Posts Tagged: leadership

Tom
Original post
Club/Org Recruitment / Leadership Training / Member Retention — 2 Comments
30
Aug 11

Laying Tracks for Motivated Trains

Three quick stories, one important point.

Story #1:
Last week, before my soccer match, I watched a little league softball game on the field next to us. Surrounding the field was a collection of parents multitasking between the game, their blackberries, and babysitting their, even younger, offspring. One parent in particular was having a hard time keeping her little one under control. Her kid kept racing up and down the sidelines while mimicking a train. He put his hand in the air, pumped his fist, and as he passed us let out a loud, “Choo Choo!” Then 30 seconds later he’d come steamrolling back. The kid clearly had extra energy and needed to let it out. The parent, and most parents would agree, didn’t try and stop him from running, instead she calming kept looking a few yards ahead to clear away any dangers that might be in his way. The little kid was motivated to run, so instead of trying to stop him, the parent took on the role of laying tracks for him to keep running.

Story #2:
My brother and I were playing Frisbee Golf and he lodged his frisbee square in the middle of a mud pit. I quickly looked around for a large stick and without much thinking took two steps into the mud pit, reached out my arm, and started to retrieve his frisbee for him. With my foot half covered in mud, my brother said, “never get in the way of a motivated individual.”

Story #3:
At this year’s ACPA conference in Philadelphia, the conference organizers hosted a special social media strategy session with several individuals to talk about how they could better leverage social media for the ACPA community. Throughout the session it was clear that someone needed to step up and lead the charge. Looking around the room, there were many capable individuals, but the question was who was the most motivated and ready? Kathy Petras raised her hand and agreed to lead the group. Since then,  she has been a wonderful leader, and had we had enough data to work with, probably could have predicted so because Kathy was already a trending leader in the community. She was a newer associate that recently took on a leadership position in another committee as well as led an ed session for the first time this year. If we were to tally up her actions, we would’ve seen she was a trending leader and was hunting for her next level of growth. In this case, leading the social media adoption committee was a perfect fit for her.

Point:
Every student group/classroom can be broken up into varying levels of engagement. Based on a specific student’s engagement level, they want to be treated in different ways. A fully involved students wants to be treated in a totally different way than a student lurking on the edge of the wall. A student’s engagement level is constantly shifting though, with a hope of always trending towards more involvement. It’s up to the leaders of the community to thus recognize the individual engagement level of each student, and also to recognize how an individual is trending. Find out who the Kathy is of your community that is trending towards being a leader, then lay down tracks for her to continue to be great, because the worst thing a leader can do is get in the way of a motivated train.

Jon
Original post
Campus Issues / Creativity / Resident Life — 5 Comments
30
Mar 11

Making a Difference Takes More Than Great Ideas

How many times have you sat in a meeting where hundreds of great ideas are tossed around, but in the end, not much happens? In his book Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky repeats the adage that creativity (or productivity, progress in our projects, and growth in relationships) is 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration.

He examines this idea through a simple formula: Creativity x Action = Impact.

So someone who is incredibly creative (a perfect 100) but doesn’t translate those ideas into action has very little impact. (100 x 0 = 0)

But someone who’s marginally creative (a 50) and even marginally moves those projects forward (a 50 again!) can have an exponentially greater impact. (50 x 50 = 2,500!)

This has powerful implications for higher ed, where thinkers thrive and “vague-agendaed” meetings can creep up from every corner. We can have all the ideas in the world, but if we can’t move them into reality, we miss the point. Moving ideas to action takes practice. It takes systems. It takes a willingness to fail. In fact, we can count on some things failing.

In the ResLife world that changes how we look at events, projects, and even tactics for growing RAs. Try things. See what succeeds. Move forward and learn.

We need to go through quicker learning cycles, moving ideas to action.

One quick, incredibly simple example. I put together a “lessons from last year’s RAs” booklet this year – by emailing the RAs at the end of the year and requesting feedback. We just needed enough to fill it out. Is it perfect? No. But it’s much better than what we had before – nothing. And in the end, it was a useful, helpful piece that carried more credibility than some of our training sessions because it was from RAs to RAs.

What about you? How have you seen a bias toward action make a difference on campus? Where can it be more challenging?

Jon Sampson is a Program Coordinator and Residence Director at Azusa Pacific University.

Lisa
Original post
Books / Budgets / Leadership Training — 19 Comments
9
Feb 11

“We cannot afford mediocre employees”

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.

Lisa
Original post
Books / Leadership Training / Technology and Programming / Uncategorized — 5 Comments
24
Jan 11

Refining and exploring lead to progress

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.

Debra
Original post
#sachat / Social Networks — 1 Comment
6
Oct 10

Happy Anniversary #SACHAT

We celebrate a year of #SACHAT this week, our regular water cooler gathering of student affairs colleagues. Each Thursday we take time to pause in our busy workday to share thoughts, ideas, best practices, gripes, and whatever else in 140 characters.

It has been transforming (and frequently laugh out loud funny!) to read the touching accounts of our community members reflecting on their #SACHAT experience. I recall the blank stare that I likely gave Tom Krieglstein when he pitched this brainstorm over a cup of coffee in late summer 2009. The path that we have traveled in such a short time is amazing.

I was certain that I would expound something about MBTI and Type here, but really, at #SACHAT, we are about sharing resources. We are about Challenge and Support (shout out to Nevitt Sanford). And most of all, we are about community. So it is easy to connect what we do to Ernest Boyer and his six principles of community.

The #SACHAT community is…

Purposeful: We share goals to develop our colleagues, our students and ourselves.

Open: Freedom of expression is uncompromisingly protected and civility is affirmed.

Just: Individuals are honored and our differences are what make us great.

Disciplined: Individuals accept their obligations to the group and guide behavior for the common good.

Caring: #SACHAT is a place where the well being of each member is supported and where service to others is encouraged.

Celebrative: We know why we ritually gather around computers, laptops and Smartphones each Thursday at Noon and 6:00 p.m. CST for this goat rodeo™ which has become our student affairs tradition. It is why we celebrate this entire week. And it is why we don’t believe anyone who claims social networks have “weak ties”.

Lurk, Learn, Drink the Kool-Aid.

Love to you all,

Debra

Licinia
Original post
Uncategorized — 9 Comments
27
Sep 10

The Leadership Challenge re-read

I have books piled high next to my bed. Most of us do. I have grand aspirations to read them, but work and life take that precious reading time away. This past year I wanted to re-read The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner. I wanted to utilize this book as a framework for my advising group (RSA), but discovered much more for myself after reading it thoroughly. After six months (yes, it took me that long) I finished the book and am glad to provide you some insight on the book.

For those who don’t know about The Leadership Challenge, it was written as a leadership development program and highlights the practices leaders engage in. It focuses on participatory leadership compared to positional or situational leadership. The book outlines five practices of exemplary leadership: Model the way, Inspire a shared vision, Challenge the Process, Enable others to act, and Encourage the heart.

Model the way refers to leading by example. There were several sections in this area that really spoke to me. A quote that really spoke to me was “Leadership begins with something that grabs hold of you and won’t let you go” (p. 52). The authors expressed that good leaders spend at least 10 percent of their day committed to the spirit of what they do. Leaders make visions and values tangible by aligning actions with values. As I read this chapter, I reflected on my daily behaviors. Do my behaviors reflect the values I want passed on to my staff? How do I know whether they understand and possess these values? An excellent strategy provided by the authors was story-telling, the art of sharing stories as a training, recruitment and hiring tool.  Another strategy they provided was tradition setting, a powerful method to help staff feel empowered and receive recognition.

Inspire a Shared Vision refers to dream sharing with members; it talks about how to develop a shared sense of purpose and direction. This chapter emphasized credibility and caring as the framework of leadership. Without these two elements, leaders are not able to achieve their organization’s mission without the assistance of everyone. A great quote by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tse wraps up this concept of inspiration: “Tell me, I may listen. Teach me, I may remember. Involve me, I will do it” (p. 162). I love this quote because it speaks to what I hold dear regarding learning–that it occurs through a purposeful and intentional experience.

Challenge the process refers to making change by doing, and challenging the status quo. It’s about throwing out template agendas and routines and exploring the possibilities. I really enjoyed this chapter. One exercise the chapter proposes is conducting an idea gathering activity:  “Call three people (students/staff) who haven’t used your services (or that you have interacted with) and ask them why. Call three recent students you have interacted with and ask them why.  Make sure that you devote at 25% of every weekly staff meeting to listening to outside ideas for improving processes and technologies and developing new products and services” (p. 203). I have taken this to heart by asking those tough questions such as “Why we do things?” and “How we can improve?”. This is necessary if we really want to put the student at the center of everything we do. The concept that leaders are experimenters, doers, and failures really hit home for me. I often feel that I cannot make change at my work, although I try every day to make or create something new that I think will be for the betterment of our students. When something doesn’t get approved or requires more loopholes to jump through, I am nearly ready to give up; but when I reflect on this concept of “challenge the process” and the psychological hardiness one needs as a leader and a change agent, my strength is renewed.

The fourth practice is Enable others to act. This chapter highlights the importance of trust and mutual benefits. A sense of accountability, empowerment, and competence allows people to make an impact on the organization. In turn, they are more satisfied, engaged, and connected to the organization. This chapter has a great exercise called the “leaders coach” that focuses on fostering accountability (p. 298). The leader is seen as a mentor or a coach, who is responsible for creating a climate within which others feel enabled enlarge their sphere of influence.

The last practice focuses on Encouraging the heart. It’s about the celebration and acknowledgements of others, not just yourself. It involves adequate praise and social support. This chapter is full of ideas about how to recognize people, from the “bragging board” to “community tour”.  I love recognition and applauding those who have done a good job. Writing monthly OTMs (Of the Month) through the NRHH website is part of my monthly routine. I challenge my staff to highlight a student once a week who has made a difference in his or her floor community. There is so much potential in our students and our staff, but we often “run out of time” to celebrate their work. I challenge you to permanently schedule in your calendar times you will demonstrate your care and provide social support to those you oversee. You’ll be amazed at how good you will feel and how much the action of recognition impacts others.

The biggest message I received from this re-read was that leadership is an affair of the heart and that it should come from love.  The focus of the leadership challenge is not on positional leadership, but rather on participatory leadership. It is not about me as the lone leader. It’s about others and their experience with me.  At the same time, it IS about me as an exemplary leader.   I have to model the way and challenge the system. I have to create systems that enable others while inspiring them to greatness. I have to applaud our accomplishments and create a space for that. Only through all this work can love conquer all.

Reference

Kouzes, J., and Posner, B. (2007). The Leadership Challenge. CA: Jossey Bass.

Licinia “Lulu” Barrueco Kaliher, Ed.D., is a Ray Street Complex Director at the University of Delaware.

Liz
Original post
Leadership Training / Uncategorized — 32 Comments
6
Jul 10

Becoming a Global Leader

As part of the summer courses in my doctoral program, I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion on international leaders.  The panel consisted of:

  • Jonas Prising, Executive VP of Manpower and President of the Americas
  • Dr. Al Durtka, President and CEO of the International Institute of Wisconsin
  • Nelson Soler, President of the Multicultural Entrepreneurship Institute and the Latino Entrepreneurial Network
  • Dr. Clara Brennan, Dean of the Cardinal Stritch University School of Business

These accomplished leaders offered some fantastic leadership insights, and I’d like to share some of them with you:

Read and learn as much as you can. Each person stressed the importance of being a lifetime learner, even after you are finished with formal schooling.  To this end, develop an area of functional expertise and own that expertise over a lifetime.

Be generous with your expertise.  Knowledge is not a commodity to be hoarded, but rather to be shared.  When you supervise/lead others, you should be striving to improve their abilities so one day they can leave you to lead their own team.  I also interpret this as contributing to the knowledge of your profession, whether that’s through professional associations or your personal network.

Conflict is inevitable—you need to be able to manage it. Conflict isn’t positive or negative, it’s a neutral action.  The behaviors that result from conflict will determine how it’s perceived.  Strive to make conflict result in a positive outcome.

Know what you don’t know. This derails a lot of people.  Developing self-awareness will give you great strength.  In international settings, you may recognize that you don’t understand cultural mores.  Expanding that knowledge can help you avoid potentially catastrophic situations when doing business in other countries.

Recognize what you’re excellent at, and delegate what you’re good at. The whole team benefits when their strengths are utilized to the fullest potential.  Seek out team members who excel in areas that you don’t.

Develop your emotional intelligence. This is extremely important in a global environment.  According to Jonas, up to 40% of people assigned to work abroad see their experience end prematurely because of a lack of emotional intelligence.

_________________________

This is just a small portion of the information that was shared with us last week.  What struck me throughout the presentation was my complete lack of work experience outside the United States.  Of course, it’s never too late to change your life’s direction.  Some action steps I created for myself after attending this session are:

Seek experiences in different countries.  For me, this will start with a study tour of Italy next year.

Expand my sources of knowledge. I didn’t read a journal article from a different country until the last year of my master’s program.  I need to be intentional about seeking knowledge sources from different countries so I don’t generalize my knowledge of the U.S. population to the entire world.

Spend time with international students. I’m fortunate enough to be in a program that includes students from Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and China.  I need to purposefully spend time with these students to broaden my perspective of the world.

Listen to/read international news sources. U.S. news is usually focused on what’s happening in our country, or in other countries because of our involvement.  International news sources tend to have a more global perspective, and I can learn from that.

_________________________

Have you thought about what it means to be a truly global leader?  What steps have you taken (or will you take) to become one?

Lisa
Original post
Uncategorized — 15 Comments
4
Jun 10

Conferencing on the edge: A step outside

What I’m about to propose may sound a bit sacrilegious, in a challenging-the-sacred-in-student-affairs kind of way: Have you ever attended a conference outside student affairs…or even, gasp, outside higher education?

We in student affairs are provided an extensive slate of career-related development opportunities. The acronyms of our state, regional, and national conferences and meetings are a large part of the language of our professional culture. And though we love all of them, we each have our personal favorites. (You know you do.)

And yet here I am, encouraging us all to attend a conference or class outside higher ed. And here’s why. The most impactful conference I’ve attended in 25 years in student affairs was “Leadership: Beyond Management,” a weeklong Executive Education seminar offered by the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business. But wait, this program sounds kind of higher ed-ish, doesn’t it? In fact, UW-Green Bay was the only educational institution represented. Other participants worked for insurance companies, architectural firms, manufacturers, financial institutions…you get the picture.

As a leadership educator, I was familiar with some of the content of this program, like Kouzes and Posner’s Leadership Practices Inventory. However, the LPI was used more extensively than I had ever seen it used before. This seminar is about strategy and business goals, the “entrepreneurial spirit,” and project teams. We discussed impulse control, communication norms, candor, positive influence, power, persuasion, and credibility. And when we weren’t in “class,” we did homework.

One particularly useful assignment for me was developing a vision statement for my work area. We were asked to put in writing: 1) where we wanted to go, 2) why this change was necessary, and 3) what success would look like. The document, which was to be shared with my department, had to be clear and concise, supported by facts, and inspiring. . . . I participated in this seminar in 2007 and introduced my vision statement almost immediately when I returned to campus. Several years later, it continues to guide our work. Student Life staff members call it “the manifesto” (affectionately, I think). I created the framework, and together we’ve made it come alive.

In all of the classes I’ve taken and all of the student affairs conferences I’ve attended, I had never before learned to express a vision. And having my document-in-progress evaluated by non-higher ed people at the seminar was amazing! Managers in banking, engineering, insurance, and technology don’t think or work like we do. They were intrigued by the peculiarities of university administration.

Really, some of the things we do are very unusual! If we want to improve higher education, we need to look for ideas in other types of institutions. What can we learn from, say, the health-care industry, amusement parks, or the local farmer’s market? How can we, as insiders, learn to examine ourselves from the outside…from beyond the usual university lingo, culture, and systems?

Higher education needs change; it needs transformation. Therefore, we must generate new models for our work. It’s so much more than whether we say “dorm” or “residence hall.” To take that example a step farther, it’s whether we should offer housing (or activities or leadership development or…) in a vastly different way or, perhaps, at all.

Like the business seminar I attended, Twitter provides opportunities for student affairs professionals to connect with people in completely different fields, and this experience similarly can stretch our thinking. What are we learning from them (and they from us)? How else can we connect with and learn from people outside higher education? Has your campus implemented an idea borrowed from another type of institution? What if we invited non-higher ed people to some of our brainstorming and planning meetings? What if . . .

Stacy
Original post
Uncategorized — 8 Comments
3
May 10

To Infinity and Beyond

The word “legacy” is thrown around often in student affairs and higher education. In my first professional position in 2004, I was asked during a performance appraisal what I wanted my legacy to be. I was unable to answer the question, but also unable to clearly explain why I couldn’t answer. The idea that I would leave a legacy, that something of my work might continue on, wasn’t entirely foreign to me. In 2008, as I prepared to depart that same institution, the university’s president readied for retirement. Throughout the academic year after he announced his retirement, people often spoke of what his legacy would be. On more than one occasion, he was asked to define his legacy. He articulated what I was unable to during my performance appraisal. He expressed that it was not up to us to determine our own legacies; that it would be most accurately defined by the people who followed us. He discussed the contributions that he felt were most meaningful to his own personal growth, but clarified that those same lessons may be meaningless to someone else in the university community.


So many of us enter this field believing we are going to change the lives of every student. If we are true to ourselves as professionals, we eventually come to understand that our students have the opportunity to change us as well. Amanda was the most exemplary student leader with whom I have had the opportunity to work and learn. Our social circles were concentric beginning in high school. We attended rival schools, both competed in forensic tournaments, and had mutual friends that kept us linked as we transitioned from high school to attending the same university. To list all of Amanda’s accomplishments and involvement would be a disservice to who she was as a person because, truly, she was so much more than her resume and co-curricular involvement. She understood leadership and engagement as an undergraduate student in ways many professionals will never achieve.

Shortly before the end of Fall Quarter of our first year of college, I ran into Amanda on the way home from class. It was the first time I’d seen her in weeks. We paused to catch up and I asked her about her quarter. She expressed her frustration with her experience, commenting on not feeling involved or engaged. She hadn’t found opportunities that suited what she had hoped to accomplish. She confided that she was considering transferring to another university.

Ultimately, Amanda chose not to transfer. Instead she sought experiences and opportunities that interested her. When they didn’t exist, she created them. She e-mailed the president of the university and invited him to share a meal in the dining hall with her and her roommates, explaining that if they were all going to be on campus together for four years, they should probably get to know each other. She sought leadership opportunities as a peer leadership consultant, within student government, and through a sorority on campus. Amanda defined her experience by paving her own path in college.

On May 3, 2003, Amanda was killed in a car accident in our hometown. Less than a month before she was going to speak at commencement as senior class president and receive her degree, she was gone. Over the next weeks, Amanda’s accomplishments and contributions were celebrated. A memorial service six days later reflected on all she had given to the university community, and also gave the university the opportunity to present her degree to her family. Two weeks later she was posthumously awarded the Outstanding Senior Leader Award at the Student Leadership Recognition Reception. Over and over again, I had the chance to hear stories from students and student affairs professionals about how Amanda changed their lives. Her legacy, it appeared, would not be in the design of the new student center for which she served on the committee or the structure of student government. Her legacy was giving back to the university and role modeling how one student can create a path that doesn’t yet exist if they simply want it to be their own.

How often do we fail our students by not supporting what they want to create, what they want to define? How often do we direct them to organizations that already exist or to established processes? How many opportunities do we miss to encourage them because we’re entangled in learning outcomes, assessment, and measurable goals? 

Amanda loved the movie Toy Story and often signed her e-mails, “To infinity and beyond…” Every time that message is unwittingly delivered to me through e-mail or in conversation, I smile thinking of her and how her legacy lives on in immeasurable ways. There is a leadership center in the new student center at our alma mater named for her. While many people naively consider that her legacy, I know that her legacy is bigger than that programming space.

It’s carried out daily in the work many of her friends now do as student affairs professionals. It’s a legacy that constantly pays forward — we encourage students to create opportunities that involve other students, who are then inspired to create their own experiences and opportunities or, better, become student affairs professionals themselves. To infinity and beyond indeed — there is no way of knowing how many people are touched by a legacy or how long it will continue to live on. 

May 3 is a hard day for me annually, particularly as the years go on and those of us who formed those concentric social circles are farther flung across the country. It is a day that I celebrate Amanda’s legacy by looking for opportunities to help students venture from a beaten path onto one that makes most sense for who they are and what they want to give back. It’s a day that I reflect as a student affairs professional on what it means to do this work. It’s a day that I remind myself that defining a legacy is related less to who I am and more to whom I help others become. 


Lisa
Original post
Careers — 6 Comments
12
Apr 10

There’s only one kind of supervisor: Imperfect

I supervise. I’ve been supervising for years. Because “practice makes perfect,” I’d like to say I’m a great boss. Truth be told, I have had some gold-star moments…and some less-than-stellar ones.

Supervision is hard, and despite its complexity most of us don’t receive any formal training. Rather, we jump (or are pushed) blindly into the pool, and we flail. Because supervision involves two people, our on-the-job education means we’ll occasionally drag someone underwater with us.

Mistakes (and apologies) are an unavoidable part of it all. Human interactions, by nature, involve miscommunication, misperceptions, and imperfect decisions. It’s not a hopeless endeavor, however. We can become stronger by assessing how we handled each situation afterward and by reworking our supervisory strategies when we misstep.

Many years ago a mentor recommended I write about my supervisory experiences in a journal: What happened? How did I feel? What was the most important thing? How will I handle a future situation differently in order to achieve different results? It helped. It still helps. Just recently I ended a reflection by writing: “Next time I need to make sure [a particular staff member] knows I’m hearing what she’s saying by checking in with her while we talk.” In other words, “Listen, Lisa.”

Observing other supervisors may inspire helpful reflections too. Have you ever heard this: “You’ll learn as much from bad supervisors as from good ones”? I’ve learned:

1) Communication is a powerful thing—in most cases, more is better;
2) Running from difficult conversations usually results in bigger problems (which often involve more people); and
3) There are times for group problem solving and times for supervisors to act alone.

Supervising well requires humility and regular thinking. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently commented that consistently successful leaders believe progress comes “through a series of regulated errors. Every move is a partial failure, to be corrected by the next one. Even walking involves shifting your weight off-balance and then compensating with the next step.”

What supervisory missteps have you learned from—either yours or those of others? What wisdom can you share with those who are about to take on this role for the first time? For newcomers, what are your hopes?

Guiding and overseeing people present great challenges and rewards. Look around you for the good and not so good, make time to reflect, and cut yourself some slack. Dive in.

Lisa Tetzloff is director of student life at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay

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