Jim Strodes' Leadership Journey: From Small Town Sports to Higher Education Administration

This episode of the Leader Lounge features Jim Strode, Associate Dean at Ohio University College of Business. Jim shares his journey from growing up in a small Wisconsin town to pursuing roles in collegiate athletics and sports administration. He discusses falling in love with athletics and his involvement with the University of Wisconsin athletic program. Jim also reflects on the importance of mentorship in his academic and professional career. Additional topics include gender barriers in coaching, the intersection of business and athletics, and lessons on leadership development with a focus on self-awareness and emotional intelligence. He provides practical advice for students and professionals looking to advance their leadership skills.

For more information about the Ohio University MSM Program, click this link!

Check out the Robert D. Walter Center for Strategic Leadership program here.

OnBrand Podcast Studios produced this episode. Special thanks to Audio Engineer Alex Winnenberg, Producer Nick Winnenberg, and Marketing Specialist Cori Stokes.

To subscribe to our monthly newsletter, click here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

I'm here with Nick Wittenberg, co-host for the Leader Lounge podcast, and we're here with guest Jim Strode. We are excited to have Jim today. He is a longtime leader in sports and leader in higher education. And he's paired them together through many different experiences, lots of training curriculum development, real-life experiences in different parts of the world. And he's here at Ohio University's College of Business. We're proud to call him our associate dean. Jim, welcome.

SPEAKER_00: 0:52

Well, thanks for having me, Amy. Nice to see you, Nick.

SPEAKER_03: 0:55

Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00: 0:56

How are you doing today? Well, we are, as we joined the podcast, we're in the second to last day of finals week of the fall semester. My email box is relatively quiet, so that's a good sign of graduation coming around the corner on Saturday. But I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm really excited to wrap up this semester and see amazing folks walk across stage like you, Nick. You're going to be graduating, you said, on Saturday.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31

Timo. 48 hours, but who's counting? Who's

SPEAKER_01: 1:35

counting? Who's counting? Oh, that's amazing. Excellent. It is one of the best times of year, but I will also say that while Jim studies all kinds of complex behavior and stereotype threat and difficult topics from gender and leadership, he does it all while seeing the glass half full and finding the best that he can in every experience. Just to be with him for a moment, you would see him smiling. You see and feel his energy. So, Jim, could you tell us just a little bit? I'm just kind of curious because I don't know some of your early background that led you. You know, I know the different universities in Ohio, but I don't know, like the experiences early in your life, you know, how you got into basketball, if that was the first love or, you know, how how that went as far as sports go.

SPEAKER_00: 2:24

Absolutely. So I guess if we want to go back in the way, way back machine, I grew up in a very small town in central Wisconsin called New Lisbon, graduating class of 70 students. So in a class where you have so few students in your high school, you had to basically be involved in everything for everything to go. So it didn't matter if it was playing a sport, being on stage in our drama organizations, being Being a member of the Spanish Club, National Honor Society, Student Council, and everything in between, I embraced that opportunity at an early age. And of course, I grew up in a family business, a small family business back in the 1980s, small town Chevrolet dealerships, Ford dealerships, Chrysler dealerships actually existed back then. We didn't have the mega malls, but rather we had small mom and pop organizations. So I grew up in Jerry Strode Chevrolet. And if you ever come to my office, I'll show you the sticker that was put on the back of bumpers. So I got to see, you know, my dad was the president of the organization. My mother was the vice president. My brother who at that time was in his late 20s, I think was listed in the Articles of Incorporation as the secretary or treasurer. Nonetheless, we had about 14 cars, brand new cars in the lot, and I got to see small business in action, of course. I was blissfully ignorant when it came to my wants and my needs at that and how they actually occurred. I just saw that my parents and my family worked very, very hard, but really had had no idea that if we didn't sell five cars in the month of May, that it was going to put a strain on our family and our resources. So tremendously grateful to be able to look back and see to see that experience that my family went through to be able to provide for me. So grew up in a small town, was fortunate enough to enjoy the classroom. And at that time, it no longer exists, but at least in that time in the late 90s, the state of Wisconsin used to give out a full ride to a state institution for the valedictorian of classes. So I was fortunate enough to be able to earn that scholarship. And I got my pick of any state institution. So I picked the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Why not pick the best school in the state? So I went 60 miles southeast or southeast to Madison and was a small fish in a very, very, very big pond. So my major was business. So I was a Bachelor of Business Administration student. Marketing and management were my two specializations. My friends were going on to go work for Target Corporation as buyer planners or going down to Chicago to work for Deloitte or KPMG. I just wasn't necessarily in love with that particular path. I was in love with athletics. I had got exposed to an early age to big time athletics. And of course, as a student at Wisconsin, getting to see 77,000 people in Camp Randall Stadium or 18,000 in the Kohl Center, I just fell in love with the athletic side. So of course, we didn't have sport management at Wisconsin. So I had to find ways to be able to get involved with my business degree in the athletic department. So Fun fact, my first involvement was I tried out to be the mascot. I ended up spending four years as Bucky Badger at Wisconsin. Nice. Oh, super fun fact. All right. You know, so I and it was a golden era of Wisconsin athletics. So I got to go to two Rose Bowls. I got to go to a final four for the men's basketball team. A whole bunch of different opportunities for a small town kid, which was really amazing. My relationship grew with the athletic department. because I was always on call, whether it was the athletic director's kid's birthday party or there was a parade in Partiesville, Wisconsin in June. I had to hop in my 1989 Chevy Cavalier, get out there, throw the suit on, and walk in a parade in 90 degrees. But I really got to meet and connect with a lot of different people, and that helped build me into working in the athletic department as a student assistant for a number of sports. I ran for for the student rep for the athletic board. So I was the undergraduate rep, which was really eyeopening because in the state of Wisconsin, the student rep actually gets a vote and is not ex officio. So when normal boards go into closed session and students get kicked out, now I was actually in the closed session making, or at least I wasn't making any decisions. I was sitting there, you know, smiling and nodding most of the time learning, but getting to hear about the multimillion dollar contracts of coaches or, you know, deciding to make a change for a coach that was at the institution for X amount of years, making six, seven figures. So I really, at that point, was like, hey, athletics is where I want to be. Being a college athletic director would be a pretty cool job. So that's really what led me to the state of Ohio. So I came to another Big Ten school. It's funny because the athletic director of Wisconsin, Pat Richter, wrote me a letter of recommendation. And I said, hey, where do I go for graduate school? And he said, well, you want to be an athletic director? You stay in the Big Ten. You can go over to Michigan. You can go over to Ohio State if they have programs. You stay in the Big Ten. I didn't really get to know any of the folks in the athletic department that were connected to Ohio University. I just went to the AD, and I sort of regret that decision because who knew that The number one sports administration program in the world was located in Athens, Ohio. Right. And that was really the network. And I missed the boat on that one. Now, I loved my time at Ohio State. Right. I got my master's, got my Ph.D. there. But I do think back to the fact like, gosh, I probably would have been in Athens, Ohio sooner if, you know, Pat Richter would have recommended my my application to OU. But nonetheless, went to Ohio State.

UNKNOWN: 8:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:47

Bad decision on my part, but I'm here now.

SPEAKER_01: 8:50

Absolutely amazing. Yeah, absolutely amazing. So you took your super small town experiences, brought them into very quickly into big time athletics and had a seat, right? And see the decision making. I don't know athletics enough table to say, there you go, and learn what that's like to have, you know, to have a voice and to see what somebody at that time really young could do and have brought all of that youth and excitement into everything you do. So just to point out a couple of things. So Jim's research and publications, you know, absolutely frustrating. I don't... I don't see a sports organization that he hasn't come into some leadership role in. He's always looking for, how can I help? How can I contribute? And then he leads in a way that is a... quiet yet strong leadership presence. And that's a lot of, you know, what we're teaching students about here at Ohio University with the experiential learning, taking that opportunity, even if you're not quite sure you're ready for it, right? Go into the big city, then go into, you know, go into the school and then kind of figuring out what you wanted. So what... What kind of thoughts or lessons do you have for our students? Particularly, I know you've been in graduate education for a while and undergraduate as well. What kind of thoughts for students who, may or may not have majored in business, but, you know, might be interested in some of the either sports or other experiences that we have here at Ohio University.

SPEAKER_00: 10:32

Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, you're right that sort of fallen into a variety of different leadership roles and opportunities and learned a lot along the way through both successes and failures. So, you know, the biggest advice I give to any student or prospective student is, you know, leadership is a journey, right? You You got to take some chances. You got to take some risks. I believe, Amy, you even mentioned too, sometimes you're not ready. And that's probably one of the biggest fears that a lot of people have is, well, I'm not ready for that next position. Give me another year or two of experience. Well, nobody really is ready for any of these positions. They learn on the fly. They learn by doing their research. They learn by going and credentialing up, taking courses in particular areas. One of my passions is I teach I teach leadership classes at the graduate level here, and I flip the script when we talk about our leadership classes, less about the theory, less about the academic work that's done in this area, but flip it more to introspective ways that you can actually use that to be able to understand yourself. So advice I give students is never stop learning, find a mentor, and be ready for any opportunity when it calls.

SPEAKER_01: 11:52

Great. So curious, you've got all the research background and you could answer this in this way, but I'm asking for Jim Strode, right? His answer. How do you think that's different or do you think it's different from what you've seen with, you know, sort of gender differences in athletics of taking the opportunity you're not sure that you're qualified for versus saying, you know what, I can do it. Do you think that that difference, you know, stems in that area? Or do you think maybe, I don't know, just what... What are your thoughts currently? I know that they change over time for all of us. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 12:28

well, and I can speak because acknowledging my privilege, acknowledging being a white cisgender male, a lot of the studies that have come out recently on stereotype threat and organizational level barriers for women in coaching is really to seek to understand, to find ways to be able to solve some problems that we know exist, but we can't necessarily always put our finger on them. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention in my more recent work, I target colleagues, researchers that have the experience, who have the lived experience to be able to better understand the conversations that we have or the survey results that we get to be able to interpret those and connect those, again, to the lived experience of our respondents, our participants in these studies. So when you talk about gender, a paper that just came out recently in the Journal of Sport Management is on organizational level factors particularly barriers for women in high school coaching, right? So, you know, what organizational level factors? So we're looking really at what does a school district control, right? Versus, you know, macro levels, which are, you know, socioculture, which are really out of our control versus let's say individual, which, you know, is personality, disposition, all of that stuff, which is certainly controllable. We're looking really at that sort of sphere of what does an organization control? Or how do they contribute into the successes and failures of women coaches? And, you know, we found a lot of, you know, stories of women who would be, you know, like the double whammy of being both young and a woman in coaching caused so much stress and caused a high level of attrition for people in these leadership roles that wasn't necessarily always supported. by the leadership within an organization. I could think of a story of one of our participants you know, she was on the sideline before a basketball game and it's pretty customary in a basketball game for an official to come over or the three officials to come over and introduce themselves to the head coach. Well, there was an older male who was sitting on the bench with the clipboard writing stuff and he was the assistant coach and she is the head coach and she was standing pacing the sidelines. The three officials walked directly past her and went right to the male that was sitting down and introduced themselves, assuming that that was the head coach, right? So the, and that, That's not a unique story. If you talk to people, particularly to women in leadership roles in coaching, I'm sure they all have some sort of derivative of a story like that. You know, when you look at it, our goal is to try to find ways to be able to fix these systems, right? It's not just enough to be aware of it because we are aware of it. But what are some things that we can do to be able to change the organization's policies and procedures to focus on the culture within the organization to be able to make some changes that, frankly, it's 2023 or a long time coming?

UNKNOWN: 15:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:50

Wow. And this paper, I would admit Lee have not read yet, but have been so excited about it. It just came out in November 2023. And yeah, I'm really excited to hear you talk about sort of the practice side of it and the implications. So as you train future athletic administrators, future coaches, coaches, You know, all of the great programs, people that you have at Ohio University. What is a piece of advice or I don't know what what what would you say to what have you said to? I don't know. To a woman in athletics, maybe maybe a woman from a small town or like add another variable, right? Like whatever that may be. So I don't know what any practical tips for us.

SPEAKER_00: 16:40

Well, I think regardless of gender, I would say I always sort of start with Emotional intelligence 101, right? If you look at emotional intelligence, you really can't move up the ladder in emotional intelligence if you have no self-awareness, right? So it starts with knowing yourself, taking a good hard look in the mirror. I open up one of my lectures with this really adorable picture of this little kid up on their tiptoes looking up at a mirror. It's like, well, why do you want to lead? Like be transparent in why you want to lead. Do you want to lead because it fulfills particular needs that you feel that are unmet in your life. That's completely fine, but be transparent in why you want to lead. Don't flippantly say, well, I led because nobody else was there and it just fell upon my lap. That's probably not necessarily the most honest answer. There are motives behind why people want to lead. It could be to make a difference, right? You like the ability to be able to have some sort of level of control, to be able to improve a situation, right? But it all starts with knowing who you are, right? And knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses, having an honest mentor who is going to tell you what those blind spots may be. But leadership has got to start by looking in the mirror and understanding who you are first.

SPEAKER_01: 18:08

We could have so many conversations. We could talk all day, right? Just great advice and thinking. And start with knowing yourself. I love that. Start with looking in the mirror. I'm gonna throw in something we'll see, but that it's even turning on the camera, right? No matter who we are, no matter what, but turning on the camera. For many of us, that's the first time we're really seeing ourselves. Maybe we didn't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, right? So we're seeing ourselves there and we're seeing how we interact and how we relate. So I love that focus on looking at ourselves. And I hear you talking about kind of knowing your why. um knowing your why that and and being really honest about that why um that fantastic

SPEAKER_03: 18:57

and just from the sidelines here i noticed that you you've mentioned the term mentor five times so far in this conversation so

SPEAKER_00: 19:03

that's

SPEAKER_03: 19:04

exactly if you're keeping score which is which is enough to warrant a conversation around it and can you tell me a little bit about the role mentorship has in both your personal life and also the role it has in academics.

SPEAKER_00: 19:19

Personally, you know, not necessarily a mentor, but a role model is probably where I started when I got to Wisconsin. So, you know, when I start to think about how I started to shape my personal leadership vision, I was looking across the sidelines at the head men's basketball coach at Wisconsin, Dick Bennett. Dick Bennett's now retired. His son is the head coach at the University of Virginia. The Bennett family is synonymous with the state of Wisconsin, right? And, you know, what I learned was his teams were always one and two star athletes that always outperformed, that grinded, that worked hard. And of course, a lot of that came because of the vision of their leader, Coach Bennett. And he had five particular hallmarks of his program, but one always stuck with me, and that's humility, right? So knowing who you are, being humble. And this is a challenge, right? You could actually zoom into my board behind me here. I have an Adam Grant quote up here. Downplaying your achievements is not the antidote to appearing arrogant. Humility is acknowledging your weaknesses, not denying your strengths. Generosity is elevating others not diminishing yourself. Owning your success doesn't make you a narcissist. It makes you a role model. So I keep that on my board. Again, doing a soft PR plug here for Adam Grant on X here. But nonetheless, I had to print that just because it really nailed it on the head when it comes to that balance of humility, but also being confident in what you're doing. So it started from afar. But then I'd say probably one of the most influential people in my academic career career. And this is where your second part of your question is, how does it foster itself in the academy is, you know, my mentor at Ohio State is somebody by the name of Dr. Janet Fink. Janet Fink now is associate dean, very similar role that I'm in, in the Eisenberg School at UMass. And she is probably arguably the top scholar when it comes to women in sport. She has done a ton of stuff, taking a look at leadership and behavior and more consumer behavior when it comes to how businesses market particularly towards women. So having her as a mentor and seeing and listening to her stories, I mean, there's... you could see how I gravitate to the research that I'm doing right now is because I found her research so intriguing and because of her mentorship relationship, I have somebody to be able to call and pick her brain and say, is this a crazy idea? Is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea? So in the academy, that's the role of a faculty member, right? Is to be able to be there, you know, for your students, when they're students, and then when they're alums, to be there as well, to be able to help guide them and hopefully become, I guess, from a mentor to a sponsor, right? Somebody who is sort of an equal, rather not necessarily mentor-mentee, top-bottom relationship, but rather, you know, we're now at the point where we can actually share with each other, rather than just take my advice, oh sage mentor, We see that all the time. We see that. I mean, that's probably some of the secret sauce that we have here at Ohio University is that our students come back. And this is a testament to it right here. This podcast is a faculty member having an influence, a student taking that influence, using that to be able to do amazing things and then to continue that relationship post-graduation.

SPEAKER_03: 23:10

100%. I mean, I think that that's probably the number one key to success, the number one piece of advice that I give young people is find yourself a mentor. Because I mean, to your point, Dr. Remy Taylor Bianco is one of my greatest mentors. I'm here making a podcast with her. And the amount that you've learned and picked up in that experience, it's still a little bit of the sage role, but I feel like we're getting there in terms of everything else. But it's so intrinsically valuable that I don't think it's possible to succeed without a group of strong mentors on your side. So sorry to derail. Back to you, Dr. B.

SPEAKER_01: 23:41

No, and maybe it's a group or a circle of mentors, right? I mean, my... my greatest students who've gone on to do amazing things or come back while they're doing amazing things. They've become my mentors. I mean, there's some of the people that I call, right? Nick being one of them. When I have a question, I don't know how to do something. The world changes, right? Because it's changing all the time, which is fantastic. Nick tells me, do not, you know, get your headphones on. He tells me, you know, all the things that I need to know. And I could absolutely Right. Because you kind of you still are choosing your mentors all along. And it's really, really fun when you have the humility that that Jim is talking about to choose your mentors of any age, of any you may have mentored them. They're going to go on to mentor you. Right. our younger leaders and we had a social media student, 20 years old, come in and teach my entire team more than I could have read or learned or anything else, right? And so talking to all those different people and And Jim, I bet you found sort of a variety of people too. Do you find that you have a network here if you don't know who your mentor is or you don't, you know, you haven't officially formed that relationship yet and you're just coming here? I know we could talk for a long time about how to do it, but do you find that the people are here to do that with?

SPEAKER_00: 25:15

Absolutely. And I also think too, you know, we say, you know, have a formal mentorship, connect, but there's also something to be said too, as I mentioned at the beginning of, I said, role model, but just modeling, right? So there's a lot of folks that are in our sphere here in the College of Business at Ohio University that may not necessarily be a mentor, but you pick up the traits, you pick up the behaviors, you pick up how they handle situational leadership, right? And you're just constantly learning and absorbing and saying, you know what, that's somebody that does this particular thing really, really well. How can I fit my leadership style into, you know, mimicking that authentically, of course, but being able to upskill, you know, you can do that without having that direct one on one relationship by just being observant.

SPEAKER_02: 26:13

Fantastic. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 26:16

No, I have one more question. I think we're about good on time. And my final question is really looking at the intersection of business and athletics. And that's one of the things that Ohio University does legendarily well at, right? I think the best in the nation. Can you run me through, was that surprising at all going from a business background to where you're at now?

SPEAKER_00: 26:36

Well, it's... Not a surprise if you walk through Barnes and Nobles or any bookstore and you see leadership books written by coaches. And you see Fortune 500 companies bringing in head coaches to be able to motivate and inspire and lead their initiatives to develop their corporate culture, to help motivate their employees. Coaches are notoriously good at that, right? Playing sports, right? There's a goal in mind. The goal is to have success, however you define that success. It might be to win a football game or it might be to PR in a track meet, right? So, you know, in sport, it's about being goal driven and not surprising, we have a lot of competitive folks in the sports world. I was lucky enough to be the department chair for sports administration for three years here. And looking at sort of the commonality in the folks that graduated from the sports ad program here is, one, the competitiveness, right? They want to be the best. They're always looking for ways to be innovative and change. And two, the competitiveness. piece of wanting to give back right to make the next class better than their class right and i i see that culture within the college of business as well where bobcats help bobcats it's not just a cliche phrase but students all the time talk about, they get messaged out of the blue from somebody on LinkedIn who said, hey, I see that you're in the College of Business. I see that you're getting your MSM, your MBA, your OMSA, your PMBA, you name it. But I know that there are certain qualities that you have that would align well with our organization. So You know, like I said, I've been tremendously blessed to be a part of the Sports Ad program. I learn a lot, you know, from the leaders in sport and how that translates into business. It's one and the same. I mean, if you look at my bio, you saw I coached for 19 years. And part of the reason I coached, certainly, you know, to have wonderful and positive relationships with student athletes, with coaches, with the community. But if I'm being completely honest, I did Yeah. there's other ways that you can manifest that competitiveness in, in business, because, you know, at the end of the day, if you're not, if you're not moving the ball, you know, up the court, or if you're not, you know, making sure that you're meeting your quarterly or end of year goals, right. You're out, right. You don't, you don't succeed. You're you, you, you miss your objective. So there's so much to be able to connect the two, you know, leadership is leadership, whether it's on the court or it's in the boardroom.

SPEAKER_03: 29:48

Thank you all so much for your time today. I look forward to connecting with the next leader lounge episode. in two weeks.