Overmanaged? Underled? How to develop good leaders.

In television shows and movies of that era, women of the 1950s were usually homemakers and housekeepers. Little wonder that when women first came to academic administration, many took on those traditional roles.

Linda McCann, a leadership development consultant, referred to the conference's title in discussing the housekeeper and groundbreaker roles that women in academic administration play at the Senior Women Academic Administrators of Canada (SWAAC) conference held in Ottawa in April. Her presentation hit home; as original SWAAC members are growing older, it is important to plan how the organization will recruit, serve and mentor new women administrators: as houskeepers or groundbreakers?

McCann, formerly director of organization and employee development at the University of Saskatchewan, is now a consultant to many higher education campuses.

A new paradigm for leadership

Senior university leaders have identified increasing leadership capacity and the ability to lead change as high priorities for those seeking promotions. They believe these financially tough times require more, not less, leadership.

We look to leaders to help us when we're in trouble, to improve morale and productivity, and to solve conflicts. The old paradigm that called for automatically moving a chair to a dean's position doesn't work anymore, because schools recognize that senior leaders need to develop a new set of qualities and skills.

The Conference Board of Canada's Report Card on Leadership found that organizations are falling short of leadership capabilities among those they have in top roles. Only 2% of organizations surveyed in 2001 indicated that they had the leadership capacity to implement major change, down from 5% in 1999. Only to percent of companies claimed to have genera] leadership ability.