by Susan M. English, Janice M. Sabatine, and Judith A. DePalma
The role of the academic leader is demanding. It often encompasses administrative duties, committee work, student issues, as well as pressures to maintain scholarly activities and a teaching load. Often, faculty members assume an academic leadership position without receiving additional management or leadership training. Being highly skilled and proficient in an educational discipline is a key attribute of a successful academic, but may not be sufficient for a strong and effective leader. This blog post and our next one will describe how two key coaching skills, active listening and powerful questions, can be used by academic leaders to effectively lead faculty and staff, while reducing their own workload.
When coaching faculty, the academic leader provides assistance, support, and encouragement to seek and find answers by building a trusting relationship, actively listening, and asking powerful questions. As a coach, the academic leader does not have all the answers, but instead observes, brainstorms, and sets the stage for new actions and then supports faculty members and staff as they put these new ideas and actions into practice. An effective leader believes that those they lead have the ability to address and resolve their own issues. Using a coaching approach, an academic leader can help faculty and staff become more aware of their impact on others, take responsibility for their actions, learn from their experiences, and become more self-motivated.
Active Listening
The first step in developing a coaching approach to leadership is to be an active listener. Most people, if questioned, would attest that they are good listeners. Leaders should challenge their own belief by asking others to evaluate their listening skills. Helpful input may be obtained by asking the following questions in the style of a 360 assessment:
- Can you honestly say you felt listened to?
- Did you feel completely understood?
- Did my response seem to grow out of my listening?
- What actual behaviors indicated to you that I was listening?
- What can I do to improve my listening?
One thing that can be done to improve listening is to focus on paying attention and to practice specific observable listening behaviors. Paying attention is much more complex than it sounds and requires focus and patience. Key to attention is monitoring your own thought process so that you are listening to what is actually being said, rather than being preoccupied with developing your response. Staying curious enables the leader to search for meaning, rather than making assumptions and judgments about motivation and likely misinterpreting statements and intent. Probing deeper with the appropriate questions will help the leader see beyond the surface details to reveal the speaker’s underlying thinking and emotions and the impact these have on the speaker. Specific observable behaviors of good listeners are apparent in their body language, their facial expressions, and their eye contact.
Our society is now composed of an educated workforce, and people are paid to think, not just do. This situation is most evident in higher education. University and college faculty are highly educated and, in general, become experts in their particular disciplines. When academic leaders employ a coaching approach with faculty and staff they create a buy-in for the existing tasks or a new initiative, improve morale, increase motivation and accountability, and create a more collaborative faculty. A coaching approach results in faculty and staff being more vested in their work and the workload of the academic leader being reduced.
Our next blog post will address another key leadership coaching skill, asking powerful questions. Once again, many people in leadership positions would rate their ability to ask questions as superior. Why then do these same leaders admit that they sometimes walk away from an interaction with a faculty or staff member without all the information they need, or having assumed the responsibility for a task that rightfully belonged to the faculty or staff member? Asking powerful questions is effective and quite different from the way most people ask questions.
Susan M. English, OSB, EdD, PCC, is Co-Director of the Professional Coach Certification Program, Duquesne University
Janice M Sabatine, PhD, CSC, is President of Avanti Strategies, LLC and of the Pittsburgh Coaches Association; Associate Professor, Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions; and Faculty Member, Professional Coach Certification Program, Duquesne University
Judith A. DePalma, PhD, RN, is a Professor with Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions and Consultant, Avanti Strategies, LLC
Larry Lewis is the founder and president of Client Builder Sales & Marketing LLC, a company that provides practical, hands-on sales and marketing training to businesses and independent professionals. He has been a sales trainer for the past 15 years and has authored many articles for Dynamic Business, Smart Business News, Master Salesmanship, Sales Jazz and Staff Digest. He recently published his first book entitled Client Builder Selling.
