CEO perceptions of their abilities to influence their leadership teams

The purpose of this study is to examine African American and Caucasian community college chief executive officers' perceptions of their ability to influence their leadership teams.; One hundred community college chief executive officers were surveyed using the revised Multifactor College Leadership Questionnaire designed by Baker, Rose, and Roueche (2001) to gather data on their abilities to influence their leadership teams. The survey captures the CEOs' perceptions of their leadership abilities in five theme areas, vision, people orientation, influence orientation, motivational orientation, and values. Fifty-three CEOs completed and returned the surveys. Of the fifty-three, forty-seven were African American and the rest were Caucasian. Purposeful sampling was be used by the researcher to select four CEOs for the qualitative aspects of this study. The two Caucasian CEOs are from the Vanguard Community Colleges and the two African American CEOs are from the Presidents' Roundtable of African American CEOs.; This study revealed that leadership provided by African American community college chief executive officers differs from the leadership provided by Caucasian community college chief executive officers because of several factors. Eight of these factors surfaced as strong indicators for comparing the leadership influence of African American and Caucasian community college chief executive officers on the leadership teams. These factors were: (1) Who the individual chief executive officer really is; (2) The CEO's beliefs, values, and attributes; (3) The CEO's views on motivating others; (4) The CEO's commitment to staff development; (5) The CEO's relationship with students; (6) The CEO's structure for interaction with others; (7) The CEO's internal versus external focus; (8) The CEO's conscientiousness.; The findings of this study will enhance the body of literature in two distinct areas: (1) leadership for community colleges, and (2) African American leadership in academia.