​Leading from behind

The school year begins with a cacophony of rhetoric, especially for the Class of 2019, whose orientation is built, in part, to inspire them grandly about what they can do at Duke. Their week ended with closing remarks from several speakers. President Brodhead advised students to be the “builder of your best self.” Dean Nowicki looked at what it means to question authority and be “engaged and productive.” Today we explore one of the paths students walk in those visions: leadership.

In their first few weeks, freshmen are introduced to Duke’s leadership culture. They are presented with ways to become leaders on campus: of their dorms, of their student government and of the hundreds of organizations that define Duke. Some organizations have high membership or demanding logistics, and having several student leaders is sensible. Yet others adopt a philosophy of leading by label where positions are pulled from the air to incentivize student involvement. This approach seems backwards for trying to identify star members and to make leadership positions healthily competitive.

We worry, from Duke Student Government to the smallest student group, that an excessive leadership culture cheapens what it means to be a leader. It is little more than sound and fury. It is student leadership conceived as moving between positions rather than a process of committing seriously to a community and thinking about ways to make it better. The difference is one of intent and action. Leadership, as we envision it, is being the member who goes above and beyond doing what the group needs done. Plainly, leadership is identifying and defining what a group needs done, thinking about problems or goals, understanding their origins, imagining solutions, anticipating consequences and then leading a team forward. It means really sinking your teeth in and doing more than just “doing.”

The responsibility for making this cultural shift is largely on a university. William Deresiewicz, an academic-turned-writer, recently argued there are serious consequences to the absence of help from a university. Students create what he calls a “parallel curriculum for themselves … [of] skills they think they really need” to lead. This is all about starting your own non-profit, business or club or minimally being a leader in every organization. After all, differentiating yourself to stay ahead is important. However university or funding-side checks on leadership inflation should be developed to combat this. A potentially effective solution is for a university to substitute the extracurricular good here with a curricular good. More opportunities for students to be leaders in their academic studies and departments are a central way to create meaningful and guaranteedly intellectual projects for students to lead. Duke should consider steps it can take to incorporate the leadership culture of extracurriculars into the rigor of academic experiences and vice-versa.

Part of the capacity to lead is recognizing students aren’t always ready. They don’t always know enough to build their best self. This humility starts in the classroom, where students must be exposed to the depth of real challenges in their fields, the complexity of solutions and the need for reflective decision-making inherent in responsible leadership. The necessary change is a broader cultural one, wherein students should reward authenticity of leadership over excess of leadership. Instead of leadership being the ends of the Duke experience, both the University and students should understand leadership as a slowly actualized byproduct of a different goal they must work towards together: a more thoughtful, well-guided, reflective and intentional education.