Learning to Lead without Authority: Accreditation and Assessment Mandates

This chapter introduces the idea of “non-authoritative leadership”– leadership that involves the responsibility for institutional-level activity, but without the direct authority to make changes. In this case, Blankenship describes how he drew on ideas rooted in Aristotelian rhetoric and feminist theory to engage faculty in the process of assessing learning in their programs, something that those same colleagues had long tired of under previous leaders. Blankenship describes implementing core tenets of Aristotle’s ideas of logos, pathos, and ethos enables him to lead from the center rather than above to affect institutional engagement.