“In order to be a good leader, you have to be not only a good communicator but a good listener,” he says. “Listening is an underrated skill.”

Rosenberg should know. He started his career as a professor, then became dean of the faculty at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis. In 2003, he was selected as the 16th president of Macalester, an institution known for churning out leaders such as Kofi Annan, Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey. Rosenberg is also active nationally in numerous groups, serving as a member of the Leadership Circle of the Presidents’ Climate Commitment and chair of the Presidents’ Council of Project Pericles.

Wanda Moore, lead faculty and area chair at the University of Phoenix Dallas Campus, says leaders also need to have the right team in place and believe in the mission at hand.

“I define a leader as someone who sees the big picture and who has a vision for the organization — and is instrumental in getting people to follow him or her without having to resort to coercion,” she says.

Moore teaches numerous psychology and management courses, including courses on supervision and leadership and team dynamics for managers.

Both Rosenberg and Moore say colleges and universities provide a critical role in creating the new leaders for the next few decades.

“Higher education has multiple roles … and one of them is to educate students to be effective participants in a democratic society and leaders in that society,” Rosenberg says. “Macalester was very fortunate in having a president from the mid-‘30s to the mid-‘50s [Charles Turck] who saw the responsibility of the college as educating students to be responsible citizens of the world.”

Rosenberg says small liberal arts colleges like Macalester have the advantage of intimacy, whereby students come to school and don’t disperse — instead, they live on campus for four years and the college teaches them “almost around the clock” via courses, sports and other extra-curricular activities. But he says larger universities and online or for-profit institutions also play a role in educating tomorrow’s leaders.

“Great leaders come out of an infinite variety of backgrounds,” he says. “The great strength of our system is multiple entry points. “[For-profit institutions] can take people who otherwise would not have access to higher education and give them a lot of the knowledge and skills that would enable them to be more engaged citizens and leaders.”

Moore says colleges and universities need to ensure students graduate with “strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills,” in addition to an understanding of teamwork and diversity, which are so important in today’s workplace. “University of Phoenix does an outstanding job of connecting students to the real world,” she says.

Macalester also offers courses plus extra-curricular activities for students to gain leadership experience. Each spring students can take a class on leadership and community engagement, which allows them to work with an organization in the area to hone their leadership skills. Student organizations on campus are also run autonomously, with the college offering merely a safety net or funding if necessary.

“I suppose if there’s a theme to all of this for preparing students to be leaders, it’s a kind of supervised freedom and autonomy,” Rosenberg says. Student groups plan their own activities, run their own budgets and events and in turn students “learn a lot about what it means to be leaders from the failures.”

During his eight years at Macalester, Rosenberg says he’s learned “a lot of humility,” as he figured out processes and became less impatient, and as he settled into his presidential role.

“In a setting like Macalester, you have very little actual executive authority — you can’t tell people what to do. So you have to lead through inspiration and example.”

And clearly, Rosenberg has done just that. Under his leadership, the college launched a historic five-year campaign to raise $150 million (ending this year), its annual fundraising has more than doubled, sustainability initiatives were established and student retention has increased.