Neil E. Golemo: Welcome to, Here’s the Story, a show that brings student affairs to life by sharing the authentic voices and lived experiences of those who are shaping the field every day. I’m your host, Dr. Neil E. Golemo, the luckiest guy I know. I’m blessed to serve as the Director of Campus Living and Learning on Texas A&M University’s Sunny Galveston Island campus.

I’m a father, a husband, and a son over here just trying to do my best to do a little good. Or get caught trying. I’m here with my co-host

J.T. Snipes: JT Snipes. My pronouns are he, him, his, I serve as associate professor and chair of the educational leadership department at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, and I am trying my best to live as a free black man in a world that would have me live otherwise.

Neil E. Golemo: Oh yeah. We’re also here thanks to our sponsor. Evolve. Evolve is a series of leadership coaching journeys designed to bring clarity, capacity, and confidence, empowering courageous leadership to reimagine the future of higher education. Finally today, I cannot wait to introduce my friend, Steve Herndon.

I will never forget the first time I saw Steve. He was giving a presentation at a CPA in Chicago. And honestly, I just talked to UJT in the lobby and I’ll never forget.

J.T. Snipes: Wait, Neil, what year was it? Because I’m trying to remember Chicago, sorry, not to throw you off, but I was like, when was Chicago?

20?

Neil E. Golemo: I think it was 24.

J.T. Snipes: It was like 18.

Neil E. Golemo: No, it was 24.

J.T. Snipes: Oh, 24. Oh my God. What his time. Anyway, sorry.

Neil E. Golemo: Anyway Steve was giving his part of the conversation or the presentation with Hillary Lichterman and i’ll never forget, he just dropped the frigging mic on. Or he was talking about how it’s irresponsible to collect data and not do anything with it. And honestly, I have been a little intimidated by him ever.

And and I got to know him better when we did faculty consults together. And I got to just watch him cook at ICA shortly after. And everybody I love to introduce the inevitable. Steve Herndon. Steve woo.

Steve Herndon: Woo. Yeah. Thank you. Oh my gosh, like I natural feel pressure. This is wonderful.

Your intro was so beautiful. Thank you for it. And thank you for the opportunity to be here. I’m excited for the dialogue that we are going to have. And a little bit about who I am, Steve Herndon. I am the Assistant Vice President for residential living. Syracuse University. I’ve been here three years.

Prior to my arrival at Syracuse, I worked at the University of Ton in Dayton, Ohio. It’s a private Catholic private Catholic marriage institution. I was there 19 years in in a variety of roles. My recent, most recent role at the time of my departure was assistant Vice President for student development and Executive Director of Housing and Residence Life.

I’ve also worked in the, on the other side of the country where it’s warmer right now in Tucson, Arizona at the University of Arizona, where I was a hall director. That’s where it’s my first full-time professional job at the University of Arizona. And that was a beautiful experience challenging in the beginning because it challenged everything about how I saw and interacted with the world and engaged with the world.

’cause I’m from the south, if you can’t tell, when I talk Greensboro, North Carolina specifically. And so I had lived in the south all my life and then suddenly I am in the southwest and a part of the country. I never thought I would ever live glad that I did because it taught me a lot about myself and helped me to begin that sort of exploration as a young adult around my ident, the identities that I hold, the values that I espouse.

And and it helped me to be a lot more sensitive to the developmental journey our students spoke through. With that said, my story. Here’s my story. My story is really about leadership and leader leading in the time of uncertainty, which has really been this decade. And if you think about 2020 with the pandemic and and where we stand now with our current sociopolitical climate and environment, I would say higher education has been.

Uncertain and very ambiguous, so to speak. For much of the decades. I’m gonna talk about some of my professional how I lead as a professional, but I actually wanna start with a personal story because I think for me there’s a lot of there’s a parallel journey that I have navigated as I think about leading, whether that’s within my family or whether that is, so leading within my family or leading within my role as an assistant vice president. So within my family, just to give you a little bit of background about my family, both of my parents have passed. My mother passed in 2005. My father passed in 1987. That is when I tell folks that my relationship with my younger brother and sibling.

Shifted from si, younger brother and sister shifted from sibling to father. And so that’s, that dynamic still exists within my family now. My sister, younger sister had two boys and I was fortunate to spend a good amount of time with him. Almost serving as, more than a proud uncle, but like a proud father.

I helped them raise in them. I, they lived with me and my sister and my two nephews. Corey, who was the old, who was the oldest in the field, who was the youngest were a. Were lived with me when they were beginning, when they were six and seven. So I got to be a part of their lives in ways that positioned me as their father.

So more than an uncle. And, it was, I tell my mom, I, if my mom was so alive, I’d tell her she was always, she always knew how to check me, to get me straight. She once told me, I can’t wait for you to grow up one day and raise yourself. Because you, I was a great, I’m a great student, great everything, but I was a know-it-all and I was quick to check people and I was quick to, assert my opinion ’cause I had an opinion about everything.

And she, one day I remember her telling me that and I was like, I don’t plan on having any kids, so guess what? I’ve outsmarted you. And then she’s no, you didn’t. Because now these two young boys are in your care. And it was like raising me and my brother. My oldest nephew was more like my brother.

My youngest nephew was more like my little more like myself. Loved school, had goals and aspirations. My oldest nephew just moved this, the spirit moved him. And why that’s relevant is because never did. I imagine, as I think about my work with crisis management, as I think about having to support students, support, families, support, the supporters of our students that I think I’ve managed crisis for much of my adult years and yet and have been faced with some very difficult circumstances and thankfully have come out of them in a very positive way.

I never thought that anything that I managed would ever come, would ever enter my sort of sphere as a father uncle. And that happened in 2021 when my youngest nephew fi took his law. So sorry. And that, that was the moment where I never thought that could happen to me, but it did. And I think about the moment where that happened.

Learning that and coming to terms with that, but also feeling the need to step into the role of crisis manager slash you know, de facto father, where I am comforting my sister, who’s devastated trying to work with the, police and hospital staff and and and various other folks because that natural crisis manager’s coming out and in some ways it was my way of processing my own treat.

It also helped to be a nice distraction from the moment as we were learning some of the details that the coroner and other staff was telling us about the cause of his death. And I share that to say that it led to moments where I started to question my own confidence. I started to, my whole world was chaotic.

My whole world was uncertain. What I knew as absolute was that I was a strong educator teacher. Professional crisis manager navigated difficult circumstances throughout my career. How is it that I missed this moment? How is it that I can see and anticipate and intuit what others are going through and can intervene and I missed it with my own family?

So I felt like a fraud. I felt like an imposter. I felt like one who started questioning their own compliment. I and I, and that really started happening when everyone else went back to their normal lives, and I was still trying to find them there. And I shared that because this is where the community that I was a part of was so helpful to me and why it’s so important and why it’s paramount to our success that we are in community with each other, beyond the superficial, as we were discussing earlier.

I’m always intrigued by people’s backstories, but we all come with a backstory. We all come with complex. I am intrigued by that, and it was that community that helped me to understand that while that there was nothing I could do, that this wasn’t about me, that while I may never get the answers to the questions that I have about why my nephew chose this, made this decision.

Why when I had just seen him a few weeks earlier, we were talking about him going to college and his plan for you just gotten promoted on the job and asked him, how are you gonna be, what are you gonna be how kind of supervisor are you gonna be? And the answer he gave me was just thrilled when he was amazing.

And I’m like, he’s just got it all together. Meanwhile, I’m worried about his older brother. I’m like, what is this teacher gonna be? Because, I don’t know, I could barely get him to complete his homework. But I share that because. My community rallied around me and helped me to understand, but even in that moment, he has agency and that as an educator and a teacher, I know that I was never going to be my responsibility to assume his agency.

That kind of helped recenter. So in the midst of all that chaos and uncertainty about myself, about my circumstances, what is my future gonna be? What is my new normal going to be? As I’m losing someone I helped raise and someone whom I could see in many ways myself, in him that community is what helps to ground them.

And I look back on that experience and think about that’s what I’m doing right now as an a DP. That is what I am doing as we’re leading. What my community helped me to understand was that my identity didn’t change, but my approach to what my future was gonna look like is what summer have to change.

And if that’s not true for higher education right now, I don’t know what it is. So as I lead now, it’s not about questioning our identity, it’s about, it’s about solidifying our identity, but making sure that we as a team, as a department have an understanding of our identity, because that’s going to be what carries us through the storm.

That’s the composure we need to utilize as we navigate the chaotic chaotic and work environments as we navigate chaos. That is the world we live in. That’s what that is. It has to. Has to be. And I think about that personal journey that I’ve been on, how influential it has been over my leadership as I lead my team through uncertainty and still helping them to find places of hope and possibility.

Still helping them to be productive and still recog, helping them to recognize where their agency lies and that while things around us may be chaotic and circumstances are. Impacting us that we can’t control. It doesn’t mean we don’t have agency. Having our identity helps us to utilize our agency strategically and responsibly.

I’ll stop there. But and turn it over to any questions. Turn over you all for any questions you may have about anything I’ve shared with you.

Neil E. Golemo: So I feel like you just justified my story about you, Robin Mouse.

Steve Herndon: Thank you. I definitely didn’t want to come over here, come over home, come on here and disappoint anyone.

So if I’ve not done that, then I feel like it’s been a successful time

Neil E. Golemo: possible. Jt, you wanna ask your,

J.T. Snipes: yeah, so I I’ll kick off the questions with one of my favorite questions to our storytellers.

Why did you want to tell this story to us now?

Steve Herndon: There are a couple of reasons because I think it’s relevant to, as I shared, it’s relevant to I, what I believe our circumstances are as educators, teachers, mentors, supervisors, all the roles we’re expected to play within our work environment.

Higher education rules is, I tell people all the time working in higher education, specifically student affairs, and I’ll drill even deeper for housing and residence. Life isn’t for the faint time. And what’s getting us through the difficult times is having a solid understanding of our identity so that collectively we can move forward in a way that’s still purposeful and speaks to the values we espouse as an organization.

I share this story as well because I think sometimes we see vulnerability as as, something negative. I see it as a positive. I think that I’ve worked for and worked with leaders who are so far removed that because they’re on that, that, that sort of pedestal that folks put them on, we believe that the people who have bigger titles and bigger salaries somehow have made it and don’t make mistakes.

And it only makes them more inaccessible to you. And what I would like to model through my leadership is that I can struggle, I can not have answers, and I can still be confident and still be an effective partner in your learning, in your growth and in your development. I’m a person who doesn’t operate in binaries and dichotomies or anything like that.

I operate in a world where it’s always growth and. I can struggle and go through my own personal struggles or professional struggles and still be an effective educator, teacher, mentor in. So those are the two primary reasons why I felt this story was appropriate to share at this point in time.

J.T. Snipes: That’s awesome.

Neil E. Golemo: Steve, you talk a lot. You talked about, having that sense of self, or at least that’s what I was hearing, and, it is so interesting you say that because that definitely feels like a theme right now. Whether I’m working with young professionals and trying to explain that yeah, that mom really doesn’t like the job you did, but also she doesn’t know anything about what you do, and

And then you talk about how our capacity to grow is is only. As, as much as the what the truth we’re willing to hear about ourselves, right?

And so I just keep, how do you talk about it and you model it, but how do you get that in to other people’s hits and like, how do you drive that home?

Because I’ll take notes.

Steve Herndon: In terms of, to go back to your example, like for instance the mom who’s upset and I’m trying to help, like how do I make like inroads with that? Is that what you’re asking? I just, yeah. Like

Neil E. Golemo: how as a young professional do you not fall all the way apart when you know somebody questions whether you’re good at your job, somebody who has no idea.

Steve Herndon: Oh. Oh. Or people who think they can do my job until they have to. Yeah. And so I would say. Whether I’m working with, whether it’s with a parent, whether or family, whether it’s with a staff member, whether it’s with a student. One of the things that I have taught my team and continue to teach my team and remind them is that how someone shows up in front of you is never about you.

It’s about the circumstance. And our jobs as educators are to ask questions that help us to get an understanding of what’s. Going on that we can’t see that’s influencing how this person has shown up. Typically what I’ve experienced, and I’ve been guilty of it too, particularly early on in my career, is someone shows up in a manner that’s uncomfortable for me and suddenly I’ve made their situation about me.

And instead of me being a good partner, we are now debating back and forth about who’s right and I, ultimately what I’ve become in that manner using that approach, what I have become is their accidental advocacy because I’ve made their circumstance about me. So one of the things that I have taught my team and continue to help my team to understand is, A, it’s not about you.

Secondly, you’ve gotta ask questions to help get an understanding of the backstory and questions that don’t. And Don. Or indict or that would indict someone’s confidence or make them question, am I overreacting any of that? I ask very few why questions. Why did you do this?

Or why do you do that? Because that centers you as the problem, rather, I can define a different one. So talk to me about what circumstances occurred that led to you. Coming to me or that you felt the need to come to me, or what assistance are you asking for? How can I be helpful to you in this moment? And I think asking some of those questions, deescalates the person and brings them from 10, hopefully to I’ll five and I’ll settle for seven.

Because at that point, when they’re, when some of their defenses are down, it helps me to get a better understanding of what the circumstances are and how I can partner within the whole thing Also. More times, more likely than not, what’s motivating the motivating factors fear. Fear of some outcome. And so how that will typically manifest is in anger.

It’ll manifest in in other ways that don’t paint that person in the most positive way. But keeping it about them and focusing on what I need to learn about you and your circumstance. Helps it to make it not about me bringing them down to a place where I can ask more questions to get an understanding of how I can be of assistance and support to, that’s a significant shift because I’ve done it where you show up and you’re angry at me and suddenly I’m saying, oh, you’re unprofessional and you’re this and you’re that.

And suddenly now you really are angry. And I’m the cause of it to some degree because of my approach and what I try to help my folks understand. Anyone I would work with is, it’s never about feeling, it’s about something. So what is the something and what questions are you gonna,

J.T. Snipes: so Steve, one of the parts of your story that I think resonated with me is this community that surrounded you.

And currently we’re in an epidemic of loneliness, right? Yes.

And you mentioned that. Your story that we should be moving beyond the superficial, and I’m wondering what are the ways that you move yourself and the folks you’re in community with beyond the superficial,

Steve Herndon: Oh, I think some of it is I try to use.

Any opportunity I have with someone, what can I learn about someone that’s gonna help me to have some understanding of who they are, but also an appreciation for who they are. An appreciation for what? An appreciation of their potential, whether that’s a friend, whether that’s a colleague, whether that’s a staff member.

The role for me doesn’t necessarily matter. Doesn’t change the approach. It might change the question depending on a question that I would ask an ra. It goes back to me about, to answer your question, it goes back to asking questions.

So instead of saying, how are you, fine, that doesn’t demonstrate anything.

So tell me something that, that I wouldn’t know simply by, tell me something that would be helpful for me to know about me that can help us to be effective or effective. Educators or whatev, I try to model that wherever I can because I know that’s easier said than done. So I think about, I use my department meetings as an example.

I get moments outside of my direct reports. I get moments with everyone else. So my department meetings are all the graduate and professional staff who we once a month we stopped doing using department meetings as two hours of information dissemination. But rather yes, information and updates are important.

However, I want us to spend time building an under a connection and understandings of one another through the work. So how are we collectively going to address X pattern that’s occurring in our communities? How are we going to do X as we address Y? I wanna build the relationship around the work.

So that there’s an appreciation for not only you can see your contributions, but you can see the value and the worth of others who hold different positions, but play a critical role in that. So it’s also about, I would rather use the department meetings as a time for teaching, whether that’s around skill development, but also around problem solving and folks being able to have an appreciation for the people who are part of the team so that collectively we can share in the impact.

Because that’s for me, how we address the complexities that we are facing. I model that as where I can, and so going back to my example with the staff meeting, before we even began the meeting, as people were sitting down, I’m already making my way around the room talking to people, and I’m like, jt, last time when we spoke, you said that you were working on this project.

Tell me more about the project. So I have a really good memory thing, thankfully. Except with keeping up with my personal items which I’ve written into everyone’s job description as the other duties as assigned the 5%, keeping up with my backpack, my wallet, my keys, all of that. Because I just start dropping stuff down.

And before you know it, I guess if I ever got lost, you could find me. ’cause you’d be like the wallet to the keys to the this. And there’s Steve in the lobby talking to someone. I think for me I’m going around and talking and I, and what I’ve seen, particularly for folks who have put me on that pedestal and thereby making me inaccessible to them, that I can relate to them, that I took the time to follow up on something we had talked about that I remember it and so it’s not difficult for me to get people’s buy-in because they see that I care about them.

So they’re willing to put the, forth, the effort to care about themselves, their work, and by default, our students.

Neil E. Golemo: I think that’s interesting ’cause it’s something that has taken me a long time to realize is that sometimes one of the most precious things that I have to give is my time and attention.

And I’ve met me, it’s really hard for me to take myself seriously, like my time, I know how to spend some of my time like can’t be worth that much, but. Steve, I was also really struck with your story about how when struck with crisis, like you fell back into the role of being the person with the answers.

And I think that resonates really heavily with me. The day my dad died, the, my father died. I went to work.

I don’t know why I didn’t stay at work, I’ll be honest with you. But I think I just needed to feel like I had a grip on something.

And you’ve been through this like how do we fight that, that, that stress of, and that expectations of ourselves to be thing a little bit more than human in those moments.

Steve Herndon: I I think for me it is really about ’cause similar to me. So I, going back to this, to my story, I was fine because I think for me, moving into Crisis Manager, it was just natural. It just happened. But I think in some ways it was my way of anchoring myself. So everything is spinning out of control.

It helped me. So I had no. It was not challenging for me to support my sister to support others, to help with logistics. All of that felt familiar to me in now a setting that was incredibly, I think for me, where my struggles came is when everybody else went back to their lives and I’m sitting at home with nothing but my thoughts.

And so for me, going back to work was less about accomplishing anything. But again, being back in a, ’cause I did go back to work too, ’cause I said I can’t sit here on my couch and just sit in my thoughts. Like I, my mind is spinning out of control. This is not healthy for me. And so I went back to work knowing that I’m not at n nowhere, close to a hundred percent.

I went back to work because the familiar, the f familiarity, that’s hard to say. Silly, as well as the, whether that’s the people, the work, the unpredictable, chaotic nature of the work in some ways was a place of feeling for me. I knew going in that I was not gonna be as productive as I would be when I had, more time to to come to terms with what had occurred.

But the familiarity of the people and the unpredic, the predictably unpredictable nature of our work, somehow in that moment is what kept me grounded, because being at home by myself was not. Yeah. And so I think for me, it helped us. It’s, I needed something familiar because I, my world was so out of black, I just couldn’t.

I couldn’t function and staying at home was just gonna send me down a spiral. I was gonna, it was gonna, I was gonna spiral out control, and I knew better. And I was like, I’ve gotta make a difference.

Neil E. Golemo: I think that’s it. Knowing that you could be someplace

Where you could make a difference.

And

Steve Herndon: you, and I think, yeah. Going back, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to talk over you. I think going back to the community, my supportive community at work understood that. So I wasn’t going back with pressure to. See, where’s that report on blah, blah, blah. And the deadline around that they understood and supported me as I came to terms with Neil.

I’m sorry for speaking.

Neil E. Golemo: No, I was just gonna say I think that makes a lot of sense where, our normal, or at least what we want for our normal to be is like helping others.

And I know that I’m doing. At least I’m going in a direction. If I had to lean some way, I know what the path looks like and

Steve, thank you so much for sharing that story.

J.T. Snipes: It’s

Neil E. Golemo: wonderful.

I think it’s

Steve Herndon: thank you for the opportunities, so thank you.

Neil E. Golemo: We’re lucky ones. I’m just so impressed with how you always are in that gross mindset and everybody becoming more than they were. Speaking of that a growth mindset and becoming more than we were.

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On YouTube, smash the subscribe button and anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode has been edited by Nat Ambrosey. Nat, thank you for making us sound every bit as good as we possibly could sound. Everybody, honestly, I hope this fed your flame a little bit because your light matters.

Please keep using it to make the world a better place. Until next time, this has been, here’s the story.