Each leadership position I've taken on has given me more opportunities to sit in an uncomfortable space and then make it a comfortable space for me and for the people that I'm working with. Everything takes time. I'm prone to pithy attitudes. But one of my favorites is slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. And so I know if I go into a space that has a lot of disruption, I'm confident that we can work together to smooth out that disruption.
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to our podcast. Hi, Amit. Welcome back. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. We have Leslie Reed with us today from the University of Alabama, and I'm excited to hear about her journey. We've done a lot of things together and she's going to share her leadership experience. She is the associate Provost for Faculty affairs and a professor at University of Alabama. Welcome, Leslie.
Thank you. Good to see you both. So, Leslie, let's hear a little bit about your journey in higher ed so far and how you ended up in Alabama. Sure. So I started my academic career at Georgia State University as a professor and kind of worked through the professorial ranks there and was really getting prepared to chair the department. I was in the chair at the time, had been chair for 15 years, and he would joke that I was his exit strategy.
Unfortunately, this was early 2010s and it was a very difficult time in a lot of state institutions. Budgetarily. I was at a university where we had been no raise for eight years and had furlough years remembering back to those times. And I was increasingly thinking about being a chair of a department that was facing serious compression and even inversion issues in faculty salaries because we were kind of coming out of the 2008 recession that many years
later. But we had a lot of rebuilding to do and we had had periods of time where we had budgetary give backs mid year. It was just a tough time financially to be at a large state institution. And about that time, someone reached out to me about a chair position at the University of Alabama and I said, well, it's close by in the same region. I wanted to stay in, close to family. So I went to, you know, interviewed on campus and I was like, okay, this is a very
different world than I'm used to. I kept thinking even after I took the job, where are the skeletons? There must be, you know, things that I don't know yet. And you know, I've been there, been here 11 years, I still haven't found the skeletons. And it was just a very different experience being in a Different state being in a state flagship and a university that had weathered the 2008 financial crisis in the years subsequent
to that much differently. So Alabama was kind of at the vanguard of the movement for state flagships to recruit heavily out of state. We kind of now, basically, we all do it, but at the time, that wasn't the case, and that really helped the university manage the recession in the subsequent years much better. So when I started as a department chair in 20, faculty salaries were reasonable. We weren't facing inversion and compression issues. We had,
you know, a solid operating budget. So it really was a different experience being share. Unfortunately, that left my prior chair without an exit strategy, but it did set me up for a very different kind of leadership experience at a state flagship that was very financially sound. You were hired as an external chair? I did. I was hired as an external chair in the criminology and criminal justice department, which was in the college is in
the College of Arts and Sciences here at Alabama. What was that like? You know, I think we do external chairs more frequently here than in many places, but it's not necessarily standard practice. And this was a department. I think a common theme in my leadership journey has been taking on jobs that no one else wants. It was a department that was experiencing some pretty
significant strife. What is it about your leadership style or experience or your leadership stance that either encourages you to take on these roles or you find that these roles are a good fit for you, these. These jobs that other people don't want to do or have struggled to do? Why is that? Why are those positions a good fit for you? Well, I think I had been mentored really well as an assistant, associate and new full professor by academic leaders at my institution.
So it was by the time I was a full professor at Georgia State and was really looking at potentially moving into that chair position. I was regularly, you know, I'd get to the office and sit down and just chat with the chair because we were the two earliest people into the office. And so I was never. I've never taken on a job where I've been concerned that I wouldn't know what to do. That I'll just, you know, I'll figure it out. I'll figure out what
I need to do. And I also kind of was mentored early on to lean into policy. If there's no policy, develop one, and do that by embracing different voices. So I never go into a space with the sense that I know what's the right thing to do. Because what I do know is that if I talk to various actors and constituents in whether it's in the department or in my new role, I'll learn what the right thing is to do from those people.
And so I think each leadership position I've taken on has given me more opportunities to sit in an uncomfortable space and then make it a comfortable space for me and for the people that I'm working with. Everything takes time. I'm prone to pithy adages, but one of my favorites is slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And so I know if I go into a space that has a lot of disruption, I'm confident that we can work together to
smooth out that disruption. And that doesn't mean that everyone will get along and everyone will like each other, but we'll follow policy, we will develop policy, we will be professional. One of the, one of the things that when I first came to my department here, there was a lot of stories of yelling at faculty meetings. And I mean, we don't yell at faculty meetings. You know, we don't cry in baseball and we don't yell at faculty. The way you described your leadership stance
or your style is a perfect description. I think of the critical thinker relator, your two highest on the five paths, lean into policy. Develop one if there's not one, but do so together. Do so in a way that supports everybody, captures their input. Because you're not always. You don't lead with the confidence that you always have the right, not confidence, but the idea that you always know
what to do. And so you want everyone's input and buy in and participation to create that policy, that policy will create some sense of fairness, some sense of predictability, smooth things out. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. That's pretty interesting. And I think when you said
confidence, you're actually. I think sometimes when people look at leaders that take the style that I take, and I've heard this from other people, not about me, but other leaders that have a similar style that that is, they don't have enough confidence because they're not the smartest man in the room. They're not the person that has the solution. And I think that's at a detriment to institutions overall. If your thought is that the strongest leader in the room is the person
with the loudest voice. Totally true. Great point. Have when you said you've seen that with other leaders, have you ever gotten feedback that that is because you lead that way, that that's how you perceived, or. No, I don't think so. I haven't gotten Feedback from any of people that I've worked with in a,
in a supervisory role from me. So I don't, I don't think I'm perceived that way, but because I think that's sometimes countered by my personality in that I sometimes talk too much and have to my, you know, we all have the voices in our heads. My voice is always telling me, okay, you don't have to say that right now. Let someone else say something. So I think maybe those two things counter each other.
So I don't, I don't think that inappropriately critical idea that a deliberative or collaborative leader is necessarily not the strongest leader, it kind of gets attributed to me in a negative way. I think also when you're describing your style, there's a saying, people will support what they help build. Absolutely. And I think that the way that you talked about, you know, getting folks on board and it's
not this, I created this thing and I need buy in. If they're helping to build it and their input is sought and it's transparent, I think goes so far. And it sounds like that is an approach that you take as well. And it has to be that idea of everyone helping to build something versus buy in. Those are really two separate things. And I do find people who try to get buy in is that the people, they're trying to get buy in too, see that it's not genuine. They just want you
on their side. And I think whenever you're approaching a project where you do need a lot of people to be supportive of it, in the end, you have to go into that with the mindset that, well, I think I know how it should work, but I definitely know that the people that I'm talking to are going to have important things to say that will point me in a different direction and it has to be genuine. And I have experienced time and again where I think we're
going to end up in. In it, you know, point X, but we end up at point Z. And that was where we should have ended up. But if I went in, you know, dead set on X, we would never have gotten to Z where we needed to be. Totally agree. Speak to how that's helped you step into some of these difficult roles, because I would imagine that's a very useful or productive approach to leadership.
When you're stepping into, like you said, a department that maybe is on the verge of receivership, there's probably a lot of contention. People wanting to do things differently, wanting to go in different directions. You've stepped into some, some tough roles where there's a lot
of conflict. And I'm curious if you could just speak to how this style both around getting everyone's true participation so there's ownership to your point, not just buy in, but real participation and ownership of outcomes and also this sense of like policy leaning into policy developing that if you could just speak to how that's helped you step into some difficult roles where there's a lot of laden conflict. Sure. I was chair of the criminology and Criminal
Justice Department. And when I was chair I received a 4:30 in the afternoon phone call from the provost assistant saying that she had the provost on the phone. And I don't know if I'd ever actually spoken to the provost before at that juncture. And so, you know, no phone call, no good phone call ever, ever comes at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. No, no, no. So I had no idea what this was and was a little
terrified about it. And then when I talked to the provost, what he was calling about was that the dean of the school had retired unexpectedly and they needed, they were looking for an interim dean and needed someone from outside the school to take that position, which also gave me insight into what might be going on in the school. So after being in Alabama for about four and a half years,
I transitioned to serve as the interim dean. And it was a organization that was in a far more strife than my department had been in when I entered it and needing to come in and develop trust in administration when that trust was basically completely absent at that point. So this idea of having some sort of collaborative faculty governance is great, but it doesn't work if no one trusts you. So I tried
very hard to build trust during my first few months. And I did that by truly having an open door policy in that every single person just came in my door and sat and talked to me for as long as they needed to, sometimes for a couple hours, and listening without judging or creating a narrative of my own of what was going on until I kind of heard everyone. And there was this sense that the dean hadn't been present for a long time.
And when I went over with, you know, just a few weeks notice, I was still teaching a class, I was still doing a lot in criminal justice to help with that transition. So I did little things like if I was going to be in my class, I'd put a. You know, and also I came in, there was no administrative assistant that they hadn't rehired an administrative assistant for some reason. So literally the Dean's office door was closed and the lights were off.
The dean wasn't there. So I would, you know, I would have a calendar I'd post in the window of the door so everyone would know where I was. So every, like, small thing I could do to build trust, I think was really important. One of our longstanding deans here, the dean of our business school, which is a big, huge, complex college, right. Her advice to every incoming dean is go and meet with every one of your employees in their space. That's good advice, is great advice.
And so I followed her advice, you know, to meet with everybody and to go to them, right? Not them come to you, you go to them. And I think that the small but consequential steps helped me build trust in the school, which allowed me to get people to work together more than they had been able to in the past. And that was in. I moved over in the School of social work in January 2019. So I had about a year and then everything fell
apart. So I was expecting to be there about a year and I ended up being there about three years serving as dean through Covid. So I had some time to get people working together and then everyone, everyone dispersed and then we did our best working together via Zoom. I think one of the things that's interesting about that story is there were so many little things that you did that I think a lot of people overlook when it comes to building trust.
People, you know, want to have a big sort of one time retreat and we're going to now trust each other and what you did, even just the simple things of like, hey, I am here, my lights are on, I'm just in class or going to meet people where they are or talking about, I want to have an open door, I want to hear from you. Those little things, you know, by themselves may not do a lot, but together it shows your stance and it shows people that you're ready to be here and to be in it with
them. And little things have a long term impact for sure. I mean, I was dropped into this space and a discipline I didn't know in a college. I'd never even entered the building before. And in the middle of the year, so there wasn't any kind of ramp up. And so, you know, within the first like month, I had to go as dean to a conference in the state. And our school is really the largest school in the state, so we, we really take a
big presence in any of these state meetings or conferences. And so they had a big event and all the alumni came and, and so here I am as dean in this big event, not knowing what to do. And then when it was all over, it was great. And this, the staff that had planned the event were cleaning up. So I clean up, and I can't tell you how much leverage I got and trust I built for not leaving that event and picking the trash. Because that's what you do. Yeah,
that's what you do. But that's not always what people in leadership roles you. Absolutely. So I'm just curious. There's. There's so much to dig into in terms of your interim experience, and I think it's so relevant right now because there are so many interim leaders right now in higher education, and yours was an unplanned transition.
It's, you know, that's, that's very different. I think when there is a. A little bit more of a planful, you know, more than Friday to Monday or whatever time period it was that you had to figure that out. Can you speak to just some lessons learned, broadly speaking? And then there's a few nuances, I think, to your situation in terms of how your interim got extended beyond what you thought. I think that's happening more and more. We're seeing longer interims, you know, two years, two and a
half years. So I think there's some nuances to dig into there. But just as you think broadly, what are some things, lessons learned around interim leadership that you've taken from your experience there? Sure. I've been in my current role as associate provost for four years now. And so I've seen a number of interim deans that I've worked with. We've about transitioned, turned over all of our deans almost in that time period. So there have been a number of interims.
Oh, wow. And different types of interim experiences. Some are just a few months, some are, you know, a year or more. And I think a few things that I've seen in thinking about and working with interim deans is that they, that sometimes people coming into interim positions have difficulty figuring out what their new role is, if they've been a department chair or they've been an associate dean. Being a dean is something different than those
two roles. Even if you work very closely with a dean before and learning to lean into other deans versus at each step, as you move up in, I'm sure any type of workplace hierarchy, your circle of potential confidants gets smaller and smaller. And as interim dean, when you know it's going to be just temporary and you Know that you'll
return to your old role or return to faculty. I think one of the missteps I've seen is people still thinking their confidants are the people who are now in positions that they are the supervisor for. And they really have to take that step in moving to the dean level and then developing relationships with the other deans to provide kind of support and feedback. We are really lucky here at Alabama that our dean's group has always been a very collaborative, supportive group
of people. We don't exist in that type of zero sum game, budgetary kind of situation where there's competition among the deans and among the colleges. So that's allowed the deans to kind of come together and support one another and support interim deans as they come in. But I think that's really important. It's thinking about who your new kind of circle of supporters can be when you move into. Even if it's an interim role, when you move into that dean role. Oh,
my God, there's so. There's so many valuable nuggets you just shared. I. It's so helpful. So the first thing you said, how do you do that? How You've. You were never a dean before, so I think you're exactly right. It's very sage advice. Like, you're no longer now the chair, you are now the dean. So how do you figure out that new role when you've never done that role before? Because I find people fall back all the
time because they're very comfortable in the old role. They were very good in the old role, and that's probably one of the reasons they were tapped for the new role. But it's much easier when they don't know how to do the new role, to default back to what they know how to do. So I'm just curious, what steps, practically speaking, like, what do you do to learn the new role? Lean into those other people, lean into the other deans, and also lean into the provost's office in academic affairs.
Because every provost office is, is, you know, set up very differently. But there are a whole, you know, level of U.S. associate provosts that are there to support the deans in whatever area they need some guidance or support in. And I think that using colleges can often be very siloed. I think at any university I've ever been at or been, you know, known a lot about, the colleges end up being very siloed. And it's only when you get out of your silo in some way that you see the
Similarities and the differences across colleges. So being able to say you move into a de enrolling, you see this unit as its own thing, but as part of the larger
institution. So really taking advantage of and leaning into the resources at the larger institutional level in terms of, you know, associate provost especially, but all of the different directors and other things at different offices that you interact with, I think that was very helpful for me moving into social work, as I had been a department chair for a pretty long period of time, relatively speaking,
in the largest college. So I had worked with so many of the different offices already in terms of student life and disability services and the registrar and all those sorts of things that I was comfortable being able to kind of turn to those. Those resources. And I think at every stage, you need to identify a mentor, whether that's formal or just in your head. Even if you don't tell that person, I want you to be my mentor. If you're looking at that person as
someone to emulate, I think that's really important. And finding another dean who you can. Who you can have that sort of formal or informal relationship with. Yeah, I think that's. That's excellent. And I think two things I just want to highlight in what you're sharing. One is I. I love what you're discussing. I love what you're talking about in terms of the network and really establishing a network and maintaining
that network and being able to tap into that. And I. What I hear you saying, especially as you, you know, whether you're leaning on the provost's office or other deans not being afraid to ask for help, I think that's counterintuitive, but I think it's. I think it's an essential leadership skill and quality, not being afraid to do that. And the other thing that you talked about in terms of the relationships with the other deans reminds me of Lencioni's concept of first
team. And I think that's another kind of counterintuitive notion, because when you ask people, who's your most important team? Who's your first team? Most people will say, the people underneath me, the folks who I support directly. Right. Who report to me. So as a dean, it might be the associate deans and assistant deans and directors and chairs and faculty of the school, staff of the school. And his concept of first team is actually when you get to that level of play, as you go
higher in the organization, your first team needs to be your peers. It needs to be lateral. And actually you're. You're better able to serve those who report to you. And you're better able to serve the person. You report to the provost if you know what the other deans are doing, if you have. Because that gives you more of a holistic
view of what's happening at the institution. So when it comes to advising the provost or counseling, you know, giving input to the provost, because the provost has to make decisions for the entire institution, unless you have the same view as he or she does, you can't advise or counsel them very
effectively. And if you only know your slice of the pie, then inherently you default to an advocate and defend kind of style of leadership, just advocating for what your school or college needs and defending against anything that you think is appropriate, perceived threat. And at the same time, when it comes to supporting those beneath you, you can actually give them as effective of guidance if you don't know what the overall strategy of the
institution is, how everything fits together. Because ultimately what will happen then is you're prioritizing things or putting things forward that may be in conflict or competing interests or, you know, create some tensions with what the central administration is trying to do or what other schools and colleges are trying to do. Creates a lot of duplication, competition, just conflict
in general. And so I think what you're describing is very counterintuitive to think that your first team actually needs to be your peers and having really strong relationships, in your example, as an interim dean with all the other deans. But the same, I think, is true at the chair level. Their first team needs to be all the other chairs of the school, because then they can advise the dean really effectively and they can translate the dean's message in a way that's
in sync with what the other chairs are trying to do. And it works really at every. In every division or department of the institution. Well, one thing that you said just now that really stands out is this idea that you are advising the person that you report to and then interpreting and guiding the people that report to you. Because I think it doesn't matter what your position is all the way up to the president.
You're always reporting to someone. And I find my role now, and even my role as the dean, it's of course, to support and grow my college, but it's to support the provost. And if I'm thinking about what I'm doing is being able to support the provost or whoever that I'm reporting to, that means I have to be looking at the whole picture. I think in any leadership role, the most frustrating thing is when Someone comes to you just with demands. Yes. And not with the understanding of
the. The competing priorities and the broader tensions in the unit, and not with the willingness to understand that and then figure out, okay, I can't. I can't do this entire thing for you, but let's see what we can do. Given to. To meet whatever your goals or needs are, given this broader picture. And if you're not willing to have the broader picture, you don't do service to the dean. You're reporting to the provost or the president that you're to.
No, And I think to your earlier point, it reinforces that if you're not taking that stance, then it. Rein. That behavior, will reinforce those silos because you're only focusing on what you need, advocating for what you need. And it does then quickly become into a zero sum. I mean, it sounds like at Alabama, you've got. I think culturally, that's a really nice dynamic where the deans can collaborate in a way that hopefully creates positive some thinking in the
room. I think that's really rare in my experience in higher education. And I think the more typical model is, whether it's the chair level or the dean level or on the staff side, everybody's just advocating for what they need because they just don't know enough about what each other does. And so it's just about. I mean, it's really as simple as sharing information at the peer level. Goals, challenges, barriers to success,
opportunities that you want to pursue. Like, the more you. You don't need to, you know, understand everyone's ins and outs, but the more you can understand at the strategic level what they're trying to do, what the barriers to success are, what the opportunities are, what the difficulties are, you can start to get more of a holistic understanding.
But. But it, it speaks to something that you're. You're saying, which I just want to make more explicit, which is you are taking a very proactive stance in your leadership because you're saying it's my job to serve provost in your example, as well as, like, faculty and staff who report to you. And I don't think that's everyone's default stance, but there, There's. So there's something about the way you're approaching your leadership, which is a very proactive stance, that says
it's. These are not. There may be tensions between what faculty want and what the provost wants, and I'm the dean, and I may be, quote, unquote, caught in the middle. But if you reorient to say, how do I serve the provost. How do I serve my faculty? You'll find opportunities where those things can come into alignment, where it's not always conflicting or competing interests, not every time. I mean, I'm not naive. There are times
when there are just competing interests. But, but you're, you're, you're more likely to find win, win opportunities when you have that more proactive stance of how do I serve both versus either or. And I think just in, in higher education today, we have to be looking for opportunities. And you will miss opportunities if you lean into, if you Balkanize yourself into your discipline or your college or you lean into the way things have always been done.
Whether it's, you know, whether it's industry partners, whether it's your donors, whether it's the government these days, it's. People are looking for something that creates synergy, that creates collaboration, that crosses disciplinary lines. And you can't do that if you're not understanding the broader picture and being able and willing to work with a whole lot of other people. I jotted that down too, as you were talking, because dean's job is to
look for opportunities. And if you don't have that view, I can't imagine all of the things that you can miss out on. Yeah, yeah. Let me ask maybe if this question for both of you, given some of your experience at other institutions, there's gotta be a pretty big difference because you came into a dean role from a. You weren't the existing chair and then became dean of that college.
It was a different college. So there's probably different dynamics that come into play when you move to dean or even interim of your existing college. And I wonder if you two could talk about, because I know a lot of people struggle when it's their own college for exactly some of the reasons you were talking about Leslie around then. My colleagues, now I'm on a different level and I have. They're not my confidants anymore.
And there's some struggles there. So I wonder if you could too, could talk about the differences that you've seen or advice for folks that are experiencing that. So way back, and this was when I was still at Georgia State, I went to some leadership training workshop and when I, the, the speaker,
and I don't remember who it was at the time, was saying something. These are all just people in different leadership roles on campus were at this workshop and the speaker was saying something along the lines of, you, you don't really know who your colleagues are until you move into a supervisory role. And you don't know just, you don't know. You don't know what you don't know about them. And having not. I mean, I was really an emerging leader at this point. I really didn't know.
Everyone at the table I was at was nodding along with this speaker. And I didn't know what kind of secrets was I was going to learn about these people. But it's really true in that when you're in a dean role or you're in a department chair role, people will interact with you and share things with you and expose a side of themselves to you that their colleagues may not ever see.
And, you know, if someone can be a lovely person with other colleagues and then reveal their jerk side to an associate dean or dean or a department chair, and that's a different thing to work with. Right. And I think for someone that is moving up in, within a unit that they've been, if they've been a department chair and moving up to a dean in that role or one of the things they struggle with is seeing this other side of their colleagues that they never knew in this way.
And that, that kind of, that's hard to distance yourself from and hard to come to terms with. And I've seen some of the interim deans that we've had and I, and I hope I can serve as a confidant for some of those associate deans when they just need to bounce things around, they'll come to me. And like, I never knew this person would. Was like this. I'm, like, I did. So it's a, it's, it's. That's a hard thing. You're people that you've been friends with, professional workplace friends.
Now you're in a different role, and that's hard to adjust to. Yeah, Yeah. I, I think it's, I think those are great points. I, I think whether you are coming internally or externally into a new role, I, I do think what Leslie, you were saying earlier is, is true in both cases. It really does come down to the relationships that you build and really building trusting, sincere, authentic, genuine relationships to try and. Because that's the only way you'll build trust and, and, and get things done.
I think they, there are unique challenges to building relationships, whether you're internal or external. If you're internal, you're sort of a known quantity. And then people have a, maybe they have their mind made up around you. And so I think you're, you have to, as you do, like your example of like a listening tour where you're going to
their space and having these one on one type conversations. I love that. And it's your chance also to then shift your, you know, step into your new leadership role, have a different stance, ask questions, listen. I mean, be very proactive about creating an environment that gets that input and also gives you a chance to
establish a little bit of a different brand or different stance. If you're internal, if you're external, you know, you have to do the same things and you have to be much more mindful that there's a lot of politics at play and people are going to be, you know, everyone's got some kind of an agenda that's not necessarily bad. I don't mean that because people are trying to manipulate you. But everyone has their needs and their goals and they want to know which side you're going to come
down on certain things. And so just being really mindful of that, having those, having your ears perked up to really, you know, not making a lot of commitments early on, listening, connecting dots, making connections quickly, trying to figure out who you can trust and who's, you know, you got to map that stuff out. So I think there are unique challenges to how you build the relationships, but I think both are
really critical. I think something you said is really important, which is you, you still need confidants, but they probably need to be different confidants. And maybe it's at a dean, it's someone like you in the provost office or associate provost level. I think it could also be a coach.
It could be somebody who's outside the institution, somebody you can process things with, someone who maybe has been there before, who's been down that road, who can help, help you connect the dots or just do some sense making. You've had some experience with coaching, maybe you could speak to that. Yeah. So when I was as interim dean and I'm not, not my field, not my discipline, I was never going to be there permanently. So part of my kind of self defined role was setting up
a structure where the permanent dean could be successful. So part of that along the way, once we had identified and it was an external person that was coming in to be dean. Cool. Once we identified someone, I think Beth, you and I talked about setting up executive coaching for that person as part of their kind of startup package and sign on and doing some kind of dean boot camps over the summer and then moving in to having some follow up coaching through the year.
And at some juncture, Beth, you said it, you said, well, what about you? You need you should have this coaching, you know, too. And I was like. And I was like, I don't want to. In my head, I'm like, I don't want to spend Social works money on me. I'm just going back to department chair. I'll be fine. And then at some juncture, I'm like, wow, I've. I've. There's been some blood,
sweat and tears in this place. And, yeah, I think I do need to spend Social works money on helping me transition to the next role. And so I worked through y' all to get set up with. With a coach, and it was fantastic because it really helped me think through. I was initially thinking I would be moving back to my chair role, and then the position I'm in opened up. So I ended up not moving back into my chair role, but that was happening as I was doing coaching.
So we were able to pivot, and Karen Whitney was my coach, and we were able to pivot what my needs were through coaching as what my future was going to be. But that experience allowed me to really set myself up. I was wanting to set the incoming dean up for success, but allowed me to set myself up for success in this in terms of really having a. A great, clear transition plan that I built with her guidance. And I
never really would have thought. Thought through how to what I should be doing coming into a new role in the same way that I was able to by working with a coach. So that was a great. I, you know, strongly encourage it whenever we have a new chair coming in. I think some people will think of coaching as something you do if you're having a problem, but I don't think that's the case at all. I think it helps you be more successful than you already are in
the role that you're in. And my mindset is that you always have room for professional development. You always have room to learn and grow in the position that you're in, and coaching is just a part of that. So it was. It was great, great experience and one that I regularly advise. And definitely when I move from this role, one that I will turn back. To again, I think that's a piece that I would just highlight for folks,
is that it's not like you're. I mean, sometimes you are in a forever relationship with a coach, but you can use it on and off as you need. But also it helps make things more intentional. Right? Instead of we kind of stumble to our next role or like, this opened up and now I guess I'm chair again. Or something like that. And it helps it. I don't know. I see it just help people really be intentional and like you said, focus on what they want. Yeah. And so that's.
And I don't think enough of us working. I mean, in faculty administrative roles, we generally don't think of ourselves moving into administration or faculty first. Right. Yep. And so we kind of stumble into administrative professional development. And it doesn't have to be that way. We have a relatively new dean here who had been a dean at another large institution, and she came in and basically gave her department chairs a menu and say, okay, here are some different kind
of programs that you could participate in. Pick one, because everyone's going to do one. And, you know, it's that intentionality of leadership that as faculty, we don't always think about because we often stumble
into leadership roles. But I think, you know, deans and people in my role, if you can create space to encourage that kind of intentional leadership development, you'll have better people working in your college or your university, and those people will have more longevity and be more happy in their own positions because you're giving them some skills that as faculty, we don't always like, develop on our own along the way.
That's so true. I love, Leslie, all that you have brought to us today, and I appreciate you ending with a growth mindset. And I think that is a leadership lesson that we all need to take with us, is to keep growing and to keep learning and exploring what's next or how you're growing personally and professionally. And I love that. And especially true for, as you said, for faculty right now. Amit, what would you add? No, I just
want to express my thanks to you, Leslie. Thanks for taking some time with us to share your experience and so many pearls of wisdom that you've shared around leadership. I mean, it's. Everything you touched on is so congruent with what the research says and what some of the things we talk about in our workshops. And it's, it just, it's nice to see it animated through your lived experience and your different roles. So thank you for sharing your
wisdom with us and thank you for your leadership. Well, it's been a lovely conversation. Appreciate it.