Ainsely Carey: I don’t wanna assume I know everything. What should I know about?” And that took a life of its own, where I started talking to my colleagues all over the profession. But then I also started to explore the literature on this, and there was no higher education literature about executive transitions or leadership transitions and how to make them well. But I could find plenty of it on the corporate side. So in the corporate world, there’s a lot of discussion about executive transitions. Real scholars have written thoughtful pieces on this work, and I thought, “Hmm, there is a gap in our literature. There’s an opportunity for us to think about, um, corporate strategies and ideas in higher education.” Well, I knew automatically that sometimes the academy rejects business ideas in higher education. We shouldn’t be thinking like that. So I had to be thoughtful on how to massage the issues around executive transitions, vice presidents, presidents, provosts coming to new universities. Everyone is dealing with that, and how to lend advice in a way that was digestible in the higher education world.

Keith Edwards: Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW. I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Today we’re exploring executive transitions in student affairs. I’m joined by Ainsley Carry, who’s a former VP of Student Affairs at multiple institutions and editor of Executive Transitions in Student Affairs: A Guide to Getting Started as the Vice President.

I’m also joined by Stephanie Garden, former Vice President for Strategy and Impact at NASPA, and her research and consulting work focuses on student affairs VPs’ success at the cabinet level. We’ll explore the gap Ainsley saw between how corporate executives are onboarded and how student affairs VPs are or are not.

From more than 20 sitting and former VPs organized into topical essentials and real-world case studies to help a new generation of leaders navigate what may be the highest stakes transition of their careers. A recent survey and focus groups conducted by both of these folks provided insights we’ll also discuss on hot topics and really current things that folks are facing in the mayhem and chaos of leading higher education in this day and time.

Student Affairs NOW is a premier podcast and online learning community for thousands of us who work in, alongside, or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find details about this episode or browse the archives at studentaffairsnow.com.

This episode is sponsored by Evolve. Evolve offers four leadership coaching journeys designed to expand capacity and build capabilities, empowering courageous leadership to transform institutions and reimagine the future of higher education.

As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards. My pronouns are he, him, his. I’m a speaker, author, and coach. And I empower higher ed leaders to lead with and through the storm toward better tomorrows for us all.

You can find more about me at keithedwards.com. And I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of both the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s get to our conversation and our guests. Ainsley and Stephanie, welcome. Ainsley, let’s start with you.

Why don’t you tell us a little bit about you and your connection to the topic?

Ainsely Carey: Keith, first let me say thank you for having us today. This is a pleasure of mine. I’ve listened to your podcast many of times, and many of my colleagues have been on this show, so I’m excited to finally join them in this conversation.

A brief background on myself, and you’ve done a great job already doing some of this introduction. My story begins at the University of Florida, where I was there as a student athlete. And after a few years at the university, finally graduated, and then went to work into corporate America. I did not like it at all.

That experience catapulted me back into the university, and I said, “I enjoy helping young people make meaning out of life.” And my advisor, Simon Johnson, said, “Oh, sound like you’d be interested in higher ed administration with a student affairs focus.” All those words I had heard before, but I never put them together into a sentence, and I never thought they were a degree program.

So I pursued my master’s in counseling, finished that, and then I was encouraged to pursue a doctorate in higher ed administration, and worked around the country for the past 30-plus years in college administration, the last 18 years as a vice president for students at Auburn, University of Southern California, and last, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

So I’m excited to be here today. I have so many things I would love to share with our profession.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. Thank you. Welcome. And Stephanie, tell us more about you.

Stephanie Gordon: Thanks as well. I’d like to add my thanks for being with y’all today. Again, my name is Stephanie Gordon. I was an undergraduate student at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, as a first generation college student.

Never really thought about working in student affairs, and of course, similar to Aynslie, I didn’t know that was a career, but ended up being an RA, and did all the things that lots of student leaders did, and ended up working in admissions as an undergraduate, and fell into working into admissions.

And I worked in admissions as an as a new professional. Got my master’s degree in higher education administration at Harvard, and then worked at Colgate University in residence life, as many of us do. Worked at Colgate University, and then Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And then I had the opportunity to spend more than 20 years at NASPA, where I held all kinds of roles for 22 and a half years, and most recently as vice president for strategy and impact.

During that time, I worked part- partnered with volunteer leaders, boards, senior administrators, the NASPA Foundation, and corporate partners to work and worked with members and conferences and workshops really to focus on the profession. I was the main person who managed it, the leaders and learning process at NASPA so I worked with the competencies, the student affairs competencies.

And so now I recently founded my own consulting firm, The Compass Collective, where I’ve been working with nonprofits and a couple of campuses with strategic planning, organizational review, and operational plans to really try to help folks think about what they’re doing on campus and translate those things into action.

And for the last few months- … I’ve been really working with Ainsley delving into some interesting data on executive transitions.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. Perfect. That’s why we have you all here. This is awesome. That’s right. True confession, this book came out in 2013. I had not seen it, heard about it, or read it.

Yeah. And I just recently came about this as I’m working with a lot of senior leaders in my own work and as a coach and through our Evolve program, which works with a lot of senior leaders. And even though it is a little dated, it was really powerful really helpful. Didn’t feel dated as I read it.

Felt like it had just come out. And I just found it really engaging and helpful, and I was just like, “Where has this been my whole life, and why isn’t everybody reading this?” One of the gifts of being a host of the podcast is when I come across things like that, I go let’s have the conversation,” and then find out there’s a, the whole research project that Stephanie’s a part of and Ainsley.

And we were talking before we hit record about focus groups and conversations, so this is a very… Even though the book has been out for 13 years, this is a very active and alive project that both of you are working on. In the 2013 book Ainsley, you observe that 40 to 50% of new corporate executives fail within two years That’s a pretty stunning number, and it’s usually from misreading the demands of the new role rather than lacking the skills or the competence.

Which is a very expensive error for those individuals and for those organizations. And then in higher education, we do an even worse job preparing and developing our senior executives. I find this very ironic ’cause the whole purpose of higher education is learning, development, and growth. And then when it comes to our leadership, we don’t do any of that.

We select them, and then we hope we made a good choice. And if we did, great. And if we didn’t, then we get rid of them, and we hire a search firm, and we pay all this money to do it all over again. So this notion that higher education is really focused on learning and growth, but then we don’t engage in learning and development for our senior leaders, the learning paradox.

You even suggest onboarding yourself, right? There’s such a dearth of development and growth for senior leaders that the second chapter, the first kind of, main content chapter is on onboarding yourself. It’s how have you seen this gap play out in student affairs, both in your own roles, in the authors in the book, and then in the time since this has been published?

My guess is you’re paying attention to this dynamic even more

Ainsely Carey: keith, let me add some background to that. So it was 2010, 2011-ish I was making the transition between one vice presidency into another vice presidency. And before I arrived, I thought about what would I do different in the next role?

What would I think about differently? So I was very reflective, very intentional about the transition. I knew the first thing that I could not do was to copy and paste what we did here and hope and pray that it works there. So I started looking into the literature, calling some sitting vice presidents and saying, “Hey, I’m getting ready to make a transition.

I don’t wanna assume I know everything. What should I know about?” And that took a life of its own, where I started talking to my colleagues all over the profession. But then I also started to explore the literature on this, and there was no higher education literature about executive transitions or leadership transitions and how to make them well.

But I could find plenty of it on the corporate side. So in the corporate world, there’s a lot of discussion about executive transitions. Real scholars have written thoughtful pieces on this work, and I thought there is a gap in our literature. There’s an opportunity for us to think about corporate strategies and ideas in higher education.”

I knew automatically that sometimes the academy rejects business ideas in higher education. We shouldn’t be thinking like that. So I had to be thoughtful on how to massage the issues around executive transitions, vice presidents, provosts coming to new universities. Everyone is dealing with that, and how to lend advice in a way that was digestible in the higher education world.

So that’s the philosophy behind the, the orish- original push for the book. Now, I wanna go to this conversation you had about onboarding yourself. I realize that your university, as you accept the new job and they say, “Congratulations, you’re our new vice president, we look forward to you starting on, September 1st, and here’s everything that you need,” included in everything that you need will not be an onboarding plan.

You have to design that for yourself. I found out that human resources, or HR, is typically the university’s point person for Onboarding for human resources is compliance. So they’re focusing on your ID, your Social Security number, your address, your date of birth, which state are you moving from, are you coming with partners, what insurance you’ll be signing up for.

All of those things are compliance issues. They’re not helping you dive into the issues of the portfolio that you are joining, personnel issues, legal issues, challenges, opportunities, funding deficiencies, structural deficiencies, everything that you are about to explore that will give you the challenges in y- your first 12 months.

No one is talking to you about that. No one is getting you ready for that. You can ask the questions during your interview process, but you will likely not get the full answers. So you have to take control of your own onboarding, and that means reaching out to people days before arrival, setting up phone calls with the key members of your staff, hosting conference calls with your leadership team and perhaps your supervisor and other vice presidents, visiting campus, walking through campus, meeting with staff members.

So I’ve outlined a kind of T-minus 30 days before arrival where you have to get serious about onboarding yourself. I even encourage asking for a SWOT analysis or conducting a SWOT analysis from a distance, sending everyone a few questions, asking your team to respond to those questions. So thinking about onboarding is intentional.

It can’t be something that you do by accident. And as soon as you arrive, within that first six months, try to host a retreat where you bring everyone together and understand the critical ideas that we should all move forward on in the first 12 months. But onboarding yourself is your responsibility.

Until universities start to make this a true part of the employment enrollment package, it… You have to do it yourself.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. So it shouldn’t be this way, but it is, and so how do we navigate that until those things change? That’s a super helpful framing. And Stephanie you were at NASPA when this book was published by NASPA and- as you mentioned in your introduction worked with a lot of senior leaders at NASPA over that time- … both in giving them awards and recognition and speakers and all sorts of things, but also in their professional development.

And I know in, in NASPA you served in so many different roles that you were even a consultant through NASPA, and I, I- my guess is you got a lot of panic phone calls. “What do I do?” Sure. “This is… is this the way it is?” And now you’re really engaged in this in your own consulting work now-

Stephanie Gordon: … And

Keith Edwards: interviewing these folks. How do you see this, and how do you see it shifting?

Stephanie Gordon: I think that this is the key to the success of vice presidents across the country.

The… I think one of the things Ainsley said was really key. The executive leadership part of the role as a vice president is the business of student affairs, is that executive nature. And while we don’t necessarily like to say that our organization is it- the higher education space is a business, it is.

We have customers, we have finance, we have the, the, the financial aspect of higher education is key to b- our success, and being able to be successful as an organization is is a, a place where we wanna make sure that we s- are surviving as a small college or a large institution. Those vice presidents have to be the most successful on the cabinet.

And at the Institute for New Vice Presidents for Student Affairs every year in the fall, the NASPA hosts the Institute for New Vice Presidents, and that is the key for them. They’re… They have to focus on understanding their pol- the politics of their campus, understanding how to onboard, understanding the communication structures within their institution, understanding the enrollment, the data, how their president or provost likes to have information brought to them, the talent management of the organization, how financing works for the building process for facilities, auxiliaries, the legislative issues, the compliance.

It’s every aspect of the institution, down to the academics with the provost. So you’re not just thinking about the student experience. You’re thinking about every aspect of it, from the financial and the executive l- leadership aspect. So that onboarding is not just about understanding the, your own division.

It’s understanding the entire institution. And so ho- hopefully that that aspect of onboarding is from soup to nuts, is understanding the politics down to the day-to-day of the operations of the institution

Keith Edwards: I think

Ainsely Carey: Evolve- Can I add to this?

Keith Edwards: Go ahead.

Ainsely Carey: Can I add? They are h- hiring a vice president. So they’re not hiring an entry level employee or a mid-level employee.

You are an executive, and you have been selected because you meet the educational background, you have experience. Sometimes you were previously sitting vice president. So don’t expect a lot of hand-holding. They are bringing in an executive leader, and it is your responsibility to figure things out. So I don’t want to create the expectation that universities aren’t doing enough.

Universities have thoroughly vetted the incoming vice president, and it is your responsibility to figure out all of the things that Stephanie just outlined. It’s your responsibility to take the time, to pay the attention, to drill down, to read everything that you can, and really get on board. The challenge in the first 12 to 18 months is that everybody around you knows more than you-

About the institution.

They know where the bodies are buried, they know where the issues are. So it’s very easy for you to come in as a new vice president and see a structure or system that is totally misaligned. It might be even something that’s harming students, or it might be a personnel issue that you’re saying, “These two shouldn’t be working together.”

And then you go about fixing that and ending that, and you have just stepped on a landmine.

That’s the challenge in the first 12 to 18 months, that you don’t know the sacred cows of the institution. For example, I came into some institutions that had dangerous student traditions, things that had been going on for decades, and every year students would get injured in this tradition, but it was such a strong tradition at the university.

I raised my hand and said, “It’s time to end this, folks.” Guess what they’re asking me to do? Get out of here.

So I do think it is critically important that as you’re coming on board, you pay attention to every detail, and take that first year to listen.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. I’m struck as you’re both talking about the, the issues and the challenges.

Very little of it is connected to student development theory- … to student life and the student experience. Not that those things aren’t important, but at the executive level, you’re at a level above there, whereas you’re mentioning finance, legal issues, personnel issues. If those things are not tended to, then the folks doing the student development theory work, doing the, the student learning work, the student success work, aren’t able to operate.

And one of the things that I see in Evolve- is the difference between director level leadership, AVP level leadership, and VP level leadership. And most people progress through that, and if they’re really successful. But then when they move into this next level of leadership, they keep doing the thing that made them successful at the last job, and as you’re shaking your heads, it doesn’t work.

Yeah, that’s right. And so how do you go, “All right, I moved from this level to this level. I’ve gotta let go of what made me good at this and got me the promotion.” “I have to get good at a whole new thing,” right? I go from being a really good project manager great at my annual reports and meeting my annual goals as a director.

Now I’m AVP- And I gotta connect all the dots, and how do I do that? And

We were just telling a story about someone who says, “I’m responsible for parking every year during move-in, and I gotta make parking happen. But parking doesn’t report to me, the police don’t report to me, move-in doesn’t report to me, the residence halls don’t.

I just gotta make it work,” right? Yeah. So there’s responsibility without authority. And at the VP level, some of the issues you’re talking about, and that vision and culture building too. And I think the things that have worked for us are the hardest things-

…

Keith Edwards: For us to let go of, right? Sure. If we were terrible at those things we’d go, “Oh, great.

I don’t have to do that.” But we usually don’t get promoted. So the- Well- Stephanie, I wanna continue with you a little bit here. You’re now working, the book came out in 2013, you’re now working on this potential new publication- … on adding value as a new vice president. So sticking in this transition, new vice president, but adding value which is really undergirded by these focus groups and these interviews and this research and this data that you’re both engaged in collecting.

And you hope that this will be out in 2028, which sounds like a Star Trek year, but is really not that far around the corner. What, as you’re having these conversations, as you’ve observed from your role in NASPA and now your role in this consulting and these conversations you’re having, what are you learning and observing about executive transition?

Stephanie Gordon: I’d say, similar to what you said earlier, not a lot has changed in the context of w- of the onboarding or the, the let’s be a new vice president, we’re coming into this role we’re having a new opportunity to be in a student-facing role. But what has changed is the environment.

There’s so much that’s changed. The, the politics are constantly moving underneath our feet. The the finances are change- changing constantly. And the executive relationships are changing. The organizational structures are changing constantly. The politics of the organization, finance and budgets are changing, and the data stories are changing.

Instead of just saying, “We’re keeping our students,” you have to say… You have to be able to tell the story with data. You have to have an understanding and demonstrate ROI in a way that we didn’t have to do that 15 years ago. And so now we’re we’re expected to understand that pipeline. We’re expected to understand how the budget works differently.

And every institution is different in how they manage money. So if you understood it at one institution, when you get to this new institution, you might have to understand it very differently. And every state is different. Red money and green money, black money and purple money. You may have a different way of managing at every institution.

And those boards or governing boards or faculty council or not faculty council, all of those are different as well. So as you’re navigating those spaces it is something you have to learn and understand, and it’s not just how you’re doing it. And I love what you mentioned about what you did well as an AVP or what you did well as a director.

That famous is it Malcolm? No. Let’s see. It’s Marshall Goldsmith. Yeah. What You Got You Here Isn’t What Got… I- What Got You Here Isn’t What Will Get You There book. It’s one of those fundamentals that you have to have on your bookshelf. We have to change what we’re doing at that executive leadership level to understand what will change that.

So I think that’s some of the, the understanding of a vice president at this point. And I’d add that you don’t have to know everything. You have to know who to hire and how to ask the right questions of those people to get the right information. So if you have a, an amazing director of counseling or if you have an amazing AVP who’s doing the right things in fraternity and sorority life, you have to make sure you have the right team in place who can get you the information on a dime so you can answer those questions right away.

Keith Edwards: And as you’re talking with current vice presidents, Are there… obviously there’s new challenges. AI wasn’t a pressing thing on the doorstep. We weren’t worrying about a new dear colleague letter every, every three months. The context is really different.

But are you seeing the experience of being a vice president really shift?

I think of terms of post-COVID, which is not really post as we see an insurgence COVID, pre-COVID and that sort of spans your time from NASPA, out of NASPA. How, what shifts have you seen in the VP role in that time?

Stephanie Gordon: There’s a lot of folks who retired after COVID. So we are seeing a, a significant number of new vice presidents in this last five to 10 years, and particularly the last five years, who were AVPs for a short period of time. So they’re new vice presidents with a shorter period of time as an AVP, so they’re- they’ve got a shorter tenure of leadership within their own organizations.

And so they need a little bit more collaboration and networking time. So ACPA, NASPA, and other organizations, those networking opportunities are even more important, and that’s what we’re hearing in these focus groups. Time together is very important, and those funds for professional development keep getting cut, which is also very difficult.

So the, the networking opportunities in the local spaces, local state organizations or the institutional type senior vice president groups like the AUs or the local small college groups that are get- that get together are very important for those vice presidents because they learn from one another.

And those are… That’s really important because their tenure in, in, in their vi- their AVP roles were not as long, and so now they’re vice presidents and they’re learning together. So those are some, some challenges I think that we’re seeing in that space. And also I think AI is challenging because they’re trying to figure out how to use it within their, in their roles, and also how to support their academic colleagues within the student conduct space.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. Now-

Ainsely Carey: Stephanie, if I can add. If I can add to the-

Keith Edwards: Let me just set it up, and then we’d love for you to add. But by my track, Ainsley, you’ve had two, maybe three, maybe two and a half transitions since you wrote the book. So you maybe blessed yourself or cursed yourself, depending on the day, of writing a book on executive transition, and then- not writing, editing, but r- really leading this and really thinking about this.

And so you became an expert on executive transition in student affairs, and then you got to do it at least two, maybe three times. What’s emerged for you in both in your own experience and your scholarship and, of course, talking with colleagues and being involved in the profession in that time?

Ainsely Carey: Keith, whenever I am struggling with something, I try to write about it. That’s the only way for me to figure out- … how to solve it. And I ha- I realized that if I’m struggling with it, others might be struggling with it. Yeah. So I go to NASPA and say, “Hey, this is something I’m struggling with. Are others in the profession also wanting advice on this?

Let’s collaborate and pr- and publish something on this.” So that’s precisely how Executive Transitions was born, and a number of other publications. Me trying to figure something out on my own, and then deciding that this may be a solution for others, and not taking it for granted. But what I have seen that I’d add to Stephanie’s list of what has changed over the past 15 plus years one, for example, the risk of the new incoming vice president.

So search firms are evaluating risk for that new vice president joining that institution. We have seen many new executives enter universities, and then suddenly something shows up in social media and the university has to reverse course on a new executive they just hired. Sometimes it’s by that executive’s doing, or sometimes it’s a group outside who’s decided they’re gonna dig up a speech or an email or a conversation or a publication.

So things that used to be praised, like our scholarship, are now threats to you stepping into a vice presidency in different states. And that’s real. So what is now being evaluated is that incoming vice president’s risk to the university. It’s completely different. You may be- … qualified, have all the education and experience needed, but now certain publications could pose a risk to you getting a job at a premier institution in different states around the country.

That’s important. Something else that has changed

Keith Edwards: is how we dig up- let me just interject there. That, that seems really true. It worries me because it seems to make our executive leaders in higher education more conservative, and I don’t mean ideologically or politically, but just like- … don’t speak out- Be safe, say something neutral or vanilla at a time when we need bold leadership and innovation and advancement.

So that’s strikes me as true and troubling, but go on.

Ainsely Carey: Yeah, th- there is a concern, and I do think now is that pivot moment when institutions and executives have to make decisions about what i- what will be their thought leadership, and I think that’s the second thing that has shifted in the past 15 years.

I remember 15 years ago we weren’t talking about LinkedIn and X and Slack and social media platforms as a part of the search process. But when I talk to search firms today, and your name is submitted or nominated for an executive leadership position, before they look at your resume, they go to your LinkedIn profile, and they wanna know what you’re talking about, what type of thought leadership are you sharing, and does your thought leadership pose a risk to their client, the institution?

So that’s why I’ve created space for executives to think about their thought leadership and how they can express themselves. But also, the other thing that has shifted, we have to pay careful attention to our own values. What do you value as you pursue the search process? And you might have to say no to some roles, or you might have to say no to some institutions.

If you cannot express your values in that state and that institution, it is not the place that you want to be an executive leader. It’s… Few things are harder than doing the job day to day, but having the inability to say the things that you believe and support the students that you believe need support.

So the biggest shifts I’ve seen is the risk profile of institutions and how they evaluate candidates, what thought leadership means in the social media world, and how to use your thought leadership as a leverage to advance your career, and then more importantly, your values clarification. What are the values that help me make this decision about whether to accept this role or not?

I grew up in the South. I love living in the South. I still value my family and friends in the South, but I know the thought leadership that I express is against the law in some southern states. And I have to decide whether I would pursue a role in those states or not, just as they are deciding whether they would consider me for an executive leadership role because I’ve published on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

I can’t retract those things, and I wouldn’t. I believe those things remain important to higher education. But in some states, that’s now against the law.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. That’s a deal breaker.

Let’s see if we can try and cook all of this more than a decade of thinking and scholarship and writing and listening and talking and experience down, We’ll do two hypotheticals.

One on a new VP at a new institution, one at a new VP at the same institution, so someone moving up. We’ve invited each of you to take a lead. So Ainsley, let’s say I’m a new VP at a new institution, and we got to have breakfast. What would be a few key things if I said I’ve never been, worked at this place.

I’m new. I’m really excited. If I’m honest, I’m a little nervous. Help me out.”

Ainsely Carey: This piece of advice is gonna sound a little bit like the advice they give people who are working in real estate. Location. I- my piece of advice here for the new VP is listen. The first thing that I do in my first year, I ask that university or my new supervisor to give me grace to spend my entire first year listening.

Don’t launch a new strategic plan, don’t reorganize the organizational portfolio, don’t move staff around, don’t redo my budget. I just wanna listen for a year. And I did that when I joined the University of British Columbia. I spent an entire year asking students, faculty, and staff five questions. What’s working?

What’s not working? What must we stop doing? What must we retain no matter what? And which questions are we not asking you that you wish we would ask? And I listened to that for an entire year, hundreds of students, dining halls- What’s great about

Keith Edwards: a podcast is people can rewind and listen to those again and write them down.

Ainsely Carey: What’s working, what’s not working, what must we stop doing, what must we maintain, and what questions are we not asking you? And after a year of listening, students, faculty, staff, the themes became crystal clear. Not only did I understand the symptoms that we were seeing, I gained an understanding of the root cause.

So I wasn’t wasting time responding to symptoms. We spent time examining the root cause and fixing the root cause. And this is how we advanced our work in student health, by really understanding the root causes of what was making student counseling services take so long to complete, why it took so long to get students the services they needed for mental health counseling.

When we understood the r- the root cause, we were able to create more effective solutions. The other thing that listening does, it helps you build the social capital that you need to make difficult changes. People don’t care what you know until they know that you care. So listening for a year helps you build the social capital, helps you understand the real cause of the issue, and then it gives you the grace to make really difficult decisions.

So people can’t say, “He doesn’t even know what he’s fixing.” Because I spent a year listening to you. I asked you three, four, five times, “Help me understand this better.” So at the end of the year when we started making those transitions, people said, “It may not have been the decision that I made, but I understand how he got here.

We have listened to this.” Yeah. So I think that’s really important.

Keith Edwards: I think it’s really wise because all those things you mentioned might be tempting, new strategic plan, personnel moves, reorganization. That’s great to start thinking about in year two after you’ve done the listening and really understand the context.

So if listening- Let me add a ca- caveat … is tip n- one, two, and three, what might be four and five, right? If it’s listen, what might be four and five?

Ainsely Carey: Yeah, so I’ll add a ca- caveat to this, that listening does come with a caution, right? If the roof is on fire, you don’t wanna spend a year listening to that.

There are some things that you will need to take action on, and be prepared to take action on that using your best analysis, bringing as many voices to the table, and take swift action to respond to something that needs to be taken action on. My other tip that I would offer is to give more than you take.

Build relationships with your academic partners and your VP colleagues. One of the challenges in student affairs and for all vice president roles, we can become really siloed, where we are disconnected from fundraising, and facilities, and the provost’s office, and the academic mission of the institution.

In fact, student affairs needs to be embedded in every aspect of the institution. And sometimes that requires giving up something, giving up a facility, deferring funding on an, on a capital project that your team really wanted, giving funding to an initiative that is way outside of student affairs. Build partnerships in that first year that make you and your portfolio an asset to the institution rather than something that just draws in resources.

Stephanie Gordon: Yeah.

Ainsely Carey: And then the last thing that I’d add, find ways to add value immediately. Find the things by listening that you say, “I can fix this. I have a solution to this.” You wanna be the person that brings solutions to the president, not just identifies more problems. So by adding value in your first year, it builds your credibility, builds your social capital, and helps the sustainability that vice presidents need to take risks in year two, three, four, and the remainder of your career.

You have very few bullets to use in your first year, but you can use them in the second and third year if you’ve done your homework in year one.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. This is great. Go ahead. This advice reminds me of Patrick Lencioni who wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He’s talking about as executive leaders, your first team has to be the other executive leaders.

It can’t be the team that you supervise. You’ve gotta… Otherwise- Exactly … you just become a, a fiefdom competing with the other fiefdoms. Yeah. Which we don’t want. That’s right. So how do you start to see that? And that point is mixing up. All right. S- I’m gonna, I’m gonna- … Stephanie, do you wanna add anything to that before I switch the question?

I

Stephanie Gordon: do. I do. I’m sorry. Good.

Keith Edwards: Go for

Stephanie Gordon: it. Totally gonna ju- I’m to- totally gonna jump in. I agree with you wholeheartedly that the, on, on almost all my focus groups, both in my dissertation, which my dissertation was all about executive leadership and being successful as vice president, and these recent focus groups, is that your team’s now your cabinet as a vice president.

Your team, yes, your team is your division, but your team is now your cabinet. So as a new vice president listen, yes, but get fluid in your finances, align with your president and know what they really care about. Make sure you understand the informal relationships. Who’s the person who knows everything at your institution?

Is it the mail person? Is it the executive assistant to the president? Who are the people who know those things? And know that the common thread is about relationships and credibility, and the tasks come after that. Sorry. I just wanted to make sure. As the new as a new person, those are some- Yeah

of the things I wanna add.

Keith Edwards: Absolutely. Okay. Now I wanna have breakfast with Stephanie. And now I’m in a different situation. Stephanie, I’ve been promoted to the VP at an institution I’ve been at, let’s say, 10 to 20 years. So I know where all the bodies are.

Some of them I’ve put there.

What advice would you have for me as an as an internal candidate moving into this new seat as the vice president?

Stephanie Gordon: Sure. Sure. There’s a few things I’d say drawn on watching some various VPs navigate this exact transition. So first, don’t assume people already trust you just because they know you.

Ainsely Carey: Yeah.

Stephanie Gordon: I’ve heard this described directly. Half the team feels like they already know this new VP, and half are wondering, “Wait a second, she’s really in charge now?”

“

Stephanie Gordon: Who do I listen to?” You’ve already they already have to figure out okay, my title’s changed, and they don’t really know. They have to figure this out.

Second, pay close attention to those who maybe wanted the job but didn’t get it. They might say all the right things and still struggle to really get behind you. It’s worth watching that early rather than assuming the goodwill behind it. Third, use institutional knowledge. U- use all that culture and institutional knowledge as an advantage and not as a shortcut.

They, usually you understand a lot of what’s going on within that institution, the culture, the politics. Use that leverage, especially with the people with whom you already have relationships, but don’t let that stop you from relearning all the things you didn’t already know, because there’s a lot that you probably don’t know.

You were involved and focused on the things that were your responsibility, but a lot of the things that you weren’t in the day-to-day, you will now n- now need to understand from the people who that is now their day-to-day. And the things you didn’t previously touch, like finance or board relationships, which trip up most people, even those who come in externally those things are going to be things you need to learn about in and out.

So the short version here is that the internal promotion gives you context, but not automatic authority. So you still wanna reestablish those relationships with all of your colleagues and also those people with whom you already had great relationships and then of course the cabinet because those are times that you you didn’t have those relationships before,

Keith Edwards: yeah. I love that line- Stephanie … of use your insider access and knowledge as an advantage but not a shortcut. That’s just packed with wisdom there. Ainsley, what would you offer?

Ainsely Carey: Yeah, I would add to that to drill down on one of Stephanie’s points already there’s nothing more dangerous than the person who thinks they know for sure So because you have been there so long, you think you know for sure.

Almost you have to unlearn what you think you have already learned because it is actually a blind spot.

Because you think, “I know how this works, and I know why this works,” you don’t do the homework necessary to understand the root cause. You may know the history, but you don’t know the root cause and the symptoms of what’s going on.

So you will ignore things, saying, “Oh, this happens every year. This is a trition- tradition that we always do,” and that’s your blind spot. “Oh, we’ve never done this before, so we’re gonna stop it immediately,” that’s your blind spot. So your institutional knowledge sometimes serves as a blind spot. So I would encourage, internal candidates, do everything that you can as if you were entering this space for the first time as a new candidate.

Oh. Meet everyone, have lunch with everyone, listen to student leaders. Because three weeks ago, these were your colleagues, these were your peers, these were people that you met with one on one a- and complained about the boss with. Now they are suddenly your executive colleagues. So it’s incredibly important- And you’re the boss they complain about.

And you’re the boss they’re complaining about. So it’s incredibly important to enter this space as if you’re a first timer here. Yeah. As, as difficult as that may be, but there’s nothing more dangerous than thinking that you know for sure exactly what’s going on. Give yourself the grace to unlearn it and relearn the experience.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. This is juicy and full of wisdom. But we are running out of time. So this podcast is called Student Affairs Now. We always like to end with this question about what are you thinking, troubling, or pondering now? And also if folks wanna connect with you, where might they be able to do that? So Stephanie, we’ll begin with you.

What are you pondering now?

Stephanie Gordon: Okay. So what I’m thinking about right now is the gap between what student affairs is being asked to prove and what they’re actually resourced to do. So programs like coaching and advising are often the first to be cut because they’re labeled as discretionary or something nice to have, but even though they’re driving really out- the outcomes and the ROI that we really need.

Right now I’m working with campuses that are translating that good support into data to try to talk about those stories and that they, folks can defend at a budget advice, at a budget meeting. So my advice- … to student affairs leaders is to stop treating strategic planning as a once in a decade event, and really try to make it a living practice so- they can make sure that they have that conversation and those stories to tell at the budget table. So if folks wanna get in touch with me, it’s LinkedIn. So we’ll see you there.

Keith Edwards: Awesome. And Ainsley, what are you troubling now?

Ainsely Carey: Yes. I am diving deep into helping aspiring vice presidents navigate the executive search process.

I’ve been a three-time sitting vice president, and one of the things that has never changed is that the employer and the search firm has the advantage over the applicant. The applicant applies, waits for a call or an email, and waits, might get a Zoom interview, might get the job, great, and if they don’t get the role, then they never get any feedback to help them improve for the next chance.

I wanna decrease that gap. I wanna be the coach that helps aspiring vice presidents get the information that they need to be successful, if not in this search, but in the next search. So ASCEND is an institute for aspiring vice presidents to help them navigate the executive search process. I’m not doing leadership development, skill management, crisis management.

All of those things happen at NASPA and ACPA type institutes, and they do a really great job. I’m laser focused on helping aspiring vice presidents navigate the executive search, and you can find that information at carryforward.com. That website is there, and there’s an eight-week institute specifically designed for aspiring vice presidents.

And then the last thing that I’m really looking into right now, as Stephanie and I mentioned, we’re working on a book, Executive Transitions Two, which is Executive Transitions in Student Affairs: Adding Value as the New Vice President. We wanna make sure that new vice presidents are successful, and we know the first 12 to 18 months is the best opportunity to build your credibility and build long-term success at the institution.

And we have identified 20-plus incredible vice presidents from all over the country who are writing chapters, and Stephanie and I are proud to lead that effort, so we’re looking forward to that publication.

Keith Edwards: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you both so much for your work and that you have done and that you are doing and the things that you’re doing.

This has been terrific, and thank you both so much for your leadership in this space. I also wanna thank our sponsor of today’s episode, Evolve. Given the current context of higher education, we need to invest in leaders, as we’ve talked about, with the capacity and capabilities to transform their institutions and the future of higher education.

The Evolve Institute for Higher Education Leadership offers four leadership coaching journeys tailored to four different leadership levels. Each is a three-month journey that includes individual and group coaching, plus a curated curriculum of short on-demand video modules. We also offer Evolve for leadership teams.

If you’re ready to evolve your leadership voice, visit evolve-institute.com to learn more. And a huge shout-out, as always, to our producer, Natalie Ambrosey, who does all the behind-the-scenes work to make us all look and sound good. And we love your support of these conversations. Your listening, sharing, and recommending episodes makes all the difference and makes these conversations possible.

You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube or to our weekly newsletter, where every Wednesday morning we announce our newest episode. If you’re so inclined, you can also leave us a five-star review. It helps us reach even more folks. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks to the amazing guests today and everyone who is watching and listening.

Make it a great week. Thank you both

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