It was May 30, 2007, when my administrative assistant walked into my office and blurted out, "The dean is dead." As I looked over at her, I saw that she was teary-eyed. My instinct, which seems curious to me now, was to glance at the clock: 7:50 a.m. Perhaps I looked at the clock to ground me or give me a clue as to what I should do next.
As associate dean of the nursing school, I knew I was "next in line" in the leadership plan, and would become interim dean. But I couldn't anticipate in that moment what the days and months ahead would require.
The dean, Terry Misener, and I had been the administrative team for 18 months, a complementary match of styles and preferences. We had learned that I could finesse a process conceived through his brilliance. Combining his creative leadership and my follow-through had proved particularly effective in doubling our enrollment. Collectively, our work had been inspired. But what would happen now?
What did happen, for me, was a sudden journey into leadership that was sometimes graceful and sometimes awkward. I learned important lessons about leadership transition and communal grieving, and about how to maintain focus on the academic mission during a time of crisis. I share these reflections in the hope that they might help other sudden leaders.
The initial week. It was midweek and midsemester when we heard about the dean, so classes and the usual activities were still under way. Communicating the shocking news was my first priority. Our president and provost had already been notified, so I called each of the other deans individually to honor their special connection to Dean Misener as a peer and friend.
Next I posted signs: "All faculty, come immediately to the dean's suite." One by one they came, their quizzical looks turning to shock and disbelief. "He just e-mailed me last night." "We just talked yesterday about my project." Then the news began to leak into classrooms, and gradually our close-knit community of 25 full-time faculty members and 300 upper-division students coalesced around this new truth.
There is a tribal instinct that comes into play in a time of loss: Call everyone together. That was my first impulse, too, but I set it aside while I made sure people were individually notified and supported while receiving the news. Then, walking up the back stairs after informing a class of students, I had a solitary moment and a searing insight. "If we are going to get together," I realized, "I am the one to call it. Oh my God, I'm in charge." I began setting into motion plans for getting through the first days and the dean's memorial service.
Professors, staff members, and students gathered at noon. The deans of the other schools at the university came to offer help. The presence of the president and provost (a priest and a brother of the Holy Cross order) was a touching display of administrative support and pastoral caring. It was at this meeting that I first thought to take advantage of the resources that were offered rather than trying to do it all myself. The catering department prepared a simple buffet so we wouldn't forget to eat; a librarian helped me find a poem I read at the gathering.
With the dean's relatives distant and disconnected, we assumed the responsibilities that would usually be performed by family. We prepared his memorial, wrote the obituary, and accepted official and personal condolences from near and far. Three of us spent a long day that first Saturday making an initial dent in the chaos he called his office. We organized his personal effects for his son to have after the memorial, and we began the arduous task of bringing order to four decades of professional files and personal memorabilia. We sorted the random things that we all keep in our offices without any thought of the possibility that someone else will have to dispose of them — old lab results, silverware and a cloth napkin from yesterday's lunch, myriad Post-it notes stuck randomly in manila folders. On day five, the campus played host to more than 400 people for his memorial service. Little prepares you for that degree of involvement in the closure of a colleague's life.
After the initial, surreal days leading up to his service, I was officially appointed interim dean. I wondered how to follow a legendary leader who had had such a profound influence on our processes and programs. How would faculty members react to me now that I was the school's top decision-maker and disciplinarian? I thought often of having to fill his shoes, and I learned quickly to correct that inner voice with the reality that I wore my own pair.
Becoming interim dean. I quickly recognized that both external and internal constituencies needed reassurance, and I began crafting distinct messages to them. The external world, including our clinical partners, agency collaborators, and the university's regents, needed to know that they could count on the quality, continuity, and strength of the remaining team. My message to them was, "We miss him, but things are going well." And while it was true, there was a hint of bravado in my voice. Internal audiences, like our faculty and staff members, needed to know they could count on my support and leadership. My simple message to them was, "I'll hold the space for our grieving while we continue our quality program."
Some leaders cut deals and complete negotiations without making a written record of the promises. And even with the most disciplined of record keepers, there can be differing assumptions and memories among those involved. I wondered about the obligation of honoring the promises of my predecessor. Was I required to fulfill what others said he had promised?
In an effort to navigate that quagmire, I met with faculty and staff members individually so that we could reach our own agreements. It helped me to know that they, too, were uncertain about those promises, and to realize that I could be guided by the bigger picture of our mission and place in higher education. The individual meetings proved helpful, although I believe now that they could have been more effective if I had explicitly stated my goal upfront.
Working through our grief. The sudden death of our dean involved both individual and collective grief. Individual grief can be messy and unpredictable, and usually it builds on experiences and beliefs. The same is true for communal grief, for it occurs within the complexity of the group's culture and patterns. My role in facilitating grieving on both levels was to create an environment where it could occur and provide help when needed. In daily practice that meant I listened, checked in, and reminded people of the counseling available.
The path to communal healing is traveled, in part, through individual work. That insight came from my own grieving. After several months of difficult work, I realized I was angry with the dean. I was angry that he had left a chaotic office, hadn't finished some sticky challenges, and had disrupted my life without my permission. As I said, grief can be messy and unpredictable.
I set out to deal with my own feelings by taking advantage of an employee benefit: short-term counseling. It gave me renewed energy and the confidence to submit my application to the search committee for the permanent job as dean. My own counseling led me to elevate the role of grieving for our health as a unit.
So we observed rituals, marked special days and anniversaries, laughed and cried spontaneously, and kept our tributes to our respected former leader honest and overt. At the same time, we honored people's needs to be private with their reflections. We survived the passage of time together. It helped when I acknowledged how resilient we were, collectively.
Straddling past and future allegiances. The nature of interim leadership is to simultaneously embrace both continuity and change. Trust is earned over time, and the transition of allegiances is especially difficult with the loss of a favorite dean.
It helped me during the transition to maintain the perspective of an outside observer. I didn't take anything personally — subtle resentment that I was in the dean's office, that I had cleaned his office too quickly, that I had intervened to handle some personnel issues. Even with an interim dean, the school needed decisions made; standing still was not an option. Testing of the new person seemed like an acceptable and predictable part of the dance, and the key for me was to not personalize any of it.
The thorniest set of actions during my interim role involved several personnel issues that had arisen before the dean died. With full awareness of the potential backlash, I acted in what I believed were the best interests of the school. My role as associate dean had been that of a supportive caretaker and understanding presence. But as acting dean, I was making decisions and having my own impact. Some people questioned my timing — after all, we were grieving. But I believe that doing the right thing comes with consequences, including criticism.
Those issues seem resolved now, and people will carry an image of either my leadership strength or my flawed tactics and timing. I've learned that that, too, is out of my hands.
Deciding to apply. Putting myself forward as a candidate for the permanent job was a difficult decision. For me there were three central questions: Could I balance the duties of the position with the other parts of my life? Was this my life's work? And, knowing the program from the inside, was I the right leader for our future? Everyone I spoke with encouraged me to apply, but you never hear from your detractors. I had to live with those questions for months.
To be in the interim dean's job while I was deciding was simultaneously helpful and distracting. It wasn't until I got to a point of joyfulness about stepping forward that I began to shape my letter of application. And ultimately, I won the job.
Dean Misener's death tested our mettle like nothing I could have imagined. And I hope not to be tested in that way again. But the experience has inspired me to create a team and develop a program that can thrive without me if I should leave suddenly. I also work hard to keep my office clean, just in case.
