What are your secrets to a positive and productive work climate?

One significant communication challenge in many colleges and universities is silos that erect unnecessary barriers to collaboration across disciplines and functions. Organizational success—with student learning and success as the north star—is best served when there is collaborative communication that flows easily across departments and functions. If you are an administrator, look for silos and work to dismantle them while educating staff and faculty about why silos are a problem.

Leaders also should constantly be attentive to talents and skills of team members that might be of value outside of the specific role that an individual is in. A team member in marketing who has clear IT skills and wants to use them might be encouraged to join an important tech project either part-time or full-time for some agreed upon length of time. This kind of cross-functional work has value for the organization because the project gains talent and the team member becomes engaged and satisfied.

Appreciation is important at all levels. Post secondary education is full of mandates, limited resources, and conflicting priorities, it’s hard to know where to begin! Yet it is also full of hard-working, smart, talented people, devoted people eager to do the right thing. Send a morning or weekly email with an inspiring quote. Encourage shout-outs at the end of a meeting. Buy donuts for the break room for no reason. Slip a thank you note under an office door for something you noticed that would never make the board of trustees’ report. I practice all of these, not only for my people, but to keep me focused on the good we do, not just on what’s needed. And when practiced consistently, gratitude can be contagious.

What’s missing in this list is the understanding that difficulty and pain also needs to be faced and grown through in collegial relationships. Higher education and its pressures can mean that it is an environment of fear and insecurity, something we humans are ill equipped to handle well. The internal work of true self-reflection is needed; as a colleague of mine once said, “higher education seems to be a place where people are working out their neuroses”. While it is valuable to point out what you want to achieve and use terms such as “empathy” and “wellbeing”, without an understanding of trauma and unconscious patterns especially among leaders, we will keep making our positive lists and wonder why we do not achieve what we hope for.

Among the greatest barriers to positive and productive work climate in higher education, two include these: 1. Administrative bloat: The rising number of administrators compared to faculty for at least the last four decades. 2. The crisis of adjunct or non-tenure track faculty. These are paid less than tenure track, but often teach larger sections and grade more assignments; they are often restricted to working only part time so that universities can save by not having to offer full-time benefits. - Both of these are signs of mismanagement, but they have become so commonplace that they are difficult to challenge or reform. - Meanwhile, increasing numbers of students have come to question the value of higher degrees. A perfect storm.