The community college professoriate is characterized by a large reliance on part-time faculty, faculty unionization, a drive for educational technology, and the tendency to become part of a practitioner's culture and undervalue intellectual exchange. College administrators and governing boards, for their part, may see themselves as making important decisions for the colleges, but, in fact, deal only with operational and procedural matters. The leadership paradigm chosen to execute these tasks can mean success or failure for college administrators. The hierarchical approach, with a strong and decisive president, may work well in a corporate structure, but can be disastrous in an academic setting. Since colleges are essentially democratic and decentralized institutions, faculty often inherently distrust anyone who seems eager to govern them. An informal poll of seven administrators at Ocean County College pointed to the importance of faculty and administrators sharing information and sharing the same institutional mission, while the general perception was that campuses functioned best when the people who inhabited them were involved in the decisions that affected their circumstances and were able to operate in free, open, and communicative climates. Contains 27 references. The questions used in the administrator poll are appended. (BCY)