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Writing in the New York Times, Susan Cain takes the class of elite higher education institutions to task for their “leadership” fetish when it comes to admissions.
As Cain reports, Harvard is looking for “citizen-leaders.” Yale ups the ante, seeking, “the leaders of their generation.”
They are not alone, of course.
Cain is troubled because she believes “A well-functioning student body – not to mention polity – also needs followers. It needs team players. And it needs those who go their own way.”
I share Cain’s distress over the privileging of leadership that centers around “Type A” personalities, as primarily evidenced in long resumes of “treasurer” of this and “vice president” of that. Even working outside of elite higher ed, the trickle down effect of this phenomenon is clear, as my first-year students will often tell tales of joining a club or organization not out of interest, but simply to compete in the college admissions realm.[1]
However, I’m not a fan of “followers” as a category to describe others who fall outside the “Type A” dynamic. Cain’s use of “team players” seems much more apt, and a much more important way of thinking about leadership, leaders, and institutional culture and missions.
Put another way, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and their ilk aren’t going to see a change just by rewording their admissions policies, or even genuinely changing their criteria.
Cain cites soccer the “beautiful game” as an example of the necessity of teamwork, “the intricate ballet of patterns and passes,” that requires cooperation and coordination.
This is true enough, but for my money, hockey is a superior example of the ways team players are also team leaders. Hockey may be a rougher kind of beauty, but the culture of the game supports more humility, a greater sense of “servant leadership” than soccer.
This goal from a recent game of my beloved Chicago Blackhawks is a great case in point.
It is not a spectacular goal, but if you take a single player away, especially those who never touch the puck, the goal doesn’t happen. Brian Campbell (51) and Marcus Kruger (16) skate towards the net in such a way as to make space for Marian Hossa (81) to have enough space to shoot. Campbell and Kruger receive no scoresheet glory for these acts, but I promise you their contributions were recognized by the team.
Hockey is a sport (unlike soccer) where even the greatest superstars are expected to project humility. When interviewed about a goal, just about every player will single out the work that others put in prior to them scoring. This makes hockey players spectacularly boring interviewees, but the culture is so ingrained, that every player understands the ethos.
Elite academia of the Harvard/Yale/Princeton variety is going to have a hard time attracting – and then nurturing – team player students because those institutions are simply built on a different ethos, an ethos not of team cooperation, but individual competition. In this world, there is little room for leading by example - a great locker room presence, in sports parlance - because the point of being elite is to be recognized as such by the public at large.
And you know what? That’s okay. That kind of competition can breed a category of excellence that has a long tradition in our culture, the exemplar who rises about the crowd.
The trouble comes when we confuse those achievements with “leadership.” There is no such thing as effective leadership that doesn’t attract those who are willing to follow. Those elite universities are using “leader” as proxy for “competitor” or even “winner,” maybe because it sounds better, but it is not accurate.
Cain says students she speaks to “define leaders as those who can order other people around.” An Ivy League professor quoted by Cain says admissions offices see “leadership” as “restricted to political or business power,” failing to also see leadership as “making advances in solving mathematical problems or being the best poet of the century.”
Of course, the categorical error by the Ivy League professor quoted by Cain should be obvious as well. She apparently believes individual “prestige” is also a form of leadership, which it is not.
We should not be surprised at this disconnect. Academia in general, and elite academia in specific has very little to offer when it comes to modeling genuine leadership. The most successful academics are not leaders, but competitors, and their prize is prestige, something that can translate into individual power – to negotiate a better personal situation, for example – but does little to enhance the institution overall.
In fact, the superstar hired for reasons of prestige likely does more harm than good to an institution and its overall mission if that mission extends beyond the perpetuation of prestige that is.
Unfortunately, even non-elite institutions follow the model of our superiors, operating on prestige models that are actually pretty bad fits for their missions. As I wrote last year, prestige isn’t going to save us. There’s only so much room at the top.
Harvard and Yale are never going to be organized in ways that will reward the team player, the person who is going to drive to the net to make the space for someone else to score. They aren’t wired that way. We shouldn’t demand they change. Let them continue to practice their alpha-type academic Hunger Games.
The bigger challenge is for the rest of us to turn our gazes away from those institutions and see them not as something to aspire to, but cultures we should be running from.[2]
[1] At the places I’ve worked, none of this was necessary to secure admission.
[2] There must be higher ed institutions out there organized and run in ways that allow space for team players to thrive and be recognized, and valued, but I’ve never experienced it.
If you have, please share in the comments.
