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I’m conducting a random survey and I really would appreciate an email response from you. An e-mail tomorrow would be fine. An email from you today would be better. My question is: “Is there a need for senior management leadership training in Fairbanks?”

UAF teaches management and supervisory skills, accounting, finance and offers a nationally accredited MBA degree on par with Ivy League schools, but is there a need to offer courses at the graduate level in leadership designed for senior management personnel?

I’m asking you this question because 32 of our neighbors showed up for our first “weekend college” session of ABUS 179 — Fundamentals of Supervision, a course for new or soon-to-be front line supervisors. After class, three of my students intercepted my escape home and lamented that “I wish my boss were here taking this course. He/she could sure use it!”

Their bosses are middle- to executive-level managers here in Fairbanks who have been promoted into their management positions without any formal leadership training.

As is the case with many managerial promotions, they earned their new positions by technical proficiency in their old positions and in one case, his skill at corporate politics. According to these three frontline supervisors their bosses were “Peter Principled.”

According to Wikipedia.com, “In an organizational structure, the Peter Principle’s practical application allows assessment of the potential of an employee for a promotion based on performance in the current job, i.e. members of a hierarchical organization eventually are promoted to their highest level of competence, after which further promotion raises them to incompetence. That level is the employee’s ‘level of incompetence’ where the employee has no chance of further promotion, thus reaching his or her career’s ceiling in an organization.”

(I add to this: In the process, choking the morale, motivation, enthusiasm and productivity of those they lead)

Wikipedia continues, “The employee’s incompetence is not necessarily exposed as a result of the higher-ranking position being more difficult — simply, that job is different from the job in which the employee previously excelled, and thus requires different work skills, which the employee usually does not possess.”

Too often, when budgets become tight, the first line item to cut is the training budget. There are words for this strategy. The word “stupid” comes to mind, but that is a whole column unto itself.

Back to the question — should your University of Alaska Fairbanks look at developing graduate level leadership courses? Should they be electives or a major in a current graduate degree? Or should we bundle four or five courses into a graduate leadership certificate? Should they be offered in the classroom, online or in a combination of online and classroom lessons?

I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Meanwhile, how should any of us know if we are the ones needing to take leadership courses? If we find this column nailed Monday morning to our office door, on the end of a Bowie knife, addressed to “Peter,” then I think we might be getting a “yes” answer from those we lead.

Please send an email reply to ffcnd@uaf.edu.