Abstract
Am I ready for the next step in my career? Should I stay or should I go? If you are asking yourself these questions, then this presentation may assist in discussing when and how to move on or create space within. Content will also include what a mid-level mindset means as you consider advancing in your career. We will explore how professionals navigate the decision to stay or go and what opportunities may be created to pour into team member and even create pathways for moving up without having to move out/onward.
Outcomes
- Participants will be prompted to consider and prepare for their next career step and what mid-level mindsets may benefit them.
- Participants will review insights into ways that organizations can pour into staff and create pathways for elevation to move up without moving out/on.
- Participants will gain information and perspective on the mid-level mindset and how to create opportunities for themselves and their organizations.
Presenters
- Kate Gannon-Cullinan (she/they), Executive Director for Housing & Residential Life, Texas State University
Date Of Recording: Friday, January 23
Watch the Video:
Links and References:
Roompact produces a monthly series of free webinars on residence life practice. Live webinars are exclusive to Roompact schools, but recordings of most webinars are made publicly available for the benefit of all.
Transcript:
Amanda Knerr:
All right. Good afternoon, everyone. As we are still letting some folks into the room, we’re going to go ahead and get started. Welcome to today’s Roompact webinar. We’re so glad that you could join us this afternoon for some training in PD. My name is Amanda Knerr and I’ll be your host for today’s Roompact session. Before we get started today, I do have a few quick reminders and announcements. Just a quick reminder that Roompact is hiring its next team of annual bloggers. Applications are open until January 30th. If you’re interested, please check out the website for some more information. Also, we hope to see you in Anaheim. Registration and program proposals are open now for our R2, the Roompact and Residence Life Conference in October in Anaheim. All details can be found at the link on top of our main page.
And just a few other housekeeping items. Today’s session will be recorded and the recording will be available on the Roompact website within just the next few business days. All participants are going to be muted and to help minimize that background noise. If you experience any technical difficulties, just let me know in the chat and I will do my best to assist you while the session is going on. Throughout the session, feel free to put into the chat who you are, where you’re from, any questions, any resources or comments about the topic. I’ll be actively monitoring that and make sure that we get to your questions during breaks or at the end of the session today. Now, I’m really excited to introduce to you our featured speaker today, Kate Gannon-Cullinan is here with us today and we’ll be leading the session Next Steps from discussion to decision.
Are you ready for that next step in your career? Should you stay? Should you go? What should you do? This presentation is going to help you consider when and how to move on or create space within an organization. We’re going to explore how professionals navigate the decision to stay or how to go and what opportunities may be created to pour into team members and even how to create pathways for moving up without having to move on or through. Kate, thank you for joining us and sharing your expertise with Roompact. The floor’s all yours.
Kate Gannon-Cullinan:
All right. Let me get us up and going here. All right, we good? We’re locked in? Awesome. Okay. Well, good afternoon, right? It’s a cloudy, blustery day here in Texas. Like they said, my name is Kate Gannon-Cullinan. I am the Executive Director for Housing and Residential Life at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, and I’m excited to chat with you. I was a former Roompact blogger as well. So if you are interested in that and not sure if you have what it takes to write, you do, and I may be happy to chat about that somewhere too. But yeah, I’m excited to chat with y’all today about this kind of discussion to decision. I’ve had quite a few of these kind of moments of crises or, “What do I do? Should I go? Is it time? Am I rushing? Am I delaying my progress?” Throughout my career, and I’ve had some sidesteps into different offices or different functions, and so excited to talk a little bit more about that from a different kind of perspective.
So all right, let’s get us going. Perfect. Okay, just a little bit of my journey. Like I said, I’m here at Texas State University as our exec director. I’ve been here since August. I have been in housing for, I think this is my 20-year anniversary this year full-time, and so I have been most of that in residential education or that kind of in-hall experience, but I have done some dabbling. I’ve spent some time doing assignments directly. I spent a couple summers doing custodial and maintenance pieces. And before coming here, I spent a year in operations for a student health center. So kind of did do a lateral move out of housing into another student affairs field, which I think was a really great perspective. And I’ll use that as an example a little bit later in my presentation about staying or going and what are some other factors you have to consider as you advance.
So yeah, we’ll kind of dig in. So my focus for today really, I want us to talk career decisions, how to find ways to elevate team members to promote retention from an employer perspective. We’re going to talk a bit about developing mid-level skills. That’s a big passion area of mine, and though these things don’t always only happen to entry-level folks, this, “Should I say, should I go?” Can happen at any point in your career. We do see a higher frequency as you’re in your entry-level job and you’re trying to decide when is it time for me to move up just because of the sheer numbers and volume of that, but also I think there tends to be a little bit more second guessing ourselves at that entry level piece of, “Oh goodness, if I…” Oh, let me move this thing off of here. Can you see this giant slide thing? There we go. That’s not as ugly now.
… that you’re afraid that if you make a misstep earlier in your career, it will preclude you from something further down the road. Spoiler alert, it won’t. You have time. You can make adjustments. I’ll talk a lot about how things aren’t always linear and that’s okay. So you’ll hear, we’ll spend a little bit of time on some mid-level skillsets and just things to consider as you are thinking if I’m ready to promote or go up, that you have to change some thinking. And then just some other considerations for career planning.
But yeah, really, like we said at the beginning, are you ready for the next step? Should I stay? Should I go? That’s really what I want us to spend some time on today. Let’s see this thing here. All right. So some learning objectives that I’m hoping you will come away with from our time today is just to consider and prepare for that next career step and what mid-level mindsets might benefit. And again, I say mid-level. Once you’ve become a boss, you’re always mid-level. You always have pressures from below and from above. So as soon as you become someone’s supervisor, your mid-level, and your mid-level, probably forever. Even the president of your university has a board of supervisors that they have to report to and people below and then across, and we’ll talk a little bit more about… We talk about managing up and managing down, but that managing through and across with other peer groups and team members at your level is an important thing to consider as you build structure and support networks for yourself. So we’ll talk about that too.
We’re going to review some insights into ways that organizations, so for employers here can pour into some staff and maybe create some pathways for elevation so that you can have your folks move up without having to move out or on. My dissertation was about staff retention in housing, and so did a lot of reading and writing and work about a thing that… We complain about attrition a lot, which is just a normal thing in jobs regardless of the career field, but a lot of our structures tend to force that as though I’m ready to move up, but there’s only two associate jobs and there’s six assistant directors, and so there’s not a pathway for me here, so I am forced to then leave the institution and cause attrition because there’s not an opportunity for me to be retained. It’s kind of a thing we do to ourselves in this field, not unlike other fields, but it just tends to happen a bit more in housing because of that bottleneck.
And then gaining some information and perspective on the mid-level mindset again, but how to create opportunities for yourselves in your organization. So maybe there’s not a formal position, but are there different initiatives or things that you can take that will develop some of those sets or those skills for you so that when you’re ready to go, you’re ready to go. Again, I have some mid-level stuff in here because of the frequency where some of these career crux decisions happen a lot of times as we start our journey into our careers, but even as I’ve had… I’m in my first lap as an executive director, some of these mindsets are great for myself to remind… Because I’ve done this presentation a couple times with my team and I’m like, “Oh, I have to remember that now I’m at this next elevated level and I have to change the way I’m compressing information upwards. They don’t need a whole long story, they need the highlights,” and so even some of that changes as you continue progressing. So it doesn’t just stop once you make it to mid-level.
So I want to frame the conversation today in three parts. So I want to start by discussing career steps and planning. So at many points in your career, like I said, you’re going to maybe question whether you should stay or begin searching for new opportunities. My recommendation is always to start with identifying what is the crux, what’s the root and the cause of what’s prompting that? Are we having a momentary frustration or is it long-term frustrations like this continues to happen, this pattern is repetitive, I’ve given this feedback, it’s not happening, and so I’m in this frustration mode and this isn’t serving me well in what I want to do. Or is it that an advancement opportunity comes up that looks really shiny and amazing and you’re worried if you don’t go get it now, you’ll never get it.
When I was my first year as a hall director, we did an activity where it was like, oh, go and find a position that you would like and then we’re going to practice interview for it, and I found this amazing position. I was going to be a hall director at an art institute and I’m art person, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s the dream job. I can live in the city that I’m from and do art stuff with my students and it’ll be amazing,” and I was like, “Should I apply for this? I mean, I’m only in my first semester as an RD, but maybe I should apply for this job because it won’t be available later.” And it was like a live-in assistant director job.
And then as I have spent some time in the field and I’ve done recruiting for about 15 years, those jobs will become available again. They’re cyclical and maybe not that place, but somewhere else, and so don’t limit yourself thinking this job will never be available again. Even the high-level jobs, everything is on a cycle and has a natural flow to it, and so there will be opportunities for you, and so not needing to rush into a decision.
And then really thinking, what is your career end goal? What do you want to get to ultimately? And that will change throughout your career. What do you want to get to, and is there a pathway involving your current position or a potential opportunity? Does that get you closer? And on the timing of it, does that make sense? I’ve had lots of conversations as I’ve done some grad prep work and recruitment on folks who will go straight from master’s into PhDs and things, and that is everybody’s individual journey. But I do find sometimes that folks will rush into those things and now you have a PhD, but only four years of full-time experience. And so trying to figure out what is your end goal. If your end goal is, I want to be a faculty member in a higher ed program, great, rock through, get that degree, go for it, start publishing, start getting what you need to fulfill that goal.
If you’re wanting to be a practitioner, maybe get some more experience and figure out what you’re wanting to research and all that. I took about 10 years with my master’s and my PhD, and so then when I went into the PhD, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. Every class opportunity I had, I wrote about that. So then when I got to that end big old paper, I had a bunch of stuff written and a bunch of stuff read. So just trying to be a little bit strategic about what is my end goal and how do I get exposure to that earlier to make sure that that is my end goal?
I would love to be a vice president someday, but I have no desire to be a dean of students. Conduct is not my favorite thing. And so I’ve spent time in conduct and realized that is not my favorite thing. So what are the ways that I sidestep or support others and pull others up and know enough to support my team, but I know that that’s not the pathway for me to do that? So what is a different route I can take to get to the end goal that doesn’t involve that? Because that would not be my favorite thing to do in a full-time capacity.
So yeah, just thinking through those things and then keeping in mind… Again, I’ll say this a bunch, comparison is the thief of joy, and I think oftentimes we compare, “Well, this other person that I was in grad school with is an assistant director already and I’m not.” That’s their business. That is their journey and their timeline. That doesn’t have to be yours. I had folks who I was their supervisor and they had their PhD before me or they were a director of a housing unit years before I was a director, and that’s okay. That’s their journey. They were at different size schools or in different regions. And so those opportunities just became different. They were bound by some geographic lines that I wasn’t, and so I could kind of go and do different things that they couldn’t do. And so I think it’s just really trying not to compare yourself to everybody else’s advancement and figure out what makes sense for you financially, holistically, and for your own wellness and professionalism.
So that’s about career stuff and planning, really thinking what is the end goal. What am I doing now? Does that get me on that way? And maybe it doesn’t, right? Maybe your end goal is to do something completely out of housing, but to get you there, you need to be able to have financial security. So living in and having a meal plan and a house or an apartment provided for you allows you to advance differently. I was just speaking with someone the other day that I think had I not gotten involved in housing… I’m a first gen student, the only one that’s moved away from where my family is, and had I not been an RA and then went to grad school and had some of these opportunities, I don’t think I would be able to have done some of the socioeconomic mobility I have had I not had the financial security of a live-in position that allowed me to save money and pay off debts in a different way.
And so don’t knock the importance of that. And maybe this isn’t what I want to do forever. I might not be a lifer, as we say in housing, but this will serve me to help me build some foundations so that when I am ready to transfer off, I will have so much skill development because housing’s such a broad range of skills and I will have some financial security ready to go for me. So things to think about as you’re kind of bopping through. Look at my time. Cool. Secondly is creating pathways. And I talk about this for employers too, but also as staff members. And I’ve said this earlier, a common staffing issue in our field is that presumption that to move up or advance in our career and scope requires you to move institutions and to leave your institution and possibly your city, depending on if you’re in a small college town or you’re not in an area where there’s a lot of higher ed opportunities.
And mobility isn’t always possible or even preferred. I saw a lot in some of my interviews from my dissertation research where folks were like, “I really made friends in this area. I didn’t want to leave the institution, and so I left housing because the only advancement opportunity was in advising or in the honors college or in counseling or something else at the university.” And even my own experience at my last institution, I had been in my associate director role for about six years. We had just hired a new director, there was no upward movement for me. I had had some conversations, but the pathway wasn’t being able to be created that would work for me and what I wanted, and so an opportunity came up in the health center and I transferred my skills and kind of sidestepped over there, and that for me was what I needed to do.
I was kind of at the stagnation part of my career of like, “All right, I’m not really advancing anything more. I’m not learning anything new. I feel like I’m having the same conversations every year, every year and having some of the same frustrations. I’m ready for something else, but this is where my family is and my partner’s family is, so I need to stay local. And so what opportunities do I have for me?” Because once you start getting to the point… In my opinion, once you’re getting to the point where you’re… And I’ll talk about this a little later too, where you’re becoming resentful about things, you really got to figure out, okay, I don’t want to leave this position with a bad legacy because I’ve kind of phased out at the end. When can you notice that you’re starting to get unmotivated? Really deciding, is that the issue or not? What is the issue that’s driving that, and is it time for me to create a different pathway for myself?
Not all positions are designed or desired to be long-term either. And so as employers, we have to know and accept that and help staff leave in a great way and help them prepare for their next role. We are gatekeepers to the profession as employers in this field, and so how are we helping folks understand what it means to leave gracefully, what it means to get yourself ready for that next job. How do I help you identify what you need and want out of that next role so that when you’re searching, you can really hone in on what it is that you’re looking for, whether it’s a vibe or a certain salary or things like that. And so I think part of creating pathways really is for us as employers too, to create a culture where folks aren’t so scared to tell you that they’re leaving, but that it’s like, “Hey, I’m ready or this isn’t fitting and so I want to do something else.” “Okay, let me help you find out what that is.” That’s part of supervision and mentorship as well, and so how do we do that as employers?
Retaining great employees who are mission and university-aligned is important too. So where organizations are able to create some mid-level pathways or some functional area coordinators and if positions aren’t formally possible, what are ways that you can gather elevated experience? Can I put you on a workforce or an implementation team for staff selection or trainings or operational design, move-in day? What are some things that I can put you on if I can’t afford to fund a full position that will allow you to gain a different scope to the department and the university? Are there managing centralized processes or front desk things? What ways can I add more stuff as you kind of mastered your main job description that I can start getting you some new experience that you’re ready and you’ve gained some of that mindset?
And that creating pathways can come from your employer, but also as employees, if we’re like, “Okay, I’m bored, I’m crushing it over here as a hall director. How do I gain more experience?” Maybe you don’t have formal committees or implementation teams at your institution, can you create something or can you sit in on a couple meetings or can you be a professional staff member on staff senate, or how can you just expand your scope and view? Because really, and as we lean into mid-level mindsets next, understanding and broadening your scope is really what gets you ready for that next step. And so managing up, down and through these roles, these mid-level roles, require attending to the needs of those above and below, and as well as collaborating across units. I tell my staff all the time, you have to water the garden you’re in as well. If you only spend your time… Because you elevate up and so you kind of rinse and repeat. You were an RA for residents maybe in housing, and so now you’re a hall director for your RA, so they’re kind of like your new residents.
When you get into that mid-level piece and you are essentially co-supervising your campus with your peers, you really have to make sure that you’re on the same page with those peers. They are resources for you. As you advance, your peer group narrows. I am one of one executive directors for housing, and so while I have a peer group in my division of other exec directors and department unit heads, they don’t all understand the scope of housing.
And so that also involves now how am I building my networks in my region or across the association so that people that get the context of housing when I’m asking this question or venting about a frustrating day, that they get that and understand that scope and can give me some resource and advice for what have they done. “Hey, I’m trying to build a new building. What have you done to do this?” Well, my folks in career services, albeit delightful, maybe don’t have that same experience about that, and so I need that resource and that support structure. And so as you are managing up and you’re moving up, figuring out how you are pouring across as well as up and down.
And these mid-level positions… And there’s been some advance in research on it in the last, I’d say, five years or so, and I’ll share some articles later on too of researching the mid-levels. But we are the ones, and I say that now, even though I’m an exec director, still a mid-level for my APP, that do… Your associates and your assistants in a lot of housing departments are the doers. They’re the problem solvers, they’re the folks that are leading the output of the organization. They’re the ones taking the directive from folks like me and then actually operationalizing it in the buildings and with the in hall staff or the facilities team and going out and carrying out the work. And so really making sure that you’re pouring into that group, and as employers, you’re finding ways to advance that group and advance those mindsets. But if you are looking to move into a mid-level position, these are some of the things that are helpful to think about.
And then a trending organizational capacity that we are starting to see, and NASPA has a new knowledge community of it, is these chief of staff or senior support staff member. I just created a program director for strategic initiatives that reports directly to me that helps me manage these larger scale strategy pieces because as senior leaders, you get pulled into so many meetings that you have… Even in six months, I’m like, “When do I have time to sit and actually strategize and operationalize these things?” And so these types of roles that you’re starting to see pop up not just for divisions, although that has been true. A lot of divisions of student success or student affairs are forming these chief or senior staff member roles to help organize all of those things, but you’re starting to see it in large scale housing operations as well. And I think the knowledge community is the strategic administrative operations and executive advisory roles.
So a big old mouthful, but a lot of board of supervisors will have a chief advisor or a senior advisor, and as well, obviously a president’s office will have a staff member like that, but we’re starting to see that expand as divisions and student affairs are growing and the demand and need acuity of our students continues to elevate too. But the importance of uniting efforts within an organization to maximize those efficiency pieces, our service, and really how are we spending our money is really important. So these mid-level mindsets and how you can scaffold responsibilities, super helpful to consider as we continue in the conversation.
All right. So in some career steps in planning, I want to talk about staying or going. So to stay, one, I would like to validate that it is okay to stay at a place. Unless you have a cap on the number of years that you’re allowed to be at a place, it’s okay to stay at a place more than a year or two. One, it helps you feel balanced, you can anchor in. And I know the kind of adage of, oh, well, if you leave after a year, it looks like you’re job hopping on your resume, and I think it was true for a long time, and then when COVID hit and people just needed to do what they needed to do to survive, maybe it wasn’t as criticized.
But if you’re seeing multiple less than a full academic year stints, it’s not really a loyalty thing for me as a recruiter, I’m more of what are you able to actually learn in a place and how have you developed your skills? If you get into a place and it takes you a few months to really get your bearings and get through training, and then you’re gone two months later, how have you actually been able to carry that out and implement the stuff you’ve learned and how are you growing your competence?
And so it’s okay to stay at a place as long as you’re enjoying the work and you’re doing it well. You don’t want to get to a point where you’re at a place and your performance now is maybe fallen off, and so now your legacy is going to be those last two years versus the first five. And for me, when I was making my decision to go to the health center a couple years ago, that was important for me. I was like, “I feel myself getting jaded and I don’t want that to be my legacy in this department, so I got to make a move here.”
But if you are enjoying learning and development opportunities, like you’re learning more, you feel like you’re still growing and developing, you’re getting, we talked earlier, access to different committees and task forces and things, you’re enjoying what you do, you have good supportive culture, there’s structures in place for growth. Are there different layers? Maybe it’s not directly from hall director to assistant director, but there’s these certain functional coordinators or things like that that kind of help you step in. What are those pathways and do you see those being exciting for you? You enjoy the job. Do you like where you are at? Maybe you are near family or you’ve created a community in town near your university that you really enjoy. I had a boss once that was like, “Things that I look at when I job searches, I have to be within 30 minutes of a Target and a Costco. Those are crucial to me and that is what I use to whittle down job searches.”
And everybody has their thing. Can I live in a rural town or can’t I? How close do I need to be to a major airport if I’m not near family, if that’s something I’m wanting to do? Do I need to be near water? As a Pisces, I need to be near water. I find that when I am not near water or within a day’s drive of water, it just doesn’t feel the same. And so figuring out what are those things, and if you are enjoying what your place has to offer for you, great. Stay. If you’re still learning and growing and there’s pathways for you, then keep rocking. If you’re worried that if you pass up this job that came across your higher ed jobs or on Facebook or something and you’re worried that that’s not going to be there when you’re ready to search into two years, I promise you things will be there. I promise they will come back around, they will be there.
And to go, is there a misalignment with priorities and direction? And I mean for you, if you get there and you’re like, “This is not how I would do that.” If you are a big res curriculum person, “This is core to me and how I like to program, and this is the only way that I think it should be done,” and you’re at a school that does not do a residential curriculum, that’s going to be tough. You’re going to find that consistently frustrating, but that’s the place, and sometimes it’s not changing because that’s what that place has. Every institution has their own stuff and what makes sense for their students and their context. And so if there’s a misalignment with those priorities and the direction of the university or the division and even your department, that’s going to be more frustrating. And maybe that means that searching for other things that better align works for you.
But as I said earlier, knowing what the root cause of that is will allow you then when you are searching to really be more intentional of like, “Okay, I know I don’t like this and I know I love this. So I’m going to ask some of those questions when I’m in interviews or I’m going to read these job descriptions and these websites and look for the stuff that I like and the stuff I really don’t like to make sure I’m not putting myself in that situation again where I got to pack up and move and apply because that’s exhausting and requires money and effort and energy.”
Is there stagnated engagement regardless of mastery? I’m crushing it over here and I’m still not able to get any advancement or I’m not able to participate in any other committees or things. I have denied staff participation in campus-wide things because I’m like, “We’re having some performance issues where you’re at. So before we add more to your plate that takes you out of the building, let’s make sure we’re crushing this first for our students and the experience they deserve.” But if you’re doing that and that’s the feedback you’re getting from your supervisor and you’re still not able to get anything else and you just feel stagnant, that might be a sign for you to start looking and poking around at what else is there.
And if you’re just consistently unhappy, and I talked earlier about leading to apathy in that role, maybe it’s time to really sit down and think about what is the issue? And as I said, clarify the problem. What is the issue, and then what do I want to do to fix that? And have you had that conversation with your supervisor? And I’ve had this happen and happens, it’s part of life, where I find out after someone’s left that they had all these issues and I’m like, “I really wish I’d have known. I wish I would’ve had that. I wish it would’ve come to me and talked to me so we could have problem solved,” or I could have said, “You’re right, that’s not going to change. Let me help you find something else. I want to be supportive and help you get what makes sense for you because we’re not going to be changing that alignment anytime soon as a university.”
And so I think when you’re really thinking about leaving or staying, you have to be really honest with yourself, is it me? Is it a misalignment? Am I happy? Do I like this? What do I love about it and why am I having a hard time leaving if it’s time. Really sitting down and talking with yourself or a trusted friend or therapist or whatever the case is on what do I do next. This is a great spot for mentors. But also talking to your supervisor, they have changed jobs at least once, and so what have they done? When did they know?
Okay. Onto some mindsets and skillsets in terms of mid-level pieces. So I talked earlier about creating pathways with different functional roles and general positions, and I’ve been an assistant director and associate directors at a couple schools, one where we were just a blanket assistant director, we didn’t have a functional thing tied to it, and so we kind of managed certain projects for a few years and then would trade them around. So you kind of got a little bit of a myriad of experiences. And then ones where it’s functional, like I am the associate for staffing or the assistant director for training. And so really understanding those might demand different skills, so when you’re thinking of mid-level pieces. In general, knowing what you’re hired to contribute is important. You want to know what skills you need to buff up and what you need to maybe re-attribute to different places or different energies.
And adding projects and rotating things can require advocacy and project planning awareness. So if I’m not in a functional role and we’re rotating things, how do you make sure there’s still consistency for the team and the department? And that’s really… I’m talking to some of my employers. If you’re creating some of these functional roles, really identifying what is this person responsible for, what are they supportive of to a higher-level person and what is their expected output and they’re doing that. And then as you’re thinking of a mid-level mindset to this, am I a supervisor and over-training, and then how do I balance those two things? Because oftentimes we’ll get really into this functional thing. I love training. I love doing training. That what I want to do, but you also still need to supervise humans, and so how do you make sure that you’re managing both of those pieces at the same time?
For project management, I think the key for this mid-level kind of vibe is to balance that supervision of the team and execution of departmental priorities. So you have to be able to manage yourself and add value without clear direction sometimes. When you come in as an entry-level staff member or you came in as an RA, maybe you had a whole week or two weeks of training, sometimes a month of different onboardings. When you start assistant and associate director level elevations, you don’t sit down through a whole training session like that. You might sit in on some trainings and like, “Okay, let me learn on call alongside these in-hall folks.” But there’s not a training week for a mid-level person because you’re not coming in group batches like you might be doing in some of the entry level roles within housing in particular.
And so you have to be able to take initiative, go and read things, seek it out, ask the questions, and manage your projects on timelines. It’s a lot less directive and handholding at times, well, a lot of times, at mid-level. And when you get to an executive director role or a unit director role, it is really you’re relying on the scripts that you have from jobs before to be like, “Okay, this is what we did at this school. It’s a different acronym here. How do I make that make sense at my new institution?” But really it is about teaching yourself. I mean, I have stumbled into things like, “Oh, we have a whole drive here that has all these folders. Cool. Let me spend some time just bopping around and learning things in here.” But my AVP wasn’t sitting me down and taking me through every little thing, was like, “Cool, here’s all the meetings you’re going to be at this week. Our colors are maroon and gold.” And so it’s really, you have to teach yourself a lot as you go and that project management is super, super important.
How do you keep yourself on task and manage yourself and take the emotional load off of your supervisor? That’s part of that managing up. If I have to ask my supervisor every single question about every move I make, I’m not taking things off of their plate, and so how do I manage that differently? Which kind of leads me into this empowered leadership. One-on-ones may be less frequent as you advance into senior roles because your upper level management is pulled into all these last minute meetings. And so being able to delineate what is crucial for your boss to know and when it matters like, “Hey, here’s a quick Teams message or a text that like… I know you’re about to go into this cabinet meeting, heads up on this,” or, “Here’s a really fun win point that you can share. We increased student satisfaction 8%. Share this.”
How do you get your team those wins and earn that capital, and then relying on those experiences and context that you have to make some sound decisions that you can stand behind and always that will make your boss and your department look great. That is a huge part of empowered leadership. And how do you empower those that you’re working with to elevate up that thought process too? In my year at the student health center when I started, I was a senior associate director and our executive director had left. My first day was their last day, kind of suddenly. And I was transitioning into a function that I had never been in. I was in housing my whole life and I worked with health center when I was doing COVID housing, but we were all just drowning.
So that wasn’t really a learning. It was like, does this work? Does this not work? There weren’t set standard operating procedures for that, and so I had to really sit and dig in and I was being supervised by our vice president because we had a gap in that level too. So I was reporting straight to the vice president. So I was two levels up than I really should have been in terms of reporting structures, and he did not have time to sit down and tour me through a bunch of things. So I had to ask questions, ask for documents, sign up for webinars. So kudos to you all on here today. … sign up for things that would help me understand this new functional area and how I could be of service as soon as possible. And I probably had in my whole year in the health center, maybe eight or nine one-on-ones, formal sit-down one-on-ones that weren’t just quick texts or quick phone calls, but a really sit down, I have an agenda, let’s talk through it one-on-ones because they don’t have the time.
And honestly, my stuff was operations, so I was over facilities, IT, money and marketing. If they had time to carve out, they needed to have it with our medical director who’s literally managing life and death things, and so I could just say, “Hey, here are my updates. Here’s a couple questions I have. Get at me when you can.” And that, in my exit interview with my supervisor, was a very appreciated skillset to develop. And so when you’re thinking about a power leadership, how do I manage myself so that I can help manage my boss and my things without needing constant oversight? Might be a couple side whoopsies here and there, but as long as you’re not massive PR debacles, you should be able to recover and learn.
And then expanding your scope, you have to start balancing the one versus the many as you move up. You have the individual and you have the team. When I was over at training, it used to frustrate me to end when one person would say, “Well, I didn’t know I had to do that,” and I had a mentor help me reframe it to be like, “No, you have 18 staff members, 17 of them did it correctly and one did not. That doesn’t mean your process is broken. That means they missed a mark somewhere.”
And you can talk with them about where did you miss this, where the rest of the team didn’t. If your whole team did it wrong, then you need to look at your process or your training. But if it’s one or two, you really have to have some empowered leadership with them. And so that trends into that mindset of removing ourselves from a problem and really looking at it to make a more inclusive decision for the whole team, and sometimes that’s not going to be overly popular. You’re going to have a couple folks who are mad at a decision, but is it what is best and can you stand 10 toes on it?
And then that peer group connectivity I talked about earlier, remembering to pour into your peers. As your peer group shrinks and shifts to maybe including more people around the university than just in your office, you have to have a solid foundation with others because that is a very important resource to cultivate, and those networks matter a lot more. Listeners that you can be on at different levels really matter a lot to help you do some more peer guidance in that way. You go from having a whole gaggle of hall directors you can hang out with and vibe with and vent to, to having a few ADs and then just you. And you don’t want to be messy and be talking about your direct reports as an exec director to other direct reports, and so that’s not appropriate. So you really have to figure out what is that peer group connectivity for you and make sure that you’re pouring into that group.
All right, I know we’re coming up here towards the end. I want to share a few articles. Obviously this is not exhaustive, but there’s quite a few things, particularly on some mid-level stuff, but then some things on professional identity, crossroads for… Some of them are a little dated. I tried to pull some of the more current ones, but there are some really good throwbacks on Hunter from ’92 of how professionals choose their careers. Some of the stuff’s a little retro in there, but there are some things that are really coming back around into very present day realness. So some good stuff to think about if you’re a nerd a like me and like to read and continue reading.
And then just a few things to keep in mind, and then we’ll shift into any questions that folks might have. But career paths are not always linear. It’s not a step one, step two, boom, you’re it. Especially in higher education. There’s just so many opportunities and so many ways you can sidestep and dance. Maybe you are like, “Well, I don’t want to do housing forever.” Totally fine. “I want to be an advisor.” Then you go do advising and you had no control over your schedule because it was a giant school with a giant advising load and now you’re like, “JK LOL, here I come back.” I missed housing when I was in health services. I was just talking earlier. I missed the chaos of it a little bit and… I’m a social person, I’m a woo and I really missed that and health services, it was not that, and so that for me was like, “Okay, maybe it’s time to look back and see what I want to do.”
And it took me a very un-linear, I don’t know what the negative for linear is, to get to this position that was an end goal for me or a goal for me in my career path. And just not comparing yourself to someone else’s, you have to do what feels best for you. I did live-in positions for seven years at a couple different schools before I moved into an assistant director role, and that was fine for me. I had folks who were zooming upwards and I was like, “Good for you,” and I had some kind of imposter, “Should I be doing that? Am I underperforming?” But I enjoyed living in. I enjoyed the financial mobility it gave me and it allowed me to live in places I would never be able to live without it. So for me, that was crucial.
Frustrations and decision making, temporary frustrations can lead to significant career alterations. So constantly changing positions is not only exhausting, but can be hard to pinpoint what you do like and need. So really take some time to seek and understand the scope and direction before you abandon ship. If it’s unhealthy, of course that’s a different situation. But why am I frustrated? What decision making opportunities do I have? Have I talked to somebody about this to make a change? And then you can be more intentional about what it is that you’re seeking and give yourself some consistency and foundation to grow.
And then search factors and idealizing opportunities. It can be very easy to idealize an opportunity and begin to compare to your current spot. “Oh, I would love to live in Los Angeles. Are there hall director opportunities in New York City?” These big flashy things. That would be so cool to live in. Or the salary is incredible. I don’t care how bad the job is, I want to make that money. Well, you might. You might get into it and find that that wasn’t worth it for your mental piece, or this is great, this is exactly what I want and wonderful. But really asking those questions and don’t just going in to an interview or an on campus missing flags that might not align with what you’re wanting for your own self just because you’re idealizing this opportunity just to escape. Are you running to or running from your current job?
And then that is the end of my rambling. So yeah, what questions can I… Or comments or thoughts or anything that folks have? We got, what, about 10 minutes or so, I think? Yeah. Great. You want to leave this up while I’m chatting or should I pull back to my face?
Amanda Knerr:
You can pull back if you want to. And since it’s a pretty small group, so if people have questions, feel free to come off on mute and ask Kate any questions you might have or any questions you have for each other.
Kate Gannon-Cullinan:
Where’s everybody from? I see Memphis on one. Oh, absolutely, Liz. No problem. Thanks for coming. Oh, Virginia. Yay. I love [inaudible 00:42:44]. It’s so pretty. I worked at Old Dominion and Norfolk for a little bit. So cool. Love Virginia.
Cece Burkett:
Yeah, that’s where I’m from actually. I grew up in Portsmouth. Yeah, sorry I jumped on here so late. We’re about to have a big snow storm.
Kate Gannon-Cullinan:
I was going to say at the end, good luck to all of us in the South that are preparing for winter apocalypse. We got sand all over the place out here in Texas.
Cece Burkett:
Yeah, crazy town. So I’m looking forward to watching the recording later, but thanks for your time.
Kate Gannon-Cullinan:
Oh, no problem. I told Paul I’ll always help out. Once you get into these big boss roles, you don’t get to do this kind of stuff very often, so it’s fun.
Amanda Knerr:
Very, very true. Very true. All right, any last minute call for questions? All right, folks. Thank you so much for joining us today, and Kate, thank you so much for a great session. Really appreciate it. Just as a reminder, it will be on the website here in the next three or four days, so keep an eye out for that. And Paul will also email all of you a brief survey as well as a link directly to the webinar so that you can access it pretty easily. Just as a quick reminder to please consider joining us for our next webinar, which will be 2:00 PM on Thursday, February 26th. Our guest facilitator will be Charles Holmes-Hope, and the topic is How to Conference Well, Maximizing Your National Conference Experience. Good luck to all of you as we prepare for this big major winter storm, and we look forward to seeing you in February. Thanks and have a great day.
Kate Gannon-Cullinan:
Thanks, everyone.
