Author: Monica M Fochtman, PhD, CPRW

What would happen to “busy” if…

Posted by

3

Earlier this morning, I posted this on Twitter “In higher education, presence is more important than contribution, effectiveness, efficiency.” The glorification of busy is rampant. The American “busy” rhetoric stems from fear. If we are busy, then we are productive and therefore, valuable. Neither of these things are true. But we keep doing it, don’t we? We post on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn on and on and on. “Look at me!” “Look at me at this conference!”  “Look at me presenting this workshop!” Look at me writing this blogpost!” (irony anyone?)

Busy doesn’t equal productivity. Busy is just spinning wheels. Busy is for others, about others. And our value comes from who we are and the unique gifts and talents we bring, not a fancy Excel spreadsheet or working til 8pm every night. We need a workplace shift, a recognition and reward shift to productivity, accountability, impact, and efficacy. I bet that if we were judged on those things, then employee engagement and loyalty will increase. I want to be judged for the good that I produce, my outcomes, the things I create, the programs I make better, the relationships that I nurture. I do not want to be judged on how frazzled I look while trying to push paper.

I want to know what my employer believes and then I want to believe what my employer believes.

“If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood, sweat, and tears.” – Simon Sinek

I would suggest that this really is what most people are looking for. As humans, we are social creatures. We were designed to belong- to a cause, purpose, another person, a family, a group. We need each other. We are hungry to feel that we belong. Each of us has a sign around our necks that says “See me. Believe in me.” What are we doing to really honor this in ourselves, our colleagues, students?

What would happen to busy if we started working for belief, rather than a job/money? Of course, I need this job (kids, mortgage, retirement) and some of the time I enjoy it. But what would happen if instead of presence, just taking up space, I was compensated/recognized/rewarded for my impact? What if, in higher education we started rewarding efficiency and efficacy, rather than presence? I know for me, I would start giving my blood, sweat, and tears and not just my time.

No more fixing

Posted by

0

About two weeks ago colleagues and I wrote a post about Loving your work. It generated some interesting conversations on Twitter and continues to emerge in various Facebook groups, Twitter chats (#sachat), and professional conference backchannels (check out #ACPA15). Earlier this week I had a parallel conversation with a Nursing colleague. She has years of experience as both a nurse in practice and as an administrator.

We got chatting about students and why they are drawn to Nursing. I have had time to process our conversation. It is now one of my all time favorite conversations. I believe that every time the word nurse is mentioned, it can be substituted with higher education professional, student affairs professional, teacher, social worker…any helping professional. And the word patients can be substituted with students.

Most of our students are drawn to this selfless, helping profession for all the right reasons. They want to help people. But some students have failed in other fields and are coming to nursing because they are still damaged and broken and think that nursing will fix them. Your role as a nurse is to help patients. It is not a mutual relationship. You serve. Patients take. Your success and your joy comes from watching your patients heal. If there is drama in clinical, it’s because of you, not the patient. Nursing is a continuum- excellent to mediocre to bad- and you get to choose what kind of nurse you are and where on that continuum you want to be.

Whoa.

WHOA.

How many of us student affairs professionals go into this field because we want to help people? I raise my hand. I was an undergraduate student leader who wanted to do this for my life to help others have similar experiences. In and of itself wanting to help others is a good thing. But the help has to be about the recipient, not the giver.

I want to help people. This is about you as the helper.

I want to help people. Where is the want coming from? If we dig deep, how many student affairs professionals are here because we are looking to be fixed?

I want to help people. Better.

I want to help people. This is where we should all strive to be. Just as nurses need to be patient-focused, we need to be student-focused. The work that we do is about students and their outcomes, not our own.

If nurses care for patients while broken, their internal holes, their brokenness, will grow. The patient is there for him/herself, not the nurse.

The same with students.

If we come to our work broken, looking to be fixed, our students will drag us along with them. Because that is what they are supposed to do. It’s about them. Our work is not for mutual benefit.

Our work is not to fix ourselves through students.

Our work is not fix students.

Our work is to help students fix themselves.

LOVING your work

Posted by

3

This post was co-written by Kristen Abell, Tim St. John and Becca Fick after a lengthy Twitter conversation topic. You might find it cross-posted on their blogs, too.

Lately, we have been noticing several folks tweeting things about “reasons I love my job.” It made us think – are we setting up the expectation that you need to love your job to be good at it? Why can’t we say we enjoy it or like it or find meaning from it and that be enough? It all comes down to false expectations of what we should get from work and what we owe to it as a result. It seems like a very unhealthy relationship. Tim threw the initial question out on Twitter, and a conversation has now bloomed into a blog post.

When/Why did we start treating work as something that could be loved? And is this only something that’s happening online? We wonder whether this professed “love” has more to do with how someone looks online, their personal brand, than their true feelings about work. Maybe some people feel like they have to profess their love for their job in order to be taken seriously as a student affairs professional – as if they have to prove their dedication to the job and to the field.

It’s not a person, it can’t love us back. Why do we put so much into something, and what do we get back from it? This can set people up for failure and/or heartbreak. No job will LOVE you back. You can get fulfillment from it, and you can make an impact, but those do not equal love. It seems that some of us, as higher education professionals, have unrealistic expectations about how our employers and institutions will receive our efforts, our “love” for them. We seem to hear, “Love your job! Be passionate. If you do this, then all your needs will be fulfilled and you will be rewarded.” In reality, a job is a job. Yes, some can be more fulfilling than others, but it won’t love you back.

When you treat work as work, you tend to be a better self-advocate when it comes to promotions, time out of the office, saying no, etc. You also tend to take less of that home with you, knowing it will be there when you go back tomorrow. Are newer professionals even taught this? And who do we look to for our models?

When you are all student affairs all the time, you do a disservice to yourself, to your friends and family and to your students. That’s right – we said your students. Do you think they care if you were thinking about them at 2 a.m. if you can’t help them now because you’re completely exhausted and burned out?

So what do you think about “loving” your job – is it all it’s cracked up to be?