the uplift: Recent Episodes
carole chabries
Brimming with wisdom, experience, and a fierce resolve to shatter stereotypes, Mayra Olivares-Urueta captivates us with her mission to dismantle institutional barriers and create a more inclusive future in higher education.
Readings and Resources:
Olivares-Urueta, M. (2022, March 28). From at risk to at promise: Fighting fiercely for the community college students we have to safeguard the futures they deserve. Teachers College Record, Date Published: March 23, 2022 https://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 24015
Olivares-Urueta, M. (2021). Mamis rising: Challenging the narrative of who belongs in community college administration. Journal of Applied Research in the Community College, 28(2), 79-92. https://www.montezumapublishing.com/jarcc/issueabstracts/fall2021volume28issue2
Olivares-Urueta, M., & Allen, T.O.(2021). Community colleges leaders’ role in nourishing student success at HSIs. In R.T. Palmer, D.C. Maramba, T.O. Allen, & A.T. Arroyo (Eds.),Exploring the unknown: Understanding the work of student affairs professionals at Minority Serving Institutions. Routledge.
Other episodes you might like:
Episode 67: Teaching is An Act of Love. So Is Leadership.
Episode 22: Feminism is Optimism, with Elise Robinson.
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
Dr. Elizabeth Keating is a linguistic anthropologist who explores language -- and more recently, narrative -- to understand people's daily experiences. In her new book, The Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations, she explores the power of asking open-ended questions that create connections by revealing the particularities of people's lives.
As much as I find this topic compelling in my personal life, I am intrigued by how leaders can use this approach to learn more about their campuses. This approach seems particularly useful when folks are new to a campus or a role, and seek to understand what is unique about their new community.
In particular, we discuss how specific questions that seem concrete open the door to meaningful memories, and the magic of asking people how they spend their time.
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
Last week in a newsletter I suggested to leaders that they reach out to their teams to talk about what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Even as I made those recommendations I knew those conversations might be hard – not just for the leaders, but for everyone involved. Because talking about suffering is hard. One person – someone I trust – responded to my suggestion in a way that shows what hard can look like, and I thought it would be instructive to share that here.
This is a short episode, but if you just want the thesis, here it is in three parts.
Leaders of teams have a responsibility to reach out to people and have conversations, even when they’re hard. Those same leaders are likely to make mistakes in the process. When they do, they will benefit if they shut up and listen, genuinely learn, and do better next time.
Part 1: Reaching out to do hard things.
Part 2: Screwing up in the process.
Part 3: Shutting up and getting better.
That’s it.
Well, there's a little more. Thanks for listening!
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
I don’t know about you, but I did NOT end up having the summer I intended to have.
I spun off in two directions: one pragmatic and logical, the other experiential and mystical.
And it broke my brain.
Listen to what I learned and how it's affecting this podcast.
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
Teaching is an act of love.
After thinking about this with recent guests and faculty Rand Park, Sidneyeve Matrix, and Stephanie Cawthon, I've come to wonder if we don't expect far too much of our educators and far too little from our leaders.
Teaching requires emotion: compassion, empathy, affection. Even love. These are necessary for learning to take place.
If colleges and universities are learning institutions, then shouldn't the same principles apply? Leading also requires compassion, empathy, affection -- and love.
Readings & resources:Ken Bain, What The Best College Teachers Do.
Joan V. Gallos and Lee G. Bolman, Reframing Academic Leadership.Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.
Theresa Amabile, The Progress Principle.
Scott E. Page, The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy.
Other episodes you might like:#65: Sidneyeve Matrix on Empathy, Learning, & Leading.
38: Excellent Teaching, Excellent Leading.
19: The Entanglement of All Things: Educating for Democracy
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
Today we wrap up our month of conversations about what teaching and leadership have in common in a conversation with Stephanie Cawthon, a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Stephanie uses her experience as a stage manager and her lifelong love of teaching to find innovative ways to engage the folks around her -- whether they're in a campus classroom, an online course, or an administrative meeting on Zoom.
Our conversation is grounded in our love of Priya Parker's book The Art of Gathering, which is a wonderful guide to creating spaces where people feel welcomed, included, and purposeful.
Stephanie spotlights the advantages of combining a clear framework and self-driven learning abilities in both teaching and leading. She also shares strategies for engaging students online and in person, which translates remarkably well into planning efficient meetings and honing our leadership skills.
This episode is very special to me: it was my first experience working directly with ASL interpreters, auto-captions, and video to make sure our conversation is widely accessible. I'm super grateful to Stephanie and her team for teaching me. You can watch the video podcast here.
Readings and resources
Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering
James Clear, Atomic Habits
Joan Gallos & Lee Bolman, Reframing Academic Leadership
Ken Bain, What The Best College Teachers Do
Other episodes you might enjoy
Episode 63, How Teaching Prepares You for Leadership
Episode 46, How to Use Feedback to Build Trust
Episode 41, The Role of Dissent in Psychological Safety
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
Successful teachers, like successful leaders, know how to engage people's hearts. Sidneyeve Matrix is one of my favorite people to talk about this with. A marketing professor and graphic designer with a Harvard credential in Instructional Design, Sidneyeve devotes I'm guessing most of her waking moments to thinking about how to help people learn by surrounding them with beauty.
Sidneyeve joins us to today to share her insights into how design can stimulate empathy, facilitate learning, and act as a catalyst for entrepreneurs. We talk about how visual cues prompt our brains to fire, and how color, curiosity, and empathy keep us engaged in what we're learning. Sidneyeve shares examples from her college teaching, the coaching she does with entrepreneurs, and from her own design shop, Valentine Course Design.
In higher ed we talk a fair bit about how visuals support teaching -- the visual syllabus is nothing new -- but I'm struck by the analog to leadership. Imagine how joyful it would be to attend meetings where documents were actually enticing to look at, or where visualizations were used to engage our hearts and minds and prompt rich conversation. Sidneyeve makes even basic ideas -- like using color-coding to help cue people to where they are, or creating simple leaderboards with eye-catching graphics -- begin to feel not only manageable but desirable.
No matter where you are in your leadership journey there's something in here for you. And maybe you'll come out on the other side not just with ideas for using color and images in your LMS, but possibly with an idea or two for creating pretty agendas and event programs to bring life to your administrative docs.
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
Meet Rand Park! He's a senior lecturer in the Department of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship at the Carlson School of Management, and he joins us this week to share his insights into how extraordinary teaching and authentic leadership can lead to both transformational learning and leading.
Our discussion is threaded through with the importance of self-knowledge. Rand talks about how he learned to "be himself" in the classroom, and we explore the challenges of "being yourself" in leadership roles -- which is part of the journey both of us have taken in deciding not to pursue college presidencies.
My favorite part of this conversation is where we explore the tensions leaders face in decision-making. We talk about how leadership decisions set the tone for entire organizations, how empowering it is to grant autonomy and ownership to faculty and staff, and the importance for leaders to build up a strong and diverse team.
Whether you're an educator, a leader -- or BOTH! -- this episode is for you.
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
It's officially back to school season! Let's kick things off by thinking about all the things you already are really good at that you've learned by teaching, and how you can use those same skills in your leadership this year.
We'll talk about...
Listening & Empathy, and the power of building trusting relationships at work;
Providing Feedback, and why the single annual review is a terrible idea; and
Differentiated Instruction, and what it means to truly meet your team members where the are.
I'll also share the details of my new membership, designed exclusively for women leaders. The Leadership Community is open for registration this week only, from Monday August 7 through Friday August 11 at 8 pm central. Learn more at theclareogroup.com/community. 🧡
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
For our Summer Session we’re running a fan favorite playlist: a combination of the most-listened-to episodes as well as listener-requested favorites. Our Summer Session gives you a chance to revisit episodes you may not have heard in a while or even to listen to episodes you might have missed.
Today we're replaying Episode 26: In Community: Interracial Feminist CoMentoring, with Christina Holmgren and Jayne Sommers at the University of St. Thomas. Here's your link to the episode's original show notes.
If you're enjoying the podcast, enter a chance to win a free book! Head over to Apple podcasts (or your fave platform) and leave a review on the uplift page. Once a month I'll randomly select one of that month's reviewers to receive a $20 gift certificate to bookshop.org. You get more summer reading, and I get to help you build your library! It's a win for us both.
So grab a nice tall glass of your favorite summer beverage, pull up your favorite outdoor chair or grab your hammock, and enjoy a few moments of summer, on me. I’ll be somewhere doing the same. 😎
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
For our Summer Session we’re running a fan favorite playlist: a combination of the most-listened-to episodes as well as listener favorites. Our Summer Session gives you a chance to revisit episodes you may not have heard in a while or even to listen to episodes you might have missed.
Today we're replaying Episode 22, Feminism is Optimism, with Elise Robinson at the University of Georgia. Here's your link to the episode's original show notes.
If you're enjoying the podcast, enter a chance to win a free book! Head over to Apple podcasts (or your fave platform) and leave a review on the uplift page. Once a month I'll randomly select one of that month's reviewers to receive a $20 gift certificate to bookshop.org. You get more summer reading, and I get to help you build your library! It's a win for us both.
So grab a nice tall glass of your favorite summer beverage, pull up your favorite outdoor chair or grab your hammock, and enjoy a few moments of summer, on me. I’ll be somewhere doing the same. 😎
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
For our summer session we’re running a fan favorite playlist: a combination of the most-listened-to episodes as well as listener favorites. Our Summer Session gives you a chance to revisit episodes you may not have heard in a while or even to listen to episodes you might have missed.
Today we're replaying Episode 20, A Bodacious Question, with Susi Keefe. Here's your link to the episode's original show notes.
If you're enjoying the podcast, enter a chance to win a free book! Head over to Apple podcasts (or your fave platform) and leave a review on the uplift page. Once a month I'll randomly select one of that month's reviewers to receive a $20 gift certificate to bookshop.org. You get more summer reading, and I get to help you build your library! It's a win for us both.
So grab a nice tall glass of your favorite summer beverage, pull up your favorite outdoor chair or grab your hammock, and enjoy a few moments of summer, on me. I’ll be somewhere doing the same. 😎
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
For our summer session we’re running a fan favorite playlist: a combination of the most-listened-to episodes as well as listener favorites. Our Summer Session gives you a chance to revisit episodes you may not have heard in a while or even to listen to episodes you might have missed.
Today we're replaying Episode 24, Empathy & Gratitude: Mandy Balek Stephens on Mentoring Young Professionals. Mandy is School Director for the Schuler Scholars Program at Golda Meir School in Milwaukee. Here's your link to the episode's original show notes.
If you're enjoying the podcast, enter a chance to win a free book! Head over to Apple podcasts (or your fave platform) and leave a review on the uplift page. Once a month I'll randomly select one of that month's reviewers to receive a $20 gift certificate to bookshop.org. You get more summer reading, and I get to help you build your library! It's a win for us both.
So grab a nice tall glass of your favorite summer beverage, pull up your favorite outdoor chair or grab your hammock, and enjoy a few moments of summer, on me. I’ll be somewhere doing the same. 😎
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
For our summer session we’re running a fan favorite playlist: a combination of the most-listened-to episodes as well as listener favorites. Our Summer Session gives you a chance to revisit episodes you may not have heard in a while or even to listen to episodes you might have missed.
Today we're replaying Episode 21, Democracy is a Creative Act, featuring my interview with Jill Arensdorf, Provost and Professor of Leadership at Ft. Hayes State University. Here's your link to the episode's original show notes.
If you're enjoying the podcast, enter a chance to win a free book! Head over to Apple podcasts (or your fave platform) and leave a review on the uplift page. Once a month I'll randomly select one of that month's reviewers to receive a $20 gift certificate to bookshop.org. You get more summer reading, and I get to help you build your library! It's a win for us both.
So grab a nice tall glass of your favorite summer beverage, pull up your favorite outdoor chair or grab your hammock, and enjoy a few moments of summer, on me. I’ll be somewhere doing the same. 😎
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
For our summer session we’re running a fan favorite playlist: a combination of the most-listened-to episodes as well as listener favorites. Our Summer Session gives you a chance to revisit episodes you may not have heard in a while or even to listen to episodes you might have missed.
Today we're replaying Episode 23: Mentors & Allies: How to be Machiavellian without being a Machiavellianne. The episode draws heavily on the book Machiavelli for Women by Stacey Vanek Smith. I love the book -- grab your copy here if you don't have one already. And here's your link to the episode's original show notes.
If you're enjoying the podcast, enter a chance to win a free book! Head over to Apple podcasts (or your fave platform) and leave a review on the uplift page. Once a month I'll randomly select one of that month's reviewers to receive a $20 gift certificate to bookshop.org. You get more summer reading, and I get to help you build your library! It's a win for us both.
So grab a nice tall glass of your favorite summer beverage, pull up your favorite outdoor chair or grab your hammock, and enjoy a few moments of summer, on me. I’ll be somewhere doing the same. 😎
Let's connect! Come find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
I also coach women leaders (individually and in groups) and facilitate campus workshops. Learn more at the website.
Have a question about whether I can help you? Just ask! I actually love getting emails from listeners. 🧡
In honor of Juneteenth I explore its history, including The Emancipation Proclamation, General Order #3, and Biden's proclaiming today a federal holiday.
If you've never read The Emancipation Proclamation and/or want to hear some beautiful words from the poet Ross Gay, this episode is for you.
Readings & Resources
The Emancipation Proclamation.
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American
Biden's proclamation
This may be obvious but it bears saying out loud: our words matter.
When we use war metaphors we create a reality rooted in violence against other humans we perceive as our enemies.
When we use sports metaphors we create a reality rooted in competition and besting our opponents.
When we use familial metaphors we create a reality rooted in the perceived ideal of strong natural ties without acknowledging the dysfunction, disappointment, and pain that accompany love, affection, and growth.
So today I want to continue the conversation about the language we use on our campuses as a way of cracking open language that might be oppressive or harmful. I started this in episode 52 talking about DEI language, and today I’m extending that into other words and phrases that I think are worth reconsidering.
1: Course Release (2:10) 2: Rigor (4:46) 3: College-readiness (8:49) 4: Professional (14:45) 5: Imposter Syndrome (19:37) Wisdom at Work (11:42) I’m offering a new leadership program designed specifically to develop teams of women on college campuses with a two-fold goal: strengthening your leadership pipeline while creating collective, comprehensive, cultural change through transformative team development.
This isn’t an elitist program designed for cabinet members: it’s an accessible, affordable program designed to help women – especially those who are beginning to discover their leadership potential and aspirations – develop the mindset, skills, and tools they need as they prepare to step into more advanced leadership roles.
By the end of this program women in your campus cohort will have increased confidence; better team-building skills; practice creating trusting, inclusive, psychologically safe environments; and enhanced communication skills. They’ll also be practiced at being coached and coaching others, creating a ripple effect as they bring their new skills and habits to their departments…and beyond.
That campus-wide reach is what makes this program unique. Instead of supporting one-off, individual leadership development for select women, this program focuses on building a culture of leadership that positions your institution to make the kinds of lasting change you seek.
The model is straightforward: a cohort = up to 10 women from one institution. The program runs during Fall term (starting late August and ending mid-December); it includes biweekly live sessions with optional readings and resources, as well as additional support through my coaching and consulting business, The Clareo Group.
I’m only accepting 10 institutions for Fall 2023. Will your campus be one of them?
Learn more at https://theclareogroup.com/wisdom.
Readings and resources:
College Readiness Shouldn’t Be a Top Priority for K-12 Anymore The Dark Side of Rigor
Is it Time to Cancel the Word Rigor?
The Bias of Our "Professionalism" Standards
Stop Using Battle Metaphors in Your Company Strategy
Other episodes might you enjoy:
Episode 52: DEI Vocabulary
Episode 46: How to Use Feedback to Build Trust
What HAVE I learned from a year of podcasting? 🧐
In no particular order, here are (some of) the things I’ve learned -- all life lessons -- from a year of podcasting.
- When you’re podcasting, even though you’re speaking on a public platform you’re not speaking to everyone. You’re speaking and most people aren’t listening. Also, you’re speaking and some people wish you wouldn’t. And here’s the lesson: so.the.fuck.what. Speak anyway. The people who wish you weren’t speaking are not your people. And among the billions of people who aren’t (yet) listening, there are people out there eager to hear exactly what you’re saying. Say it so they can find you.
- Your attention matters. The episodes where I’ve sweated stuff have been the episodes that matter the most to me. They’re the ones I remember, that I’m glad exist. It’s easy as a college administrator to have the experience that you crank stuff out - you make decisions, revise policies, attend events – and it’s all important to someone but not deeply meaningful to your soul. Doing work that isn’t meaningful turns out to be a hard habit to break, especially since we live in a world that rewards quick responses and regular presence. Sometimes I still crank my work out. And sometimes I am able to give episodes more attention, and that turns out to be deeply rewarding.
- Podcasting is almost as cathartic as journaling, and I’ve come to appreciate the effects of having the discipline to think about something well enough to say anything at all about it. I’ve been exploring recently how to carry that discipline into my writing. We’ll see if anything comes of that.
- A year of doing anything builds habits - for better and for worse. When I started the podcast I had no idea how to do any of its component parts, except the writing. Everything else as I’ve learned as I’ve gone. And every now and then I’ve realized that I keep doing something the same way I learned it - because doing something over and over makes it a habit. So it’s been beneficial for me to step back and look at my habits and structures, and either embrace them or revise them.
- Podcasting has changed how I listen to other podcasts. I sometimes listen for content, but I’m always listening for editing. I listen for production. I listen for the narrative arc. There’s an analog to how I read. I love reading and sometimes I read with the intention of losing myself in what I’m reading. I read, quite literally, for the physiological pleasure of reading. I’m also a trained scholar of literature and so sometimes I read with the intention to explore the writer’s use of structure, character, the use of imagery. I’m also trained in critical theories so sometimes I read with the intention of understanding a feminist take on a text, or I read and contemplate what I think about the text from a new historicist perspective. I can, somewhat but not fully, turn these faculties on and off at will. I could not have done this with podcasts a year ago, because I didn’t know enough about how to create them. I do now, and so I listen differently.
- You never really know what’s going to happen, or why. To date, my most-downloaded episode is #23, Mentors & Allies: How to Be Machiavellian Without Being a Machiavellianne. I have no idea why that particular episode is so popular. My 14YO son suggested it’s popular because it’s short. A friend suggests it’s popular because it resonates. It could be the title, or some weird SEO quirk of using the word Machiavellian. I’m really curious about this episode’s success but I’m not obsessed with replicating it. (Maybe I should be? I dunno.) But I’m definitely learning from the experience of never really knowing what topics will hit, and how.
- Podcasting has made me value my time, as well as skills I don’t have. Right now an episode takes me 4x as long to edit and produce as its final length. So a 15 minute show takes me an hour of post-production time. I’ve gotten better and faster over time, and I intend to get even faster. Some of that speed comes from skill, and some comes from automation. But this makes me eally value the time that I have as I think about how to use it effectively to produce each show. I also have way more respect now for audio editors and the magic they create, and I can understand why people would choose to devote themselves to creating beautiful, fluid, moving audio experiences out of what might start as random bits of choppiness. I guess this is a way of saying I have a deeper appreciation for the craft of audio editing.
- Podcasting is a great way to connect with people. I’d never really thought about it much, but when I started I assumed that producing a solo show with occasional interviews would be a somewhat solitary venture. It can be - and it can be so much more. Every single person I’ve interviewed has expanded my horizons in some way. I’ve learned from them, had books and other readings recommended to me, and deepened relationships. I’ve reached out to people I didn’t know and learned about their work. Working as an administrator, especially in academic affairs, I’d become accustomed to having really smart people be openly skeptical of me the minute I walked into a room. Producing a podcast is the opposite. People are so excited to be given a chance to talk about things they love that they are grateful and open.
- Lastly, I would say podcasting for a year has forced me to think about purpose, which is sort of amusing since purpose is really my whole shtick at work. As I was thinking about how to mark the end of the first year I asked my kiddos how I should kick off my second season. Their answer surprised me: Why would you start a new season? And I said, well, the second year is starting. And they said - ummm, so? So I asked a friend who podcasts how he thinks about seasons and what his thoughts were on whether my year 2 should be season 2. He asked me, in turn, what my purpose of the podcast is, and how that would correlate with the rhythm of the show. I had to laugh, because my idea for this podcast started with the 2016 elections, and yet I’ve devoted only a fraction of the podcast to that particular purpose.
All of which is to say, here we are kicking off year two, and it’s not going to be season 2. But thanks for listening to episode 54. I LOVE having you here.
Other related episodes:
#23: Mentors & Allies: How to Be Machiavellian Without Being a Machiavellianne
#1: The Bitch Above: One Woman's History of Shitty Female Bosses
Mary Oliver's poem, The Summer Day, does not appear in this episode but my thinking is inspired by her question: since this is the only life we have, what will you do with yorus?
How will you spend your days?
Leaders in higher ed often don't feel in control of their days. We have so much to respond to, and so many people we're accountable to. It seems right to spend our days attending to all those things, and letting them all shape our priorities.
But that can easily turn into a life where instead of accomplishing what you care about most, you've just reacted to, and for, others.
There is a better way.
It's not productivity hacks - although that's part of it. It's not purely self-care and boundary-setting - although that's part of it. It's not strategy and planning -- although that's part of it.
It's taking the time to articulate what you care most about, and then organizing your day to make space for you to focus on those things. It's integrating your family and personal life into your one big picture of how you spend your time. It's understanding which activities will bring you closer to your dreams. And it's letting go of everything else.
Today I talk through my approach to organizing my days (and life) this way, and invite you to join me. I've put together a FREE PLANNER that will guide you through this, AND I'm offering a FREE WORKSHOP so we can work through the planner together.
Download the planner here, and then join me on Friday June 2 at 11 am central for a FREE WORKSHOP to design the days of your dreams. 🧡
Readings and resources
Oliver Burkeman: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Mary Oliver: Devotions
Rebecca Pope-Ruark: Unraveling Faculty Burnout: Pathways to Reckoning & Renewal
Other episodes you might enjoy
Episode 42: Checking In With Your Goals
Episode 32: Lessons From My Year of Yes
Episode 30: The Grounded Academic Leader: Annual Plan 2023
Episode 17: A New Kind of Self-Care
Episode 4: In a Leadership Role This Fall? Do These Four Things Now
Whenever I explore research in equity work, either by reading or by talking to experts, I hear all kinds of updates in language.
And when I try to research the idea of language updates, I read all kinds of articles about the difficulty inherent in accurate naming, and sometimes even acknowledgement that striving for the right language is itself rooted in anxiety and perfectionism.
So there’s no easy way through this.
That said, I’ve learned some interesting things I think are worth distilling and sharing. Today let's talk about them!
Vocabulary we discuss today:
Under-represented vs. under-recognized
Minority vs. minoritized and/or excluded
Diversity vs. [specific] diversity
Microaggression vs. abuse
Privilege vs. entitlement
Ally AND accomplice
Readings & resources
These 4 Phrases are Sabotaging Your DEI Efforts, Fast Company
Why We Should Stop Saying Underrepresented, Harvard Business Review
Andre K. Isaacs on undderrepresented
We Need to Retire the Term Microaggressions, Harvard Business Review
Race REALLY Matters, David Asai
Additional episodes you might like:
Episode 50: White Women's Nonsense, with Renee Wells
Episode 47: White Women's Work: An Invitation, with Jayne Sommers
“To incorporate the sense of oneself as part of a complex web of mutual dependence is to become more humble. At the same time, this humility enhances one’s ability to form bonds with others. In short, retreating from the center of things – both in reality and in one’s self-conception – is inseparable from forging connections that expand the boundaries of one’s self.” –Sarah Buss
In today’s episode I thread together what we’ve heard and learned from Jayne and Renee, along with some things I’ve learned from books on my bookshelf, and distill that into a few key ways to think and behave with a focus on inclusion, building trust, leaving space for other’s agency, and reducing harm.
I focus on how to move from humility and decentering ourselves, which Jayne and Renee advocate for, to action. I draw on ideas from Inclusion Uncomplicated, by Nika White; DEI Deconstructed, by Lily Zheng; White Feminism, by Koa Beck; and Radical Humility, a collection of essays edited by Rebekah Modrak and Jame Vander Broek.
Additional resources
Rebekah Modrak's examination of Shinola -- how one big-name US brand co-opted the community of Detroit and continued its historical racialized representations of Blacks in the united States: Rethink Shinola.
Other episodes you might enjoy
Episode 47: White Women's Work: An Invitation, with Jayne Sommers
Episode 48: From Climate Crisis to AntiRacism
Episode 50: White Women's Nonsense, with Renee Wells
Episode 26: In Community: Interracial Feminist Co-Mentoring
Today I talk with Renee Wells about what it means to educate for equity through the lens of restorative justice. Renee is an educator and consultant with a grounding in the work of bell hooks and Paolo Freire, and I love how open and frank she is about all the things that we sometimes find hard to deal with…or to talk about…or to change…in our work on campuses.
I wanted to speak with Renee particularly because she’s white and spends her time helping predominantly white campuses think about how to act and intervene in ways that disrupt racism, misogyny, homophobia, and all the other structural things that cause harm. Our shared whiteness frames our whole conversation: as Renee says at the end, we’re two white women with the time and energy to talk about these issues in ways that could easily be construed as just white women’s nonsense.
Renee has a preference for action - and in that spirit, consider this episode an invitation to shift from the nonsense of white women who are nice ladies thinking about themselves as antiracist, to being intersectional feminists who take action in support of all minoritized people on campus, across the many multiple minoritized identities they hold.
If you're leading on a campus, Renee's call is to include in your decision-making and action-taking frameworks the focus on reducing harm. 🧡
The day Jayne and I talked about the book White Women: Everything you already know about your own racism and how to do better, I woke up here in Milwaukee to snow. In April. Yes I'm a Prince fan and yes I'm familiar with the jokes.
On May 1 I was running an errand with my kiddo and we sat at a stopsign for about 7 extra seconds, marveling at the snowflakes hitting the windshield. Moments earlier it had been raining, and moments later it was raining again. But for a few moments, it was snowing.
So I dug back into the audio recordings from my convo with Jayne and stitched together a short version of the first 20 minutes of our interview -- this is a new track where we connect the climate crisis to antiracism and unpack the ways that there is essentially one job for white women to do, and we need to do it over and over and everywhere.
I hope you enjoy this shortie episode!
Come read this book in community! We're hosting a book discussion group facilitated by Dr. Jayne Sommers of the University of St. Thomas. Get the details and register at the website.🧡
I love this book -- "White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better" -- a lot. And I’ll be honest: I don't enjoy reading it.
Aaaannnd…white women are not meant to enjoy it.
It’s meant to hurt – not to wound or cause harm, but to open white women to the ways we hurt others -- historically yes, but also today through our participation in white supremacy culture. And if you’re a feeling human, knowing you’ve hurt others – and learning that you’ve hurt others through your own words and actions – should hurt.
So I thought I’d share what reading this book is like for me because I think my experience as an educated white woman with leadership experience in higher ed will resonate with you.
In short: if you’re delaying reading this book because…you think it doesn’t apply to you because you’re not racist…or you feel some uneasiness about being schooled on your whiteness…or even if you’ve done a lot of DEI work on your campus so you’re not sure you have anything new or more to learn…I hope this episode can help you get over those hurdles, quit delaying, and read the darn book already.
readings and resources White Supremacy Culture Characteristics: the website. The art is by Melanie Walby; check out her full portfolio.
Ten Ways White Supremacy Culture Hurts White People: A Tale of Mutuality, by Greg Elliott.
A significant book list, courtesy of Christina Holmgren & Jayne Sommers: https://theclareogroup.com/resources
other episodes you'll enjoy Episode 47, White Women's Work: An Invitation, with Jayne Sommers
Episode 26, In Community: Inter-racial Feminist Co-Mentoring, with Christina Holmgren & Jayne Sommers
Episode 9, Unleashing the Power of Diversity by Creating Psychological Safety
Jayne Sommers shares her journey from first-born Capricorn -- achievement-oriented, striving for perfection, confident in her own rightness -- to anti-racist educator. She brings these experiences to her work as facilitator of our upcoming challenge: White Women's Work, where we'll spend a month exploring Regina Jackson and Saira Rao's work in White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How To Do Better. ps: Our potty-mouths let loose a bit on this one.
Interested in the challenge? Join us here: https://theclareogroup.com/whitewomenswork
Learn more about Jayne at LinkedIn.
Read Jayne's article: From Shame Spiral to Humility Helix.
Grab a copy of Jackson & Rao's book from the publisher.
If you work on a college campus, I’ll guess that most of what you do, all day long, is talk. You teach, mentor, and advise students. You run committee meetings. You report on your findings, whether you’re conducting research, designing systems, or enforcing policy. You send emails. You chat in Zoom. You message in Slack. You trouble-shoot and problem-solve. You talk to prospects – students, employees, donors. You hire and supervise people. All of that involves a helluva lot of…talking.
Which means that whether you feel joy at work – whether you feel valued, whether you feel like you’ve really reached other people, whether you enjoy time with your colleagues, whether you get dopamine hits from the work you do – depends on the quality of your conversations.
In this episode we explore how to use feedback -- low-stakes, short, daily conversations with your colleagues -- to build trust and increase joy at work.
There's a story I regularly tell when I'm asked how I deal with conflict. It's of a time when a campus leader called my cell and chewed me out. Hard. In today's episode I unpack that story and try to disentangle what I usually say about it from what the neuroscience of conversations tells me. I come to some interesting truths along the way, all in the context of helping us think about how to understand the neurochemistry of our emotions when we're having fraught conversations.
Understanding what parts of your brain are activated in conversations, why they're activated, and the stories you're telling yourself about your physiological reactions (your racing heart and churning stomach) all give insight into the neuroscience of conversations -- and how you can harness that to turn difficult conversations grounded in fear into conversations that build trust.
https://theclareogroup.com/category/the-uplift-podcast/
“Twenty years of research involving more than 100,000 people reveals that the key skill of effective leaders, team mates, parents, and loved ones is the capacity to skillfully address emotionally and politically risky issues. Period.” (Crucial Conversations, pp 9-10)
Here’s some of the research showing how organizations benefit when teams are skilled at crucial conversations:
- Respond five times faster to financial downturns – and make budget adjustments far more intelligently than less-skilled peers.
- Are ⅔ more likely to avoid injury and death due to unsafe conditions.
- Save over $1500 and an eight-hour workday for every crucial conversation employees hold rather than avoid.
- Substantially increase trust and reduce transaction time in virtual work teams.
- Influence change in colleagues who are bullying, conniving, dishonest, or incompetent.
In this episode I'm focusing on #3: saving money and time by having crucial conversations instead of avoiding them.
With all that saved time, you and your team can focus on the things that really matter: your morale, inner work life, trust, and well-being. All the things that contribute to making work feel joyful.
W•A•I•T is an easy framework that helps you ask: Why Am I Talking? It's a great tool for slowing down, asking questions, and inviting greater participation in conversations. Get the details and grab my easy guide to the framework, along with a (very partial) list of powerful questions in today's episode.
In this episode we revisit The Grounded Academic Leader from episode 30. I want to help you set yourself up for a strong start to your next term by reviewing your goals as this term comes to an end, and making adjustments based on what you've accomplished and learned to refine and recalibrate your goals for the next term.
A discussion of the fourth stage of psychological safety - the safety to challenge the status quo - as form of institutionalized and acceptable dissent.
[02:22]: The three stages of psychological safety we've covered so far: Inclusion Safety, Learner Safety, and Contributor Safety. Today we'll dig into the role of dissent in psychological safety and explore how institutions create a culture where folks are in the habit of disagreeing in order to get better.
[8:35]: An example of how an organization can have varying levels of psychological safety based on differing team dynamics, and how that can be exacerbated by race and gender bias.
[13:44]: "Where psychological safety is high, there is necessarily a high level of inclusion and belonging."
[15:30]: The role of discipline in creating a culture where people can disagree. That's discipline as in consistent behavior, not as in punishment.
[21:00]: Recommended strategies for embracing dissent, inclusion, and discipline, no matter your role, style, or level of leadership.
[30:50]: Hey have you left a review yet? Please do it today!
"Being a contribution" -- an idea from The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander -- provides a frame for creating the 3rd stage of psychological safety (Contributor Safety), even as it helps you develop what Amy Edmondson calls Leadership Inclusiveness.
For better or worse -- & TBH, just for worse -- our busy-ness has become a measure of our worth. But activity is not achievement. We know this from teaching. Now it's time to infuse this into our leadership practice.
Some of your best skills in the classroom translate to your best skills as a leader. In this episode I explore the second stage of psychological safety -- the safety to learn -- and draw parallels between what successful teachers know in the classroom and the ways leaders can create learner safety for their teams.
in today's episode i discuss why inclusion matters so much to psychological safety, and how to identify inclusive behaviors in your own leadership, on your team, and even from your own boss. i weave together research from amy edmondson, nika white, and timothy clark. i also share some resources you can use today to identify behaviors you can change to improve psychological safety for your team, as well as behaviors you can look for to assess your own team's levels of inclusion with each other.
I recently hosted a couple workshops designed to help leaders find joy in their work again. On today's episode I share the audio of the workshop along with the workbook participants used to complete the activities. Grab a copy of the workbook -- a color copy to print, or a fillable PDF -- and follow along!
Listen to this episode along with #35, The Secret to Joy at Work, as a kind of mini-course on using consistent feedback on meaningful work to re-energize your team, increase their inner work joy...and in the process, reignite your pleasure and happiness in your leadership.
After talking with women across the country about how to love your job again, we're digging into the core premise: inner work joy comes from getting consistent feedback on meaningful work. This is findings of the research from Teresa Amabile and Stephen Kramer, which they share in their book The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.
When I told a friend about my dream of building an app to help women see whether their new-boss-to-be is toxic -- before they accept that new job -- he burst out laughing and said “you’re on a serious vendetta here.”
My first response was oh no, no no no. And then immediately I was like uhhh, yeah, maybe a little bit.
In this episode I explore how what could have been a vendetta instead has become my mission to transform higher ed.
This idea has pervaded my life since childhood, but I hadn't heard (or remembered) the phrase until I saw it last summer, painted starkly on a building mural near George Floyd Square in Minneapolis. For days I couldn't get the phrase out of my head.
Budgets reflect values - that's not news. I've seen this at play in institutional budgets on every campus where I've worked. It's at the heart of our debates every budget cycle. As leaders, we have a responsibility to ensure our institutional values and our distribution of resources are aligned. And when they're not? We should be honest about that.
After seeing George Floyd Square, I began to wonder what our lives could look like if we approached all our budgets through this lens. How would we allocate our money? Our time? Energy? Our love?
Today I invite you to think about the resources you have and what you do with them. What do you save and spend? What do you cling to out of fear or worry? What do you generously distribute? And why? What's behind all those choices and feelings?
This is just one issue I help women leaders explore in my new course, Leading with Clarity. The course gives leaders the space and community that makes it possible to think deeply and connect the dots between our personal values and priorities, the ways we plan, and how we lead our teams. Doors will open soon -- join the waitlist so you can be first to hear when registration opens!
Join the waitlist: https://theclareogroup.com/leadingwithclarity
This week I reflect on lessons from my “Year of Yes.” Shonda Rhimes coined this phrase in her 2016 book Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person.
Higher ed is not great at creating space for women to integrate our desires and aspirations. We are complex creatures - we seek professional success, disciplinary expertise, promotions and positive evaluations, connections with our families and people we love, our hobbies and fulfillment, and the ability to build a life in a place we care about. At least, this has been my experience - and I've spent my career accepting all those compromises in pursuit of professional success and recognition. But then last January I came to face-to-face with the truth: this was no longer working for me.
So this year, I embraced my "Year of Yes" and decided to rebuild my life to be integrated and joyful, inside and outside of work.
SHOWNOTES: https://theclareogroup.com/2023/01/09/lessons-from-my-year-of-yes/
In this episode I welcome special guest Dr. Jade Singleton, co-founder of Johnson Squared Consulting and DEI consultant at NASA's Science Mission Directorate, to discuss the current state of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace -- what we're getting wrong, what we're doing right, and how we can get better. Dr. Singleton designed and leads a DEI certification program through The Sarah Jane Academy, with the next cohort starting January 9. Learn more and register at https://www.thesarahjane.org/courses/diversity-equity-inclusion-in-practice.
In this episode I share my process for designing a successful year grounded in clarity, calm, and confidence. I walk you through my own planning process, which includes reflection, setting intentions, and backward design. I've used this system to establish my purpose and my financial goals, and to make sure they're connected.
I also share the free resource I created to help you plan for a full year based on your values, with prompts to revisit and revise at every term transition: The Grounded Academic Leader: Annual Plan. Grab it at the link below!
I first got interested in the idea of burnout for faculty and staff through the work of Rebecca Pope-Ruark, author of Unraveling Faculty Burnout: Pathways to Reckoning & Renewal. So I've been attuned to conversations about it -- not just among colleagues who are experiencing it, but also among women who are eager to help each other prevent, avoid, and extinguish it. The work of Julie Olson Rand and Alyssa Klenotich caught my eye: it's grounded in lived experiences, draws on research, and suggests paths forward for women -- for all of us -- to support each other by building a community of care. Thanks for listening!
Shelly Roder and Sarah Moore Nokes, two coaches who focus on support those in helping professions -- especially nonprofits and social-justice oriented organizations -- created the Tiny Sabbatical Project. Tiny Sabbatical: Creativity helps you connect your intention and your creative side, while Tiny Sabbatical: Connection helps you forge deeper bonds where you want them. I can personally vouch for their Teeny Tiny Sabbatical: A Seasonal Reset and talk about which practices I still use, even today.
Willo Boniface is the Founder & Lead Glower at The Transformed Academic, where she coaches and consults with women in higher ed who seek holistic, joy-filled lives. She considers herself a "recovered" academic and has rich insights into what women experience inside of higher ed, as well as practical approaches to finding balance and restoring their energy in a way that brings happiness to them and the people in their world. You can find her at The Transformed Academic on Facebook.
Christina Holmgren and Jayne Sommers share a co-mentoring model that dismantles typical patriarchal, hierarchical mentoring structures codified by white supremacist culture and instead creates space for black women's experiences and agency to exist alongside white women's humility and allyship.
After more than two decades leading transformational projects for organizations of all sizes, Barri Harris has committed herself to supporting success across intergenerational teams so that colleagues can develop meaningful trust in their leaders and in each other. In this episode we talk about cultural conditioning, especially related to power and gender, for folks from different generations.
Mandy Balek-Stephens leads by practicing empathy and gratitude as people explore their path -- whether they're exploring their profession, their studies, their interests and passions, and their identities.
Gender discrimination is real. The gendered wage gap is real. The mommy tax is real.
It's bad for straight white women.
It's much worse for women with brown and black skin; for lesbians and queer, bi, and trans women; for women whose first langauge is not English; for women who are entering professions as the first in their families or social circles and don’t have allies to support them.
So let's take a lesson from Machiavelli: look the monster in the face, and determine our best course of action given the lay of the land. Let's strategize. Not to be brutal, but to lift each other up.
To set the groundwork for this I take a peek into Machiavelli for Women by Stacey Vanek Smith. In particular I share the four archetypes of nasty female colleagues she identifies, and suggest actionable strategies you can practice this week to protect yourself, and the women around you, by being a mentor and an ally -- especially for women who inhabit less privileged positions than you do.
Then join us for the rest of the month as my guests discuss supervising and mentoring from intersectional and intergenerational perspectives.
Joy. Activism. Feminism. Optimism. Throw in a love of teaching, and I bring you: Elise Robinson!
I feel like I've known Elise forever and goodness knows I've admired her for just as long. Currently earning her PhD at the University of Georgia in Theatre & Performance Studies, Elise is the kind of professor we all love and remember: passionate, enthusiastic, and pushing her students to always be better versions of themselves.
In this episode Elise shows us how we can prepare students to be active and engaged citizens by preparing them for daily actions grounded in "perspectacles": small actions that are relevant to their daily lives. Elise shares particular student stories as well as ideas for how to incorporate easy assignments and activities that keep students focused on, and learning about, how to use their voices for democracy.
As provost and faculty member in Leadership Studies at Fort Hays State University, Jill Arensdorf believes democracy is a creative practice that calls for situational and contextual awarenss as folks move together toward a shared goal. As a leader, Jill has "a lot of faith and hope in people," which she expresses both through her leadership practice and through her commitment to civic engagement as she helps prepare FHSU students for rich lives of community and civic participation in service of larger democratic principles. Come learn about Fort Hays State University's Civic Investment Plan, a complement to their strategic plan that helps ensure all students -- whether they are located in Kansas, throughout the US, or around the world -- understand how to bring civic awareness to service for their communities.
A medical anthropologist by training, Susi Keefe approaches her teaching, like her research, by focusing on people and their stories. In this episode of The Uplift Susi tackles the "bodacious question" of whether teaching public health can model democratic citizenship. She shares stories about her students claiming their identities while learning to advocate for community public health...and discovering themselves as leaders along the way. Susi also discusses teaching evals -- and if you stick around, you can catch her rowdy dog Tater making his first podcast appearance.
"Changing the world - changing the civic existence - is completely central to what Dominican University does."
At Dominican University of California, the majority-women leadership team models communal leadership, mutual support, authenticity, and bravery. President Pitchford is willing to say even the hard things...perhaps especially the hard things, for as she reminds us, education is political, and requires opening up and speaking out.
Colleges and universities can "teach the art and science of a liberal democracy" -- not just in the what and how we teach, but also in how we model governance and participation. This month on The Uplift we're exploring what women leaders believe this can mean on their college campuses. In today's episode I describe why I have a deep personal investment in this question.
In this final episode of our "back to school" theme for September, I encourage you to take a fresh look at caring for yourself. I redefine self-care as intentional life-sustaining practices that protect well-being, enhance overall health, increase happiness, and promote empowerment, and, for women leaders in higher ed, also produce vitality by making space for curiosity and purpose. I offer suggestions for how to infuse your daily activities with this notion of caring for yourself. Special shout outs to Rebecca Pope-Ruark and her new book, Unraveling Faculty Burnout, as well as the FREE "Tiny Sabbatical Project" with Shelly Roder and Sarah Moore-Nokes.
What is going on with quiet quitting, burnout, and quiet firing on college campuses? This episode explores them through the Marxist idea of alienation from our labor. I suggest that alienation is a natural outcome of systemic accretion: the ongoing increase of small tasks and assignments that seem individually manageable but taken together become impossible. It's easy to see how this could contribute to disengagement and burnout. I also wonder aloud whether institutions that engage in habitual systemic accretion might be unintentionally "quiet firing" their people by giving them work that is designed to leave them feeling undervalued and unwanted. Luckily there's an alternative and potential solution for leaders: strengthening the connection between people's purpose and their work.
"The power to trust and be trusted is an essential prerequisite to enhancing the department climate." Mary Lou Higgerson wrote that 26 years ago, and it's as true now as ever before.
From "Soulless Opening Year Academic Speeches" to "Calling it Quits" to "Why 2022 is the Year of Workplace Culture," US employees are yearning for inspiring leadership that fosters a vibrant culture at work. How to get there seems elusive, and so we spend time and money on surveys, 3rd party vendors, and expensive consultants to help us through.
A large body of research is clear, though, that trust is the key to unlocking a healthy work environment: one that celebrates growth, coaches mistakes, and doesn't resort to fear, shame, or retaliation. This is not some made-up fantasy: I have lived and led in environments like this, and you can too. In this episode I share my favorite strategies, proven over more than 10 years of experimentation, for infusing your leadership with deep and rewarding trust.
In the US we host approximately 55 million work-related meetings a week. 71% are considered unproductive by attendees, and 65% of employees agree that meetings prevent them from completing their own work. This is expensive, and soul-crushing, and I think we should knock it off.
Wanna kick "meeting malaise" to the curb on your campus? In today's episode I talk about the differences between traditional meetings and meaningful gatherings, and list four steps you can take to change how you lead meetings in order to infuse them with clarity, purpose, and joy. Not only can you become the person on campus who runs meetings people enjoy attending, but you'll benefit from stronger relationships with your colleagues as a result.
Spoiler: I'm still fan-girling Priya Parker's book The Art of Gathering and share a link to a free guide she wrote to help you make the most of your gatherings. And I'm totally inspired by the podcast episode where Priya helps Brene re-imagine one of her work meetings. Because you know if Brene needs the help, then we probably do too.
I've been thinking about Priya Parker's book The Art of Gathering and what it can teach us about creating the BEST FIRST DAY EVER! -- both for our students on the first day of a new semester, and for new colleagues on their first day as members of our teams.
I combine Parker's wisdom with advice from my colleagues and a sprinkling of my own experiences, and distill it all into four easy guidelines with more than 20 actionable steps you can take. As always, I link to extra resources for you in the shownotes.
This episode is meant to be a useful resource as we enter back to school season and think about welcoming a whole bunch of new people into our teaching and leadership lives. Enjoy!
Here's a peek at Getting Clear on Purpose: Module Three of The Leadership Academy.
This module explores mindset and intentions, which are as imporant as goals to your leadership practice. In this module I'll also teach you actionable strategies for making space for all that, AND abundance, in your overly full work calendar.
Get a glimpse into how the module is organized and learn why I want YOUR NAME on the waitlist for The Leadership Academy. 🧡
Here's a peek at Getting Clear Within: Module Two of The Leadership Academy. I explain the half-dozen frameworks you'll learn, and the ways you'll apply them, to practice leadership grounded in trust, psychological safety, inclusion, equity, marketing (gasp!) and old-fashioned kindness. I talk a bit about the research, authors, and ideas behind the content; and share the story of how I learned the importance of talking about your own leadership. For you Badgers trained in the English Dept, this episode is also kind of a love letter to Brad Hughes. 🧡
Today I preview Getting Clear Within: Module One of The Leadership Academy. This module guides you in the reflective self-examination that is key to values-based leadership, setting the foundation for you to be an exceptional leader. I give you a sneak peek into the content; talk about the research, authors, and ideas behind the content; and share why I take this approach to helping people build a values-based leadership practice. I also swear a few times. 🧡
Meet Archibald McBacon VII, aka Bacon! He's our family's fourth dog, and after 22 years of raising pups - including a year of running a side hustle on Rover - I'm pretty convinced that everything I learned about leadership I learned from our pups. 🐶
When PWIs use "race" as the primary signifier of diversity, we burden our colleagues with black and brown skin and reify structural and behavioral racism. We can do better.
Thinking about diversity along two dimensions -- identity diversity and cognitive diversity -- gives us a framework for unleashing all the creative power of everybody in the room, giving them the room and respect to bring their full selves -- all aspects of their identities -- to bear.
Research shows that teams high in cognitive diversity -- especially when identity diversity is present -- are better, faster, and more accurate as problem-solvers.
The key? Psychological safety.
You have a strategic plan. You work with focus on your institutional goals and priorities. But when sudden, surprising, big paradigm-shifting stuff happens, you're not prepared.
We've all been there.
We just spent the last two years there, muddling through the pandemic and the way it forced us to make quick decisions with insufficient time to plan.
There's another way, though: using stories to develop scenarios about potential futures, and then "rehearsing" those futures as a means of preparing -- deciding what impact these stories will have for our industry and your institution, and determining ahead of time how you might respond.
You can even use scenario planning in conjunction with your strategic plan. In fact, scenario planning can help you be even more effective with your mid- and long-term strategies because the stories you create will help you prepare for changes as they emerge, making it easier to pivot and still get where you want to go.
In this episode I'll walk you through seven steps you can take to get to good stories about the future by convening diverse teams, preparing them to be vulnerable, and keeping your stories alive. I've also included a free "tip sheet" for you -- a guide to what your planning could look like -- that you can download, share with your team, and use as a starting point.
Today I explore the intersection of power, competence, courage, and perception for women leaders on college campuses, specifically in light of the Dobbs decision to strip women's rights. This exploration involves talking about Liz Cheney, Brett Kavanaugh, a person's right to privacy and bodily autonomy, and what you can do about it as a leader on a college campus.
I share excerpts from a few statements made by inspiring campus leaders around the country - including a student association - and help you prepare to lead from your values as students and colleagues return to campus.
Links to everything in the shownotes!
Today’s long and rambly title kinda reflects the episode content. This July 4th I’m meandering through my past as a student, and taking some time to look at the three institutions where I studied – three places where I was particularly vulnerable as a low-income student with no family support – and exploring their responses to Dobbs because I wonder and worry about their students now.
Last January I found myself in a terrible situation: I couldn’t take a scheduled week of vacation because my workload was too heavy, in part because my calendar was double-, triple, and sometimes even quadruple-booked. (No lie.)
I’ve spent the last six months fixing that problem and creating systems to prevent it from ever happening again. In this episode I share those tips so you can learn from my mistakes, and plan instead for a rockin’ success of a fall semester.
In this episode I share my top four tips for approaching your leadership practice to keep you in control and on top of things.
Tip 1: Instead of protecting your time, create your ideal week.
Tip 2: Instead of letting others control your pace, create white space in your day.
Tip 3: Instead of accepting additional tasks, swap them for meaningful assignments.
Tip 4: Instead of acting like you’re broke, gather and spend your assets.
To learn more about creating your ideal week -- a calendar-free way to control your calendar -- check out the resources below:
Amy Porterfield’s Podcast, “Online Marketing Made Easy,” episode #433: How To Create An Ideal Week for Optimal Focus, Productivity, & Well-Being.
Michael Hyatt: How to Better Control Your Time by Designing Your Ideal Week.
Hey, welcome back! Today I’m taking a piece of advice from Gretchen, who I met at an event hosted by Doyenne Group in Madison, WI. Gretchen mentioned to me that she and her husband talk about what it means to be an ally to a female colleague in your academic department. And she suggested that I develop some materials specifically to help folks know what, specifically, they can do to be allies.
If you want to read the full transcript of the podcast, it's posted on my site at https://theclareogroup.com/blog/#blog.
And/or you can nab the handout I created, Five Ways to be Her Ally, here. All I ask in return is for your email address so we can stay connected. It's a full-color .pdf for you to print out and hang in your office, or even (ahem) on your department's bulletin board.
In the show I also promised to direct you to the amazing work of Scott Page at the University of Michigan. I listened to Scott's book, The Diversity Bonus, on Audible and it blew my mind. The hard copy is now on my bookshelf. I can't wait to dig in to even more of his work.
If you're here just for my five tips for being an ally to the women in your department, here they are:
Tip 1: Halt the He-Peats
Tip #2: Redistribute Housekeeping
Tip #3: Give Her a Power Task
Tip #4: Compliment Her Mind, Not Her Manners
Tip #5: Praise Her Publicly, Especially When She’s Not in the Room
And finally, consider joining us in The Leadership Academy or even The Leadership Community! These are not your typical professional development workshops, and I do accept payment from your institution. Learn more at my website: www.theclareogroup.com. I really hope to see you there!
If you’re leading people in any capacity you have likely already experienced some sort of tension between what you want to do based on your sense of right and wrong, and what you’re being asked to do on behalf of the institution. What do you do when someone on your team – and maybe even you – would benefit if you could make the decision you want? How do you decide when to speak up, speak out, push back? To whom, and how loudly? How do you find the balance between representing the institution as expected from someone in your role, and representing the core of who you are?
When you make decisions based on your values, you’ll come that much closer to leading with joy.
Yes, "The Bitch Above" is singular, but I’m not referring to a single person. It’s shorthand for those shitty women bosses -- you know the ones -- the mean girls who grew up but didn’t grow out of their shitty ways of treating other people – especially other women. At its heart, The Clareo Group is about helping women bosses use their powers for good.
This bit of backstory helps explain how we got here.