Once one becomes an
academic administrator, one of the most valuable skills one should cultivate is
the ability to repeat oneself, and still sound fresh and sincere.
Similar questions to a
similar audience result in similar answers. For instance, when I meet a donor
or an alum who asks how the school is doing, I have a ready answer
in my head — with key talking points, stats, and anecdotes. The content will
vary over time as the data shift, but basically I’m echoing myself. The same is
true of many internal conversations.
There are very few
critically urgent matters in the world of academia — besides obvious ones like
"building on fire" or an imminent deadline for a large grant
proposal. Most of the time — whether it is deciding on how to allocate funding,
making a hiring decision, negotiating appointments, or revising curricula — you
legitimately have weeks or months to deliberate.
Be wary of agreeing to
something, or refusing it, too quickly. When someone makes a request, expresses
a concern, or argues a case, you need time to collect more facts. That’s when
you pull out this phrase. "We have to
follow the OP’’ (operating procedures).
As it turns out,
following "the OP" on any campus is quite a challenge. At my
institutions, for example, we have at least 400 different operating rules, each
about two single-spaced pages long. We have some veteran administrators who are
like walking encyclopedias of these rules, but the rest of us aren’t. State
laws and codes, and the interpretations of them that might vary by campus,
further complicate matters.
Nevertheless — and I
cannot stress this enough — you must follow the rules as an academic leader,
even if nobody else does or wants to. The promotion-and-tenure process is a
case in point. Over the years, I have talked to hundreds of people who have
been denied tenure. I can’t say whether they deserved to earn tenure on merit
since I don’t have their files. But time after time, I am continually shocked
to discover how many departments, colleges, and universities fail to follow
their own prescribed steps and measures on promotion and tenure. Obviously, you
open yourself up to charges of incompetence, unfairness, and even illegality if
you don’t follow your own procedures to the letter.
So learn the OP (and
laws, codes, etc.) as well as you can, and force yourself to look up or ask
other authorities what you don’t know. And then let this phrase become your
mantra.
"Let me clarify
and confirm."
In my discipline of
communications, entire subfields are devoted to how humans transmit
information, attitudes, and opinions to one another. A lot of that research can
be summed up by the dictum every administrator should learn: The message you
intended to send is not necessarily the message received.
A dozen
extraordinarily bright people in a faculty meeting can discuss a topic for two
hours and each come away with different versions of what was said. Hence the
need for official minutes of group meetings. I have found that small meetings
are important, even hallway encounters, to make sure everyone understood what
transpired and what actions were agreed to be taken. And that’s when this
phrase comes in handy.
Typically, I try to
practice this principle in two steps:
· First, when a meeting
or encounter is coming to a close, I say something like, "So, wrapping up,
I will do X and you will do Y. Sound good to you?"
· Then I often send a
follow-up email: "Just to clarify: We covered the following points. And
just to confirm, I will do X and you will do Y." That not only makes sure
all parties are on the same page, it also provides a time/date stamp to confirm
(months or even years later) the commitments made that day.
"What is the
outcome you are seeking?"
Early in any
encounter, it is very important to make sure you completely understand what
someone wants to happen — whether it is getting tenure or a new desk for their
office.
A department chair
told me a story that nicely illustrates the importance of this phrase: A group
of faculty members came to see him seeking support for renovation of several
classrooms. They pointed to the department’s reserve fund as the
"obvious" place from which to pay for the improvements. The chair
appropriately said, "Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Let me
look into it and get back to you." After consulting other relevant
parties, the chair learned about an amount, specifically set aside
for upgrading classrooms and secured funds from it for his department’s
classrooms. However, when he met with the faculty group to convey the good
news, he found, to his astonishment, that they were only grudgingly pleased. In
fact, they seemed disgruntled that the chair had not financed the improvements
in the exact way that they had specified. (Lesson learned: The chair clearly
needed to talk with faculty members about how to use the department reserve
fund.)
Such a can of worms frustrates
many an administrator. People will not only have a goal in mind, they also will
be fixated on a pathway to that goal. They don’t have the eagle’s eye view you
have — such as, in the case above, protecting the department’s rainy day fund.
Some objectives cannot be achieved through full-frontal assault. Sometimes, by
taking a few more steps or even an indirect path, you can get to the same place
with less cost and fewer troubles. Your job as an academic leader is to solve
problems, but not necessarily in the way people want those problems solved.
It helps to lay the
groundwork by clarifying and confirming up front just what it is people are
asking of you. And be ready for resistance if things don’t proceed quite as
their advocates had envisioned.
"Thank you for
everyone’s contributions. Now it’s time to make a decision."
As a faculty member,
you have a lot of autonomy over your own work — you decide how you will teach
something and which research project you will pursue. But the moment you become
an administrator, almost every decision you make will require you to consult
multiple constituencies. No wonder that one of the negative descriptions of
academic culture is "paralysis by analysis." Because we must get so
much input from so many (bright) people, matters can drag on for years and
often end in a series of compromises that do not really constitute a true
decision at all, just a continuation in another form of the status quo.
Leaders, however, are
paid to lead. While acting unilaterally or pushing through an agenda against
intense opposition is pretty foolish in an academic environment, someone
eventually has to make a final decision — and on occasion that someone is you.
Here is where situational awareness, a sensitivity to the local culture of governance,
and other human-relations skills are vital.
Yet there comes a
moment when it’s time to stop talking and move forward. When I was a department
chair leading a meeting, for example, I felt that one of the indicators of that
moment was when everyone was largely repeating points they had already made. I
would then say, and usually find a preponderance of support, "Sounds like
it’s time for a vote."
Sometimes there won’t
be a vote — you will have to decide what to do on your own. The key is to
satisfy both yourself and the people involved (or at least a majority) that
there was a reasonable process of fact finding and deliberation leading up to
your decision.
One note of caution:
While in many cases, it will make sense for you to repeat one of these five
tried-and-true phrases, don’t be too rigid about it. At the end of the day,
flexibility married to consistency is what will allow you to survive and thrive
in academic administration.
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