Leading and Communicating addresses how your institution’s leadership and communication structures, networks, and processes guide your institution in setting directions, making decisions, seeking future opportunities, and building and sustaining a learning environment. It examines your institution's processes and systems related to:

• Leading activities 
• Communicating activities
• Alignment of leadership system practices
• Institutional values and expectations
• Direction setting
• Future opportunity seeking
• Decision making
• Use of data
• Leadership development and sharing
• Succession planning
• Measures
• Analysis of results
• Improvement efforts

Criterion Five addresses the college’s commitment to leadership and communications as it carries out its mission and purposes and reaches toward its vision of education in the 21^st Century.