Observations on Community College Leadership

External forces create demands that affect community college institutional effectiveness. Likewise, how leaders respond to those demands and their behavior within an institution can affect staff morale and effectiveness, and thus institutional effectiveness. The author describes leader behaviors that create a constrained and negative institutional climate and illustrates those behaviors with detailed scenarios. The following suggestion is made based on the author's observations: Leaders must maintain formal and informal communication channels to gain information that can help them to understand how their behavior is perceived by others. Such information can be used to develop positive leadership behaviors that can change institutional climate and thereby increase effectiveness.