Leadership Constants

1. Leadership Constants Connie Wolfe, VP of Instruction, Alamance Community College; Jami Woods, VP of Academic Affairs, Surry Community College Joint NCACCIA & SDAA Conference, 3.22.19

2. Purpose • To share resources and information about best practices in leadership • To share leadership experiences that can improve our effectiveness • To practice applying principles to scenarios

3. “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard P. Feynman, American Physicist

4. As the Oracle of Delphi said . . . • Self-awareness • 360 review • Avoiding the two I’s (isolation and insulation) • Don’t believe the hype

5. Self-Awareness • Am I a “keeper”? “Adequate performers get a nice severance package.” (Netflix) • How do I know? Ask your supervisor, “if I were leaving, how hard would you fight to keep me?” • Do I want to know what others think of my performance? • Am I willing to ask and accept the answers openly and objectively? • Is my work aligned with the larger goals of the college? • Am I working collaboratively to achieve these goals? • Am I developing those who work with me, or did I become a supervisor who kept my old work and accepted a lot of new work?

6. Continual Improvement Keep learning • Books • Colleagues • Webinars • Conferences • Podcasts

7. Foundations

8. Foundations • The Contrarians Guide to Leadership, Stephen Sample • Good to Great, Jim Collins • The Coach Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, Michael B. Stanley • HBR • Netflix Manifesto • Google’s Project Aristotle findings

9. Key Tenets from the Readings • Shoot your own horse (Sample) • The hill you’ll die on (Sample) • Sports team analogy versus family analogy (Netflix) • Show horse versus plow horse (Collins) • “When you start jumping in to fix things . . . you work on the wrong problem; you do the work your team should be doing; and the work doesn’t get done” (Stanley, 2016, p. 82) • Stay curious—applies to learning, listening, developing others

10. Key Concept If you don’t have precise guiding principles (GP) that inform what you do, you can’t build a shared vision, commitment, and engagement. Some common GPs: • Ego • Fear • Politics • Student Learning • Faculty Support/Advocacy • Student Advocacy • FTE • Student Support • Policy Compliance • Self-Preservation

11. On any given HE issue, what are your guiding principles?

12. Key Concept—Guiding Principles Brief activity—small group or pairs: Reflecting on yourself and your direct reports, what would they say is your compass? Would they be accurate? Reflecting on a few of your recent key decisions, do they reflect your compass? Explain. Stated guiding principle> Action>Congruency check

13. Key Concept—Your Guiding Principles Stated guiding principle (GP)> Action> Congruent? EXAMPLE: Student learning> Expanded online offerings> Congruent or not? Expanding online offerings could be compatible with your stated GP—if those course demand is not being met and data shows that students are doing well in the online environment. What if the data shows that your online courses have your lowest success rates? If you find yourself abandoning your GPs, what is the cause? Can you maintain your GP in light of those forces? Is a compromise wise, necessary?

14. Gatekeeper FACETS OF SUPERVISION HRPLAN Coach, facilitator Builds capacity

15. Gatekeeper to Developer • Talk less, listen more • Stop “helping” • Ask good questions • Show empathy • Build autonomy and engagement

16. Scenarios An administrator has decided that advising—which has heretofore been done in Student Services—is now going to be a shared task between the SS staff and faculty. The administrator decides that the Director of Advising is the best person to share this news with the faculty. After all, this is an advising issue. Discuss this approach.

17. Scenarios ROLE: In this scenario, you are the VP of Instruction. A Dean who is one of your direct reports tells you that he is concerned about a key staff member in another division’s area. The staff member in question is disrupting his area by sharing plans to move faculty and staff to other areas before he is able to share the news and rationale with his staff. This is not the first time this situation has occurred. He comes to your office and expresses his frustration. Your response?

18. Scenarios ROLE: In this scenario, you are the VP of Instruction. One of your best lead instructors is upset about a colleague. The LI has information—verbal and in writing—from others (inside and outside the college) that his colleague (another Lead Instructor) is making negative statements about his program. Your division chair is relatively new to the role, and your dean has some negative history with the LI creating the problems. What is your role in this scenario as VP? The dean’s? The new chair? Explain.

19. Scenarios ROLE: In this scenario, you are the VP of Instruction The college policy—as clearly stated in the policy manual—requires that any non-renewed employee be made aware of the non-renewal by a specific date in the year. The Dean has followed all procedures and policies and has recommended to your office that this problematic chair should b The particular Chair in question is very high profile and well-connected. The date that the notification must be delivered to the Chair corresponds with one of the Chair’s major divisional events for the year--an event that has been publicized in local media. You do agree with the dean’s assessment of the employee’s performance. Do you follow the policy?

20. Scenarios ROLE: In this scenario, you are in a subordinate role; your supervisor is either a Dean or VP. You supervisor is a very busy woman. In the last year, she has started communicating with you and some of her other direct reports through her assistant. The assistant, while always a bit over-bearing, is now being described by some of your direct reports as a “bully” and “mean,” as she has started contacting them, too, and at times telling your direct reports how to do their jobs. You don’t want to offend your supervisor, but you also have an obligation to those reporting to you. You have been told that your supervisor is very protective of her assistance and considers her a close personal friend. Many say you would be wasting your time. What do you do?

21. “What Project Aristotle has taught people within Google is that no one wants to put on a ‘work face’ when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present a work, to feel ‘psychologically safe,’ we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations. We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversation with colleagues who are driving us crazy” (Duhigg, 2016).

22. Questions and thanks!

23. References Burnison, G. (2019, March 11). 7 years ago, Google tried to study what makes a perfect team-and researchers were shocked by theresults. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/what-google-learned-in-its-quest-to-build-theperfect team.html Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great. London: Random House Business. Pisano, G. (2019, January). The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures. Harvard Business Review, 62-71. Rogelberg, S. (2019, January). Why Your Meetings Stink—And What to do About It. Harvard Business Review, 140-143. Sample, S. B. (2003). The Contrarians Guide to Leadership. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Stanley, M. (2016). The Coach Habit. ON, Canada: Box of Crayons Press. Sull, D., Homkes, R., & Sull, C. (2015, March). Why Strategy Execution Unravels--and What to Do About It. Harvard Business Review, 58-66.