My First Three Mistakes

My entry into the life of a chair involved a baptism of fire.  Just as my predecessor stepped down and I took up the job, my department got dragged into a controversial project initiated by the university's president.  Shit hit the fan, and I was doing damage control from day one.  Here are three mistakes I made that increased the volume of the excrement I later needed to clean off the blades.   

Mistake 1: Believing that my relationships with friends in the department would not change. 
Before becoming chair, my best friends in the department, those with whom I most identified, were the rabble-rousers (among whom was my predecessor).  We took delight in keeping higher administrators, and other departments honest.  We read the fine print.  We remained vigilant.  Somewhat naively, I expected that these friends would give me a pass when I became chair.  Instead, in the context of this controversial project, they turned their scrutinous--I know, I know, that's not a word--eye upon me.  They asked accusing questions.  They didn't believe my answers.  They were skeptical.  Some of their questions suggested they didn't fully trust me.  Others exposed their deepest fears about my chairship.  Would I be fair?  Would I be aggressive enough?  Would I defend the department with the proper degree of valiance?  Would I, as a chair, remain a rabble-rouser, or cross over to the dark side of higher administration?  It is only fair, of course, that my friends might ask such questions.  But I was unprepared for them, and hurt by what they implied.

Mistake 2: Believing that bygones are bygones.
During my baptism of fire, faculty in one division of my department made wild, unsubstantiated, and inaccurate claims about the actions of a faculty member in another division of the department.  These accusations were related to and fueled by tensions within the department that predated my chairship.  They even predated my arrival at the university.  Since they predated my arrival, both as a faculty member and as chair, I assumed somehow that I wouldn't need to deal with them or take them into consideration as the department moved forward.  But I did. 

Similarly, my department had had, under my predecessor, rather strained relations with another department in our college.  Prior to becoming chair, I had attributed the conflict between our department and the other to a personality conflict between my predecessor and the chair of the other department.  And I had rather optimistically assumed the conflict between our departments would dissolve as soon as I took over as chair, and the personality conflict was removed.  But institutional infighting has a lot of momentum, it seems, and within a few days of my taking over as chair, the other department was interacting with me in much the same way it had interacted with my predecessor, despite my personality and history with members of the other department being radically different, and radically more positive, than those of my predecessor.  From the moment I took over the chairship, I was, in the eyes of faculty in the other department, no longer "that faculty member we like," but rather "chair of that department we don't." 

Mistake 3:  Being overly deferential to senior faculty
Being a chair is different from being a manager in a business in many ways, perhaps the most important of which is that the position generally revolves.  If you become chair, you are suddenly plunged into the role of supervising those who once supervised you.  Similarly, if you are a chair, you are likely to at some point be supervised by those you currently supervise.  One advantage of this arrangement is that the usual term limits prevent chairs from thinking there could be no comeuppance for their bad behavior.  But it's also awkward to become chair when your predecessor (or multiple predecessors) remain/s in the department.  Chairs tend to have rather strong convictions about how best to occupy the position and carry out its duties, and many of them have a hard time keeping those convictions to themselves.  Moreover, chairs are often chosen from the middling ranks of seniority, which means that chairs suddenly come to supervise their senior faculty, maybe even those most responsible for hiring them.  This results in a complicated dynamic, and during my baptism of fire, I erred by showing too much deference to my senior faculty, and even to my predecessor, and in so doing gave the impression both that I intended to lead as they might see fit, and that I intended to be led by them, rather than to provide some leadership for them, others, and the department.  It is important, of course, to demonstrate an ability and willingness to serve other members of the department, to learn from their experience, and to trust in their expertise.  But it is equally important to lead as one sees fit, to carve out one's own niche, and to improve upon the practices of the past when one feels one can.

Introducing...a chair

Yes, that's me.  A chair.  A static, stationary object.  One that moves very little.  Or maybe just swivels just a bit.  Except that's not the truth.  I am a chair.  A chair of an academic department.  A buzzing, whirling, barrel of motion, activity, and blunder.  And this is my blog.

I was not a reluctant chair.  I wanted this job.  I asked for it.  I took pleasure in the fact that others thought it would suit me.  But it has not been a bed of roses.  In this blog I metaphorically prune my bed of roses and pick at the thorns that sometimes lie under me, getting under my skin.  Hopefully, along the way, some beautiful garden might grow.