Where’s the Playbook? A Love Letter to Those Just Getting Started in Higher Education

“I sit in my office thinking to myself (rather frequently), “No one taught me what to do in this moment.”, “No one prepared me for sharing the news I am about to deliver to a student.”, “No one explained to me that there would be enduring problems that humanity has yet to solve and for which my students will look at me longingly to try to help them understand.”

I left graduate school a number of years ago feeling hopeful about the impact I could have, clear about the goals and purpose of higher education, and most importantly, prepared for the world of work I was entering into in higher education.  I was confident…maybe a little too confident!  

23 years into my career, I find myself still having moments of incredible impact and hopefulness…in fact, this year, I witnessed 18-22 year olds on a small, liberal arts campus with both an incredibly large Jewish population and budding Middle Eastern, Palestinian, and Muslim populations, wrap their minds and hearts around one of the greatest world challenges they have known in their lifetimes, in ways that adults…my peers, their parents and world leaders have not been able to do in productive ways.  

I also remain clear about the goals and purpose of higher education…albeit, after more than two decades, I recognize the rose-colored glasses I once wore.  As a senior executive, I have seen the real challenges of balancing the unbridled pursuit of knowledge with a decades-old business operating model that is in need of deep repair.  I see the stressful tensions that tenure, academic freedom, student health and safety, an enrollment cliff, a pandemic’s aftermath, a social justice reckoning, and a demand from the labor market for stronger student outcomes all have on the very existence and success of our institutions.  But our purpose is still clear amidst those challenges - educate the future leaders of our world, teach them to think critically, care deeply, use technology wisely, and consider the condition of the human experience and how they might leave the world a bit better than they found it.  It remains a noble purpose.

And yet…

I sit in my office thinking to myself rather frequently, “No one taught me what to do in this moment.”, “No one prepared me for sharing the news I am about to deliver to a student.”, “No one explained to me that there would be enduring problems that humanity has yet to solve and for which my students will look at me longingly to try to help them understand.”

*Note - Special shoutout to the University of Georgia CSAA program - to be clear, I attended a darn good graduate program!! :-)

The world is different.  People are different. Students are different.  Technology is different.  Our news cycle is shorter, our world is more connected. The natural disasters, a polarizing election cycle, or the effects of a war-torn region reverberate closer to home than ever before.  People are stressed…so stressed…and so traumatized.  They are begging to slow down in a world that is speeding up. They want family time, and then feel the social pressure to schedule their family’s every minute with activities and events. People are looking to AI, not just to help build the next best medical technology, but to write their own personal thank you notes to a friend or colleague.  People’s mental health suffers from social anxiety, personal comparison, and FOMO, yet we cannot possibly turn off the social media that is perpetuating it because it is more of a life line than our own human conversations at times.  Our collective grief for the marginalized, the oppressed, and the mistreated is overwhelming and we are stymied by rolled back policies, an erasure or twisting of historical facts, and a banning of the very books that were specifically designed to force us to react, to teach us empathy, to help us question the ethics of human atrocity, or to just open our hearts and perspectives.  

So what are we as leaders to do in a broken world to guide people who are burned out, tired, stressed, and feeling isolated and alone.  What are we to do as leaders to keep laser focused on a mission of education while the pressures and the ethics and the impossibilities of enrollment cliffs, massive budget shortfalls, skyrocketing student debt, falling faculty and staff morale, declining employee and student health continue to mount.  What are we to do as leaders when the very task of leading ourselves and others and massive, long-standing institutions seems like a complete impossibility?

In a feeble attempt to answer some of these questions, I reflected on what my career in higher education has taught me and I wrote my younger, eager, wide-eyed self this letter about leadership.

Dear Allison (yes, you - the one wearing the very rose-colored glasses!), 

You are about to embark on an incredible professional journey.  You will work long hours, get paid peanuts for quite a few years, and even with your degrees hanging on the wall, you are going to push a lot of paper, unfold and refold a lot of chairs, clean up a ton of pizza boxes, and probably many other things you thought would not be part of your “job”.  You will also have moments where you are the one person someone will trust with their deepest challenge or their greatest insecurity. You will stare students in the face following many, many human atrocities and injustices, and you will sit alongside students at protests, rallies, memorial services, and you will not have the answer as to “why” that they will be seeking from you so badly?  You will one day sit in an executive seat and have to consider cutting staff positions to meet budget challenges or you will sit in that same seat and need to decide whether to increase students’ cost of attendance or forgo critical health services that will better ensure the well-being of students.  These and countless other moments of complexity, challenge, and heartache will happen.  

You MUST lean into your values.  In those moments when both sides argue they are right and refuse to see the humanity in the “others”, you must choose your values, not a side.  And you will need to keep choosing them over and over again as the temperature rises and people threaten to harm reputation, finances, and spew hatred toward those around you. At that moment, more than any other, you will need to sharpen and clarify your values over and over again, and keep leaning into them in everything you do. 

You MUST spend every day, starting today, deepening your own self-awareness. And when you think you know yourself pretty well, look deeper.  Ask yourself, “Where is my current reaction coming from?”, “Why am I  continuing to engage in that same unhealthy pattern of behavior that I know is not good for me?”  Be disciplined in considering and reconsidering your own identities and how they come to bear on every single decision you make, interaction you have, and fear that you hold.  Get comfortable.  This is you. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the origin story that led to this moment.  Embrace it all.  Learn from it all.  Don’t rely on it as a crutch, but let it be a truth-teller and a light along a path that can help guide your next steps and illuminate your truest potential.  

You MUST ask hard questions.  Not because you just want to trip people up or create a mess, but because that deep curiosity about how things work, how things connect, and what new things are possible are the only way we make progress.  Ask yourself, ask others, ask people in positions of power, ask those who hold different identities from you.  And then listen to their answers, their perspectives and their hopes and ideas.  Do not shy away from the hard truths that may come your way when you ask the questions.  Listen even deeper in those moments.  Allow the context and insights you gain to guide your next steps and your next question.

You MUST have compassion and hope.  You have not and will not walk in everyone’s shoes.  But you can listen to their reality, learn their histories and experiences.  You can say, “that sounds really hard or really lonely or really messed up.”  You can say, “I don’t know the answer and I am not in the position to fix it for you, but I do see you and I am listening to you, and I will consider your perspectives alongside my own.” You can show empathy for those who have caused significant harm because the human conditions in their world and yours helped create the very environment that allowed them to act harmfully or to think their personal motivations should take precedence over the needs of others.  You must remember that compassion does not mean excusing harmful behavior or feeling sympathy for bad actors.  It means showing compassion for the human experience around you…even when it is hard and takes astronomical emotional effort.  Empathy, grace and hope are in short supply in the world you will be “adulting” in.  Be the model of these things for others.

You MUST be willing to change, to adjust the sails, to pivot.  As you widen your perspectives, learn new context, hear other’s stories, you must be willing to act differently.  As much as you might want control and seek to have a plan for everything, the old saying by Robert Burns is true, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry…” When that happens, know that it is ok to need a minute to wallow or to be angry that your plan got disrupted. But then, you must be willing to move within the context of the moment to meet the needs of the community around you.

You MUST take risks to stand in your values and be vocal in your words and aligned in your actions when moments of justice arise, when ethical considerations become murky, and when the temptation for others to take a shortcut is real.  Safety is important and complacency is comfortable, but the leadership you are being called into is complex and requires your courage.  You are going to be asked to do things that will compromise your integrity - ask yourself every time, “Will I be able to sleep tonight if I take this action?”.  You will desperately want to hide away in your office when justice calls, because it rarely comes alone.  Instead it is coupled with a lack of understanding, assumptions about your motivations, fierce disagreement with your decisions, and with a feeling of being on an island all alone.  Even if your palms are sweating and your heart is pounding, those are the moments that will demonstrate your character and integrity…but they will be awful.  When that happens, try to minimize the noise, lean into your people, trust your gut, and for the love of God, limit your social media.  

Love,

Your older, slightly wiser, a little more jaded, but still radically hopeful SELF,

Allison

If I think back to my 24 year old self and imagine myself reading this letter, I know what my very confident self would have said.  “Ok, I can do that!” 

Easier said than done, my sweet, young friend.  Hypothetically we know, we will, and we can.  But, in reality, “Do we know?”, “Will we?”, “Can we?”

I hope so, because this world and our inextricably linked collective humanity is counting on it!