Weekly Wisdom | OSU President Becky Johnson

Bridget Burns: Welcome to another episode of Start the Week with Wisdom. I’m Bridget Burns, executive director of the University Innovation Alliance.

Doug Lederman: And I’m Doug Lederman, editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed.

Bridget Burns: Each week, I team up with Doug to have a conversation with a sitting college president or chancellor to try and unpack what it’s like to lead in this moment and to uplift those of us who are stuck at home with positive examples of leadership. Hopefully, so you can start the week with a little bit of optimism. So that’s why we call it Start the Week with Wisdom.

Doug Lederman: We’re joined today by Becky Johnson, who’s the interim president of Oregon State University. She’s been at Oregon State, I think it’s about 30 years, and has stepped in to the campus’s top role to sort of lead into another turbulent fall, but to sort of provide a lot of steadiness to a campus that’s been through some stuff. So welcome to the program today.

Becky Johnson: Thanks, Doug, and thanks for saying 30 years. It’s really more like 37.

Doug Lederman: We can round down. That’s fine.

Bridget Burns: Well, as a double Beaver, I am particularly grateful for your willingness to step in, especially in this time. We’re finding that a lot of leaders are stepping down and transitioning because it’s the hardest it’s ever been to lead. And so, those who are willing to raise their hand and kind of step into what is the most difficult time is something that’s really worth noting. So, and you also already had a really awesome job as the CEO of OSU-Cascades. And so, anyway, just thank you for that.

Becky Johnson: Happy to do it. And my job in Bend at the Cascades campus was terrific. And be able to start to work at a campus, it’s really a startup. It was so entrepreneurial and had so much innovation. It really was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So, but I was getting ready to wind down there, and this is a great way to end my career.

Bridget Burns: Well, then, that’s perfect timing. I know it’s really difficult. I get called all the time by boards that are trying to figure out how to handle interim appointments right now. And it was always a very difficult job, but I would say it’s the most difficult right now because it’s even if you are a sitting president, having a sense of what’s really happening and how to anticipate and how to lead in this moment is, I mean, I don’t, it’s just very challenging. So, um, well, for those of you at home, uh, I met Interim President Johnson when I was just a student back 100 years ago. Uh, and it feels uh so full circle to have you on the show now and at this moment in time. Um, what struck me when I first met you, and one of the things, if you talk to folks on campus about Becky Johnson, is her ability to always project calm, uh, very humble but calm at all times. And I, the first question I wanted to ask you is, where does that come from? And for those of us who are at different points in our career and know the importance of projecting calm when things are not calm, but it’s just really hard. What has helped you, and what advice do you give for that?

Becky Johnson: Well, I’m sure that I’m not calm all the time. In fact, I don’t think I’m really a patient person, but I think where you learn this is by observing people who do it badly. And you see people who panic in certain situations, and you realize that nothing is ever as bad as it seems in the moment. And that if you just step back and you think about the situation, you accept it, you look at what the alternatives are, and you try to calm people down, you’ll always end up in a better place. And I especially see this in younger leaders, and I especially see it in younger women leaders because I think we all suffer a little bit from imposter syndrome. And so we have this fear of making the wrong decision or fear of failure, and it tends to create anxiety. And you’re not calm and you’re not analyzing the situation. And so, my advice to those women in particular, but young leaders, is to always take time, even if it’s take a day, you know, sleep on this. If you can’t take a day, at least take a few minutes, but don’t just react to the situation that’s in front of you. You, as a leader, need to project calm and confidence, and that you have this situation under control, and things are not going to fall apart.

Doug Lederman: I’m curious: does that steadiness, that not as nothing is ever as bad as it seems, does that also mean that you don’t get overly excited positively as well? Because I think there’s a pretty significant tendency I see for leaders to sort of exaggerate the upside sometimes and to get sort of, so I mean, do you sort of try and stay in that middle generally as also in addition to sort of not trying not to let the negatives get to you?

Becky Johnson: I definitely do. If you ask my partner, she would say that I’m never high, high or low, low. Sometimes she wishes I was a little more high, right? But I will say I was with the football team at Cal. And before the game, I might have said something about the Rose Bowl. So clearly, I was going through high, high in this case as we got Cal. But no, you’re exactly right. That’s just not the type of person I am in general. So it’s not hard for me to not go there. But it’s really important to manage expectations in both directions and try to keep things on a steady course.

Doug Lederman: So the situation that you walked into there, and people can read about it. We don’t need to talk about it a lot here, but there’s a lot of places, again, that are, as Bridget said, sort of it’s a hard time period. But so I’m curious, sort of what how you prepared? You obviously spent a career preparing to know Oregon State and to sort of be able to understand the place. But what have been your main goals in trying to sort of take over at a time when there has been uncertainty and turmoil, maybe more than normal? What are some of the strategies you’ve used and tactics?

Becky Johnson: Well, our situation was fairly unique in that the previous leader was only here for about nine months. And unfortunately, it was during the middle of COVID. And so people didn’t really get to know him very much. And I think that was difficult then to be in a crisis situation when no one has gained trust in you, no one knows you very well. But so what my role, I think why I was chosen for the role is because people do know me and they’ve known me for 37 years at Oregon State University. And that’s what was needed at this time. And interestingly, I was talking to the chancellor at Cal last weekend and she said the same thing happened with her. She was invited to come back as the chancellor of the University of California because people knew her for years and years and she was a trusted person to be in that situation. So, but I think that in addition to being someone that people know and trust, you also have to restore the sense that, you know, things didn’t go, the things that happen at the university that are important, which is teaching students and doing research and doing outreach, that didn’t stop. You know, the president could be anyone and those things can still go on and be successful. And our faculty were still doing amazing research. Our students were learning. Our extension folks were out in every county doing what they do. And we needed to remind them of that, right? Things weren’t terrible at Oregon State University. Yes, we had a presidential transition, but things were really good, and we just have to restore that confidence and get people focused back on their day-to-day jobs that they do so well.

Bridget Burns: That’s great. I did want to ask just a follow-up about you stepped into a period of uncertainty. I’m curious about what advice you would give another leader who is about to do the same. And is there anything in particular that you thought or you got feedback about that was particularly useful in that steadying ambition? And was it commute, like, I mean, in Zoom world, it’s like really hard, but I’m just trying to understand, in addition to what you just shared, like the that sense of rebuilding and refocusing, were there any particular activities that you thought you would suggest to someone who’s thinking about stepping into something like that?

Becky Johnson: I think the main thing was to listen and assess. So find out what people are worried about, find out what their kind of greatest fears are, what their challenges are, assess what we can do about them. We can’t do everything about everyone’s fears. And, you know, from this situation that we’re in right now with the pandemic, there is a sense to of people where they’re going to the worst-case scenario all the time. And you hear from a vocal minority of people who want you to eliminate every risk that could be out there. And of course, we can’t do that. We have to figure out how to learn how to live with risk. You have to identify those risks, assess them, but then make the decisions to move forward where you can. So I think listening and assessing, and don’t come into a situation like I came into thinking that you’re going to have some grand big vision and you’re going to change the institution and here’s our opportunity to go in a different direction. That’s not what the institution needs in that situation. We need to make sure that people are focusing on the direction that we were already going, which was great. And at some point, when I’m not interim and a new person comes in, that would be the time to think about new strategies, new visions. So I think that’s important in this interim kind of role is that you don’t try to change everything at the university in a short amount of time.

Doug Lederman: A lot of the presidents we’ve had talk to us recently have talked about the importance of sort of showing vulnerability, of letting people, and not everybody’s fully agreed on sort of how much to do that, but I’ve been struck by how many presidents have talked about sort of being willing to acknowledge how hard this time is for them personally. How have you sort of approached that? And what have you sensed the reaction that that has brought from the people you’re talking to?

Becky Johnson: Well, for me, I like to talk about being authentic, and people say that back to me often. They feel like I’m an authentic person. And it’s probably a little bit different than bringing vulnerability to the job, but I’m always conscious that I don’t want to try to be something or look something that I’m not. You know, I don’t look like most presidents, certainly don’t dress like most presidents, probably don’t act like most presidents. But everybody realizes that this is me. I’m authentic and they appreciate that. And then that gives them confidence in what I’m saying. You know, they’re not second-guessing. Am I really telling the truth or am I just saying what I’m supposed to say because I’m a president? So I think that authenticity just goes a really long way in terms of inspiring people to get on board with you, to share the vision of where we’re going and have them get on board and feel like they have a role to play.

Bridget Burns: That’s great. I agree. And I, so the piece I wanted to follow up on was: you mentioned earlier that you actually learned a bit about leadership from watching other people not do it potentially well. And I want to understand what now COVID has been a very unusual time. And I’m wondering if there are things that you have learned, good or bad, from watching other presidents navigate the pandemic. And I’m curious if you could share any insights you would draw from that.

Becky Johnson: Well, when it comes to the pandemic in particular, I felt like we got all consumed with planning at our university, and I’m sure lots of other universities. And I felt like we almost got into planning paralysis. You know, there’s lots of other things that need to be done that administrators need to be working on, and all we were doing was planning. And usually, we were planning for the worst-case scenario instead of the most likely scenario, because again, and sometimes, you know, you have your general counsel in your ear that’s always telling you the worst-case scenario that you better look out for. And so, we had, you know, probably tens, you know, probably hundreds of people involved in planning nonstop for the worst-case scenario that could happen. And of course, conditions kept changing. So every time the conditions changed, you had to go back and you’d have to plan again. And so I just felt like we got into a little bit of an all-consuming planning mentality. And I’m not trying to put down planning because you do have to plan. And this was a case where that was important. But I’d like to make sure that we are not kind of in a paralysis where all we’re doing is planning and not remembering what are we here for? What are the jobs that we’re here for in terms of teaching students and doing our research and doing our outreach and making sure that we’re not taking our eye off of that, always worrying about the worst-case scenario?

Bridget Burns: That’s very true. I was just thinking about how, you know, the real challenge is how institutions do the dismount of how do they, what it’s not getting back to normal, but how do we shift this new weird muscle that we’ve developed? I mean, people are having COVID meetings every single day. Cabinets that used to meet once a month were meeting every day, or, you know, and every task force was related to response. And so I think the question I’m interested in seeing if any leaders really have a strategy about is how do we want to set the posture of our institution up for the future? How do we position ourselves to not just be firefighting, but actually what are the things that we need to be doing? And then how do we assemble our how we spend our time? Because I think that what we haven’t recognized is that our calendars have become so bloated with this obsessive focus on this moment. And we should give ourselves a chance to think about how do we want to spend our time in the future. That’s just a reaction to what you—

Becky Johnson: I guess I’d add there that we’ve also heard a lot from I mentioned the few vocal voices. And so there are always going to be people at your university that are worried about a very small risk of something happening and they want you to do something about it. And it means the vast majority of the people will be jeopardized or set back because we are trying to address every small problem for those few vocal voices. And so I think that’s really difficult for all leaders. And of course, most of us have bargaining units at our institutions as well. And those vocal voices tend to get magnified then through the bargaining units. And so it’s really a challenge, I think, to always see the broader picture and what’s best for the institution, even while you’re getting bombarded with some very loud voices.

Doug Lederman: We’re talking about sort of how to move, and you’re in this period where you’re obviously sort of the institution that is pivoting, you’re at the institution’s helm at this time where you’re sort of starting to pivot, again, not out of the pandemic. But I’m curious what you, as you look ahead at a place like Oregon State, what are the issues that you think are going to need to be sort of front and center? And what should be on the institution’s agenda, getting more conversation now going forward, maybe than has in the past? And maybe if there are things that we should be focused on less than we were before? Like, do you think, I’m curious how you think this moment has changed? You talked about the things that the university always has done and probably will continue to be, but are there things that you think deserve more attention now than they did before and maybe things that we should be focused on less?

Becky Johnson: Well, I think the thing that we need to focus on more is getting more underrepresented students into our institutions of higher education. And never, I think, before has this been more important because income inequality has just become a larger and larger problem in our society. And the only way that I see that we’re going to address that issue is to get more students into higher education, get them on a career path, and into a good job. And we, you know, UIA is at the forefront of this. And these are efforts that all of our institutions are working on, but I don’t see that we’re making progress as fast as we’d like to. There’s still a wide discrepancy between who goes to college and who doesn’t. And so if I were going to say what we need to pay more attention to, and I think our state is doing a pretty good job of that, and probably many states are, but there never seems to be enough resources to be put toward that. And one of the things we need to do more is working with our K-12 partners on this issue because that’s where a lot of these students are lost. You can’t get them when they’re 18 years old and say, come to college. You’ve got to get them when they’re in middle school or before and get them thinking about going to college. And so partnerships with our K-12 institutions, I think, is going to be more and more important. And I just feel like the Alliance has been doing a good job of sharing information across institutions for where people have had success to increase access to higher education and increase success once they get there.

Bridget Burns: Thanks for the shout out. Always happy to have that. But yeah, I agree. I also think that, you know, there’s so much talk about adult learners right now. And everyone thinks that’s this new pipeline because there’s just a shortage of 18- to 22-year-olds. And if you look at the birth rate, it’s not where it used to be. We’re not even at replacement. And so I think a lot of institutions are thinking about adult learners as the way they will make up for enrollment drop. But they’re not doing the work to think about how they need to reorient and reimagine their institution to actually meet adult learners where they are coming from. And I also think that you’re right, that K-12 partnerships, they’re very old school. We actually need a new way of working with K-12, especially as we’re seeing burnout and exhaustion and everything that’s happening in K-12. I mean, we produce the teachers. And so how have we changed our curriculum to adapt to what’s happening to better support them? I think there’s just, there’s so much there. So, I think I want to turn just to our last few questions that are really about you as a leader. And I’m curious about you have had a really unique career. You are someone who represents a vantage point that has not rarely been seen leading higher education institutions. And you’ve overcome, you know, traveling up the org chart of the university. And I’m just curious about what leadership advice someone gave you that you have used throughout your career that has been the most valuable?

Becky Johnson: Well, you know, leadership happened early for me because I was involved in sports and team sports in particular. And I still credit team sports with a lot of what I learned about leadership. And I think that you learn about how important confidence is. If people go into a competition and the leaders aren’t confident, nobody’s going to be confident and you’re not likely to win. So the importance for leaders to display that kind of confidence in all situations, I think, is incredibly important. The other thing is who’s on the team. And as I got out of college and started making my own teams, and you’re playing city league and these other things, and you get to decide who you want to play with, I spent a lot of time thinking about who are the best people that I wanted on my team because I wanted to win, right? And of course, that is directly transferable to all of our situations in life when you’re putting together a team. And we’ve all probably read Jim Collins, you know, Good to Great, and having the right people on the bus and then the right seats on the bus. And I just think that’s incredibly important as you move forward. Now, sometimes you get put in the situation where the team’s already there and you’re there as their put in as the leader. And then sometimes you’ve got to move people around and find the right place for them. If they’re not in the right place already, sometimes some people have to go. You need to get new people. But if you don’t have the right people on your team, you know, you’re just not going to be successful. And then when I got to Cascades, OSU-Cascades, I think I was, it was the first time I was actually in charge. You know, I had been kind of associate dean and vice provost. So you’re always kind of second in command. And here I was in charge of this, although we always have a boss, right? No matter how high you think you are on the ladder, there’s always a boss. But I could make more decisions. But there I discovered the importance of having a vision and starting to think about what it takes to reach that vision and doing what I think of sometimes as reverse engineering, which is if I know where we want to be in five years, well, where do we have to be next year? And then where do we have to be next month? And where do we have to be this week if we’re going to make that goal in five years? And then really laying that out. Everybody has to know what that plan is. Everybody has to buy into it and stick to it. And then you have to celebrate your wins, right? You have to make sure that people know we’re making progress, we’re doing great things, and it just kind of becomes contagious and people get on board.

Bridget Burns: Those are great. Those are all solid pieces of advice. And for those at home who don’t understand the team sport background, we didn’t mention this earlier, but Becky was a two-sport NCAA Division I athlete at University of Wisconsin-Madison. So that’s also another rare background for a president. A lot of college presidents have never done a lot of sports. So our last question, Doug, do you want to grab that? Or I can. You’re muted.

Doug Lederman: All right. Well, I will, I’ll grab it, which is: so, Becky, because you are in this position and a lot of people look up to you, I’m curious if there is advice that you find yourself most frequently giving to others, whether it’s in the academy or otherwise, in terms of beyond the advice we just heard served you well. What do you think you tell people the most frequently if they’re thinking about the presidency?

Becky Johnson: Well, I guess I’d go back to being authentic in who you are. And not everybody wants to be a president. Not everybody should be a president. Understanding your own goals, your own personality, what you’re suited for. Don’t get into something that you’re not going to be happy in. When I was in forestry, I was in a program that was focused on forest recreation when I first got there. And parents would say, I don’t want my kid to be in recreation. What are they going to do? They’re not going to make any money. And we would say, well, you know, they could go get a degree in something that they hate and then they’ll have a long career in something that they hate. Or they could get a degree in something they’re passionate about and be happy for the rest of their lives. And maybe they won’t make a lot of money. But which path do you want for your kid? So, you know, I think in general, it’s finding a path that’s right for you and your personality and finding a way that it’s going to be rewarding. I’ve changed positions. I’ve been at Oregon State my entire career, but I’ve changed positions probably, you know, five times. And that was so energizing and so motivating to move into a new position. And some people want to be a professor for their entire career. They want to study the next narrow thing in their discipline. And that’s great because people need to do that. That wasn’t me. You know, I really did get energized by taking on new challenges and have really enjoyed moving into administration and trying to figure out how to help other people be successful.

Bridget Burns: Well, that is perfect advice, I think, for us to wrap this Monday. Thank you, President Johnson, for being with us today. We really appreciate a chance to learn from you. And, Doug, as always, thanks for being such an excellent co-host. And for those of you at home, we’ll be back here, same time, same place. Next week, we will be interviewing the president of Morehouse. So stay tuned for that. And otherwise, we hope you have a wonderful week ahead.