Community colleges are complicated environments impacted by precarious funding models, population shifts, burgeoning enrollments of students with nonacademic barriers to success, and more. An institutional climate can easily become volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). In 1985, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus’s Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, “emphasized the need for leaders to be adaptable, comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, and capable of navigating complex environments” (VUCA-WORLD, n.d., para. 3). In 1987, the U.S. military coined the term VUCA (Wright, 2023), which has more recently been embraced by higher education (LeBlanc, 2018).

Community colleges can get bogged down by VUCA situations and find themselves unable to quickly pivot. In his chapter in Generation X Presidents Leading Community Colleges (Ellis & García, 2017), Dr. Kirk Nooks, current President and CEO of the Council on Occupational Education, addresses the lack of innovation and flexibility in today’s community colleges and asks the question: “When did the movement turn into a monument for community colleges?” (p. 58). There is a rising need in higher education to prepare leaders to face VUCA “realities for which there are no answers or clear precedents, a context in which the life experience and formal learning of many senior leaders have not prepared them to act wisely and well” (Carvan, 2015, p. 3). According to Petrie (2014), we are not called to train fully grown minds to lead; we are called to grow bigger minds.

With appropriate leadership and cultural shifts, institutions can transition to a VUCA Prime environment: one characterized by vision, understanding, clarity, and agility (Lawrence, 2013). To make this critical pivot, leaders at all levels of the organization must embrace principles related to psychological safety, 360o learning, and leading from the middle. Fully engaged and highly effective VUCA Prime leaders manage based on core values; are agile and responsive problem-solvers that empower decision-making up, down, and across the college; and are passionate opportunists for authentic engagement, striving to promote a culture of safe, open, and honest communication (Edmonson, 2018). A VUCA Prime, values-based leader is committed to self-awareness and growth; seeks to develop others; and fosters learning and innovative risk-taking. Such a leader will collaborate effectively, reframing perspectives responsive to emerging realities to accomplish the vision and identified priorities for educating the leaders of tomorrow: our students. The VUCA Prime leader is authentic and humble, possessing high emotional intelligence, and cultivates trust among individuals and full-permission psychological safety among teams. The highest ideal of the VUCA Prime leader is service to others (Elkington, 2017).

VUCA to VUCA Prime

Dealing with budget constraints and complex issues such as a rising number of students with life barriers, Monroe Community College (MCC) began researching and embracing VUCA Prime concepts. The college’s VUCA Prime initiatives were spear-headed by Associate Vice President of Administrative Services Darrell Jachim-Moore, who was inspired by an article in Harvard Business Review about psychological safety (Gallo, 2023). After reading additional work by Amy Edmonson and the Fearless Organization, Jachim-Moore became a committed champion of psychological safety.

Carvan (2015) states that leadership development “requires awakening, unlearning and opening up, and experimenting with new prototypes, new actions based on a whole new way of seeing,” (p. 5). Jachim-Moore’s efforts reflect this philosophy. He began to run lunch & learns, designed and implemented training for college directors, became DiSC certified, and engaged with colleagues throughout the organization on Maxwell Leadership training targeting VUCA Prime leadership competencies as described below:

• A full-day, onsite, experiential workshop leveraging The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential (Maxwell, 2021) with key leaders from Administrative Services and other divisions.
• A lunch & learn series on Maxwell’s five levels of leadership facilitated by those attending the onsite workshop. Nearly 100 college leaders, including 40+ from outside of the Administrative Services’ division, are reading and discussing The 5 Levels of Leadership: Lunch & Learn (Maxwell, 2014) and its principles.
• An exercise to share the Maxwell values and engage in values-based conversations. This effort represents ongoing leader engagement with direct reports and colleagues across the college.
• Executive group coaching for the Administrative Services senior team on a quarterly basis. Developmental learning in this forum includes the five levels and maximizing leadership potential, understanding your why and connecting one’s role to the bigger vision, putting people in the right place and creating vision and team alignment, and pursuing the best.
• How Successful People Think online video series by John Maxwell for the senior team
• Maxwell DiSC Method – Behavioral Analysis Trainer and Consultant certifications earned by two division leaders. Both individual and team behavioral profiles are now available to the college.

Jachim-Moore then co-presented a session with Greg Hinton, MCC’s Chief Financial Officer and Vice President, Finance and Administrative Services, on the college’s VUCA to VUCA Prime transition—“VUCA: A Framework for Mastering Disruption in Today’s Higher Education Environment”—at the League for Innovation’s 2024 Innovations Conference in March 2024 as well as American Association of Community Colleges’ annual conference in April 2024. For his outstanding work, Jachim-Moore was awarded the MCC’s 2023-2024 Innovation of the Year Award, an honor the college typically bestows on an entire committee or office. In April 2024, Hinton additionally presented a session titled, “Strategic Finance and VUCA” to the New York State Community College Leadership Academy.

Results

A commitment to psychological safety has already benefitted MCC financially and culturally. When the Controller’s office had a significant need to fill two vacant clerk positions in Accounting Services, critical positions for compliance and potential external audit, Controller Mike Quinn responded creatively. “Instead of hiring these two positions externally, we searched for potentially underutilized staff elsewhere at the college and found two gems in Parking Services: Alex Campanis and Ashely Smock,” he said. With the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, these employees were working in a department with a declining workload, but were both very familiar with the structure and function of many areas of the college. According to Quinn, Campanis and Smock “have significantly improved our processes by implementing new procedures based on a critical review of current procedures and a more efficient use of technology.” He continued, “Maximizing and leveraging our exceptional internal talent resulted in budget savings for the college.”

Associate Vice President Quent Rhodes created an environment in which two maintenance employees, Tim Brancato and Chris Doles, felt empowered to offer their own skills to solve a costly issue at MCC’s Downtown Campus. When the college requested quotes to retrofit the overhead gate of a garage, external companies proposed to replace the gate at a cost of over $100,000 or to assess the existing gate at a cost of over $7,000 instead. Using their own machining skills and the support of Rhodes, Brancato and Doles fabricated the replacement parts that were no longer available, repaired and replaced wiring, and completed electrical work, “all while being attacked by a protective mama bird whose nest happened to be near the top of the gate,” according to Rhodes. The results were a long-term fix that saved the college $100,000 or more.

Employees value and appreciate psychological safety and understanding from their leadership. When leaders take the time to recognize and celebrate employees at collegewide events, feelings of gratitude and appreciation trickle throughout the organization. After the Vice President of Administrative Services publicly acknowledged his seamless transition from a custodial worker to a critical part of the college’s information technology team at an all-day college event, Shaun Lennox wrote:

I wanted to say thank you for that encouragement and let you know that it means an incredible amount. I have striven hard to be able to have these opportunities and improve my life. But it is you and your team who have provided me with those opportunities as well as the support and encouragement to grow.

Next Steps

Monroe Community College plans to expand its Maxwell Leadership training next year to include the following books:

• Maxwell’s (2011) 360-Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization. We will offer a half-day virtual training for middle managers, to include experiential practice modeling 360-degree leadership and leader development.
• Greg Cagle’s (2022) The 4 Dimensions of Culture: And the Leaders Who Shape It. We will use our own lunch & learn series to explore the idea that culture is how we think, act, and interact, and that leaders have the responsibility to build supportive cultures within their teams.

Additionally, MCC will continue to expand and empower its middle management team. Most recently, middle manager Mike Bates, Procurement Director, facilitated a group discussion on DeShazo’s (2020) book, Keep Chopping Wood: An Ordinary Approach to Achieving Extraordinary Success.

References

Cagle, G. (2022). The 4 dimensions of culture: And the leaders who shape it. 4 Dimensions Publishing.

Carvan, M. (2015). Leadership education for the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous now: A Challenge to the field. Journal of Leadership Education, 14(4), 3-10.

DeShazo, K. (2020). Keep chopping wood: An ordinary approach to achieving extraordinary success. Independently Published.

Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization. Wiley.

Elkington, R. (2017). Ethical leadership at the speed of VUCA. In R. Elkington, M. V. D. Steege, J. Glick-Smith, & J. Moss Breen (Eds.), Visionary leadership in a turbulent world: Thriving in the new VUCA context (pp. 13-27). Emerald Publishing

Ellis, M. M., & García, L. (2017). Generation X presidents leading community colleges: New challenges, new leaders. Rowman & Littlefield.

Gallo, A. (2023, February 15). What is psychological safety? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety  

Lawrence, K. (2013). Developing leaders in a VUCA environment. UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. https://emergingrnleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/developing-leaders-in-a-vuca-environment.pdf

LeBlanc, P. (2018). Higher education in a VUCA world. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, (50)3-4, 23-26.

Maxwell, J. C. (2011). The 360-degree leader: Developing your influence from anywhere in the organization. Thomas Nelson.

Maxwell, J. C. (2014). The 5 levels of leadership: Lunch & learn. BookBaby.

Maxwell, J. C. (2021). The 5 levels of leadership: Proven steps to maximize your potential. Center Street.

Petrie, N., (2014). Future trends in leadership development. Center for Creative Leadership.

VUCA-WORLD. (n.d.). Where does the term VUCA come from! https://www.vuca-world.org/roles-of-nanus-and-bennis

Wright, G. (2023, February 9). VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity). TechTarget. https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/VUCA-volatility-uncertainty-complexity-and-ambiguity

Lead image: MCC grounds crew installs outdoor gathering space designed to support mental health of students; materials purchased with HEERF funds

Gregory Hinton is Chief Financial Officer and Vice President, Finance and Administrative Services, at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York.

Opinions expressed in Innovation Showcase are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the League for Innovation in the Community College.