Credit: Jon Roemer

February 15, 2011 | Nannerl O. Keohane draws on her experience in educational leadership as well as her training as a political theorist to bring theory and practice together in “Thinking about Leadership.”

Keohane has served as president of Wellesley College and in 1993 was named president of Duke University, where she was the first woman to serve in that office. After leaving Duke in 2004, she was named the Laurance S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Affairs and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. She is an American political theorist who has also taught at Swarthmore, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1995 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Keohane spoke with Faith & Leadership about looking at leadership from both the inside and the outside. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.

Q: Why another book on leadership, and why this particular approach to it?

There are so many books on leadership. It’s a topic that fascinates many people. I thought it was worth adding another book to the pile, because I have a perspective that is unusual, having [taught] theory of politics since I was a sophomore in college and also having 23 years’ experience in leadership in higher education, as well as serving on corporate and foundation boards.

When I took the job as president of Wellesley back in 1981, one of the things in the back of my mind as a political scientist was, “There’s going to be a good opportunity to learn more about leadership and power from the inside.”

Most political scientists look at it from the outside and say, “What are those guys up there -- often guys -- and gals doing, and how do we understand it and also keep them from misbehaving so the rest of us are better off?”

I wanted to know from the inside what would it be like on the other side of that desk. I had that in the back of my mind when I was president at Wellesley and Duke. Then, when I finished, one of the first things I wanted to do was to make good on that commitment.

So how do you bring theory and practice together? How do you talk about leadership, both from an informed theoretical perspective and also as an experience? It’s not a book of memoirs. I’m like the guy who has been over some mostly unexplored territory and therefore can help others find their way better than if you’ve never been there before. That’s the main purpose.

Q: In what ways did the experience from the inside surprise you?

One thing that didn’t surprise me is that it does make a difference to have power. A president of a college or a university gets to make some final decisions, or at least recommendations to the board of final decisions, and that’s a pretty heavy responsibility. It involves many steps and stages and coming to understand from the inside how that feels.

Instead of looking at it as a sort of bloodless sequence -- here’s the dilemma, here’s the process and here’s the outcome -- you think about all the times you spend your time jawboning people so that they understand where it is you think they should be going, think about all the times you try to make sure you weigh the alternatives, but recognize you can’t take forever. Think about the times when you are able in the end to say, “This is where we’re going,” and people then begin to move. That’s very different.

It became clearest to me when I chaired a faculty-staff committee at Princeton for a project that I really cared about and the dean really cared about. The members of the committee -- some of them thought it was a good idea and some of them didn’t. After one meeting where everybody was being negative, I sat at the table after everybody left and I thought, “If I were president now, I would say, ‘OK, thank you, I’ve heard all of you; this is what we’re going to do.’”

That’s the difference, and I knew it from the inside.

It’s not just power. I also learned what it is to become deeply identified with an institution. Duke is a good example, and so is Wellesley, where you as president are the standard-bearer for the institution and people look up to you for that. You walk down the aisle of Duke Chapel or Wellesley Chapel wearing the chain of office and you realize that you are there embodying this institution, which is a matter of great responsibility and great pride.

I’m very much an institutionalist, and when I become that deeply engaged in an institution, I really bleed Duke blue or Wellesley blue, whatever it may be. It’s different than looking at it from the outside.

And finally, I learned the importance of having good people around you, because there’s never a job that you do all by yourself. Knowing how to pick the right people, knowing how to work with them, inspire them, be inspired by them, help them, criticize them, encourage them to criticize you in the right thoughtful ways is an invaluable part of being a leader.

You may write about it from the outside, but from the inside it’s so deep and so important.

Q: What do you mean when you describe yourself as an institutionalist?

In the book at one point I talk about leaders in higher education as having one of three different motivations for taking a job.

Some people like founding, beginning an institution and having the sense that they can see it growing from scratch. Some people like fixing things; they want to go to an institution that has a lot of problems so they have work to do to provide remedies. Some people -- I count myself as one -- have the greatest interest in, and capacity for, working within a very established, very fine institution with a long history and a strong series of ambitions and goals and a lot of people who care deeply about it. The weight of taking leadership in that institution is different from either of the others in some fundamental ways.

I regard the history, the values and the goals of an institution embodied in your colleagues and your predecessors as being part of what you are taking responsibility to continue. That, to me, is a very important part of the kind of leadership I find most rewarding.