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Teresa Valerio Parrot
Hello and welcome to the Trusted Voices Podcast. I’m Teresa Valerio Parrot alongside Erin Hennessy, and in each episode, we discuss the latest news and biggest issues facing higher education leaders through a communications lens. For these conversations, we’ll be joined by a guest who will share their own experiences and perspectives.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Hi. Welcome to another episode of Trusted Voices. This is our second episode of the season, which means we’re no longer welcoming you to the fall semester. We’re in the fall semester. So Erin, how’s it going?
Erin Hennessy
This is the wrong month to ask that because I feel like I am holding on with my tiny little fingernails at this moment. But if I can make it to October, things are going to get a lot better. How is your fall semester?
Teresa Valerio Parrot
[singing] If we make it to December. If we make it to October, then we’re to your birthday month.
Erin Hennessy
Yes, we are.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And when we make it to November, then we’re to my birthday month!
Erin Hennessy
Yes and then we’re to the election. And then, you know, who knows? Let’s see if we’re gonna ride this toboggan downhill.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I don’t think we have any choice. So let’s go ahead and get started with what we’re reading and what’s going on in the world.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, I am going to just throw this out there, because while we were checking to make sure microphones worked and video was uploading and the dog wasn’t barking, the GAO dropped their FAFSA autopsy, and it sounds pretty damning. A lot of these details were already out. There are new details that were included in this GAO report. I have had no time to read it, but I am sure that most of the higher ed trades will be covering it. I have the Inside Higher Ed story up in front of me right now, so just throwing a little, a little wrench in things and letting you know that that is newly released this morning, which is something that I think is probably going to be enlightening and frustrating in equal measure.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Excellent. Well, I have not yet read it because I was the one who needed to do a little adjusting with her login. So that’s something that I can look forward to reading. Today. I will talk about something that I did read and I thought was really interesting. And there was a piece that was in the Chron that David Jesse wrote that was called, You Became a Mere Mortal: What Happens When Presidents Go Back to the Faculty. And it was a positive piece. And this is about presidents who were going back, either planning to go back, or have gone back to the faculty after serving. And it was talking about how those who are embracing it and saying, I’m ready to go back, and I don’t want to be asked about what it’s, what’s going on in the C suite, and I want to be teaching, and I’m looking forward to embracing student interactions. And it was really a light-hearted piece, and there are a couple of those who are in the piece that I’ve worked with, and I was very happy to see their lightheartedness in that piece. So if you haven’t read it, think about it. And if you are a president and you either are thinking about what comes next, that some of them talk about how they’ve added some language to their contracts for when they do go back to the faculty. So take a peek at that one.
Erin Hennessy
I loved the story of Susan Herbst, the former president of UConn, who was on the ACE board when I worked there, repeatedly locking herself out of her office so that she now carries a key on a chain around her neck. And I will also mention, I got a text message this weekend from a former president who is enjoying a month-long, he didn’t call it detox, I will call it detox, out here on the East Coast, near the water, and seems to be recovering well. And I’m excited to see what he does post-presidency, also.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And Jeff Abernathy, I worked with him when he was at Augustana College. He was in the piece. He is a delightful human being. He’s talking about when he returns to the faculty. I’m excited to hear what he does. And someone who was in, basically a president, is Ken Carter. This weekend, he had his Ideas Festival. So post-deanship, he became someone who now works on thought leadership, and he launched an Ideas Festival at Emory University, and this weekend, he got to launch his Idea Festival, and had a number of really high-profile celebrities and academics on the Emory campus. And just to see the photos of the smile on his face was priceless.
Erin Hennessy
That’s so great. Jumping ahead to the next something that I wanted to share with you, it’s actually two somethings. I feel a little bit like Teresa Valerio Parrot this morning when I say there are two stories that I looked at this week that are very focused on data and offering some new data that we can dig in to answer some of the questions that sort of hang over this era in higher education. The first is a new study that’s out from New America that looks at whether or not Americans have actually lost faith in higher education, which is a conversation we go round and round and round about, just between the two of us. And I don’t know that there is necessarily an answer here, but what I love about this report and about this data is that there is nuance, and there are questions being raised about what it actually means to say Americans have lost faith in higher education. What does faith mean? What does trust mean? So I think it’s a really interesting read, and I would commend that to folks. And then the other bit of data also in Inside Higher Ed, it’s a very Inside Higher Ed Week for me, is some information released on how pandemic-era students are doing today. And probably not surprisingly, we see that those students who are in historically marginalized groups like LGBTQ, Black, Hispanic, are struggling more than white cisgendered students, particularly with things around affording housing and affording food. So some very sobering data there that I encourage everybody to take a look at and then to apply some of the takeaways there to their own campuses, to make sure that we are doing everything we can to help these students get to and succeed in and graduate from our institutions. So those are two data stories that I enjoyed this week, and hope folks will click over to and they will, of course, be linked in the show notes, as are all the stories that we’re talking about.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Let me personalize that last data point for you. I have a story that I am linking about a Michigan State football player. His name is Armorion Smith, and his mother, unfortunately, recently died of breast cancer, and he has been given custody of his five siblings. He is going to be raising them. So there is a heartwarming story about his future and how Michigan State and the community is really rallying around this football player, and how they’re helping him with name, image, likeness, different opportunities, and they’re sponsoring him and his family through a GoFundMe and some other opportunities. I have to say, I donated last night because I just think it’s a heartwarming story, and I really like that the community is coming to help this football player so that the family stays together. What a nice story he was at the University of Cincinnati, and has come home so that his family can stay together. And it’s just a nice way for community to really support somebody who’s stepping up to make sure that his family stays together. And then, because I think we’re enjoying this podcast experience, and I know that we have really great networks who can help get some news out there, I wanted to share that NPR has their college student podcast challenge that is live right now, so I’m encouraging all of us to spread the word about that, the challenge closes in January. So please use your networks to share the opportunity with others, and let’s see if we can’t get one of our students to have their podcast picked up by NPR, so the information about that will be in our show notes as well.
Erin Hennessy
Perfect. And then one last link that I want to share with folks, because I think it sets us up really nicely for the conversation we’re about to have with this week’s guests. There was a piece in The Chronicle about the new president that has been named at New Mexico State University, who some folks are hoping will be the university’s “healer-in-chief,” doing a lot of air quotes this week, healer-in-chief, after a lot of turmoil in a leadership position there, the new president will be joining the community, and folks are really hoping that he can tap into and motivate and really bring together that community as well. So those are high hopes for Valerio Ferme, apologies if I am pronouncing your last name wrong, sir. He’s also joining the institution from the University of Cincinnati, and folks are really hoping that this is going to turn a page for a really important institution that’s serving a lot of students in New Mexico. So that story’s in the Chron and is also linked in the show notes.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Perfect. And with that, does it make sense for me to go ahead and introduce this week’s guests?
Erin Hennessy
I think that is a beautiful segue.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Perfect. So with that, let me go ahead and introduce our two guests for this week. First, I would like to go ahead and introduce Jorge Burmicky. Jorge Burmicky is assistant professor of higher education, leadership and policy studies at Howard University. And Kevin McClure is the Murphy distinguished scholar of education, associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and co-director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges. They recently released a study on behalf of Academic Search entitled 2024 Competencies for the College Presidency: A National Study of Effective Leadership in Higher Education. The study included a survey of 700 college and university presidents in four focus groups that identified the leadership traits necessary to succeed in today’s challenging political higher education landscape. Welcome Jorge and Kevin. I have to begin by disclosing that I partnered with the two of you on the rollout of this report, and in having the honor of working alongside you, I was struck by how you personalized and humanized the survey and the focus group data in a way that felt as if you saw the presidents that we work with. You captured these positions that really focused, once upon a time, on management-based skills, and they now hinge on trust and resiliency and emotional intelligence. And I’d love for you to share a quick background on the report and why you don’t see the identified competencies as leadership checklists, but instead as this constellation of skills whose saliencies rise and fall.
Kevin McClure
To your point around kind of seeing presidents as people, I think, is part of the fact that Jorge and I have been doing research with presidents for a really long time, and as part of that, we have had the opportunity to do a lot of interviews with presidents and other senior leaders in higher education. And so for us, it really isn’t just a position. These are people we have gotten to know and have gotten to understand their backgrounds and their stories. We’ve had the privilege of talking to them in the midst of very real challenges, sometimes when they are in spaces around colleagues and around friends, where they can be vulnerable, which is not necessarily something that all of them feel like they can do on the job. And so it makes it possible for us to very much see them as humans that similar to other humans on the job, have needs and interests and things that get them, you know, fired up and things that they really struggle with on a personal and professional level. And so, you know, I think that experience is really important anytime we’re studying a population and trying to draw some conclusions around who are the types of people that we would want to step into these roles. I think it really does help having a foundation already in understanding the types of folks that are in these positions and what they’re facing, what they’re encountering on the job.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And Jorge, I know for you it was really important that we not see this as a checklist because I know the first time that we talked, I started by saying something about a checklist, and you were like, “Wait a minute. Let’s stop and talk about this differently.” Why do we need to move away from thinking about, do you fit these criteria? And instead thinking about, what does the moment need? And how should we think about the rising and the falling of the different types of characteristics?
Jorge Burmicky
That’s a great follow-up question. And the reason why I do think it is detrimental to leaders development to focus on that checklist is because it’s simple. We’re all very different. We’re all very different individuals with different training, with different educational backgrounds, with different contexts in which we’re leading. So your checklist might be very different than the checklist that I need, and part of it is it comes from engaging enough critical consciousness about understanding who are we within the context of the presidency, but who are we as individuals, and how do we cope with adversity in different ways? I think that one of the things that is very unique about this study is that, yes, we have a very comprehensive and robust survey, but we also made the effort to collect focus group data. And I think that gets at your question of, why is it so human? Is because we were able to get more granular in the focus groups. About here are the preliminary findings that we saw with the survey responses, which were very strong. But here is how we get to operationalize how things like, for instance, resilience, look like in the day to day of a college president. And the reason why it should not be treated as a checklist is because we definitely have data to say that there are different individuals, such as women and people of color that perceive these competencies differently because they also told us that their journeys have been different, that the ways in which they have been treated by their field, by their colleagues, by their supervisors, were different than perhaps their white male peers. And why do I say white male peers? Because the data has been very consistent about that is the majority individual who has occupied the presidency for the past, I mean, all of the decades we can really, really go back. So, so there, it is worth pointing that out, because again, the checklist might be very different for you than it is for me. And really, really understanding individual backgrounds and context is critical to using this work effectively.
Kevin McClure
The other piece of this that I’ll add is, and this is somewhat of a personal vendetta. Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Vendetta?!
Erin Hennessy
Making news here today. Mild-mannered Kevin McClure, scholar of the welcoming workplace, has a vendetta revealed on Trusted Voices. Go ahead.
Kevin McClure
Okay so here it is. I’m on LinkedIn a lot, and so I am privy to the 1000s of infographics around what leaders need to do. Here’s what you need to do to be a good leader. Here’s what you need to do to avoid a toxic workplace. This is what it looks like to be a supportive leader, and they’re all just like a collection of keywords. You know: build trust, be supportive, listen. It does a disservice, I think, to A. leaders and the complexity of the work that they’re doing, most of whom I think, have a pretty good understanding that these keywords matter. And it also, I think, does a disservice to those of us that are thinking about how we can develop our own leadership skills and develop future leaders, because we don’t talk about how. It’s one thing to just tell someone, go be vulnerable, go build trust. I think it’s an entire matter, a very different matter, to think about, okay, well, how do I do that in the context of my team at my institution that’s facing these issues? Our study only does this in a partial way, but I think we’re trying to complicate the idea that all you need to do is tell a leader here is the thing that you need to go do, and instead pause and say, what does this look like in practice? What are some examples that we can point to, and how do we acknowledge the fact that this is hard and it’s a process and it is a skill that takes time to cultivate. It’s just not good enough, in my view, for any of us that care about leadership in higher ed to say, here are six things. Go do them.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Well and I think, so this is one of the questions that we gave you but this is important, when you talk about those infographics, what they really boil down to is be liked, right? And what your survey in your report really says, your survey, your focus groups and your report boil down to is, and this is among your items, is make tough decisions. And as you just said, this is hard, and those are different, and that really is important, right? And I think it is different than some of these infographics that we see that are so flowery that are: be liked. These are tough jobs, and we need to call it for that.
Kevin McClure
Yeah. And what was really interesting is our data really underscored a prevalent perception on the part of the folks that we were speaking with and surveying that this is a job where it’s not about being liked, and in fact, they were very clear in recognizing that oftentimes they are doing things where they are not well-liked, but they can still put a lot of work into relationship building and I can invest in this relationship with faculty and with students, even if we are going to disagree or they are going to be mad at me at points in time. And similarly, there was a very strong emphasis on this idea of building trust, because they knew there was going to be conflict, and it’s impossible for there not to be some sort of tension or conflict between these very different stakeholders who sometimes have different visions for where the university should be headed. And that makes trust all the more important. It’s not about being liked, it’s about having a strong enough foundation relationally to make hard decisions and then to be able to move forward.
Erin Hennessy
It’s so interesting that you raise that, that sort of relational question. And I’m sort of putting this question together in my head as we talk, but as we look at boards who are charged with selecting leaders, supporting leaders. You know, supervising is the wrong word, but holding leaders accountable at our institutions, and keeping in mind that you don’t see this as a checklist, but rather this constellation. How do you see boards using this data? How do you see boards engaging with your research in a way that can help them do their job better because we can look at presidents coming up short in a lot of spaces and places, but boards do as well, and I think that relationship is so important. How do you see boards using this, this research?
Jorge Burmicky
Well, for one, I think it’s great to see any boards whatsoever read it, because I think it’s very relevant, if not more relevant than ever before, to their role, particularly when we think about how, how much turnover there is with presidencies today. I think one of the ways in which I would help governing boards to be utilizing this document is to see, again, as we’ve been talking about the humanity of the presidency, how we ought to actually care and provide support for presidency so that we can have thriving institutions, but then also to ask themselves the question, you know, often we put so much emphasis or onus on who’s going to be the best leader to be leading this institution, but we don’t really ask institutions how are we ready as an institution, as governing boards and search committees, how are we ready to support this incredible leader that we want to be, you know, taking the realms of our institution? I think that’s just as critical. And I think right now, the reason why I see so many presidents falling so quickly is because they don’t find themselves being supported by their institutions, by their governing boards when things are tough. Which is not an if, it’s a when. When things get tough, is this institution going to have my back? So I think if I were to be sitting on a governing board, actually, if I were to be in a search committee, I will be reading this very, very carefully, particularly our focus group data to see how, for instance, how lonely the presidency is, how difficult it is. You know, when we want the first woman or the first person of color to be leading our institution, are we ready to support them? Are we ready to put a press release that doesn’t just throw them under the bus. And again, I’m not saying that presidents are not at fault here. I think that obviously everybody is an adult, and you make your own decisions, but I really do think that it’s time for institutions and boards to ask themselves, are we also ready for this superstar to come in and maybe make some people upset, but also knowing that that is for the best long term success of our institution and ultimately our students.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah. And then how do you see knowing this isn’t like, am I ready to be a president? Check, trust, check, savvy, check. How do you see people who are asking themselves the question, am I ready to be a president? How do you see them engaging with this research? Because I think that’s the other natural instinct to pull this down and go, Oh, well, I missed this and this. And we’ll set aside the question, how self-aware people are about their own strengths and competencies. But how do you see a potential candidate interacting with the findings?
Kevin McClure
You know, I think that there’s an opportunity for there to be a phase two of this that starts to think about, what does this look like if it were to become more of exercise and self-reflection, that somebody could walk through a little bit more systematically, or even a type of rubric of sorts that someone might be able to utilize that, that may help them get a better sense of where they might fall on some of these. There are two things that come to mind for me, as I consider myself an emerging leader in higher ed and so as I’m engaging in this process, I’m also thinking about, how would I utilize some of this information, and for me, and I know this is something that Jorge talks about as well, part of that emotional intelligence piece is creating time for yourself to reflect on where you’re at, where it is that you’re hoping to go and do some critical assessment of your skills. And yes, that is difficult for us to do. This is why I have recently started working with a leadership coach to kind of help me through this. Because I think we individually have our own lenses on our strengths, but other people see strengths in us that we don’t always see. But the other piece of this that I think is really interesting is, I think for a long time, any of us that have been slowly stepping into leadership in higher education have been passed along a message around what it looks like to be selected and to ascend and to step into leadership, and it’s heavily oriented towards how big was your portfolio, how large was the budget that you managed. How many people have you supervised? What have you accomplished along particular metrics? And what that does, I think, is it leaves out a whole set of really important skills, and people are good at those skills. And this report forces us, through the eyes of actual presidents, to pause and say, would you notice that I am not talking at all about the size of my portfolio or the budget that I am managing or the number of direct reports that I have? I am talking about what types of skills do you have in talking with seven different constituent groups? What kind of skills do you have in taking a cabinet of people who I inherited and hated each other, and I have to figure out how to now turn this into a constructive group that moves forward with a vision. What types of skills do you have to consistently operate in a way that aligns with your values and aligns with the institution’s values, so that people know what to expect when we hit hard times. They know where you’re going to head or what you might say. And if you are that type of person, if you already ascribe to some of those values, you’ve already started to cultivate those skills, it allows you to say, maybe there’s a pathway for me here, maybe there’s a place for me to be successful here. I can start to work on maybe some of those other types of skills and experiences that are also important, but I’ve already got something valuable here, and this report helps to ensure that we’re not going to lose out on some of that talent who may write themselves off because they maybe haven’t notched some of those other kind of experiential hallmarks that we’re expecting of folks.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, that’s so that’s so important. And I just want to quibble. I think you’re well past emerging leader. I think you’ve emerged in the last couple of years, but I’m a big fan of working with leadership coaches and building our leadership muscles that way. I’ve done it. I’m thrilled that you’re doing it as well.
Jorge Burmicky
And Erin, if I don’t mind adding to your question, because I think that’s a really important question. My hope for this document is that leaders who don’t see themselves reflected in the, not even leadership landscape right now, but all different types of positions, and I’m really talking about multiple identities and backgrounds, I hope that they find also hope in this document. That they see themselves, heard and seen. Because some of the data that we have here, I really don’t think any other report or study has truly captured in this way. So I hope they’re able to read through it, not necessarily even those that aspire to be presidents, but anybody who sees themselves as a leader period, even outside of higher education, by the way, and say, wow, I have never been able to put into words what I was thinking or feeling and now seeing them for a president who we think to be superhuman, turns out that they’re very human. And now there’s a pathway for me, because I fear, I really, really do fear about this, and I’m not a fearful person in general that we’re losing out some of our best talent to other industries outside of higher education. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with that. I engage with consulting myself, and I think it’s wonderful. And there’s a lot of different ways to engage outside of higher education, but higher education changed my life. So if I would have that attitude towards leadership, then how do I get to replicate that transformation that I had for me when not only as a student, but also as a professional, as a faculty member, and all the different ways in which higher education has been truly transformative to me. So I really do think that American higher education is one of the best assets that we have in this nation, and I think it’s one of the best contributions that we can have to society. And I really hope that we don’t lose our best leaders because they’re feeling so demoralized. Rightly so, and I think it’s really critical to preserve that so that we can continue to impact students, leaders, professionals, faculty, to do their best work. So I really do see it. I mean, not to be cheesy, as a document of hope, because we haven’t been able to document these experiences in a way that is saying, You know what? There is a solution. There are ways to cope. There are ways to be resilient. There are ways to elevate our emotional intelligence and not just focus on the things that everybody has told you that you’re not great at. It turns out that you can hire a good cabinet or a team to help you with that, and it turns out that our leaders are telling us that was one of the decisions that I regret, that I didn’t get to start from scratch from week one and hire the cabinet that is going to bolster my skills, my experiences better. So there’s a lot of opportunities for everybody, particularly those that don’t see themselves represented in the leadership landscape, to get a confidence boost and see themselves seen and reflected.
Kevin McClure
Jorge also brings up a really, really important point that I think came to my realization that we made this point came later than I think it probably needed to have in the sense that it kind of surprised me in its simplicity, but it’s, it’s really necessary. These days, especially college and university presidents, are kind of nodes in a network. They are, yes, it is an important position, but I think we may sometimes go overboard in our emphasis on it, and place all of our hopes and aspirations on this single individual who’s going to come in with the vision and they are going to revolutionize our enrollment and bring in all this new revenue. The message that we were just really clearly getting from the data over and over and over again was that these were folks that were coming in and trying to surround themselves with a really, really brilliant team of people, and it was through the team that they were able to achieve anything. And it was through the team that they were able to complement those areas where maybe they were not as strong, they were able to leverage strengths that they may have with someone else. And so they put a lot of time and effort into that process of working out those internal dynamics, bringing in the right people, and it helps us, therefore, I think, to relativize the college presidency and no longer…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Here’s where I’m going to go to one of your other competencies, and that was communications. And one of the things that we stress pretty significantly is that the communicator doesn’t always have to be the president. And one of the reasons why we stress that is because if you make the communicator be one in many people, you actually are highlighting the strength of the team. It doesn’t always have to be the president, because you’re highlighting the strength of all of who is contributing to the decisions, to the actions, to what gets done, and to the strength of exactly what it is that you’re talking about. And every time that people think it has to be the president, you’re actually diminishing that strength, what it is that you’ve built, what it is that you are sharing, who it is that you’re highlighting, and to your point, the strength of what it is that you’ve built. So when we talk about that, people feel as if it has to be the president, and what you’re diminishing is what it is that you’ve built and what you’ve accomplished in the strength of that network and that, to be honest, that safety net and that team.
Kevin McClure
Sure, yeah. One of the focus group participants talked about, over time, getting a better sense of what are the issues that need the president’s voice.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Right, right.
Kevin McClure
And what are the issues that do not. And then the interesting flip to that, because there is kind of this tension or a balance that has to be struck, because they also talked about the fact that not every message has to be kind of vetted through these official channels, because when they do, then for the rest of us, were kind of left thinking, well, who is this person?
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Right?!
Kevin McClure
Every message I’m getting feels heavily filtered through marcom and it sounds like that. And so the presidents talked about how they needed to figure out, how do I take this message that’s really important, and it needs to be in my language. It needs to feel like it’s coming from me and the way that I think so that folks get a sense of who I am as a person, and not just try to get messages through me that are entirely in the official email template.
Jorge Burmicky
Well for those who care about communication to is, not only does it not to come always from the same person, but it doesn’t always have to come from the same channel. So what we talked about a lot, what our participants share with us is that, you know, for some people, the newsletter, the emails, whatever prefer communication will do it, but you have to really try what works for your audience the best, right? So for some, particularly those that are in smaller colleges, you may have to do the in-person town halls frequently enough to make…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
You need to do the in-person town halls! You have to actually meet with people. Right!
Erin Hennessy
And display the fact that you’re comfortable not being beloved again and saying the hard things, and you’re not afraid of your own.
Jorge Burmicky
Because that’s how people feel hard and I think even when you feel well, what do you mean? I’ve already sent out my email, my newsletter. What do you mean they’re not hearing from me, they’re not here.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
What do you mean I’ve been transactional?
Jorge Burmicky
Exactly! And we have a really funny quote, I think, is like, former president says, you know, I realized that I was letting my comms person that I hired do all the communication, that this sounded like an insurance company or something like that, like, this doesn’t even sound like me. And again, that’s very real. You have to be, that’s why, again, we have to really treat it as a constellation, not just a checklist, because it really is different for everybody. Everybody prefers different platforms. There are certain things that ought to be communicated with the president. Others, not so much. And it’s so diverse in the way in which we communicate with people, right? There’s social media. There’s some people that want their video embedded on the email. There’s some people that want the in-person only. There’s the faculty, you know, as we have in our data, wants to feel like they’re in the inner circle. They don’t just want to find out about a big change through a generic email. They want to be in the 30 meetings that happened before that press release was released, right? So, you really got to think about the various stakeholders, forms of communication, and really ask yourself, am I the right person to be communicating this? And how should I be communicating that.
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Erin Hennessy
Teresa, you and I could just sit back and let Kevin and Jorge give all our presentations, do the podcast, because they are, it’s everything that we’ve been saying. And it’s so gratifying to be able to point to the data and to point to your research and say, see, we weren’t making this up!
Jorge Burmicky
We’re here to affirm you.
Erin Hennessy
Thank you!
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Can I just give one anecdote just from this past week? Because I just want you all to hear how, what your report is doing is making a difference, because I talked to a president last Thursday, it’s making a difference for her. She just had her annual review with her board, and I know that feels off cycle, but her board met this last weekend, and so she was using your report and some of the data in her discussion because she raised the data point that women and presidents of color are more likely to feel that they need mastery of specific knowledge in areas to be effective at their institutions, and that presidents of color are often held to higher standards by their community than male and white peers. And that was really important to her, because as she had put together her own personal review, she had talked about where she had mastered things, she hadn’t talked about where she had succeeded. Instead, it was about mastery. And she went back and she rewrote her own review, and she talked about that data, because she used that data to provide that context and then to rewrite her own goals for the coming year. So I just wanted to talk to you about that, because I think that your report is already making a difference, and it’s already helping presidents to stop and say, Wait a minute, how I am talking about what I’ve done and how I’m talking about what I’m going to do. It’s already making a difference. And I think, as you saw in your data, it’s already helping presidents to see what do I need to be thinking about, either those who are aspiring to presidents, or who are presidents. She looked at that list of professional development and she stopped and thought, I haven’t put together a professional development list for myself as a president, yet, as a sitting president, I used to have one. I don’t have one now. I think that the application of what you’ve done is real. And I just, I know we’ve already talked about, what can some of the application be, but I just wanted you to know I’m already hearing after a week, it just was released a week ago, that it’s real, and I just wanted you to hear some of that, because I know for the women and presidents of color, they noticed, and I just wanted you to hear that and let you have that, and just, I’m curious if you dream about what some of that impact can be. And I know we talked about some of that too, but I just wanted some of that feedback and let you hear that too.
Jorge Burmicky
Well that’s just incredible to hear because it gives me more purpose and strength to keep doing this work. You know the reality is that, although I’m so glad that this was so impactful for this particular president, it also brings me back to saying we’re so exhausted from seeing ourselves, from people questioning our credentials. We’re exhausted from the good old line of like, yeah, we’re leadership is not diverse enough. And I was like, we’re really exhausted from seeing the same rhetoric over and over because we’re here. When I see that you can finally just change the narrative. You can have data to change the narrative of you know what? Yes, I’ve worked really hard on master these skills because nobody else around you has been paying attention, and now have all these assets that I can bring to my performance evaluation, or whatever it is that we’re talking about to say, not only am I working twice as hard as everybody else, but I bring a set of assets, a set of, a self-awareness that a lot of my peers simply don’t have. And we know that our students, our demographics, are shifting way faster than our leadership and way faster than our faculty and everybody else. So we owe it to them. We owe it to them to lift up leaders who are just simply exhausted and want to bring assets to the table that in a lot of that became a result of decades of being questioned, that you don’t belong here, that you’re just simply not good enough. And you and then you on top of that, you overcome these barriers, and now you get to flip the narrative and just to simply say, enough is enough. Here’s some data that shows that what I’m saying is not fake. This is not made up. This is not me being dramatic. This is not a political move. This is data. This is real, and I’m a transformed leader who can turn things around if, again, you support me. So I really feel like I’m dreaming big here. Because I really feel like this also serves as a wake-up call to those of us who say, well, none of these things impact me. You know, I’m doing just fine. Well, no, it will impact you, because your leader will quit on you. When things, you know, they will, they will leave, or they’ll just simply, we know what happens when things get crazy in higher ed and then we’re starting from scratch again. And nobody wants to start from scratch again. So I think that, you know, for those of us who are feeling exhausted with being questioned about our credentials, about our accents, about our backgrounds, our hair, our skin color, whatever it is, this is data that you have to go up to your supervisor and say, this is not made up. I’m not being dramatic, and you need to do better. You really do need to do better.
Kevin McClure
You know, one of the challenges is that I think competencies and the notion of competency gets weaponized against women and leaders of color and leaders that are of other marginalized backgrounds, and they are obviously more readily viewed as not competent or not competent enough. And so I think we see kind of the vestiges of that in our data, in the sense that, across the board, women, presidents of color, are rating that they have to be more competent in so many more things. The takeaway for us was basically, for many of those respondents, everything was important all the time, and for them, there’s almost a type of resilience that they had to develop that was heavily oriented towards competency, being competent in everything. I can’t afford to not be viewed as competent, because it’s so quickly something that could be brought up and used against me, and so at the same time that the data is kind of pointing us in that direction and suggesting that to us, there’s a conversation there to be had for all of us in higher ed, inclusive of boards, inclusive of faculty, who can be a really hyper-critical group when it comes to higher ed leadership, we have to think about the space that we create for leaders to develop. That they are going to come in with a certain set of strengths, that’s great, and experiences that suggest to us that they’re going to be good at this, but they’re also going to come into this needing to develop, and we ought to allow them to do that. I understand, of course, that there are big mistakes that can be made, and there may be mistakes that say, that lead us to say, this person shouldn’t be in charge anymore. So that’s one category of thing, but there’s a much larger category of thing, which is people need time to grow in the job, and it’s particularly important, I think, for women and for marginalized leaders, broadly speaking, to be allowed to develop and be afforded opportunities for professional development, because otherwise, I think the message that they are getting over and over and over again, and what they are experiencing over and over again is that they are not allowed to admit that they need to grow in certain areas. There is no affordance for them to be imperfect and again, that vastly reduces the talent on which we can draw. It does a disservice to our institutions. And I think it’s just not really consistent with leadership. Leadership Theory, this idea that we want people who are in process that are able to grow and learn and to be thinking about that all the time, we just have to make sure that there’s space for it to happen.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, that’s such an important point. And I’ve said this to Teresa before. You know, growing up in higher education, I used to look at presidents as these outsized figures who were different and special, and I don’t know, were born in suits and with cabinets and budgets in the cradle with them. And it’s so important that we stop looking at people like that, that we look at them as human, that we look at them, as you said, Kevin, as in process and and we need to make sure that we can tell our leaders that it’s okay for you to be that and give themselves room for that. And I think it’s all so, a piece with the rest of the work that you’re doing right now, Kevin, particularly on the caring university and how we build workplaces that are humane, sustainable, offer a living wage, offer living you know, I hate to say work-life balance, but offer an opportunity to have a life in addition to your work. Do you feel like you’re moving the needle there? Are you hearing different conversations when you visit with campuses and professional groups? Is there some recalibration that’s happening? And could your answer please, please be yes?
Kevin McClure
Boy, do I want that answer to be yes.
Erin Hennessy
So much.
Kevin McClure
The conclusion that I’ve come to with this, because I grapple with this question a lot, is the needle is moving, but it’s moving, I think, in very different ways on different campuses. There are pockets of movement within a given unit or at a given institution. And so, the collective experience for most people is that the needle is not moving because it’s maybe just kind of twitching for them. We’re not at a place, I think, where we can look and see that there has been sweeping change, but change is happening, and we might just need to give it a little bit of time to get to that point. But the other piece of this is we need to be doing more. We need to be acting more. We have a set of concepts that are incredibly helpful. We’ve got good data at this point that helps understand the nature of problems. We need action, and we need people in leadership positions that are willing to take that action. And so this is kind of full circle in the sense that the very same people that I think Jorge and I are lifting up as exemplars, and would like to see step into leadership. I believe, subscribe to some of these ideas around how we build more caring institutions, more emotionally intelligent leaders, places where people want to come to work, but yes, they have a life outside of work, and so they are better positioned to just understand this and act on it, and to see real change. And so I do, I have seen examples of that that give me hope. And you know, to the extent that there might be board members or policymakers that could be tuning into this particular conversation, they’re the ones that are behind. They are the ones that are behind. And we are, in some cases, swimming upstream, and it makes it incredibly hard to move that dial, because we have a set of folks that are in positions of influence that are still struggling to catch up with this, or are viewing higher ed through a completely different framing than that, which I can respect. But it does make overall, the change process harder.
Erin Hennessy
Right.
Jorge Burmicky
Well, and to, you know, obviously I’m not doing Kevin’s research right now in this particular area, but I do think that people are in, are being impacted by our policies and ideologies differently than others. So when it comes to anti-DEI legislation, some of us are feeling it more than others. And I think that when it comes to moving the needle and change, I think that some of this work perhaps might speak to people more that are feeling under attack as a result of where some of our policies and ideologies are shifting in this country, because it’s not just one or two states, it’s really everywhere. And I think that it’s important to consider about who is the needle moving for, you know, because I think some of us, again, we’re not all the same, and some of us are feeling very scared and very honestly oppressed by some of these movements. So this work may resonate, particularly when it comes to workforce and really how policies impact our places more than others. Because I don’t think it’s all the same. You know, it’s not a one-size-fits-all in this legislation is really, really targeting very specific groups of people, in my opinion.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
So Jorge, let me ask a final question, because I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that scholarship for both of you, really focuses on MSIs and regional comprehensive universities, and they often find themselves at the political crossfires at the federal, state and local levels. And this report’s backdrop includes the context that presidents face intensified political polarization and campus unrest. That’s a quote from the report, yet, many boards and leaders are trying to find safer spaces for their institutions and leaders, even if it means underperforming on mission. That’s my take. So based on the history of higher education and your scholarship and your opinions, is this practical? Is it possible, and does it meet what higher education needs now?
Jorge Burmicky
Well, I’ll give you a quick example to wrap up here, but I think more than ever, everybody needs to be looking at, very closely, the mission and purpose of the institution that they’re choosing to work for, and making sure that those institution’s values align with yours. More than ever before. Not so long ago, I was working at the University of Texas at Austin, where I graduated, and I also did a postdoc under the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. That division is no longer. Had I been there, the state would have, would have simply said, we don’t believe in your work, you need to be banned. Now I’m at an HBCU, private HBCU in Washington, DC, and I feel completely embraced to do this kind of work that I consider to be aligned with my core values. So when my colleagues from my not-so-long-ago institution hearing the things that they’re going through, I’m currently going through pieces that where there’s institutions that are public, that are under states that are having very tough DEI bans, and they’re telling us that we can’t publish this because it might jeopardize our jobs and my jeopardize funding, which we don’t want to touch. You know, we’re already underfunded. So imagine if you say no more funding. So more than ever before. To wrap up here, I think some people say I want to be a leader. I want to be a college president. But where and where do you want to make that? Because you should not. You shouldn’t just take the first offer now that anybody does this really, but you should really be thinking about is this institution aligning with my core values? Because you will get to a cross point where, if it doesn’t, you’re going to have to make some really, really tough decisions that just don’t feel good. I can’t imagine doing my work without talking about matters of equity and social justice. I really can’t. I would have to completely reinvent myself. And because of that, I tell myself, well I’m very grateful to be an institution that only embraces that, because historically, this institution has been about those core values. So that’s a good fit, and things change. So particularly when it comes to public institutions, I think this is a huge question, because legislation changes and elected officials also change. But I really feel like ultimately you should always stick with your core values and make decisions based on that, because otherwise you’re going to regret it.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
And public education matters. There’s the balance between the two of those, right? It’s so hard these days.
Kevin McClure
It’s incredibly hard, and there was not a separate kind of competency area that Jorge and I pulled out connected to this idea of being able to navigate politics.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Right.
Kevin McClure
But I do think that a lot of the underlying skills that we are trying to highlight are incredibly effective and helpful in this moment, thinking about how am I developing trust capital? How am I communicating to different stakeholder groups with messages that make sense to them? Am I willing to make courageous choices and explain the why behind. I think all of these are really, really helpful in this current moment, right now.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, that’s all politics. Small p, small politics.
Kevin McClure
Yeah, I mean, that said, I think it is entirely possible for a very good leader to be at an institution that they believe in, that they believe in the mission and the politics for them personally are not tenable. And they are doing the best that they can, in some cases, to follow through on commitments that they have made. They are trying to follow through on a contract. In some cases, they want to do right by the institution. They want to see it be successful, and at the same time, they hate the politics of this place. And we have to understand that that could be the reality. We are still going to need people that are leading institutions in places where the politics are broken, and there are going to be some that I think, have a special skill set for helping institutions kind of navigate that space. But we also have to be prepared that we are going to lose people, they are going to step down. And we, when we ask them about it, and they explain why, it will make a lot of sense to anybody who’s willing to sit and listen why they did that, because it was an impossible position to be in.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
It’s the courageous decision-making that you all talk about.
Erin Hennessy
Yep, and we have this…sorry, go ahead, Kevin.
Kevin McClure
I just, I can’t fault an individual who has tried really hard to steward an institution, do right by the folks there, and also be in the midst of policies that they really disagree with but they’re being forced to implement, and they’re probably only going to be able to do that for so long before it does kind of eat at them personally.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I agree.
Kevin McClure
But I think all of us in higher ed need to be able to disentangle the individual from the context to some extent. We want things from the individual that I think are asking too much, in some cases. I agree with Jorge, we want people that are leading with their values, that are making choices based on their values. But things change, and they could change very quickly. When that happens to be the case, we need to understand what the context is that’s causing things, and not necessarily always put it on the individual as being the root cause of some of these.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, and I think this is a conversation I’m having with a couple of friends in my personal life, as we all sort of get to this very august age of 50, and move forward from there and thinking about recalibrating our work as a job and not as a calling, not as something that requires these enormous sacrifices, and it sort of goes hand in hand with rethinking the president as a normal person. Let’s rethink the presidency as a job, and let’s stop ascribing these enormous moral failures when people say this isn’t tenable. It isn’t good for me or my family. It’s not something, I tried it and I’m not great at it, or I don’t enjoy it. And I want to go and this sort of circles back to the conversation Teresa and I had before you joined us, I want to go back to the faculty. That’s what I love to do. That’s where I can really have an impact. And I stepped in, and I did this for a while, and I was successful in some areas, less successful in others. I’m still a good person. My dog still is excited to see me when I get home and I’m done with this. And it’s not a failing, it is a stepping out to allow other things to happen in my career, in the career of others.
Kevin McClure
So you all are going to get very quickly a second Kevin McClure vendetta, okay, which is, first of all, we’ve made a big…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
First of all…
Kevin McClure
A big fuss around declining tenures of presidents. I happen to think that if you’ve got a president that does great work in five years, perfect, you know that’s okay. You know, this idea that folks that are in this job for a decade or longer, and they become the embodiment of the institution, is a problem.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I think that’s unhealthy, PS. And I’ve said that always. It’s unhealthy. You should have a separation.
Erin Hennessy
The goal is not to go out in a pine box, right?
Teresa Valerio Parrot
You should not be one in the same, it’s unhealthy. Go ahead, it’s already been written, it’s out there.
Kevin McClure
Your marcomm listeners are probably not going to love this, but I really don’t like the idea of the president being the institutional cheerleader.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I don’t either I don’t either! I have a piece on that too, It’s out there.
Kevin McClure
Dressing in the colors all the time. If that’s what they want to do, that’s their personality, I love it. Go for it.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
No! No. They are a person. They hold a title. Those are two separate
Kevin McClure
That they have to be out there at every event, and they have to be just a constant presence in social media and waving the pom poms the whole time. I think it’s too much to ask of the vast majority of people, and you might…
Teresa Valerio Parrot
It’s too much to ask of anybody, because here’s the thing, when the stuff hits the fan, right? The person isn’t allowed to be a person. We can’t separate them, because we have allowed them to merge into one. And that means that when the stuff hits the fan, the person goes down with the title. We haven’t allowed them to be two separate entities. And then we say, what happened? What happened is we merge them ourselves. We’ve done that to them and or they’ve done that to themselves.
Erin Hennessy
And it’s not sustainable.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
It’s not sustainable.
Erin Hennessy
I would never want to be in a job where I can’t go to the grocery store in sweats, and we need to stop putting these folks in these sort of minor celebrity slots. It doesn’t make sense.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I wrote a piece about this, and I had to tell you, I got holy hell when it came out from presidents and from marcom people, because they vehemently disagreed, and that is a hill I’m willing to die on. We need to allow people to be people, and we need to let people have lives, to your point, we need to give them space. And at the point that we don’t allow a title and a person to have space, we’ve set them up for failure.
Jorge Burmicky
Not to mention their families and friends and communities of origin. I think it’s too much, it will be interesting and fascinating to do more work on the impact that it also has on their loved ones and close allies, because I think that’s also something to consider.
Erin Hennessy
I think Teresa is a little more worked up about your vendetta than you are, Kevin.
Kevin McClure
You know, as you said, a mild-mannered so my vendettas don’t usually go very far.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
He just cast that out for me to catch down the river. I’ve caught it, Kevin.
Kevin McClure
I’m too midwestern to take my vendettas very far.
Erin Hennessy
That’s probably good for all of us in the end. I wish that folks listening could have watched this entire conversation on video, because you would be amazed at how hard Teresa and I could nod our heads in agreement and not knock ourselves out. This has been such a great conversation.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
With both of you. Thank you!
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, such a great conversation and such an important conversation, and we’re just honored that you’re going to let us share your work with our audience.
Jorge Burmicky
Absolutely. Thank you for the work of uplifting all of this. This is not just one study, but a lot of our many years of research and ideas and experiences. So it’s very personal to us as well, and it matters a lot that you’ve created this space. So thank you so much.
Erin Hennessy
Yeah, thank you both.
Erin Hennessy
Well, that was fun.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
That was awesome. They were both so great.
Erin Hennessy
Yes, absolutely. And I do, I know we said it while they were here, it’s such important work, and I just kept thinking about one of our past episodes, maybe the close of last season, between Michael Harris’s work and the ACE American college president survey and this data, there’s just such a great constellation of data and research and takeaways out there right now for boards, for current presidents, for potential future presidents. There’s a really rich set of things out there for folks to dive into.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
There’s almost a constellation whose salience rises and falls. One might say.
Erin Hennessy
Oh, indeed, a confluence of constellations with salience and whatnot.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
I’m joking, but I have to say, it really makes my heart happy that we’re looking at these really important jobs, because we need to be taking these seriously. Our institutions depend on strong leadership, and it just makes my heart happy that we’re doing this important work. And I think more work needs to be done.
Erin Hennessy
And we all know ain’t nobody happy unless Teresa Valerio Parrot’s heart is happy. Not too harsh your mellow, as young people say, but just want to tease that we will be back in a couple of weeks. Our next episode is just the two of us.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
(singing) Just the two of us.
Erin Hennessy
That’s the second time you’ve sung on this episode.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Sorry, everybody.
Erin Hennessy
I feel like we’re gonna get listener feedback, but our next conversation is going to be recording in this potentially fraught time, which doesn’t really differentiate it from any other time that we’ve been living in lately, between the anniversary of the October 7 attack in Israel and the American election, presidential election on November 5. So that one’s gonna be interesting, I think.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
So we’ll close by saying, also birthday seasons. So let’s just go ahead and say that.
Erin Hennessy
Pivot. Pivot!
Teresa Valerio Parrot
So thank you everybody for joining us. We’re super pleased that you were here to hear us talk to two scholars that we respect and talking about very important issues. And as always, we appreciate you spending time with us. Thank you.
Erin Hennessy
Thank you. See you soon.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
Bye. Bye.
Thank you for joining us for this episode. You can find links in the show notes to the topics and articles referenced, as well as a copy of the show’s transcript on the Volt website, voltedu.com. Remember that you can always contact us with feedback, questions or guest suggestions at trustedvoices@tvpcommunications.com. Be sure to follow Trusted Voices wherever you get your podcasts. And we invite you to check out Higher Voltage, another podcast on the Volt network that is hosted by our great friend Kevin Tyler. Kevin explores the evolution of higher education that is happening right before our very eyes. Until next time, thanks to Erin Hennessy, DJ Hauschild, Aaron Stern, Nicole Reed and the Volt team for a great episode, and thank you for listening.
