Rejection Is Part Of Leadership

What if the rejection that knocked you down was actually preparing you to lead?

This one was recorded somewhere a little different — the middle of the Caribbean Sea, on a group vacation with our guest. Because sometimes the best conversations happen when you stop scheduling them.

Dr. Darren Pierre is a lecturer in the Office of Global Engineering Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a preeminent scholar in higher education, leadership education, and student affairs. He is also the co-author of Considerations for Culturally Informed Leadership: Moving Toward the Future — a book designed to help the next generation of leaders navigate a global world with cultural fluency and genuine humility.

In this conversation, Elizabeth and Darren cover a lot of ground: what it really means to be a leader (spoiler: it's not what the archetype says), why rejection belongs in the leadership story, the difference between change and transition, and why student affairs has had an attrition problem long before it became a political talking point.

Darren also makes a case that will stick with you: leadership is a process, not a credential. And the slingshot matters just as much as the armor.

On Campus, Off the Record. The meeting after the meeting.

Find us on Buzzsprout: https://oncampusofftherecord.buzzsprout.com/

Resources:

•       Darren Pierre's book: Considerations for Culturally Informed Leadership: Moving Toward the Future — co-authored with Dr. Kathy Guthrie. A framework for college-age leaders preparing to lead in a global world.

•       Peter Northouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice — the leadership text Darren references in his classes. One of the most widely used leadership frameworks in higher education.

•       Malcolm Gladwell's TED Talk: "The Unheard Story of David and Goliath" — the reframe Darren references on what it means to carry the underdog advantage into any room.

•       William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes — the foundational text behind the change vs. transition distinction Elizabeth raises in the conversation.

About the Guest
https://www.darrenpierre.com/

Dr. Darren Pierre is a lecturer in the Office of Global Engineering Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a scholar in higher education, leadership education, and student affairs, and the co-author of Considerations for Culturally Informed Leadership: Moving Toward the Future. He has taught leadership seminars internationally, including at the University of Sydney, and has spent his career helping students — and the institutions that serve them — lead with cultural intelligence.

About On Campus, Off the Record
If you work in student housing, residence life, or higher education leadership, this show was made for you. On Campus, Off the Record is  the candid, peer-to-peer conversations that happen when the official channels go quiet. Hosted by Dr. Elizabeth Cox

Find us on Buzzsprout: https://oncampusofftherecord.buzzsprout.com/

Transcript

On Campus, Off the Record
Episode Transcript: Rejection Is Part of the Process — with Dr. Darren Pierre
Speakers: Elizabeth Cox (Host)  |  Dr. Darren Pierre (Guest)

This transcript was produced with AI assistance and edited for clarity. It may contain errors. For the full story, hit play — that's where the real conversation lives.

Oceanfront Setup And Guest Intro

Elizabeth  [0:08]
Welcome back to On Campus, Off the Record. I’m your host, Elizabeth Cox. And this episode happened in a place I never imagined, but kind of always dreamed of — the middle of the Caribbean Sea on a group vacation with our next guest. Dr. Darren Pierre is a lecturer in the Office of Global Engineering Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park, and he is considered a preeminent scholar in the field of higher education, leadership education, and student affairs. We sat down, watched the beautiful sea go by, and talked about his journey to becoming a professor, the universal definition of a leader, the power of rejection, and his new book, Considerations for Culturally Informed Leadership: Moving Toward the Future. So grab a drink and get comfortable. Let’s get into it. Did you always want to be a professor? Like, how did that whole thing start?

Rejection And The Belonging Mindset

Darren  [1:10]
No. I think I was going to go to law school. And then I was student government president. My advisor, Glenda — she said, I think you’re changing, used to be a lawyer. And she was always such a diplomatic, counseling-based person in her approach. She would ask you questions to get you to your own understanding. So when I asked, what do you think I should be doing? She said, I think you should go into student affairs. So I applied to the University of South Carolina and the University of Maryland. University of South Carolina was my backup school, and Maryland had this really high ranking. And anyways — I didn’t get into South Carolina.

Elizabeth
Wow.

Darren
I was devastated. So I called Maryland — I called the SJA office, gave my information. And the administrative assistant came back on and said, let me give you the information for John Williams. He’s going to be your advisor. And I said, this is amazing. When I got rejected from the University of South Carolina, all they did was give me a letter in the mail. At least Maryland, when you get rejected, they give you someone who can counsel you about how you do student affairs work without a master’s degree.

Elizabeth
Amazing.

Darren  [2:31]
That’s what I said to her. She starts laughing and says, no, he’s not your career advisor because you need him — he’s your academic advisor, because you’re going to come to Maryland. And that’s how it all started. A couple of weeks later, Susan emails me to fill out all this information for preview days at Maryland, where you come and meet everyone who’s going to be your cohort. She asked for interests, and I put long walks on the beach and music by Janet Jackson. Then I get to Maryland for preview days and I look at people’s interest sheets — and it’s things like high-achieving African-American males and their retention at predominantly white institutions. And then there’s me: Darren Pierre — long walks on the beach and music by Janet Jackson.

Darren
There’s a quote by Maya Angelou: I belong nowhere, I belong everywhere. The price is high and the reward is great. I’ve never felt like I belonged anywhere — in student affairs and higher ed. But the truth is, we belong everywhere. And the price is high because not everywhere am I accepted.

Elizabeth
Right.

Culturally Informed Leadership For Students

Darren  [3:36]
And not everywhere do people vibe with me. But the reward is great. So fast forward years later — finishing my PhD in Georgia, moving to Chicago — and I get a phone call from the department chair of the higher education program at Loyola. Ironically, I had applied to four PhD programs: Georgia, Boston College, Loyola Chicago, and GW. I got rejected from all of them except Georgia. And on the day I got rejected from those three schools — all on the same day — Loyola I loved, because John Dugan and Bridget Kelly, who I had known for over fifteen years at that point, were both professors there. So I thought I was definitely getting into Loyola. And Georgia was like — if I was going to be a nerd, go to Georgia. When I didn’t get into Loyola, I cried. I sat in my living room in San Francisco watching Oprah, eating a Whopper and a Coke. And then a couple of weeks later, I got into Georgia.

Darren
Fast forward — years later, I’m living in Chicago, and the department chair at Loyola, the program I did not get into, calls me and says his colleague John Dugan thinks they should have me as a part-time faculty member. I had just had a book come out — me and the wonderful Dr. Kathy Guthrie — on culturally informed leadership. There’s a lot of research on thinking about leadership, but the way someone is going to lead in Atlanta and the way they’re going to lead in Bogotá are going to look different. There are cultural considerations to keep in mind. And a lot of that existing research is aimed at people in mid-level management, C-suite — well into adulthood. So the intention behind the book was to ask: what if you are a second-semester sophomore from Marietta, Georgia, going to Emory, and you’re getting ready to study abroad in Madrid for a semester? You’ve never been abroad.

Elizabeth  [6:09]
Oh, interesting — yeah.

Darren  [6:10]
What are the things you want to keep in mind? What are the four stages of culture shock? How do you see yourself as a learner? So that when you get to Madrid, you’re not saying things like, wow, everybody in Madrid walks slow — which is a value statement. It’s a judgment, because slow is in comparison to how they walk in Atlanta. It’s getting you to unbridle those predispositions — this idea that the United States is the norm and everything else is measured against it. That’s no way to lead. Nobody wants to feel like they’re being judged. So the book speaks to those things and tries to help college-age students be powerfully prepared. And not only college-age students — we live in a global world. When people graduate from Emory, they’re not just staying in Atlanta.

Elizabeth
Yeah.

Darren  [7:38]
They move to London. If you’re in Atlanta now, you may not be in Atlanta tomorrow. So I believe the book will also be helpful for the recent graduate getting ready to do a six-month assignment in Singapore — thinking about how to do that powerfully, respectfully, in a culturally informed manner.

Elizabeth  [7:57]
I think that’s really cool. It goes back to the idea of — what are the mistakes you want to make that can teach you lifelong lessons, versus what are the things you can avoid before you go in?

High Context And Low Context Signals

Darren  [8:08]
Last year I was teaching a class in Sydney, and we had a guest lecturer who teaches in the business school at the University of Sydney. She had done work in China — she was in a meeting where they were evaluating a candidate for a role. Everyone was going around sharing their thoughts. And one person said, she had a pretty dress. And my colleague from Sydney thought — what does that have to do with whether she should be hired? What she came to realize was that the culture was one of politeness. It’s a high-context culture. In a high-context culture, rather than say I don’t believe she’s a good fit for the job, you say, I thought her dress was very pretty. Australia is a low-context culture. In that same meeting in Australia, they would have said directly, I don’t think she’s a good fit, or here are the things we should consider. They would have spoken without much pretense. Knowing those cultural signals — whether it’s the office chit-chat or the pretty dress comment — matters enormously. Because if you’re from the States, you might walk into an environment where everyone is just working quietly, no small talk, and think, do they not like me? Is this a chilly climate? When really, what’s informing their way of being has nothing to do with you — it’s cultural.

Elizabeth  [9:50]
Do you think there’s a universal definition of a leader — like, across the globe?

Darren  [9:54]
No. No, I don’t think there’s a universal definition. I wish there were. I use texts in my class whose definitions I agree with. Peter Northouse, one of the leading scholars of leadership, talks about leadership as a process occurring in groups. I absolutely agree with that. But I also honor that among the 7.1 billion people who reside on this planet, someone else may differ. I do believe that a definition of leadership that centers it as a process — occurring in groups, grounded in ethics, and focused on the elevation of the human condition — that is the type of leadership that will succeed now and into the future.

Elizabeth  [10:44]
Is there something the world is teaching your students when they walk into your classroom that you have to help them unlearn?

Breaking The Leadership Archetype Myth

Darren  [10:52]
That there’s an archetype for leadership. That I’ve got to be extroverted, tall, strong, a certain race, a certain gender, a certain socioeconomic status. That I can’t be bipolar and be a leader. That I can’t be working class and be a leader. And that’s a fallacy. So what I have to help students unpack is: you may have come from a society that told you, because you don’t fit the archetype, this isn’t for you. But I’m telling you — the battles you have to fight in this life, if you can have the efficacy, the belief in self... Malcolm Gladwell has a great TED talk where he says, listen, Goliath very well could have been a product of being a giant — someone with limited eyesight, with real limitations. But because he fit the archetype of what people thought a warrior should look like, they put him on a pedestal. And really, it was a meek man with a slingshot and five stones. I have students who come into my classroom feeling like that meek individual. If you don’t let the external forces take you off your own internal voice, the world will be shocked what you do with your one slingshot and five stones.

Elizabeth  [12:45]
Do you think we are raising good leaders in administration right now?

Darren  [12:56]
That’s a hard question to answer universally, because I’m sure there are spaces doing it well and spaces that are not. I believe we have the capacity to. But I am nervous we are not. We live in a country that is quite diverse. And you have some people who are prolific in their understanding of gender beyond the binary — the multiplicity of ways in which people can identify. And you have other people who are absolutely antagonistic to that. Both of them are in the higher education lexicon. If we are not adequately preparing educators to speak to both, we are doing an incredible disservice and will face extinction. Because while there are baby boomers in the world, I need to be able to speak to boomers just like I need to speak to Gen Alpha. The person who cannot figure out how to speak to the multiplicity of people will find themselves in extinction. I don’t care how prolific you are in speaking to one versus the other — if you cannot speak to both, at some point, you’ll find yourself there.

Elizabeth  [14:17]
I think that goes to everything you’re saying about the definition of leadership. If you’re a professor, you’ve got to be able to speak to the students who are really interested in your class and the students who aren’t.

Darren  [14:35]
Yes. People do not resist for resistance’s sake. They resist for fear of loss. And if I can understand that the person who is resisting what I stand for is not resisting just to be antagonistic — they are resisting because there is a fear of loss — then the question becomes not, why are you being so difficult? Why are you like this? Othering them. It becomes a conversation of: what are you afraid of losing?

Change Versus Transition In Real Life

Elizabeth  [15:06]
Right. As someone who focuses a lot on change and organizational change, that’s why I’ve been so interested in the transition of things. Because the change is just what we plan — I’m going to move this chair from there to there. But the transition is when you walk in and think the chair has disappeared and it’s gone forever. We just don’t do a good job of transition. We focus on the rational and the practical and we don’t deal with the human elements. And so no wonder people freak out. No wonder change fails. Because change is still a human process.

Responsibility And Student Affairs Attrition

Darren  [15:54]
And I think it goes back to that conversation about taking responsibility for our own lives. In student affairs right now, there’s a lot happening in the political sphere that has people in higher ed saying, let’s just throw our hands up because things are happening that are in resistance to what we’re trying to move forward. But what is really being called for is to say, how do I — in this powerful moment — take responsibility for what we’re doing? Fifty to sixty percent of new professionals leave student affairs in the first five years. That was happening before any particular administration came in. So this whole idea that the attack is just now happening — the attack has been from the inside for years, and we just haven’t had the space to speak truth to power. Your attrition did not start in an election year. It’s been happening. And so, the same way that an individual has to take responsibility in the midst of their sadness and frustration — not you, me. I am the reason I’m not going to class. I need to take responsibility. I honor that my feelings have shifted because of someone else’s behavior. I honor that the landscape has shifted because of policy. But some of the acts of today were already part of the acts of yesterday. And I can’t blame a doctrine for why things are the way they are. I need to look inward.

Elizabeth  [17:45]
Do you think of yourself as a leader?

Darren  [17:50]
Yes. I do. It took me a while to get to that answer. Because remember — Janet Jackson, long walks on the beach. Rejections. But every leader faces rejection. Every single one.

Elizabeth  [18:08]
Yeah. I mean, some of the greatest coaches in the world get fired.

Darren  [18:11]
They do. And they get paid a lot of money when they do — but they get fired. Whether it’s Oprah, who talks about being fired in Baltimore, whether it’s presidents who’ve lost elections — everybody in leadership has experienced rejection at one point or another. The important piece is: if you don’t think being fired or losing something is part of the leadership liturgy, then when it happens to you, you may say, well, I guess I’m not a leader. I got fired. But leaders get fired. Steve Jobs got fired. Leaders don’t always get elected. So there could be a listener right now who ran for student government and didn’t get it, thinking, well, I guess I’m not a leader. Look at the president of the United States — he must not be either, because he lost before he won. I have to shift the narrative of what a leader is. When I look at my lived experiences, I’d be like — oh, that was not leadership. But it absolutely was. It’s part of the process. The rejection from a job, the rejection in a relationship, the rejection from a position you sought — all of it is part of the process of becoming the leader you’re supposed to be.

Ocean Closing And Share Request

Elizabeth  [20:01]
Well, thank you, Darren. Thank you for doing this — as we sit here and look at the beautiful ocean and the birds.

Darren  [20:10]
I think this is the best place I could have ever done a podcast.

Elizabeth  [20:12]
I think so too. I think we should now go have a cocktail.

Darren  [20:16]
I think we should.

Elizabeth  [20:18]
And that’s a wrap on this one. There’s something about having a conversation like this with the sound of the ocean in the background that just hits differently. Thanks to Darren for joining us. He gave us a lot to think about — from what it really means to be a leader, to what rejection can actually teach you, and how higher education needs to do better when it comes to developing the next generation of leaders. If this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. I’m Elizabeth Cox, and this has been On Campus, Off the Record. The meeting after the meeting. See you next time.