'Sorry! I don't want any adventures, thank you.
Not Today.
Good morning!
But please come to tea -any time you like! Why not tomorrow?"
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Good morning!
But please come to tea -any time you like! Why not tomorrow?"
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
[Editor's Note: I first published this on May 20, 2020 as COVID descended fully onto education with devastating and multigenerational impact. I cannot help but think I'll be writing about the impact of artificial intelligence in a similar way very soon. But first, some tea...]
None of us asked for the kind of adventure we are on in the time of COVID. Our adventure, the one we thought we were on anyway, was trying to create a culture of change. But I think we need to go backwards before we can go forwards!
We opened the year focused with a relatively few outcomes that we thought could advance the college. It seems like a long time ago but we held the department chair retreat with the intent of thinking about how we could expand leadership through our organization and think about leadership not just in terms of us as leaders but around our teams. We talked about all the standards stuff: leadership development, budget and planning, professional development, enrollment management, and assessment. Even then, we were talking about the importance of building a culture that empowers our faculty and staff and that provides them with a different experience of the way the college operates then maybe they had experienced before. We talked a lot at the beginning of the year about love, trust, and communication.
We entered this year with high hopes.
Then we ran out out of money. Our dreams turned into reactions and we lost sight of the reason many of us entered this calling in the first place: to be servant minded leaders who believe in critical role of faculty as problem solvers for the institution.
We forgot to be the most critical of traits-- active listening, responsiveness, and support while maintaining accountability. These are needed consistently over a long period of time before our colleagues beliefs will change. And without a change in beliefs, we will not see the kinds of individual and collective actions that lead to better outcomes.
The budget crisis served to remind us that our efforts to create islands of sanity are for naught unless all areas of the college are functioning at a very high level. This demands a higher caliber of administrative practice around the four pillars of efficiency, effectiveness, equity, and sustainability so that we can maintain and advance our mission to the public good: to meeting the needs of the neediest and serving our communities
Islands of Sanity, as expressed by Margaret Wheatley (2017), recognizes that it is possible for leaders to use their power and influence, their insight and compassion, to lead people back to an understanding of who we are as human beings, to create the conditions for our basic human qualities of generosity, contribution, community, and love to be evoked no matter what. I know it is possible to experience grace and joy in the midst of tragedy and loss. I know it is possible to create islands of sanity in the midst of wildly disruptive seas.
Islands of Sanity, as expressed by Margaret Wheatley (2017), recognizes that it is possible for leaders to use their power and influence, their insight and compassion, to lead people back to an understanding of who we are as human beings, to create the conditions for our basic human qualities of generosity, contribution, community, and love to be evoked no matter what. I know it is possible to experience grace and joy in the midst of tragedy and loss. I know it is possible to create islands of sanity in the midst of wildly disruptive seas.
When COVID -19 hit us in March and we all attempted to move with our faculty to remote learning, we started talking about the need to be flexible and adaptive in teaching and learning. While there are many elements to this, over the course of the last few months we've talked a lot about not only teaching and technical skills but also the need to be a good human, and to instill a sense of worth and cultural responsiveness in our faculty. We asked faculty to start planning for contingencies and to make choices for themselves. We built a huge enterprise on an assumption that it would be temporary and now we are finding ourselves in a situation where it may exist for much longer than we expected. Collectively, we have kept the wheels on, applied duct tape were necessary, kept our faculty and staff focused, and modeled -to the extent possible - a modicum of work life balance.
Two critical questions stand before us in this time of COVID -19. First, how do we continue to make progress around the multiple needs of our institution as a leadership team, and how do we continue to build a culture of inquiry and improvement among our faculty while operating remotely.
How do we continue to make progress around the multiple needs of our institution as a leadership team while operating remotely?
We need to be creating not only islands of sanity, but pockets of change wherever we can. We have entered a different kind of leadership model where our daily huddles and just in time check ins have replaced a more formal model of leadership. We need to be intentional about how we are creating social processes that are effective for communication, collaboration-and caring- and we need to push these efforts further down the organization.
These themes are connected. Islands of sanity born of communication, collaboration and caring lead to pockets of change because the people who live on them - even in the confines of their own homes - are influencing colleagues around them. This is particularly true if we can make apparent what we're trying to do.
Talent Management
Even before COVID, we have struggled with talent management. Too much of our efforts are focused on addressing the personnel challenges we face and not enough time is spent getting the right people on board with the right initial orientation and getting them onto the right seat of the bus (James Collins, Good to Great). When we're in the middle of layoffs forced by budgetary problems the problem is exacerbated. We not only let go of good people that we need, but we slot people where we can put them not where they need to go. Now that crisis is the foreseeable future, we need to stop triaging and start planning forward related to talent management. We need to be thinking about each of our influencers across our divisions regardless of their official status. Who are the influencers and how can we help them grow? How can they help us change?
How can we develop some intention around how influencers' professional development remotely. This will require we be explicit about th
We also need to be thinking about how being remote - with all of its associated reactions- actually impacts our efforts in creating cultural change. How do we support our faculty and staff -before, during, and after unplanned and planned changes?
As illustrated by Smollan (2016), there are a variety of supports that can mediate the kinds of stress we all are feeling right now. Our colleagues are in fight or flight mode, they are burnt out and stress, and the onslaught is unlikely to abate anytime soon. The fear of layoff- or infection -impacts focus and commitment to the changes we are trying to gain traction on: whether building a cultural of inquiry, impacting student success, or driving greater effectiveness.
Our first job as leaders in this context is empathy. Ironically, how we supervise right now can be seen not as supervision, but as support, if we spend time building great communication, showing concern, and creating communities of practice that lead to reflection, learning, and self-awareness. We can do this by modelling it ourselves as a team and proffering our own feelings of uncertainty, depleted bandwidth, and anxiety. We can give ourselves and our teams permission to express fear, anger, and exhaustion (Smollan, 2016).
Being supportive, having emotional intelligence, is not enough for us as leaders right now. We are coaching virtually and we need to be really intentional in building relationship with our teams with assignments/assistance, specific role expertise/performance feedback, and impact that builds trust, helps with career goals, and creates learning (Hart, 2016). Am I providing this for you? Are you providing it for your team? All of this takes time and a personal touch that now must be technology mediated. Are we making the time and creating the touch?
How do we continue to build a culture of inquiry and improvement among our faculty while operating remotely?
I have been really surprised by the faculty response to our instructional contingencies model that places decision-making for program modality "subject to statutory guidance" with programs and departments. While some faculty are expressing appreciation for this, I am hearing from deans that many others would like "someone to tell them what to do." The irony of faculty interest in codified shared governance while resisting local control of their own programs in the time of COVID has been befuddling.
The practice of shared governance in critical times not only contributes to a healthy culture and climate but also better decision-making. As academic leaders we need to consistently and collectively ensure are faculty are experiencing both the rights and responsibilities for both input and, where appropriate, authority.
I expect this will be a difficult matter. we need to delegate to faculty at a time they themselves are isolated and overwhelmed. Doing so, I think, can reinforce the faculty experience that they are problem solvers. That we need their expertise. That real shared governance is the kind where we all shoulder some of the responsibility closest to our spheres of work. Delegation needs to really be about appreciation. Valuing your influencers means delegating where there is passion, not just offloading work.
Finally, we can't overlook the most important component of all, our students. We all need to look at data with open minds and hearts, prepared to address the needs and solve problems. This includes trying to find ways to temporarily bend the quality/service balance toward service even if faculty need to make some concessions. Students are already being asked about their preferences and one that gained national prominence showed, unsurprisingly, that students overwhelmingly want to return the face-to-face classes. Students want to return to the way things were, but they also like the idea of block schedules and hybrid face to face. One-third of the 10,000 surveyed, presumably the most privileged, indicated they might transfer if their courses are all-online. (What Students Want This Fall, Accessed 20May20 from https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2020/05/20/survey-results-15-fall-scenarios-suggest-what-students-want).
These survey results, and the ones we will get from our own students, will be strong indicators but how we need to continue to pivot forward as student opinions about learning and living change.
As noted in early discussions around Instructional Contingencies, none of us may see a return to the old normal but may persist in a new normal with more online and hybrid options, contingency based instruction that can pivot in a term “high flexâ€, competency based instruction that assesses learning from all sorts of places, and highly adaptable delivery systems. In a high flex world, student choice will increase and student challenges around time and life management will increase too. Our teams need to engage students around this new reality. Our leadership approaches and talent management need to begin selecting for and shaping our teams for this reality.
Really, none of asked for this adventure, but we've got it just the same and we'll make the journey a bit better if we take the time to engage our teams, our faculty, and our students with communication, collaboration, and caring...perhaps over a cup of tea.
References:
Hanson, B. (2013). The leadership development interface: aligning leaders and organizations toward more effective leadership learning. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 15(1): 106-120.
Hart, R. K. (2016). Informal virtual mentoring for team leaders and members: emergence, context, and impact. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 18(3): 352-368.
Smollan, K. R. (2017). Supporting staff through stressful organizational change. HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT INTERNATIONAL, 20(4): 282–304.
Wheatley, M. (2017). Who do you choose to be? Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.Oakland, CA 94612-1921
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