Leadership strategies for department chairs and program directors: a case study approach

As a part of the 2000-01 American Dental Education Association (ADEA) Leadership Institute, the Leadership Institute Fellows conducted a faculty development workshop for department chairpersons and program directors during the 2001 ADEA Annual Session. A central premise of the workshop was that successful chairpersons and program directors are both effective leaders and effective managers and that leadership and management involve complementary activities. The workshop was case-based. The ADEA Leadership Institute Fellows developed the cases and led roundtable discussions of each case. A group facilitator led large group debriefings to apply management and leadership theory to each case. The purpose of this paper is to review leadership challenges and management concepts as they were applied in a case-based faculty development workshop. The program was structured to address leadership challenges relating to managing people, mission management, conflict recognition, and conflict management. The cases were developed to relate management theories to situations in academic administration. The situations were designed to encourage debate from numerous perspectives. Each case presented general dilemmas that could be addressed from the vantage point of the dean, chair, or individual faculty member. Reinforcing discussion followed and included identification of central issues, key management concepts, and action alternatives. Because of the breadth of possible discussion, group case analyses at the workshop and in the appended case reviews explore only one perspective. This overview article introduces concepts of leadership and management that provide the foundation for analysis of three case studies that follow. These cases address common leadership and management issues in academic dentistry through three typical cases: the frustrated faculty member (case 1), the misdirected faculty member (case 2), and the faculty member stuck in the middle (case 3).