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[skeptical]

I've recently been appointed chair in my department. I've interviewed several of my colleagues since my appointment; it came as no surprise to me to hear from colleagues that our department's big problem is a lack of trust of colleagues and, in general low morale. The previous chair's motto was "I'm not a detail person" and hence, details (like stopping senior faculty from bullying junior faculty) were overlooked.

Any ideas for boosting morale and building trust? My plan is to bring transparency to the process (and not make any "special deals") but what else?

Help

[diefluffykitty]

1. Faculty should feel that you have their backs in disputes with students and the administration. Tell them you will support them 100% so long as they are in the right.

2. Bullying is a cancer in any department. Make a public announcement that it will not be permitted. Then back it up. Talk to your dean and see what you are allowed to do to discipline bullies.

3. Do everything you can to shield your faculty from bureaucratic nonsense. Shift as much as you can to administrative assistants.

4. Develop a personal relationship with every member of your department. Tour the offices every week and ask people how it is going.

5. Be an advocate for your department. Brag about your faculty to the administration and anyone else who will listen. Be aggressive in asking for money and other goodies for your department.

6. Organize the department happy hour and make sure everyone feels welcome.

[sibyl]

Transparency is an excellent principle.

Involve the whole department in resolving problems.  If the dean says travel funds are going to be cut (and doesn't tell you it's a secret), ask the whole department to join you in figuring out how to allocate them.  Don't build the department schedule by yourself; get everyone to help you, so that everyone sees that everyone has some "good" classes and some "bad" ones.

Also, involve the whole department in celebrating good things.  If a senior or a faculty member publishes something or wins a prize -- even if it's not related to your department -- announce it with pride to everyone... maybe at that department happy hour (or pot luck, if that's more in keeping with the culture).

[cgfunmathguy]

Don't build the department schedule by yourself; get everyone to help you, so that everyone sees that everyone has some "good" classes and some "bad" ones.

I'll second everything said by Kitty and most of Sibyl's suggestions. However, be careful how you implement the quote above. Scheduling by a committee bigger than two is a recipe for disaster. What I do (and what has worked well for me) is to ask everyone for what they would like their schedules to be IN PRIORITY ORDER. I then try to write the schedule with everyone's wishes in mind. Rarely does this give a good first schedule because of room limitations, classes being needed at times no one wants to teach, etc. I then remove each faculty member's lowest priority constraint and try again. I continue in this manner until a workable schedule is written; I've never had to go beyond two constraints. I then give each person the draft of his/her individual schedule in a faculty meeting. If they want to compare, they may, but I don't help them do that.

[skeptical]

thank you for your good advice; I am sure my colleagues will appreciate it!

[sibyl]

Scheduling by a committee bigger than two is a recipe for disaster.

Much depends on the size of the department, and I should have said as much.  In the SLACs where I have worked, having everyone involved has been extraordinarily useful, because it means that people will stand up to colleagues who want to bully the most junior people into taking the lousiest courses, and everyone will be publicly committed to working together to achieve a usable resolution.  I can see that in large departments it might be easier for a single person to adjudicate twenty or more individual requests and share the "pain" equitably.

And really, any of these ideas come with the same caveats.  There may be good and sound reasons in your culture that any of them may not work; take them as the sparks of ideas. 

[cgfunmathguy]

Scheduling by a committee bigger than two is a recipe for disaster.

Much depends on the size of the department, and I should have said as much.  In the SLACs where I have worked, having everyone involved has been extraordinarily useful, because it means that people will stand up to colleagues who want to bully the most junior people into taking the lousiest courses, and everyone will be publicly committed to working together to achieve a usable resolution.  I can see that in large departments it might be easier for a single person to adjudicate twenty or more individual requests and share the "pain" equitably.

And really, any of these ideas come with the same caveats.  There may be good and sound reasons in your culture that any of them may not work; take them as the sparks of ideas. 

Very true. FWIW, my department had ten (including me) FT faculty; in fall, that number drops to eight. Unfortunately, I don't think I could everyone to agree on a basic schedule of 55 sections for the semester, even if failure meant death to all of us. So, I take input and write a schedule.

[anthroid]

I agree with almost everything already discussed, except for one thing:

You must always, always, always take care of your administrative assistants if they are any good.  Do NOT shovel unpleasant things in their direction.  Look after them, treasure them, and make sure that they are happy.  If your AAs are happy, you will be a much better chair.  Plus you'll never have to learn Banner.

[cgfunmathguy]

I agree with almost everything already discussed, except for one thing:

You must always, always, always take care of your administrative assistants if they are any good.  Do NOT shovel unpleasant things in their direction.  Look after them, treasure them, and make sure that they are happy.  If your AAs are happy, you will be a much better chair.  Plus you'll never have to learn Banner.

Very, very true.

[science_expat]

You must always, always, always take care of your administrative assistants if they are any good.  Do NOT shovel unpleasant things in their direction.  Look after them, treasure them, and make sure that they are happy.  If your AAs are happy, you will be a much better chair. 

Absolutely!

Plus you'll never have to learn Banner.

Which is a goal in itself!

[much_metta]

1. Faculty should feel that you have their backs in disputes with students and the administration. Tell them you will support them 100% so long as they are in the right.

Make sure you know if your admins have your back, because if they don't, if you are at a "Customer Service U," then sticking up for faculty will rarely get you anywhere.  Faculty will think you are completely powerless (which makes it harder and harder to do anything about those things you might be able to control, like bullying) and the admins will look to get rid of you or make your life a living hell for "creating problems" that they think "they shouldn't have to deal with." 

If your faculty say they need a course capped at 20 and your dean says "that way of teaching is outdated" and raises it to 40 or 80 over faculty objections and complaints, can you get the dean to back down and restore the cap?  If you can't (and you probably can't if you were to have a dean like that), make sure your faculty know before they even turn in their schedules that something like that could happen and there's nothing you could do about it.  Universities vary widely in the distribution of power and what "shared governance" means.  At some, chairs can actually protect faculty from abusive deans and other admincritters.  At others, they are victims, too.  Make sure you know where your institution falls on the continuum before you wade into too many battles you can't win.  A chair who is not taken seriously by upper admins will rarely be effective in advocating for faculty, and faculty won't "trust" you if you can't ever do anything to help them...

[skeptical]

More good points. I've already taken each AA out to lunch and asked for advice about doing a good job. I'm doing the same with each colleague. So far, a lot of useful advice (especially about what NOT to do).

[helpful]

Don't forget that there is power in numbers. Make friends with other chairs and see how you can work together for the good of the university and all your departments together.

[nomozob]

Just finished my stint, and have been thinking about just this.

1.  Under-promise and over-deliver.  Be cautious in what you say and take your promises seriously.  Apologize sincerely when circumstances beyond your control cause you to fall short.  If the circumstances aren't beyond your control (post hoc regret), weigh carefully the costs of reneging.  There's a lot of value in being the person people believe.

2.  It's easy to get bogged down in people's weaknesses.  Be sure to identify each person's strengths and help them find ways to use those strengths in ways that benefit the department.  Appreciate your colleagues and make sure they know it.

3.  Robert Jackall wrote, in Moral Mazes, that managers have a tendency to pull credit up and shove blame down.  Do the opposite:  shove credit down and absorb the blame.  It does wonders for building morale and loyalty.

4.  As others said, be kind to your administrative assistant.  Believe me, you can't do this job well without his or her support.

5.  My take home point from "The College Administrator's Survival Guide:"  Learn (when) to say three things -- (1) what action would you like me take?, (2) I'll look into that and get back to you, and (3) you'll do what you need to do.  Invaluable phrases.

6.  Understand your department's role in the larger institution, and convey decrees from on high in the context of that role.  Central admin is sometimes crazy, but often they just have a different view of the world than one gets in a single department.

7.  Make new friends: with other chairs, with deanlets and assistant provosts, with the dean of students, with the university attorney and affirmative action.  They can help you do your job better.  Save email from these folks, if it contains advice, direction or financial commitments.

8.  Don't avoid hard conversations.  Some things have to be said, and as chair it is your job to say them.  Putting your head in the sand doesn't make problems go away.  And when others see you do this, they lose respect for you.  (You can practice these hard conversations with your new friends -- see #7.)

9.  Deliver bad news in person (or at least by phone), then follow up/confirm with an email.  Don't avoid conflict by using email to deliver bad news.  It will make things worse.

The rewards of being chair can be great.  In the midst of the inevitable frustrations, remember that you are helping your colleagues do their work even better.

[thundering_m]

First of all, kudos and sympathies DieFluffyKittyMeister.

A small thing to consider: Respect and foster the working relationships between others. While an open door is a good thing, you must be careful not to become the individual  everyone looks to for solutions. You provide strategies.

My bet is that the morale varies widely according to power.  Because bullies are by nature cowardly and merely performing for some appreciative audience, it is very important to make it self-evident to the audience that it's in their best interests to nurture junior faculty to tenure rather than express their own frustration through intimidation. It helps if there is some data such as quick turnover or low tenure rates. Depending on your program, there may be ethical issues they are teaching their students and therefore it is reasonable to point out the hypocrisy. In a general if-the-shoe-fits-wear-it sort of way.

Any bully is fearful of losing something and has probably no hope of gaining anything. So you have little extrinsic motivation to work with. When they see their appreciative audience eroding. The morale of the people in the middle is your starting place. If they see your interest in their supportive behaviors, you can leverage their need. 

If anyone can pull this off DFK, surely you.