Editor’s Note: Stacy Oliver has turned over her blog to the interns again. This week’s post is from Dillon Wyatt, a graduate student at Western Carolina University, who is interning at Indiana University South Bend for the summer.

Stacy’s Note: Supervisors, stop reading here. This post is for other ACUHO-I interns. Or you can keep reading to learn more about what your interns are going through (like I did), but make sure you share this.

When I got to my intern site two weeks ago, I thought I was ready to for the experience to start. By the next evening I felt that it wasn’t the place for me. Then I started to remember a few things.

1. Things should feel foreign. I conducted my search partially with the goal of ending up at an institution that was in a different part of the country than my own grad school. I did this because I wanted to experience a different region and to try something new. I go to grad school in the same state that I grew up in, so that was very important to me. Then I got here and felt that it was strange and alien, unlike home, and didn’t like it. That was when I remembered I wanted this, to test myself, to see how I would do somewhere new, and to experience new things.
2. I should feel uncomfortable. I wanted an internship that was different than my graduate assistant position. This meant I wanted something different than a mid-sized public institution with traditional students and a decent-sized, well established residential living department. I am at a brand (almost) new, tiny department at a mid-sized public institution with a lot of non-traditional students. I got an internship with a lot of different traits than my grad school; it should feel weird and uncomfortable. It should take me awhile to fit in. I have started to learn how the department and institution work. I have started to find my niche. I am learning my role. It’s, a different one than my graduate assistantship, but it’s my role.
3. I need to learn the area. My grad school is in a rural area, I am interning at an urban institution, once again by design. The first couple of days I felt that I didn’t fit into the area, I didn’t like it, it was dirty and strange (Stacy’s note: My poor interns moved in during the rainiest week of the year. Now that the sun is shining, they both promise they’re happier). Then I found a couple of grocery stores, learned a couple of streets, and found a couple of places to eat. Now I am much more comfortable there. You shouldn’t know the area, which is one of the great things about the internship exchange; you get to discover a new place.

After thinking about this in the shower, I realized there were some general “rules” to go by when interning in student affairs.

1. Use the other interns or the department. They are going through the same experience as you. Explore the area with the other interns. Ask your supervisor where to shop. Ask people in the department to go eat, shop, and explore things. They are your link, or your sidekick, in learning the area.
2. It is a learning experience. Hopefully you are at a site that you picked for some good reasons. Hopefully, it was to broaden your experiences.  Whether it is the type of institution, the different setting/area, or different area of student affairs; remember you are there to learn. It might not be comfortable and easy but use it to gain as much knowledge as you can.
3. It doesn’t last forever. The internship is not a permanent position. You get to leave after the summer is over and go back to your grad program. Take it for what it is, learn what you can, make as big of a positive impact as you can. Give yourself and your program a good reputation. Learn everything you can. Use this in your work and your job search. Leave the experience a better professional.

What has been the experiences of the other ACUHO-I Housing Interns out there? How are you acclimating to your new campus? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Other stories deliver advice on how to keep your momentum going all the way through the move-out process as well as examining ways to deliver amenities to students that are valued as well as a good value. And, just in time for The Placement Exchange, this issue’s “Conversations” feature has four professionals discussing how important creating an accurate job description is to finding the right person for the job.

Check out the latest issue. And also remember that you can browse past issues of the Talking Stick online by clicking the “Archives” tab that is at the bottom of the browser window.

There are traditions for this day in my world. They involve rallying the Community Council, oversize signs on staff member’s doors, a Dairy Queen ice cream cake at staff meeting just when the staff has reached their threshold with my full agenda. They are small things, to be certain, but they are things that highlight my appreciation of these undergraduate students who step up and demonstrate leadership in their community. We know from our own experiences that it can be a thankless job, and while we do our best to demonstrate continued appreciation to student staff, it falls off the to do list amidst all of the other responsibilities we have.

I am reminded of celebrating the same day a decade ago when I was a resident assistant. Having the dining hall’s premiere and rarely served dessert at a staff meeting seemed indulgent for a Wednesday night; the decorations on my door reminded all of my residents that even if they were mad at me that week for enforcing policies, I was appreciated by someone on campus for doing my job.

Being candidly honest, I was disappointed in this year’s International Hall Staff Appreciation Day. Remembering my own glowing response to the recognition, I anticipated the same bubbling joy from staff this year. Maybe it was that my enthusiasm level was diminished after being ill, or maybe it was the timing in the semester that left us all ready to finish the staff meeting and move on with our week, but the event felt deflated. I went back to my office with a heavy heart, wishing I could articulate more appropriately to these students how much they have accomplished.

They are, after all, only the second group of resident assistants on this campus. Many of them did not live on campus before being hired and so had no context for what it means to be a resident assistant prior to coming to their interview. They fight an uphill battle daily of defining housing to a campus that still identifies with its largely commuter population. They explain, justify, plan, create, and innovate.

And ultimately, that explains my lackluster response to the day. There is no way an ice cream cake, even with its fudgey center, could ever begin to demonstrate an appropriate level of appreciation to this group for what they have accomplished. I want to give them so much more, show them the progress they have made, but that will take time and benchmarking and reflection in a time and place in the distant future. I want them to know that more than just the campus and the community; they have changed me with their passion, their unanticipated love of their jobs.

I may not be able to show them my appreciation in the way they want or need right now. Someday, though, they will understand the scope of what they accomplished in this place, and I hope that when they do, they will also know how much their effort and time meant to me.

How do your campuses celebrate International Hall Staff Appreciation Day?

Because of this, the intern process means something different for our department than it may for larger departments. Departments that hire six or eight interns as conferences staff potentially also double the size of their staff, but without the two additional bodies [and brains!] brought in each summer, our operation would fail to thrive. We rely on those two additional people to move our operation forward. I am continuously amazed by what these young soon-to-be professionals are able to accomplish in the eight weeks they are with us. In fact, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t use something created or enhanced by a previous intern.

Previous interns have told me they value the experience they had because it is so different than what many of their peers experience during the summer. For our interns, there is no distribution of linens, no camps, and no conference-themed polo shirts in their closets. They tell me that their peers are often envious of the “inside” look at an operation, particularly a new one, that they receive. And while you can’t rewind to make your department new again, here are some ideas to give your summer interns a more meaningful experience, no matter what the focus of their position is:

• Before interns arrive, send them a packet that includes information about the campus and local community. Share recent copies of the student newspaper, particularly those featuring articles related to your department. Also include any marketing material that your department utilizes to familiarize them with basic themes, mission, goals, etc.  Include a survey to assess their interests beyond the scope of their position. Use that information to arrange meetings for them with other university administrators early in their time on campus or identify specific tasks within the department that they be able to get involved in.
• Utilize neighboring campuses for professional development opportunities. While I work at a regional campus of a large, state university, one of the nation’s largest private, faith-based institutions is down the street. We do an intern exchange and immersion program over the summer so they learn more about each type of operation.
• While waiting for institutional access to e-mail or other systems during those first days, provide documentation for interns to read. Remember that they are staff members, not just visitors, and should have access to annual reports, assessment data, quantitative statistics, demographics of the population served by your office, etc. The more they know early on the better able to serve they will be.
• Include interns in major strategic planning and assessment. Not only is this an opportunity they may not have at their own institutions, they also bring an objective perspective to the table.
• Let them take the lead. Don’t just invite interns to meetings throughout the summer. Let them facilitate meetings with other departments, particularly for the tasks of which they have ownership.
• Designate a dry erase board as “Future Intern List.” Have the interns jot notes of things future interns should know or ideas for next summer’s projects.
• Link interns with opportunities beyond the institution. Each summer I encourage our interns to write an article for Trends, GLACUHO’s magazine, about their experiences or a project they’re particularly proud of from their time at the university. This forms good professional development habits and provides an opportunity for reflection.
• Follow up, follow up, follow up. Before the interns leave at the end of the summer, we schedule an online staff meeting during the fall semester so they can be updated on how the things they worked on are going; whether that is new initiatives at staff training or a policy they helped benchmark.  Let them know that they what they did mattered, even if they aren’t there to directly see the results.

Each internship position is different and has a varied intended outcome. Above all else, remember that the focus of the experience is education and immersion in a new university culture.

What does your department do to enhance the intern experience? Share your ideas and thoughts in the comments!

Residence life at OSU has a history of being a family-friendly environment, which is something that I take for granted since that’s always been my experience. When I came back to work after eight weeks home with my baby, she came with me the entire summer. Even now I still pack her up and wheel her in twice a week. (In January her “come with mommy to work” days will be over) When people outside of our office, either friends, family or other professionals I work with, ask where she stays while I’m at work, I’m both delighted and embarrassed to share with them that she comes with me. I get so many people who say, “that’s great” or “I wish I could bring insert-their-child’s-name-here to work with me.” Personally, I love it and I hate it and I kind of can’t wait for it to be over. Judge me, as you will for being antsy for these days to end.

What do I enjoy about having Charlotte at work with me?

1. I think she’s pretty cute and I love to show her off. I’d be lying if I claimed otherwise. (ed. note — keep reading for photographic proof)
2. It’s a lot easier to pack stuff all together and drag her along with me. I have less to pack and get home earlier since I don’t have to pick up/drop her off anywhere.
3. I don’t have to worry about food for her for that day. I could be more specific, but I’ll spare you the details here.
4. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on her new “tricks.” Just before I started writing this, she was crawling to my feet screaming “ma-ma-meh-meh-MEH” to be picked up. I love that I don’t have to hear about things like that second-hand. I was there for it.
5. She gets to interact with other people and they get to enjoy her. I love the combo of her developing social skills and others just getting to smile when they see her.
6. She makes me smile. It’s nice to have that kind of motivation in your day.
7. It was way easier to get back into the swing of things when I first came back with her. She helped me ease into things and I probably came back earlier than I would have if I wasn’t bringing her along with me. I was still able to be quite productive even with her here when she was younger. Things are a little different now that she’s crawling.

Why having my daughter here isn’t all sunshine and rainbows…

1. I know that by choosing to have her here, I’m being judged by the people that I work with. The truth is, because of the precedent set ahead of me, I might even be judged MORE if I chose not to bring her with me. Either way, I know that someone out there is assuming I’m less competent, less committed to my work, or less considerate of others. (Or any combination of the above)
2. I can’t always get things done as fast as I used to. She’s a joy, but also a distraction.
3. Life is less predictable. Wardrobe malfunctions, illness, general crankiness (the kid, not me) and feeding habits make scheduling a bit harder and sometimes interrupt previously scheduled plans.
4. Our campus, as a whole, is not always ADA friendly. I didn’t look at that too carefully until I was rolling around a stroller, but some buildings are great and others need a lot of work to really be accessible.
5. I am hypersensitive about every whine, cry and peep that comes out of my daughter in an attempt to be considerate of others around me. I can’t tell you how many times I leave the room with Charlotte because she’s making noise and someone says to me “I couldn’t even hear her” or “she’s fine”.
6. My office is a pig sty. My desk has always been cluttered, but the assorted children’s toys add a different level of mess and it’s hard to get your work done, take care of your child AND clean all at once.

In a world where balance is something that we talk about (but don’t always have) and evening and weekend commitments regularly surface, I think it’s challenging to separate work from life in the idealistic way that people would like to see happen. Yes, it’s both wonderful and stressful at the same time to have my daughter at work with me right now, but I wouldn’t have done it any differently. (Though I am still anxious for this time to come to an end.)

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how they keep their work and personal lives separate. If that’s your expectation, I might argue that you’ve picked the wrong profession. Your family, friends and pets can’t come to everything you do for work, and I doubt many folks would invite the whole department to their house for Thanksgiving, but I do think there are small overlaps in these worlds that provide a great deal of richness for those who are a part of it.

As I think back to my time starting here at OSU (as a full-time staff member), I remember how excited I was to return to my undergraduate institution. At the same time, my previous supervisors from my time as an RA were still here and I really felt I had a lot to live up to and felt really pressured to impress.

The hall director position had been advertised to me as one with a great level of autonomy. I actually found a lot of what I did to be pretty prescribed and the CYA mentality to be pretty pervasive almost from the moment I got here. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t be creative about some things or that I couldn’t go above and beyond in other areas and put my mark on my buildings and projects. It just meant that if I wanted to do something that had a larger implication, I had to ask my supervisor who asked her supervisor who, in turn, had to ask her supervisor. I loved my work, my students, my staff and my job and became really comfortable doing what I knew I was “supposed to do.”

Whether people buy it or not, things are different now. You don’t have to have 20 people’s permission before you make a decision.  You have the freedom to make a lot of different things happen. Sounds great, right? As a J, I can say it’s great in principle, but kind of tough to figure out how to make it happen.

I may be in a unique position, since few people completely understand my job, but for the most part I recently feel like we have an insane amount of freedom. Sure, there are a few guidelines to follow, some outcomes to shoot for and some overarching messages focusing on our need to “help students succeed.” The problem isn’t that we aren’t supported and that we don’t have flexibility - it’s that we need to figure out how to adapt from a very structured, there is a right answer, type-A approach to a very different philosophy. We need to define our work for ourselves and as a J, I think that can be very scary to be up against.

I think that is why people are sitting around bracing for change, an answer, or the secret to success that they’ve been longing to have. We are a department full of J’s who are waiting for someone to tell them where they are headed so they can either follow along or complain about the direction that’s been decided upon. I’m sure we’ll continue to get some direction (some has already come), but I recently realized that if I sit around waiting for a magical answer, then I’m just wasting my time and letting my experience and degree sit on the shelf and collect dust. (Not to mention putting off good work that our students could benefit from.)

I think for me, the biggest challenges are motivation and direction. I recently spoke with my supervisor about the fact that I was happy to be here and felt okay about my work, but that I didn’t feel inspired (as a general statement) and that I thought I needed that somehow. She asked one simple question that really helped things click. “Why is it someone else’s job to inspire and motivate you?” The answer: “I guess it’s not.” I really think that’s true. It’s really my job to search within to be motivated and inspired to do new and exciting things.

The other challenge of direction came full circle for me in our leadership meeting last week. We were talking about a lot of big picture things with the department, including how committees will be structured and roll-out for this year. As a group, we discussed some ideas, but ultimately pushed it back for our director to decide how to do. Now, maybe she was planning to do this anyway, but I feel this is representative of our leadership team as a group right now. (Myself included.) As of recently, we had been used to having some clear directions with some flexibility about how, within a set of prescribed guidelines, we want to get our work done. We were the true “stuck in the middle” people that Krystyne wrote about in her earlier post. I’m not sure this is still the case, even though that’s how some people still feel.

I think the reason we still feel that way is that because as a group, we have not risen to the challenge that should be expected of us as middle managers. Like our HDs are still used to waiting for answers from us, we are still used to waiting from answers from above. They’re not coming. We need to create the answers ourselves or at least engage in the process of creating those answers. (And my “we” is staff at all different levels) It’s not always someone else’s job to figure it out. We need to see it as our job, too.

I don’t know exactly how I’m going to proceed to motivate myself and to help be a part of creating direction instead of waiting for directions, but I know these are the challenges that I’m setting for myself and I’d welcome your suggestions and/or support.

I was recently telling my supervisor that I was raised in a house that practiced a religion based on a blend of Eastern and Western philosophies. I was taught at an early age to meditate, as well as to use visualization. If you are sick, visualize your body well. Essentially, I was taught that you are what you think.

This concept of visualization was reinforced by coaches in gymnastics as well. If you want to perform a good routine, you must first see it being executed perfectly in your head. Really feel it mentally. This practice has served me well over the years. I am someone whose boots shake when they have to speak in public. Doing the mental run-through first helps.

But lately, the desire to visualize has been a bit of a roadblock for me at work as I try to plan for the year ahead. I feel that this is partly due to my place in the organization. Let me jump back in time for a moment.

The group of assistant directors who supervise our in-hall staff spent a majority of last year working to be consistent. There are six of us who supervise three areas in tandem, and we wanted to get on the same page. Some of us felt that being more consistent might improve our hall directors’ experience.

We met weekly for two hours in an effort to make this happen. The snag became, who picks the page? The most vocal AD? The most articulate? The oldest? After a while the futility of working for two hours to get on the same page became more apparent. We could look at one another at the end of a long dialogue, and agree that we had come to a decision we all felt good(ish) about. But then what? Articulating these ideas, both up and down, required a different skill set. The middle can’t necessarily make plans in a vacuum. We are forgoing these meetings now, embracing the spirit of being more nimble and efficient. Consistency wasn’t the solution.

I have had other struggles as well. Learning to operationalize our new leader’s value system has been a challenge. Not because I agree or disagree with the values, but because I am not regularly at the table where he is conveying them. I hear them secondhand. Without context. I’ll use a previous blogger’s example: the new tenet of “It’s just business.”

The “feeler” in me could not initially embrace this notion. Some staff members were asking how they were supposed to not feel about a job that is so connected to their lives. Some of them were taking it to mean that they could work business hours. Others that we didn’t care how they feel. It took me some time to understand that he was referring to the difference between having “a motion” on the table and “emotion” on the table. I can wrap my head around that. I can work to enact that and learn to articulate the value of that orientation. But the process of getting there involved equal parts of grasping and straws.

If I look realistically at my position, I am not truly even “mid-level.” I am the fourth down in the five levels of post-masters positions in our departmental org chart. AVP, directors, associate directors, assistant directors (me!), and hall directors. It isn’t until you add in the assistant hall directors and paraprofessionals that I actually achieve my middle standing. I think about how frustrating that must be for the staff that I supervise. That they know they are telling me something, so that I can tell my boss so that he can tell his boss, and so on. That’s a big game of Telephone. Did we communicate the point correctly? Keep the spirit? The intention?

I know these issues are not unique to our department. There are institutes for mid-level managers dedicated to exploring the experience. Over time, I have come to accept my place in our department. Some people find the concept of “place” to be offensive, negative, or imposing. I don’t. Accepting my place has started to allow me to find more peace in my work and my ability to contribute. Or not.

There are a lot of us. Too many to put around King Arthur’s table. I recognize that I can’t always weigh in, but I do want to understand. I like to see the process; the evolution of a decision. To hear the ideas that were put out there, know what was shot down, and see why some were not the “right” idea. I don’t expect, at my level, to have a deciding vote, but I want the perspective of the proverbial fly on the wall. I want to understand the rationale behind the idea that I am sharing with the front line staff in our weekly area meetings.

One of our bloggers recently asked if change could be fun. Personally, I am excited by the idea of departmental change. Change is specifically why I decided not to go down my original path toward being a high school English teacher. The idea of rolling out the same canon year after year didn’t appeal to me. I like the unpredictability of our day-to-day work in the context of something stable.

We have been waiting for organizational change here for a while now. It appears to be just around the corner. Personally, I feel like I’ve been sitting here with my hands out, waiting for our departmental leadership to toss me the big old ball of departmental change. I want to mush it around. See how I think/feel about it. Mold it into my vision of the future. But we’ve been waiting in this position for a while. My limbs are getting tired. My muscles are starting to shake. And I am starting to feel a little pathetic. Waving my empty hands at the occasional leadership passerby. Asking open-ended questions. Hoping for a glimmer of what is to come.

This brings me back to my mental roadblock. As a person who likes to visualize what is to come, but lacks a seat at the table where the meaty discussions will happen, I start to play a mental game of University Housing Mad Libs. (Person) is going to be (Position) with (some sort of) responsibilities, supervised by (Different Person.)

The fill-in-the-blank possibilities are endless. They change based on a recent vague statement at a department meeting, ideas that have been floated around in the past, and whether or not the moon is in Aquarius. Some might say I have a “high need to know.” Well, sure. I’ll own that.  It’s how I think. I need to know something in order to create my vision. Maybe a completed Mad Lib is what some of us need in order to focus on what’s important and make meaning of our work. Or maybe it’s just me.

This series, Housing 360, is focused on documenting multiple perspective of a housing department in transition.  At Ohio State, the university as a whole is amid a cultural transformation so our transition within housing exists in a broader context of university transition.  We see the future: Our president sees an Ohio State that functions far less based on the bureaucratic ethic of fairness and operating with far more focus on common sense and the individual experience of the student. Our department is transitioning from a two-year period of being governed by numbers (i.e. counting the number of student programs) to a model of student engagement more akin to student affairs than accounting.

While we see the future, we also see the past:  The “CYA” behavior of assigning blame and distancing ourselves from our mistakes, have hindered us from learning from our errors – dooming us to repeat them.  If a shift in the culture has indeed taken place, the difficulty is in convincing people who have been formed by the culture of the past, that it is now safe to take chances and make mistakes.  While the future direction of the organization is largely a function of the vision of leadership, the cultural change brought about on the ground is largely a function of individual choice.  To commit to look forward and let go of past perceived transgressions of colleagues, who were operating in the context of a different organization.

My “default” settings, like most people, are set to avoid pain, but yielding to the fear of future pain is a prescription of paralysis.  The question for myself is to what degree am I willing to blindfold myself to the past and re-invest in fractured relationships and understand that individual behavior is largely a function of the organizational culture?  A shift in the direction of an organization’s culture is an opportunity to begin again, focus on the students we serve and our role in assisting them in defining and reaching their personal, academic and career goals.

As you think about your work setting, what cultural aspects of the past must be left behind in order to move forward?  What responsibilities does university leadership have to set the create and implement cultural change and where do our responsibilities lie?

Back in May, I made the brilliantly crazy decision to move from my traditional first-year residence hall to become the first hall director for the Lane Avenue Residence Hall, a converted Holiday Inn hotel across the street from our main campus.  There’s much more to come on the challenges of the building, but what I didn’t realize when I accepted this new opportunity was that my office would provide me with just as much new knowledge as my new building.

Just like other departments in transition we are preaching the idea of transparency in our roles and processes in an effort to make them as efficient as possible.  For me, transparency became quite literal when I moved into my temporary summer office.

No you are not confused; I am in an open seating area without walls. My office was located in Neilwood Gables, the location of our central housing office and the director of Residence Life, Cheryl Lyons (who is also blogging with us).  In addition to moving and opening a new building I was also chairing the Housing Training Committee, which meant that I already spent a lot of time talking to Cheryl, so along with my excitement of being in the central office, I also had reservations about being within shouting distance of Cheryl for two and a half months.

That leads me to lesson one of the summer: Sometimes not having office walls can be a good thing.  My open concept office allowed me to connect with peers as they passed through the office, and helped me coordinate several pieces of the construction/move in process with other staff members who work out of Neilwood.  It also allowed for daily (and sometimes twice and thrice daily) Cheryl drop-in meetings.  While these meetings resulted in more versions of the training schedules then I cared to count, they also challenged me to think about why we do things the way we do in training and how to play nicely with people in other departments.

My greatest learning moment from Cheryl came during an impromptu lunch where she peppered me with questions as though I was the director of residence life.  You haven’t quite had a learning experience until you’ve been asked what our values are and then subsequently asked why we spend more time on everything else besides those values during training. Of course I still have my own opinions about many things within our department (who doesn’t), but I have a new found respect for Cheryl and position that she is in during this transitional period.

Have you ever had a conversation with a colleague where you question the job responsibilities of other people in your department?  Do you ever wonder, “What does that person do all day?” That brings me to my second lesson of the summer: Sometimes the people who have interesting or unusual titles are busting their butts more than you know.

You know the people I am talking about. You only ever have to contact them for this one specific request or issue, making it seem as though that is their only function within your department.  I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to falling into this trap.  This summer showed me that when you think that someone is “just” the facilities or information technology liaison, it really means that their “other duties as assigned” job section keeps them busier than you know.  I encourage all of you to withhold your anger when the request you feel is of the utmost importance takes some time to be completed because, trust me, those folks aren’t sitting at their desk waiting for your one request to come through.

Although it was challenging, my summer in Neilwood was definitely two months of unbelievable, free professional development.  If you ever have the unique opportunity to temporarily work in your central housing office I urge you to take advantage of the opportunity to learn some new and interesting things about a place that might seem familiar to you.

I’m not talking about the feedback and evaluation cycle here.  You may know the saying about “no surprises” at evaluation time.  It really is a good practice not to blind-side someone in their evaluation with feedback they’ve never been given before.

What I’m talking about here is the non-evaluation type of feedback.  The kind of conversation where you actually find a way to tell someone, who is doing a pretty good job, that there is some poor practice, fatal flaw, or disastrous habit standing in the way of their success; the kind of things that people joke about behind their backs, but never address the foible owner about directly.

I have been working in an organizational culture in which not discussing someones Achilles heel with them has been the norm.  There are many reasons for this:  they do a good job “in spite of” their foible; we’ll have to face them in meetings for the next several years and that makes us squeamish; we think it’s their (unchangeable) personality; or we don’t want to hurt their feelings.

What I’ve seen in my experience is that people end up losing out on the opportunity to know the truth about their reputations. They don’t know that they are being talked about, worked around, or overlooked for more responsibilities and opportunities because of the “unsaid” factors.

I see this as a very delicate matter, indeed. I am not talking here about the “Tell it like it is! If they don’t like it, they can leave!” kind of mentality.  I’m talking about investing in our colleagues and supervisees in a caring way.  It is the idea that you’d care enough about someone’s career and personal development enough to sit them down and say, “You know, Ginger, I care about your success. I know that you are working hard and doing great things for students, but I’m wondering if you are aware of how your colleagues see you showing up in the workplace.”

I can tell you that when I have had this type of conversation with some folks who have worked in an organization for years and they look at you in a shocked way and tell you that they “had no idea.” It’s a real bummer.  People feel even more off-balance when they find out their previous supervisors or trusted colleagues in the same organization never talked with them about it either.  It is a very difficult thing to do, but I am challenging myself, and my staff, to not let folks go blindly forward in their careers without having the brave and honest conversations that need to be had.

The best part about having the guts to have these caring conversations is that then you can then be an ally in helping the person to process the new information.  You can help them find new perspectives about their performance or personality.  You can encourage them to ask others for some honest feedback and you can help them to figure out if the issue is changeable. Or, maybe they just aren’t meshing with the place after much effort and you can help them come to terms with the fact that sticking around for several more years waiting for a promotion isn’t the best idea.

Many of us do this well with our students.  We can critique their résumé, give them advice on their confrontation skills, and tell them that something they said was “inappropriate.” What prevents us from investing in the growth and development of our colleagues as well?