Informal faculty leadership in the community college: Characteristics and behaviors, areas of influence, and contributing circumstances

Leadership is a central theme, playing a pivotal role in theories of ongoing and productive institutional transformation within higher education. The notion of leadership and its role in organizational development is evolving, becoming richer and more inclusive and focusing attention on more than the role of a single hero as ultimate visionary leader. While executive leadership is important, a model that excludes consideration of the broad sweep of leadership roles is a model that is out of step with the 21st century community college. Issues of shared governance, multiple missions, institutional maturity and organizational complexity mitigate against single source leadership. Leadership is distributed in many forms throughout the organization, which suggests that leaders emerge in response to issues and challenges and that leadership is potentially the role of everyone in the organization rather than a virtue vested in one person or a small number of individuals.; Of special interest to this research study were informal community college faculty leaders who, without formal designation, exercise influence and attract followers. The purpose of this research study was to develop an understanding of informal faculty leadership in the community college from the perspective of informal faculty leaders themselves. The research sought to answer these questions: (1) What characteristics and behaviors exemplify effective informal faculty leaders? (2) What factors contribute to the emergence of informal faculty leaders? (3) What issues tend to be influenced by informal faculty leaders, and do their peers perceive this influence as positive or negative? (4) What circumstances tend to draw out or be associated with informal faculty leaders in the exercise of informal leadership?; The population for this research study was informal faculty leaders from Michigan community colleges. Six Michigan community colleges were selected and a purposive sample was drawn through nominations of informal faculty leaders by department chairs at each of the colleges. Informal faculty leaders were defined as faculty without recognized positional authority yet who influence others within the college either consistently or in reference to specific issues or situations. Care was taken not to disclose to the research participants that they themselves were considered informal leaders. Key findings regarding the nature of informal faculty leadership from the perspective of informal faculty leaders include: (1) Informal faculty leadership is generally associated with positive attributes. (2) Concern about issues, a feeling of personal responsibility and the opportunity to contribute expertise cause informal leaders emerge. (3) Informal faculty leaders are perceived to have high levels of positive impact on curriculum. (4) Informal faculty leaders are perceived differently by females than males, by longer serving than newer faculty in higher education, by high length than low length faculty at their current institution and by technical/occupational faculty than liberal arts/general studies faculty.