Higher Education Managers/Executives/Administrators
OBJECTIVE To assess the thinking styles and the leadership practices of selected community college leaders and examine the interrelationships of these styles and practices.
METHODOLOGY The Human Information Processing Survey (HIPS) and the LPI (Self and Other versions) were used. HIPS (Taggart & Torrance, 1984) follows up the earlier work on brain dominance (right, left, integrated, and mixed) by Ornstein (19) and Herrmann (1982).
California community college presidents (N = 107) were asked to nominate two individuals, administrative or full-time faculty, who they felt were leaders, as well as five additional people each who were familiar with the nominated person. The sample eventually consisted of 70 nominated leaders and 214 observers of these leaders (73% and 59% response rates respectively). In this sample were 42 men and 28 women (40%), 44 people in administrative positions and 26 faculty members (37%); most people were between 46 to 50 years old (40%) and all held graduate degrees (with 40% doctorates).
KEY FINDINGS Whereas previous research has demonstrated a prevailing existence of prevailing dominant left or right modes, the sample population fell primarily in the mixed and integrated thinking styles. Both the HIPS composite and Tactic Profile scores reflected this with the former being predominantly mixed, and the latter mainly integrated.
There were no statistical significant relationships found between the thinking styles (HIPS) and leadership practices (LPI). In addition, there was no differences found between self-perceptions on the leadership practices and those provided by others familiar with these leaders.
The researcher concluded that to the most recent thinking on whole-brain processing, a large number (74%) of the sample population were able to move between and to combine both left and right mode processing.