Leadership Competencies for Sustained Project Success

Equitable Leadership

Equitable leadership style has a strong presence in the academic arena. A key ingredient in the development of an equitable leadership competency is building awareness of the impact of social justice on the success of educational project initiatives. In this paper, equitable leadership uses the definition proposed by Buettner, Schmidt, and Lobo (2012) who argued that equitable leaders are the one who fully participate in the same community alongside their followers and partake in the “balancing and burdens by all citizens, resulting in equitable living and a just ordering of society” (p. 948).

Bettez (2011) examined community building and the challenges faced when creating critical communities in today’s diverse educational landscape. In addition to feeling isolated from family and friends who were not in a graduate program, the very nature of graduate school could be intellectually challenging and emotionally taxing to a student. Therefore, building critical communities creates safe environments where students know that other members of that community are working through similar issues academically, if not personally. Academic leaders who are aware of this student’s challenges and facilitate the development of such communities will achieve sustained success in their educational initiatives.