Faculty do not necessarily see themselves as administrators but good faculty can be valuable in administrative roles. In this episode, Kristin Croyle joins us to discuss how and why faculty become leaders at their institutions. Kristin is a psychologist and the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at SUNY Oswego.
Show Notes
- Croyle, K. (2021). Preventing Workplace Burnout. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 204. September 8.
- Rath, T., & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow. Gallup Press.
- CliftonStrengths Finder
- Hispanic Leadership Institute – SUNY
Transcript
John: Faculty do not necessarily see themselves as administrators but good faculty can be valuable in administrative roles. In this episode, we discuss how and why faculty become leaders at their institutions.
[MUSIC]
John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
[MUSIC]
Rebecca: Our guest today is Kristin Croyle. Kristin is a psychologist and the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at SUNY Oswego. Welcome back, Kristin.
Kristin: Thank you. I’m glad to be with you again.
John: Thank you for joining us. Today’s teas are…
Kristin: I am drinking Lipton black. And it says right on the tea bag that it’s “America’s favorite tea.” I’ve got to believe that, right?
Rebecca: I guess. I mean, that’s what a lot of places would have you believe. [LAUGHTER]
John: I think it probably is, in terms of sales, it’s been around for a long time.
Kristin: Mmhmm.
Rebecca: I have Supreme English breakfast again. [LAUGHTER]
John: And I have Tea Forte black currant tea.
Kristin: Lovely.
Rebecca: Many administrators in academic affairs—chairs, deans, provosts—were once faculty, yet faculty do not necessarily start off their academic careers planning to be administrators. Can you talk a little bit about your own journey, Kristin, of moving from a faculty position into a leadership role?
Kristin: Absolutely. So before I came to Oswego three years ago, I spent 17 years in South Texas at the University of Texas–Pan American that became the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. So that’s where I started my tenure-track faculty position. And within the first year, the faculty in that department were extraordinarily supportive of new faculty, it was a great department to be hired into. And they said, “We want you to meet other people on campus, so you should be on the faculty assembly.” So I was on the faculty assembly in my first year. And I got there in my first year, and they said, “Oh, guess what? You’re advising students.” Which is not an uncommon thing for new faculty to be told. So I was advising students. And I think this was actually an important thing for me. Because what I did was I went door-to-door to the faculty in my department and said, “How do you advise students? What do you tell them? When they say, ‘What do you do with a bachelor’s degree in psychology?’” which is a pretty common question for psych students in a bachelor’s program, “What do you tell them?” And I did get from a couple people: “I don’t know what to tell them. I never had to get a job with a bachelor’s in psychology.” Which is not a good answer, by the way, not a good answer. And in those conversations, I figured out that our advising resources were pretty scant. We had hundreds of students that needed better resources. So I put together an advising handbook. I asked the Department Chair, “I want to do this, I’m gathering this information anyway.” She said, “Sure.” And that was my first year. And then I had some significant committee service. And within about four years, the Dean of the College said, “I’m looking for an assistant dean to come into the office.” In that place in time, there weren’t associate deans in that role, they were called assistant deans. “And I’d like you to work with me.” Which is not, I think, an uncommon experience, that oftentimes people who start to step more into administrative roles or service-heavy roles in any way, generally start with a period of volunteerism, really. It’s faculty service, but it is volunteerism, you’re volunteering to do stuff that needs to get done. And then someone says, “Oh, look, you’re pretty good at that. We could use someone who does more of this stuff that you’re pretty good at.” And you’re exactly right, I had never thought about doing significant service in that way. But it’s not that big a step from what I was already doing. And I think some of the things that I was working on that drew the eye of people who would ask me to step up to a role is that I consistently want to make things better. If there’s a problem that I think I can fix, or at least make significant progress on, I’m more likely to want to work on it, than to complain about it to someone else. Because you know if you complain about it to somebody else, unless they really are as excited about that problem as you are, they’re probably just going to say, “Well, thank you for sharing that problem. That’s not something I can work on right now.” So I was excited about creating solutions to problems that I saw. I really value my colleagues and my students and their experiences. So oftentimes, the problems that I would see were around the faculty experience and the student experience. And honestly, I’m a pretty even tempered person, I don’t lose it at inopportune moments. So asking someone to step into, for example, an assistant dean role and knowing that they’re not going to freak out and curse at their colleagues, that’s a good thing. And I served in a number of roles in Texas. I served as a vice provost, I served as a vice president, I came here as dean. And in many of those cases, I was happy in my role, I was working on things that were interesting and challenging for me. And then someone would tap me on the shoulder and say, “Hey, it would be great if you could work on this other thing. The university could use your service.” Now, when you’re listening to that, somebody’s going to think, “That sounds pretty undirected.” [LAUGHTER] Yes! It does. It’s not like I had a 20-year plan: “I’m going to do this and then I’m going to do this and then I’m going to do this.” My plan was I was going to do teaching, research, and service, and get tenure. That was the plan, and that’s a good plan. I still endorse that plan for people who are hired as assistant professors. But I have no fancy plan about exactly how to do that, and what one does after one becomes an associate professor. It was doing things that I found interesting that I found challenging, making a difference in a way that I could make a difference. And that lead into more administrative work. I’m going to jump in with my own question there.
Rebecca: Of course you are. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: Of course I am.
Rebecca: I remember you from last time. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: John, you spend a huge amount of time directing the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching and doing this podcast, this really significant service. I would be very surprised if you thought of that as administrative service, but it’s significant service. And it is different than a typical faculty role. So what led you to provide such significant service?
John: Well, I suppose I got started by wondering what would let me help students learn more effectively in my classes. So I tried writing some software, I had tried doing some evaluation of it and measuring learning gains that might have occurred or might not have occurred. And I had done some research in general areas of the scholarship of teaching and learning. And then I was asked to present some of that to the advisory board to the teaching center. And then I was asked to join that, and then I was asked to chair that. [LAUGHTER] And then when the former director stepped down, Mark Morey, he suggested that I may wish to apply for the position. So I figured I’d try it because I was already involved with the center quite a bit. And I figured it was just a little bit more than what I was doing at the time. And it ended up growing to be a lot more [LAUGHTER] than what I had been doing at the time. The teaching center used to run about maybe 25 to 30 workshops a year and then a teaching symposium for a day. And it’s grown quite a bit, as has happened at pretty much all colleges since then. But I still wouldn’t consider myself an administrator, and I still maintain a full-time teaching load in my department.
Kristin: Mmhmm, mmhmm. Yeah, so some similarities definitely there where you saw a problem—and when I say a problem, I don’t mean there was something wrong, per se, more like a problem in search of a solution—and you investigated it and led you into more and more service. Yeah. How about you, Rebecca?
Rebecca: I think that I subscribe to that same idea, Kristin, of that continuous improvement model. And I just can’t help it as a designer, that’s the designer in me that speaks to every part of my life. So I too, would seek out things that I was interested in and wanted to work on. And my first teaching position that was full time was at Marymount Manhattan College, it’s a really small private school. I loved my colleagues there. It was so small that it was so easy to collaborate on things, and so I had a lot of opportunities there. And one of the opportunities I had was to really increase the service learning initiative that was on that campus. I was really interested in making a community impact, and still am, and still do a lot of work like that. I started learning about service learning and community-based learning and being the faculty liaison for community-based learning at our institution and doing research around that, and got really involved with that. And then I came to Oswego, and I told John about that when I met him at faculty orientation. And John is really good at roping people into things, he immediately asked me to join our advisory board for the center. And I did that for a while, and then the associate director position opened up and then I moved into that role and learned a lot by doing that. And at the same time, I was getting involved in a lot of campus committees that I think helped me understand how the institution worked more, right? Like one of the ones that we have on our campus is called the Campus Concept Committee. And for me, that was really eye opening, because it was all about the physical facilities and the priorities around that. And to me, that was really, really interesting, both as a designer and as a member of the campus. That led to many other things, including, eventually getting really involved in accessibility and doing big, huge accessibility initiatives on campus. And so I saw this opportunity opened up in the Graduate Studies Office, and I applied for that position as a new opportunity, because I love learning new things. And I’m learning a ton.
Kristin: I’ll bet you are. [LAUGHTER]
Rebecca: I’m getting an e-du-cation! [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: Good. Well, I’m glad I asked you after the first question here, for both of you, because I think there’s going to be themes that come up as we talk that connect to both of your stories.
John: Actually, one thing I was thinking is, you did mention the podcast, and Rebecca and I started that just as an experiment, and it certainly has grown quite a bit beyond what we anticipated.
Kristin: Yes, yes. That’s another great example, that when you do things that are interesting and meaningful and connect, they do grow, they grow beyond what you thought they would. And at that point, you get to decide: Do you want to continue to invest your time and energy in that direction?
John: And a lot of it was not something I think either of us had planned, that neither of us started our career thinking that we’d be spending a lot of time running a podcast and editing audio and doing all these other things related to this.
Rebecca: I probably would have laughed in your face if you suggested that. [LAUGHTER] One of the things that I’m thinking about a lot, transitioning into the role that I’m in now, is how many times people will say “the administration” or “the faculty.” And I’m in a place where I’m still teaching, and I’m also on this other side, and seeing things from multiple perspectives. And I always feel really awkward because the people who are critiquing were once part of that group. So administrators might be critiquing faculty, but yet, they may have started as faculty. [LAUGHTER] And then faculty may be critiquing administrators, yet, many of them love teaching…
Kristin: Yes,
Rebecca: …you know? and maybe you have had to give it up. So I’m curious about how to bridge some of those gaps between thinking through the role of faculty and the role of administration.
Kristin: Yeah, and I think you raise a really good point. I still remember… I worked with an exceptional Provost, Havidán Rodríguez, in Texas, who’s now president of SUNY Albany. And I still remember that when he first started, we had been through a period of stress as many institutions are, cyclically, especially when they’re looking for a new Provost. And people were a little cranky. And there had been a fair amount of “Oh, the faculty” talk. And then he started. And I remember some of the first meetings he led, and I had to go and talk to him after the meeting and say, “I so appreciate that you don’t run down faculty. You don’t say, ‘The faculty do this. Oh, how can we get them to do this?’” And he said, “Why would I do that? I’m faculty too.” And I think it comes from an innocent place, that separation…
Rebecca: I agree.
Kristin: …because all of us are trying to achieve our goals every day. And when there are little speed bumps in achieving those goals, we get frustrated. And this is a normal human thing. So if I’m trying to negotiate workload with specific faculty where the number of courses and what they’re doing aren’t adding up to a full workload, I just want them to say “yes,” honestly, because I want to move on to the next thing I have to do. So there’s that little element of frustration. And I’m sure on the side of faculty who are working with administrators, administrators are asking them to do things that take them away from the goals that they’re trying to achieve in that moment. And that’s frustrating, too. So it’s easy to demonize and label when people are frustrating you in getting your goals achieved, it just is. The extra challenge is that oftentimes, faculty have very little understanding of what a full-time administrative job is like. So I think it’s even easier in that case to demonize because it’s an unknown, like, “Well, what in the world is the Dean doing all the time?” So just that vacuum leaves lots of room to fill in imaginings. And I will say on the administrative side—and when I say administrative side, I mean any kind of supervisory side, department chair, anything—the faculty that end up taking the most time are the ones that are problematic in some way, let’s just say. So if there’s a student complaint or a personnel issue, those issues take a lot of time. So there will be that level of frustration involved in trying to get over those bumps and get back to what you were trying to work on. But it’s not an excuse. It’s a bit of an explanation, but it’s not an excuse.
Rebecca: You talked about the unknowns of what administrators do. So could you demystify what a Dean does all day? [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: Email, all day! No… [LAUGHTER]
Rebecca: I know, I spent at least two or three hours yesterday, [LAUGHTER] just email. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: Yes, yes. I actually have to spend about three hours a day on email, I do. And when I say email, I actually have to reconceptualize that just for myself, because I find it very discouraging to say, “I spend three hours on email,” it sounds so insignificant, and like such a ridiculous time suck. But it’s not, it’s work. It’s people who need input or asking for approvals or who are trying to plan a project and would like assistance with it or a policy that needs revision. So it is work. It’s just occurring via email. So I tend to spend a lot of time in meetings. I spend a lot of time, let’s just say, on paperwork that is not actually paper, on electronic work. Let’s think about today… So today, I have a really excellent faculty member who’s been nominated for a teaching award, and I agreed to provide a letter of support for him. So I visited his class, so I could have really good, specific things to say in his letter, and talked with him about his approach to teaching. I’m PI on a grant that’s going to go in next week. So we had our final grant meeting to look over our materials and make sure that they are ready to submit. I approved some travel requests, checked to make sure we have some money. We have a board meeting next week for our engineering advisory board, so I’m finalizing the agenda. I’m going to share that with the board members and make sure that they’re ready to come visit. So a variety of things, but each of them to forward the goals of the university, they’re not my goals. I mean, they are my goals, but they’re my goals because it’s good for the university, good for the faculty, good for the students and staff.
John: But they may not be the most enjoyable tasks all of the time.
Kristin: Not all the time. Today was pretty good, visiting a class in Native American studies… if you have had a chance to talk with Michael Chaness, he’s exceptional. And finishing a grant is much better than starting a grant.
John: Yes. [LAUGHTER] In an earlier podcast discussing burnout, you suggested that faculty who were experiencing that issue, might want to consider taking a break from teaching by learning something new, or trying to do something different. Is transitioning to another role within academia worth considering for faculty experiencing burnout?
Kristin: I learned this actually from my first department chair, who was an excellent teacher and researcher and a very talented administrator. And she said, “When I get tired of dealing with students.” If you’re teaching a full load, after a while, there’s a little fatigue there. “When I get tired of dealing with students all the time, I become department chair. I push some papers around, I do the schedule, I check the budget, I supervise staff, push some papers around,” that’s what she said, I know it was much more meaningful than that. “And then, when I get tired of pushing papers around, I go back to full-time teaching.” She was also faculty senate chair, intermittently, she was asked to step into other administrative roles which she declined. But one of the strengths of a long-term faculty position is that there’s actually a huge amount of flexibility that’s possible there. It’s not baked in to the contract, but universities are complex organizations that have a lot of different things that need to be done. And someone who has a passion, or even less than a passion, let’s just say an interest, an interest in getting some of that work done, an interest…
Rebecca: A vague interest. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: And I’ll give our Middle States review as an example. Our Middle States Chair is often a faculty member. It’s a huge amount of work over the course of a couple years. It’s not exactly the most fun thing to do, but it certainly is really different. It’s very different than the typical faculty role. And it’s challenging in a different way. And many of us joined academia because we love to learn, we enjoy the challenge, we enjoy the questions of our fields and finding interesting solutions, whether that’s through research or other activities and administrative roles. When you shift into a different role, you have all of that back, you get a whole new set of things you have to learn, a whole new set of challenges, a whole new set of problems to sink your teeth into that are immediately meaningful in your environment. So I’ll give Middle States as an example, again, it may sound from some perspectives kind of like torture, to have to lead that effort. But it’s incredibly meaningful. If we’re not accredited, all kinds of bad things happen to the institution beyond losing access to federal financial aid. Accreditation is one of the most important activities of the university. So you can see immediately the work that you’re doing and the impact that it can have. I think when we had talked about it in the context of burnout, it’s about the flexibility that’s possible in a long-term faculty role, that what you did five years ago, doesn’t have to be the same thing that you do now, and it doesn’t have to be the same thing you do in five years. And if that stepping in and out of the department chair role, that’s one aspect. But another could be taking on some leadership of important committees or faculty assembly, it could be leading the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, it could be doing some consulting, it could be all kinds of different things. And that’s all within the contract. And so people who have a strong affiliation to their institution, who really are still closely tied to their colleagues and their students and the mission of the institution, don’t have to leave to try something different. I will say that I’ve seen, and I would guess you have also seen, we’re not going to name names here, we’ve also seen people who have stepped very successfully into administrative roles or service-heavy roles that are trying to get out of an unpleasant or toxic environment in their home department, and have done that really well. That it’s been an environment that they don’t want to continue to work in, but they don’t want to leave the institution, they have a lot of talent and things to contribute. I’ve worked with a number of people over the years that have made that shift because they don’t want to work with somebody anymore. And the university needs them, and they’re thrilled to take on a different role and move their office and continue to contribute and work and have seen that shift as a real success. So I don’t think that’s typical. I’m not saying that everybody who chooses administrative roles are trying to get out of a toxic environment. [LAUGHTER] But there are certainly people who have done that with great satisfaction.
Rebecca: So related to that, there’s also a lot of people who move into leadership roles and administrators are really good teachers, and sometimes leaving their home departments can cause some tension because there becomes some staffing issues. But it also can provide some internal tension, because you’re giving up something that maybe you love really deeply. So what advice do you have for faculty who might feel pulled in a few different directions?
Kristin: So that’s a two level. So one is like just the internal pull of: “What if I’m teaching less, and I really love teaching?” And I’m with you, I love teaching, and I really think that many people who make really excellent teachers are also very good at administrative work. I think it draws from many of the same strengths. Okay, some of you listening may disagree with me, but I could elaborate if you want, but I do think it draws from many of the same strengths. And thinking, “I’m going to be in the classroom less,” can be a really painful personal decision. On the other side of that, you can think about what kind of impact you can have with the skill sets that you have. So I’ll give an example. My father was an academic and directed the graduate program for a number of years that he was a faculty member in. And it was an applied field so that there was internship experiences for the students. And when he came in, he changed the course schedule completely, not the curriculum just the schedule, to open up time for students to be in more placements. And then he negotiated with all their placement sites so that they would be paid, because previously they had been unpaid. So he, in the matter of about two years, when he first started working on this, he had changed a doctoral program that had unpaid placements into a program with 100% paid placements for students who really needed the money. Now, I can guarantee you within about three or four years, most people did not remember that he had done that.
Rebecca: But what an impact.
Kristin: It was just the way the program worked. But I can also guarantee you that they followed that same model for 20 years. And he kept those students from being homeless, essentially. So the time that he took away from teaching in order to do that administrative work had a significant impact on students in a different way. So stepping out of the classroom with one foot doesn’t mean that you’re not working with students and impacting students and doing things that can have a broader impact in many ways. The way that I think about it, because I do love to teach, is that, if I’m in the classroom, I love to teach both small and large classes, I actually really love big classes. So if I’m in the classroom, with 100 students, that’s 100 students that I can work with and impact. But if I can support faculty to be more effective in their teaching, that’s 1000s of students that we have an impact on. Now, then there’s the separate question of: What do you do with your colleagues who were like, “But we were depending on you to be our next department chair and advisement coordinator and recruitment coordinator all in one. What are we going to do without you if you step into this other role?” And this can be particular pressure for faculty of diverse backgrounds. If you’re the one African-American woman in the department, it can feel extremely painful to think, “How am I going to not be present every day in the classroom with students who are depending on me to be the person that they look up to, that they can talk to, to be that special person in their lives?” So for that, I would say you go right ahead and be a little selfish. Think about what it is that you want to try next, and just give it a shot. Because when you’re in a current role, you can see what you can do there and what you’re leaving behind if you step away from it. In the role you’re going to step into, you can’t see what impact you’re going to have there and what the advantages are going to be there. So you have to kind of take the leap of faith and just give it a shot. Because as soon as you do that, you’ll start to see, “Wait a minute, in this different role, I have all these other ways that I can impact students, and my colleagues and my department, that I didn’t anticipate.” So you have to be a little selfish and step right into it, recognizing that there are going to be huge advantages that your colleagues and your students and you don’t even know until you give it a try. Plus, again, universities are big complex places, we could really use a lot of good service in a lot of different ways. Just because you’re stepping away from one doesn’t mean that what you’re stepping into isn’t going to be even more impactful.
John: And the people we’d most want in the administration would be people who are trying to improve the environment for our students. So as you noted, many of the people who are the best teachers are also the best administrators. And that does make it a little bit more challenging often. And we’ve been pretty lucky with that here, in general, with our administrators, certainly all the administrators I can think of from the last 15 years or so [LAUGHTER] have fit that definition quite well. There have been a few exceptions during my time here, I’ve been here for quite a while. But for the most part, I think the administrators and faculty shared a similar attitude towards students and the institution.
Kristin: Yeah. And I think it’s worth saying, when I think about how I approach the classroom and my classes, I’ve got the one aspect of… How do I design a learning experience that is empirically supported? So I know I’m doing the best things that I can do, that is structured in the most effective way possible, that I can test with data. And at the same time, when I’m interacting with the students, I’m essentially trying to pull them in, pull them along with me. How do I keep them engaged and get them excited and get their best work out of them? And to me, that is the exact same thing I do every day. I’m trying to figure out how to construct great programs based on the data and how to evaluate them. And at the same time, how do I pull people in so that we can share similar perspectives that we’re working towards the mission of the institution? It feels, honestly, exactly the same to me.
John: Except there’s a bit of a multiplier effect when you’re working with a large number of faculty, if you can get them to implement some of the same techniques and approaches that you were using in the classroom, it reaches, as you noted, many more students.
Kristin: Exactly. Exactly.
Rebecca: So we’ve talked about it a little bit, but do you have some advice about leadership opportunities that an early-career faculty might explore if they have an interest beyond the classroom? And how might those opportunities be different for someone who’s maybe farther along in their career?
Kristin: Yeah, absolutely. So, of course, service is a required component of a faculty day, it’s every day, right? [LAUGHTER] There’s always a little bit of service happening every day, if not a lot. And I understand the message, and I respect it and support it, that we don’t want to ask our assistant professors to do too much because they have commitments to teaching and research as well. But that doesn’t mean nothing, do some service. Because that’s how you find out as a professional person where your strengths are on contributing to the institution, you get to meet different people that you wouldn’t meet that are outside of your department and create collaborations in that way. So for early-career faculty, if you see an issue, don’t be afraid to step up and say, “Hey, there’s an issue here, I would like to work on it.” If you see that there is committee work, and somebody needs somebody to serve on a committee, volunteer. Yes, don’t volunteer for everything, that’s unwieldy. And some of it will be really boring, if you’re not interested in it. But I’ve also seen faculty who struggle, who say, “I’m trying to do more service, but I don’t get picked for committees.” And as we talk about it, what it usually ends up being is, “Oh, I’m only interested in this, this, and this. And those committees don’t have any openings.” Well, a little broader than that. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. So volunteering, noticing when, if there’s something that you want to work on and stepping up for it, and tell people, talk to people about what you’re interested in. Rebecca, as you said, at faculty orientation…
Rebecca: Mmhmm.
Kristin: …you talked to John about some of the stuff you were interested in.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Kristin: Yeah! Tell people, because we all are always looking for collaborators in the kind of work that we’re doing. And if we know somebody is interested, trust me, there are literal mental lists in people’s heads: “I need someone for this. I need someone for this. What if we took on this initiative next?” Yeah, tell people, talk about what you’re interested in. Now, for faculty who are more advanced in their careers, of course, the promotion to associate, big deal, it’s a bigger deal, sometimes, then you think it’s going to be, at least emotionally. Because oftentimes, people who are assistant professors have a good sense of what that trajectory looks like, until they hit associate. And then they realize that there’s this whole universe of possibilities that they weren’t really aware of until promotion. So at that point, there are certainly more opportunities for service that is really meaningful, where the protection of promotion and tenure can be a big boon. But honestly, if there’s something that you’re interested in, I wouldn’t wait for that. If you’re really excited, say: “I’d like to work on this.” And even doing it at the assistant level, if it’s something that excites you, it’s worth giving it a shot.
John: And even if you’re not invited to a committee, you can always talk to people on the committee and make some suggestions about things that might be worth exploring. And usually, once you do that, you get invited pretty quickly to join, because committees are always looking for people to help share the workload.
Kristin: Exactly, exactly. And there are at all institutions, there are ones that have very set membership, and then there’s just a whole bunch of other ones that are working on important interesting issues, where the membership is not that set. Where if you say, “I want to work on this,” they say, “Yay! Our next meeting is tomorrow, you should come.” [LAUGHTER]
Rebecca: And picking out things that might give you the opportunity to work with colleagues beyond your own department is really beneficial. And although often warned against early in the career, I think that was actually something that I did early on in my career that helped me at both institutions I worked at. I met faculty across campus really quickly and by doing I mean that it opened up a lot of doors for me in terms of research opportunities, other collaborations, and even other committees or things to work on that I was interested in.
Kristin: Exactly.
John: In a workshop you offered for our faculty, you introduced Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow by Don Clifton, as a tool to help individuals become more effective leaders. Could you talk a little bit about what this tool is, and how someone could use it in their own career journey?
Kristin: Absolutely. So sometimes people are familiar with StrengthsFinder, which is a Clifton tool, particularly people in student affairs. So if you know what I’m talking about, this is the same assessment, but it’s a different report. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay, I’m just going to go from there. So, the strengths-based approach is based on significant research. So it’s an empirically supported approach to looking at human potential from a strengths-based perspective, as opposed to a weaknesses perspective where you’re trying to consistently remediate the things that you’re bad at. Instead, you’re trying to get a better awareness of the things that you’re good at, so that you can build off of those. And the strengths-based leadership approach takes those strengths and applies them to a leadership context. Saying, as I said, many of us in academia really love learning, “learner” is one of my strengths when I take this assessment, one of my top strengths. And the interpretation that I get from this kind of leadership report and development says how I can use my strength and orientation towards being a learner to be a more effective leader. So there’s a couple of reasons why I like this approach. One is that well, just overall, anytime you reflect on challenging things that you’re doing, regardless of whatever role you have, it helps you to grow. So if you’re trying to figure out… What does it mean that I’m in a leadership role? I never expected that. What am I supposed to do with that? I don’t know how to be a leader, I don’t even know what that is. All of those things. Reflecting on that in a structured way can help you to grow and to find your footing. And there are lots of tools out there to do that, there are a number of development programs, this is a great tool. If you want to do it yourself, if any of the listeners want to do it themselves, it’s super easy. You can buy the book on Amazon or from any bookseller.
Rebecca: Like your local bookstore.
Kristin: Like your local bookstore! And with that comes the assessment code and the personalized interpretation. But another piece of this strengths-based approach is that there are many, many ways to be a successful leader. And sometimes you’ll hear this, for example, from a dean or provost or a department chair, who’s figuring that out. And they’ll say, “Well, I can’t do it like the previous person did.” Well, that’s right, they can’t, because they’re not the previous person, they’re going to lead in a different way. There are many ways to be a successful leader and the research suggests that if you build off the strengths that you already bring with you, you’re going to have much more potential to grow quickly than if you’re consistently trying to fix your weaknesses all the time. So I’m okay at budgeting, I’m not great, I’m okay. But sitting and spending a lot of time in the budget system and really sinking my teeth into it is going to be kind of boring for me. And I’m not going to develop any dramatic insights through doing that. Instead, I have a much stronger orientation towards people development. So I have an excellent staff member in my office, Jennifer Cook, who is great at budgeting. So we work on it together. And I support her, she figures out all the details, we take a hard look at it and figure out where there are opportunities to save money and reinvest in other ways, and together that is a much less stressful and more successful approach. Similarly, as a faculty member, I really find solitary writing to be an unpleasant experience. I can do it, it’s just a little bit like pulling teeth all the time.
Rebecca: Sounds great.
Kristin: Yeah, yeah. But I am much more motivated by working in collaboration. So I know, that took me several years to figure this out, but I know that if I’m working in a collaborative project, I will write much faster and find it to be much more rewarding than if I am writing all by myself. Now working in a collaborative project, I’m still writing by myself, but I have those other people and those deadlines and my commitment to them in mind. So working off of that strength is a much less frustrating, much more successful experience than trying to constantly focus on, “Oh, I’m so bad at this. I need to get better, better, better.” That’s also true in lots of other ways. It’s certainly true of faculty in the classroom as well, that if you have in mind what the excellent teacher looks like and you can’t do that, you’re probably thinking in far too restrictive a way. There are many ways to be an excellent teacher. If you can’t do the one that you have in your head, talk to the people on your campus that do teaching development because they’re going to have lots of other suggestions for you that will fit much better with the strengths that you already bring with you into the classroom.
John: So for faculty who are considering this, how might faculty find some mentors who might give them some advice or some assistance in the process of considering a transition into a leadership role?
Kristin: Well, my preface here is that I have a good answer, but I’m really bad at this myself. [LAUGHTER] So it is one of the things that I’ve had to think more explicitly about because I have spent so many years just trying to do stuff by myself, without realizing, “Oh, this is something that other people ask for support and assistance with.” So I do have an answer, but it’s because I’ve had to think so hard about it. There are certain things we clearly know about mentorship. One is that the individual mentor model is spectacularly unsuccessful, that if you expect one mentor to be able to serve all your needs, that actually doesn’t work very well. And we all expect that because our graduate programs assigned us individual PIs or supervisors for our dissertations. So we think of mentorship as an individual model, when actually a team model, it works much, much better. And many people grow into this very naturally in their careers. When I was first serving in the Dean’s office in Texas, I had my little group. So I’d go to this really amazing sociologist who was down the hall when I was trying to figure out how to populate committees and relationships like, “Well, what about this person? I don’t know this person.” And he was a wise person who knew everybody. And so I could say, “Well, if we have this junior person and this senior person…” And he’d be like, “Oh, but they hate each other.” [LAUGHTER] “Okay, well no, but what about this one, and this one?” And I had my person who was very successful with grants. So if I had questions, I could go to him about grants. And he was also the one that would come and knock on my door real hard every so often and say, “How many publications do you have? Are you on track?” And we could talk about it quickly. And I had a couple of people that I would talk about teaching with. And this is the same kind of thing, if you’re thinking about other options in your career, other roles to take on, a team approach is really the best. So don’t be afraid to approach people, both on and off campus. Be clear on what you want from them, and then ask for that. So if what you want is just a little advice here and there, just go and ask for advice. People love to give advice. It’s not like they’re going to say, “No, I’m not going to tell you what I think.” If you want to develop a plan for your next five years, which some people really like, and it’s a good approach, say, “I’m going to be looking at my career trajectory. Can I talk with you about that?” If you want sponsorship, which is different, that’s the person who’s in the room, when you’re not in the room who says, “You know who would be great at this? Rebecca would be great at this.”
Rebecca: Stop volunteering me for stuff. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: So if what you want is sponsorship, be sure that you ask for that, too. And when I say be clear with what you want, part of that is because some of us have been so poorly mentored in some aspects of our career, that we don’t spontaneously offer that type of mentorship because we haven’t been socialized to it. I have had some exceptional mentors. And that was because I was lucky, it’s not because I asked for it. Ask for it, it’s much more reliable. And when I say don’t be afraid to approach people, I’m being absolutely literal. And I have had people say, “I would like you to mentor me for this reason.” It’s a perfectly normal thing to do. I have been really privileged to be able to work with the Hispanic Leadership Institute with SUNY for the last few years. And one of the things that the cohort of participants in the Leadership Institute does is approach people to serve as mentors. And it can be a scary thing for them to approach someone that they admire professionally, but have never met. And typically, the response they get is fantastic. So don’t be afraid. If there’s somebody you admire, reach out to him and say, “I admire these aspects of your career. Would you be willing to talk with me for a few minutes? I am an assistant professor at this institution. I am interested in growing in this way. I think your perspective would be really helpful.” Chances are good you’re going to get a yes from that.
Rebecca: Especially if you’re asking someone to do something that they already know.
Kristin: Exactly.
Rebecca: Right? [LAUGHTER] That’s their expertise for something they have experience with. It’s not like it requires a lot of prep work or extra side work. I think we underestimate that sometimes, that like, “Oh, you want my perspective on this? Great, yeah, I can do that right now.”
Kristin: Exactly.
John: And in academia it’s always a pleasant break from grading, for example, to talk to a colleague about their career path. It can be a nice diversion, so people often enjoy it.
Kristin: Exactly.
Rebecca: Academics are really great at procrastination just like students are. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: Well, most of us get a real kick about helping people with career path.
Rebecca: Definitely.
Kristin: I’m sure that part of the aspects that you enjoy about teaching are the students who are like, “I’m trying to figure out, what can I do? What are my choices? How can I prepare for that, given my interests and strengths?” So, it’s the same kind of conversation, it’s just a later stage. So it’s something that is already appealing. Yeah, don’t be afraid to ask and have a whole committee of mentors that you can draw from.
Rebecca: Just don’t try to schedule them at the same time. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: No, no, no, no. [LAUGHTER] No, they don’t like that, they don’t like that.
John: And a really good way of dealing with collaboration is something you said before, Kristin, about having collaborators, because, as you noted, that serves as a bit of a commitment device, which makes it much more likely you’ll pursue things because you don’t want to let the other people that you’re working with down. So it’s a really effective strategy in many aspects of our careers, I think.
Kristin: Exactly. We are social creatures, so having the social aspect helps to keep us motivated. Plus, for the many of us who really hate letting other people down, that commitment device, it can help us to stay on top of things. That you’re not going to let your team down if you’re all working together on something.
John: It’s also a strategy I suggest to my students, that a really good way of making sure that they work on things they need to do is to work with others and to form times when they’re going to do that and make a commitment to others.
Kristin: Exactly, exactly. And I know that writing groups for faculty are similarly effective, as long as they’re very focused.
Rebecca: Any kind of accountability club, right?
Kristin: Mmhmm.
Rebecca: However you want to call it. Even if we’re working on different things, but you’re checking in with someone to tell them your progress because they’re expecting to hear from you can work in a similar way.
Kristin: Exactly.
John: Do you have any other advice for our listeners on this topic?
Kristin: Oh, I do have one thing. I just have a little plea, a plea. So a periodic thing that people will say on campuses is, “I don’t know why ‘the administration’ doesn’t do something about XYZ.”
John: COVID.
Kristin: Anything! Exactly. “Why they don’t do something about workload and this issue? This problematic person that everybody knows is a problem. Or how the furniture is falling apart in this one area of campus, or something, the giant potholes. I don’t know why the administration is not doing something about something that is an actual, real problem.” If you find yourself saying that, my plea is that you try and share a solution for that. Because I can guarantee you, if somebody knows it’s a problem and isn’t doing something about it, that probably means they don’t know what to do about it. They don’t have a solution yet. So if you’ve got a solution, share a solution. And even if you don’t, it’s totally fine to share the problem. Because if we’re talking about, “the furniture is literally falling apart,” it’s possible nobody knows that except for the people that are there. This is a perennial issue, by the way. I’ve heard it on different campuses for things like, “The water is leaking, there are mice, or whatever. [LAUGHTER] Why doesn’t somebody do something about the mice?” Yeah, well, you never told anybody. So that’s why. But if the issue is like the workload is out of hand in this area, people are at the end of their rope, please share your ideas and share the problem. Nobody wants to leave, I can guarantee it. There isn’t anyone in a leadership position at an institution that wants to leave a festering problem that is making people’s lives difficult. Either they don’t know about it, or they don’t have a good solution. So that’s my plea. It’s not directly related to what we’re talking about. But we’re always looking for good ideas.
Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking, What’s next?
Kristin: What’s next… So I’ve been in this role for three exciting years. They have been exciting. And I have, over my career, there have been episodes in which there have been “the big problem,” the big problem that takes multiple years to work through. And clearly the big problem has been COVID, and the way that it has disrupted all of our lives, and the way that everything works at the university. So what’s next is to try and figure out what we do next with that. Because, clearly, we’ll be in a different place next year than we have ever been. We’ve never been at the, hopefully, tail end of a pandemic and trying to figure out what is the best way to help people reengage, to feel safe, what have we learned that we can use in different ways? All of that is a whole new set of sticky, wicked problems to deal with and to try to figure out solutions.
Rebecca: So a fun adventure then.
Kristin: Yes! I think it’s better to be at the tail end than at the tip of the nose. [LAUGHTER]
John: And I hope we are.
Kristin: I certainly hope we are too.
Rebecca: I remember us saying this about a year ago around this time.
Kristin: Yes, [LAUGHTER] yes.
Rebecca: But maybe this time.
Kristin: Maybe this time.
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
John: Editing assistance provided by Anna Croyle, Annalyn Smith, and Joshua Vega.
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