The history of higher education in the United States encompasses conflicting attitudes towards those in educational leadership roles: educational leaders should be well-trained academicians who somehow know how to manage, or they should be well-trained managers who somehow know how to be academic. However, community college educational administrators are neither one nor the other, but persons trained a bit in both areas who get caught in the debate not to determine purpose but in search of identity. The problem does not involve formal training as much as how management responsibilities should be fulfilled and the nature of the academic commitment. To that end, the behavioral context in which people function as leaders determines the success or failure of that leadership. This context involves leaders' self-knowledge, awareness of others, willingness to take risks, and capacity for self-confrontation. In addition, successful "anticipatory" management necessitates understanding the psychology of decision-making and the significance of the systemic approach, maintaining a balance between change and innovation and between strong leadership and delegation, providing honest adverse news as opposed to suspicious good news, making a clear short- and long-term mission statement, identifying success as well as failure, and getting things done. (TR)