Susan's PSEL Blog

Last week my office held their annual retreat at the Nature Inn at Bald Eagle State Park.  Most of the employees in the office have been there less than a year so this day was an opportunity to get to know each other a bit better.  We all completed the strengths finders survey before the meeting.  Chris Heinz with EnergyCAP, Inc. facilitated the morning discussion about personal and team strength.  Chris is now a learning partner with Penn State Human Resources.  My top 5 strengths are Harmony, Consistency, Discipline, Responsibility and Learner.  I was not surprised by these results. A summary of these strengths based on my results:

• Harmony –  You look for areas of agreement.  When you know that the people around you hold differing views, you try to find the common ground.
• Consistency – Balance is important to you.  You believe that people function best in a consistent environment where the rules are clear and are applied to everyone equally.
• Discipline – Your world needs to be predictable.  You set up routines and focus on timelines and deadlines.  You want to feel in control.
• Responsibility – You take psychological ownership for anything you commit to and you feel emotionally bound to follow it through to completion.  This conscientiousness and your impeccable ethics (not my words), combine to create your reputation: utterly dependable.
• Learner – Your love to learn.  You are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence.

Strengths Finder groups talents into four categories – Strategic Thinking, Influencing, Relationship Building and Executing.  Harmony falls under Relationship building, Consistency, discipline and responsibility fall under Executing and Learner falls under strategic thinking.  3 of my five strengths are in Executing which makes sense to me as I am a task-oriented list maker who likes to get things done!

This was a good exercise for our team as Chris made a spreadsheet of everyone on the team and what their top 5 strengths are.  This list will be helpful to me if I am working on a project where I am weaker in certain skills.  I will be able to know who to go to for some suggestions and direction.

Completing the Strengths Finder as a team was a very valuable activity.  I highly recommend this session with Chris be involved in Future PSEL programs.

 

The shadowing experience of the PSEL program was the one I thought I would find the most uncomfortable for me.  My introverted self was not terribly thrilled about asking a stranger if I could shadow them for a day.  So, I decided to ask someone that I know well.  I decided to ask Jeanie Andrews who is the Director of the Office of the Board of Trustees. Jeanie is a co-worker of my husband’s and I have gotten to know her over the last few years.

Jeanie suggested that I shadow her at the July 2018 Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting at the Berks campus.  I was able to discuss the schedule for the 2 days of meetings with her as well as attend several board committee meetings and have lunch with Jeanie. I attended the main open board meeting and was able to observe Jeanie’s leadership role in those meetings.  Watching Jeanie interact with the board members and other university staff and executives gave me insight on how to interact with leaders of an organization or even people who hold higher positions than myself.  I observed Jeanie’s incredible patience and ability to keep a meeting on track by keeping attendees focused on the agenda.

Jeanie was committed to making sure that I had the best experience possible on my visit to Berks that she put me in touch with the Dr. Hillkirk, the Chancellor at Berks, and Dr. Paul Esqueda who is the Sr. Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a professor of Engineering Office at Berks. I was able to interview both men during my visit.

I sat down to talk with Jeanie the week after the BOT meeting to discuss my experience.  I had the chance to ask her some of the questions I asked in my other leader interviews. Jeanie’s background is firmly in human resources.  At Penn State, she worked in employee relations dealing with supervisors and employees who don’t get along and teaching supervisory skills.  She said that these jobs helped in learning what not to do as much as what to do in a situation.  Some of the leaders that she saw as doing it right ranged from a tech service worker on a grounds crew up to a former Chairman of the Board of Trustees.  Her point was that you can learn leadership skills from people at all levels of the organization.

Some tips that Jeanie gave me to help in my leadership journey:

•  Ask lots of questions
• Don’t let other people get you down
• Don’t react to the shock of a situation as this can cause others to panic
• Treat people well and do nice things for them
• Write thank you notes and give gifts to people for their hard work

I admire Jeanie’s ability to remain calm and deal with the situations with which she has control and to not get riled up about the situations that she cannot control.  I have asked Jeanie for advice numerous times in the past on how to handle difficult situations at work or how to word a response.  She gives great advice and has an amazing vocabulary.  For these reasons I have asked Jeanie to be on my mentoring board of directors and she happily agreed.

As I look back on this experience, I see in action through Jeanie some of the skills that we have learned about in PSEL sessions – persuasion and negotiation, presentation skills, and engaging and motivating others.  Jeanie exhibits these skills daily.

The dreaded shadowing day turned out to be a very positive experience for me.  The PSEL program has definitely pushed me out of my comfort zones many times and I am thankful for each experience!

 

This morning I listened to a webinar entitled – “Working Through Change”  presented by Michael Kubit the VP of Information Technology at Penn State .  ITS at Penn State is about to undergo some drastic changes with the Re-imagining Penn State IT initiative. I believe that Mr. Kubit created this presentation to begin to prepare his staff for the changes that will be coming.  The basic content of his message was very similar to what Stephanie Flanagan presented to our group in the Leading Change session. The content and sources of information differed between the 2 presentations but the message is the same to me – “Change is inevitable, so how do I deal with it?”. I missed the first few minutes of Michael’s message but he was talking about the changes in our emotions as we experience change.  His comments were a bit similar to the 3 phases of transition that Stephanie mentioned.

Kubit gathered his information from a Harvard Business Review article   by Nick Tater entitled “How to Get Better at Dealing with Change”.  The stages of change that he discussed were:

• Find Humor in the Situation
• Talk about problems more than feelings
• Don’t stress out about stressing out
• Focus on your values instead of your fears
• Accept the past but fight for the future
• Don’t expect stability

Kubit’s suggestions for moving forward:

• Stay positive
• Focus on what what you can control – do your best work
• Learn more about the process and ask questions – don’t assume
• Trust the process – Penn State is trying to provide more structure to information technology

I am sure I did not quote this all exactly as I decided to take notes several minutes into the 20 minute presentation, but what I gleaned from his presentation reinforced  a few ideas that we learned from Stephanie – stay positive, encourage others to embrace the change and focus on what is in your control.

 

 

 

 

Today I experienced 2 “firsts” for me.  The first “first” is blogging about an event that I attended immediately after the event.  Usually I wait days or weeks to sit down to blog and then forget many of the details of the event.  The second “first” was attending a Toastmasters meeting.  My initial reason for attending was to check off a requirement for the PSEL program. I attended the meeting with 2 of my PSEL learning group partners Scot Emel and Melissa Whited, after being encouraged by Kimberly Croft, another member in my learning group who had joined Toastmasters.  I was pleasantly surprised by my experience.  I expected a very rigid group of people critiquing everything that was spoken.  The group was smaller than normal because of member vacations, but everyone in attendance was warm and welcoming to us.  Everyone made sure they explained the agenda items and what was expected of the person fulfilling each meeting task.  They took several minutes at the end of the meeting to allow the newcomers to ask questions about Toastmasters.  Kudos to fellow PSEL member Melissa  on winning the best Table Topic speech for sharing her thoughts on picnicking at a table suspended in mid-air from the ledge of a mountain.  Melissa said she would absolutely do this and explained why she would.  I sat there barely able to look at the picture let alone think about sitting at a table in such a place!  Or drinking a beer in such a place!

Overall the Toastmasters experience was very positive.  I believe it is valuable group to be a part of if you are looking to develop your public speaking skills.  Joining this group would be way out of my comfort zone but would be a great method to increase my confidence in public speaking and in leadership.

Last week I attended the July 2018 Penn State Board of Trustees meeting at the Berks campus.  I was there to shadow Jeanie Andrews who is the Director of the Office of the Board of Trustees.  I will blog about that experience in another entry.  The Board meetings consist of 2 days of public and private committee and full board meetings.  I was able to attend 3 public committee meetings as well as the public board meeting on Friday afternoon.  I attended the Academic Affairs and Student Life committee, the Audit and Risk committee and the legal and compliance committee meetings.

The Academic Affairs and Student Life committee is chaired by board member Bill Oldsey.  Mr. Oldsey opened the meeting and welcomed new members of the board to the committee.  He asked that the minutes for the previous committee meeting be approved and they were.

Provost Jones game a report that included updates on hiring searches that are in progress for dean level positions, Lion Path continuing improvements, SIMBA  project beginning, Work Lion updates and the focus this summer on entering graduate appointments. He also discussed some high level strategic planning issues including seed grants and streamlining the submission process and he mention the new hire of Daniel Newhart as the Assistant vice provost for planning. 

Dr. Pangborn gave an update on 2 new national initiatives in which Penn State is participating.  The APLU and ATI surveys that are designed to increase the graduation rates of low to moderate income students.  He presented many details and several board members asked questions about the levels of Pell grants that PSU students receive.  I was interested in this discussion as I provided to Dr. Pangborn’s office the graduation data by students with Pell grants.  I felt like I actually understood something that was being discussed!

Damon Sims Vice President for Student Affairs gave an update on Fraternity and sorority life.  He indicated that his office staffing levels are optimal for increased monitoring that needs to take place.  Penn State has had more in depth discussions with individual chapters, student leaders, alumni and national organizations to talk about the circumstances for each chapter.  The university is working with the organizations and leaders in the community to build bridges.

Sims also discussed the fall 2019 mandate to roll out university-wide student health insurance for all undergrad students by.  Students will have to show proof of insurance while at PSU or they will have to purchase insurance that meets certain requirements.  The purpose of this is to prevent students from having to drop out of school because of medical bills.

Dr. Hillkirk Chancellor of Penn State Berks spoke about student engagement and undergraduate research being top priorities at Berks.   3 Professors and their students gave brief presentations of their research.

Dr. Jones presented the 2 administrative Fellows who are finishing up their year long assignments. Michelle Shaffer who worked with Neil Sharkey and Laura Miller who worked with David Gray.

The audit and Risk committee is headed by board member Walt Rakowich.  Dan Heist who is the director of internal audit at Penn State presenting the status of audits that have been completed and are in progress for the year.  Athletics monitoring was discussed.  The annual audit plan was also discussed regarding compliance audits and discussion of executive and supplemental pay.  The committee also discussed the auditing process of large construction projects at the Commonwealth campuses.

The last committee meeting I attended was the Legal and Compliance committee which is chaired by board member Mark Dandrea.  This was a fairly short meeting where they had only one agenda item to approve and that was regarding the license for alcohol sales at the Bryce Jordan Center.  Gary Langsdale is acting as interim chief Ethics and Compliance Officer until a new director can be hired.

The full board meeting on Friday, July 20th was rather short. The new chairman and Vice chairman of the board were elected.  Chairman is incumbent chair Mark Dambly and the vice chair is Matthew Schuyler.  Each committee chair gave a report of their committee’s meeting and several other items were voted on.

Attending these committee sessions was very interesting for me.  I was very interested in how the board conducts business at these meetings and it was insightful to see how the board members and staff at Penn State react with one another.  Different leadership styles become very evident in these types of situations.  This was a valuable learning opportunity and I encourage anyone to attend a public committee meeting at one of the upcoming board meetings.

 

 

 

I admit I have been quite the slacker in keeping up with my blogs.  My son graduated from Army Ranger school in late April (more about that in a blog to come), my daughter got married in mid May and I just moved my office to another building off campus.  I ready to put my focus back into PSEL activities.

The week after the Presentation skills session I went to Florida for the Association of Institutional Researchers conference.  I thought that this was a great opportunity to practice my elevator speech.  While most of the people at the conference have similar jobs to mine or at least understand a bit about the functions of institutional research and reporting at a university, I knew that I would be asked the question “What do you do and where do you work?”.  I hadn’t memorized or even perfected my elevator speech but at least I had given thought to what I might say.  The version of my speech that I used at the conference was more job specific than a speech I would use if I was meeting someone new in a social setting.  I had several opportunities to practice my elevator speech with new people and they had no idea I was practicing.  The conference experience helped me to realize why it is important to have several variations of my elevator speech.  I could be a little more detailed about my job in this audience.

Next week I will be having my shadowing experience.  Blog to follow!

I have to admit that I really dreaded starting this exercise.  As I spend more time reading, listening to TED talks and podcasts, conducting leadership interviews, I become less intimidated by the task.

I completed 3 leadership interviews with people who hold very different types of leadership positions at the university.  I was amazed by how similar many of their comments were.  Some of the common ideas I heard were empower your people, let your people be the spotlight in good times and be willing to shoulder the blame in the bad times, listen well, good communication skills are necessary, integrity is important, recognize work well done, be observant.  I learned that leadership is about getting people to move in the same direction to have them understand the common goal and to take steps necessary to reach the objective.

I finished reading a book this week by Kristen Hadeed titled Permission to Screw Up – How I Learned to Lead by Doing (Almost) Everything Wrong.  I really enjoyed reading this book.  She provided many real life examples of how Not to do things and then explained how she corrected her leadership mistakes.  Hadeed commented that “managers give orders not ownership.  Leaders ask themselves, How do I get this person to do what I want them to do and make sure they feel good about doing it?”.  This to me sounds like a question that a leaders should routinely ask themselves.

I watched a TED talk a few weeks ago called Why Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe by Simon Sinek.  This brief talk really affected me an helped me to realize that  I want people to feel safe in their work environment.  And then to my surprise in our group PSEL session with Maurie Kelly, she played this same talk. It really drove home to me that people are most important.  Sinek said that the leader sets the tone.  If he/she decides to put the safety of employees first, the people will trust and cooperate.  They will combine strengths and talents to meet the needs of the company and its outside threats.  He said that great leaders don’t sacrifice people for the numbers, they sacrifice the numbers for the people.  I want to be a leader that people can trust.  Part of my leadership philosophy will include listening well, respecting opinions, empowering others , recognizing work well done. and being honest even in difficult situations.

I have a feeling my leadership philosophy statement will  have many iterations as I finish the Emotional Intelligence book and complete the Strengths assessment. I will combine what I have learned in the interviews, my readings, and the assessments into a philosophy that is unique to me.

I conducted the first of my three management interviews with Dr. Tom Poole who is the Vice President for Administration at Penn State.  Tom has held this position for 11 years and he will be retiring on June 30, 2018.  I am not going to list all of the questions I asked and the answers.  I will instead summarize the points that Tom made that can help me on my leadership learning journey.

To said that organizational skills, ethics, integrity, character, diplomacy, hiring good people and letting them do their jobs are keys to being a good leader.  He relies on good staff, gives them space to do their jobs and gives them the credit for their work.  He is willing to take the blame when things go wrong.  Tom believes that one of the primary roles of a leader is to help people to do their best work.

I asked Tom how his job has evolved since he first took the position 11 years ago.  He said that his job change drastically when the Sandusky scandal occurred.  He and several other administrators were tasked with implementing the recommendations in the Freeh report.  He because the chief policy steward to review policies university wide.  He also became the secretary of the Board of Trustees, a job always held by the President of the university, as a result of the Freeh investigation.  His job changes a bit from one president to the next depending on how the president likes things done.  Tom handles many routine tasks for the President.

One of Tom’s responsibilities is managing the PSU Board of Trustees (BOT) office.  He also sits on the Board of Trustees for the Pennsylvania College of Technology.  I asked Tom how being on the board and working for the board differ in leadership skills needed.  In being a leader of the BOT, it is his job to maintain good relationships with all of the board members which helps to build a positive relationship between the BOT and the president.  His focus in this role is the day to day decisions that keep Penn State running.  Being a member of the BOT at PCT the responsibilities are hiring and supporting the president and making decisions that ensure the future viability of the institution.  The focus of the 2 jobs is different; One is more of the day to day decisions that affect the university and the other is the decisions that have long term  significance.  Both jobs require skills in diplomacy.

I learned from Tom that it is important for a leader to be organized, honest, ethical, to support your staff in their jobs and to never take yourself too seriously.

Last week I met with my supervisor for the first of our monthly meetings.  I’m not sure why I waited a week to blog about our discussion.  Note to self – schedule the meeting time for 30 minutes longer so I can work on the blog entry as soon as the meeting is over. Or even better – start the blog post as my note taking session and clean it up after the meeting.  This will be my goal for next month.  Our discussion revolved around the goals he would like to see me accomplish and the skills he would like to see me develop.

1.  At the end of this program he would like me to have a broader understanding of leadership.  The skills and actions of leaders outside of their actual management tasks.  The group sessions, meeting with my learning group, interviews with university leaders and the assignments for this program will help me to learn more about leadership styles and to help me determine my leadership style.
2. Self-Reflection – Listen to all of the feedback that I receive during this program.  Determine how to learn from the feedback and to make necessary changes in my attitude and my skill sets.
3. Gain knowledge from listening to other university leaders and others within the program.  Understand how I can learn from other’s experiences and mistakes.
4. Relationship building.  Learn how to make the most of the connections that I develop with fellow PSEL participants, those that I interview and shadow and others that I meet during this process.  In what ways will I be able to utilize those connections to assist me in my leadership journey.

We also discussed opportunities to attend committee meetings outside of my normal responsibilities and how we can work together to schedule these opportunities.

 

My group met together today for our first monthly meeting to discuss where everyone is with completing assignments and planning.  All of us are accomplishing tasks necessary to meet deadlines.  Some are farther along than others.  The really organized among us, ok I will name names – Kimberly, motivate the rest of us to get moving.  We all agreed that the program materials are hard to to follow for trying to figure out what the assignments are, where to find the instructions and when assignments are due.  Everything can be found it the manual but it is not very clear on where to pinpoint instructions and materials.  The group decided to set up a Google Docs for all of us to use where we can come with a calendar that makes sense to us.  Thanks to Brian Redmond for setting this up.  We also decided that we will email each other occasionally with updates on what we are working on so that we can try to keep each other on track.  It is early in this program, but I already feel that my learning group is going to be the most essential “tool”  in helping me to succeed in this program.  It is great to have a group of people who are invested in helping each other succeed!