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“Remember, you’re a target,” warned my well-meaning colleague, “and your family is too.” He cautioned me to always be on the lookout for potential enemies. I realize he meant to be helpful, as a senior president passing along wisdom to a neophyte, yet I was taken aback by his message. It sounded like an exhausting way to live, one guaranteed to encourage paranoia.
While I had expected a demanding life as an institutional leader, I had never thought about my new existence in quite those terms—perhaps because in Harvard’s seminar for new presidents, the word “target” was never mentioned. In our brief but helpful summer course, we had instead discussed the president as a symbol, politician, fundraiser, financial officer, problem-solver, and human-resource manager. We had learned about the symbolism associated with inaugurations (don’t put your smiling face on a mouse pad), the key importance of your chief financial officer (make sure yours is honest), and fundraising tips (the least effective means is a passive mailing).
Perhaps being considered a target is an inevitable aspect of the symbolism of the college presidency, which carries with it implications of power and control. Presidents are viewed by their various constituencies as responsible for everything, good and ill. If the stock market is up, the president is a success; if it is down, why were the college’s investments positioned so poorly?
Upon assuming the role of president, one takes on a double existence—the symbol of the presidency overlays one’s identity as a private individual. And the line between the two can at times become dangerously blurred. Is a verbal attack on the president a commentary upon the defects of the person? Yes, no, maybe—what day of the week is it? While I was deeply shocked that Denice Denton’s brief tenure as chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, came to such a horrific ending with her suicide, it appeared that at a certain point the attacks upon her as chancellor crossed that line and began to affect her as a person.
Yet while her reaction to vilification may have been extreme, her isolation was not atypical. What my Harvard class did hear repeatedly from our instructors is that we needed to prepare ourselves for the inevitable loneliness of the presidency.
The Presidency’s Demands and Stresses
We also needed to prepare for the escalating demands of the job. The responsibilities that are now commonly considered part of the typical presidential portfolio have undergone a dramatic change and expansion during the past few decades. In a survey conducted by the American Council on Education, presidents were asked to rank the primary uses of their time. The top three were fundraising, budget/finance, and community relations. Indeed, a recent Chronicle of Higher Education survey found that 53 percent of presidents reported that they conduct some form of fundraising every day; 91 percent do so weekly.
This emphasis on fundraising may be the inspiration for a new term that has entered the administrative lexicon, the “external president,” one whose focus is solely on fundraising and profile-building. The first time I heard a president refer to himself as “external,” I had to ask him to explain. His provost, he said, took care of the internal/academic issues, while his gaze was directed outward, at “resources enhancement.”
So the very aspects of university life that originally attracted most presidents to academia—the opportunity to work with young people and the demands and joys of teaching and research—now have been pushed out of the presidential workload. In the ACE survey, academic and faculty issues were at the bottom of the list of presidential priorities, and personal scholarship was not mentioned at all. When I tell people that I still teach and remain active in scholarship, the news is usually greeted with surprise. This past summer, during the half day I managed to spend conducting research at the Huntington Library, a staff member who recognized me openly expressed his astonishment. Presidents’ ability to serve as academic leaders of their institutions and also rise to the role of public intellectual upon demand has, over the last decade or so, become less important than their capacity to endlessly fundraise, moderate campus conflicts, govern, and manage the trickle-down effects of Sarbanes-Oxley (a federal law pertaining to for-profit entities that mandates new accounting standards).
The presidents I know well all practice a grim sort of humor, recognizing the impossibility of their 24/7 lives, while simultaneously acknowledging that this is their reality and that they volunteered for the job. Obviously, some of the pressures are at least partially self-imposed. All of the presidents I know are enormously committed, driven, competitive individuals who work constantly. In fact, I think it is often difficult for presidents to allow themselves to take a vacation without a nagging sense of work left undone. Or even worse, they may worry about urgent problems compounding in their absence or about obligations requiring delicate timing, such as follow-up on fundraising contacts, going unmet.
In case you were wondering, for the official record presidents are never sick. Try to find a president who feels comfortable staying home with the flu. A recent example of presidential invulnerability came when I chaired an accreditation panel, and we interviewed a president whose campus had just had a visit from the accrediting team to gauge institutional capacity. The interview was positive, and the president was an excellent spokesperson for his university. But I found out the next day that immediately after leaving the room he complained of chest pains, and he wound up having an emergency angioplasty that night. He never broke a sweat in front of us.
I will freely admit that I, too, am loath to admit fallibility. A few weeks prior to my family’s move to California to begin my presidency at Pitzer, I seriously injured my back. An emergency MRI and visit to the doctor confirmed that I would need surgery. A week after my operation, our belongings were in a moving van and my six-year-old son, with his right arm in a cast due to a playground incident, pushed me in a wheelchair through the airport while my husband followed carrying two bags of howling cats.
Nothing would deter me from starting my new position on July 1. I began work 10 days before my doctor recommended, with staples still holding me together. I grinned, gritted my teeth, downed aspirin, and never told a soul at work. This was not heroism. The alternative, starting out with an admission that I was not physically ready to hit the ground running, would simply have been more painful than my temporary physical injury.
The Denton tragedy was due not just to attacks on her, but also in part to the unremitting stress of the job. While suicide is the most catastrophic instance of the consequences of compounded demands on presidents, there are plenty of milder warning signals, such as the president who takes an immediate indefinite leave of absence. Some signals involve presidential misbehavior. Just read The Chronicle of Higher Education, which regularly runs stories about a president’s sending harassing emails to a subordinate or charging outrageous, unapproved purchases to the university. These examples of erratic behavior on the part of executives who had previously met the demands of the job could, in some cases, be interpreted as cries for help from individuals who may feel that their boards and other constituencies would see an admission that they need assistance and rest as an unacceptable sign of weakness.
The aftermath of these breakdowns is institutional devastation. Perhaps I am particularly sensitive to this issue because I have had some first-hand experience with what happens when a president succumbs to the pressures of his position. In 1997, when I arrived as the first woman dean of the faculty at Coe College, it was two years after the deeply depressed president had attempted suicide, just prior to a scheduled meeting with the board of trustees. The college was shaken to its core, and a number of senior administrators left. Trustees, faculty, and staff were all concerned for the institution’s future. During the five years I spent there, it was a difficult task—though ultimately a successful and satisfying one—to revive institutional self-confidence and progress.
This past year saw a number of high-profile institutional governance crises. Events at Harvard, American, and Gallaudet Universities, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Iowa made their way into the network news stations and national newspapers. Amidst public rancor and resignations by board members, faculty took no-confidence votes and protested presidential search processes. When unpopular candidates were chosen or when compensation packages for departing presidents became public knowledge, enraged students in some instances shut down daily operations and forced the academic life of the university to a standstill.
So it is not surprising that an article recently published in Inside Higher Ed, “The Graying of the Presidency” (February 18, 2007), noted that the “prevailing wisdom” kicking around academia is that “presidencies are just too difficult, too political and too draining for anyone to last very long.” But all this pressure notwithstanding, according to a 2006 study by the American Council on Education, presidents have been “staying in office longer than at any point in the last 20 years.” The average number of years for presidents currently in office (for all institutions) was 8.5 in 2006. In 1986 the average was 6.6 years.
The apparent contradiction—that the job is too tough to be sustained, but presidents are hanging in there longer than ever—can perhaps be explained by the demographics of this hardy group: Nearly 50 percent of presidents are age 61 and older (the average age is almost 60), 77 percent are male, and 86 percent are white. In the profile this suggests, we see a man who has reached the terminal rank in academia, is a few years from retirement, and has had eight years to acclimate to the hassles and the perks of the presidency. Where is this man going to go?
Preparing for the New Generation
Meanwhile, something that we can derive with certainty from these statistics is that a new generation of presidents is on the horizon. Will the college presidency prove attractive to them? In particular, will the position lure women (according to ACE, now 21 percent of presidents) and people of color (13 percent), two groups that have been historically underrepresented in academic presidencies? Given the pressures I’ve outlined, now is a good time to step back and examine what boards and presidents can do to prepare themselves for future challenges.
An important step in the right direction is suggested in a report from the Association of Governing Board’s task force on the state of the presidency in American higher education, The Leadership Imperative. Whereas a decade earlier the AGB called for institutions “to empower presidents to be purposeful decision makers,” it now finds that higher education is “in a governance crisis” (vi).
While boards understand that their responsibility is to hire the president, they sometimes believe that once that process is complete, their only job is to evaluate his or her performance. The board’s role, though, really has just begun with the successful hire, and board members should see themselves as active agents in supporting the president in the transitional first year. Recognizing that a synergistic partnership between the president and the board is critical for the good of an institution, AGB calls for a brand of leadership linking the two “in an environment of support, candor, and accountability” (vii). This new brand of “collaborative but decisive leadership” is termed “integral leadership.” AGB makes 43 recommendations regarding how a board can produce it, including how the trustees should support the president, approach presidential compensation and evaluation, and be involved in presidential renewal and succession. The areas of concern about presidents can be broken into several areas.
Presidential Being
One of AGB’s categories of concern might be termed presidential being. The AGB report warns that the president is the living symbol of institutional strength. There’s an old saying, “presidents never whisper,” and in these days of YouTube.com and blogs, you could say that the presidential whisper has become a shout-out. Boards should help presidents understand that their every utterance is for public consumption and will likely be viewed as a formal statement reflecting institutional policy or philosophy.
Boards assume that presidents will be in continual good health, endlessly patient, and bursting with energy. What is typically not part of the conversation between the president and board is how best to achieve this robust state and when the president will rest. As much as we may be loath to admit it publicly, presidents really do need “down time.” Trustees need to monitor the impact the duties of the presidency may be having on the president and his or her family and engage in an open and candid discussion about how best to support these individuals. They should take as their role model the board at one college that required its president to take a vacation when he found it impossible to force himself to do so.
Presidential Doing
Let me call a second area of concern for boards presidential doing. A critical aspect of presidential leadership, according to AGB, is the “quality of engagement” of the president with the institution. Presidents must take the lead in creating and sharing a vision of the college. But this vision cannot be the president’s alone—it must be developed in consultation with faculty, alumni, students, staff, the vice presidents, and trustees. In my experience, if the “vision thing” is seen as “the president’s vision thing,” opposition will arise from constituencies that benefit little or not at all or, worse, feel threatened (no matter how mistakenly). Furthermore, an institutional plan will succeed best if it seeks to make the college or university more rather than other. That is, presidents and boards must love the institution in equal measure for what it is and for what it will become.
If the president develops her vision in a vacuum, that is where it will stay, with very little possibility of successful implementation. Even with a shared vision, it is the president’s responsibility to establish a meaningful strategic-planning process, once again involving all members of the institution, to transform the vision into actuality. Most presidents won’t need to be reminded that an envisioning process disconnected from budget reality or fundraising ability is wasted motion.
Presidential Social Integration
Finally, another aspect of the AGB report has to do with what I call presidential social integration. The report identifies the very real issue of the presidential “loneliness” that I kept hearing about in my Harvard program. Boards need to understand that presidents are also private individuals. I am fortunate in that I have a family to keep me grounded. I met Nelson Trombley when I was a graduate student and he was a high-school art teacher, and we have been married for 16 years. My son is 10 years old, a fifth grader, and he is well aware that he is our first priority. Every day begins with me walking my dog Freckles around the College. To the greatest extent possible, I exercise regularly, try not to engage in stress eating, maintain my scholarship, and keep in touch with relatives and friends.
I also have now been in this position long enough to realize that it is possible for the president to enjoy (not just work at) developing a rich social life with the people at her college. Beyond the college, too, it is important to create and maintain a network of collegial friendships with chief executive officers at other institutions, who can act as sounding boards and advisors. Few problems are unique to one’s own institution, and it is equally rewarding to be able to give and receive advice.
Presidential Transition
Boards should see themselves as especially active agents during the president’s transitional first year. Trustees should think about who would serve well as a presidential mentor, perhaps a long-time faculty member or board chair. This person should be proactive in arranging opportunities for the president to make connections in business and social circles.
What proved enormously helpful when I came to Pitzer was the establishment of a presidential-transition committee consisting of faculty, staff, students, administrators, alumni, and trustees. After soliciting feedback from the various segments of the college regarding their expectations for my first year, what became immediately apparent to the committee members were the extraordinary demands on my time. I visited the committee at various intervals during the six months they met prior to my arrival to hear their suggestions and to offer feedback. The transition planning was valuable for me because I was able to discern a great deal about campus culture, and I also felt that I had a group of people with whom I could immediately communicate and discuss institutional strategy.
This process also served to bring the board into the community in a way that was participatory and positively collaborative.
Presidential Evaluation and Support
While expectations for presidential performance have increased exponentially, many colleges have been slow to recognize the professional and personal demands of the presidency, to question the advantages and pitfalls of the increased demands, or to discern how their trustees can assist the president. To ensure that the expectations are realistic and transparent and that the performance of the president is commensurate with the board’s expectations, AGB recommends that after the fifth or six year of a president’s term a formal evaluation of both president and board take place, overseen by an external consultant.
This is a valuable opportunity to reinforce the “integral leadership” of the president and board. A framework of support and mutual guidance between the board and president is the best guarantee of institutional success. It reduces time-consuming misunderstandings, serves as a basis for trust and openness, and minimizes the president’s energy-sapping stress. Denton’s death should serve as an important reminder, should they need one, to aspiring presidents, sitting presidents, and boards of trustees regarding the importance of establishing a mutually supportive relationship that will enable the president’s success.
There is no escaping the fact that creating this relationship is largely the responsibility of the president. Since it is best cultivated and nurtured from the beginning, new presidents should see this as one of their top priorities. The partnership between the president and board chair is of particular importance and should present an opportunity for strategy discussions as well as information exchanges. I speak with my board chair at a regular hour every week, and I know that he will make himself available should an issue arise.
As I was sitting in a restaurant a few years ago with an exhausted president just starting his first year, he asked me if his days were always going to be so demanding and long. I told him to regard the experience of being president as like running a marathon; this is no job for sprinters. I advised him to learn how to conserve his energy, sleep on demand, and keep his worries confined to his office.
I also shared with him how very special his new life was and how profound his experience could be. I count my five years at Pitzer College as the most joyous of my professional life. I believe that one is “called” to the presidency. Presidents, who must inevitably be prepared for long days and nights, need the strength provided by passion and commitment and joy in the job. But they also need support. I was fortunate in that I had the good will and guidance of a seasoned and patient board, so that in time I came to learn the importance of the kind of relationship I have emphasized here. I hope those presently rising to the presidential challenge have the same good fortune.
A Mark Twain scholar, Laura Trombley was inaugurated as Pitzer College’s fifth president in 2003. Prior to that, she served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Coe College, a private liberal-arts institution in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.