Taking Care to Take Care: Rest, Resilience, and Community in Residence Life [Webinar Recording]

Abstract

In Residence Life, leading with care starts by taking care of ourselves and our teams. This session offers practical ways to build resilience, strengthen a culture of mattering, and support well-being within professional staff communities. Join us to reflect, recharge, and explore how intentional care can sustain both you and the students you serve.

Outcomes

• Recognize the importance of personal well-being in sustaining effective leadership and student support.
• Identify strategies to foster a culture of mattering, community, and recognition within professional and student staff teams.
• Apply a “care chain” model — self-care, team care, and student care — to guide decisions and practices in residence life.

Presenters

• Crystal Lay, PhD (she/her), Senior Director of Student Housing and Residence Life at CSU Monterey Bay

Date Of Recording: 10/29/25

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Watch the Video:

Links and References:

Transcript:

Amanda Knerr:
Good afternoon, everyone. We are going to go ahead and get started. Welcome to today’s Roompact webinar. We’re so glad you could join us today. My name is Amanda Knerr and I’ll be the host for today’s session. Before we get started, I want to do just a few quick housekeeping items.
First of all, today’s session is being recorded and the recording will be available on the Roompact website within just the next few days. All participants are currently muted and we’re doing that to help background noise. So if you could please just double-check and make sure you stay muted during the session unless you’re asking a question, that would be fabulous. If you experience any technical difficulties, please use the chat to let us know and we’ll do our best to assist you with the technical difficulty. Throughout the session, feel free to submit your questions or comments in the chat. I’ll be actively monitoring it and we’ll make sure our presenter has time to address your questions during or after the presentation.
I’m excited to introduce today’s featured speaker, Crystal Lay. Crystal will be leading today’s session entitled, Taking Care to Take Care, Rest, Resilience and Community and Residence Life. In this session, we’ll be discussing practical ways to build resilience, strengthen a culture of mattering and support well-being within professional staff communities. We hope that you’ll use today’s session to reflect, to recharge, and to explore how intentional care can sustain both you and the students you serve. Crystal, thank you for joining us and sharing your expertise with the Roompact community. The floor is yours.

Crystal Lay:
Thank you so much, Amanda and to Roompact. Hello, everyone. Thank you for being here. I want to start off by taking a moment and having you in the chat respond to this idea of taking care to take care. What does that mean to you? So take a moment, hop in the chat. When you hear taking care to take care, what comes up for you?
Okay, thank you. Working to be your best self so you can be your best for others. Securing your air mask before trying to help others. Okay, thank you. So taking care for me, I think about the word intention. I think about being thoughtful, mindful, not rushing. There’s also this imagery that comes to mind of fragility. Handle with care. And so taking care to take care for me as a leader and in the work that we do in Residence life is really slowing down and being intentional to make sure that folks have what they need and you have what you need to be successful. So I want to talk about where we’re going to go today and thanks folks, keep putting stuff in the chat.
So where we’re going to go today in our agenda, my goal for us is to do a couple of activities. So we’re going to do a chat waterfall. We’re going to do some important stats and definitions. We’re going to get into self-care, teen care, student care, and then this idea that I call the care chain or care link, and then we will close out our time together. So it is my hope that three things will happen by the end of our time. So our learning outcomes. First, that you’ll be able to recognize the importance of personal well-being and sustaining effective leadership and student support. Second, that you will be able to identify strategies to foster a culture of mattering community and recognition within professional and student staff teams. And finally, you’ll be able to apply a care chain model for self-care, teen care and student care to guide decisions and practices in residence life. I’m really, really excited for our time today and I hope that you’re able to do these things again by the end of our time.
So we’re going to transition now into what I call a chat waterfall. So the chat waterfall, if we can go to our next slide, is this idea that there’s a prompt, and when you respond to the prompt, the presenter, the facilitator will say 3, 2, 1, and everyone will hit enter at the same time. And so there’s this cascade of responses that I think is pretty cool. So we’re going to try it. So I want you to take a moment and think about the prompt that you have here. So in one word, what do you need more of this week? So I’ve provided some examples. Rest, laughter, clarity, connection, joy. So take a minute, think about that, and then I’ll say 3, 2, 1, and then we’re all going to hit enter at the same time and you can keep going. But again, the prompt is in one word, what do you need more of this week? Is it rest, laughter, clarity, connection, joy? Et cetera. Okay, 3, 2, 1, enter.
Okay, you can keep going if there’s more. I know I said one thing, but you can do two or three. Okay. So I want everyone to look in the chat box and see what’s coming up for folks. What commonalities are there? I’m seeing time, joy, rest, appreciation. I see purpose. My hope in us putting this into the chat is that you can get some sense of where folks are as we’re in community together. What do folks need more of as you think about this week? It’s Wednesday. We’re halfway through the week. Okay, so we’re going to go to our next slide and we’re going to talk about this idea of resilience, and then we’re going to talk about psychological wellbeing and we’re going to talk about workplace burnout. I was intentional in putting these three slides after this question, because in order for us to think about what we need more of, we need to really be in the mindset of what do we talk about in residence life when it comes to wellbeing, when it talks about our success, when it talks about our ability to show up and do our best work.
And these are three terms that I think we talk about a lot. We talk about resilience, we talk about wellbeing, and again, we talk about burnout. Can anyone relate to feeling a little burnt out? We’re in October. So let’s talk about resilience. Resilience in the workplace is the ability to handle adversity, bounce back and cope with the daily pressures and stressors that come with the job. And we know in our work we have a lot of that. Being resilient also includes not taking things personally, being self-aware, looking for opportunities, never giving up on yourself, and possessing the ability to reason, preparing for a range of situations, continuing to learn and grow and embracing change. And I put our sources here where I pull those from.
Next, we’re going to talk about psychological wellbeing. Sometimes you may hear that as psychological safety. I like the framing of wellbeing. So we’ll talk about what that is now. So here’s some stats that comes from the American Psychological Association. They did the first ever work in America survey in tandem with the Surgeon General, and they said that 92% of workers said it is very or somewhat important to them to work at an organization that values their emotional and psychological wellbeing. So conditions that are conducive to me feeling well, I can show up. People care about me in my workplace. 92% of folks said that was important.
92% said it’s important for them to work for an organization that provides support for employee mental health. Extra noises in my office, so sorry. 95% said it was important for them to feel respected at work. And 95% said it was important for them to work in an organization that respects boundaries between work and non-work time. Now, this last one, we work in residence life and that can be a little blurry because sometimes our jobs, we don’t typically have 9:00 to 5:00 jobs. We’re getting two A.M. phone calls, text messages. There’s many different things that are taking place. So as you look at these stats here, can you put into the chat if these things resonate with you? Do you feel like you have these things?
So I want to work in a place that values my emotional and psychological wellbeing, that supports my mental health, where I feel respected and that there’s boundaries between my work and non-work time. Now, how many folks feel like, and you can do a reaction, but how many folks feel like, “Yep, that’s where I’m at”? And that can also be personal reflection. I work in a place where these things happen for me as a human or it’s encouraged. Okay. So our next topic we’re going to get into is workplace burnout and stress. Workplace stress is at a concerning level. It’s from the same survey from the American Psychological Association. Again, the survey was in 2023, so post-COVID.
So it remains at a concerning level. 77% of workers reported feeling work-related stress in the last month. Further, 57% indicated experiencing negative impacts because of work-related stress that are sometimes associated with workplace burnout. So if any of these resonate with you, and I’ll read them aloud, you can put yes. These numbers are staggering, right? Like 77% experience this. So if you’ve experienced emotional exhaustion, you didn’t feel motivated to do your very best, you wanted to just keep to yourself, I’m going to close my door, turn my noise machine on, pretend like I’m in a meeting or I’m just going to put my head down and not speak, I just need time alone. A desire to quit. I can’t do this anymore. Lower productivity. There’s a days where you’re like, yes, I’m operating at 90% or I’m at 40% and that’s all I can give. The irritability or anger with coworkers or our students or staff or teams. And then feelings of being ineffective. I don’t know if I’m good at this anymore or I’m replaceable. I didn’t do that well, so a lack of confidence. Someone said I’m calling you out.
So here’s the thing. I think all of us can probably admit to or name that we may have felt this and that is definitely concerning. So when we talk about these three ideas, again, ideas of resilience, psychological wellbeing, and burnout, what I want to offer up to you all is that this is not an individual thing. We cannot put it on ourselves or an individual to say, if you’re more resilient, if you were more psychologically well, you wouldn’t experience burnout. We can’t do that, because we’re a part of systems and departments, and sometimes leadership spaces that may not allow us to do our best work. And so, I want to offer up the ability for you to forgive yourself if you ever felt like I’m not doing a good job as an employee, because it is a partnership. You are going to be able to be resilient in places that allow for resilience, that allow you to be whole and do your best work.
You are going to feel psychologically safe in places that allow for you to feel psychologically safe. There are things happening that signal to you that this is a place where I can be who I am and show up. They are providing resources, the information that I need to do my work and feel really good. And I’m also in a place that knows how to say no. It’s clear. It doesn’t feel hard or chaotic, or doesn’t make me feel like I am a good employee if I work 60 to 80 hours a week. So there has to be onus on the individual employee and the system structure department leadership for folks to feel well.
I was reading a quote recently on LinkedIn and they said there has to be a balance between self-care and a system that says you are valued. If you are able to care for yourself and whatever that means for you, and you’re in a system that says you are valued, can you imagine the joy that you will feel and the productivity that will take place? So I’m going to allow folks to just… I’ve shared some pieces, but I want maybe two humans to come off of mute and kind of share your thoughts so far about what we’ve been talking about.
No pressure.
Okay, we will keep going. All right, so next where we… Did I hear a noise? Okay, so next, where we want to go, I want to get into this idea of personal well-being. We’re going to start with I first because we talked about self-care. So we’re going to spend some time there. So we’ll go to our next slide. We opened with the chat waterfall. Where do you want to do more or need to do more this week? I want to refine it. Which area of your well-being needs the most attention right now? Rest. I went to bed at 11:30 last night and I was up at 6:30. I have a lot of coffee, but rest. What does rest mean for you? It’s recommended. You’re getting what, seven to eight hours a night? And how often does that happen in our line of work? No judgment.
Boundaries. Boundaries is that fence that you put up to say what you’re going to allow in and what you’re going to keep out. So what boundaries have you set up in your workplace to say this can or cannot happen, as I protect my person and my humanity?
Connection. To be in community, to be around the folks who remind you of how amazing you are. And then joy, I used to tell my team members that more often than not, I want you to feel joy in your workplace. And then purpose.
So think about what you’re going to do over the next couple of days to give more attention to yourself in these areas. And how might you do that? What do you need to do to have more rest? I have a 6-year-old, and rhe last two nights, he has hopped into my bed. Now I can lock my door so I can get more rest. It’s a real thing. So what do you need to do? Okay. All right. So next we’re going to go down and I want to go into some actionable things that you can do, because I love to give examples. So we’ll go to our next slide.
So self-care, we’re getting into the leadership place, you want to lead from a place of balance. Now I go back and forth about this idea of balance, because we’re never truly balanced in anything. This is not just a residence life and housing idea. It’s integration. My family will always be more important than my work. It’s not going to balance. And then there’s some days where I might have to say, Hey, I have to be at work. I have to go do this thing. And so for me, I try to think about integration. How do I make sense of it, and think about what my priorities are?
So here’s some ideas for you. You want to set clear boundaries around work hours, email and on-call time. You want to create personal rituals of reset. Is it a morning walk, journaling, reflection or gratitude check-ins? Using your PTO, I had one job that when I left, I had 286 hours of PTO, unused time that the university gave me to care for myself and I did not use it. Don’t be me. Use your time away. Because guess what? The buildings will stand. If your team is trained effectively and have what they need, they will be okay while you go someplace else and care for yourself. And that can be a staycation or taking the day and going for a walk, going to the movies, reading a book, et cetera. And then how do you share what you do to maintain balance so you normalize rest?
So for yourself, we are all leaders. Folks are watching us. And that’s not to create discomfort, but we know there are folks looking up to us. And so what are we modeling? But more so importantly, what are we doing to care for ourselves? Okay, so here this is an opportunity again for anyone to come off mute. What are some additional things that you’re doing when you think about self-care and leading from a place of balance or integration?

Jordan:
Hello, Dr. Lay. It’s Jordan here. Nice to see you.

Crystal Lay:
Hello.

Jordan:
So one thing that I do is I don’t use my PTO for mental health days. I’m like, no, this is sick time. Maybe I’m not physically sick, but if I am tired and I’m not feeling well, I am feeling burnt out to get me back in a good mental state. And also if I’m not in a good mental state, I’m not in a good physical state. So I say no, I’m not taking a vacation day to care for my mental health. I’m taking medical sick time to do that, and my PTO then is used for I want to do something or I just don’t want to be in the office today. So those are some boundaries that I set with that.

Crystal Lay:
I love that. It’s really using sick leave for what it’s for. And you get to define that, right? It could be a mental health day, a wellness day. I am not operating at 100% and I need to recharge, to get back to a place where I feel like I can be competent and confident in the work that I’m doing. And then that PTO time, this is fun. I want to go on a vacation, I want to reconnect, I want to do some really cool things. So I think it’s really that clarity on what is the time for and using it appropriately is perfect. So thanks for sharing that, Jordan. Okay, so is there anyone else who wants to share something you are hoping to try or you have tried with regard to this? How do you model or work to model self-care for your team? Any thoughts there?
Laura?

Laura Larkins:
I just realized I had the thing on my computer muted too. Sorry. Hi, Dr. Crystal.

Crystal Lay:
Hello.

Laura Larkins:
So one of the things that I think that my staff do really well and that we are working on getting better with in terms of boundaries, so that way they can disconnect after work, deactivating notifications from emails, deactivating notifications. We have something called Ring Central so you can schedule specific times when your phone will ring for work hours, so making sure that that’s there. And then boundaries within our group messages and stuff. One of the things that we’ve been really, really good about is when the hall directors are out sending out a communication to all our staff that this person is out, please do not call them, please do not text them. Call this designated hall director. So that clear boundaries has been really, really beneficial in I think some of our working environment.

Crystal Lay:
I love that. Thank you for sharing, Laura. Yeah, I will say don’t call, don’t write. We have an on-call system. We have systems in place or we should have systems in place that allow folks to leave campus. Now, that can depend on position. My supervisor is like, “Hey, I’m out of the office, but if you need anything, let me know.” And I will not reach out to my supervisor unless it’s something catastrophic. I know this human needs to have this information so they’re not coming back to campus and a building disappeared. So I think it’s really with discretion, but I think it’s the how do you build in systems that allow folks to feel like I can have time away, I don’t have to be tethered. And then you protect folks, right? You’re like, this person is out, do not bother them. And here’s who you go to instead. I love that. Okay, we’re going to move forward and now we’re going to talk about team care.
Okay, so team care is really about building a culture of support and mattering. And then Jordan and Laura helped out with this. So here’s some ideas and then when I talked through this slide, I want to have someone come off mute as well and share some ideas too. So beginning staff meetings with a quick check-in round. Some folks don’t really enjoy this. And so if you have those folks on your team or you find that that’s you yourself really thinking about, I’m creating an opportunity for folks to just really name where they’re at, it’s a good pulse check. And it allows folks to check in with themselves and reset in a different way. And so what’s a check-in and how do you share the why of it, so you create space for folks to really be present in the space if they’re, when they’re able?
Celebrating small wins. And so also they’re invisible labor. There are a lot of things that we do in residence life, a lot of work we do that is not in our job description or we just do it because we care and we’re compassionate and we just want to make sure that folks feel like they matter. And so while crisis response and on-call is in our job description, you can’t quantify this is going to be a four-hour call or distinguished traumatic, and I’ve been holding it with me for years. So there’s invisible labor. And so how do you celebrate the wins? And also really name and acknowledge the ones that are impactful and have some additional pieces to work through.
Pairing staff for wellness partners to check in, or sometimes I’ve heard it called accountabilibuddies. A little hard to say. But these are folks that are paired together to check in with each other. And so I do have colleagues where we just check in, we might send a meme to each other. I like puns, how are you doing? How was your week? What’s on your plate? How can I support you? And it’s a really beautiful thing if you wanted to do that within your staff team. And then using Google forms or boards for thank-yous and shout-outs, I know, I think it’s kudo. There’s a kudos board too where people just put a bunch of stuff. I don’t know how to create one, but people have sent stuff to me. But whatever mechanism you have to really help people visualize if they’re able to see all the really cool things. Or auditory, what are some ways to make sure people feel and know that they do matter?
With regards to this idea of mattering, there are some theories I think about, and we’ll get more into this later, but there are theories like marginality and mattering. We talk a lot about belonging and connection and usually we’re talking about students. We want students to belong. When we talk about staff, we talk about retention. We got them here, we need to keep them here, but we really don’t flesh out often, what are the things that we can do? How do we know? And I heard someone talk about it as key people indicators. What are the things that we can do that show us that people feel like they matter and they feel like they’re supported? And so I invite you to think about for your team, how do you make sure that folks feel seen and valued and like they matter in the workspace?
So our next slide, I want to get into why people stay.
So here’s what I want to share with you. I found this on LinkedIn. I go there every day. I just always find some really cool infographic or a quote or something or a Harvard Business Review or Forbes, Indeed. Those are the websites I like to go to. Really think about employee and team culture. So this, why do folks stay? This came from an HR survey and it said these are the reasons why people stay in their jobs. These are good things. So if my workplace has these things, I am more likely to stay. I’m going to throw some stats at you really fast. I’m looking at my notes here.
So paid well. If you are paid well, you want to stay. And it says here, at $1 per hour pay increase, that can increase retention by 2.8%. Mentorship. With mentorship, staff turnover can drop by 49%. Can you imagine being a new human in an organization and having a more seasoned professional, like a built-in mentorship program, work with you and support you as you’re learning your role? Now, I have a mentor that I sought out and she’s wonderful, wonderful. But imagine having a built-in mentorship program in your department or in your division. 49% drop in turnover. I want to point out this one about appreciation, which is right in the middle here on the screen, there’s a woman holding a trophy. It says, a simple thank you can make 63% of employees less likely to leave. Isn’t that wild? If we say thank you to people, they might be less likely to leave.
And then value in the bottom right corner here on my screen, it says 40% feel isolated at work leading to low engagements and commitment. So when you think about team culture, isolation could also be physical. Where we put folks offices, who’s invited to meetings. We also have a culture of virtual meetings where I could potentially sit in my office all day alone and not see another human and just interact online. And so what are the physical things that could be contributed to isolation? What are the social things like?
“I invited Crystal three times to do karaoke with us on Thursday night as our team, and she never goes,” which would never happen. “I love karaoke, but Crystal never goes with us.” And then guess what? You stop inviting me. So that can be this out-group isolation that takes place as well. Okay, so what I want to do now, and put it this in the chat, please. When you look at this, which ones are taking place for you? Like, yes, I get this at my workplace, and this is one of the reasons why I stay.
For me and my job, I just started a new role and so far I feel appreciated. Like yes, I feel appreciated. I feel trusted, I feel empowered, I feel valued, paid well. I got to get that first paycheck first, but so far I think I negotiated well. But there are some reasons right off the right at the start where I feel like I want to stay here.
I’m seeing folks in the chat, if you want to scoot over to the chat. Folks are feeling challenged, healthy challenged. People want me to grow. And I hope that’s balance would also support it. I’m paid well, I’m involved, I’m trusted. Trust is so important in our work. If I feel like people trust me, I can lead. I’m trusted to do my job. That’s really powerful. Empowered, valued. And then peers. Your peers make you feel valued. Okay, this is good stuff, y’all. Thank you.
And then the counter to that, the opposite why people may leave could be the opposite. They’re not paid well, they don’t feel valued, they don’t feel trusted. Our field is not glitter and rainbows. And so really understanding as a leader, as you assess your team culture, whether that’s student, staff, mid-level. Where in your ability are you able to influence these things? What can you create so that more of your humans, your colleagues, stay?
Okay, let’s go into mattering. Now mattering, I think it’s making a comeback. I think Sloshburr’s research was in the late 80s or early 90s. She also does transition theory, which is one of my favorite theories to just acknowledge that change. We need to talk about change, there’s an impact. And how do we transition through different life changes, particularly as adults. But she talks about mattering and marginality. And so for me, this mattering goes along with recognition. So I want you in the chat to share a time, or you can write it down to yourself, or come off mute. We’re flexible. I’m flexible.
But I want you to share a time when someone at work made you feel seen, valued, or appreciated. Because in that theory of mattering and marginality, to not feel seen, valued and appreciated, it’s likened to feeling invisible. Can you imagine feeling invisible in the workplace? Here it talks about how mattering fuels care when we make people feel seen, valued, and needed, whether staff or students, we create the conditions for resilience, connection, and authentic leadership. Is there anyone that would be open to sharing a time when someone at work made you feel seen, valued, or appreciated?

Speaker 6:
So one time I had a student staff member come back to me and tell me that she felt sorry for taking advantage of me and my kindness and what I did for them, because she was also… That was my first year as a hall director and they realized I wasn’t but a couple years older than they were. And now she was supervising some college students or young adults, and she was like, “I understand now and I felt sorry for taking advantage of you and how much you did for us.” So that made me really feel good in my role.

Crystal Lay:
I love that, because it’s like the student had to experience it for themselves to realize all the work and effort you did, right? This appreciation. I made a phone call to my mom once I had kids like, “I’m so sorry.” But how wonderful that you had this moment of gratitude and appreciation for who you are as a human, and how you were trying to support this person in their work. So I love that. There’s also some really cool things popping up in the chat here. Someone shared their RAs, gave them snacks for bosses day. Staff, checking in with how you’re doing. How often do you ask your supervisor like, “Hey, how are you doing?” That care, it’s a supervisory relationship. It’s a community, it’s a partnership. And I will tell you that that makes me feel valued and appreciated when a team member says, “How are you?”
Wow. Oh my gosh, they care about me too. It’s not a one-way relationship. It shouldn’t be. And so checking in could be really, really powerful. Someone shared here that a coworker nominated them for an award that got campus recognition. That is huge. If you have significance in your top five, if you’re a strengths quest or strengths finder human, that is one of those things where it’s like, oh, I like folks to know what I’m doing. Not from this gold star perspective, but it’s literally this satisfaction of people noticed I’m doing good work. That can be really powerful and motivating. So the other thing with recognition too is trying to assess how you like to feel appreciated and recognized.
There’s a book… It’s not strength, it’s the love languages, but the workplace appreciation. I think it’s Gary Chapman, if you want to look up that resource. And it has an inventory, it tells you how you want to be appreciated at work, you can figure that out for yourself. You can also do that with your team members and it gives you a really cool way to say, oh, this person feels appreciated with a gift card, or this person feels appreciated with a note, or this person wants to be told publicly that you are awesome. So I would recommend that book as you’re assessing your own appreciation style at the workplace, but then also that of your team. And I am so happy folks were able to populate on this question in the chat. So thank you for your engagement.
All right, so we talked about self, we talked about team, and now we’re going to move and talk about students. So student care, this is extending compassion through structure. Now I call this compassionate accountability. I care about you enough as a human and my employee or my resident, my community member, that I am going to hold you accountable. Accountability can be hard, especially if you’re in a space of, “I really want them to like me and if I hold them accountable or if I get them in trouble, they won’t like me.” How many folks have been there at some point in your career? “I just want them to like me.” I think that can now resonate. Or there’s the, I don’t care if they like me, they’re going to respect me. Rawr, accountability. There has to be a balance. And so this idea of compassionate accountability or compassionate through structure builds out processes and systems that are transparent and really clear so folks know what to expect.
So student care. Integrate well-being check ins into student staff one-on-ones, not just task updates, pulling folks together for a meeting to just sit, and it could have been an email is not particularly a good use of time. We are very busy humans and yes, we should slow down, but really being mindful of how we slow down and what we’re slowing down for is really important. How do we train our student staff on active listening and referral skills while emphasizing boundaries and empathy? How many of us have had a student who stops by every day and that 15 minute check-in turns into four hours later and nothing was accomplished, or it turns into a counseling session, which we should not be doing even if that was our degree. We work in residence life and housing, we’re referral agents.
And so how do you balance? I want to provide support and care and appropriately send you over to the expert in this particular area. How can you do that and still be empathetic and care for yourself? Minimize our exposure to some of these incidents that can be a little bit traumatic or not within the scope of our role. Hosting community building events that censor belonging and rest, not just activity or performance. And so what’s a quiet night in? A reflective circle? Sunset outing where you go out and watch the sunset. I live by the ocean, so it’s very easy to do that for me.
So this idea of belonging and rest. There’s some folks who will do the silent disco where we’re all out in community. We have our three channels. Pick one you’re listening to and then you can connect around, okay, well what channel are you on? But it’s really being without the responsibility of I have to do all this thing or be performative. I can just be here. Or is it, we’re going to sit together and read and have coffee and we’re not talking and that’s okay? How do you normalize belonging and rest versus I have to go be performative?
And then this last one here is the chair, the care chair… Oh my gosh, I picked something that stumbles me. Oh my gosh. Here we are. Using the care chain lens in decisions, and I’ll show you what that is shortly. So are we asking things of students or staff that doesn’t align with well-being? Okay, I want you to think about that. When you’re sitting with your team, whether students or professional staff, are we asking things of them that does not align with well-being? You have to find well-being for your team and this culture of care. And so I’m sure there are lots of things we can think about in our work that maybe does not align with caring for the whole person or the human.
When I was an RA, the year 2000, I’m going to do it when I out myself, I remember there were a lot of things I was asked to do because we did not have the amount of resources we have now. There are things and conversations I had, nothing illegal, but probably not appropriate for 20-year-old crystal when now I would have that RA go to or refer that person, that human over to a different space or use resources differently. So that’s an assessment you can do as you think about your team, your department.
Or hey, you need to do 15 programs a semester and be a student and be on call. And so there’s some assessment you can do to figure out what’s truly needed to support our students and our staff. Okay, let’s move forward. Thank you so much. So here is this really… It’s not fancy, it’s just three circles, but it’s a chain and I made it on ChatGPT. I will own it. I even said, “ChatGPT, can you make this pretty?” And this is where we are, this chain that we have here. If you were playing along at home, we talked about self-care, teen care, student care, I wanted to give you all a visual because when you take care to take care, we sustain ourselves, our teams and our students.
Chains can be seen as bondage. This is not where we’re going. I want to think of this chain as connection, strength, a link. So this idea of all of these are together, and when they are done with intention and care, it can be very strong and powerful and resilient. So that’s the imagery I’m hoping to invoke for you here. We’ll go to our next slide. So if one link in the chain is neglected, the others weaken. You see where we’re going here? When all three are intentionally supported, you create a sustainable and caring ecosystem. So if you are caring for yourself, aware of what you need to be well and show up in the way that makes sense in a psychologically safe environment, an environment that allows you to be and build resilience, in an environment where you’re not burnt out, and then that’s for your team as well.
Is your team operating in a system, in a department with a supervisor, with a leader that is allowing for psychological well-being, their ability to be resilient, systems and structure and they don’t feel burnt out? And then again, we have our students. Systems, processes, barriers. Thank you Jordan, for coming. So systems, processes, barriers, what are we doing that might be weakening the link of this chain? Does that make sense where I’m going? Okay, thanks Laura for the nod. I appreciate it. Okay, we’ll go to our next slide.
So how do you apply the care chain? So here’s something I want you to think about for yourselves as we wind down on time. So you’re short staffed. Can anyone relate to that? You have a vacancy in your department right now or on your team. There’s student crises that are taking place there. Your student staff and or your entry level staff are burning out. How can you apply the care chain, self, team and student to make decisions this week? Where might it be weak? And then where do you celebrate where it’s strong? We’ll go to our next slide.
So putting it all together, here’s what I want you to think about. As you’re looking at situations as a leader, do I have the capacity to do this well? Team, how will this thing, this decision, this action, the space I’ve created this department, fill in your this, how will it affect my colleagues? And then finally, how will this impact the student experience? This is the formula to taking care to take care. This is the formula. Pausing to do this.
All right, we’ll go to our next slide. Thank you, Amanda. You’ve been so great. So here are some thoughts I want to leave you with. And then for the time we have left, I want to open it up to any questions or thoughts that folks have. Okay, so when we take care to take care, we model what it means to lead with heart. I always say this is hard work and it’s heart work. We care about humans. That’s why we do this work, right? The next one I have here on the bottom left. Take care to take care means leading with mindfulness, modeling balance or integration, and recognizing that care done well starts within and radiates outward.
And then the graphic here says, leaders who have heart will always have the hearts of those they lead. I think that’s beautiful. So how are you taking care of yourself, your heart, so that way you can do this with your team and then you can do that with your students? Because there is a trickle down. So that’s what I have for you all today. I want to transition into time for anyone to ask any questions or share any comments about what we talked about. I do hope that this was helpful. Thank you, all. Comments, questions, take aways.

Laura Larkins:
I did want to say I always appreciate you giving presentations Dr. crystal, you are wonderful. I did pop the link in there for the languages of appreciation. I do try to do that with my staff every semester. They are wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for all the work.

Crystal Lay:
Thank you. And thanks for putting that link in there. I was tongue-tied. I was like, what is it called? Thank you, Laura, for being here.
All right, I will turn it back to you, Amanda.

Amanda Knerr:
Did I get the right slide up that people wanted?

Crystal Lay:
Oh, is it the questions or the model? Or go back one, please. Yep. The formula. Yes.

Amanda Knerr:
Yeah. Did we get it? Excellent. I have too many screens up on my thing. I can see. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Awesome. Well, I want to thank each of you today for coming to the webinar, and I want to again thank Crystal Lay for being willing to spend an hour with us, giving us some great information. As a reminder, the session has been recorded and it will be up on the website here in the next few days. And I would also encourage you to look back. We will be doing webinars at least once a month, and they’re all free of charge for Roompact customers. So there is one scheduled for November. Take a look at it and we hope to see you back here next month. Thank you and have a great day.