Exploring Leadership at TMU

Yes, before stepping into the role of director of the School of Work I spent three years as associate director, Field Education in the School of Social Work and also had leadership experience from other employment experiences prior to joining TMU. 

I stepped up for the director position because I strongly believed in the vision and mission of my school and I wanted to help ensure we would be able to maintain this vision and mission into the future. In the past, I had seen how fast things could shift negatively if we didn’t have a leader in place who supported our goals and values and who deeply understood who we were and what we were all about. So, my decision to take on this role was primarily about my commitment to the School of Social Work and to the approach to social work that we collectively envisioned. 

I learned so much in the director role–things I didn’t even know I needed to learn, like how the university actually worked, who was who, and how various parts of the university worked together. In this role, I was also exposed to a whole new set of experiences, new sources of information and new people. Having this new vantage point helped me better understand how to develop proposals for change (for example, organizational change, curriculum change, and budget change) that would be successful in the context of the university.

Being in this position also allowed me to further develop my management skills in working with staff and to hone my conflict resolution, mediation and consensus-building skills as I engaged with faculty colleagues. 

Overall, I would say that in this role, I enhanced my capacity for leadership in every possible way, including gaining a solid understanding of my own approach to leadership and how it matched or differed from others.

Take that leap of faith! The work can be extremely challenging but it is also highly rewarding. I would urge you not to take on a leadership role if your main priority is your own career aspirations. Take on a leadership role because you care deeply about and believe in the unit you’re aspiring to serve and because you see strength and inspiration in the people you’ll be working with and for. Your job is to serve the people you’ll be leading. It always has to be about the group, not about you. 

Make sure you establish a support system for yourself. The work is hard and it can oftentimes be lonely. Ensure you have a support system in place that you can easily access, including people you can confide in and get advice from. Your ability to stay steady and project an optimistic outlook is the key to success. If you don’t find ways to take care of yourself when things get frustrating (and this will happen!), you’ll bring that attitude to the group. The attitude of the leader (if it’s authentic) is contagious within the group. If the leader is steady, calm and generally optimistic (without being overly so), it will help the group stay steady. If the leader is grumpy and frustrated, the group will likely be as well.

If the leadership role is one where a major stakeholder group is tenure-stream faculty members, you can’t do this work if you don’t value and support collegial governance. Learn how to harness the power of collegial governance. This work is always about the needs, desires and strengths of the group, not of the individuals. There is so much power in the group and a big part of your job is to make sure folks understand how collegial governance works and are ready to step in and work with the group to get things done. By understanding what the group wants to see happen and recognizing your unique vantage point (because as director/chair, you now have a broader line of sight, access to different points of information, and relationships with different people) you can bring proposals to the group to help generate ideas about possible options that could work within the university’s broader context. You can then provide guidance to help the group figure out which pathways they may want to pursue. 

Your role as an academic leader in the context of collegial governance is to keep the group engaged, to help them articulate their collective goals and to then help them stay on track so these goals can be achieved. It is not about what YOU want to see happen. It should always be about what the group wants to see happen, and what the group is willing to put effort into in order to make those things happen. Know how to let an idea go if the group doesn’t value or support it. Something many people find extremely challenging is that the role of a director/chair relies on the successful utilization of the power of influence, not the power of formal authority. A key aspect of your job is to create the conditions that motivate faculty members to WANT to come to the table and work together to do the work required to achieve their collective goals.

If you lead with an approach that has integrity, honesty and transparency, and always have the group’s needs (not yours) at the centre of whatever you do, you’re on the path to being successful.

Know that year one will be the hardest year. Don’t expect it to be easy, but definitely do expect that after the first year, things will get considerably easier. Don’t make a decision about the role and your desire or your ability to continue doing it, during the first year. Year one is an anomaly. 

Be ready to be surprised, a lot. Academic leadership is extremely complex, much of the work is invisible to others (especially if you’re doing it well!), and the specific nature of the day-to-day life in the role is difficult to understand in advance.

Know that even though many of the responsibilities of the role are set, the way the role works and the kinds of things people will bring to you will be different for each person, depending on who you are, what your strengths and limitations are, how much people trust you and how you take up the role in general. Don’t imagine how the role will be for you, based on how it seemed to be for others who have done the role before you.

When you begin in a new leadership role, even if your colleagues have known you for a long time, be ready to prove yourself all over again. People will watch closely in the first year to see how you’re taking up the role. Don’t take for granted that folks know you. Make sure you are extra careful to be transparent and share information about your decision-making. Take time to (re)connect with your colleagues and (re)build trust. This will take a lot of effort in year one, but it will pay off in spades after that.

Set expectations from day one. Even though it may take a while to get used to the role and to figure out exactly how you want to be in the role, make sure you take time before you start, to think through how you’d ideally like things to work. It’s much easier to set expectations with people at the start of your time in the role than to start one way and then try to change things later on. Similarly, the messages you send to people (consciously or unconsciously) at the start, will stick. For example: if you want to be an accessible leader, you have to begin from day one by showing this to people through your actions. If you want people to trust you, you have to take time to build this trust. It doesn’t just necessarily transfer from one role to another as you move into new leadership roles.

Don’t over-expect what you can achieve in year one. Be realistic. You might not know it in advance, but you will have a big learning curve and it will take time to adjust to the new role. Make sure you spend time in year one doing things that will set you up for success in the long term, for example, building strong trusting relationships with people. Don’t be afraid to be decisive right from the start, but also make sure you take adequate time to fully understand the culture, values and norms of the group. And finally, don’t give more scope to the position than actually exists. Know the limits of your role and make sure others know this as well.