At one point while University President Dave Frohnmayer was running for South Eugene-Goshen state representative, he was losing by 14 points. He sat on his deck in the midsummer evening and wrote for the next 5 hours, exploring all of the reasons he was running for elected office in the first place. The exercise helped him continue on his journey, and it helped lay the foundation for his fascination with leadership theory.
The theory of leading and being a leader was the subject of Frohnmayer’s presentation Tuesday for the Academic Initiatives Quality Circle’s “Last Lecture” series. The series gives a professor the opportunity to give a one-hour lecture on whatever they like.
The key to leadership, Frohnmayer said, is honesty, with oneself and with others. “You cannot lead other people until you lead yourself,” he said.
On the other side of that is the necessity for honesty in producing trust in others, he said. A study that polled 95,000 people on four continents on what a good leader needs to be, Frohnmayer said, came up with a decisive answer: A good leader must be honest.
Honesty breeds trust, he said, and one must trust himself and others must trust him. The exercise of writing through a problem, as Frohnmayer did when first running for office, is just one way of achieving self-awareness.
In addition, one must face their own “shadow side,” avoid hiding from themselves and avoid creating masks or fronts for their own personality.
“It’s hard work,” Frohnmayer said, “which is why so many people are incomplete.”
People must also surround themselves with honest peers and mentors as well, Frohnmayer said.
The most difficult but most effective type of leadership is mutual leadership, he said. This occurs when an entire group has shared values and goals and works collaboratively to achieve them, all leading each other. Talking about shared values is very hard, he said, but ultimately necessary to create trust and communication.
Those in the audience were impressed with Frohnmayer’s lecture. Senior Adam Petranovich said he’s never heard Frohnmayer speak but said he enjoyed it and found the president reflective and engaging.
Junior Alisha Bachelder is usually impressed with Frohnmayer. “I think this was very consistent with things he’s said in the past.”
Leadership has been Frohnmayer’s career on a basic level – he has been an attorney, a state representative, Oregon’s attorney general, and University president for 15 years. While at the University, he has taught a freshman seminar on leadership every year. He will retire this year, effective July 1.
The principles of leadership – honesty, openness, understanding of values and goals – are “important for living,” he said, “as well as for leadership.”