Uncategorized

What stories are you telling these days? What stories are your campus leaders telling? When I entered the phrase “storytelling as leadership” into the Google search bar, it told me there were more than 71 million pages to review. In other words, the idea that leaders need to be able to tell a compelling story is…

It’s almost too much to take in right now, isn’t it? The amount of change and disruption we’re facing at home, in our organizations, and in the broader world is overwhelming. And for many of us one way to cope is to focus on the immediate, on what’s right in front of us. We ask…

Many years ago, one of my colleagues who served our campus as the Equal Employment Opportunity officer and who had spent her career in the world of Human Resources, told me, “I used to think there were only two things we didn’t have to tell people about their jobs – you don’t sleep on the…

Last week in Inside Higher Education, Matt Reed, who writes a column called “Confessions of a Community College Dean” wrote a column about risk and reward that raises an important question for which I have no answer.* It’s still one worth grappling with. A former student came to him for help asking to change some…

The first time I did the Myers-Briggs test, I was lucky enough to be part of a workshop led by a very good facilitator. For each element measured by the test, the facilitator divided us into several small groups based on our test scores and gave us question to discuss. For one question, he asked…

Organizational values. Most organizations have official statements of values, printed in documents and on websites, sometimes posted on walls. Sometimes we even talk about them or perhaps it’s more accurate to say we pay them lip-service. However, in my experience, clarity about our organizational values is not only important, it’s practical. Matt Reed, who writes…

Higher education, college campuses, are chock full of rituals. Commencement is the flashiest one, though welcome convocations and orientations are close seconds. But there are other rituals and markers. For me the day the RAs start training is the beginning of the new academic year. For others it may be the beginning of sorority recruitment or…

And suddenly it’s mid-May and we are reaching the end of one of the most amazing academic years of our lifetimes.  Throughout my career, I was privileged to attend many of the year-end festivities for student organizations, student staff awards programs, appreciation receptions and other events designed to recognize and celebrate all the great work completed…