4.14 Coaching for Academic Leaders

In this episode of Mindful Academy, Jennifer Askey discusses the importance of coaching skills for academic leaders. Drawing on her recent experience with department chairs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Jennifer explains how incorporating coaching techniques can alleviate the burden of being the sole problem-solver. She introduces key coaching practices like waiting before responding, asking open-ended questions, and helping to define goals. These methods can help create a collaborative and positive departmental culture, essential for mutual success. Jennifer also previews that future episodes will dive into promoting shared vision and psychological safety within academic departments.

00:00 Welcome to the Mindful Academy

00:07 The Importance of Coaching Skills for Academic Leaders

00:18 Coaching Skills in Practice: A Case Study from Nebraska

03:39 The Role of Department Chairs in Creating a Positive Environment

06:38 The Challenges Faced by Academic Leaders

07:37 Introducing the WAIT Acronym

10:45 The Power of Asking Questions

15:37 Defining Goals and Strategic Thinking

17:45 Conclusion and Next Steps

Transcript

 Hello everybody and welcome to the Mindful Academy. I am Jennifer Askey. I'm your coach, and today I am going to be talking to you about coaching skills for academic leaders and why they're such an important and valuable toolkit. I just came back from a trip to Nebraska where I'm worked with department chairs and leaders at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who are interested in.

Incorporating some coaching skills into their leadership style. And then in a separate session with folks who were signing on to be peer coaches in the unos, in Unos, new expanded coaching practice where they have professional, a professional coach on staff and they're putting coaches through Gallup strengths training, um, coaching and Gallup's strength.

Coaching training. I think I said that right. Um, anyway, they're gonna have several Gallup certified Gallup strengths finders, coach coaches, um, among their faculty and staff, and, um. And they're going to be doing peer coaching, and I came in to, to give them some practice and deepen their skillset around sort of open-ended coaching.

Um, whether or not you have that Gallup strengths finder assessment report in front of you or not, and a faculty member just knocks on your door and says, Hey, I need some help. So, um, today I'm gonna offer a few highlights of what coaching skills for academic leaders are and why they're important. And I think this will probably be the first of a few podcast episodes that focus on this because having some coaching skills in your practice as a department chair, as a dean, as a whatever kind of leader can be super critical.

Critical to your happiness and your success. Why? Because in my experience, um, if you're a super competent with it, on top of it, leader people come to you and say, Hey, I have this thing, an issue, a question, a problem. And they explain that to you and you say, oh, okay. And then you go and you figure out how to solve it, and you become the answer person.

And the answer person is maybe a super comfortable role for you because you're a scholar and a teacher, and so having the answers is like your stock in trade, and it's really great until you have more and more people looking to you to be the answer person. And so one of the things that coaching can do is to help cultivate an environment where we tap into shared wisdom and we don't just rely on one person to be the problem solver, or in other words, I call it like giving the work back to the people.

This works for students, it works for colleagues and collaborators, right? Where we don't just assume that we are being asked to solve a problem, take it upon ourselves and go solve it, but we. Lean in to asking questions, clarifying objectives, brainstorming, goal setting, and then going to action without short cutting all of that and saying, oh, I know what needs to happen here.

Just let me take care of it. Right. So coaching skills can help you overperform less at work and excellent performance is lovely, but overperforming where you're doing more and more and more and more, and being weighed down by that is something that we. We're not here for that in 2025. So, um, I'm gonna start with some assumptions about being, say, a department chair.

So the last time I worked at a university and I was doing some leadership things with department chairs, I actually looked at like university handbook language and job description language around what a chair does and what was super interesting about those. Texts that I consulted. It said, it said the chair was responsible for creating an environment in the department that was positive and primed for success.

And that's an interesting charge, right? How do you create a positive, successful environment in a department like this places the job of creating culture. On the chair's, shoulders, and I think that maps onto Deans, provosts, presidents, right? The, when you're in a leadership position, people look to you to figure out how do we treat each other?

What are our expectations of one another? What is the workplace culture here? And then our ME metrics for annual evaluations and merit increases and promotion and tenure and all of that. They don't say anything about culture. All they talk about is productivity. Maybe some teaching, but it's output, output, output output.

Teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching. A little bit of service thrown in. But the notion of culture and environment, um, is really hard to quantify. And yet we know that if you're in a department where the culture's not great, um, this. Drags on productivity, it drags on teaching. It drags on the ability to make decisions.

It drags on alignment, and it becomes a place where people don't wanna work. And so I don't see coaching as the panacea for all of this, but I do think that a coaching mindset is one of the things that can help a chair cultivate the kind of department that people wanna work in. So, um. So we have chairs responsible for culture, and we have chairs responsible for some deliverables, right?

We're delivering a curriculum. What are, who are the people we have to deliver that curriculum? What are the spaces? We have the student enrollments and working in collaboration with facilities and staffing and all of that to deliver the content of your program, right? And. And then there's the productivity part on the scholarship side that you are responsible for creating expectations and environments towards.

So it's, it's a squishy, wishy-washy job in some ways. Um, you're expected to do a lot of things. You don't have a ton of authority. You pressure from faculty and students, pressure from deans and provosts. Not enough money, right? It's a hard job. And when you take all of those things on your shoulders, is my department producing enough?

Are we teaching enough? Are we enrolling enough? Are we positive enough? Are we, um, are we the kind of place people want to work? Like that's a lot, that's a lot on your shoulders. So enter coaching one little snippet. So somebody walks into your office and says, we have a problem. They outline some sort of problem, and your first impulse as chair as human is, oh, no problem.

Let's figure out how to fix this. What do I need to do to solve this? How big is the fire that I need to put out? Jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, get it done. So whether this is a knock at the door or an email, right? Somebody hands you a challenge and you go into solving mode. And I am gonna offer, I think in this episode, looking at my notes, two or three shifts to think about.

The first is the coaching, um, acronym weight. Why am I talking WAIT? Why am I talking this? Adage acronym mantra can be super useful if you find yourself explaining and doing all the, explaining, all the brainstorming, all the problem solving, all the solution offering on your own. So if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, there's an issue, and you immediately respond either verbally or in text with a wall of information, um, sometimes that might be warranted, but I will suggest that when it's a human issue and most things are human issues that.

You would benefit and maybe your organization would benefit from you. Creating a little bit of space around that because launching into explanation, launching into planning and problem solving is jumping straight into action and that does not give you or your colleagues or the students or where, wherever this problem is bubbling up.

That gives nobody any time to sort of reflect. And define. The parameters of the problem and the parameters of the goal, right? It's just action, action, action, and, and you're, you're short circuiting a community problem solving process or a partnership problem solving process. Because as the leader, as somebody who's been around a while and has some expertise, you.

Confidently know, oh, this is how this is gonna get solved. And you launch into action now, launching into action multiple times a day without stopping to reflect, look, this is who this can be. What leads people to show up in coaching with, like, all I do is put out fires. I never have time for any strategic work.

Um, right. And that's because they get problems handed to them and they jump on them. So enter, why am I talking? This means, this is an a, a reminder to slow down, give the problem some space. Maybe don't respond right away. Maybe don't justify, explain or problem solve instantaneously. Maybe just let it sit.

It works great with email. It also actually works great with people. People come and say, gosh, I have a problem. And they lay it all out on the line. And if you respond, and here's my second point with a question, an open-ended question, then they have more time to do their own brainstorming, problem solving, goal setting.

Right. And you. Overexplaining and I call it overexplaining. It's not gonna feel like overexplaining. You explaining and problem solving and justifying doesn't give people time or space to do their own strategic thinking. So with the acronym wait in mind, your next step is to have a small repertoire of really good questions.

So, um. The, the kinds of questions you want to ask are questions that start with what and how, as opposed to questions that start with why questions that start with, why invite people to feel defensive, even if it's not your intention, right? So somebody comes to you with a problem and you might ask, what's the biggest challenge there?

You might ask, what is the degree of urgency here? You might ask, what would you rather have as an outcome? You might ask, what is it that you are looking for from me? Right? So asking people to clarify. What the challenge is that they're presenting you is really useful because oftentimes we come and we just, we're venting, blah, this thing happened and we don't ha, we haven't taken the time to sort through our own thoughts and having a somebody ask us question, what would you rather have here?

What kind of help are you looking for? How big is the challenge? Those help the person with the issue slow down. Right, access their wisdom, hopefully, and then create their own solution that you have not had to provide at the drop of a hat. Right? So asking questions after you have waited a moment is like, it's coaching 1 0 1, right?

I'm not gonna tell you what to think or do. I'm gonna ask you what's important here. Um, I know that on the podcast previously I have mentioned the book by Michael Bunge, Stanier, the Coaching Habit, and he starts with the questions, what's on your mind and what else 'cause and what else gets to maybe the deeper issue and where's the real challenge here?

Right. Sometimes people present, and this happens in the workshops that I conduct all the time. I, I give folks the, the job of, um, in a coaching conversation, getting to, and what's the real challenge here? Finding a way to like, identify what the problem is that needs to be solved and. People see the question out of the question structure and they're there for it and they get it, and then somebody asks 'em a question and everybody to a person responds with, oh, okay, that happened to me once.

This is what you do. But, so it's a, we respond with advice and storytelling and this is my experience. And when you're a leader, advice and storytelling, and this is my experience, seems like a really valuable thing to offer, right? Because you have more experience. Putting the coaching hat on says, maybe my experience isn't the most important thing in the room right now, and I am going to help this person access what they need in this moment through helping them sort through the jumble up here, lay it all out on the table, put it into nice piles and say, okay, here's where the challenge is.

Okay. If that's the challenge, what would you rather have? What would you rather see? What's your ideal outcome? How is the challenge impacting you? How is solving this challenge gonna make your life better? Right. Getting people to not go immediately to action, but to pattern recognition and evaluation and, and doing that slowing down, that gives us time to be strategic.

And this is gonna bring me to the third point, is once you've said, you know, where is, where's the real challenge in everything that you've just laid out? We're giving ourselves and others opportunities to define not only the challenge, but to define the goal. Because when problems get tossed at us and I might, you know, read the email or listen to the story and I'm like, seven lines down.

And I go, aha, okay, there's the issue. I'm gonna solve that now. Um, and I'm making all sorts of assumptions about having identified the proper issue and also having, being in possession of the proper answer for that. And if I slow down and ask some questions, then I, and anybody I'm talking to, we're in a better position to define, oh, this is what we really want and this is how we're gonna get there.

So the coaching skills of being quiet and asking questions so that we can define goals. Um. Really supports academic work beautifully. Right. We the, um, there's a haiku in Michael Bunge Sander's book that I like a lot. Um, it's, um. Tell less and ask more. Your advice is not as good as you think it is, and I'm sure I've said that on the podcast before and it bears repeating, right?

Tell less, ask more. Your advice is not as good as you think it is, and that is not an admonishment as much as it is a gift. Because what it does, if you say, oh, my advice is maybe not the most salient thing here in the room, it frees you from the pressure of being the expert and the doer and the problem solver in all instances.

And being relieved of that pressure is an enormous gift that I invite you to take whenever you want. I, you don't have to know all the answers. Right. Um, now. The, I think the next, I'll probably stop today here and make this a brief episode, and I'm gonna pick up again next with the notion of like defining what we would rather have and goal setting and talk a little bit about what it means in a department to be on the same team.

Um, as a group and because it is easier to have coaching conversations with people or to use a few coaching skills in conversations with people if your department functions well and is psychologically safe. So I'm gonna talk about how we, how you can, in your role as a leader, do some things in your department to support alignment.

Um, support shared vision and goals without being autocratic, without compromising academic freedom, but promoting shared vision and goals and understanding the people who work with you so that when they show up with issues or when you show up with issues that you need to discuss with them, there is a basis for psychological safety, um, to build on.

So that conversations where you don't just show up as the authority or the answer person. Are more possible because they're shared trust. Um, so that's where we're headed next. But for today, why am I talking? I should ask some questions and then we can really define what's going on here. Um, those are the three coaching skills to, to think about.

In your leadership practice in higher ed, thank you so much for being with me and the puppy today. If you are watching on YouTube, you can see that Sadie joined me about halfway through. Um, and I look forward to being in your ears again soon. Please reach out and get in touch and let me know what about this seems useful to you or what you would like more on at jennifer@jenniferaskey.com.

Bye.