It’s no big secret: get more than a few people together to meet, to make a decision, to collaborate on something, and merriment ensues. Well, maybe not merriment, but frustration, anger, and resignation that you’d rather poke yourself in the eye with a pencil than sit through another meeting with “whiney Wanda,” “grumpy Goddard,” “Marsha the martyr,” and “I’ve-published-more-than-you’ll-ever-read Ichabod.”
OK, I’m prone to hyperbole. That hyperbole, however, doesn’t make the problem of navigating personalities in departmental meetings any less important.
Navigating the personalities within an academic department, school, or university is difficult to do, especially for first-year faculty members (tenure-track or contingent). These individuals do not know the histories in a department, the personalities of department members, the department-specific unwritten meeting policies, or the long-buried issues that could cause difficult personalities to emerge. In graduate school, we don’t take classes about how to navigate these meetings and personalities. We (hopefully) learn on the job or we have mentors to help guide our way. That’s what this post aims to do, help newer faculty learn how to handle the problems that can arise in group meetings.
Here at ProfHacker, we strive to create a place where we can address these sensitive concerns in higher education. We provide our perspective, and then we poll you, the readers, about your responses and potential solutions. We don’t assume that we always have the answers. We do ask that you observe a caveat or two:
- ProfHacker is not a place to complain about our new colleagues not knowing what we know. Instead, we want to focus on what we can do, positively and professionally, to handle the sometimes-difficult situations we can have with each other.
- Please don’t focus solely on the examples provided in this post. They are simply examples. I could have come up with others. The examples are only important in that these personality types are common in groups of individuals.
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A new faculty member joins your department. Your task, as an experienced and sensitive long-term faculty member is to help this person navigate the murky waters of your department’s meetings. How do you mentor this person in the “art of meetings” in your school?
How to you help your new colleague handle
- The committee member who never stops talking but rarely has anything useful to add to conversations…
- The committee member who cries in meetings if her opinions are in the least way challenged…
- The committee member who remembers that, “we tried that 30 years ago, and [new initiative] didn’t work"…
- The committee member who cannot see any limitations on initiatives…
- The committee member who cannot see anything but limitations on initiatives…
- The committee member who overtly (or covertly) reminds everyone how she/he is smarter/more accomplished than others in the room…
- The committee member who has been in the department a short time and who continually compares the current university to her/his graduate institution, “When I was at XYZ University, we did it this way"…
- The committee member who sees potential for discriminatory behavior (gender, sexual orientation, class, race, religion [and others]) in department decisions…
- The committee member who is a bully …
- And there are many, many others …
How about you? You know how to handle these difficult personalities? How do you help your new colleague (or do you)? Please leave your suggestions and comments below.
[Image by Flickr user Stephanie Richard and used under the Creative Commons license.]