I think as a leader remembering where you came from and the road to where you are now is important. I come from a blue-collar family with a strong work ethic and belief in education, effort, and respecting everyone. When I started in education, I started at what some would say is an entry-level or ground-level position as a para-professional. I have worked my way up to working at the university as a professor and partial administrator. I state this because I am learning about the human resource perspective on leading organizations—and this framework is one I find comfort in, maybe because I’ve always had to work my way up in organizations or maybe because it makes all work seem more humanizing and brings capitalizes on respect.
​
I value others’ thoughts and believe everyone has something to bring to the table, and we can all learn from each other. Knowing people’s aspirations and finding ways to encourage and promote these aspirations leads to a more engaged and richer organization. Often when finances are a struggle, this level of support is the first thing that declines, and when layoffs need to happen due to financial constraints, it continues to decline. When leaders do not invest in people, they can become disengaged and apathetic and could ultimately just check out mentally or physically leave a university.

The pandemic exacerbated people feeling under-appreciated and, in turn, left more workers disengaged.  The job of a leader at this time would seem to be to make people’s contributions to the organization noticed and attempt to reengage culture. Are there ways to do this while many workers want to remain remote? Would requiring in-person contact reestablish culture, or would it drive people further away? Before asking about in-person culture building, should acknowledgment come from personal conversations and departmental praise? I think each individual person wishes and requires something slightly different in their work environment to feel connected, but feeling appreciated is needed regardless of how much in-person or human contact one requires.

I have heard that the Dean’s newsletter should be reinstituted because this was a way to get praise across the school. Previously, it was stated that not many people paid attention to or read this newsletter—but what people said pre-pandemic I don’t think should be touted as gospel post-pandemic. I think this is a small way to begin to acknowledge people’s talents and show appreciation for the work being done. I know this is too big a lift for some, but maybe I can take this on as work to do—in starting to build the culture portion of leadership that I wrote about in my last blog post. Culture takes time to develop, and small actions start to add up to shape the organization. I think this can be one small starting point. Knowing what everyone is doing also keeps leaders grounded in “where they came from” and their path to their current position. I also think it helps to know this to encourage and promote aspirations in all employees. 

I spent my free time this week reading Marjorie Hass’ A Leadership Guide for Women in Higher Education. The book brought up some of what I am worried about in terms of influence and people expecting women to behave in specific interpersonal ways. One of the key takeaways from the book is how leadership can be thought of as a triangle—with its sides identified as business operations, culture, and mission. I would put the mission at the base of the triangle as the foundation for the other two to develop, but I don’t know that all the leaders I know would. I also think that in the organization I am in right now, culture does not get much attention and is often overlooked, or at least not as much time and development is placed on this. I wrote in my last post about where my higher education leadership niche could be—and developing culture was my line of thinking there, and focusing on this could create a more uniform triangle and stronger leadership.
​
Throughout the book, there were pictures of this triangle, and in all the pictures, an equilateral triangle was seen. I wonder if the goal is equal time and energy spent in all three domains (mission, business, and culture), if organizations go through times where a scale triangle is the ‘norm’, or even if it’s not just timing, but the organization looks for leadership to emphasize one domain over the others. Is this dependent on an organization’s purpose? For example, in higher education, should the goal be an equilateral triangle, but say in an e-commerce organization, the goal is to focus more on business?  This line of thinking, had me purchase the newer version of Boleman and Deal’s Reframing Organization: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. I read the 4th edition of this book when I was pursuing my doctoral degree. The 4th edition was written in 2008, and this newest version was written in 2021, so it considers how the pandemic affected organizations, and just general changes society has had in the last decade. I am only two chapters into the book thus far, and it’s a good reread for me, as I think about leadership a little differently.

I am immersing myself in leadership literature now as I think about how to lead best. Sometimes analyzing information about how to lead, however, may make me question my action steps and next move. I am someone that likes to process before responding and do this to simply steer away from solely reacting to information. If my goal is to work on culture, I think responding in appropriate time frames is important because I have seen reactive decisions ruffle feathers and not be openly accepted. If the mission is the foundational common ground between all individuals within an organization, then this should be leaned on to construct culture. Maybe this is the best way to influence and inspire people as a leader. 

This week I have spent a good amount of time thinking about my vision and how my vision fits into the work I do. My vision is to ensure that all teachers are trained to give every student an individualized and high-quality learning experience that allows them to continually make progress in the curriculum, feel socially connected, and contribute in a meaningful way to society. Right now, as graduate chair, a good portion of my work seems to be centered on creating systems and compliance checks for the state. I do a little on addressing quality when I evaluate teaching and when I examine supervision practices—but this is limited due to the main focal point of the school-turn-around being the organizational structure. I would like to work more with the faculty around the curriculum and with social connections.
​
I think feeling socially connected at the university is an area that needs attention. When I first began working at my current university, all stakeholders at the university took the campus climate survey. These survey results indicated that the climate needed to improve, and there was much work needed to do this. Some schools within the university conducted their own school climate surveys, and the results in the School of Education mimicked the larger campus survey. Many thought what would follow would be some shifts and some work to address these surveys—but we are over eight years later, and little has been done—at least not enough to trickle down, allowing faculty and staff to acknowledge and call attention to it explicitly.

In fact, if we were to do another campus climate survey in this post-COVID year, I think the university and even specific schools within the university would have poorer results than the first time these surveys were taken 8 years ago. I say this because as I read Gina Garcia’s Becoming Hispanic Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges and Universities (for the university-sponsored HSI reading group), page 30 specifically calls out how campus climate which provides individuals a sense of belonging that leads to desirable outcomes (such as retention, persistence, and graduation) needs to be focused on. As I grow into leadership, maybe working on climate and building connections can be my niche and the largest thing I can contribute.

I think social connections are important to learning and growth in general, but I am often the quietest person in a room, so most would not have me targeted as the person leading such an effort. Could I do this, and do I have the skill set to do this work? I have a background in K-12, working with populations that struggle socially and providing authentic opportunities to connect—but could this background be built upon and scaled up to address an entire university’s needs and overall climate? I think my job as a leader is to see how this is approached in other universities or even companies with “healthy, productive, and positive climates” and see what initiatives, practices, and day-to-day ways of operating are transferable.

This right now seems like the most important move to make at the university in terms of leadership based on what I am hearing and seeing. I can also have this connect directly to my vision because I believe that higher-quality learning experiences happen in positive, constructive, growing environments than they do in climates that are negative. A sense of belonging and feeling socially connected are also needed for large-scale high-quality outcomes. If the university I work at is hoping to become a Hispanic-Serving Institution, I think we need more work on the current climate, so everyone feels welcome and feels they have the bandwidth to provide a positive culturally, linguistically, and racially connected campus and climate that Garcia calls for in her book. 

I bought my husband a subscription to Master Class for Christmas, and I have found myself watching and listening to the subscription more than he does. This week I have been invested in the lessons Coach K (the long-time Duke basketball coach) has on leadership. Throughout Coach K’s learning series, he breaks down traits of being a leader and applies them to the game of basketball and then extends these traits to the business world.

Today’s early morning fifteen-minute lesson was on how leaders must be trusted to lead effectively and how vulnerability can contribute to building trust. I think there are some parts of imposter syndrome when a new role begins that can be shared openly as the adjustment happens, but I think there is a delicate balance between this vulnerability and how one does this, so they do not self-sabotage and cause others to lose trust in them. It’s finding this balance that becomes the art of leadership. Many new processes within our school are being put into place as “the plane is flying” if I, as a leader, question my ability to implement all the changes, then trust in my leadership will go to the wayside. If, however, I have a confidence level with some processes, I need to lead with these, and then share that there are some questions I have about other operations and vocally share these questions. I think this is trust and vulnerability applied to the actual leadership work, but I also think trust and vulnerability need to be shared about things other than the work.

As a leader, I believe, certain parts of being human and being yourself also need to be shared to build trust and empathy in a team. I think it can be beneficial to share little nuggets from one’s personal life so that others can see the leader as multi-dimensional. When a leader is seen as multi-dimensional, I think this helps others relate, and may, in turn, help future leaders believe they can aspire and work towards a leadership role. I do not think vulnerability should hinder one’s job performance, and vulnerability should be used as a crutch to play “a victim’s game.”  In other words, I don’t think someone’s imposter syndrome should cause inaction or skepticism in performance.

I, as a leader, must work through my imposter syndrome and perform despite it. For example, I worry about my ability to connect and build personal relationships with others; this is a vulnerability I have had my entire life—starting off in my early childhood years as selectively mute and known as “the girls who doesn’t talk” by my classmates (who called me this outwardly throughout my pre-K-grade 2 experience) and then through struggles with social anxiety. If I were playing a “victim’s game” with this trait, I would state this and then just push paper, make decisions in isolation, and essentially become a dictatorship. I do not think I lead this way, but I can acknowledge that this would be the easiest way for me to lead. Instead, I need to lead “the hard way” (for me), which is through consistently extending myself and building personal relationships. I work through this by building these relationships through one-on-one interactions centered on the work.

I am not a leader who will mesmerize an entire crowd of people, but I can get the work done through small everyday one-on-one or small group interactions. These one-on-one interactions force me to be vulnerable as I work through my imposter syndrome related to personal relationship building, and in turn, build trust with my team. Consistency in approaching leadership this way over time, builds trust as both my professional and personal vulnerabilities are shared in these interactions. It builds trust in my own abilities as I work through the imposter syndrome, and builds trust in my team as they get to know me on both a personal and professional level.