I define academic leadership as the practice of inspiring others to make change in the service of a shared, positive vision. That work is always difficult. Vision crafting requires creativity. Inspiration requires energy and presence. The will to change requires the resilience to overcome many kinds of resistance. In moments of chaos and disruption—when energy, presence, and resilience are in short supply—it can be hard to know how to continue to lead effectively.

One suggestion is to focus more explicitly on relationship building. The current moment is absolutely the right time to deepen the questions you ask of yourself and your colleagues: What do we care most about? What are our deep fears? What would we do if those fears came true? What can we do to mitigate the worst things? Who are we responsible for and how do we meet that responsibility when the winds are not at our back? Where are opportunities to plant seeds for the future?

This may also be a perfect moment to focus on ways to remove frustrating barriers. Simplifying processes and loosening pain points can go a long way toward reviving the people with whom you work. Asking about the areas of everyone’s regular work that drag down satisfaction is a great start. Often policies and processes are designed to catch the slacker or prevent the least competent person from making an error. Redundant steps, overly rigid work requirements, and other such fail-safes may be effective in rooting out flawed performance, but they may also slow down and dispirit the best and even the average worker. Freeing up organizational time by simplifying a process can pay dividends in morale and creativity. Not every onerous task lends itself to this, but many do. It’s a way of showing care and support when resources are constrained, and attention is fraying.

Don’t forget to consider the drags on your own productivity as well. This might be a good season to simplify, reduce, and refresh in order to free up energy for the most important things.

Questions for reflection: What are the pain points that affect our team? How do I know? Where might we gain via subtraction? Is there a process I am hanging on to for the wrong reasons? What are the detours and time wasters in my own routine? How can I simplify and create ease for myself and others?

I was honored to be part of a panel at the ASU+GSV Summit where the topic was “Revelation or Revolution? An Inflection Point for Higher Education.” 

I just returned from our annual trip to the ASU+GSV Summit, a convening that brings together ed tech developers, funders, and leaders for three days of learning and conversation. For the third year, CIC hosted a delegation of 60 CIC presidents. Participants came away with a deeper understanding of the promise and peril of AI and the ability to make informed choices about how to leverage new tools.

A Spark of Inspiration

I have written here before about Dacher Keltner’s remarkable book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. It was a great launch pad for my study of awe last year. This year, as I investigate the meaning and power of hope, I have returned to the book with new eyes. Among the most astonishing of Keltner’s findings is that a key driver of awe for people all over the world is a phenomenon that Keltner terms “moral beauty, i.e., encountering courage, goodness, or kindness.” Witnessing these core virtues expressed in the actions of those around us is, he learned, the most common way that ordinary people report experiencing awe.

Moral beauty is also closely tied to hope. When we avoid reducing hope to a kind of magical wish fulfillment or optimistic expectation, it crystallizes instead as an inner strength. Hope is there when we act on behalf of what is good, right, and just. Especially when optimism is low and magic seems in short supply. The drive to do the right thing no matter the consequences is a deep form of hope. It requires that we affirm that something matters more deeply than the present moment and more fully than our own comfort. How lovely that we are awed to see this in the actions of others. How amazing that we seem wired to respect and esteem courage, sacrifice, and commitment to justice.

This doesn’t mean we won’t disagree about what those ultimate values are. But it does mean that we are pretty good at weeding out the cranks—those who are clearly acting out of pure self-interest, expedience, or greed—no matter how loudly they pretend to be acting for a greater good. It also means that we have a target at which to aim as we judge our own actions. We can try to exhibit more moral beauty and therefore more cause for awe as we make choices in difficult circumstances.

I’ve begun keeping an informal list of awesome examples of moral beauty around me. There’s plenty to be dismayed about right now. But there are also plenty of quiet heroes showing us the way.

The Source

by James Michener

Re-reading it for the first time since seventh grade (when it served as the topic of my first school critical research paper), I was again deeply engaged with the plot, the history lessons, and the wide temporal sweep. This story of an archeological dig in Israel and the thousands of years of history it unearths is a good reminder about the rise and fall of empires, the ways history “rhymes,” and the remarkable origins and fates of monotheistic religions.

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning

by Peter Beinart

A text with which to wrestle and hopefully from which to rise up with new insight and moral courage. Beinart will make readers appropriately uncomfortable no matter their Middle East politics.

Choosing Hope: The Heritage of Judaism

by David Arnow

An inspiring study of the texts, concepts, and practices that have sustained the Jewish people for more than three thousand years. Arnow offers deep insights even for those steeped in the tradition and at the same time makes it accessible to those who are not.

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