Women@Work
in Higher Ed

I tried to implement structure and systems while diving deep into who I am. The result? A systematically mystical summer that broke my brain.

Rand Park is a senior lecturer at UM’s Carlson School of Management. He joins us to share his insights into how extraordinary teaching and authentic leadership lead to both transformational learning and leading. 

In this final post of our “back to school” theme for September, I encourage you to take a fresh look at caring for yourself and encourage you to take a Tiny Sabbatical.

Alienation is a natural outcome of systemic accretion: the ongoing increase of tasks and projects that seem OK by themselves all together become impossible and lead to disengagement and burnout. Leaders can reduce alienation by reconnecting people to their purpose at 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 hyperfocused on the need for inspiring leadership that fosters vibrant cultures 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 never resorts 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 and your team with deep and rewarding trust. 

In the US we host approximately 55 million work-related meetings a week. 71% are considered unproductive 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.  

I’m betting you also would like to 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 combine them in order to bring purpose and meaning to your campus meetings. 

Boring meetings are a bad habit. They are expensive, and soul-crushing, and I think we should stop holding them already.

But change is hard, and requires understanding what to stop doing as well as what, and how, to start doing. So I’m kickstarting this for you by dissecting traditional meetings and comparing them to meaningful gatherings. I also list four steps you can take to shift your meetings into purpose gatherings, bringing clarity and possibly even joy to your campus meetings. 

If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands folks around the country who want to kick “meeting malaise” to the curb on your campus, read on!

In this post I share four guidelines and more than 20 actionable strategies for creating THE BEST FIRST DAY EVER! for your students and colleagues.

In this post I share four guidelines and more than 20 actionable strategies for creating THE BEST FIRST DAY EVER! for your students and colleagues.

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 […]