LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORK GIVES CAMPUS COMMON LANGUAGE

Phrases such as “leadership is an activity,” “adaptive challenges,” and “intervene skillfully” are as much a part of the McPherson College lexicon as “It’s a great day to be a Bulldog.” That is because, for nearly 10 years, the college has partnered with the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) to implement its leadership philosophy and tackle some of the college’s biggest challenges.

The Kansas Leadership Center, a non-profit organization, has a bold mission to transform civic life in Kansas and beyond. It aims to create a culture where ordinary people exercise leadership and engage others to make progress on their toughest challenges.

“The KLC helps ordinary citizens with civic leadership and engagement,” said Kaye Monk-Morgan, President and CEO of KLC. “That engagement is everything from running for a political o ce to being on the PTA at your kid’s school, to caring about your neighbor, and everything in between.”

Monk-Morgan stated the KLC’s objective is to help individuals deploy themselves in ways that increase the likelihood of making progress on daunting challenges. She emphasized that challenges often go unsolved for decades or generations because we rely on authority figures or designated leaders, rather than individuals, to assume accountability for finding solutions.

“Our primary work and belief are centered on the idea that if we approach things di erently, we will achieve di erent outcomes,” she said. “We partner with individuals to build stronger systems.”

McPherson College first partnered with KLC in 2014 when President Michael Schneider introduced the KLC adaptive framework to address freshman retention on campus. A diverse group of campus employees participated in KLC training, setting the stage for an all-campus meeting in the fall of 2014. The goal was to mobilize the entire campus to improve freshman retention. KLC competencies inspiring collective purpose, working across factions, testing multiple interpretations and points of view, and creating a trustworthy process were emphasized.

After the first year of working with KLC and involving the entire campus in retention e orts, the college increased fall-to-fall freshman retention from 56% to 70%. While work on retention continues, the KLC framework has also been applied to diagnose other campus issues, such as increasing the retention of minority students.

“I have watched McPherson College do fantastic things and have discussions both on campus and in your community in ways that most institutions don’t,” Monk-Morgan said. “You also have an administrator who makes room for others to exercise leadership and engages not only the voices that are typically at the table but looks for the uncommon voices, too.”

Developing an environment where everyone is invited to lead isn’t always easy. According to Monk-Morgan, the challenges that often interest a college campus are adaptive challenges – ones that cannot be solved with technical solutions, such as student retention, community engagement, and workforce development.

“It’s not an easy place to be,” she said. “McPherson College is fortunate to have a president who understands that he might not have the only idea, so he gets a bunch of people in the room and hears from them. McPherson College is benefitting from that. You can see it in the faculty, sta , and even the students.”

Creating an environment where everyone can experiment with leadership is crucial for colleges. Providing faculty, sta , and students the skills to practice leadership instills in them the courage and confidence to engage actively.

“When we work at colleges, we often talk about our college students as leaders for the future, but the reality is that they are leading now,” Monk-Morgan said. “If we can give them the skill set that allows them, while they are young, to approach a challenge with confidence and engage di erently, hopefully, it allows them to see that they can do other things, too. Students practicing those skills can be hugely e ective because of the way they show up and the relationships that they build.”

While numerous organizations o er leadership training and executive development, few approach it the same way as KLC does.

“It is a unique framework,” Monk-Morgan said. “Our framework says leadership is an activity, not a position. And everyone is expected to do it. It’s not a single person or senior team or group of selective individuals; it is many di erent people doing it. That’s really avant-garde.”

While the college’s goal is to utilize the KLC process to work together as a community and address the challenges facing the campus, the KLC’s objective is to see its framework applied in other areas as well. Although it is a Kansas-based nonprofit organization, it extends its work beyond Kansas, partnering with federal and state-level government, Fortune 500 companies, and other colleges outside the state.

“We hope for a ripple e ect,” Monk-Morgan said. “The campus works on the challenges it has elevated, but the same skill sets show up in the community at city council meetings, Kiwanis, school board, or running for a local o ce. No matter where our point of entry is to develop these skills, once you have them, you can use them in many other places and spaces. The more we partner with the college, the more the community will see those skills spill over outside campus. When di erent people in di erent places adopt these practices, you start to see the culture shift.”