Redesigning Collegiate Leadership: Teams and Teamwork in Higher Education

Most organizational theorists use the athletic team as a metaphor for the effective work group - specific players motivated to give their best performance in pursuit of a common goal. Redesigning Collegiate Leadership offers a different model, focusing instead on the complex ways that members of a leadership team interact, wield power, use language, and creat meaning. Estela Mara Bensimon and Anna Neumann describe the team as a culture and argue that effective team leadership depends on expecting, understanding, and appreciating the differences among individuals. Using interview with members of administrative teams on fifteen campuses - including research universities, public colleges, and community colleges - the authors examine teamwork as an essentially human activity.