Kelly Cherwin 0:02
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs Podcast. I'm Kelly Cherwin, the Director of Editorial Strategy, and today we are lucky to have a friend of the podcast, Matt Trainum, who is joining me today while Andy is out. Thank you, Matt, for joining me today.

Matt Trainum 0:16
It is a delight to be here.

Kelly Cherwin 0:17
You are typically on the other side as one of our experts, so it's nice to have you on this side of the table or this side of the microphone co-hosting with me today. Well, I have the pleasure of introducing someone instead of being introduced. That's wonderful. Today we're joined by our new expert to the show, Gretchen Bataille. And Gretchen's long career in higher education has included a variety of really, really astounding academic positions. Gretchen, it's amazing what you've achieved. You've been Senior Vice President for the American Council on Education before becoming the President of the University of North Texas. You also served as Department Chair and Senior Associate Dean at Arizona State. You've been Provost at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as Washington State University. Down in my neck the woods in the University of North Carolina system. You were Senior Vice President. You've been a faculty member for 20 years at Iowa State University, in addition to a variety of other roles. Today you are President of your own consulting firm. I'd love to hear a little bit more that you would like to share about yourself and just generally welcome to the show, Gretchen.

Gretchen Bataille 1:18
Well, thank you, Matt. And thank you for that lovely introduction. I think it's fair to say my career has been somewhat unconventional compared to other presidents you've probably had on the podcast. And that has provided me really with a wealth of knowledge about the diversity of higher education. My experiences inform the kind of advice I give to aspiring leaders. And so, I want to share a little bit of personal information with your listeners. You've summarized the positions I've had. But it really did all begin with me having only a master's degree and starting teaching at Iowa State University as an instructor and realizing that if I was going to stay in higher education, I needed to get a doctorate. Well, by then, I was a single mom with two little babies, and I could not figure out how in the world, at that time, I was going to be able to go back to graduate school. So, I looked at Drake University, which was 30 miles down the road in Des Moines. And they were starting a new doctor of arts degree, a Carnegie Mellon sort of invention that doesn't exist anymore. I don't think it disappeared. But I was able to get grants and start this new degree. Well, all of my colleagues said, you never get a job. And so, I just sort of have to laugh now because truly, that's what they said. No one's going to hire someone with this degree. And I got the degree. I moved up through the ranks at Iowa State, served as a faculty member, a program chair, took on state roles. I was chair of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. I was chair of the Iowa Humanities Board. And then I made a decision to move to California to follow my man and quit my job as a full professor. And everyone said, "Well, now you're never going to get another job because you don't quit a job as a full professor." And I began career in California at the bottom again, as an adjunct, Cal Poly Pomona. And I really learned a lot about how our profession treats temporary faculty, instructors, adjuncts. And that has really informed me as I'm working with universities and working with faculty to talk about what does that mean to be in that role where they're doing the bulk of the teaching. And so, that really was an extension of how my personal life dictated the rest of my career because I'd gone to California to join the man in my life, and he died shortly thereafter. Then my two children were in high school, and I decided, "Okay, my job now is to be sure they get launched into college, and I'm going to dedicate my career to higher education." And so, that's pretty much what I did. And I served in the leadership roles that you mentioned. And I went on, finally retired from the presidency at UNT, but then ended up with a registry appointment. And if your listeners don't know about the registry, that's also an interesting place for people who want to stay engaged. And I was VP for Academic Affairs at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Well, I knew nothing about fashion, except I liked clothes, but that's not a qualification for being a vice president of the Fashion Institute. But I had a great time there, then moved on to ACE, as you mentioned. And then for the past dozen years, I've been working with Barbara Kaufman at ROI, a consulting company that provides support for senior leaders throughout the US.

Well, obviously, as you can tell, I failed retirement several times, because, you know, after I thought I retired, I continued to work. And I did finally retire from consulting in January, sort of. But here I am, I'm still committed to my colleagues in higher education, and really excited to be part of this podcast series that will continue to grow the next generation of higher education leaders.

Matt Trainum 5:07
Well, Gretchen, we welcome you so much. Thank you for that wonderful background and bio. And I think Kelly has a really broad, open question for us to talk about today.

Kelly Cherwin 5:17
Thanks, Matt. And thanks, Gretchen. I must say, we are glad that you've dedicated your career to higher education. I'm sure you've affected many, many people over the years. So thank you for that. So today's question from our listener is: "How do I become less of a doer and more of a leader when there's so much work to be done?" Gretchen, what are your thoughts on this:

Gretchen Bataille 5:38
It's a really great question, because we all, because of how we are trained, really, how we're prepared in our educational journey, we tend to begin by taking orders, whether it's being a graduate student, being told what to do by a professor, being requested to serve on committees. And when we get into increasingly higher levels of leadership, I think we recognize that we're supposed to be delegating, and those positions require that we delegate, but we still want to be doing. And I think we have to look at almost everything we do and realize, you know, your staff may really like to see you pitch on things like moving day being out there helping the freshmen move their suitcases into the residence halls. But they also want to be sure you're available to address the complaining parent that they haven't been able to deal with, or that you really have the acumen to deal with the strike of food service workers in the cafeteria. They don't want to be micromanaged, and sometimes when you do too much, they sense that you're micromanaging them, you're doing their job. They want the permission, really, to do their own jobs. And so that really comes down to delegating. And I think you can then demonstrate your leadership in multiple ways. So again, being a doer and a leader and trying to balance those two things, you're going to be chairing a lot of committees. Have an agenda. Do not come in and say, 'what do we need to talk about today?' If you're the leader, your team wants to know, what is it that needs to be talked about today? You need to have an opinion on issues, but you don't necessarily have to voice it until you've heard what your staff have to say. Sometimes there might be a time issue, or you know you have no choice about actions. Be specific. Let them know. You know, we're not going to have time to discuss this issue because the board has just told us we have to do it. How are we going to do it? Instead of just sort of waffling around some things. Think about what you do and what you've delegated to others. You have to be informed. You have to gather all the information about issues, and you have to use your assistants and your staff to do the research. Don't assume everyone on your team is already informed. Usually, each team member has enough information to contribute to the decision-making, but they don't understand some of the big issues, such as the ramifications of the decisions that you're going to make. What will the response be from the staff association? What will the response be from the faculty senate or the board or the legislature? Right now, this is even more crucial. I mean, you as a leader are the one who has to sort of guide your team to recognize that some of the things they might have done two years ago, they can't do now. And while you might have agreed with them two years ago and you might agree with them today, now you're taking a different position because you're in that leadership position.

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Kelly Cherwin 9:24
So, Gretchen, you made some great points, and I know a lot of you were talking about delegation, and you mentioned the idea of micromanaging. I'm just curious your thoughts on where does this trust factor come in? Because delegation is not easy, and it takes time to build that relationship in order to trust the people that you work with. And I don't think anyone wants to be micromanaged and I don't think sometimes a leader naturally wants to micromanage them. But what are thoughts on how to build this trust so you can delegate easier?

Gretchen Bataille 9:57
Well, that's a great question. I mean, the trust goes both ways. Your team has to trust you, and you have to trust them. And my approach has always been to trust people until they prove to me I can't. And that's worked for me. And sometimes it backfires, because I, obviously in my career, had to trust a lot of people. And some of them weren't trustworthy. And then things changed. But in general, my approach, and the approach I recommend to folks is, particularly if you inherit a team, if you get a new position and you inherit a team, and you don't know these people, you only know their public face really, what they've presented to you at interviews, or what you see at the beginning. You have to meet with them, find out as much as you can about them, trust them. But as soon as they cross you, in any way, you have to have that tough meeting and say, it looks like we're not agreeing on something. Let's hash it out. And if you can't hash it out, it's time to move on for person. I really bristle when I think of particularly presidents, sometimes it's provosts come in. And all of a sudden, they're firing all the vice presidents, or they're firing all the deans, because they want to build their own team. Well, you can make that team your own team. And trust is really at the basis of it.

Kelly Cherwin 11:20
Thank you for that. And I'm guessing once you trust, then it's easier to delegate.

Gretchen Bataille 11:24
Absolutely.

Matt Trainum 11:25
I have a question outside of delegation. There's a pure read to the question that was submitted here, which is, I imagine someone maybe a mid-director level with minimal people to delegate to that simply saying the workload is so big, right? And, and how do prioritize? It's in this person's world, that would not be as much about delegation, but about what emails to ignore and not ignore, what work to do and what work to not do. Gretchen, you've had such a wide range of experience. What would be your guidance to someone sitting there going, I just can't get, inbox zero is never a goal. What do I do?

Gretchen Bataille 12:07
Well, I think that you do have to obviously prioritize and figure out what's important. And that comes through discussion and dialogue and making lists of what are the priorities. And by next week if you are in a position where you at least have someone reporting to you, I mean, if you're a leader of any sort, you've got someone reporting to you, have them working with you on a list of their priorities, and you check in with them every week. Find out what's been accomplished and why didn't it get accomplished. What stood in the way? Because then your role may be smoothing the way for someone rather than doing the work for that person. Because sometimes, I mean, I've had experiences where no one in that office will even talk to me about this issue. Well, that's when you have to make the call. Because you all know there are people who don't want to talk to anyone except the, whether it's the provost or the dean. And so they don't even respond when a chief of staff calls or when an executive assistant calls. And so that's when you really have to pick up the phone and say, I asked my assistant to contact you. She wasn't able to get this information. Can you help me here?

Matt Trainum 13:30
Right, right.

Gretchen Bataille 13:31
And smooth the way to get some of that done. I mean, in that sense, you're still a, you're a doer, but you're also a leader.

Matt Trainum 13:37
And I sense in there and that answer that that can apply to someone where they might be the supervisee as well, where they might be able to seek out to their boss and say, 'hey, I've got all of these things to do. Can we sit and talk about priority? Can we sit and identify what's most important?' For those that are listening to this, that might feel like they're in that other position, they can also be empowered. That's what leadership looks like in that role is to go help me prioritize this work.

Gretchen Bataille 14:03
Yep. Well, leadership is also helping make leaders. So in working with your staff, you want to teach them ways that they can lead.

Matt Trainum 14:11
I have one additional question. Gretchen, there is also for me in this question, there's an undercurrent about most important. And I have found that some emerging leaders, it's hard to say this really, it's hard to kind of acknowledge this out loud, but I find that some maybe not even emerging leaders, but we like the safety of the inbox. We like the safety of all of the easy to do work. I'm wondering if you have some guidance on how folks can break away from the easy to do quick response work, and the managing a meeting and get to the most important items that are on their plate that are in their work for the next semester. Just what's the guidance on finding what's most important? Because when I think about someone who's trying to be a leader and more of a doer, there's certainly something about finding what's most important. And sometimes I think we know what it is. We let ourselves also get buried under everything. So there's just a general idea there. That I want to present to you and see if you have some guidance and wisdom.

Gretchen Bataille 15:10
Well, I think it's fair to say that whatever I'm saying now in this environment we're in right now may not work as well as it did in the past, because part of the work I've done for the last dozen years is helping leaders, presidents, chancellors, provosts, figure out how to answer those questions. And we do it, ROI does it through retreats and interviews with everyone reporting to the administrator we're working with and asking them questions about their priorities. "What's the low hanging fruit here? What could be done?" And there are confidential interviews and things come up that the president will use the example of a president doing a retreat with vice presidents. President will say, "Well, no one's ever brought that up at a cabinet meeting." Well, because maybe your cabinet meetings don't allow for the free expression of ideas. Do you have a time during your meetings where you say, "what haven't we covered? What do we need on our next agenda? What are the big ideas and priorities that we need to pay some attention to and get the entire team on board?" Because being the leader and having your own ideas, in some cases, sure, it might work. You intimidate everyone and they, they just say, yes, sir, yes, ma'am, whatever, and do what you want them to do. But I think what you're getting at is, what's going to challenge and change an institution? And those are the big ideas. And they require teamwork. They require everyone being on the same page. It's sort of like leaving a meeting and saying, "All right. We all agreed that we're not going to push for this tuition increase." And you don't want to walk out of there thinking, and that gets back to trust as well, that your student affairs vice president is going to go around saying, "Well, here we go again. We need the money, and the president isn't going to support a tuition increase." So you've got to really work your team. And I don't mean that in a negative or a manipulative way. I mean, you have to work with your team in order to, to confront those big ideas. You can't do it, as you say, by just adding some more email responses to your list.

Matt Trainum 17:28
Thank you. That's great.

Kelly Cherwin 17:29
Thanks, Gretchen. Do you have a few other thoughts? And we'll kind of wrap this up.

Matt Trainum 17:32
Well, I guess my final thoughts about being the leader is you have to speak up. And right it's a difficult time to speak up. We've seen a lot of different responses across the country to recent actions by the administration. I think if you look around, and I don't know how much detail you want to get into, but you look at Harvard's president, he's frankly stated and restated his view of the critical importance of a university's autonomy. Princeton's president has spoken out about the importance of universities remaining true to their mission. Some university leaders that I've with are afraid of speaking out because they don't want to be viewed as the leader who destroyed an institution by not complying with federal orders. It really is a dilemma that can be described as a contrast between being a doer and a leader. But right now, I think they're one in the same. Leaders right now need to pitch in. They need to do what is necessary to ensure the university's continued success. Whether that means doing what Northwestern has done, and that is saying, we're going to find the money to continue our research. That was a bold move on the part of Northwestern's president. In the end, those actions, what you do, will define your leadership. And so it really brings together the doer and the leader, it seems to me. And the assumption that doing things rather than directing others to do things is not leadership is not the way to define the role of a leader. The leader has to be engaged, demonstrate ways to address the challenges of the campus, and work closely with the faculty, the staff, and the students. A leader shows strength as well humility. And they're both key elements, it seems to me, in the role of leadership.

Kelly 19:18
Thank you, Gretchen, for the conversation. I appreciate you joining us today. Thank you, Matt as well. If you have a question for Gretchen or any of our experts, please email us at podcast@higheredjobs.com or message us on X @higheredcareers. Thank you both for joining us today. And we'll see you next time.

Gretchen Bataille 11:38
Thank you