All right. Marilyn and Laurie, you want to start us off?

Transcription

1 Beginning Your Journey: Beyond the Book Live Briefing Transcript All right. Marilyn and Laurie, you want to start us off? Great, great. Good afternoon and good morning to everybody. We're so glad that you joined us today. Happy Careers and Student Affairs week. I thought that this was probably intentional on NESBA's part, right? Stephanie, to plan t his event on this week but certainly a great way for us to spend some time with you to really think about what it means to work in Student Affairs and hopefully share some thoughts and ideas from the book with you. What we hope is that, just to give some highlights from the book, we know that every single cheaper could be a full session, a full hour plus session and, in fact, NASBA was going to offer something like that. Stephanie will talk a little bit more about that at the end. We want this to be an interactive session and hopefully, we'll all learn from each other over the next hour. What we want to do in the next slide is just learn a little bit about who you are and who's with us today. Stephanie, what do they need to do to tell us who they are? I'm going to launch a poll right now, it's going to show up right on your screen and whoever is at your computer is going to go ahead and enter their response. People are going for it so that's good. We're just going to give you a couple of minutes until I get a majority of responses in, seconds really, not minutes. Almost everybody has voted. I'm going to share the results of that so everyone can see. We've got a good mix in there. That helps us get some perspective that the majority of you are still pretty new in your positions or graduate students that will be going into your positions full time. In terms of who has read the book, and this is not like a test or any judgement if you've not, it just gives us some perspective on how much of this is brand new or how much of this might be a highlight. So again, Stephanie we'll turn it over to you. Go ahead and vote right on your screen. Just about everybody is in so I'm going to close it and share those results with you so you can see them right on your screen. Great. I think what that means is sales will fly after this webinar. Those of you who may not have read the book yet, maybe we'll inspire you to buy the book. Neil and I make no money off this so there's no self incentive for that at all but hopefully you'll be inspired. We love the book. We've worked on this for a long time. This is our fourth edition on this book and so its been just an honor and privilege for us to do this and to share it with colleagues across the country's. In terms of introductions and purposes, I mentioned, we hope that this will be interactive as much as we can through the webinar. Need Help? mailto:support@rev.com

2 We're going to do a couple of highlights from the different chapters of the book and allow for some interaction and questions or comments if that allows that conversation to happen on the webinar too. In terms of our background, I'm Laurie Lisa and I am the Vice President for Student Affairs here at the University of North Dakota. I've been here for almost 5 years and prior to that, I have previous experience in a number of institutions in the state of Kansas and Missouri, pretty diverse experience. I've been in the role of management. I've been in housing U.S. students. It's kind of a diverse background and we can certainly talk about those kinds of things later on in the presentation as well. I've often taught and I teach in our graduate program here at UND and I've taught at other places as well and then NASBA has certainly been very important, professional association for me and I've been very involved in professional associations there as well as a few others. Two other things I'd like to share about myself that I think are important. One is Marilyn was my advisor of my doctoral dissertation and so she was my faculty member at University of Kansas, we worked together there and I think that's a great demonstration of networking and a mentorship that really began a long time ago, a way long time ago and continues to this day so it's a great gift for me to be able to continue to work with her on projects like this and then, the last thing I think is important for you to know about me is that I'm the mom of Sarah and Jack so I have 2 children; 11 and 13. I keep saying they're young and they're really not young anymore so I'm now in the world of pre-teens and teenagers and that brings on a whole other set of opportunities and challenges. So, that's a little bit about me. I'll turn it over to Marilyn. I'm Marilyn Amy and as Laurie said, we've known each other for a long time now. I took probably a less varied path than Laurie did in building her career in that I started out in student affairs, student activities and residence life work before I went back to school to major in Student Affairs with a Masters and having found it, as probably many of you did, not knowing that there was such a thing as you could study this great work but then I became a faculty member instead of choosing to pursue a career as a Senior Student Affairs Officer, which had been my original goal. Happily, when I went to the University of Kansas, we started a Masters program there in Student Affairs, which was just great fun and that's how I met Laurie, working in activities and when she became a doctoral student and I got to work with her more closely, actually the first version of the book was here idea and so, as she said, what a nice opportunity this has been for us to work together through 4 editions of this book and a long time. What she didn't say is that she has been my NASBA mentor because in Ohio people are ACPA-ers and in Kansas, you are NASBA [inaudible 00:06:24] and I never left it even though I'm not in Michigan. BYJBriefing Page 2 of 23

3 Laurie has been my conduit to all things great and NASBA for which I'm very thankful. I'm not only a faculty member, I'm a department chair at Michigan State University where I'm sort of a third arm of the Student Affairs program here. I probably also do a little less teaching now because I have to do this other administrative work of Student Affairs and running the department so that's me. We want to kind of run through with you a little bit what's included in the book, not again as a sales pitch but we thought you would be interested to see the things that are covered in here; many of which we're going to highlight today and at the origin of getting started on the first edition of this book, what Laurie and I and NASBA were interested in doing was providing some tools for thought for people who are entering the practice of Student Affairs Administration and trying to think of what were the key issues that would face new professionals when they enter the field that they may or may not have thought about regardless of whether or not they were in degree programs before they took their first job; I was not. Laurie, I don't know if you had done your degree before you started in Student Affairs? Yes. I went for a little bit in business and then went into my Masters and then started working. When we put our heads together with wonderful colleagues around the country and the experts at NASBA, we try to think of things and so you'll see this list come up as Stephanie clicks through it and these are all the topical areas that we have covered in the book and since the first edition back in 1997, what we've realized that you have too is that the world of higher education and Student Affairs Administration has really grown and expanded. What we've tried to do each time is talk to our colleagues, talk to the new professionals that we know and say what now should we be adding to this book? You'll see some of the things are typical; what's it like to take that first job? What are the ethical concerns you have going into this practice? What's it like to have a supervisor or all those faculty people that you might have to work with from time to time or want to work with from time to time. Two areas that we added this time were on assessment because we're all doing so much of that now to talk about student learning, to talk about the ways in which all cocurricular, curricular activities enhance that and also about crisis management. Unfortunately, we really felt a strong need one cycle ago to put this front and center in the book because there's so much that we're confronted with that you don't want to have to think about but really is important, especially if you're going to be helping students deal with the crisis as well. This time, we also added technology and social media since we're so living that experience and what it means to be 24/7 connected or not and how to communicate in effective ways with our students and with early career professionals as well. BYJBriefing Page 3 of 23

4 We're going to talk a little bit about many of these things today. The professional connections balance, for those of you who are students or early career, we know that this is an issue on a regular basis and it's not one that you reconcile and never have to think about again; as well as job search and then some next steps. The last thing that I'll say about this is that when we have gone through this every time and with all of our collaborators, one of the most exciting parts, I think, about having worked on this book and continuing to think about what it means to be a new professional is that; it's been a little while, not as while ago as my hair looks but it's been a while since I was a new professional and Laurie too. These are not issues that go away or that you don't have to think about again or that you can't enjoy revisiting over the life of your career. While the task originally posed to us by NESBA was to think about beginning your journey, that's why they called it beginning your journey, the journey keeps going. One of the great parts is seeing people that we know who have moved on trough their careers, are now working with other new professionals and even for ourselves, as we switch jobs or switch areas of work, we're revisiting some of these same topical areas again from a slightly different perspective but with as much enthusiasm in our business and need for good colleagues and friends as we were when we were first new professionals. I hope you see that too as we're going through this. One of the things that we would like you to think about as we're moving through the topics today is we didn't really know how to do this in the space of the webinar but some of the things, especially for those of you who are in graduate programs, we hope that you take into account as we go through these topics, what you might be learning about them in our Student Affairs graduate program of some kind or a higher education graduate program so what did you learn about these topics while you were in school? As importantly, what did you learn about these topics from your work experience. Did what you learned in school have anything to do with what you experienced on the job. One of the things that Student Affairs programs that we always talk about is failure to practice. Does it really work like that in practice? You could debate that either way but what we hope is that if you start to think about the topics, from what you know about it and how you feel about it and where did you learn those things. You also might find some holes or some areas that you hadn't yet thought about for which you could draw on colleagues, you could start a discussion where you work or in your class and really fill out, from a professional development perspective, some of what you see as a disconnect or things you haven't yet learned but really want to. As Laurie said, there's going to be modules on these topics that come along but we also know that in the moment, she may have some questions that come up or some thoughts about what we're talking about and we hope, in the space that we can at 11 or a bit, you'll type a message or get us some way of BYJBriefing Page 4 of 23

5 understanding that you have a question or a comment because we'd like to take those into account, we're just not sure what kind of time we have. Before we move on, Laurie, any thoughts? Nope, sounds good. The first topic I'm going to cover then, Laurie's going to take over because one of my favorite things always is being in what I've called a good organizational [inaudible 00:13:23]. I think, in Student Affairs, we're all committed to students and helping them succeed and then we forget that perhaps everybody else at the institution doesn't see it that way or when you work in different kinds of institutions, it may be expressed differently or the kind of work that you do may be different and especially as early career professionals, a lot of the job descriptions really look somewhat similar. You need to be a good problem solver. You need to have good people skills. You need to be able to think about students and their success. What does that really mean? We talk about becoming a good organizational analyst where you learn to read the context in which you're working. The quote here, what I didn't say was that in the book, we've always thought it was important to have the voices of new professionals represented and throughout, we've pulled out selective quotes today to share with you what those we interviewed or surveyed said in relation to all of these different topics. This one about the unwritten rules that exist in colleges and universities in the departments that you work in and residence life, which is in student life or student activities, they're there whether you realize that or not and sometimes you don't notice until you run into it and you've got a block or you need some more help or you didn't know it was actually like that. This person says "Finding a trusted supervisor or mentor or a mentor to help you process and navigate the invisible politics and culture of the institution". We think that's both really important and it's always true when you're moving outside of your realm; whether that's across campus or to another unit within your building or to another campus. It's also a good strategy to find that trusted supervisor and mentor, somebody that you feel you can be really honest with and you can trust what they're saying to you. Just so that you have a good sounding board and somebody who might have a better or a different understanding of what's happening than you have. I say that a lot to my students and my colleagues. It's one of the things that we don't teach very well and it's usually not in the training that we receive. In my mind anyway, it matters a lot to your overall success and satisfaction is learn how to read the organization where you work. What does it really mean to be a member of that group? Along with that though comes this phrase we've labeled here Institutional Etiquette. In terms of Institutional Etiquette, I wish I could do the show of BYJBriefing Page 5 of 23

6 hands but I'm going to assume that pretty much everybody has been faced with it at one time or another, the institutional way we do things. We don't do things like that around here or this is the, my case right now, Michigan State way. Oh, we've tried that before, we don't want to do it again. As you can see in this quote from one of our new professional colleagues, both the way in which the people that you work with and the units around you can help contain your enthusiasm in ways you might not want for them to but also, sometimes it doesn't feel very encouraging to have really good ideas and really enthusiastic ideas and feel like it's not the right time to say that, it's not going to be very well accepted here. The space and the quote about it seemed like there were insiders and outsiders can be defined in a lot of different ways but one of the parts of becoming a good organizational analyst is figuring out how to be yourself in each new environment. What are the things that most matter to you? What are your strong values? Then figuring out; what are the norms and the rituals and the symbols and the myths of your institution? Is it okay to wear jeans on Friday, for example. Do you call people by their first name or with a prefix like doctor or Ms.? How do you know where that is? It's not like you get a queue card at training that says here's how you should be in this environment. We're trying to figure that out so you can be comfortable as a full fledged member is a really important part of becoming a new professional who feels like they're really valued and can make a contribution. Laurie, I'm going to pass to you. Marilyn, before we go to the slide, the only thing I would add is, I really would emphasize your point that it doesn't matter what level your position is, you go through this with every new job, you go through this with every new institution. You really go through this with every new boss and so again, I think that if you can learn these skills, at the beginning it will serve you well throughout your career but I'll just tell you, even at my level, it's not like oh phew I've got it, I'm done, I don't have to think about these things anymore. Marilyn is always my go to person to ask questions about to help me think about what the organization is doing at that point. What we want to do is shift to establishing your professional identity and I have a question here again for you all to consider and think about it and I think this will be a great conversation for you to have with your colleagues and other folks. It's really, while everything will continue to change at every level, you're really starting your foundation as who you are right now as a professional. When I think back to my career, that's a little scary. I certainly wish I would have done some things differently and Marilyn and I joked about, we were going to introduce each other at the beginning and thought, you know, that's a little risky because she knows a lot about me that I really wouldn't want to be shared BYJBriefing Page 6 of 23

7 nationally on a webinar. My question to you is; if you had to pick 3 adjectives that describe who you are as a professional, what would those be? If you would be willing to chat and write some of those answers, either as a group or individuals or whatever that might be, what would be 3 adjectives you would want to describe yourself as a professional. We'll wait a second and see what kind of response we get. Go ahead and open up your question box and type in some of your responses and I will be happy to not say names, I can just say the words, if that makes you more comfortable. We'll give you a couple of seconds to do that. All right, some responses are coming in. Passionate at the goal, committed, authentic, thoughtful, critical, reliable, organised, passionate, graceful, knowledgeable, resilient, learner, curious, energetic, knowledgeable, relational, passionate, caring, ambitious, creative, engaging, enthusiastic, caring, honest, professional, open, available. Bravo everybody. Genuine, friendly, futuristic, organized, determined and passionate. Quirky? Thank you everybody for that. Those are great. What would be really fun is if you wrote those down about yourself today, you know that whole thing and then you save it and then pull it out. Again, wouldn't you want most of those to be who you are your whole career? How do you establish that foundation of who you are in building that identity? I think on the flip side, wouldn't it be interesting if you asked your colleagues what 3 adjectives they would use to describe you and then, are those similar or are those different? What would your supervisor say? What would your staff member say? What would your colleague say? What would somebody in another department at the institution say about you? Again, just to kind of get that feedback of; does your own self identity match the persona that you're presenting to others? If not, where are those inconcurrences and how do you adjust those in-concurrences? Do they change? Do they change from group to group again or from situation to situation? I think it's really thinking about that intentionality of who you are today and who you want to be throughout your whole career. Some of that is positional. Like Marilyn was saying; she wanted to be a Student Affairs Senior Support Officer at one point and then went to the faculty. Does that change who our identity is? Absolutely. Are some of those core attributes and traits still there? Yes they are. To think about some of those kinds of things would be really important. I'm one of those nerds that I have my RA evaluation still someplace in my files and I went back and read it the other day. They haven't really changed a lot from the positive feedback that was said about me and some of my areas of growth are probably still there today. Again, I think the core of who we are is always there but that should also give us permission to learn, to grow and to develop and to really enhance those things. Hopefully, my supervisors would see that I've grown a little bit as well. The other point, I think in the professional identity is, and you know this already BYJBriefing Page 7 of 23

8 from being in the profession but I don't know that graduate students always remember, is how small of a connection we are in Student Affairs or in higher education. Again, it's really not 6 degrees of freedom, it's probably 2 or 3. Again, when you're thinking about that professional identity, sometimes I thought well I've left that identity at that institution and now I'm going to start a new one. Marilyn's shaking her head no. No, it doesn't happen. Wherever you go happens throughout. One of the things I didn't realize as a new professionalist; every interview I did as a new professional, I was establishing my professional identity. It didn't occur to me that somebody I would interview with for an entry level job, I could come back and interview again in 5 or 10 years for a different job. I could be interviewing them or they could be interviewing me. I think what I thought at one point was; that was a bad interview. I've had some of those bad interviews and I want to go back to some of those place and go really, that's not who I am, I'm much better. I never really thought about that I'm really creating my professional identity in every single interaction that I create in this profession. Again, to be conscious of that and that's not to say we can't learn. That's not to say we don't make mistakes. That's not to say that we don't take risks because that is not the message at all. Absolutely, we should be doing all those things but I think it's the thoughtfulness of sometimes the consequences for those risks are pretty small and okay, sometimes maybe not so much. In a world of social media and all those things, who you are is much broader than what it ever used to be. I think being intentional about that. If we go to the next part in thinking about supervision. Again, some of my favorite topics, we could spend hours and hours and hours about being a supervisor. I'd be interested to know and maybe Stephanie, this is where we could do the raise our hand, how many of you are currently in a supervisory role right now? Go ahead and raise your hands for just one minute, don't put them down yet until I have a chance to count. Looks like the majority. Oh cool. Great. It's about half our group. Okay good. Again, some things to think about is where did you learn to be a supervisor? How do you learn those things? Kind of going back to Marilyn's questions about how do you learn to be a good Student Affairs professional? How do you learn to be a supervisor? Certainly, it's one of those on the job things and I think there are things we learn from other people. However, we were supervised, we think that's the way we should supervise others; BYJBriefing Page 8 of 23

9 sometimes in a good way, sometimes in not such a good way. I think all those things are really important. One of the references in the book that I love and it uses Bolman and Deal and this is, again, something that I learned a lot from Marilyn who I think uses Bolman and Deal in terms of organizational analysis. Just quickly, Bolman and Deal uses 4 phrases. If you have not read any Bolman and Deal stuff, it really should be on your to do read. One is the structural frame, which is really about those organizational policies and rules and procedures. The second one is a human resources frame; how do we treat people when we're making decisions or looking at a situation or a case or having to make decisions, how do we think about the people that we're doing. The third one is the political frame and certainly, Marilyn talked about this and a lot of people don't want to be political or think about being political but that's a reality and so always being sensitive is when I make this decision, what are the political ramifications of it? The last one is symbolic and I think this is one in Student Affairs that we often don't really appreciate, I think because sometimes we come from a more unassuming humble kind of rule, it's really not about us, it's about serving the students. Where you go and what you attend sends symbolic messages. If you go to one of your RA's programs and say, that's great, and you don't go to another RA's program, what is that saying to that person as your role as a symbolic supervisor? Again, we can spend lots and lots of time. Marilyn, I'm always risking because you're the expert at this one, is that a good description of those 4? I think it was great and I think with the political, one of the things that I wanted to add Laurie was; we tend to think about that as negative, especially at this time of year in an election year but what I would suggest that we also think about is, part of what Bolman and Deal and others talk about with the political frame is the choices. Choices compete. There are competing agendas. If you only have the time to go to one of your folks presentations or their workshops or their sessions, you do send a message. For you, it may be I only have time to go to one but if you don't communicate that, it sends a different signal. There are always choices. Our institutions have to decide how they're going to spend their money. They're going to be deciding which students are you going to best be able to help at what particular moment in time and how are you going to account for all of it? In some ways, those are all political decisions because we don't have all the money that we want or we don't have all the time that we want. You have to prioritize and make choices. It doesn't have to be in a negative way but it isn't always clear exactly what, and the competing interest that you face already and that you will continue to face in Student Affairs, that's part of what makes it political. If you have to make a BYJBriefing Page 9 of 23

10 choice, someone probably won't be very happy. So how you communicate about that choice becomes really important. Thank you, that's great feedback. I think, again, a lot of times new professionals think; I don't like politics, I don't want to be in politics, I don't want to move up because of the politics. You're in it. I mean, we all are. Every organization has political dynamics to it. It's at the smaller level, at the micro level and it just gets bigger and more complex certainly as you move up and more sensitive to that but Marilyn is right, you have to be conscious of those choices and those decision making things that you do and how you communicate that so you can try to minimize some of the political aspects of it. A couple of other things I would encourage you to think about in terms of supervision. I mean, I think sometimes with new professionals, when they get in that first job, they may not have done the homework that supervision is a two way street and that is certainly one of the parts to this quote that is on the screen for you right now. I have always said who I work for makes all the difference in the world. I could have a great supervisor and it doesn't really matter what my title is because they're going to support me in what I need to be successful and they give me many opportunities to do that. I can have a great title and a not so good supervisor and I can be put in this little box that says no, no, no, no, you can only do this, you can only do this and not be in that affirming supportive role. Again, whether it's this role and certainly for graduate students, you have a responsibility to interview your supervisor. What's their style like? What are their expectations? How do they work with people? How do they support the staff and to ask really, really good questions about that. If it's not a good fit, most likely the job won't be a good fit. I've been in those situations and they're very, very difficult, they're very, very painful and often your stuck. Again, it doesn't matter what level of the organization. I'm at the University of North Dakota because I wanted to work with this president. I knew he supported students. I knew he supported the institution. I knew we share values and he cared about me as an individual and wanted me to be successful. I had to really make sure I did my homework on those things. I've had other supervisors where people said, I don't think this is a good fit and I was like oh no, it will be fine, I can manage it. I couldn't. It doesn't mean necessarily it was right or wrong, it just means it's not necessarily a good fit. I think doing your homework on those things are really, really important. The last thing I would say is; in addition to being a good supervisor, you have to be a good supervisee. One of the questions I would ask you to think about is; do you know what's important to your supervisor? Do you know what keeps them up at night? BYJBriefing Page 10 of 23

11 Then, even think about, I've done presentations called managing up. Do you know what their supervisor's supervisor worries about or above that or above that? If you don't, shouldn't you know? If you're not doing something that's keeping that person up at night, you might want to shift your priorities a little bit. ON the flip side, could your staff answer that question about you? Not to jump ahead on the mentoring, I have a person I mentor at the university and we've talked about that, it's just that I don't know what my supervisor worries about at night and I don't know off the chain what they worry about. She was saying; what do I do? They said you ask, let's talk about it at staff meeting. Let's talk about what the priorities are so that when something comes down, you know, oh because that person really cares about those things. Again, everything has a two way street so what you should be able to do with your supervisor, your staff should be able to do with you. If you've not had some of those conversations, that's why I think those conflicts occur, because people are not meeting expectations and it goes back to Marilyn's comment, I think because most of the time they're unwritten rules and you didn't know. Now, you've tripped into some black hole and now you're in the list and you didn't even know that was the rule to step on. Again, how do you have those conversations and to think about those things? Let me just stop there real quick and Stephanie, we can take a question or two that people might have about supervision. Marilyn and I might be ale to answer. We'll give everybody about 20 seconds here to answer a question. Raise your hand if you just want to clue me in that you have one and then I'll give you a second to enter it in. We were all listening attentively, I'm sure. If you do have a question, go ahead and raise your hand so I know and then if not, we can just keep going. We do have a couple of people writing in. I'll give you a second to do that. Laurie, you can take a sip of something, I know you're suffering with your cold. I forgot to tell you, I have the red nose, I have a really bad cold right now so I thank you for putting up with my blowing my nose. If anyone has some great local honey and you know Laurie's address, go ahead and ship it to her. Laurie's friends for life. Okay so a question came in that said, I just lost it, hold on. Can you apply the same advice to undergraduate students? Yes. Go ahead Marilyn, you might interpret what that means better than I do. Was the person asking the question meaning can you apply it to when you are working with and supervising undergraduate students? BYJBriefing Page 11 of 23

12 She says undergrads who are interested in going into higher ed. Well Laurie, I think yes. Okay, I think yes. In terms of, it's hard to understand what the question is, is where it's a little more challenging. I think these are all conversations to have with people. I think sometimes we go into Student Affairs because we love students, we make a difference in their lives and all those things are really the core of what we do. I don't know that people are often aware of the political aspects of higher education and sometimes the not so nice parts. Again, that's sort of any organization. It doesn't mean a corporation, it can be a non-profit. You can be in healthcare. There are some negative challenging aspects of working in a large organization and so I think it's good to be aware of that. I think sometimes, when you're an undergraduate, you're a little insulated from, you get lots of strokes, you get lots of affirmation, you get told how great you are and you're a great student leader and you should do this career at Student Affairs, that is awesome and those are great reasons to do it but I think what happens is, as a graduate student or sometimes as a new professional, you get hit pretty hard with; I don't care that you're a great student leader, this is the job, this is what I want you to do. You're not meeting my expectations and some of those dynamics are a little bit hard to get used to I don't know if that's exactly what you mean by those questions but I think those are hard conversations to have with undergraduate or even graduate students but I think they're real and I think it's important to be authentic about what the work really is. What she said perfectly answers my question. Thanks. We have another question; how do I navigate my supervisor who doesn't have a great relationship with their supervisor? Oh yeah, that one. I've never been there. Everyone's like oh. I'll start and then certainly Marilyn. I think it's tricky. I think that you don't want to get into the bashing and the common goal of; we dislike this person, we don't support this person and now we're going to support each other by not supporting that person. That can be pretty poisonous and pretty dysfunctional to the organization. One of my mantras and I have to say it a lot still. Again, it's one of those life things; the only person you can change is yourself. You cannot change anybody else in this world, we can only choose to change ourselves. This is who they are. What we can control is how we respond to that person. BYJBriefing Page 12 of 23

13 If it's negative, if they're not providing the support. IF they don't feel like because of that relationship, that affects you. I think to try to still look and figure out what can you learn from that person, what does that person care about and how do we help that person still be successful and how do we manage some of those, kind of, difficulties? I think you don't want to be caught if there is a personal conflict personality difference that you're linked to that because you're that supervisee. On the other hand, you don't want to not support your supervisor because of the person above you. It's really, really tricky and I think having honest conversations about that would be really important to have with your supervisor and with your colleagues. Marilyn, do you have anything to add on it? This is hard. I absolutely agree and I like what you said Laurie. As a way to think about it in terms of who you can change or what you can change. We talk a lot here about your sphere of influence and where you can make a difference. It might not be that person above your supervisor. They may be out of reach but trying not to get caught in the personality issues or the conflicts there but also, sometimes I think there's a space in between getting all the way sucked in and having to stay all the way away from it and trying to figure out how do you still accomplish that which matters most to you in your sphere of influence; positively for your students or for the people that you work with or your peers. Your supervisor or your supervisor's supervisor, whatever happens to them affects you and that, I think, is one of the hardest things. It would be much easier to try to manage them away from your sphere but, on the other hand, most colleges and universities, they don't work like that and it trickles down. Trying to be mindful of staying your course whilst keeping the communication channels open and just acting out because you can listen without having to agree. You don't have to be bashing, as Laurie said, and climbing up about somebody because it won't work that way. You have people looking to you in that two way street and so standing up, thinking about how you communicate, what's going on around you and the people you work with in a really thoughtful process, it's really important, especially to people as they become less aware, like your undergraduate students, if you're working with them, don't really understand what people 2 or 3 layers up are involved in or doing or what's bothering them and maybe they don't need to. It will affect them but you want to stay focused on those goals and what's going to help them the most. It's hard. THat's a great question. When you hear a good answer, you can write another chapter. Exactly. We have 2 more juicy questions; however, I do want to be mindful of our time so I'm going to keep those in reserve for you guys and let you get a few more slides in and then we'll go back to those, if that works? BYJBriefing Page 13 of 23

14 Great. I think the next segway, actually, the networking and then the next one after that will be mentoring. The reason to do these things is exactly because of that situation, that last question, is that you have to have external relationships and external mentors to your institution, I think, in order to be successful. Again, no matter where you are in your career, at some point, something will not go right, something will be toxic, something will be very difficult and talking about that internally with an organization will cause harm. It could cause harm to you, to your supervisor, to other situations. The value of that network, of your network, is so important and I love your phrase of sphere influence. When you think about networking, a couple of things I would suggest that you think about; one is internal and so what is this one talked about, it's really that peer networking and so how do you give off those relationships within your organizations? Housing's the best, right? I mean, you've get this group; a hall director, you're all hanging out together, sometimes really a little incestuously I would suggest and so I would say you need to get out of that group and find out other colleagues on campus. That advantage of that networking, even in the division of Student Affairs or in other areas or other people on the campus. Then you have your external and so again, the advantage of getting involved in professional associations is to make those contacts so that you have those resources of people you can call and say; what do I do and how do I manage this? It's always had because they don't have the context but I think having those relationships are so vital for success. Networking sometimes has its artificial, plastic, kissing up kind of thing. It's not. It's about being sincere. It's about being intentional. It's about finding people that you have heard of or you've watched or you know of and you say well, I can learn from them and I want to learn from them and I need that support and advocacy. I'll also suggest, my dear friend Marilyn will disagree, Marilyn, it's not just for extroverts. I am an introvert. That part she doesn't agree with me on. It is a skill. I think extroverts is a natural thing, you just walk in the room and you start talking to people. God bless you. I don't know how you do it. Immediately, I think I walk into a room and I just freeze and I think; okay, really just one person. I just need one person to talk to me and I'll be okay. When I get one, then I can do another one and then I can do another one. I always thought I should have gone through sorority improvement because I would have learned some of those skills a little bit better. I, all together, failed at sorority improvement because it would have just scared me too much. Thinking about being intentional with that networks and then if we can go to the next slide. The bonus of networking is then sometimes you create those mentoring relationships and that's a fabulous beautiful thing. I will challenge you. I've done a lot of presentations on mentoring, people talk about their supervisors. BYJBriefing Page 14 of 23

15 I would say your supervisor is not your mentor. You could have the best supervisor in the world who cares about you and supports you and challenges you and that's awesome. It doesn't necessarily mean that they are your mentor. For me, a mentor is really somebody who does not have a reporting relationship with you, that does not have direct control or influence about your role as your current employment. It could be somebody outside the organization. It could be somebody in another area on campus but to really, again, think about it. Some people think I have this great supervisor, I don't need these other people, well you do because, again, that's where that learning kind of happens. I think my comments on this one would be; you have the power to evolve those relationships and in terms of mentors, I think people think that you're tapped, that somebody comes to you and says I pick Marilyn Amy, you are the protégé, you have great potential and I want to mentor and nurture you. It doesn't really happen that way. Sometimes it can a little bit coincidentally but as a Vice President, I can't pick those people, right? Remember, go back to the things that Marilyn was saying about politics, I pick one person and not somebody else, then I stepped in some stuff and I'm sending some messages that may not be interpreted accurately. If somebody approaches me, that's a different story because everybody can approach me and not everybody likes to approach me and not everybody wants me to be their mentor but some people might and so we were in this session on campus the other day and a graduate student said; well how do I manage this if I want to meet with you? What do I need to do with my supervisor, how do I manage that? I turned to my data student and I said; what would you say and her answer was; you should tell your supervisor, I'd love to meet with the Vice President or the Dean of Students or the Director or whatever, it doesn't matter. I want you to know, I'm not there to talk about you. I'm not there necessarily to talk about my work. I'd like to learn more about NASBA or I'd like to learn more about enrollment management. I'd like to learn more about their career and how they got to where they are. I have done this intentionally my whole career. Sometimes it's a one meeting and I go, well that was nice meeting you but not for me and then there's other times when these people have been my mentors for life and so you need many mentors. I love this quote because I think it also encourages to find mentors who are different than us; whether that may be different gender, whether that may be different ethnicity, whether that may be different levels in the organization because again, we all come from different perspectives in different [inaudible 00:47:21] but I'm always doing the; what would Marilyn do? What would Dave Ambler do? What would Jim Radigan do? I think about it and sometimes the answers are the same but sometimes they're going to be a little different and then I think about okay, now what would I do? How do I go through this situation? BYJBriefing Page 15 of 23

16 Again, thinking about that intentionality and creating those relationships are really important. Laurie, if I could just add? You said mentors role? I think that's [inaudible 00:47:50] worth reminding us all is you can have a mentor, a peer mentor or a person who's aspect of their life matches an aspect you're looking for. Laurie mentioned that she has children and I do as well and starting out early [inaudible 00:48:08] trying to think about, what does it mean to have a partner if the people that you work with don't? How do you find balance? What are some examples you can draw upon or you want to learn some area of work that you haven't been exposed to yet. It may not be a long standing relationship but you're looking for someone with whom to build a relationship of understanding or an aspect of the work you want to do, an aspect of your life. Rather than relying on one person, which goes back to the supervisor comment, I think. We all need multiple mentors. It's a much more affective way to go. It allows for people to move or change or perhaps to have a falling out or for you to grow and develop beyond what that person was originally in a relationship with you about. I think we don't emphasize that quite as much and especially in some areas of Student Affairs where you're sectioned off physically on your campus or in terms of who you interact with, that reliance on a very traditional definition of mentoring that Laurie was suggesting, I think really hurts people when they can't figure out why it isn't working the way they want it to work. I would just say, throw that out the window and start to look for the kinds of things you want support with to learn more about and find people with whom you can have those conversations. Lots and lots of books about mentoring that you can spend more time about and have more conversations about. I'm a little worried about time and we have a few more slides. Should we keep going? Yes. A couple of more things, one more for me and I'll turn back over to Marilyn. Again, this one just is really talking about your values. Again, that should be the core of everything that you do. One is talking about balance, which Marilyn just talked about and then the second quote is also talking about some of those climates and some of those things. Just two suggestions I would have for you in terms of the value as it relates to this. One is, at some point, when you've started a new institution, you start talking about your previous place. I would say, never say the name again. What you do is say; at a previous institution I've heard they do blah, blah, blah or I've heard some colleges had done it like this. You know it's about your last school but if you keep saying; at the University of Kansas we did this. At the BYJBriefing Page 16 of 23

17 University of Kansas, we did this. Then people look at you and go, well why don't you go back to KU because that's all you talk about, clearly that place is perfect, we are not and so we don't want to hear about it anymore. That would be my one piece of advice. The second thing is really to embrace your next institution. Don't wear your previous places clothes, don't wear your previous colors, all those things. Really embrace what it means to be for my kids at the University of North Dakota and it means, I remember shopping once with a colleague and I was looking for green clothes because I was moving here to UND and they're like really, do you have to wear green and I'm like yeah really, they have to wear green. I never wore green before but now I wear green. That was really important to you because that sends a message of; I'm part of this institution, I'm part of you and again, no matter what level you're on in the organization, that's what people want to hear. We could spend hours talking about balance. Marilyn and I talk about this often as we both have children and what that means and that is certainly an ongoing challenge. Again, I think the one thing I would just encourage you to think about, especially at first when you're starting out in your career is, why are you working so much? Is that from you? Is that from your supervisor? Is that because there's just so much to do? I remember once I was the Dean of Students and I was working late at night and I was mad, I was crabby, I'd rather be home watching, I don't remember what show it was. It was a TV show that was really importation to me. I thought well, who's making me stay here and I was like ha, that would be me. That would be me, this is my choice. Now, that's not always that simple, I understand that but this work never stops. Student needs never stop. If you don't learn those skills quickly about boundary management and what you can do and what you can't do, you're not going to survive, you're just not because, while they don't mean to, they'll eat you up and chew you up and spit you out and you'll be exhausted. You've got to learn what your values and your priorities are and again, have all of those conversations. One other quick story, when I supervised a staff and one woman was a single parent, we talked about it. She would come into work every day late because she had to take her child to school. Now, she compensated by doing other things but we had to have that conversation because I knew if we didn't, people would be like, why does she get to come in late, why am I here at 8:00 every day and she rolls in at 9 every day? Again, talking about those things all together as a group is really, really important. It also means, just because you don't have children, you're not the one to do duty every night either. Again, your favorite TV show or your workout or your club or organisation could be just as important as somebody's children and those things should be honored and you should be having conversations about that with your BYJBriefing Page 17 of 23