Collaborative Leadership Observation

Ka’rin Thornburg
SW n393T19-Summer 2016: Dr. Cal Streeter
Strategic Partnership Through Collaborative Leadership
Observation Paper For my observation paper, I was approved to attend the Greater Austin Black Chamber of Commerce’s (GABC) Town Hall meeting. The meeting, scheduled for 6:30pm on Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at the Historic Dedrick-Hamilton House – located in a concentrated African American residential area of East Austin, was set to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the Chamber from a community perspective. As described on the GABC website, the meeting was an opportunity for chamber leadership to “hear and understand valuable feedback, which will help to build a stronger chamber”. The ultimate objective
New Orleans served as the host city for the 2016 leadership development institute (LDI) and committee chair training for the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). NACAC, founded in 1937, is an organization of more than 15,000 professionals – both in the US and overseas – who serve students seeking post-secondary education. NACAC’s membership is comprised of professionals on the secondary side, namely high school college counselors as well as community-based organizations and private consultants that serve high school students in the college search process, and those on the post-secondary side, namely admissions counselors, directors of admission, and those in related roles in enrollment management at colleges and universities. NACAC’s 2016 LDI and chair training would bring together the president’s council (president, president-elect, and past president) for 23 national affiliates that represent 50 states and overseas, returning chairs and/or outgoing and rising chairs for 10 standing committees, roughly 15 NACAC Board of Directors, and more than 20 NACAC staff. My role at the meeting is my service as returning chair of the NACAC Inclusion, Access, and Success Committee – of which there are eight
Though this was primarily by design, I found myself somewhat taken aback by the lack of engagement with participants and the way NACAC staff and leadership presented information during the update and assembly preview. For a period of two hours, approximately 9 individuals addressed the audience, during what was largely a massive unload of information, decisions – some of which had only been previously discussed amongst the board, others of which were discussed solely among a few high ranking NACAC leadership staff with little to no input from the greater leadership. One of these decisions was notification to all present that, beginning in 2017, future “collaborative and partnership” meetings such as this one would separate the board, president’s council, and committee chairs. They informed those in attendance that, not only would there not be time to collaborate, but the meetings would not be scheduled in the same month or in the same city because it was too expensive for the association to bring all parties and staff together for a single meeting. Instead, the NACAC leadership staff proposed future planning and collaboration could be done remotely. This top down decision not only failed to take into account the purpose behind the opportunity to collaborate in person with individuals across the country, but also proposed moving one of the meetings from July to the month of November – one of the busiest