We Don't Trust People We Don't Know

The writer is a current president

Of course, there have been periods of great campus unrest in the past. Before some of my younger presidential colleagues were even born, protesters burned down campus ROTC offices, National Guardsmen killed students at Kent State, and the civil rights movement and desegregation made some campuses look like an Army encampment.  

Presidents are optimists and cheerleaders by nature. Aware that negative stories might hurt our institutions—and our reputation as leaders—we downplay our struggles and remain upbeat in the face because we must and, for most of us, it’s simply our nature. We breeze over even our toughest problems, even when gathered with each other.  

But recently I have seen my colleagues utterly deflated. They describe not sleeping, feeling that the joy has gone out of the job, and when in a meeting one mustered a “Listen, I’ll be okay” as he shared his anxiety, another responded with “Well, I’m not at all okay.” Presidents didn’t used to talk this way.  

“Joyless” seems an apt term for today’s leaders.

The presidency has always had quiet casualties. We all know colleagues who drink a bit too much. Marriages dissolve under the pressures of the job. Too much eating and too little exercise have resulted in health outcomes nobody desires. Aside from the occasional obsessed faculty member, rarely were there people actually gunning for you personally. That’s no longer the case.

Expertise and wisdom are no longer respected, nor, in an age of deepfakes, can you believe what you read. The public trust and support for higher ed has melted along with the glaciers, and at an even faster rate. To the extent we are the living logos of our institutions, trust and support for us has also steeply declined. That we get paid so well these days isn’t earning us a lot of allies either.

I come from a demographic that has received more leeway. I’m more Marcus Welby, M.D., than a Shondaland doc, though I make it a point to stay ahead of trends and guide my institution toward innovation. My presidency has been long, and the truth is, I can see the exit approaching. 

About my junior colleagues, especially the group who came into office when there was no one in office (the pandemic presidents), I wonder: do people know who you are as a human being? Have you found ways in this TMI Instagram age to share who you actually are, or does your social media look like a curated commercial for your school?

Do people on the lower rungs of the organizational ladder feel like they matter to you?

Do you know about the families and personal stories of faculty leaders, student leaders, and other key stakeholders?

We have entered an age of relational leadership in which intellectual track record and institutional pedigree carry less weight, while authenticity and a big heart are what garner support.  

It’s human connections that bring joy back into the work. Most presidents I know say the thing that makes them happiest is, and no surprise here because most of us started out teaching—are the students. 

I think presidents can start to be more authentic in their leadership. The tools that led previous generations to these roles—vision, competence, academic prowess, and alpha-dog confidence and even competitiveness—may not be the tools now needed for these roles. 

Tomorrow’s presidents will need to lead differently because the old ways are failing us.

The writer is a current president

When I became a provost, I had a fabulous boss who had been a provost before becoming president.

On my first day on campus, he told me he wasn’t going to try to be provost. That was my job. Faculty wouldn’t be able to maneuver around me. He wouldn’t second guess my decisions, but he would make himself available anytime I wanted to run something past him. 

It worked well for the years we were together.

So, when I became president of another college, I learned from his example and was determined not to act as provost. 

My mistake was in underestimating how important it was for me to get to know the faculty and for them to get to know me. 

The process that led to my appointment had been completely confidential. A handful of faculty on the search committee had learned about me during the process, but the rest had never even met me. They didn't know about my passion for the institution, my commitment to the liberal arts, my focus on student learning. 

I spoke about all of those things during my installation speech, but I suspect what I said didn’t matter much. In the press of managing a schedule whose rigors threatened to overwhelm me, getting a financial plan in shape, and adjusting to life in the fishbowl of the president’s house in a relatively small town, I didn’t return to those topics often enough in my first couple of years. 

Sure, I had receptions for small groups of faculty at the president's house throughout my first year, but those conversations were never substantive enough to build relationships. 

Faculty leadership didn’t think the president should attend faculty meetings. I had to insist that I couldn’t represent their needs and hopes if I couldn’t hear their discussions. Finally, I forced the issue by pointing out that I had a tenured faculty appointment. That went over as well as you might expect. No, I wasn’t invited to speak.  

What I realized later is obvious. Faculty wanted to know who I was, and they wanted to know I valued who they were and the work they did. We don't trust people we don't know. 

I had never encountered this problem before. At other institutions, when I was provost, while faculty didn't always like what I was doing, they understood. We had direct and open lines of communication. We knew each other.

As president, I had to own difficult decisions that directly impacted real people’s lives. Real people who didn’t know me, and because they didn’t know me, didn’t think I cared. I knew I had to change that, so I took some extra time while working on my self-evaluation for the Board that year to try to figure out where I had gone wrong. How could the faculty so fundamentally misunderstand me? Because I had never given them a chance to get to know me.

So, I decided that every time I received one of their nasty-grams via email (things they would only say by email, not to my face), I would get up from my desk and walk to their office to have a conversation about their concerns. The first couple of people were pretty shocked to see the president at their door, but we had productive conversations. The word got out (of course!), and those nasty emails became less frequent, replaced by meaningful discussions before issues got hot.

I also pressed for opportunities to speak at faculty meetings. When I was given ten minutes, I chose one particular topic to address at each meeting for about five of those minutes and then took a few questions. That willingness to respond to questions from the floor went a long way toward building trust. When we relaunched social gatherings at the president’s house, they were open question and answer sessions.

I continued to be careful about not getting into the provost’s space, but the faculty came to know me as a person. They still didn’t like every decision I made, but they had a better understanding of why I had made the decision.

I’ve just moved into a new presidency and am working closely with the provost to identify ways to get to know the faculty and for them to get to know me. I don’t want to repeat that first experience. It’s difficult to move into and immediately lead a new community. I know now that a great deal of my early work has to focus on building relationships.

It’s essential that a president not try to do the provost’s (or anyone else’s) job. But I also learned that a title alone does not confer authority or inspire confidence. Though I had long been a faculty member, I was no longer, and I was an outsider.