If the candidate were applying for a job as a professor, her decision to rearrange the chairs would have been bold and probably appropriate. Personally, however, I want deans and chairs and provosts, etc., to take charge and give us direction. If your leaders are making up the rules as they go along, very bad things can happen. Candidate 3 would be good as a team-teacher or maybe to operate a tutoring program on campus, but not to make executive decisions.

Regarding gender, I must say I have 25 years in the working world, of which 13 years have been spent in higher education–and I can’t say women manage that much differently from men. I work with two female deans at my university: One works by consensus and always sees every issue as a case of compromise. The other is a “bulldog,” often criticized by people for being crude and insensitive. I love the bulldog lady.

I also work with the grants office a lot, which has mostly female grants officers. One is very sweet and gentle. Another one I nicknamed “Thunderbolt” because she has the thunderbolt stare that stops people dead in their tracks. I like working with Thunderbolt.

In my own department, I have found that female colleagues tend not to be very nurturing but they stand up for me when a clear ethical stake is on the table. I respect them immensely, to the last one. I haven’t had a single female colleague at this university who gossips or backstabs or does any of the stereotypical “girl” things.

My straight male colleagues present quite a different range, however. Four of them were very nurturing when I came back from active duty and struggled with post-deployment mental-health issues. They were kind and patient, willing to listen to me break down and even cry in front of them. Even though I am bisexual, I think they connected with me because I am married and a dad and served my country, so they could relate to the typical male stress of my experience.

Other straight men have been horrendous at places where I have worked, acting like little b*tches and going behind my back, forwarding emails and creating public pressure to force me out of this job or get me blocked on that grant. 

And then there are lesbians. I always, always, always get along with lesbians with one or two exceptions. They’re the most awesome people to have as colleagues or supervisors.

So I can’t really generalize about male/female leadership styles at all. Times have changed and I think those characterizations are passé. Candidate 3 in the scenario above is not indicative of the way “girls” or women lead things, from what I have seen. She is simply not the right person for an executive job. Maybe she could teach research classes at the library or do group therapy.

On the one hand:

1) people might have gotten bored sitting so a bit of movement might refresh
2) touchy feeling facilitators are among the most demanding dictators in life–throw her in the trash
3) asking 50 people to change ANYTHING is a good beginning—garlands around her neck
4) apparently brain contents were irrelevant—shoot all 50 faculty
5) why not chairs that roll?—-shoot the facilities people
6) hand out sheet with what leaders look like and give each candidate 5 minutes to strut and fret
7) March–real leaders take credit for luck and avoid credit for bad luck—check her ability to do that
8) Have a man and her run races, lift weights, spit, and make vulgar jokes—then choose the best
9) have her and a man fight using neutral tools—racoons, espressos, 
10) give em both a stack of abstracts in their field and challenge them to stay awake for 5+ minutes.

On the other hand:

Whomever you hire will have zero money the next 20 years—so it hardly matters, hire anyone. 
if you are in great warm city with great coffees and conversations and lots of high tech firms near the ocean and are paying 300K or more a year—hire me. 

GREAT LEADERS, truth be told, do not LOOK like ANYTHING—
they can be very very unimpressive people–their RESULTS look impressive, not them—
research shows interviews are the LEAST RELIABLE hiring criterion—people who are fascinated with winning interviews are stupid (candidates and deciders both).

More seriously–since LOTS of research finds executives have NO MEASURABLE EFFECTS except in crisis situations where confounding factors abound, hire someone it is entertaining to watch the ups and downs of—someone who enjoys the flows of life instead of taking it out on the poor staff, organization, students, faculty, or other stakeholders. People who treat the interview as a joke can turn out to be pretty accurate and good readers of faculty. ooooo that was subtle…..

The observation fails to take note of the fact that, in addition to the third candidate proceeding in an unusual manner, she was the only female.  Is it possible that the “acting like a girl” comment tells us more than was intended?

“acting like a girl” ?!?  sounds like those critics opinions should have been discounted for acting like sexist individuals…

True leadership is not about the position we hold, but the influence we wield.  When selecting for leadership position, we must consistently look at the influence the candidate imparts to us in the short time that they are with us. The method that a candidate uses to present is far less important than the leadership influence they exude.   We must always ask ourselves, is this a person that I want to follow?  If not, move on to the next candidate. 

That is just plain stupid. Know your audience! And lastly, people work very hard for a phd and she may have offended others in the audience that had one which I am sure was most of them!

I’ll let my moderate side comment on this one: What a bunch of sniveling, equivocating, weasely excuses for college presidents. Ask them to take responsibility for bad things that occurred in their ships on their watch, and suddenly they’re captains of only part of the ship, with the athletic department being a separate compartment with, apparently, a separate engine, steering mechanism and, most important, set of rules.

* “Do you really want your president to be the ‘Super AD’?

Well, yeah. We want the president to be the Super Provost, the Super Buildings and Grounds Head, the Super Development Office chief, don’t we? OK, not in the sense that the president micromanages all these departments’ day-to-day operations, but in the sense that the heads of these departments are under the authority of the president and report to him, in summary, about what’s going on. If there appears to be a problem, the president is supposed to call these people on the carpet and compel them to get it resolved. If it’s a “natural” problem, e.g., classroom overcrowding, snow not removed from parking lots, a dip in alumni giving, then the solution has to be less top-down and more cooperative. But if the problem is rule-breaking, flouting of regulations, undeniably and willfully scandalous behavior, then the president has to administrate top-down, and, if necessary, fire (with whatever board participation is required) the malfeasant officials.

* “It’s unrealistic for college presidents to know about every rogue booster or every fancy car a star linebacker has mysteriously acquired, says James C. Garland, a former president of Miami University, in Ohio.”

No, but it’s quite realistic for the president to know that the AD knows what the football or men’s basketball coaches are doing. It’s quite realistic–even minimal due diligence–for the president of a university with big-time revenue sports programs to convene with the AD, say, twice a semester and ask, “Is there anything illegal, unethical or immoral going on in your area of the university that I should know about?” If he does, and the AD says, “No,” and illegal, unethical or immoral doings are revealed, he or she  should fire the AD and go public with what he or she knows. If the AD says, “Well, yes” and the president helps cover it up, then the board should fire the president. The AD, likewise, should ask the same questions of the football and men’s basketball coaches, and proceed accordingly.

What the honorable James C. Garland (was he the one who gave us that stellar citizen, Ben Roethlesberger?) is doing is using the excuse of “I was only following orders” in a reverse direction.

* “Should [Shalala] be the one cleaning things up?”

Hello? She’s the president, isn’t she? Does she know what her AD is up to? (I’ll bet she knows what the Provost and the Dean of the Graduate School and the Director of Development are up to.) One looks forward to yet another iteration of the great Watergate question: “What did the President not know and when did she first not know it?”

If there’s anything worse than the current corruption in big-time college revenue sports, it’s the cowardice (anybody have a better word?) of college presidents who have big-time revenue sports programs and are now hiding behind “I can’t know every detail of my athletic department’s doings” crap that that former president Garland is shoveling or the “Everybody does it and you have to do it in order to compete” evasion.

Oh wait, there’s something worse–if not in real-world consequences, at least in repulsive pseudo-innocence–and that’s the likes of Kirk Herbstreit hand-wringing and shedding crocodile tears on ESPN over the situation. He (and Lee Corso) get paid big bucks to know the inside stuff about college football; they hang out with coaches and AD’s and hear the rumors; they could act like sports journalists and ask a few pointed questions now and then. But Herbstreit acts like he never saw anything coming, and issues such platitudes as “I just think the leadership groups — including coaches, people who care about the sport at the end of the day — have got to come up with some ideas and brainstorming ways on how to police this.” How much of even this feckless twaddle do we think will cross his lips when he’s at the game-day desk in front of a bunch of howling fans?