Cultivating Compassion in Our Practice

August 8th, 2011 | Posted by Adam Ortiz in Books | Campus Issues | Collaborative Learning | Creativity | Diversity | Leadership Training | Work/Life Balance - (4 Comments)

Last spring, my supervisor and I had a conversation about Student Affairs and Buddhism. I mentioned to her that, as someone with an interest in Buddhist philosophy, I would like to begin thinking about ways to intentionally incorporate my broad personal belief in compassion into my professional practice. My supervisor noted that she had never had a supervisee mention this aspiration to her before, but that I should pursue it.

In an effort to learn more about compassion and how I can contextualize it within Student Affairs, this summer I read The Lost Art of Compassion: Discovering the Practice of Happiness in the Meeting of Buddhism and Psychology by Lorne Ladner. In the book, Ladner articulates the benefits of compassion as well as how to cultivate a compassionate attitude using Buddhist-inspired meditations. He examines through Western psychology how cultivating compassion is extremely beneficial to both an individual and the community in which they live.

The entire time I was reading the book, I was thinking about ways that actively cultivating compassion could bolster my work in Student Affairs. After all, if one of our profession’s foundational goals is the holistic health and wellbeing of students, I think it’s reasonable to argue that compassion is a necessary component of efficacy. Ideally, we practice compassion when we are helping students understand the impact of their mistakes, when we are teaching them about social justice and identity, and when we are challenging them to become responsible global citizens.

The most competent professionals I have met are those who demonstrate their commitment to students in their compassion for them, even when they behave in ways that are damaging. Yet, so few of us ever name compassion as a professional competency. I think that a lot of us, particularly in the United States, associate the cultivation of compassion as a lofty and spiritual practice. I certainly used to. Since reading about and seriously contemplating compassion, however, I have realized that my best professional moments have come when I have exercised it.

Is compassion an intentional component to your professional practice? If so, in what ways do you practice compassion with your students and your colleagues?

Adam J. Ortiz is a House Director at Hampshire College, Massachusetts

Build This House: An activity for discussing first-generation students with student leaders

July 18th, 2011 | Posted by Tyler Martin in Campus Issues | Collaborative Learning | Creativity | Diversity | First-Year Experience | Freshman | Games | Leadership Training | Low Cost Programming | Resident Life | University - (0 Comments)

Explaining the experience of first-generation college students is a task that many of us quickly deflect if at all possible. Just because a subject can be classified as “well, every situation is so different” does not mean that we cannot try. A few years back, a hall director I worked for needed me to come up with a first-generation college student (FGCS) program for her resident assistant staff. After some thought, I came up with the following, relatively quick program:

Materials needed:

Two (or more) sheets of paper

Pencils (preferably the stencil pencil kind)

Or use a whiteboard/chalkboard

(Groups should be 5 or less/group)

Preparation:

1. Design two like house outlines (basic blueprints with basic room options)

2. On back of each, list:

Rooms needed:

Kitchen

Bathroom

Living room

Master bedroom

Spare bedroom

Upstairs bathroom (shared between the two bedrooms)

Appliances needed:

Oven, fridge, sink, pantry, island, counters, cupboards, dishwasher

Sofa, couch, TV, coffee table, plants (x3)

Soap and towels

Bed, armoire (x2), treasure chest, nightstand (x2)

Repeat for spare bedroom (add a desk)

Rules:

Designate 2 “parents”

Divide group into (two) equal halves

Parent 1 = you know the ins-and-outs of home building. Feel free to help with all aspects of the basic design. Give pointers but allow for choices!

Parent 2 = you try to help with basic design but have no prior experience. Accidentally, you give the group bad advice and misguided direction. Five minutes into the activity, you get frustrated and leave.

Allow for 15-20 minutes for groups to finalize their houses.

Once completed, ask the following questions (plus your own):

  1. How did the “parents” help/hurt?
  2. What were the difficult decisions?
  3. Why did you place/label each room where/what?
  4. What are the differences between groups?
  5. How does this relate to first generation college students?
    1. Parents who can help/ parents who are inexperienced
    2. Some decisions are made without understanding
    3. Communication between student-home is stressed
    4. Transitioning as a freshman becomes immediately more difficult
    5. Does FGCS correlate with low socio-economic status (SES)*?

Treat this as a basic start to get the discussion/training session started. The point of the project is to metaphorically show students that matriculating through a successful college career is similar to building an efficient house— it helps to have an experienced architect. However, it takes student leaders and student affairs professionals to make sure that each student who does not have an experienced parental architect is aware of the plethora of resources offered by their university.

Remember, first-generation college students (FGCS) and students of low socioeconomic status (SES) are not necessarily correlated and should be understood as separate but equally important variables when further understanding our student populations.

Tyler Martin recently completed his M.Ed. in Higher Education and is seeking a position in Student Affairs.

Toots Away: Salvaging the American Education System

June 30th, 2011 | Posted by Tyler Martin in Campus Issues | Collaborative Learning | Creativity | Leadership Training | University - (5 Comments)

Whether you saw it on Fox8 Cleveland or YouTube last fall, or more recently/likely on Tosh.0, the story about the sixth grader who received a one-hour detention for “passing gas” is true. This article is not to debate slapstick humor versus highbrow entertainment nor is it to discuss the (un)-importance of having/learning “class.” No. This article is to raise awareness to the real problem: our failed education system.

While we in the U.S. confuse young children about natural, bodily functions by not just hushing the “embarrassing” ones— but now disciplining those who childishly defy or outright do not accept mainstream mores— countries such as India, Thailand, China, and Sweden are not simply excelling in academics, but quickly monopolizing the world’s future movers-and-shakers. Take a look at this detailed report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

According to OECD’s latest tri-annual Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the United States education system ranked 14th out of 34 in reading skills, 17th for science, and 25th for mathematics. Dare I ask what your reaction would be if your child— who has open access to the best of the world’s resources— came home with a 58% in language arts, a 50% in science, and a 26% in mathematics? I venture to assume that your reaction would include a long parent-to-child talk, a parent-to-teacher conference, and inquiring assistance from the professionals at the Sylvan Learning Center.

All right. So what does farting/tooting/passing gas/etc., on a bus have to do with salvaging our failed education system? A lot. Without me going into a complete tirade about revamping the concept of honest adult roles and responsibility courses in grades 6-12, I will leave that for another time and skip to this basic truth: instead of the world’s foremost bright, inclusive, inventive, and progressive nations, we have sidewinder’ed our culture into the trammels of inanity and shame (whatever that is, precisely).

While you watch FOX/CNN/PBS/MSNBC/AJE, etc, tonight, take note of how many stories (and their cumulative time spent) are fixated on fatuous topics: kids farting on busses, a sad woman who has injured her children, a congressman’s sexting pics; and then compare that to the amount of time American media spends discussing how we as a nation are actively seeking means of succeeding in solving our country’s and our world’s largest problems: Diabetes, Rx-addictions, Asthma, Racism, Cancer, Homelessness, Alzheimer’s, HIV/AIDS, Spina bifida, Ethnic “Cleansings,” Anti-Semitism, Homophobia etc. Unless you are a strict PBS or Anderson Cooper (CNN needs to expand with more Coopers, Guptas, Zakariases, etc.) fan, chances are there is a distinctive gap in your findings.

Now that we honestly recognize the problem and its severity, we must now immediately begin to work on salvage and reclaim. Think FDR’s New Deal. And as the Alphabet Soup of FDR’s New Deal inspired reconstruction of a failed economy, an overhaul of our current SES-restrictive, test-driven and anti-scientific education system would reconstruct a failed education system. But how would we replace our failed system? How about through the same philosophy professed by The Statue of Liberty: Freedom. Huh? Stick with me here:

As rational, educated beings, we can all easily agree that our nation was initially founded on the simple concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness— all of which The Statue of Liberty represents, right? Or have we forgotten so soon that She is a beacon of America’s adoration for collective, innovative ingenuity between Free nations, demanding the world to give Her its “tired, [its] poor/[Its] huddled masses yearning to breathe Free?” If we have, click the hyperlink in this paragraph.

So again, how do we fix the American education system? Easy: we return to our original philosophy as a people. We abandon our silly, failed conventional intelligence bench-markers (brainless book-regurgitation tests, academic anxiety-sparking pop-quizzes, and pre-established, assigned group projects) and replace them with innovative, collaborative, self-driven and student-to-teacher-to-student lead projects respective to a given subject’s academic field.

And please— America— please let us finally embrace science! It is time that we drop our animosities towards science and make our children scientists. We rely on scientists for vanity (hair color, Rogaine), health (disease-prevention, vitamin-infused beverages), finances (try and tell the FED that economics is not a science) and almost any/everything else we use daily. Obviously, it is time that we give the scientific method our unadulterated respect and no longer exploit its power for profit and veil it in irrational suspicion.

It is as simple as that folks. Still do not believe me? Ask yourself: “when do I learn best?” I will gamble that it is one of— if not a combination of— you being in your own little geek-out world, exploring websites— or talking to direct sources in a quasi-Socratic conversation— or when you are diving into a good book— or possibly expressing an idea or newly learned concept through artistic means? Maybe it is when you are exercising in the morning or during the monotony of your morning wake-up routine? Regardless of what your unique learning scene is, or how you tap into it, you know that it has bred your favorite and most powerful learning experiences.

Why are we not harnessing this basic understanding and injecting its wisdom into our educational system? If we really want to become the world’s hope again— if we really want to be the leading nation in solving what ails us— we need to make this easy, 100% logical plan an immediate reality.

In student affairs, we pride ourselves as a freethinking, innovative field on a blazing quest of establishing the most efficient and positive learning environments, correct? Then it is time we collaborate with our faculty friends and try tooting new horns— and stop fartin’ around.

Tyler Martin recently completed his M.Ed. in Higher Education and is seeking a position in Student Affairs.

Truly Leading: Lessons In Leadership

May 10th, 2011 | Posted by Del Suggs in Announcements | Books | Campus Issues | Club/Org Recruitment | Leadership Training - (8 Comments)

Truly Leading:  Lessons in Leadership was released on May 2, and I’m really proud to announce it here at the SABlog site.  This book was written over the past three or four years, and several of the 21-chapters actually began as postings to this blog.
Truly Leading coverI wrote it as primer for campus leaders.  It covers both basic and more advanced leadership skills, and the chapter titles lay it out.  “Leading With Integrity,” “Effective Time Management,” “The Art of Delegation,” “Setting Organizational Goals,” and “Conflict Resolution”  are good examples of the basic skills required to lead.

But Truly Leading goes beyond the basics, and addresses those skills that more advanced leaders need.  “How to Inspire Others,” “Being a Better Leader,” “The Power of Ceremony” and “More Effective  Meetings” are aimed at lifting an emerging leader into greater success.

I’ve also included chapters on some very important foundational needs, such as creating a mission statement and some advanced concepts in recruitment.  Organizational training needs are addressed in chapters covering both planning and training retreats, along with presenting a full-blown campus leadership conference.

Truly Leading:  Lessons in Leadership is chock full of leadership tips, suggestions, and guidance.  It is brisk reading, written in a style that reflects the my personal experiences as a life-long leader.

If you’d like a copy, it’s available directly from my website store, or you can purchase it from Amazon.com.  It’s also available as an eBook from the Kindle Store.  It should be available at the Apple bookstore and Barnes & Nobles.com in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for letting me announce this here.  Okay, Fellow Contributors:   it’s time for you to write your new book!

“We cannot afford mediocre employees”

February 9th, 2011 | Posted by Lisa Tetzloff in Books | Budgets | Leadership Training - (19 Comments)

When I heard a student affairs administrator make this statement awhile back, it gave me pause.

She explained that big budget cuts at her institution a year or so ago meant she had had to find ways to accomplish the university’s mission with fewer staff members. She began the process by assessing employees’ strengths relative to their positions. As a result of her assessment, she kept some employees where they were, she moved a couple to positions she determined to be a better fit for their talents and skills, and she let others go (with several months’ notice and assistance with their job searches).

The competencies she displayed—building and maintaining trust, assessing people and situations well, and making difficult (even painful) decisions without pause—are invaluable.

“Releasing an employee troubles, disturbs, and unsettles every leader,” writes Phillip Clampitt and Robert DeKoch in Transforming Leaders Into Progressmakers: Leadership for the 21st Century (2011, p. 166).

Therefore “cutting your losses [is] . . . an act of judgment and courage,” they concluded.

In higher education, the phrase “cutting your losses” sounds insensitive and incongruent with our culture of learning. Instead, we teach, correct, guide, and motivate . . . sometimes indefinitely. We may convince ourselves that “if only I were a better supervisor, then he/she would be a better employee.” And so we try yet another approach and give the employee more time.

The costs of keeping marginal employees, of course, can be very high. Their actions (or inaction) can affect recruitment and retention of students, the learning environment, risk and liability, and customer service. They also can affect morale, as other employees compensate for deficits or create ways to work around them.

What does it take to be able to handle challenging personnel decisions well? How can we develop these traits and/or skills? What are your thoughts about the statement: “We cannot afford mediocre employees”?

Our students deserve our best, including courageous leadership. How are we building and sustaining our value to our campuses?

Lisa Tetzloff is the Director of the Office of Student Life at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

, ,

Refining and exploring lead to progress

January 24th, 2011 | Posted by Lisa Tetzloff in Books | Leadership Training | Technology and Programming | Uncategorized - (5 Comments)

As both a leadership educator and the director of a department, I keep an eye out for new resources on leadership. One of the books I read recently is Transforming Leaders into Progressmakers: Leadership for the 21st Century by Phillip Clampitt and Robert DeKoch.

Some leadership literature seems to lend itself better to higher education and student affairs than others. I found the key concepts in Progressmakers to be a good fit for a daylong, mid-year retreat I had been planning for the Student Life staff. My intent was for us to evaluate our programs and services based on their reach, impact, and connection to our mission. What was lacking or missing?

Our goal is always progress. We want to make changes that result in something better. In Progressmakers, Clampitt and DeKoch (2011) suggest that improvement requires two separate but equally important activities: “exploring” and “refining.” They define refining as tweaking to optimize what we already offer, and exploring as creating bigger, more revolutionary change. Exploring results in leaps, such as from newspapers to news on the Internet, or from the printed Sears catalog to amazon.com. (The authors contend that Sears could have preempted amazon if it had chosen to leap rather than tweak.)

According to Clampitt and DeKoch, “The most fundamental leadership judgment is determining when the organization needs to explore new opportunities and when it needs to improve (or refine) current practices” (p. 6). My experience in student affairs has been that we tend to favor refining rather than venturing into the risky unknown.

So how might these concepts relate to Student Life? A simple example: A few years ago we decided to temper our “bigger is better” approach to programming by planning some intentionally small, more intimate activities that we thought might be more appealing to some students. We then took the fairly unusual step of initiating a series of informal book discussions. We saw this activity as a tool for facilitating self-awareness, for increasing students’ comfort with conversing, and for promoting reading. For us, this was a leap—and it worked. Today our book discussions draw students, faculty, staff, and community members, and they remain capped at 12. We have since refined our book discussions by offering some via Skype (with the authors joining in!).

Another example: We are constantly fine-tuning our fall leadership conference, which typically draws highly engaged, on-campus students. We are now exploring ways to address the leadership needs and interests of our non-traditional students, who spend very little time, if any, on campus. What topics are relevant to their experiences? What methods and technologies would appeal to them? We want to leap. Ideas?

In what ways are you, your department, and/or your campus refining and exploring? Would you describe yourself as more of a refiner or as an explorer? Does your organization have both (and does it value both)?

Clampitt, P. G. & DeKoch, R. J. (2011). Transforming Leaders into Progressmakers: Leadership for the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

,

Engagement Based Leadership

November 12th, 2010 | Posted by The SA Team in Club/Org Recruitment | Leadership Training | Member Retention - (5 Comments)

Most student club advisors will tell you that club engagement goes through waves; some years are rockstars and others are duds. Almost every club starts the year with aspirations of rockstardom, but within a couple weeks, the excitement and motivation of the leadership team fades, and thus, the entire club activity withers. In pondering this problem, I’ve been talking more and more about an idea called engagement-based leadership (EBL), meaning that leadership is not a one-time elected thing, but rather an ongoing, ever-changing position rewarded based on engagement. Before I talk more about EBL, first let’s dissect the problem of why student leaders fade within a month of being elected.

Several years ago, I walked the second day of a 2-Day Avon Walk For Breast Cancer with my wife and some friends. Anyone who’s ever done the walk knows how grueling it is. Blisters alone are painful, but the average Avon walker can expect to endure multiple layers of blisters building up until his or her entire foot becomes one big blister. It’s disgusting and painful and makes the second day of the walk intense. The organizers know that completion of the walk is extremely difficult without a continuous onslaught of support from spectators and volunteers. That’s why for every walker, they commit to line the entire path with at least five cheerers. On the last leg of the walk, my feet blistered up and shot a pain through my body with each step. Mentally and physically I was ready to quit. My motivation was gone. But then, as we turned the corner, there was a smiling old lady sitting in a wheel chair, wearing a cap to cover her bald head and holding a sign that read, “I’m why you’re walking, Thank you.” Like a bolt of electricity, my whole body reenergized and plowed toward the finish line. Imagine if the only rewards for walking the race were in the beginning when they pumped us up, and at the end when we crossed the finish line? The attrition rates would be horrendous!

Like the Avon walk, student leaders begin the year excited and motivated about the idea of the journey they’re about to start. They might have just attended an award ceremony where the outgoing leaders were showered in praise for the hard work they did throughout the year, which further motivates the incoming leaders. So much support. So much praise. And then, let’s say within a month or so, reality sets in. The real work starts, and the “blisters” of being a leader build up. But unlike the Avon walk, with a motivational checkpoint waiting for you at every street corner, the next motivational checkpoint for student leaders most likely won’t be for another six months, during their outgoing ceremony when they are praised for all the hard work they did throughout the year. Thus, within the first couple months of being a leader, the excitement and motivation fade and the attrition rates go up. It should be noted that some leaders drop off for other reasons, such as class overload, work overload, or personal issues.

What’s a solution look like?

As the advisor, you could make sure to set up a collection of individual checkpoints for your leaders throughout the year, so you make sure they stay excited and motivated. At bare minimum, let’s say you create checkpoints that happen once per week for ten minutes where you praise them for the work they are doing and remind them of the bigger picture of student engagement. Just one leader multiplied out for eight months, that’s just under five hours of your time. Now expand that to 50-300 leaders. If you don’t think you have a life now…

Enter EBL. The goal is still the same, keep the leaders motivated on an ongoing basis so they can survive through the typical student leader burnout, but in EBL, the tactics change. In EBL, you are moving the motivational checkpoints away from you as the admin/advisor and pushing it to the students. EBL builds in a peer-to-peer motivational system that is ongoing and ever present. Now it doesn’t matter if you have 50 or 5000 student leaders. Actually, the more leaders you have, the better.

How does it work?

It’s no secret I’m a fan of Whole Foods (also known as Whole Paycheck). Because there’s a WF on my way home from work, I tend to frequently stop in and grab a few items. Over time, I realized that WF is one of the top five places I visit the most every week, which makes me a pretty darn engaged customer. In fact, WF should probably be rewarding me for being so engaged. Enter FourSquare, Yelp, and SCVNGR. For those unfamiliar with these three sites, they are, simply stated, mobile check-in tools. I can be anywhere in NY and check in that I am there via my mobile phone. Nothing special yet, until you start to receive prizes, titles, and recognition for checking in more often. For a while, I was crowned the Mayor of our WF because I was the most engaged customer. But then my speaking travel schedule picked up and for several months I disappeared and rightfully so, someone else took over as Mayor.

EBL rewards students based on their engagement. The more engagement “points” you score, the more rewards, titles, and recognition you receive. To repeat from above, leadership is not a one-time yearly elected thing, but rather an ongoing, ever-changing position that is rewarded based on engagement.

There certainly is much more to debate and discuss here, but consider this post only a surface-level introduction to the idea. I’m not interested in getting into the weeds just yet, so I purposefully left out many of the operational details. This isn’t a pitch to integrate FourSquare, Yelp, and SCVNGR into student activities, because engagement is more than just being there. Engagement also could mean clicking on a link, reading/commenting on a post, or expressing your opinion at a meeting…etc.

The Value of EBL?

Admin/Advisor – Student Leader attrition rates will drop, which means student leaders will stick around longer and be more active in their clubs. The increased activity will make clubs more successful throughout the year. The admin/advisor also won’t have to do as much individual student leader motivational check-ins.

Student Leaders – Like a video game, the rewards and benefits built into EBL will keep the student leaders motivated throughout the entire year on an ongoing basis. They are going to have more fun because their clubs are more active and engaged. They also won’t feel as much guilt about dropping off the map and letting the club die due to some personal issues they didn’t plan for ahead of time. A new leader with the most engagement points is ready to step up to Mayorship.

Students – They will have a larger group of active clubs to join. After joining they don’t have to rely on a disengaged elected leader to keep the group going. Leadership is open to anyone who wants it and is willing to work for it.

Wrap Up

EBL is a blend of game theory and student engagement theory. Every student affairs professional knows the pains of deadbeat leaders and thus dead groups. EBL is a new paradigm in thinking about leadership. If we want to break out of the normal student engagement levels of 16-40%, we have to think differently. The ideas, tactics, and tech tools we use have to embody this new way of thinking. It’s not just about making paperwork more efficient, that’s just extracting more energy from the resources you already know exists. It’s about exploring new potential energy that is sitting dormant in the 60-84% of the rest of your student body, that’s a massive untapped pool of energy.

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Blog Reflections: Student Leader Development

September 20th, 2010 | Posted by Cindy Kane in Budgets | Campus Issues | Club/Org Recruitment | Collaborative Learning | Conferences | Creativity | Leadership Training | Low Cost Programming | Online Tools | Orientation | Professional Organizations | Technology and Programming | Uncategorized | University | Web/Tech - (0 Comments)

I always hope for that perfect storm of aligned experiences when sending a small group of organization representatives to a conference.  In my mind, the students will be empowered with questions and ideas to pursue upon the return home; their energy ignites a new sense of motivation in their group; and they begin to pursue their new definition of the future.

Sound great?

Hasn’t happened for me yet, either.

Sure, our students had some great presentations and excellent experiences but nearly always my student groups struggle to accurately communicate the true picture of what they experienced.  They struggle to not use too many “inside jokes” when describing their time at the conference and nearly always ended up engaged in a conversation about “why can’t we send more people next year?”  Given that our travel funds are not likely to increase anytime in the near future, we needed a new plan.

So, my insanely talented staff member (that’s you, Matt!) says, let’s try blogging.

Our office now requires any students traveling to conferences sponsored by our department to blog each day while they are there.  We create a blogging site for the group’s travels and make each of them the authors. I love the fact that those of us not attending the conference can keep track of their experiences and that we can comment and have dialogue while they are there. We also send the site around to our student affairs colleagues and division leadership so that they can get some insight into student experiences.

This has enabled us to document these travel experiences and now see, in writing, what we already knew about the impact of spending time with other students who are similarly committed to common goals.  As one of our student orientation coordinators posted, “I don’t think I ever got completely used to everyone actually understanding ‘Orientation Speak’ and being able to have in-depth conversations about different aspects of their programs.”

The use of blogs has enabled our students to do more active reflection on these conference experiences and has allowed us to use the sites to help other students understand what the experience might be like the next time around. We get pretty active commentary from participants about what they like and don’t like about the conferences and, when warranted, our structured reflection topics allow for some time for them to pause during a busy conference and make meaning of this experience that the university has offered to them.

For our department, we reported themes communicated in these blogs as part of our annual report in hope of illustrating the impact that off-campus professional travel has on our student leaders.  Themes of increased pride in our university, increased confidence in their own leadership efficacy, and enhanced sense of community with other student leaders certainly made this student affairs professional proud.

If you’d like to take a look at one of them, here’s a link to the blog from our delegates at the National Greek Leadership Association conference in Hartford, CT this year.

http://bscgreeksgotongla.blogspot.com/

And just for fun…check out the Wordle the blog for our Student Orientation Coordinators’ trip to the regional NODA Conference (at the top of this post) and the Wordle for our Program Committee’s travels to the NACA regional conference (2) pasted below.  Looks to me like they had a good experience…and had some fun along the way!

So, how do you facilitate reflection when your students travel? Any interested in blogging?  If you are, let’s correspond and if our students attend the same conferences we can cross-promote their sites!

Eight Strategies for Communicating with Challenging Parents

September 7th, 2010 | Posted by Scott Helfrich in Campus Issues | Leadership Training | Resident Life - (0 Comments)

Over the past few years I have had more interactions with increasingly aggressive and challenging parents than in previous years. Most of my student affairs colleagues across the country have shared similar experiences like this along with their frustrations. Although a lot has been written about the recent helicopter parent phenomena, I have not seen much on how student life professionals can and should handle parents such as this. As the new academic year starts, I would like to offer some practical advice on how you can better communicate with challenging parents.

1. Seek understanding before taking action. Many times parents can “catastrophize” situations because they are hearing secondhand information from their son or daughter, which may not necessarily be fully accurate. Reacting to a parent’s reaction without fully understanding the situation at hand can create chaos and further bolster the parent’s anxiety (and your own). If necessary, take extra time to find out the facts and then simply call the parent back. The problem could be a simple misunderstanding that can be easily resolved.

2. Explain the reasoning behind policies and procedures. Nothing can be more irritating than hearing someone tell you, “Well, that’s our policy” when you want something resolved right away. Fully understand the reasoning behind why your department has the policies and procedures that it does so that you yourself can explain the philosophy behind why things are the way they are. Policies and procedures are created to save time, money, resources, to enhance safety & security, and for the personal development and education of our students. Explaining these things can disarm someone particularly when the reasoning behind these policies are usually easily understood and appreciated.

3. Predict and respond to irrational thinking / reasoning. Many times, the emotion underlying anger is fear. People can become angry and aggressive when they fear that something overly negative or disasterous will happen. Parents can easily assume the worst of a situation particularly when they are not around to easily solve whatever the perceived problem may be. Irrational thoughts that an overreactive parent can have include the following: this is going to cost me a lot of money; my student will have to transfer universities because of this; this is an incredibly dangerous situation; and they don’t care about my student. You can dissolve a problem quickly if you can predict up front what the underlying thoughts a parent may have, which is causing them to be overly anxious. By providing accurate information and tactfully challenging those irrational thoughts, you can calm someone down quickly.

4. Move the conversation along toward action. Your time is important and you have other issues to attend to so make sure that you are moving the conversation along toward some sort of resolve. Be respectful and tactful, but cut to the chase as soon as possible. One easy way to do this is by asking: “Sir, how would you like me to resolve this?” or “What would you like me to do, mame?” Being empathetic and allowing someone to vent is one thing, but permitting someone to lecture and berate you is counterproductive.

5. Provide alternatives and options. Another way in which you can move the conversation along toward action is to provide alternatives and options. Figure out what these options are for various situations so that you can pull them out of your hat when the need calls. The alternatives and options may not necessarily be the exact solution the parent is asking for, but at least you’re showing a good faith effort to create a solution rather than doing nothing at all.

6. Do not allow yourself or your employees to be abused or bullied. I simply refuse to listen to an abusive parent or allow my staff to suffer the same abuse. You have to know when to say when. It is alright to acknowledge that things are getting out of hand and maybe there is a more appropriate time to discuss the matter when clearer heads can prevail. I have had multiple parents apologize on subsequent conversations for how they acted and appreciated how I resolved the situation afterward.

7. Refer to your supervisor. This should go without saying, but if you find yourself in a situation that you simply cannot resolve or the person is being overly hostile or foul-mouthed, refer them to your supervisor. Additionally, if they should demand to speak to your supervisor, do not become upset by this, just help them with their request by giving the appropriate contact information. Try to plan for this strategy ahead of time with your supervisor so that you are both on the same page when the need arises to employ this tactic.

8. Attempt to get to know them as people rather than adversaries. Keep in mind that you may have a multiple year relationship with many parents so be purposeful in your communications with them. Include them in newsletters and other pertinent mailings. Send them departmental or institutional promotional items (e.g., t-shirts, pens, mugs, etc.) as a token of your appreciation, kindness, and generocity. If you have the opportunity to talk in a personal manner, ask them about their work, their interests, and anything else of note they may discuss. Establishing relationships like this creates trust and will go a long way if you have to interact with them again in a difficult situation.

Scott M. Helfrich is the director of upper campus housing at California University of Pennsylvania, co-owner of Student Life Consultants, and the creator of http://www.studentlifeguru.com.

, , ,

Semester Planning, Student Leader Training and the beauty of a nicely compiled list

August 30th, 2010 | Posted by Adrianne Dahms in Club/Org Recruitment | Community College | Creativity | Leadership Training - (0 Comments)

Part of the semester planning ‘round these parts is to conduct a student leader training for all of our new, incoming club and Student Government (SGA) officers. We talk about things like communication, team building, conflict management, member recruitment and retention…ya know, all the million dollar words in student affairs. Most years, our group of student leaders consists mostly of returners with some newbies thrown in for fun – the returners naturally mentor the newcomers and everything is hunky dory. Last year, we got a group of nearly ALL newbies with only one or two returners interspersed. It was a long, but very rewarding year, and at the end of it, as if they were scripted, they all gushed about how much fun they had and how much they’d learned. They were free with the compliments to the office staff and our advising skills, but they also reflected on how much they didn’t know coming in that just wasn’t covered under the umbrella of million dollar training topics. As student leaders are so apt to do, this particular group pooled all of their genius, sarcasm and new-found expertise, and imparted insight onto us for inclusion into all future upcoming student leader training sessions.

I would now like to share their list with you because 1, it makes me laugh, but 2, because these are little things we, as SA pros, don’t always stop and think about, but could make or break a student leader’s experience.

Top 25 things I wish someone would have told me about being a student leader…

As compiled by the Spring 2010 Burlington County College SGA and Club Officers

  1. It is a lot of work, but don’t forget to have a good time!
  2. Being a student leader is a large time commitment – it will be worth it in the end. The more you give, the more you get back.
  3. You need a lot of dress clothes for meetings and events.
  4. There is a lot of paperwork to be done. Be patient with the OSA’s (Office of Student Activities) processes and follow the guidelines.
  5. You will meet tons of great people.
  6. You are given so many opportunities and rewards – academically, personally and professionally.
  7. The advisors are awesome resources and awesome people.  They want to see you succeed. Do not make any of them angry with you.
  8. There is a Mt. Holly campus. You will have to go there for events. (one of our smaller locations with very specialized course offerings, but equipped with a beautiful event space)
  9. You will get to go to the President’s house for a tree-trimming party. Be prepared to sing Christmas carols.
  10. Network and build relationships!  Recruit EVERYONE! “The more the merrier” really applies to being involved with Student Activities and the people you meet will become your friends.
  11. You will learn WAY more than you originally thought.
  12. Get yourself organized from the get-go. Use your club’s office space to help! The best way to do this is to keep your club space clean!
  13. Find a balance between being a student leader and class/family/work/friends/etc…
  14. BE CREATIVE and don’t be afraid to try new things.
  15. Give yourself way more time to plan things than you think you’ll need – you’ll need it.
  16. There are people out there who want to join your club but don’t know about it yet – Tell them!
  17. If you have a small club or inactive members, don’t underestimate a good co-sponsorship opportunity. You can’t do it alone – teamwork is imperative!
  18. You will grow as a person.
  19. Update your bulletin board often!
  20. Market your meetings and events in ALL locations, and remember that fliers are not the end-all-be-all of advertising.
  21. The OSA is a one-stop-shop for event planning resources.  Don’t take it all on yourself and never be afraid to ask for help!
  22. The OSA and SGA offer student leadership development workshops – attend them!
  23. Don’t doubt yourself or change your plans because a few people disagree.
  24. Check your personal drama at the door.
  25. Take the time to reflect on your experiences so you can do it even better the next time around.

Adrianne Dahms is a student activities specialist at Burlington County College, Pemberton, New Jersey.