InPositive Academic Leadership, Jeffrey Buller offers new insights and practical tools, as well as language and tactics, for fostering a more effective approach to leadership. With acumen and a dash of humor, he shows leaders how they can take the focus off the negative and change what they say, their perspectives, and their strategies. This more constructive leadership style plays to the strengths of leaders rather than to the weaknesses of their institutions.

Offering time-tested and fresh ideas for becoming the type of leader who acts as a coach, counselor, and conductor for faculty, staff, and students, Buller demonstrates how positive leadership can become a day-to-day practice. With its down-to-earth style, the book draws on the most current research on positive leadership in neuroscience, psychology, management, organizational behavior, and other disciplines and translates their lessons into readable and accessible recommendations. It then makes these recommendations come to life by providing real-world examples that illustrate how to implement positive leadership strategies in all spheres of the leaders activities and institution.

Positive Academic Leadershipis a wise guide for transforming any leaders attitude about inevitable daily crises into manageable challenges that are based on a philosophy of accepting the environment and situation but working to make things better.

THE AUTHOR

Jeffery L. Buller is dean of the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of Academic Leadership Day by Day; The Essential Department Chair; The Essential Academic Dean; The Essential College Professor; and Best Practices in Faculty Evaluation, all from Jossey-Bass.

About the Author ix

Introduction xi

PART ONE Exploring Positive Academic Leadership

1 What Positive Leadership Means 3

2 Alternative Approaches to Academic Leadership 25

3 Applying the Positive Leadership Model to Higher Education 43

PART TWO Positive Approaches for Yourself

4 Positive Language 67

5 Positive Perspectives 83

6 Positive Strategies 101

PART THREE Positive Approaches for Faculty, Staff, and Students

7 The Academic Leader as Coach 123

8 The Academic Leader as Counselor 143

9 The Academic Leader as Conductor 161

PART FOUR Positive Approaches for Higher Education as a Whole

10 Positive Administration Throughout the Institution 183

11 The Crisis Industry and How Positive Leaders Should Respond to It 205

12 Playing to Our Strengths 227

Index 249