Greetings and welcome to the Excellence in Academic Leadership (EAL) program presented by the National Center for Principled Leadership & Research Ethics (NCPRE). Our goal is to support your growth as an academic leader. The program will be offered through online group Zoom sessions augmented by outside readings and your reflections and analyses.
You are in a cohort with colleagues from Western Michigan University, tailored to your interests, and supported by resources in the NCPRE online Leadership Collection. NCPRE creates and shares resources to support better ethical and leadership practices in academic and other professional contexts. Leadership—and particularly ethical leadership—is central to creating a culture that establishes healthy and productive professional interactions. We equip you with evidence-based tools to support intentional leadership development and institutional integrity.
Your cohort’s presenters are Ann Briggs Addo, BrandE Faupell, and C. K. Gunsalus. Jacob Ryder is your Cohort Coordinator and will be your main point of contact for scheduling and logistics.
We are planning two hour online meetings, approximately once a month, throughout the academic year. Each meeting will focus around a particular topic and include related resources available for you to pursue as your interests direct. Other than these online meetings, you will be in control of how much external time you spend; there will be ‘homework’ assignments after each session and it will always be your choice as to the time you devote.
Please feel free to contact Jacob Ryder, the Cohort Coordinator for this program, if you have any questions: jjryder2@illinois.edu
Session Nine: Leadership, Shared Governance, and You
Session Date: Monday, April 11 at 2:00pm – 4:00pm ET
This session, featuring shared wisdom from President Emeritus Robert Easter and Professor Nicholas Burbules, asked you to consider your role as a leader and the values you bring to it. Below are materials you need for completing the homework for session ten and the slides from session nine.
As a reminder, our closing session will be on April 25th from 2:00-4:00pm
Use the attached capstone case study to develop a plan to address the scenario. Your task is to describe how to navigate the difficult process before you as effectively and constructively as possible. Each group of 2 people will present its approach to the full cohort in a 5-minute presentation. You are welcome to use slides, a document, or any other vehicle for making your presentation. You will be able to share your screen.
Be prepared to field questions from the NCPRE team and your peers following your presentation.
If you are unable to attend the final session, you are still encouraged to participate in preparing the capstone case with your colleagues.
You are not expected to have a complete IDP ready by our meeting. We ask that you start to construct one and be prepared to informally discuss your progress with the group.
Please let Jacob Ryder know if you have any questions or concerns. We look forward to our next and final session with you. We have valued the opportunity to work so closely with you over the past year, and all of us at NCPRE are thankful for your engagement with the material.
Session Eight: Bullyproofing Academic Units
Session Date: Monday, March 14 at 2:00pm-4:00pm ET
Below are copies of a case study and situation analysis we will be using in the session. In order to make the best use of our time, we ask that you read them ahead of the session. Please make sure to have them on hand for our group discussion tomorrow.
As a reminder, we ask that you dig far back to our first session together and revisit the short video featuring “Professor Major” having a conversation with a new Department Head on his first day
We will be opening our session with a group discussion of the behavior you see in the video and the dynamics involved in the interaction. Please be prepared to share your thoughts.
Review the second version of the Professor Major video below. Make note of your thoughts on what the department chair learned in this program. What changes did he make to the interaction and its outcome?
Meet in a group to develop a list of skills you’ve acquired through this cohort program that you see being applied in the second version of Professor Major. Be prepared to report at our next session.
Meet in a Critical Friends group: use an issue a member of your groupis facing. If you would like a case study to discuss, please contact us and we will provide one for you.
Session Seven: Giving/Receiving Feedback
Session Date: Monday, February 28, 2022 at 2:00-4:00 PM ET
Use your Critical Friends to work on difficult feedback situations, whether giving or receiving. (Feedback is a gift.)
Session Six: Negotiation
Session Date: Monday, February 14, 2022 at 2:00-4:00 PM ET
Before tomorrow’s meeting, we ask that you do the following:
Please read “Are You the Doormat?”, the case study sent via email. We will be discussing this in breakout rooms later in the session and taking the time to read it ahead of time will give you more time to have meaningful group discussions.
You have also been assigned one of two roles for a negotiation role play to be undertaken in pairs. Typically, these documents would be distributed the moment before beginning the exercise. To adapt to an online setting, we will be providing them now, so that you may print them outto have ready for the activity. We ask in the strongest terms that you please refrain from reading them beforehand. For clarity, I have marked these files with “PRINT ONLY” in the file name. The experience will be far more valuable and provide a better learning opportunity if you read their contents for the first time during the exercise.
We also request that you please refrain from distributing this particular document in any form. As such, I will not be uploading the roles to the webpage. Typically, we would collect these handouts after the exercise and ask that you please dispose of them with care given this online setting.
Negotiating rationally: the power and impact of the negotiator’s frame, Bazerman & Neale, Academy of Management Executive, 1992 Vol. 6 No. 3DOI: https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.1992.427418
Consider interactions you have that you now see as negotiations: what can do you do to improve your preparation for these conversations? Record them in your journal.
Send Sarah topics of difficult conversations around feedback you find challenging (next session is about giving and receiving feedback).
Finish reading Crucial Conversations or Crucial Accountability to prepare for our session on giving and receiving feedback.
Session Five: Exploring Leadership
Session Date: Monday, January 31, 2022 at 2:00-4:00 PM ET
This session will focus on leadership through the lens of preparing for (and responding to) paradigm shifts–Leadership Through Challenging Times, if you will.
In preparation for this week’s session, we ask that you take the time to:
1) consider and identify a fundamental change occurring in your field and be prepared to describe how your unit will adapt to it. Consider the impact that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity had on Newtonian Physics, or the impact of genetic engineering on agriculture, or the introduction of satellites on meteorology. These are all examples of major paradigm shifts. Other changes are smaller in scale and still impactful. How you recognize and respond to these events is key to being a successful academic leader. Please prepare to discuss the fundamental changes occurring in your fields in breakout sessions.
2) In addition, we ask that you remember to have your definition of leadership from our first session on hand and ready to discuss.
Re-visit your definition of leadership and reflect on your strengths; how will you play to them? What would you like to focus on going forward? Record your thoughts in your journal.
Do you see a paradigm shift in your field or institution? How will your leadership help your colleagues prepare for or react to it? Record your thoughts in your journal.
Submit via email discussion questions or a topic you would like to discuss with the group from your reading of Crucial Conversations or Crucial Accountability (whichever you read).
Session Four: Difficult Conversations and Personal Scripts
Session Date: Monday, December 6 at 2:00pm-4:00pm ET
Please be prepared to share your one-minute elevator pitch and to report back on your Critical Friends sessions.
I have attached the conflict self-assessment we sent once before. We ask that you continue to keep this in mind as you consider your conflict style and how you tend to react to difficult conversations. Among other topics we will cover, we will revisit your conflict comfort and style and introduce the And Stance, a powerful tool that grows out of work on influence and persuasionat the Harvard Project on Negotiation. The idea behind the And Stance is that ‘but’ is a stopper word in American English; the exercise is to practice moving to the And Stance, where you use “and” instead of “but” (or “however” or “although”)–without changing your message. If you have time to look over the exercise in advance, we can spend more time discussing and working on it during the session.
Practice applying the And Stance in your everyday life. First, try to go one week without using “but” in an email, instead restructuring the statement with “and” in order to align with others. Then, try to go 24 hours without saying “but” at all. This is a very difficult and worthwhile exercise that helps make you aware of just how often you use stopper words and where you can change your approach.
Start reading either Crucial Conversations or Crucial Accountability. (If you haven’t read either, start with Crucial Conversations.) Both are readily available for purchase online. We wish to provide time for all members of the cohort to read one or the other before we start a discussion, so are providing a head start for a future discussion.
Prepare personal scripts and share them with other members of the cohort, using the Personal Scripts Quick Tips as a guide. Also consider the Complaint-Handling Guidelines. You may find these helpful for handling difficult conversations and for constructing personal scripts when faced with these scenarios.
Before our next session, find and have ready the definition of leadership you recorded in your journals during the first session. Prepare to discuss.
Session Three: Vibrant Academic Units
Session Date: Monday, November 22 at 2:00pm-4:00pm ET
We ask you to be prepared to discuss the AUDiT that you filled out for your unit along with the real or hypothetical situation you developed for use with a Critical Friends group. We have also attached a self-assessment document that we will be using during today’s session. Please download it to have at hand during our meeting.
As always, please make sure that you have your journals at hand. We will be asking you to refer back to them throughout the program.
Remember that there are books available to support your development—use your funds!
Session Two: Critical Friends/Group Problem Solving
Session Date: Monday, October 25th at 2:00pm-4:00 PM ET
For this session, we would like you to watch, in advance, the video provided below. This one is a bit longer than last time, around 9-10 minutes. It depicts a staged meeting discussing the Thomas Santo case study we addressed in the first cohort meeting, using a protocol created by the Annenberg Institute known as Critical Friends. We have provided a description of the protocol along with the full background from the Annenberg Institute for reference. We also have included a quick reference summary sheet of the Decision Making Framework (DMF) discussed in our last meeting that many find useful during a Critical Friends session. We will discuss the protocol, its uses, and do an abbreviated Critical Friends session during our upcoming online meeting.
We will be opening with your reviews of items in the Leadership Collection and the Testing Yourself prompts provided as homework after our last meeting, and discussing the AUDiT assessments you started.
Review the AUDiT you filled out for your unit; be prepared to discuss
Develop a real or hypothetical situation to use in a Critical Friends group
Session One: The Special Challenges of the Academic Environment
Session Date: Monday, September 27th at 2:00-4:00 PM ET
Prior to our Zoom Call on Monday afternoon, we ask that you watch this short vignette that was filmed as part of our larger Leadership Collection. This particular clip features a faculty member named “Professor Major” having a conversation with a new Department Head on his first day.
As you watch the scene unfold and the behavior of the characters within it, we invite you to think about what is really happening in this interaction. Please consider the questions posed within the video and write some thoughts down in the Journal we have asked you to maintain as part of the program.
We will begin Monday’s session by discussing this scenario, after which we will take some time to explore the unique challenges our environment presents.
We invite you all to take a look through NCPRE’s Leadership Collection. This library of resources has been developed over several years, built on the experiences and wisdom of our experts. The collection includes Quick Tips, Executive Briefings and Annotated Bibliographies, as well as many video interviews with our experts themselves sharing their thoughts on a variety of subjects. Please take some time to browse the collection – during our second session we will ask each of you to share a couple of the assets you found most interesting or useful.
Find attached the Testing Yourselfexercise and take a few minutes to respond to the prompts within. We will discuss these prompts and share responses in our next session when we dive deeper into handling contentious situations like these.
Also attached is a copy of the AUDiT Dashboard,developed by NCPRE to help systematically assess the health of your department. Our observation has been that many leaders tend to focus on areas that they think are problematic. The AUDiT approach helps ensure that your assessment is comprehensive. Use the AUDiT table to score your unit. Start by putting a number in each cell – the more the cell describes your unit, the higher the number should be. In the green and red columns, scores run from 0 to 5; in the yellow column, it is 0 to 3. When you are finished, add up your green scores and subtract the totals from your yellow and red scores. We will be revisiting this tool throughout the course so please keep the original with your journal.