| To continue providing accessible and high-quality education and to assure their success in turbulent times, community colleges in the United States need effective leadership. This need is punctuated by an imminent shortage of community college leaders. Servant leadership, in which the leader focuses first on serving and then on leading, is a potentially effective, yet unexplored, model to help community college organizations to be flexible, responsive, and accountable. This quantitative study used a combination of non-experimental and quasi-experimental approaches to understand how servant leadership functions in a community college and to determine whether role impacts perception. Employees (N = 180) of a single organization voluntarily responded to Laub's Organizational Leadership Assessment (OLA), an on-line measure of six servant leadership practices. A range of perceptions were reported, but a multivariate analysis of variance revealed no statistically significant differences (T2 (6, 173) = 4.589, p = .615) between leaders and the workforce, although leaders tended to perceive higher levels of servant leadership in the college. These results support leaders who seek to transform the leadership environment from the traditional approach of managerial control to one that is more holistic, learner-centered, and responsive to the complex and rapid changes of the 21st century. Finally, consistent with the historic mission of community colleges to provide open access to all learners, this research supports the use of servant leadership as a viable means to effect positive social change. |
