When I last wrote, I had landed my first major position in academic administration as director of an up-and-coming performing-arts program at a university in the Deep South. All that remained for the deal to be sealed was for the trustees to grant me tenure. After much nail-biting on my part, they did.
In my quest for a deanship or a similar leadership position I tried to project the values that I would bring to the arts in higher education. Loyalty is one of the values that I hold dear, so I am especially proud that I did not give in to the temptation to use those other potential offers to negotiate a better financial arrangement with my new university.
Officially, I started work July 1, but well before that date, I hired a PR company to organize a retreat where I could meet with faculty and staff members, donors, and students to talk about positioning our program to best advantage. The retreat went very well. The company had worked with nonprofit organizations before and had a real sensitivity to the language and culture of academe.
The retreat helped persuade me to make excellence in communication my top personal priority as an administrator. I have seen firsthand how attempts at transformative leadership have been muddled, and even damaged, because scant attention had been paid to communication. Roving from table to table at the retreat, meeting people and learning their beliefs, I hoped to convince my new colleagues that I was eager to learn from them and listen to them.
I'm sure that my leadership style will evolve as I get used to being in charge. But I already have a good sense of how not to be a good administrator, based on my experience at my former university in the Midwest, where I was an assistant vice president for academic affairs for four years.
In that position, I watched with interest as a newly recruited vice president sent staff members an article on emotional intelligence. After arriving on the campus he preached openness, collaboration, and honesty -- everything you want to hear from a leader.
But a few months into his term, those values began to mean little. Most annoying was his tendency to believe anything that anyone told him, and never show any interest in hearing the other side of an issue. If you got to him first, you were fine. He rarely gathered his leadership team together to meet. He would make decisions behind the scenes, leaving many in his stable to play catch-up after the deals had been cut. What little communication there was usually came after the fact.
"Doing" was not a priority on the campus, and was often looked on with disfavor. Instead, those who talked policy, made symbolic plans, and then started making more plans (before the first plans were carried out) seemed to thrive. Naturally, this vice president didn't last long: He was soon named president at another institution.
In the last months before I left, clear communication from the administration was especially lacking. The university, like many, has an electronic mail system in which you can recall a message that has been sent. That is, if you see an error in an e-mail message after sending it, you can send another e-mail that recalls the first one, and essentially says, Let's try this again.
Over one eight-day span last spring, I counted five messages from a dean's office that had been sent, recalled, sent again, recalled again, and then sent once more. The college's new vice president for academic affairs also got into the act, sending, recalling, and then resending a message to the entire campus.
My old institution hired a commercial consulting company to help -- you guessed it -- improve campus communication. That company sent a message to the entire faculty, which would have been fine, except that no one on the administration had told the faculty that a consultant was being hired and for what purpose. So, people were more than a little confused and suspicious when they were contacted by the consultant.
Those examples of miscommunication underscore a lesson that people should have learned in high school: Write a draft and have someone else look at it first. Having an itchy trigger finger to hit the "send" button can lower your credibility quickly.
I will, no doubt, make a lot of hires over the years at my new university, but I already know what not to do in the search process. At my former institution, searches would be started for high-level executive positions without anyone having asked the deans, directors, and assistant/associate vice presidents to contact or nominate some prospects. An ad for the position would be placed (who knows who wrote it?). The expectation seemed to be that the dynamic language in the job description would attract many fine candidates.
Without warning, e-mail messages would be sent, asking people to come to important interview sessions. The recipients of those invitations would be left to wonder: "What position?" "When was this announced?" "Why wasn't I informed so that I could network and identify outstanding candidates?"
In many cases those searches failed. Then (often after 10 months or so) a longtime assistant or associate vice president would be appointed to the job, and the world would be told, "After an extensive search process, we found the best person right here on our campus."
On that campus, people would talk about communication but not really step up to make it a priority.
One of my mentors is a senior university system officer. His background is in behavioral psychology and he always says, "Watch what people do more than what they say." I have taken his words to heart. One of my criteria for selecting the institution where I wanted to work (and I was fortunate to have several choices) was whether the campus had an identifiable culture of action over words.
The institution that I am joining is much smaller than the one I left. It has been refreshing to enter this new world and see crisp, concise, and clear communication -- without any spin. The president has already sent personal, hand-written notes to me and my wife, offering to help in any way. The vice president for academic affairs is energetic, thoughtful, and supportive, as is my new dean. How refreshing.
The die has been cast and my family and I have moved on. We've left the city where our children were born and where we had lived for more than 10 years. Before they would agree to the move, my wife and kids had their own demands. She wanted to go back to graduate school, and they wanted a pet.
So, here's where those negotiations stand: My new dean will be my wife's adviser as she seeks her master's, the boys are getting cats, and we are looking forward to starting a new chapter in our lives.
