Three Simple Secrets to Staff Engagement #sachat #reslife #highered

Staff engagement can be as simple as it can be elusive. We all know what it looks like, what it doesn't look like and can oftentimes do a decent job of describing it. Where we get into trouble is when we define staff engagement with too many factors that cannot be measured, seen or really changed at all (i.e. the mysterious idea of "ownership").

What is "ownership" anyway? It is literal ownership of the direction of your work? Is it being concerned and invested into the outcome of your work? (Again more things we cannot actually see or influence. You can't make someone care more). There are some ways to define ownership in a  useful and actionable way but at that point we have created behaviors that we should focus on and abandon this idea of "ownership". I should also note that I do use the term "ownership" and need to get over that myself, but I digress.

If we look at staff engagement from the other end, and look at truly miserable jobs this can shed some light for us. This is exactly what Patrick Lencioni does in "The Three Signs of a Miserable Job". He looks at staff engagement from the perspective of what it looks like when it is not there, then works backwards to what is missing.

If you want to increase staff engagement you need three things.

1. RAs need to be able to see progress for their hard work. They need to be able to see that what they do has accomplished something.

2. RAs need to be able to know that they make a difference in someone's life, and not just know that they do, but whose lives they impact. They also need to be reminded of this regularly.

3. RAs need to feel like they matter and are known as people and not just RAs. This is one area we tend to excel at in Student Affairs.

 

So what can you do to accomplish each of these three things? Let's start with the first. When an RA has no way of knowing what they have accomplished this can easily lead to burn-out. Being an RA is a difficult position and one that is often thankless and more to the point immeasurable. It can be easy to get dogged down in seeing roommate conflicts, documenting residents and dealing with crises and not seeing your work be anything more than a series of band-aids. We as supervisors know that this is not the case. We know and have seen actual change in a person due to their relationship with their RA. While living the day-to-day life of  an RA though, it can be difficult to see these changes occur because they do happen overtime. Therefore we need to add some measurement to the RA position.

The key for these measurable aspects of the position are that: they must be under the RAs sphere of influence (they need to be able to see how their work can change the results), they need to be relevant to the RA (while some departmental wide measurements can be useful, allowing each  specific RA to come up with 1-2 is useful), and they need to be continuous (one-time complex assessments can be helpful, but these measures are meant to show progress for the RA to increase their engagement). Depending on your programming model you can use attendance at programs, or  if you use the You+Two model that Delaware uses (shameless plug) you can use student submitted proposals for programs. Other measures can include number of doors open on the floor (if an open community is a particular priority of your RAs), or the RA being able to identify a particular number of talents of residents, or the number of conversations they have with residents each week. Depending on your departmental, building and staff goals and areas of focus  these will look different for each of us. The important part is that they are easily measurable by the RA and speak to something that is relevant to them and towards their residents' success.

 

For the second part, RAs need to know that they make a difference in the lives of others. This is the easiest for us to see, but can be difficult for RAs to truly identify. We know that RAs make a huge difference in the lives of three groups of people. They influence the residents most of all with their role modeling, assistance with crises, mediation and everything in between. They need to be reminded of both the long process of student development and their how their impact fits into that development. Try sharing stories of how your RA really helped you as a student, or explain some basic student development theory and what those stages of development look like , explaining how what they do impacts change. Oftentimes students apply to be an RA because of the impact their RA had (both good and bad), and having your staff share their reasons and their experience as a student can help them see the connection between their work and the success of their residents.

RAs also impact their piers. Through their skill-sets, connections on campus and experience working with people they will no doubt have an impact on their friend groups. I myself answered questions about campus and helped friends through crises using the skills I learned and used as an RA. Heck, I have even used these skills to help family and my fiance.

The third and sometimes hardest one to talk about, is the impact RAs have on us, their supervisors. We often recognize RAs for a job well done, but how often have we told them directly how much their efforts have made a difference in our lives? I can think of many times in the past week when my staff have not only made my life easier but have reminded me why I am in this profession and why this work is so important. My staff have such large hearts and work so hard and while I tend to recognize that work and the impact it has had on their students, I forget to let them how how much their hard work has meant to me personally.

 

For the third "secret" to staff engagement, we already tend to do this well. We know our RAs as people and tend to be closer to them than most supervisors in other fields will be. The part where we need to challenge ourselves is in combining this with the RA position. If we spend any amount of time thinking about we can make connections to any major, any hobbies, any goals to the RA position, we can come up with some very unique and truly rewarding experiences for our staff.

 

The challenges in implementing these three simple 'Secrets" is our own daily routine. When a crisis happens or that parent calls, or that report is needed for that committee that is planning that event next month or whatever else pops up, we tend to put that fire out first. What tends to take the back-burner are things like staff engagement. I myself am as guilty of this as the next person and once I come up with that magic solution I will certainly let everyone know until then I will just need to keep these three little "secrets" in mind and do my best to keep them a priority.

 

I have no doubt that with more meaningful measurable factors, being reminded of the impact their hard work has on others (including supervisors), and by tying in their personal interests into the position any staff will become more engaged and accomplish this elusive idea of ownership.

 

As always, Thanks for reading!

Paul Miller...

Complex Community Council Recruitment Cards #sachat #reslife #highered

You always want student recruitment for leadership positions to have a personal touch, something a mass-email or a poster just wont do.

We wanted to have something for our RAs to hand out residents during our Complex Community Councils (the hall governments for our residence hall complexes). I designed these to appeal to different students and to carry a consistent message that we carried throughout much of our marketing; "You've Got Potential, We've Got Opportunities".

We printed these cards from VistaPrint.com and divided them up amongst the staff to hand out to students. This gave them a clear reason to walk up and mention this to people and gave us a clearer way to measure their effort to recruit students.

This year, I re-printed the cards but changed the slogan to "You've Got Talent, We've Got Opportunities". This change to talent goes along with similar language changes we have made in our marketing and programs. The cards are all printed on recycled paper and include a request to please recycle the card through our single stream recycling.

These proved effective and were liked by staff and students alike. We always tend to over estimate the numbers we needed and when we print them in the future we will work on finding a way to make the website the same year after year so we can re-use them.

The Green Team Cards (located bottom left in the picture) are reusable and we use them to recruit students throughout the year. Green Teams are student groups that focus on education, programming and advocacy regarding environmental sustainability on campus.

Thanks for reading,

Paul Miller...

What's your rallying cry? #highered #RLchat #sachat

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The 3 BIG Questions for a Frantic Family, or what we really need to be doing with our staffs and families alike.

I picked up Patrick Lencioni’s book “The 3 BIG Questions for a frantic Family” because I had thoroughly enjoyed his other books. His writing style makes his advice as memorable and enjoyable to read as it is indispensable. Lencioni presents his theories and models in the form of fables. These fables have characters that we can relate to and grow to care about. Lencioni is a business consultant and even though his models are constructed from the lens of a business I have found them very helpful for student affairs work. I was particularly interested to see how he takes the idea of organizational clarity and applies it to a family and how that would relate to a staff of RAs. I have to say that I was a bit nervous for my fiancé to see me reading a book about frantic families! Luckily, I read a wide variety of book and she did not think that I was accusing our family of being frantic (although at times we certainly are!)

Ultimately this book offers some amazing lessons for both families and for any staff, whether you identify as frantic or not. The idea behind answering the 3 BIG questions is that we lack clarity and focus in our organizations and by developing a rallying cry and some underlying objectives we can better make decisions that are cohesive with our core purpose. The 3 BIG questions simplify conversations about strategy, goals, core purpose etc so something that is more manageable to tackle and something that fits a group like a staff or a family.

The 3 BIG Questions adapted for use with a staff are:

1.       What makes our staff unique?

a.       What will we do that differentiate us from others? Is it our student population that we work with? Our location on campus? Is it our focus on something particular? The purpose of this is not to compare ourselves to other staffs, but to identify what makes us unique. Without knowing what makes us unique then we will try to be all things all the time.

2.       What is our top priority or “rallying cry” right now?

a.       What priority do we need to focus on this semester? In other words, by the end of this semester or 6 weeks, what one thing we will need to have accomplished to feel successful?

b.      The difficult thing here is just chose one main focus. People tend to include more and more priorities until everything is a priority. When everything is a priority, then nothing is. Choose the single most important focus and then flush it out. Sometimes what we think of are priorities are really goals that have a common theme that is our priority. Think of something that is more of a semester-wide focus that has sub-tasks that need to be complete to accomplish the priority.

c.       With a rallying cry, you want it to speak to you and be exciting. No one is excited or rallied by “teaching residents to find their own answers on campus” but they are by “providing an experience that enables residents to be self-sufficient”. Make it exciting and something you can stick with.

d.      Underneath the top-priority or rallying cry are Defining Objectives and Standard Objectives.

                                                               i.      Defining objectives: These are the basic areas you will need to address to accomplish your rallying cry. For example if your rallying cry is ‘To engage residents in meaningful talent based activities.’ Some defining objectives could be ‘develop tactics to identify talents’, ‘compile list of opportunities’, ‘simplify the process for funding student initiatives’, etc. Basically this is breaking your rallying cry down into more actionable steps.

                                                             ii.      Standard Objectives: These are the basic categories of ongoing responsibilities that you must attend to. These may include ‘resident follow ups’, ‘staff cohesiveness’, ‘student leader support’, ‘ongoing staff development’, etc. Having these listed helps to keep in mind those basic categories of important daily duties. The key here is list categories and not every single task.

3.       How do you talk about and use the answers to these questions?

a.       Schedule regular times (like weekly staff meetings) to quickly go over the priorities and objectives. This should be quick and just include a basic judgment of where you are at with accomplishing them. Lencioni suggests using colors: red (needs great improvement), yellow (going OK and could use improvement), green (doing very well in this area).

b.      The purpose here is cohesion of understanding the priorities and where to go from there. So again do not spend a long time on each of these in a staff meeting or it becomes easy to skip over this part, especially if there is a lot to cover in that meeting. Keeping it to 10 minutes each week will help more than covering it for 30 minutes every once in a while.

Answering these three questions will bring clarity to your staff if you stick with it. If you choose to use this, don’t try it and then just file it away. Nothing really helps us from the back of a cabinet. I plan on using this with my staff and at home. By breaking down strategy and organizational clarity into three questions, it makes it a manageable task without going on an all-day retreat or drastically changing what we do, just focusing our energy and giving everyone a common understanding of what we are here to do.

Lencioni suggests that this go up in a common space, like a staff office too so it is a clear and visible reminder.

The main take-a-ways for me are:

1.       1. Organizational clarity & strategic thinking is easy and understandable, or at least will be if you use the 3 BIG questions.

2.     2. In terms of a rallying cry “what’s more important than choosing the right thing is choosing something” (Lencioni pg 71)

3.      3. We could all use more fables in our presentations. Telling a story with characters is far more engaging and memorable than presenting bullet lists. I still remember the models and theories from all of Patrick Lencioni’s books. He creates engaging stories to frame his model in a way that we relate to them.

For more information on model presented in Lencioni's book (including two examples of its use by real families) see the included pdf from www.thefrantifamily.com or read the book. It is a quick and enjoyable read. http://www.amazon.com/Three-Big-Questions-Frantic-Family/dp/0787995320

Frantic_Family_Model.pdf Download this file

Thanks for reading,

Paul Miller…

 

The great fear of Impostership

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The past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about the idea of impostership. I have been hearing these issues pop up for my RAs and it got me reflecting on my own experiences with it.

There are certain times in our careers where we feel like imposters. Whether this is during our first AP Class in High School, during a class in College, the first new weeks of a new position or even 25 years into our careers, we can all have feelings of Impostership.

Impostership, according to Stephen Brookfield (The Skillful Teacher, 2006), “is the sense learners report that at some deeply embedded level they possess neither the talent nor the right to become college students.” I myself have had feelings of impostership as early as High-School. I remember sitting in the front row during my freshmen year in Spanish 2. They had decided to have me skip Spanish 1 and jump right into Spanish 2. I sat there, having no idea what was going on and hoping for dear life that if I just smiled hard enough and nodded with enough vigor that I would avoid any attention and avoid being found out as having no clue what was going on. As students around me pulled out a piece of paper I did the same, scared that soon I would need to do something with it, when I didn’t even know to get it out in the first place. The feeling of not being smart enough to be there and that any moment I would be found out was terrifying. I did not want to ask for help and be ridiculed; after all I was chosen to be put in this class and I couldn’t let on that I might be an imposter.

This may seem extreme, but that feeling was very real albeit not nearly as well articulated as it is now. I agree with Brookfield that impostership is largely ignored and that “these emotions are silent killers of student engagement, a kind of pedagogic hypertension”. It is also interesting to note that based on Brookfield’s experience as a teacher and his research of student learning “not all share this feeling… but it does seem to cross lines of gender, class and ethnicity. It is also felt at all levels, from developmental, remedial learners to participants in doctorial seminars.”

These feelings are not always a negative thing; I believe that at times they propel us to greatness. The problem comes when these feelings isolate us from others and force us to put up this façade. The best way to deal with these concerns is to bring them into the light. Once students realize that we can all feel like imposters at one time or another and that those feelings are a part of learning and challenging oneself, Impostership begins to lose its destructive power.

During that first Spanish class, this happened early on when someone else asked (in English) “What are we supposed to be doing?” It was that moment when I realized that others were lost too. When we feel alone in our Impostership and fear being found out, we allow the destructive nature of these feelings to disengage us from our learning.

I see these feelings also arise in Resident Assistants (RAs). It is natural to struggle at times within the RA position, as well as any position in student affairs. For me, that is why I am in this field, to learn, to grow and to help others do the same. It is important to have moments where you unmask impostership and work to bring out its qualities that help us succeed. Once we acknowledge it and make it mutual knowledge that we all struggle at times and that we overcame those struggles, we will be better off as individuals and as a staff.

The best time to do this is early on, during training. Even if all of your RAs seem very confident, aren’t asking any questions and seem to have it all under control, keep telling yourself that there are feelings of impostership out there. If you don’t address it, not everyone will have that self-realization that I had in Spanish class and those feelings may continue.

Overall, impostership is a natural phenomenon that can either help us grow or undermine our ability and confidence as learners.  This is just as present if not more-so within RAs as it is in academic settings. The best way to deal with this issue is to make it public and discuss these feelings as a staff.

I started thinking about this idea of impostership, and finally had clear language for it, from reading “The Skillful Teacher” by Stephen Brookfield.

Brookfield, Stephen. The Skillful Teacher: on Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2006. Print.

Problem Based Learning (PBL)

Hello all,

A while back i was attending a certification workshop for PBL use in the Classroom. I was one of two student affairs professionals in a room full of faculty. It was a very interesting session and it was helpful to have faculty there providing their examples as well as grappling with how to write an effective PBL.

For those of you who have not had experience with PBL, Wikipedia has the simplest explanation.

Compliments of Wikipedia (October 10th, 2011)

"Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject in the context of complex, multifaceted, and realistic problems

Characteristics of PBL are:

• Learning is driven by challenging, open-ended, ill-defined and ill-structured problems.
• Students generally work in collaborative groups.
• Teachers take on the role as "facilitators" of learning."

During that workshop I put together this PBL for Hall Directors and veteran Resident Assistants. The focus is on a student who was stopped by the police due to stumbling and open wounds on his knees and hands. This PBL is structured to take place during a 1-1 where the staff member gets the "initial blurb". From there, they decide who to gather the important information to best be able to help the student. The supervisor then acts as the other people, depending on who the staff member would speak to. For example, if the staff member said they would first go to the RA, then the supervisor pretends to be the RA while the staff member asks them to questions they would ask the RA.

The supervisor goes off the student profile and what they choose to answer based off of the questions. The purpose of this is to give the staff member experience and practice digging through what at-first appears to be a simple issue, and identify the different concerns as they uncover the complexities.

This PBL is in draft form and has not been used yet, but I plan on testing it out this semester with a Hall Director. Overall, it was an interesting session and it was great working with faculty on putting this together. Attached are the drafts of the PBL including learning outcomes, an outline, and second part to try out later. The second attachment is a draft of a rubric for each of the learning outcomes.

Any feedback on how this draft can improved or how others have used PBL's in training would be appreciated!

PBL_Alcohol_Student.docx Download this file

PBL_Rubric.docx Download this file

Draft Development Plans

Here is a draft of a development plan that I had put together and presented on during a NASPA regional Conference. This plan is meant for graduate student hall directors.

The plan had two parts, the Learning Outcomes and plan outline and then is broken down month by month.

I ended up not using this due to a different staff development pilot project that I was asked to develop and work on with another colleague of mine. The pilot porgram took up the time that would have been alloted to this plan and ultimately still provided a plan for staff development.

Again this is a draft and is my own work.

Dickinson_HD_Development_Learning_Outcomes.pdf Download this file

Monthly_HD_Development_plan_10-11.pdf Download this file

What is an RA candidate to do?

Our RA Interview process includes an exciting and full weekend of interviewing all of the candidates and then we invite specific people we want to see more of to our complex group processes.

The Complex group process is more about working as a team and getting a feel for the RA position. We have a brief introduction to the RA position. We have a number of activities that gets them thinking about the position.

The following document is an activity that I put together for the Complex group process for all First Year residence halls. The purpose is to get them talking in their small group of candidates and to get a glimpse of where their priorities for the position currently are.

In this activity they are already in small groups, having just discussed their FY of college and reflected on a video. Each group receives an envelope with about 15 different possible components to a floor meeting written down. They are asked to unanimously decide on which three they will include. While we do have more than three things during our first floor meetings, they are asked to choose the three things they would choose if they needed to boil it down to just three.

What we got from this exercise was increased participation from candidates, a discussion so lively that we ourselves wanted to join, and some great ideas on what we can do to improve our first floor meetings.

What helped was that groups were forced to choose their top three components and could only include three. We wanted people to discuss things, advocate for what they felt was important and then come to a consensus as a group.

Overall this was a huge success and one that we will tweak in terms of components, but one that I will continue using.

Floor_Meeting_Activity.pdf Download this file

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