Department chairing do’s and don’ts?

A little while back, Helen asked me if I would be willing to write a post or find someone to write a guest post on how to be a good department chair. I thought it was a great idea—but naturally because I'm a chair, things have been really busy, so I hadn't been able to get around to it. However, in our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a potential future chair made a similar query, asking:

Would you be willing to run a "do's and don't's" post on being a chair? I want to see what kind of consensuses there are.

So I figured I should try to finally write something up, and then ask you all what you think some department chairing do's and don'ts are. I think it would be great to hear not only from department chairs, but also people who aren’t, as it's not just department chairs who can have views about these things! 

Before I say anything more about my experience, a few caveats. First, I'm not going to suggest (or imply) that I'm a good department chair, or that I have a handle of most or all of the do's and don'ts of the position. Although I've tried hard to be a good chair, there are things I think I've done pretty better than others, and I'm learning new things all the time: encountering new situations, making new mistakes, learning from them, and so on. Second, I think it's worth recognizing that my experience as chair may not be very representative of the job in general. I chair a pretty small department. Until last year, we only had three tenure-stream faculty members (myself included) and four total full-time faculty. As of this year, we have five full-time faculty, and ten adjunct faculty. Consequently, my job may be very different than chairing a different kind of department. Finally, on that note, I think it may be worth noting that chairing may differ so much across different types of departments and institutions that there may be relatively little in common about the job in different places--thus making a good general list of do's and don't difficult to put together.

Okay, so much for preliminaries. Here are a few things I think I've learned about being a chair:

1. You're may not be all that well-prepared for it heading in: The vast majority of our training and experience in the academy focuses on pretty specific sets of skills: research and teaching, as well as service (on committees, etc.). I myself had a lot of service prior to becoming chair. However, I don't think any of it prepared me all that well for being chair. As I will explain below, my own experience is that being a chair requires developing many skills (particularly interpersonal, leadership, and political skills) that aren't emphasized or developed nearly as much in academia more generally. So, at least my experience has been, developing into a good chair takes time. At first, the job can seem deceptively simple: you have to put together course schedules, organize and run department meetings, and so on. But that's really just the tip of the iceberg, or so I've learned the longer I've been in the job.
2. Equitable decisionmaking: I'll talk more about communication below, but one of my own personal priorities as chair is to try to "do right" by everyone in my role as chair--that is, with our tenure-stream faculty, non-tenure-stream faculty, adjunct faculty, administrators, staff assistants, and so on. Sometimes (for example, when it comes to course scheduling or other departmental decisions), you have to make decisions as chair that some people aren't happy with. What I think is key, in general, is for people to believe that they are be treated fairly. If a person didn't get "anything they wanted" in this particular departmental decision (whatever decision it is), I want to keep an eye out for how the department might accommodate something that person cares about later--say, in the next major decision. Few things could be worse for the health of a department, I think, than some members feeling like they constantly get the "short end of the stick." Conversely, my sense is that the members of a department tend to feel good about how the department functions when people see that the decisions the department makes are equitable, representing the thoughts and values of different members in a way that people experience to be equitable. To this end, as chair I always try to frame questions and conversations with "we." What do we want to do as a department? I also work hard to ensure that everyone feels comfortable sharing their opinions and feels heard by others. 
3. Good, open communication: When you are chair, other people--both in your department and outside of it--come to you on issues relating to your department. This, for me, was a pretty damn new experience. People come to me to resolve issues, and now I'm suddenly in charge of handling them. The question then is how to do so well. My sense here is that fostering an atmosphere of good, open communication is vital. My experience is that in some departments and colleges, there can be really unhealthy modes of communication: secrecy, behind the scenes gossip, factions seeking to dominate each other, and so on. While I think there is a legitimate place for confidential conversations, my general aim as chair is to realize an atmosphere of openness—so that me and my colleagues in the department can productively resolve issues together rather than in ways that drive wedges between people. Part of fostering good communication involves recognizing and compensating for power differentials and individual differences. As I’m sure we all know, some people can dominate conversations, intimidate others (whether internationally or not), and so on. I’m inclined to think it may be vital for chairs to steer conversations in ways that, again, encourage and enable everyone to be heard and have their opinions and interests represented in decisions.
4. Consensus building: For things to happen in a department and work well, one generally needs “buy in” from people. This can be difficult because people can have very different opinions and priorities. My experience then is that chairing requires learning how to get different people to be comfortable enough with a given decision to support it. 
5. Leadership and hard decisions: although I try to build consensus, ultimately the responsibility for hard decisions are up to the chair. This has been one of the most difficult parts to the job, as it can require making decisions with some risk to the department and not everyone may agree with the decision. My general aim is to avoid this (that is, unilateral decisions) as much as possible by discussing things with people more rather than less. Although I expect some chairs may run their departments like their own little fiefdoms, my general aim is to keep gathering information and opinions from colleagues until I can either generate more consensus or I *have* to make the decision one way or another. Finally, chairs also have to be able to take hard stands on things, playing “hardball”—sometimes pushing back against administrators, initiatives that might harm the department, and so on. Having the courage to do this can be really hard, as it can lead to hard feelings on occasions—if for example you have to give a speech in the faculty Senate that is really critical of work other people have done on an initiative. But it can be necessary, and my sense is that a good Chair has to do it sometimes.
6. Multilevel advocacy, negotiation, and developing political capital: As a department chair, part of my job is to advocate for our faculty (all of them, both full-time tenure-track and part-time and non-tenure-track). Another part of my job is to advocate for the department. For example, our university is currently considering possible changes to our Gen Eds--changes that might affect our department in all kinds of ways. Next, advocating for the department can also involve advocating for the college--that is, working with other department chairs to make sure that our departments (in the plural) are adequately represented in university decisions. This multilevel advocacy and negotiation can be one of the most challenging parts of the job, as it requires engaging with and navigating competing interests. Doing so effectively involves all kinds of things: seeking faculty input from my department on things going on at the university (in the Senate, things coming from the Dean, etc.), advocating our department's views in chairs meetings and at Senate meetings--and in conversations with chairs in other departments, negotiating with and maintaining goodwill with administrators who have their own jobs to do, and so on. It not only requires learning how to negotiate with individuals, but also forming 'coalitions', developing political capital (developing good will with other people), and not “fighting every fight” but rather “picking your battles”, figuring out what can and cannot actually get done (given the institutional structure of the university and the level of support you can get from other relevant parties). All of this is hard work and difficult to learn how to do well.
7. Proactive attention to detail: More so that in academia generally, being chair requires exquisite attention to detail. If there are little details one gets wrong (you make a mistake with a course schedule, or a budget, or fail to convey a university policy correctly, etc.), it can really mess things up later on. I won't say how I know this to be true. Just trust me. ;) It takes work. If you mess something up in a paper draft, you can always fix it at little cost later. If you mess something up in a lecture, you can always correct your lecture notes. When you're chair, you really need to get details right--otherwise, you may make things more difficult on you, your dean, your faculty, etc., later. If you're not the kind of person who has great attention to detail, you'll need to work on it!
8. Efficiency and organization: You have a lot to do as chair. Right now, I'm having to learn an entire new software system for scheduling courses. This means attending trainings, sending emails to faculty asking for their course preferences, trying to figure out how to satisfy them as well as possible in a spreadsheet, and so on. Further, all kinds of “emergencies” can happen, from student complaints to instructors quitting mid-semester. Being a chair requires getting things done as quickly and efficiently as possible while keeping a cool head and paying attention to detail.
9. Running meetings: Most of us hate meetings. They go on too long. They can end up devolving into long digressions on tangents, etc. Good chairs, I think, should try to run a tight ship, as it were. It's easier said than done.
10. Learning from mistakes: As you can probably glean from the above, chairing is a heck of a lot different than—and requires very different skills than—other things one has probably done before as an academic. In additions to having new kinds of formal responsibilities (ranging from scheduling to budgeting to hiring instructors), the biggest thing chairing requires is “people skills”: effective communication with people indifferent disciplines and roles, negotiating skills, political skills, and so on. Chances are, you’ll make some mistakes—as so much of this is fundamentally different (at least in my experience) than the things we have spent our professional lives training for: research and teaching. As chair, you’ll make some mistakes—the key is to try to avoid terrible ones and learn from whatever mistakes one does make.

Anyway, these are just a few things that sprung to mind. They aren't a list of "do's and don'ts" by any means, but rather are just some things that have stood out to me in my experience as chair thus far. Given that it's been a long week and I'm drafting this late on Friday afternoon, I'm sure I'm forgetting things. Maybe discussion in the comments section below will jog my memory of whatever I'm forgetting. That being said, I'll end with two questions:

1. Are there any do's and don'ts for chairs that you think are important be aware of?
2. Are there any chairs out there interested in writing a guest-post on your experience in the job? (If so, feel free to email me at [email protected]. I'd love to have one or more guest-posts on the topic!).

Comments

[El Gordo]

Two pieces on this topic. One from Weingast:

https://web.stanford.edu/group/mcnollgast/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/caltech-rules-for-chairs.17.0201.pdf

and one from Munger:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/10-Suggestions-for-a-New/64963

[Marcus Arvan]

El Gordo: Thanks for those links! I think they are both great. In fact, each one reminded me of something really important that I somehow forgot when putting this post together.

(1) The second piece emphasizes the importance of handling things in person rather than via email. I completely agree. Emails can come across cold, and lead to unproductive back and forths. Better, in general, to invite people to talk in person. It's more *personable*, and in my experience tends to be much better received and more productive than email.

(2) The first piece emphasizes how emails are equivalent to legal documents. In part for this reason, I was told by my former chair to document everything, particularly conversations, by sending email follow-ups recapping important points.

On the surface, these two "do's" might seem to be in tension. But my experience they're really not. Have discussions in person first. Then simply send a follow up email recapping what was talked about.

This might seem overly formal. But I've been taught (and learned) that it has two really important advantages--one for the chair (and institution), but also a very important advantage to the other parties to the conversation. The advantage to the chair (and institution) is obvious: an email documentation of a conversation is a record of what is said. If there are any disputes later about what was said, everything is on record. However, just as importantly (probably more importantly, I think), recapping a conversation in an email helps to ensure that nothing "gets lost in translation." Oftentimes, a lot gets covered in a conversation--and it can be difficult for the parties to it to remember everything important later. Sending a follow-up email recapping the central points of a conversation ensures that whatever points were made in the conversation are clear after the fact. This can be important for everyone involved, so that there aren't any misunderstandings!

[frustrated]

What do you do if you find yourself in a fiefdom situation as a junior person? Grin and bear it?