PRIN LEADERSHIP CERTIFICATE: WHERE IT LEADS

A reserved Principia junior found himself appointed Sylvester House president after the original president left for a semester abroad. But this new student leader struggled to lead. During his first house board meeting, he was uncomfortable and tentative, letting his board members lead him rather than him leading them.

“He wasn’t really someone who liked to be in a leadership role, he liked to be in the background,” recalls David Wold, who was the resident counselor for the house from 2005-2007.

The student started meeting with Wold multiple times a week, and Wold coached him on how to confidently lead a team, actively engage with house members, and direct group decision-making.

The student was a pilot, so Wold related leadership practices to flying. They talked about not holding the “stick” with a death grip, which relates to a controlling style of leadership, while at the same time not letting go of the controls, or being a passive leader.

“He really grew into the role,” says Wold. “And interestingly, he went on to Officer Candidate School to become a fighter pilot and was elected by his peers to be one of the key leaders of his group, and has said that his experience as house president was really helpful training to prepare him for that.”

Stories like this are what inspired Wold, after attending graduate school and working two years as a consultant, to return to found and direct Principia College’s Leadership Institute in 2010 and to eventually launch the Leadership Certificate program in 2012.

Wold wanted to harness students’ leadership skills and abilities and help them recognize and take advantage of the experiences they were getting at Principia College so that students could become successful and knowledgeable leaders.

“You can talk about [leadership] and think about it, but it’s only by doing it that you really learn,” says Wold.

The Leadership Certificate program has six components: participation in elected positions, completion of specific academic courses, participation in a special project, participation in talks and workshops, completion of a personal development plan related to growth in a specific quality or skill, and a final presentation of what one has learned in the program.

“I built the program around something called the 70-20-10 rule [from the Center for Creative Leadership],” says Wold. “Seventy percent of your development comes from actually doing the work of leadership, 20 percent comes from reflection, assessment, evaluation, coaching, and peer-to-peer conversations, and the final 10 percent comes from formal training such as classes, workshops, and skill-building exercises.”

“I think the chance to reflect on my own leadership in the Leadership Certificate program has been one of the most valuable parts of the program,” says Robby Butler, CSO president and previous student body vice president. “Reflection is such a big part of growth.”

Recalling issues that seemed to defy agreement when he was vice president, Butler says Wold helped.

“[He] and I reflected on the parallels in each hot topic issue,” says Butler. “Through this reflection…I realized I was less comfortable around issues with unclear direction.”

Butler explains that Wold taught him techniques to embrace ambiguous issues, such as finding people and resources to get more information about the surrounding context of these challenges to bring clarity and solution.

The program has had 100 participants in the past six years, with 40 students involved now. So far, 25 students have earned leadership certificates. With 10 more expected this semester, the overall completion rate of the program is roughly 30 percent, says Wold.

“Some students simply can’t meet all the requirements even though they wanted to and kept at it,” says Wold.

In other cases, he explains, students transfer, get involved in other activities, or decide they aren’t interested in the leadership positions the certificate requires students to fill.

Senior Timmy Steckler says the program would appeal more widely if it expanded the list of qualifying leadership positions.

“I quit it, in part, because they didn't take any international relations courses as credit,” he explains.

But Steckler says he still uses skills he learned in the program, such as time management and public speaking, and has since served in a variety of leadership positions, including co-director of the International Perspectives Conference and leader of the Principia Euphrates Institute.

Wold admits the program is challenging: “How do I balance making the program demanding enough to be meaningful, but not making it so demanding that really only a small percentage of the students are either willing or able to meet the requirements?”

“In one of my first leadership roles at Principia as a freshman, I had a partner who was not pulling his own weight,” says Cha Cha Fisher, Howard House president. “My instinct was to take over his work for him. But then I had a conversation with David that turned the whole situation around.”

Fisher and Wold discussed effective delegation and how to enable others to act. Wold suggested that Fisher start by giving her partner smaller tasks he could accomplish in order to boost his confidence and feel invested in the work. Over time, the partner started taking more initiative.

“I have carried this lesson, as well as other lessons in organization, responsibility, initiative, collaboration, and discussion facilitation, into all of my subsequent leadership roles at Principia, and I now particularly see delegation as crucial, especially for team morale,” says Fisher. “As Howard House president this year, I make sure I am delegating fairly, and I have seen great success with the house board as well as great overall improvement in my leadership abilities since freshman year.”

Because the first certificates were issued in 2013, most recipients are not yet in positions of typical high-authority leadership in the workforce.

“Some people would like to evaluate [program] success on the basis of whether or not students end up in prominent leadership roles outside of college,” says Wold. “To what extent can you attach the Leadership Institute to a person’s success? That is a very difficult question to answer. However, I do know from experience that it can have a significant influence on students.”

Baily Bischoff, former student body president and a 2017 graduate of the program, is using what she learned from the program as an intern at The Christian Science Monitor, including being a clear communicator, valuing her own and others’ opinions and ideas, and collaborating with and initiating creative, inspired, and invested teams.

“I’ve initiated Friday debrief sessions for the interns, where we talk about what we've done that week, skills we're learning, and questions that the week inspired,” she says. “It's not part of a formal leadership position, but I like finding opportunities like this to use what I learned throughout my time in the Leadership Certificate program to create a more collaborative and engaging work environment for my peers and me.”

Other graduates of the program are teachers, reporters, senior associates, college admissions counselors, info security analysts, and executive assistants in places as diverse as Liberty Mutual Insurance, S&P Global, The Christian Science Publishing Society, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Digilock.

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