I hope it gets better....

Wednesday was our All College meeting wherein we talked about our reorganization and the missing pieces and opportunities. It was a pretty intense day.

We talked about our mission vision and values. One of my long-time pet peeves is that we have as a value "social justice" and yet the staff are often dismissed and disregarded simply because they are staff. So in our meeting I asked how committed we actually were to that value since I never saw it being acted upon. And that social justice implies all stratas of society, not just our pet cause. That opened a whole can of worms but for the most part it was good. Apparently this was a new thought or an eye opening concept...leading by example...who knew. I've been harping on this for 12 years but I had to be faculty in a position of some power before anyone would take it seriously.

One of the other things that came out of the meeting is that I have been assigned as the triage "nurse" for the college. All problems, concerns, issues, ideas, or anything for which we don't have a recognized authority to whom to take it, it all comes to me first. I don't have to have the answers, I just have to figure out to whom to send it. I said "I can't answer every thing but I can tell people who to talk to." And someone else chimed in "and where to go."

I'm seriously considering putting a sign on my door which says "welcome to the information super highway!"

I also had my first meeting with the staff since I became their supervisor. I had one member that completely disengaged from the conversation (which was: our top three priorities for things to accomplish this year.) So I stopped the conversation and I said "XXX, you have disengaged from this conversation. Why? Do you feel like we aren't listening to you or hearing something you are saying" I had to come back to it several times before we got to the bottom of it. I don't think it was really about us but about the circumstances in which she finds herself in her job. And she's angry about the disrespect and lack of support that is being offered by the faculty. I totally understand that but I reminded her that we can't make the faculty change, we can only change ourselves...and we could find ways to make goals that might help influence the current culture.

We ended up with:

1. Create our own mission statement and clearly identify how we each contribute to fulfilling that mission.
~Who is our customer?
~How do we best serve them?
~How do we recognize deficiencies and opportunities?

2. Develop a team in which individual function and group function are clearly identified and which supports each other in personal and professional growth.

3. Create a culture of professional development.

I am hoping that everyone feels like they had a say in the development of the goals. I need everyone to have buy-in if we are going to be successful.

Someone felt like they didn't understand what professional development was. I explained it but then today I also sent the link to the university's professional development training website. Learning to be a supervisor is going to be a bit challenging. It's going to be important to make sure I follow through so that people feel like they are being heard.

The dean and I are still working on our communication. I've been stressing about a report that was sent to us from the Provost's office and trying to figure out how to get it done before Monday. It turns out he'd already done it, but he'd forgotten to copy me on it so I didn't know.

He is realizing that he needs to be present in the College to have the most impact. So, for the first time, I think he's going to be right down the hall from me all day tomorrow.

I've started making detailed and dated notes on everything so I know what I've done and what I need to do yet. Fortunately, today I finally whittled my email down from 290 to 14. I'm using the flagging feature in Outlook heavily to note what still needs action. In my in-box now all but two emails are flagged. That's still quite a lot to follow up on.

Today, I tried to follow up with three of the four people who are on my staff. I should probably follow up with the fourth who was the one who disengaged from our conversations. I spoke to the "would be" dean's assistant about what we could have done differently with the meeting yesterday. I saw many things we could have done better (both of us, not just her) but it concerns me that she didn't think there was anything wrong. We had a long discussion about the expectation of professionalism and how that increases when you are the assistant to the dean and are a good portion of the face of the College. There is a need for growth, but I think there is a potential for growth too. I don't know but I think the dean is recognizing that need too or maybe he's just now realizing how much more he needs as the dean.

If this sounds disjointed, it is. Because right now everything really is disjointed at work too. It's very stressful; I hope it gets better.