Photo by Cassandra Rae

By Debbie Gin

Keeping company with seminary presidents and deans this year, I’ve had an unusual opportunity to watch how top leaders in theological education function — how they make decisions, what connections they forge, with whom they cultivate deep relationships, why they work against the grain for particular projects, and how much they divulge and in which circles.  For the most part, authenticity and transparency are highly valued.  And, for the most part, I agree with this high valuing.

Modeling transparency in leadership, I have found, nurtures trust among the constituency.  I’ve seen situations where students and faculty of seminaries express gratitude in the president’s simple gesture of acknowledging a wrong decision or a freeze in spending, laying bare the budget to the seminary’s faculty.  “She’s [the president’s] a breath of fresh air,” they would say.  Or, “That makes sense, now that I know why.”

I believe many women leaders tend toward this kind of transparency.  (Whether it is a social expectation — and, thus, we have been socialized to lead this way—or it is a natural tendency….is another debate, which I leave for another blogger.)  In education, there’s even a philosophy of teaching/learning (i.e., pedagogy) that highlights this authenticity of engagement — feminist pedagogy.  (Others call it relational pedagogy.)

Feminist pedagogues (women and men) lead their classes with full transparency.  They don’t wait until they’ve completely, even almost completely, worked out a solution before they share it with the class.  They don’t submit to students the final dictum as truth and expect that dictum to be swallowed whole without any chewing and ruminating.  They often work a problem right in the presence of students, so as to model how the process works.  (This isn’t fake modeling either; in the view of students, relational pedagogues will approach problems they don’t have the answers to.)  And they help students figure out solutions much like doulas do, assisting in the birthing of answers already being formed within the student.  Jesus’ teaching was framed in feminist pedagogy.  He often taught in parables, for example, expecting learners to arrive at answers through a process of birthing understanding.

There’s a cost, however…especially for women leaders.

Sometimes, students lose respect for teachers who don’t have (or, at least, appear to have) most answers worked out.  Students have also been socialized to expect solutions from teachers.  Or sometimes, women have learned to protect their public image for security’s sake.  There are fewer opportunities for women, for example, in church or seminary leadership positions.

In one situation, there was an outgoing male leader of an institution whose main prospective successor was a woman.  She had all the qualities to guarantee a successful transition and an era of great leadership, except one.  She was more guarded than him.  Apparently, she was a private individual in her personal life, which did not sit well with many of the constituency.

I see myself as a feminist pedagogue.  I enjoy working topics out in front of my students.  But, while not as private a person as my husband, I am private (especially if you count how I avoid being tagged on Facebook).  I feel there’s more at stake when I make an institutional mistake, versus when my male colleagues make such mistakes.  My colleagues’ gender would never be blamed for those mistakes, whereas my gender would.  Comments would go something like, “Oh, she’s a great leader for a woman.  Too bad about that one decision.”  The next opportunity, then, would undoubtedly be more difficult to land.

So, I ask, exactly how much transparency should women leaders risk?  How much vulnerability can we afford?  And how much do we risk by not being completely open?

Dr. Debbie Gin is Director of Faculty Development and Research at The Association of Theological Schools/Commission on Accrediting, the support and accrediting organization of most seminaries in the US and Canada.  She was formerly Associate Professor of Ministry at Azusa Pacific Seminary and Fellow for Faculty Development and Evaluation in the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment at Azusa Pacific University.  She and her husband currently live in Pennsylvania.