Leadership And Team Play – Forte of The Registrar in Colleges of Education in Nigeria

The paper expounded the views of scholars on the concept of leadership and team play and tried to contextualize the concepts within the realities of institutional administration in Nigeria. Similarly, the paper explored the dialectical relationship between management and leadership vis-à-vis their importance to professional administration. It highlighted the need for the delegation of duties by leadership. The theoretical framework of the paper was anchored on Tuckman’s Team Theory of Bruce Tuckman in 1965, which identifies the five stages of team development as forming, storming, norming, performing and adjoining. The theory was used to evaluate the role demands and profile of the Registrar in educational institutions in Nigeria as a team player amid emerging challenges. The paper identified some of the forte needed by the Registrar to manage occupational challenges and to function effectively, such as emotional intelligence, use of the SMART principles, organizational skills, and directing skills. It equally discussed some notable challenges and practical demands on the Registrar as a leader and team player in institutional administration in Nigeria, such as: brain drain, digitization, staff redeployment, power relations and potential conflict triggers between the Provost and Registrar, re-designation and elongation of career paths for non-teaching staff, mentoring, and succession chain; as well as the place of merit in appointment and promotion with regards to the Peter’s Principle as described by Laurence J. Peter. Conclusively, it elaborated on the confluence of leadership and management and recommended, among others: the need for the Registrar to be a talent-plus personality, develop the capacity to multi-task, be a team player by making conscious efforts to sell his or her vision to the subordinates, and always put the team before self.