What Makes a Leader?

I always begin my fall course, Critical Perspectives on Collaborative Leadership, by asking students to draw a leader. Every year, the images they produce vary widely: Some depict a person interconnected within a community, while others place the leader at the top of a hierarchy or illustrate individual traits. We then compare these images to those from a 2018 study that asked members of the general public to engage in the same task; invariably, these drawings portrayed men in suits with a commanding presence, confident corporate executives who have all the answers.

I find this in-class exercise compelling because it raises discussion about the default leadership models students hold. Their drawings acknowledge the ways old models of leadership have shaped and limited our conceptions of leadership, but perhaps more importantly, they also reflect a yearning for something different. This isn’t surprising. The pandemic, the climate crisis, and the country’s extreme political polarization have created a profound sense of overwhelm and worry about the future among students today. As a result, they harbor a desire to make change even when they might not know where to begin.

There is little doubt that the world our students will enter, with all its complexities, conflicts, injustices, and inequities, will need leaders of all kinds. At the Wurtele Center for Leadership, we are working with students to explore and practice more expansive models of leadership so that they leave Smith equipped with the skills and confidence to pursue what really matters to them. Specifically, we’ve begun to help them distinguish between big-L leadership (leadership as a position of power) and small-l leadership (leadership as a set of change-oriented behaviors or actions that are adaptable, contextually embedded, power-aware, and often nonhierarchical). We’re finding that this approach resonates with a wide range of students, including those who have long believed that leadership was not for them. This more nuanced definition of leadership, students say, eases the stress they often feel about being No. 1 in their fields or meeting other unrealistic ideals of success.

Research shows that members of Generation Z—students currently at Smith and entering the workforce—are more likely to embrace leadership that is authentic and inclusive, collaborative, purposeful, and flexible. With this in mind, we’re taking four approaches to helping students think differently about what a leader can look like and what it means to lead. Here’s what we’re doing.

Putting the focus on purpose rather than achievement

Students today are largely turned off by the “lean in” leadership style that was so common a decade ago. Though this model rightly highlighted the lack of representation of women in positions of power, it tended to focus conversations about women’s leadership on individual career achievement. For Gen Z, that often doesn’t feel right. With a growing concern about the security of our democracy and the health of the planet, climbing the corporate ladder is often not enough for them. So even as we continue to honor the career ambitions of our students, we’re also teaching them to train their focus on exploring a sense of purpose, to imagine the impact they want to make, and then to identify the skills and knowledge they need to do so.

Teaching collaborative teamwork inside and outside the classroom

Collaborative teamwork is among the most important small-l leadership skills for students who want to make a difference. The Wurtele Center builds collaboration training into every experience we design and facilitate. We also partner with professors teaching intensive group projects to help them guide students in the art of managing group dynamics. The center sponsors a Student Leadership Conference and other trainings for student leaders in residential life and in clubs and organizations, which build cultural competency and conflict-management skills, among others. By reframing leadership as collaborative engagement across differences, we teach students to imagine how they can impact change with others without necessarily occupying a particular position or role.

Instilling facilitation practices

The term “facilitation” is often used for a style of leadership that involves designing collaborative experiences for groups of people to engage them effectively in working together toward a common goal. The Leaders for Equity-Centered and Action-Based Design (LEAD) Scholars Program, which Wurtele co-sponsors with the Office for Equity and Inclusion, trains a cohort of students in facilitation practices and then employs them, in their second year, to facilitate their peers in workshops on topics ranging from building belonging to responding to microaggressions. The program is transformative for students who want to lead their communities toward equity but often can’t imagine how to generate 
and harness the collective power of a group.

Practicing what we preach

If we want students to develop a more expansive, collaborative approach to leadership, we need to model what we teach. We do that in several ways, including through our Art of Leading Teams monthly lunch series, in which Smith staff and faculty grapple with topics related to team leadership and generating a collaborative culture on campus. Topics have included welcoming new team members, destructive conflict versus healthy dissent, and managing up. Each session is designed and facilitated with a guest colleague from another office on campus, and we always offer concrete tools and resources for participants to use immediately in their teams. Last year, a record 193 people attended at least one of the sessions. In short, we’re starting a growing campuswide movement to integrate more collaborative ways of working and leading at Smith. 

Erin Park Cohn ’00 is the director of Smith’s Wurtele Center for Leadership.