Continued from page 16
“It’s an enormously competitive world out there. We need to do more, we need to do better, and we need to keep right on doing more and better.”
captaincies, club presidencies, and literally dozens of others. early on, he set regular luncheon meetings with student leaders. It was also seen in Flynn’s relentless efforts to enhance shared faculty governance. He worked tirelessly to empower the Faculty Senate and establish it as the primary faculty leadership body, a role it had not played prior to his arrival.
The Leader
Flynn’s leadership featured close attention to the little things. All who know him know of his aforementioned detail orientation, but few realize its full extent. For example, he had a primary role in encouraging, planning, financing, and executing the many new landscaping touches that now grace the campus. And, determined to faithfully repro- duce the College sign that had stood for many years at the corner of Alden and Hickory streets, when the sign was resur- rected at the front of naismith Green, the base built to hold it contained precisely the same number of bricks as the old one had because Flynn himself had counted them— not once but twice—just to be sure there were the same number as in a photo of the original sign that was given to him by Coach Dottie Potter zenaty.
Flynn’s childhood and his
collegiate background as a successful three-sport athlete (shortstop in baseball, point guard in basketball, and center halfback in soccer) honed two qualities he probably always had within him— competitiveness and determination. They were to play prominent roles in his leadership of the College. During the early months
of the successful fund- raising campaign, more than a few people expressed doubts about the $40 million campaign goal, which was three times more than had been raised in any prior campaign. Flynn’s response, as published in Triangle magazine on the occasion of his 10th anniversary as president: “I believed we were better off setting the goal higher and coming up short than setting it lower and making it. And I must say, in my own mind, I was absolutely determined that there was no way we would come up short.” During the final weeks of the campaign, it was Flynn himself who brought in a number of major gifts, which made the critical difference, enabling the College to exceed its campaign goal by 11 percent. Part of every leader’s
The Flynns with student leaders, fall 2011
work toward that change. In a speech during his first year as president, Flynn summarized the message of change: “It’s an enormously competitive world out there. We need to do more, we need to do better, and we need to keep right on doing more and better.” It is one thing to develop and articulate a
clear vision for an institution. That really is only half the battle. equally important is to identify the specific goals and strategies to achieve that vision, and to pursue those goals and strategies aggressively and consistently, over time. In other words, the implementa- tion phase. Flynn was more than equal to this
job is to encourage change and motivate people to
Students say farewell to the Flynns at an event held in the Richard B. Flynn Campus Union in April.
TRIANGLE 1 Vol . 84, No. 2
daunting task. Speaking to a YMCA workshop, he drew on a well-known leadership model presented in The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, saying that successful leaders challenge the process, inspire shared vision, enable others to act, model the way, and encourage the heart.
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