Listen and Learn: Leading as a New Dean

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• Early engagement with students, faculty, staff, and external partners proves invaluable for understanding what has driven success and where opportunities exist.
• Strategic alignment emerges when leaders transparently share feedback gathered during onboarding, ensuring stakeholders see their ideas reflected in evolving institutional priorities.
• A shared pride in teaching, research, and the student experience can unite a community around a higher standard of excellence and momentum for change.

Transcript

Todd Milbourn [00:12] As you’re coming in as a new leader, there’s always going to be a little bit of angst and change, especially if previous leaders had been there for quite some time. The Cox School of Business, in particular, had only had two deans across 28 years.

[00:25] I think that the listening and learning tour across the first hundred-plus days was even more valuable and critical than it would be at any other time.

[00:33] During that time, I met with hundreds of students, all the staff, all the faculty, and as many of our external stakeholders as we could.

[00:42] And I think as you’re coming in, it’s important to build up that credibility and that trust, and so ask lots of questions. What has made us great so far? What are the opportunities for advancement?

[00:53] What was really key to that was, with all the new energy coming in, making sure we were aligned, that we communicated well, and hit the ground running—standing on the shoulders of giants—as you looked back at where we had come from to get to that point.

As you’re coming in, it’s important to build up that credibility and that trust, and so ask lots of questions.

[01:07] With that, it also makes you present and connects you to the people who are there that you’re going to need to capitalize on the change that’s coming. So, that was an invaluable part of my onboarding.

[01:19] The best advice, and I received it from multiple people, when you’re coming into a new deanship or any new leadership position, especially if you’re coming in from the outside, is to be present, be energetic, and be an authentic listener.

[01:35] I think it’s also important that you share the feedback that you gain as you go across that listening and learning tour at the very beginning.

[01:42] As long as you bring people along, make sure that their ideas have been considered, and they’re going to see their ideas actually show up as you start making your strategic plan going forward.

[01:52] When you are faced with so many good ideas and so many different things that you can do, it’s important to bring them all to the table, ensuring representation from all of the key stakeholder groups.

It’s also important that you share the feedback that you gain as you go across that listening and learning tour at the very beginning.

[02:05] And we say, ‘hey, we’ve got 15 great ideas, but let’s be honest with ourselves, we really have to focus on five,’ is making sure every idea gets, in some sense, a cost-benefit analysis of how do we prioritize these from there?

[02:19] If you bring everybody into that conversation as effectively as possible, as the top five, maybe six priorities emerge, folks are going to understand that, ‘Okay, my idea didn’t make it.’

[02:31] Still, these other ones really carried the weight, and I think that’s important, and again, part of that shared ownership.

[02:37] Folks genuinely care about their student experience, their work on the staff, their teaching in the classroom, their research from a faculty standpoint, and just that collective energy, for we’re already really good, but we truly want to be incredible and we want to be great.

[02:55] That’s been the most surprising thing: I knew people were proud of their university and cared deeply, but it’s been multiple levels up from there.