Letter from the President

A common misnomer in higher education is every student affairs practitioner loves a good teambuilder. I, for one, do not. The word teambuilding conjures up images of hokey activities putting pressure on us introverts to wax philosophical on the spot. That said, I place high value on the process of building a team and creating a work environment and culture where people can thrive.

I have thought a lot about team dynamics and workplace environment lately. As some of you know, a little over a year ago I changed professional roles at the college. After 17 years working for the same supervisor and with largely the same coworkers, I was on a new office team - one in which I had a new supervisory role and was the new person on the college’s senior leadership team. I found myself contemplating how to build one team while simultaneously figuring out my lane on another. What was the culture? What did my team need from me? Do I simply slip into the existing fabric or do I try to help it evolve? Just when I thought I had that figured out, there was transition in the senior leadership team, and I was asking the same questions in order to help onboard new vice presidents.

There are many ways to be an architect of effective teams and office environments. Common readings exist about workplace culture; establishing group commitments for how a team will engage; self-assessments such as DiSC, Myers-Briggs, and StrengthsFinder which help coworkers identify strategies for working together; and yes, teambuilders. Equally important is including an exploration of how our identities, cultural upbringings and expectations, implicit biases, and structures that center power and privilege impact the ways we show up and determine our ability to succeed in the work environment.

Take for example a common reading our leadership team participated in using the book “Mastering Civility: A Manifesto For The Workplace” (Christine Porath, 2016). Before even cracking the spine, we spent quite a bit of time discussing the word civility, what that meant, and how the word is perceived in different spaces. Some shared the notion of civility and asking people to be civil has been used as a means to tone police and silence voices that are seen as too loud or too emotional. Others shared thoughts that some view a request for civility as another way of demanding political correctness (used pejoratively). To me, this discussion was just as important as the reading itself. It provided me a set of lenses with which to think about the author’s guidance and how it could be applied in a culturally competent way.

Many of us spend as much time, if not more, with our coworkers as our family and friends. Achieving job satisfaction, work-life harmony, and personal fulfillment is much simpler when you feel affirmed in who you are, work seamlessly with colleagues, and love where you work. Retention of employees in the fraternity/sorority industry matters. We cannot move the needle on creating a safe and meaningful fraternity/sorority membership experience if we cannot retain dedicated staff who believe in the power of that experience. Let us keep the conversation going about how we can create teams and workplaces that set our members up for sustainable success.

Wendi Kinney President