University Business - September 2011 - (Page 20)

VIEWPOINT Creating a Community of Leadership Lessons learned from managing an academic leadership development program By Mary Y. Lee and Regina Corrao S UNIVERSITIES PUSH TO support interdisciplinary education and research initiatives, a crucial ingredient is faculty collaboration across disciplinary and departmental lines. True collaboration—where faculty grasp the institutional “greater whole” that clearly values individual faculty contributions yet still transcends the sum of the faculty “parts”—is diﬃcult to achieve. An academic leadership development (ALD) program, ﬁne-tuned by Tufts University (Mass.) over the last three years, is working toward that goal. ALD helps faculty from every corner of the university become more eﬀective leaders and team members within the new “matrix” organizational structures required for successful interdisciplinary initiatives. In training more than 100 department chairs, center and research directors, and associate deans from all of Tufts’ schools and three campuses, as well as participants from another university, we’ve learned some valuable and sometimes surprising lessons. EFFECTIVE PARTNERS Leveraging existing human resources in partnership with academic leadership to serve faculty needs is not just ﬁscally smart, it’s eﬀective. Although faculty and staﬀ must work together on a daily basis, HR and academic leaders typically work in parallel. HR handles staﬀ, and the provost’s oﬃce handles faculty issues. Certain leadership aspects are unique to each group. Yet the two realms have much more in common than one might think. Shared leadership challenges include managing conﬂicts and underperformers, communicating eﬀectively, managing change, and mentoring and coaching eﬀectively. Since most of these areas were being well addressed in Tufts’ 20 | September 2011 A Shared challenges include mentoring and coaching effectively. longstanding HR training program for staﬀ managers and administrative leaders, it made sense to adopt much of the staﬀ program framework, augmenting it with faculty-speciﬁc scenarios and content. As a result, faculty and administrative leadership now share a common language, and the HR and provost partnership can more eﬀectively support the shared needs of a diverse university community. Faculty want to move quickly beyond leadership theory to solve immediate problems. Common initial reservations of faculty are that leadership training will be “too theoretical,” “too touchy-feely”—a waste of time. Properly structured training can dissolve those concerns. We developed scenarios using issues raised repeatedly by faculty leaders, including highly competent, veteran chairs. Exercises use the scenarios to focus on common challenges experienced by both new and veteran academic leaders, regardless of discipline or type of faculty (e.g., tenured, clinical, research, etc.). In a variety of formats—peer coaching, small and large group discussions—faculty share current real-life problems and solutions relevant to their roles as academic leaders. At the end of each session, each faculty participant must review his or her personal action plan, select a lesson learned, and commit to practicing a skill before the next session. Participants consistently note that sessions are highly relevant. ey “feel like real life”—because they are! Faculty need time and opportunities to practice leadership skills and get feedback. It may be tempting to cram training into an intensive one- or two-day workshop, but such an approach runs counter to what we know about how the human brain learns. Shorter, more frequent sessions provide a respite from hectic schedules, enabling faculty to reﬂect on issues with colleagues with similar experiences. At Tufts, stretching ﬁve half-day sessions over several weeks allows participants to practice new skills between sessions, applying those skills to issues they’re grappling with and then bringing the results back to the next session—what worked, what didn’t, and why. Using the iterative process of “learn, practice, reﬂect, get feedback, reﬁne, repeat,” participants become much more self-aware, and can analyze and manage diﬃcult faculty and staﬀ situations more productively. “Managing up” is just as critical as managing in every other direction. “Matrix” organizational structures are becoming increasingly common in academia. But, many faculty have not been exposed to the idea of “managing up”—being able to work eﬀectively with the president, provost, operational vice presidents, and academic and administrative deans. We’ve found faculty are grateful to receive direct exposure to institutional leadership during training. Incorporating such discussions is essential to furthering critical understanding about how faculty and their units ﬁt into the institutional universitybusiness.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - September 2011

University Business - September 2011
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Financial Aid
Money Matters
Internet Technology
Shared Governance
Acknowledging Achievement
Looking Back
Spotlight on Procurement
EduComm 2011
End Note

University Business - September 2011