The best way to deal with change is to embrace it because things in life always are changing, Scott Williams told Lincoln University's faculty and staff Thursday.
"Every single one of us can grow, and every single one of us can change, and every single one of us can become a better leader if we desire to and we can be open," Williams told LU's Fall Institute to help the school's leaders get ready for the new school year beginning Aug. 22.
Williams, of Oklahoma City, is an author, speaker, strategist and international consultant. He is the CEO and chief solutions officer of a company called NxtLevel Solutions.
According to his biography, the company works with some the world's largest and most influential churches, nonprofit organizations and Fortune 500 companies, "guiding them to solutions that instill leadership and foster growth."
Working with those clients, he said, "You begin to see things that matter. You begin to see some themes that really work, no matter what organization. There are some things that are constant for organizations that thrive, for organizations that win and for organizations that have success."
Most of his 45-minute presentation focused on key differences between leaders and managers. "Your responsibility is to lead the way," he told the LU faculty and staff.
For starters, Williams said, being a team means "together, everyone achieves more," and it's more important to work together for common goals than to stand out as an individual.
"Managers are focused on stability while leaders embrace change," he said. "A leader understands that change has to happen - it's either you change, or you stop existing."
As far as rules, Williams said "managers make them, and leaders break them," putting people over policy.
He called conflict inevitable. "The question is whether or not you're going to have healthy conflict," he said, noting managers do their best to avoid conflict while leaders embrace it and use it as an asset.
Even at Lincoln, diversity is important, William said.
In setting an organization's direction, he said, managers keep to existing roads, and leaders forge new paths. And while leaders can stick with the things that work, they still need to look for new ways to do things because everything around them keeps changing.
LU President Kevin Rome noted Lincoln is facing a lot of changes that have made some people angry and others happy and either upset or pleased with Rome's role in those changes.
"It would be easy for me to sit in my seat as the president and never make any decisions, let whatever happens happen, get a check every month, and in a few years, walk away being loved," Rome said. "But whoever inherited the institution after me would say, 'What in the world were you doing, or not doing?'
"I'm willing to not be liked even willing to be hated, but I'm not willing to not serve Lincoln University to the best of my ability while here."
Bryan Salmons, an LU English professor and Faculty Senate chair, urged caution when it comes to talking about change.
"Change is not self-justifying," Salmons said. "It is no philosophy complete unto itself - and its potentially salutary effects are entirely dependent on the soundness of the ideas and objectives that inform it."
Too many people focus on success, he added, starting with "the notion that the goal of all industry is to achieve an outcome that the world will celebrate immediately and tangibly. It is an inherently myopic assessment of any result.
"None of us should find consolation in the success that comes from the imposition of our will in the advancement of a bad idea."
Doing that, Salmons said, "We have dethroned deliberation in favor of inferior procedures - namely coercion and chance. We have, in every meaningful sense, failed."
But, Williams told the LU leaders: "If you're not failing, you're not trying. You're playing it way too safe."
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