Maximizing Your Potential: Practical Advice from a 20Something Dean

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Maximizing Your PotentialPractical Advice from
a 20-Something Dean

• James A. Troha, Ph.D.
• Vice President for Enrollment Student Affairs
• Dean of Students
• Heidelberg College
• February 3, 2006

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Agenda

• Introductions
• Why Student Affairs?
• Leadership
• Building Your Experience
• Ladder Issues
• Degrees
• Training
• Mentors
• Public vs. Private
• Length of service

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My background

• Residence life (4 years)
• Greek life (2 years)
• Dean of Students (11 years)
• Vice President for Student Affairs (4 years)
• Vice President for Enrollment (3 years)
• Ph.D. Educational Policy and Leadership

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Why Student Affairs?

• Students
• Personality
• Environment
• Learning
• Leadership

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Leadership

• Leadership vs. Management
• Managers are people who do things right and
  leaders are people
• who do the right thing
• To manage means to bring about, to accomplish, to
  have charge of, responsibility for, to conduct.
• Leading is influencing, guiding in direction,
  course, action, opinion.

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Leadership

• What do Senior Student Affairs Officers say about
  leadership?
• No single formula for success
• Highly personalized leadership is needed depends
  on institution and culture
• Need to deal positively with stress, courage and
  integrity

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Stress

• Serve at the pleasure of the President
• Long hours
• Many constituent groups
• Students, faculty, staff, parents, trustees,
  alumni, community members
• Single issues may often determine fate
• Unpredictable

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Courage

• If you want a place in the sun, youve got to
  put up with a few blisters.
• Criticism
• The courage to move forward in view of expected
  controversy and opposition is a clear indication
  of successful leadership.
• Doing the right thing
• Educational leadership means moving forward,
  developing new approaches.
• Leadership is about risk.

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Integrity

• Trust
• I may disagree with Dean Troha, but I know he
  was telling me the truth.
• Credibility
• Policy development
• Fair but Firm
• Consistency
• Flexibility

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Developing Your Own Experience

• Before we can talk about advancing your career,
  you must first do well in what you are doing.
• You are most promotable and most rewardable when
  you show superior performance at your current
  job. DO YOUR CURRENT JOB WELL!
• What does it take though to do your job well?
  Trendy word is competencies I like the terms
  hard and soft skills.

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Developing Your Own Experience

• Hard skills
• easy to measure (productivity, accuracy,
  timeliness)
• Soft skills
• just as important, but hard to measure (team
  player, good communication, personality,
  demeanor, relationships)
• YOU WILL BE MEASURED BY BOTH. You can be the
  best typist in the world but if nobody gives you
  anything to type because of your personality,
  youre out of a job.

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• Basic Hard skills
• Show initiative (own your job)
• Meet deadlines
• Do more than expected
• Have a goal in mind and share these goals
• Work from a base of knowledge (avoid rumors
  facts deserve respect from others)
• Dont demand immediate payback or recognition
  Make lists and take notes! Each minute you spend
  planning can save 20 in execution!

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• Soft skills
• Positiveness optimism (hire for attitude, train
  for skills)
• Herb Kellerher, CEO for Southwest We look for
  people who have to excel to satisfy themselves
  and who work well in a collegial environment. We
  dont care that much about education and
  experience because we can train people to do
  whatever they have to do. We hire attitudes.
• People skills (other people have to want to be
  around you.)
• Communication (small talk, conversation, avoid
  religion, politics, other social topics, know
  current events, listen)

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Soft Skills (cont)

• Confident but humble
• keep bad moods to yourself, work on fit, every
  interaction is a deposit in the workplace
  relationship bank
• Dont be a talented jerk (know-it-all, elitist)
• Manage up (dont kiss ass but play the game,
  understand boss game, preferences)
• Be pleasant, say hello to people, shake hands and
  look at them, use names, ask questions.

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Movin on up!

• The burden for most of us is on us!
• Some are born into good positions,
• others have great luck
• but for most of us,
• WE ARE IT!

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• So how do we get promoted?
• What will give us the edge?
• Meetings
• Speaking
• Committees
• Impressions
• Intentionality

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• Be a good meeting person
• Take up space (spread work materials in front of
  you, pull your chair up and sit straight, ignore
  dinner table etiquette and put your elbows on the
  table.)
• Pay attention (dont sit and nod your head like
  one of those car dolls marks you as a
  subordinate use words to agree or disagree)
  Seek first to understand, then to be understood

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Be a good meeting person

• Dont fidget (men average 12 major movements
  women 27 the more you fidget, the more you
  siphon attention from you are saying think
  poise)
• Finish your sentences (dont repeat things, state
  your point clearly)

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• Public speaking
• DO IT!
• Preparation - know your audience, be comfortable
  with your material
• Use your nervousness (keeps you on your toes)
• Use short sentences, dynamic words (use stories,
  visual aids, move around, look at audience)
• Believe that your audience wants you to do well

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• Committee work
• Provides visibility
• top levels of management already have visibility
  you need it
• builds a network, lets your talent be seen
• cant let day to day performance decline though

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• Good impression
• Dress for success (the greater danger is not
  dressing for success and wanting it)
• Wear the costume of the organization (high tech
  companies not the norm)
• Good personal hygiene

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• Strategize / Be Intentional
• Long, mid-range, short-range
• Know yourself, be in the loop, get feedback, be a
  team player, accept change, have options, follow
  your plan, believe in yourself.

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Ladder Issues

• Degrees
• Training
• Mentors
• Public vs. Private
• Length of service

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• Other Ladder Issues

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Conclusion

• What am I good at?
• What do I enjoy?
• What are my contributions to students? The
  campus community?
• Am I satisfied and successful with what I am
  doing?
• What are my opportunities for future growth?
• What do I want to do next?
• What has changed in my life the past year and
  how do I respond to that?

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Thanks for Listening!!!

• QUESTIONS?
• Jim Troha
• jtroha_at_heidelberg.edu
• [phone]