Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Swakuhot Podcast.
Speaker: Before we begin today, I have to share something neat I recently learned.
Speaker: Carly Smith at Texas A&M inserted a, quote, popcorn and podcast session in their staff professional development series, where they listened to episode two individually and then got together to talk about the episode content.
Speaker: Here are a few quotes from Carly given to me in an email exchange about it.
Speaker: She said, we had our first popcorn and podcast yesterday with our staff and it was so, so good.
Speaker: We all listened to episode two and then put together some discussion questions.
Speaker: There were 20-ish people there, and it was such a good conversation and just a good time to connect with each other.
Speaker: Even the people who didn't listen or didn't finish the episode could jump into the conversation.
Speaker: This has been officially added to our Pro Devo series mix.
Speaker: And personally, and most importantly for supervisors out there, I want to share this other thing that she said.
Speaker: This was so simple for me to put together, so I really think everyone should be doing it.
Speaker: And that's the point.
Speaker: Swakuho is providing more content for professional development on a smaller scale, whether it is the podcast or social media posts or the blog, professional development menus.
Speaker: So take advantage of these things.
Speaker: They are simple and small and already made for you.
Speaker: All you have to do is to direct yourself or others to take advantage.
Speaker: Since we are still creating reflection guides for past podcasts, Carly agreed for her discussion questions to be uploaded.
Speaker: So episode two now has a reflection guide.
Speaker: If you facilitate a podcast book club, send me your questions and I'll get them posted, giving you full attribution, of course.
Speaker: But now on to today's episode.
Speaker: Because everything is transferable skills in campus housing, today's episode is applicable to all housing staff, but may be of particular interest to our mid-level professionals looking to ascend to the SHO role sometime in the future.
Speaker: Today we are discussing serving in the SHO role for the first time, specifically talking about transferring specific skills to broader application at higher levels and being able to mentally project yourself into the role you wish to occupy.
Speaker: Since our guest is less than one year into her first role as a senior housing officer, we're going to dive into the actual experience of sitting in the big kid's chair for the first time and how she got there.
Speaker: To help us achieve this goal, our guest today is Tanya Massey, who took her kiddo on a college tour and something strange happened.
Speaker: She decided she wanted to go there too.
Speaker: And so it went that she applied for the Senior Managing Director for University Student Housing at the same school her son decided to attend for college, Texas Tech University.
Speaker: The fear of rejection and the worry of moving the whole family away from the familiar is strong.
Speaker: But as Chris Stapleton says, quote,
Speaker: Nobody wins afraid of losing, and the hard roads are the ones worth choosing.
Speaker: So after 16 years, Tanya and her family decided to take a chance and move to West Texas.
Speaker: Tanya, welcome back to the show.
Speaker: Thanks, JC.
Speaker: It's good to be here.
Speaker: We're so glad to have another repeat guest.
Speaker: Yeah, when you emailed me about doing this, I thought, do they really want to listen to me again?
Speaker: Well, and I think I've also started to show, but maybe my network's drying up.
Speaker: I got to go back to the big hitters.
Speaker: So first things first, Tanya, do you consider this your very public six-month performance self-evaluation?
Speaker: Well, you know, pretty close to it.
Speaker: I started July 15th, and so I am hitting that six-month mark, or pretty close to it, but it has been a phenomenal six months.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Well, and more importantly, was your first order of business when you got there to change your son's room assignment to be a broom closet to ensure there was no perception of favoritism?
Speaker: You know, it's really funny.
Speaker: He lived in a learning community for education.
Speaker: That's his major.
Speaker: And when I talked to parents and they walked
Speaker: The really nice suites that we have or the high-end housing, they're like, well, your son wouldn't live there.
Speaker: And I'm like, well, my kid lives in Hewlin.
Speaker: It is a double-loaded corridor, two people to a room, nothing fancy because I think I really value that experience.
Speaker: Well, good.
Speaker: The real old-timers there speaking out from all the double-corridor gang bathroom days and the development your son's getting.
Speaker: Well, well done.
Speaker: So, Tanya, let's start.
Speaker: What the heck is the difference between a senior managing director for university student housing and a director of student housing?
Speaker: I think some of that has to do with the way that Texas Tech aligns their titles.
Speaker: My predecessor, Sean Dugan, who is a longtime known in the profession and phenomenal setup that he left me with, but he was a managing director.
Speaker: When they were going to repost the position upon his retirement, they did some alignment for budget and the scope of our department within the TTU structure.
Speaker: And that put my position at a senior managing director.
Speaker: And so would you have applied for the job if the senior part wasn't a part of the title?
Speaker: Oh, I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, it does seem more daunting that way.
Speaker: But I do think, you know, there were some really great things that
Speaker: We talked about in my interview, but we've also been able to do in the past six months.
Speaker: And some of that is I want every job in our department to have a career ladder.
Speaker: And so in doing that realignment and changing my title, I was able to also be part of a conversation with Dionne Green, who was our senior associate managing director and convert her title to managing director.
Speaker: because of her scope and her length of service here and just have the chance to be able to honor that work.
Speaker: And so I appreciate that the university structure lets us do that.
Speaker: So I guess my real question is, do you think Sean would have retired if they had given him a title bump?
Speaker: Oh, I don't know.
Speaker: I think he, you know, his wife had retired a couple of years before from teaching school.
Speaker: So I think he's ready.
Speaker: You know,
Speaker: I think he lives on Instagram and sleeps till 930 every day.
Speaker: Well, well-deserved, well-deserved.
Speaker: I just thought he was going to love it because he and I have been playing phone tag about catching lunch and catching up, but we have not been able to do that yet.
Speaker: So speaking of Sean, how frequently do you call Sean asking him to explain something to you that he left behind?
Speaker: Only once.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Only done it once.
Speaker: Usually I call more about, hey, I need a doctor.
Speaker: What does Amy recommend?
Speaker: Or where's this in town?
Speaker: And he's like, I don't know.
Speaker: I stay in the loop.
Speaker: But they have been great support for us.
Speaker: One of his close friends was our realtor.
Speaker: Another one of his close friends works at the public school system and helped my husband when he was looking for a job.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Sean and his circle of friends have adopted us and made our transition very smooth.
Speaker: Oh, that's nice.
Speaker: I always love thinking and laughing about job titles sometimes.
Speaker: And a number of years ago, there was actually like a higher education job title generator that would just randomly make these job titles and then put like a projected salary based on how prestigious it appeared or whatever.
Speaker: And some of these job titles that take up two to three lines on a business card just make me smile like what the decision making behind all that was.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Well, and within our system, we have several directors that report up to managing directors.
Speaker: So it's a different setup within the system.
Speaker: And I think it's kind of interesting, but the title is, you know, we use a lot of section supervisors and lead supervisor titles as well.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: So you talked about the responsibilities.
Speaker: Give our listeners a 30 second rundown of your responsibilities.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So our department has kind of three main functions.
Speaker: Our operations area, which includes facilities, housekeeping, pest control, warehouse work, some construction work.
Speaker: We have a full trades area within that department.
Speaker: We actually have our own upholstery staff and they reupholster furniture on a regular basis for us.
Speaker: So we have that area.
Speaker: We have our traditional residence life area.
Speaker: That includes our summer camps and conferences, our student intervention, case management work, and our academic support, as well as our leadership and traditional hall staff.
Speaker: And then we have our administrative and business services area.
Speaker: That is our occupancy, finance, IT, marketing.
Speaker: A lot of our enrollment management partnerships are also tied within that area.
Speaker: That's a lot.
Speaker: Yeah, it's pretty fun.
Speaker: And Tanya, you've worked, correct me if I'm wrong, you've worked at only three schools full-time in your career prior to this.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So do you think you're an example of longevity, providing depth of experience compared to moving around a whole bunch to get breadth of experience?
Speaker: Yeah, you know, I think some of that is a balance of what your personal life looks like as well as your professional life.
Speaker: For me, we had committed that we would not search for jobs when we had a child in high school.
Speaker: And so Garrett graduating gave me this perfect little window of I have a year and a half.
Speaker: If I want to look, this is the time to look.
Speaker: But I do think I've always worked at land grant institutions until now.
Speaker: But while Texas Tech is not a traditional land grant, it operates a lot like that.
Speaker: We are the main higher ed institution in West Texas.
Speaker: And so I think it still has some of those fields.
Speaker: But I do think, you know, there's something to be said for longevity.
Speaker: It gives you a lot of history.
Speaker: I go to our longstanding employees and say, hey, can I have context on this?
Speaker: Or can you give me background of why we made these decisions?
Speaker: But I've never been one that wants to up and move because I think I'm just losing all that equity in my house every time I have to buy or sell.
Speaker: Always the planner you are, Tanya.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I love land-grant schools, the people's college.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: You said you had this small window.
Speaker: And given that Sean Dugan had been at Texas Tech for some 30 years, it probably wasn't a surprise that he was going to be retiring sometime in the future.
Speaker: Were you kind of patiently waiting and hoping that he was going to retire within this year and a half window you had?
Speaker: Or were you patiently waiting for other things to open up?
Speaker: No, you know, I had not thought anything about working at Texas Tech until we, Garrett had narrowed his school choices down to four final schools.
Speaker: And we were trying to tour them all at the last little bit of his senior year to make some final decisions.
Speaker: And he had applied to them.
Speaker: And we were down here in September, had dinner with Sean.
Speaker: And he said, hey, I'm retiring in January.
Speaker: You should apply for my job.
Speaker: And I told him, I said, I can't do that, Sean.
Speaker: This is Garrett's school.
Speaker: You know, I'm not ready for this.
Speaker: And I think that's where some of that imposter syndrome comes in.
Speaker: You have to think about, well, I do have this skill set.
Speaker: I do have this knowledge base.
Speaker: Maybe I should look at it.
Speaker: I had been thinking for about a year of what my next transition was going to look like.
Speaker: But it was more of a question of, do I pivot out of higher ed to stay in Stillwater where I had established a strong family connection and had a good family support network?
Speaker: Or do we move the family?
Speaker: And I think that's a debate everybody has to have is, is this the right move for all of us?
Speaker: And what does this look like?
Speaker: when you're moving a spouse, when you're moving kids in school that are well-established within their community.
Speaker: I just think it's interesting to think about the patient, you need more patients the further up you're trying to move because there's less positions, there's less openings, they come open less frequently.
Speaker: And that, you know, sitting around thinking about like, who's going to retire next or who might possibly be job searching that I think that's on a lot of people's minds is when they're trying to project out their next steps.
Speaker: Well, you know, Henry Ford says, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
Speaker: And I think, you know, looking at what that next leap of faith looks like, you have to kind of reimagine and really rely on your circle to kind of cheer you on in that.
Speaker: And I think that's part of it is having good peers and mentors that will say, hey, you are ready.
Speaker: And this is why, like, remember when you did this?
Speaker: And I think as I prepared for it,
Speaker: you know, the interview process and going through what that looks like.
Speaker: I had a lot of people that were telling me, hey, don't forget who you are.
Speaker: And I think that's the important thing is you have to remember who you are.
Speaker: You have to remember what your skill set is.
Speaker: And then you have to, you know, rely on that strength.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: And like you said, when Sean originally contacted you, you're like, I can't do this.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: Well, you're the person removing you from the process before it even begins.
Speaker: And I know I've talked to a number of people, even on this podcast before.
Speaker: It's like, you can always pull out later, but you can't put yourself in after the fact.
Speaker: And don't negotiate against yourself, I guess.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let other people make that decision for you, even though then it becomes more public.
Speaker: So you were at Oklahoma State for what, about 16 years?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: When your current job at Texas Tech Posted,
Speaker: Did you have to scramble to remember 16 years worth of stuff or did you regularly update your resume and make tweaks along the way?
Speaker: I had updated a resume when I joined school board, but it was not very in-depth at that point.
Speaker: And, you know, you and I have talked about Derek Jackson and how I really trust him as a mentor.
Speaker: He once told me that he kept a resume in his binder.
Speaker: And every time he got a new assignment, a new committee, he would write that on the back of his resume and then update it annually.
Speaker: I did not do that.
Speaker: So it took me an entire weekend of sitting down and trying to do that.
Speaker: And it really helped that my job search was facilitated through Spelman Johnson's
Speaker: And they have a very specific way that they want your resume.
Speaker: So doing that in that format helped me kind of align and give me a starting point to get it pulled together.
Speaker: Well, tell me, please, and listeners need to know, did you put on your resume when you were updating it that you were a guest of episode six on this podcast?
Speaker: Oh, my goodness.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: JC, I totally forgot about that.
Speaker: I didn't do that.
Speaker: I feel like I could have doubled my salary if I had alluded to my radio work with you.
Speaker: Missed opportunity.
Speaker: Lesson learned for everybody out there.
Speaker: Next time.
Speaker: I'm going to update my resume tonight just with that information.
Speaker: Just in case.
Speaker: Draw your binder that Derek Jackson told you to have and write podcasts now twice.
Speaker: Given your new position was much more expansive in terms of responsibilities, what did you really focus on or lean into with your application materials to demonstrate your ability to lead such an expansive department?
Speaker: I think I'm a learner.
Speaker: or I have a curiosity about things in general.
Speaker: So I had not had just a traditional res life experience.
Speaker: I had, you know, done a lot of work in human resources.
Speaker: I had spent a lot of time working with enrollment management in my last position.
Speaker: Plus I had some construction process under my belt.
Speaker: So I really did focus on not having just res life experience, but having a breadth of knowledge about the overall department and really understanding
Speaker: kind of tying all of that back to our main job is to serve students.
Speaker: And it does not matter what your role is within the department.
Speaker: The impact on the student is what matters.
Speaker: And so really relying on that, you know, I spent some time thinking about and really deep diving into budget review, which I had done a little bit in my human resources work, but the budget for our department is significantly larger.
Speaker: And so how do you manage that?
Speaker: How do you scale up?
Speaker: when you're used to this small budget, but now you're going to a really large budget.
Speaker: And I think just really making sure that you understand the language, that you're capable of really talking about all of your experience and what that looks like, but that you also are aware these are my learning areas.
Speaker: These are areas that I'm going to have to spend a lot of time with staff.
Speaker: And a lot of it, from institution to institution, things change.
Speaker: account, how you title an account changes, how you title processes, some of those things.
Speaker: And so really, I think your first couple of months are a lot of listening and looking around.
Speaker: And, you know, I think that's one of the things that really I focused on is I made a hundred year or a hundred day plan.
Speaker: And I had a very clear intention of how I was going to spend my first hundred
Speaker: Really, it's kind of like 150 days.
Speaker: But what I was going to do in that time to set myself up for success.
Speaker: I mean, Tanya, I know you're a planner, but even for you, a hundred year plan sounds a little ambitious.
Speaker: I wouldn't hold it against you, but... Yeah, that's a little more than I can do.
Speaker: A little full of yourself, maybe.
Speaker: But a hundred days, you know, a hundred days of deep diving into everything I can to make sure that...
Speaker: When I sit down and say, this is where I want us to move, I am doing that with a lot of intentionality and with a really clear understanding of my team and my student population and the structure of our department.
Speaker: And on what day of those hundred days did the wheels come off the wagon and the plan went out the window?
Speaker: Well, you know, the plan's still in place at this point.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: You know, I really wanted to spend the first couple of weeks, months,
Speaker: looking.
Speaker: I walked every building on our campus.
Speaker: I walked every floor.
Speaker: I went in student rooms before they got here.
Speaker: I spent a lot of time just, you know, popping into staff meetings across the department, but just observing and making notes kind of internally in my head about what I was thinking.
Speaker: And then I kind of did a listening tour where I met with our mid-level staff.
Speaker: And I just actually finished that up the other week.
Speaker: but really listening to them.
Speaker: And I asked all of them three questions.
Speaker: What do you love about your job?
Speaker: What would you change about your job?
Speaker: And what do you wish your supervisor knew about you or the work you do?
Speaker: And that wasn't a, you know, rat out your supervisor.
Speaker: It was, I think we all take on work that our supervisor may or may not understand how we do that work.
Speaker: And so really trying to understand that I got to go around and meet all of our housekeeping teams and spend some time with them.
Speaker: And then
Speaker: From there, I want to make sure that I'm learning.
Speaker: I got to learn how to do packages at a front desk, how to operate a KIVAC, really spending a lot of time just learning the ins and outs of the department.
Speaker: You know, if something happens and we are shut down, can I answer the phone up front with confidence about what the housing signup process looks like?
Speaker: And then I think
Speaker: After that, that's where you start the real true leadership is leading your team to where you want to go next because you have all this knowledge base.
Speaker: So is it your professional opinion that everybody should work the front desk for a minimum an hour a week?
Speaker: I totally support that.
Speaker: I think as you move up, you disconnect from some of those low-level things.
Speaker: But ultimately, as the director, you're responsible for everything that goes on in your department.
Speaker: And if you don't understand it,
Speaker: How do you help work through that?
Speaker: If you don't understand what the process looks like or the impact it has on your staff team or the students in your building, I think it makes it hard for you to really be able to voice change or to say, this is why we do things the way we do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and if problems are truly best solved at the lowest possible level, if you don't understand the processes or the barriers to being successful in that level, then how do you
Speaker: accomplish anything really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and think about, you know, you and I have worked a desk as a undergrad student at some point in our career, but that was before the days of Amazon.
Speaker: And you think about how much stuff comes in from a package standpoint in our desk, in our older buildings, they're not designed to store mass quantities of packages or how you check them in and check them out.
Speaker: And so, you know, there are systems that have evolved to help with some of those things, but our building design hasn't necessarily evolved as fast or we're using buildings that were put in place before that.
Speaker: And you can't really know that until you're actually in that and doing that process.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Go work the package room on Black Friday these days in an old building and you're going to see all the failures of foresight that nobody could have anticipated.
Speaker: Very true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You mentioned this was done through Spelman Johnson or it was facilitated, the hiring or the recruitment was facilitated through Spelman Johnson.
Speaker: What are your candid thoughts on outsourcing hiring to a company?
Speaker: You know, I think it depends on what your staff structure looks like.
Speaker: If you have the internal capacity to do that, I always think your department knows your department best.
Speaker: And
Speaker: So in some ways, if you have capacity to do a big search and to do all the reference checks and follow through with all of that, that's great.
Speaker: If you don't, that's where a search engine or a search company really can kind of come in and do that legwork for you.
Speaker: You know, I won't say that it felt significantly different other than, you know, some of the initial screening process.
Speaker: But I think it really just depends on how your department is set up and what that looks like for you.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Let's talk about your interview process.
Speaker: Did you get to pick your interview time slot from a selection of options?
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: So let's overthink this for a few minutes.
Speaker: If you were given five options to pick from over the course of, say, a two-week period, when would you pick to interview?
Speaker: Would you go first, in the middle, or would you want to be last?
Speaker: I think ideally I would like to be first or last.
Speaker: And why is that?
Speaker: Well, I think if you're first, you're the first impression they have.
Speaker: And so you set the bar.
Speaker: I think if you're last, you provide them a solid wrap up and you're the fresh candidate in their mind.
Speaker: I was in the middle because that's what worked.
Speaker: Based on my schedule, I was given three options.
Speaker: And it was really interesting that I had a school board that backed up to one of them.
Speaker: And then one of them overlapped Connect Tech, which is kind of an admitted student's day here.
Speaker: And I was already going to be here with Garrett.
Speaker: And I thought that would be really awkward to leave my child to go interview.
Speaker: And so I chose the middle one as part of the process.
Speaker: Well, and our small data sample size here proves that the middle worked out okay.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I would really trust that in a large sample data size, but...
Speaker: Again, overthinking way too much.
Speaker: I think if it was like a small window to choose from, like less than a week, I'd want to go first to set the bar.
Speaker: But if it's over like an extended period of time over two weeks, I think I'd want to go last as to be like the most memorable, the most recent impression.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But it's fun to think about, especially when I'm not actually interviewing for anything.
Speaker: It's always fun to think about these things when they don't actually apply to you.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You didn't have to give a presentation, but I imagine we have both sat through a number of presentations or open forums, either in housing or across student affairs for leadership position.
Speaker: If you had to give a presentation, what would be a piece of advice for prepping for a job interview presentation you'd give?
Speaker: One of the things that stick out to me is sometimes in presentations, you can see that people aren't reading the room and you can tell when you have a disengaged audience that
Speaker: And I think it's really important that you need to change tactics at that point.
Speaker: You need to ask a question or feel comfortable engaging the audience because otherwise you're losing them.
Speaker: And I think knowing and having some of those ideas in your back pocket to help kind of pull them back in and re-engage them in the process is important.
Speaker: They're fun and all, but sometimes people are just like, my boss made me be here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I always think like, how do you be unique?
Speaker: And I remember I applied for a job, you know, 10 years ago or so.
Speaker: And I had to give a presentation about, I think it was engaging students.
Speaker: And I was like, this is the time of like learning communities were the hot topic.
Speaker: I mean, they still are, but it was like the prime.
Speaker: If you weren't talking about this and you didn't know what you were doing, but I was like, everyone's going to talk about learning communities.
Speaker: So I'm going to talk about like engaging students to feel like they matter and
Speaker: And, you know, switch it up in that way.
Speaker: And I'm like, how do you be unique in a situation to be memorable, I guess?
Speaker: Yeah, you know, I think some of it is having an odd question that you can tie back to the rest of your team.
Speaker: I met with all of our managing directors yesterday and I threw out, we were really just ideating the entire meeting.
Speaker: And I threw out some questions for them and I could tell that they had to start thinking through that process.
Speaker: And I had kind of shocked them because they were like, oh, wait, my brain is not in this mode yet.
Speaker: So I said, hold on, let's start with an easy question.
Speaker: Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?
Speaker: Yes or no?
Speaker: And I made them vote on that first.
Speaker: Then they could think about, okay, now I've had a chance to settle into the thoughts and get my thoughts in order.
Speaker: But I think just being able to understand that you have different learner types, you have processors,
Speaker: some of those type of learning styles within your audience, you have to be able to understand that and feel comfortable engaging with them, not just talking at them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also remember that like 95% of the people in the audience are not decision makers in this process.
Speaker: So, you know, get through it, deliver the content and move on with your day.
Speaker: Now, my real question, though, is if you had to give a presentation, would you have found a Texas Tech template to use or would you have done something original?
Speaker: You know, I don't know.
Speaker: I've never even thought about that, really.
Speaker: I think, well, you know, here's one of the things that I love about this team here.
Speaker: They have, they will Texas Tech up everything.
Speaker: And so we have a phenomenal marketing team.
Speaker: They, you know,
Speaker: The Texas Tech swag is strong.
Speaker: And so I think it would be really easy to do that.
Speaker: For us this year, it's our 100 year anniversary as an institution.
Speaker: So everything has this 100 year logo on it.
Speaker: But I don't know that I would have necessarily done that in an interview.
Speaker: I might have stepped to school colors, but maybe not full out Texas Tech theme.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: But Tanya, hold on, a 100-year anniversary.
Speaker: What better year to roll out your 100-year plan than now?
Speaker: Here I am.
Speaker: Yeah, you better get back to that.
Speaker: It's a gift right there.
Speaker: So let's go back.
Speaker: We talked a little bit about you and your role in the first 100 days and all that.
Speaker: But let's really dig into what it's like to sit in the big kid chair.
Speaker: You talked about your 100-day plan, but what did your first day actually look like?
Speaker: I started on a Friday.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I wish we could only start people on Fridays.
Speaker: And I did that intentionally because my thought was, let me get in and get oriented.
Speaker: Let the system have time to catch up and make sure that, you know, processes, hopefully then I'll have email earlier the next week.
Speaker: But I also wanted to kind of dip my toes in and then take some time to really reflect that weekend about what I was doing.
Speaker: And so, you know, my first day, this is where I really do think I cannot thank Dr. Dionne Green enough because she has been a phenomenal interim for us and helping on board and giving me information and helping me navigate campus and what that looks like.
Speaker: But really, I started.
Speaker: I took my ID photo, got set up in the office a little bit.
Speaker: I think I did one meeting.
Speaker: And then I really just had the rest of the day to just kind of get familiar with what life looks like.
Speaker: Spin in your chair.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I did come in the week before and actually set up my office.
Speaker: I took some time between my last position and this position because obviously we moved six hours away.
Speaker: And I will tell you, no matter...
Speaker: How good do you think you are of cleaning things out?
Speaker: We are all hoarders in different ways.
Speaker: And unpacking my house took a long time.
Speaker: My husband has realized over time that he cannot defeat my love of Christmas.
Speaker: And so you're moving 11 trees and all of the holiday accoutrements that come with that and a whole house worth of furniture and everything else.
Speaker: I took time before I came in.
Speaker: But I was able to come in the week before and kind of set up my office and spend a lot of time laying around, just really thinking and working on that 100-day plan.
Speaker: But start on a Friday.
Speaker: That's what I would recommend because then you work one day, you have a weekend to kind of recover, and then you can kind of start in the next week.
Speaker: Well, and everyone's generally in a good mood on Fridays.
Speaker: So, so Tanya, you kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, or at least alluded to it, but I want to ask you very directly, did you come in wanting to make your mark and start changing things?
Speaker: Or did you put like a moratorium on your personal workplace desires?
Speaker: Yeah, I definitely came in with the mindset of if it's not broke, don't, don't mess with it at this point.
Speaker: but really just observe.
Speaker: I think it's really important for new leaders to come in and really pay a lot of attention to the why of processes, to know kind of what are the sacred traditions within the department that you don't want to touch?
Speaker: What are the things that are frustrating to people?
Speaker: But to gather that information and I teased my staff, I wanted a lamp in the office and they were bringing me all these options.
Speaker: And I said, like,
Speaker: Don't buy anything.
Speaker: Just find something in the warehouse.
Speaker: I am not that high maintenance.
Speaker: But, you know, I don't feel like we need to make big sweeping changes because I don't know that that builds a lot of understanding of the why behind it.
Speaker: And so I think it's really important for new staff coming in to learn what's going on and then to help kind of get that buy-in.
Speaker: And you referenced this before, but this is one of the things that we've talked a lot about in the department.
Speaker: I want our staff to feel competent and comfortable making decisions at the lowest level possible.
Speaker: Because I think that's where you get true employee engagement.
Speaker: That's where you get a lot of buy-in and they don't need to ask my permission to do their work.
Speaker: They need to do their work and then really kind of escalate things up to me if they can't make progress with what's happening or if they need that additional support.
Speaker: But I think, you know, when, you know,
Speaker: If I came in and changed everything, no one would know what their work was.
Speaker: And then we're in chaos.
Speaker: Well, I think how many young professionals have come in out of grad school and been like, hey, we should change this to do it how I did at my grad school.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And I can say, you know, there are times that I'm like, we did this this way.
Speaker: But I think, you know, that's your experience.
Speaker: And referencing that at least gives you a point of reference in conversations.
Speaker: And I will say, I've done that.
Speaker: You know, in my previous institution, we did this.
Speaker: Tell me how it happens here so I can learn that transition and that information.
Speaker: But I don't think that making wholesale changes ever works out.
Speaker: So were you given any mandates upon your arrival from up above?
Speaker: Like, were you given a charge to do X?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: You know, my supervisor, I'm not actually in student affairs.
Speaker: Our division is
Speaker: is auxiliaries.
Speaker: And it's very student affairs focused.
Speaker: Our associate vice president is former military and retired out of the Air Force.
Speaker: But he really, you know, I really enjoy working with him because he trusts me.
Speaker: He knows that I know my business and really just kind of lets me do my work.
Speaker: But he encourages me to focus on
Speaker: what are the areas I want to see our department grow in?
Speaker: You know, we're in the process of an RFQ for a new build.
Speaker: And so we've spent a lot of time talking about that.
Speaker: We've spent a lot of time walking facilities because he is only a year into his position as well.
Speaker: And so a lot of, in a lot of ways, we are growing and learning and developing as a team together.
Speaker: What was your biggest surprise so far?
Speaker: Something you really didn't expect.
Speaker: I am less busy than I was in my previous role.
Speaker: And
Speaker: So that was kind of a shock to me.
Speaker: Some of it is I am committed to role modeling really good work-life harmony for my team.
Speaker: And so I tell them, hey, it's five o'clock.
Speaker: You know, if nothing's on fire at this point, we should all be going home.
Speaker: And really trying not to send emails or do lots of work on the evening or weekends unless they're essential work.
Speaker: because I want to make sure that we are talking about whole life engagement and this idea that we all should have something outside of this office that takes our time and energy and our passion so that when we come back, we are charged up for what we're doing.
Speaker: And I think about, I mean, think JC, this is you to a T. You've learned candle making and pasta making and Legos and refinishing our garage.
Speaker: That's,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, what are those things outside of work that recharge us?
Speaker: We have to spend and invest a lot of time in that.
Speaker: And if we're always working, we're not we're not doing that.
Speaker: And I say that with a lot of knowledge of I'm entitled here that I have a team that is set and doing great work.
Speaker: And I don't have to spend a lot of time doing that, but also trying to make sure that I'm creating space for them to have time away from the office.
Speaker: Well, I love that.
Speaker: And the comment about like, you know, you're entitled with such a strong staff.
Speaker: It's like in supervision and leadership, it's like sometimes it's all about just trying to get all the right pieces and all the right places.
Speaker: And so often one of those is off or it doesn't quite align or whatever.
Speaker: But when you get it together, you can just feel like we're on the horizon of a very productive, very enjoyable period of time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, I think a part of that is there's always room for growth.
Speaker: You know, we want to we want to be challenging.
Speaker: We want to innovate.
Speaker: We want to think about how we fix what our problems are.
Speaker: Nothing is ever going to be perfect.
Speaker: But knowing that you have a solid team, you're on a clear plan of how you're serving students and making sure that that's your end goal.
Speaker: I think to me, it's a perfect picture of where I want to be.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: Let's talk about the psychology of the senior housing officer role.
Speaker: There's this one West Wing episode when the president's talking to his deputy chief of staff, Josh Lyman, and the president says, you know the difference between you and me?
Speaker: I want to be the boss.
Speaker: You want to be the person the boss counts on.
Speaker: Tanya, I imagine you've been the person the boss has counted on your entire career.
Speaker: What's the difference in mindset now that you're the boss?
Speaker: I think the biggest thing is making sure I'm not playing in their weeds.
Speaker: You know, I think for me,
Speaker: I have three very strong direct reports that know their area and have been working in their area.
Speaker: And yes, there are tweaks that we will make along the way.
Speaker: But if a parent calls me and raises a complaint about something, I don't know the details of that.
Speaker: And I can't promise to fix it or imply that my staff did anything wrong.
Speaker: I have to send that parent and tell them why I'm doing it.
Speaker: I'm going to connect you
Speaker: with the associate director over your area who knows the details and can fix this or, you know, can help you navigate through this process.
Speaker: But I think while I could take those calls and I talk to lots of parents about experiences, you know, they'll say, well, if you had a son here and I'm like, well, I do, which is phenomenal from a parent standpoint.
Speaker: But I think part of it is really,
Speaker: not getting into the middle of their decision-making processes and working with them about leading their own areas.
Speaker: Because I think part of it is we have to build leadership and we have to build leadership at all levels.
Speaker: And if we're getting in there and stirring their pots, we're not letting them lead.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I've got two follow-ups.
Speaker: The first on the comment about, well, if you had a kid here, I get the exact opposite of that where I don't have kids.
Speaker: And when parents always ask me, oh, and well, you wouldn't understand that.
Speaker: I was like, well, I've got 5,000 kids that all have different parents.
Speaker: And just because I don't have a child doesn't mean I can't relate because I also have a home I live in.
Speaker: And these problems happened to me in my life that infected me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and I think some of it is just really helping parents understand they're not on an island alone.
Speaker: Whether if you have children or you don't, if you have dealt with that specific incident or you haven't, they're not alone.
Speaker: And so some of it is having some empathy for what they're going through and listening to that, but also letting them know, hey, we are professionals here.
Speaker: We deal with student behavior and student interactions.
Speaker: on a daily basis for 20 plus years.
Speaker: You know, I think with our senior level leadership, we have over a hundred years of housing experience.
Speaker: And so trusting that and helping parents understand you've trusted us with your kid and we're going to do our best to serve your student and serve them well.
Speaker: That to me makes parents feel safe about what we're doing.
Speaker: Well, the real question now is, in what meeting or who was responsible for figuring out the 100 years of experience among your leadership?
Speaker: Like, how did that come up?
Speaker: So we actually were working on a presentation to give to our university president about this desire to build an increase in upperclassmen housing.
Speaker: We have 8,100 bed spaces right now.
Speaker: We have one building offline this year that we are renovating.
Speaker: Structural plumbing, fire suppression, cast iron, all of those things are happening in there.
Speaker: But we have had to limit the number of upperclassmen that can return to campus.
Speaker: And last year, that limit was 800.
Speaker: And we had a lot of students that wanted to come back, but we didn't have room for them.
Speaker: And so we were packaging together some information to provide to our CFO and our president about why
Speaker: a new build is a good idea.
Speaker: And what we have as a department that helps support that, and we just got to chatting about it.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, you know, I started in 1996 as an RA, but I started as a professional in 2000.
Speaker: And so we just kind of chatted and added it up.
Speaker: And I thought, wow, that is, that's a lot of service and a lot of commitment to students and a lot of focus on student development and engagement and
Speaker: and processes over time that mattered.
Speaker: And it was something that someone else, you know, once we put it all in and sent it off, they're like, 100 years?
Speaker: That's a lot of time.
Speaker: But it is because I think we've seen students at a variety of institutions and timeframes that give us a good picture of how to serve.
Speaker: Did you include that stat in your presentation to the president to flex your credentials?
Speaker: I don't know if it was a flex on our credentials, but I do think it was to say, hey, we really have a great knowledge base.
Speaker: And I think it was more of a, your trust in us is not misplaced because we have the credentials to back it up.
Speaker: Going back to your comment about not playing in your staff's weeds or whatever, I think that's a great thing, very valuable, but I'm trying to now project it back to lower levels and thinking about the times where we've had staff that are high performers who don't necessarily get as much attention because they are high performing.
Speaker: And then because they don't get as much attention,
Speaker: And there's a difference between just like paying attention to micromanaging, of course, but then they'd feel like they aren't important or the supervisor doesn't care about them because they're not getting regular playing in their weeds by their boss or whatever.
Speaker: Any, I know that was a little rambling, but any thoughts on, because it changes as you move up where you have higher level of specialization, higher level of expertise, but on lower levels, it's not like a hall director can just be like, I'm not going to play in the weeds of my RAs or my grad students.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, I think there's a difference between playing in their weeds versus not knowing how they're doing as an employee.
Speaker: You know, we talked in our first podcast about the mullet one-on-one.
Speaker: And I think... Of course.
Speaker: I still keep that kind of philosophy.
Speaker: I meet with each one of my direct reports for 30 minutes a week, sometimes longer, and we catch up periodically throughout the week.
Speaker: But I still want to know, how's your staff doing in your area?
Speaker: What are your concerns?
Speaker: What are the big things that are coming up?
Speaker: What I think is...
Speaker: important is I want the knowledge of, but I'm letting them make the decision for.
Speaker: And they may come to me and ask, you know, hey, are you okay with this?
Speaker: Does this align with what we want to do?
Speaker: And that's one conversation.
Speaker: But if they are moving forward and they're on a process there, I think playing in the weeds is where I want to say, hey, nope, swerve left here, when they're already doing it.
Speaker: And I had this conversation with our senior leadership we created
Speaker: this group called the Brain Trust.
Speaker: And they're really our middle management level.
Speaker: And we meet once a month.
Speaker: I met with them yesterday.
Speaker: And I told them, I said, here's the deal.
Speaker: We can make decisions in this top four senior leadership group, but we don't always know the boots on the ground information.
Speaker: And you're the group that not only has that information, but you have to implement the decisions that we make.
Speaker: And so you should have a very strong voice in that.
Speaker: And we need to, one, develop y'all as leaders so that you are growing in this and growing in your decision making, but also kind of connecting all three areas of our department together.
Speaker: So really the supervisors from the middle management group from all three areas meets once a month.
Speaker: And we put out a topic and we're like, okay, here's the problem.
Speaker: How do we fix this?
Speaker: And they get to make recommendations and decisions about what that looks like.
Speaker: And I told our senior leadership group, I said, they may make decisions that aren't the way we would do it.
Speaker: But if it works, we have to let them do it.
Speaker: Because otherwise, they're not going to grow.
Speaker: And we're still making all the decisions.
Speaker: And that was not designed so that we work less.
Speaker: But I think it was designed so that we were growing that as a department.
Speaker: And we're making those decisions at lower levels.
Speaker: We are engaging our staff in the process.
Speaker: We're kind of building that understanding of engagement at work and how we all have value in what we do.
Speaker: Because I think a lot of employees, they come, they punch a clock, they do the same rote job, and they don't see how that relates to the overall value of the organization.
Speaker: And I want to make sure that from our housekeeping staff to our managing director and everyone in between, they understand that what they do
Speaker: it matters to our students.
Speaker: If a bathroom doesn't get clean, that matters.
Speaker: If, you know, a phone call gets dropped and doesn't get called back, that matters.
Speaker: And so, you know, thinking about how we grow that as a group.
Speaker: But for me, when I think of playing in the weeds, that means that it's my decision and no one else's.
Speaker: And while the ultimate responsibility rests with me,
Speaker: Their ability to lead their own areas is something that we have to engage.
Speaker: I think that that is a phenomenal idea in the abstract of like this mid-level managers meeting.
Speaker: Actually, I was in one once upon a time and we actually called it the bridesmaids meeting because we were always the bridesmaid, but never the bride.
Speaker: But it's...
Speaker: It's a great idea in the abstract.
Speaker: So, but from a tangible like takeaway to people out there is like, I really want to emulate this culture.
Speaker: Like what was last month's topic that you gave them to talk about?
Speaker: So I told them really it was, we called it ideation station and it was, what are the problems that we face in the department and how do we solve them and how do we keep work fun?
Speaker: And I gave them all stacks of post-it notes and
Speaker: They wrote ideas and posted it on the three areas.
Speaker: And then we kind of pulled them together in themes.
Speaker: How do we communicate so that all three areas in the department know information at the right time?
Speaker: How are we cross-training and creating departmental leaders so we don't have, you know, managing or assistant managing director of facilities?
Speaker: We have a assistant managing director of university student housing, and they have
Speaker: When they're in a meeting, they're representing our whole department, not just facilities.
Speaker: But to do that, they have to have knowledge and understanding more than just facilities.
Speaker: So we talked about communication.
Speaker: We talked about a lot of just cross-training and professional development.
Speaker: How do we engage our younger professionals in regional conferences?
Speaker: And how do we have a strong presence there?
Speaker: What events do we do annually?
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: Donnie, in a typical organizational pyramid, the odds are you have less direct reports now than in the mid-level role, but that isn't always the case.
Speaker: And I know you've talked a little bit about this with like your 30-minute weekly staff meeting or meetings with your staff, but how do you manage supervising less people?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's 30-minute check-ins once a week.
Speaker: It's
Speaker: making sure that they feel like they have the support they need to do their work.
Speaker: And then it's really getting out of their way.
Speaker: Do you ever consider, do you do weekly reports?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: If you're not doing something actively with that information, you're wasting their time.
Speaker: Couldn't agree more.
Speaker: I imagine you did weekly reports at some point in your career.
Speaker: At what point did you stop?
Speaker: I think I stopped when I started supervising just grads.
Speaker: Because that's what your one-on-one is for.
Speaker: Use that time in your one-on-one to get that information and problem solve what the issues are.
Speaker: A report, it's just paper.
Speaker: This may just be me, and I'm imagining now that I'm saying it out loud, it probably is just me.
Speaker: But do you have an issue with the terminology, quote, one-on-one as a meeting name?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I mean, one of my staff called them a one-to-one.
Speaker: I think they're on my calendar right now, which check-ins.
Speaker: I don't really, I mean, it doesn't matter to me what we call them.
Speaker: I think it's time where that is individualized supervision and communication with each one of those staff members that is uninterrupted.
Speaker: And, you know, like I had to move one yesterday because I had a conflict and I was going to go to their office.
Speaker: And then based off of what the rest of the day looked like, it ended up being a team's meeting.
Speaker: but trying to make sure that I'm committing to them to give them that time every week so that they have a voice and a communication channel.
Speaker: It must just be me then.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause I'll never get, I cannot stand that name.
Speaker: What do you call it?
Speaker: Weekly meeting, which then also bothers me because I hate naming a meeting meeting because it's redundant or individual or weekly wrap up.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I, every semester it's something different and I have,
Speaker: I'll never get over it.
Speaker: You should give it a nickname and then that's what it is.
Speaker: But then that just doesn't seem like professional enough or serious enough.
Speaker: Like I'm going to get subpoenaed one day in court and they're going to be like, tell us what happened in your mullet meeting with Tanya.
Speaker: Well, you know, when you said that about it doesn't sound professional enough or serious enough.
Speaker: I think one of the things that I challenged myself on moving into this position is not to take myself too seriously.
Speaker: Well, and that's why you're in the big kid's chair and I'm here in my lowly middle manager desk.
Speaker: No, because I think sometimes we put too much self-importance on who we are and what we're doing.
Speaker: And I can pick up trash just like everybody else, just like I can swipe a package log, just like everybody else.
Speaker: And so I think as we move up, we have to realize we are not above those roles.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, no, I totally agree with that.
Speaker: And I have personally no problem with it other than it just feels funny to me.
Speaker: I'm really not sitting here.
Speaker: I fully realize how unimportant I am in the full scope of the university.
Speaker: But it's just something about it.
Speaker: I'll get back to you on that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right, then, Tanya, let's talk about your budgets.
Speaker: You've talked about it a little bit here and there.
Speaker: When I spoke to Nancy, we talked about scaling budgets as you move up.
Speaker: It's like
Speaker: You know, it's all transferable skills and basically you're just adding a zero at the end of it.
Speaker: How many zeros did your new budget increase compared to your old budget, your budgetary area?
Speaker: Zeros?
Speaker: I don't know that it increased there.
Speaker: Or orders of magnitude.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, I went from, you know, like a $2 million payroll budget when I was doing human resources to a $44 million budget.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Yeah, one order of magnitude.
Speaker: So, you know, I think it's really just really learning it.
Speaker: And one of the things that I love is our finance team has a budget guide.
Speaker: And it's this booklet that is such a huge help in walking through the budget.
Speaker: But I spend a lot of time with them.
Speaker: You know, when I reconcile at the end of each month, I sit down and I'm like, okay, tell me why this looks different.
Speaker: How does this compare to
Speaker: And one of the things that, you know, I'm tracking pretty closely is what does our savings look like from month to month?
Speaker: And what are our overages look like?
Speaker: And are we capitalizing those savings in a way that still impacts the students that paid into that?
Speaker: So, you know, if we have revenue that we didn't allocate or we had savings from salaries or something else, I don't want to just suck it away in a fund and not touch it.
Speaker: If there are things that we can do this year, if there's things that we can add to the student experience, let's do that.
Speaker: Because we've already budgeted at this point.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So the last thing I want to talk about is not your new role, but departing your old role.
Speaker: And I think this is something that always comes with mixed emotions, whoever you are and wherever you are.
Speaker: How difficult was it to leave your previous staff behind?
Speaker: You know, it was hard because we had gone through the fire together.
Speaker: And I think I care about those team members and I want the best for them.
Speaker: But I also had to say, I can only control what's in my circle of control.
Speaker: And this is the best decision for me and my family.
Speaker: But I remember at my going away party, one of, I don't even think it was my staff.
Speaker: It was a campus partner said something and I cried.
Speaker: And I thought, oh,
Speaker: You know, what is happening here?
Speaker: And I think when you've been at an institution for a long time, you've developed some really strong relationships and you miss those because you don't necessarily have those right when you first move.
Speaker: But I think really it's just knowing that I've done the best that I can for them.
Speaker: We stay in touch, but we don't talk about work anymore.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Is there anything you particularly did to set them up for success during their upcoming transition period?
Speaker: Oh, I cleaned out 16 years worth of emails and documents and put everything I possibly could on a OneDrive.
Speaker: And I emailed them old things and basically gave them any piece of knowledge or history that I had in my possession.
Speaker: Here you go.
Speaker: So that you have it to refer back to.
Speaker: Now, I will say I had a phenomenal staff, but I had one staff member that she was email gold and she could find things from her first year, like six years earlier.
Speaker: She's like, here it is.
Speaker: And so I think that helped.
Speaker: I think I wrote a long transition binder and I referenced back to different documents, but tried to do everything possible.
Speaker: And I had some staff call and say, hey,
Speaker: tell me this, or do you remember this?
Speaker: And I could kind of navigate them to where that was in the, in the drive.
Speaker: But, you know, really I told them, I'll give you five months to call about anything you need to call about.
Speaker: That was very generous of you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Here's the thing though.
Speaker: There's still our, you know, there's still our colleagues and our professionals, even though they're not directly reporting to me, there are still people that I want to see succeed.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: I think helping them, you know, if they had questions and I will say, you know, the calls were frequent at the beginning and then they really became more of a how are you doing?
Speaker: How's the family?
Speaker: Some of those type of chat.
Speaker: But I think it's really hard just to cut that off and not ever keep going.
Speaker: Well, I love the treasure troves of like old emails and OneDrive documents.
Speaker: It's like there's ghosts of former staff members all throughout departments.
Speaker: And when you're digging around for some document, it just brings back fond memories of like whoever edited it last or you're like, oh, this is Tanya definitely wrote this.
Speaker: You know, I found when I was still at Oklahoma State, I found an inner office envelope that was from
Speaker: Kevin Solomon at that's at Arkansas Tech now.
Speaker: He's not even in housing anymore, but he had sent it and somehow it got stuck in a drawer.
Speaker: But to open it up and see him and think we've never worked together, but he was my first real connection in Swakuho and thinking about, oh, this just brings back really fond memories.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: All right, Tanya.
Speaker: So any closing thoughts as we wrap up the day?
Speaker: You know, I would say you miss 100% of the chances you don't take.
Speaker: And whether you are successful in that job search or not, moving up into new positions, it comes with its own set of challenges.
Speaker: But I think if someone is thinking about what the next position looks like, don't let your imposter syndrome be the thing that stops you.
Speaker: It's great advice across the board.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker: It really means a lot that not even six months into sitting in the big kid's chair, Tanya found some time to invest with us grunts at the bottom of the org chart.
Speaker: Be sure to join us next month.
Speaker: And don't forget to submit questions or ask for advice via the link in the show notes.
Speaker: And with that, I say to you, good day.
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