An analysis of student organization advisor roles, skills and styles

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the use of roles, skills and styles of leadership with different groups types by student organization advisors. After a review of the literature on the history of student organizations and advising, roles, skills and styles of leadership and small group development, an inventory was developed and validated using the following advisor roles, skills and styles, and student organization types: (1) roles - group member, programmer, advocate, authority, expert, educator, resource, evaluator, process consultant, reflector and fact-finder; (2) skills - budgeting, planning, evaluating, problem solving, communicating, listening, supervising, and delegating; (3) styles - directive, persuasive, consultative, participative and supportive; (4) group types - infant, adolescent, young adult and mature. The inventory contained closed-form items, as well as open-ended items designed to supplement the quantitative data. The inventory was distributed to all student affairs professionals who were listed as members of the South Central Region of the National Association of Campus Activities (NACA) in the 1989 NACA Directory. Descriptive statistical analysis was applied to the data collected on the closed form items and content analysis was conducted on the open-ended items. Results indicated that certain roles and skills are used with consistency across all levels of group maturity, and others are used according to the specific level of group maturity. The roles used most frequently across groups included: educator, resource, reflector and fact-finder, while skills included: listening and communicating. There were no styles used frequently across all groups. Open-ended item responses indicated that financial and institutional risk factors also impact the roles, skills and styles used by a student organization advisor, and that experiential learning and autonomy in leadership are critical to the development of the student organization.