DeanWuBlog

Stakeholding and More

As Dean, I have realized that one of the most difficult aspects of leadership is persuading people they have a common cause. I have tried to cultivate a sense of stakeholding: the feeling that causes people to invest their time, money, and energy into an idea or an institution, abstractions and entities larger than themselves. I have enjoyed modest success. Indeed, some of the people who have been most generous, especially of their time, which is harder to give than money, had not previously had the most direct relationship to the Law School. The greatest gratification is when they in turn persuade others of the value of the vision we have for positive change – for the contributions that can be made by our students and our alumni, and by organized activities that create public life.

Yet as much of a challenge as it has been to generate a sense of stakeholding, for the sentiments cannot be instilled by command nor can they be readily faked and a place that trains attorneys inspires less affection perhaps than some other sites of memory, it is even more of a challenge to generate a sense of shared goals. Many of us believe in the programs with which we are associated, the students whom we have trained, the teachers by whom we have been trained, and so on, without connecting our experiences to those of others in a meaningful manner. The notion that our success depends on the success of others, and that it will be our failure if they fail, is referred to in rhetoric only rarely, and put into practice even less. It matters not that it is true: certainly, a Dean recognizes as much, for a Dean is identified with the entirety of the operation over which he nominally presides, and it would not do to point out the accomplishments of a single aspect, especially if it were to the neglect of everything else.

Our Law School, like our metropolitan area, will flourish only if all of us work together.