No More Mister Nice Guy

As noted in the previous post, this week I interviewed for the position of Campus Executive Officer at a college in the Southwestern U.S. [This job is at a two-year branch campus of a university; it would bear the title of “president” at just about any other two-year college.] Although I was pretty positive that I would not be considered further in this search, the next morning (i.e., yesterday) I received a phone call inviting me to campus to interview as a finalist!

Ohmygod! (I said to myself…) How can this be?

THEN, came the rest of the news: I was being offered a maximum of $750 in reimbursement for travel expenses (airfare alone would cost over $600), which would not be paid at all if I either withdrew from the search or declined an offer of employment.

WHAT!?!

I called and wrote back to them expressing my interest in being reimbursed actual expenses (100%) and in having them drop the “terms.” The final offer from them was a maximum reimbursement of $1,200, under the original terms. (My expenses would have been, I think, a little over $1,400.)

This is how you hire a president?

I don’t think so.

Sorry, Bobbi Jo…nice to have met ya…

Mr. President

Oh, what an experience! This job-search life is such a hoot sometimes!

Today I had my first-ever interview for a campus presidency. There’s no way that I’ll ever be hired into this position, though, so I thought I’d make mention of it (and make fun of it) here.

I’ve only ever applied for three jobs at this level, and this is my first interview. So, in that way it’s kind of a milestone. And, it’s difficult to believe that this campus will actually find someone really desirable with the process that they’ve put in place.

Last week, a woman from that campus’ HR department called and identified herself as Bobbi Jo. She told me where she was from and then said, “we was wonderin’ if you’d want to interview for the campus executive officer position.” Yes, Bobbi Jo (what is this, Petticoat Junction!?) actually said, we was wonderin’ – when calling to set up an interview for a presidential candidate. (She phrased it this way two different times during our conversation.)

Well, I talked this through with her and set up a phone interview for today, scheduled to last (a mere) one-half hour.

So: I got the call today at five minutes past the scheduled time. The person on the phone identified himself (by name, not position), indicated that the interview committee was gathered, that they were going to tape the interview with my permission, and jumped right into the questions. He asked them all himself. Totally without inflection or trace of any personality at all. As soon as I provided one answer, he jumped right in with the next question. I had no sense of the group, only this task-oriented, humorless person on the other end of the line.

This is how you hire a president?

I don’t think so.

Please: No Assholes Allowed

I drove up to Eugene yesterday to do some shopping. What with all these interview invitations coming in, I thought I might treat myself to a slightly-updated wardrobe. I have two suits that I currently consider “interview quality,” but, still, it’s been a little while since I bought a new one. So what did I do? I splurged. The suit I found is just what I need and (ohmygod!) the most expensive item of clothing I’ve ever purchased. But, wow, do I look good! (I guess you’ll need to take my word for it!)

The only place I buy suits, slacks and sport coats these days is Men’s Wearhouse, so the drive north was necessary. Plus, it was a warm and sunny mid-winter day and a great time to get out of the house for a little road trip.

While in “the city,” of course, I couldn’t pass up a visit to the local Borders (why no apostrophe?). When I have one of those 30%-off certificates they regularly email me, it’s always so tempting to drop by and pick something up. This time, I wandered over to the just-released non-fiction section for some reason, and I found a title that immediately caught my eye: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. Now, you realize, I’ve just barely poked my nose into this work as of this moment…but, my first impression is that this is an extremely worthwhile book. Despite its rather pedestrian title, it was written by a Stanford University professor (of Management Science and Engineering) and offers up the latest research on workplace assholes.

Now, just what is a “workplace asshole” you ask? Ah, there are two tests (p. 9) to determine whether anybody you know is one:

Test One: After talking to the alleged asshole, does the “target” feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled? In particular, does the target feel worse about him or herself?

Test Two: Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than those people who are more powerful?

I’m anxious to find out what the author (Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D.) has to say about such troublesome individuals, how to cope with them, and how to survive a workplace where one (or more) exists.

Teller’s Tale

Teller, simply, didn’t know what to do.

His life, it seemed, was at an impasse. Any way he turned seemed to be a dead end. Most days, he felt as if he were living a work of fiction: more specifically, as a character in a tepid novel written with little sense of direction or plot. Certainly, the ridiculous nature of his existence couldn’t be real. How, he often asked himself, could this possibly be my life?

Teller identified a lot with the character of Harold Crick in the recent movie Stranger Than Fiction: a person whose moments in life, the significant and mundane ones, were all but indistinguishable. Teller existed, in recent times, within a narrow range of experience from neutral to negative. If this were an actual life he was engaged in, surely it belonged to someone else.

Surely it must.

Because: here he was, this year, at Cascadia College, located in a little town in southern Cascadia. How did this happen? It was absurd, really. Yes, everything about his existence at this point was absurd. That plainly was the word for it.

Even the name of the college, Cascadia, was just too weird. This was what the campus in Bernard Malamud’s 1961 novel, A New Life, was called. In that story, a professor (Samuel Levin, steeped in the liberal arts) finds himself teaching at the fictional Cascadia, an agricultural college with traditions much different than he was accustomed to. Struggling to overcome past adversities, Levin relocates and takes the teaching job in a far-off place in an attempt to start his life over. It is a place so foreign, however, that Levin finds he must have been attracted to a mirage. His struggles, not unpredictably, continue on. You can run, as they say, but you cannot hide.

So, here he, Teller, was. He was trying mightily, after a couple of job losses, to put his life in order. Unlike Levin, though, he was not a teacher (any longer). He was now an academic administrator, and held the position of Dean of Faculty at the real-life Cascadia College. A small campus in an isolated, rural setting. A place so entirely different that his past experiences had ill-prepared him for what he found. Teller had earned his doctorate at a big-time Big Ten campus of over 35,000 students. And now, here he was, attempting to function in a place where the entire little city barely scratched the 20,000 mark, with no diversity to speak of at all. This was not a college town. The place felt stiflingly-small and claustrophobic. And amazingly conservative.

Further, the college was in a condition that he had not really appreciated.

From the start, he found his administrative peers friendly enough people. They weren’t really bad folks. But, too, Teller wasn’t sure they were the right ones to actually run a college. Teller found he did not fit so well with them. So he spent as much time as he could amongst his “own kind” … i.e., the faculty. Teller’s span of control was fairly wide-reaching on campus; he lived with the humanities folks (that’s where his office was located), but was in charge of all the liberal arts and sciences. These people were the ones who not only intellectually engaged him, but also shared their stories and lives with him.

Sure, Teller found that there were some good aspects to all that sharing. He was, after all, able to talk with them about a wide range of topics: reactions and replication; reading and reasoning; rocks and rhymes; language and logic; peace, prose and philosophy; equations and equality; literature and liberals; Iraq and irony; politics and pooh-bahs. But mostly what everyone talked about (at least with Teller) was how to cope: namely, how to manage their lives given the massive number of changes the college had undergone in the last few years, including several presidents, leadership styles, and unclear expectations.

The net effect of all that change, Teller discovered, was that most everyone was off-center most all the time. And there was little trust, might say none, between the faculty and administration. Teller, of course, as the Dean, lived his professional life at the intersection of faculty and administration and their issues. So, if the conflict on campus were the Gunfight at the OK Corral, then Teller was in the crossfire. It didn’t take long before he found himself gravely wounded.

Totally dismayed at the current state of the campus, and while expending inordinate amounts of energy to keep from being injured any further, Teller concluded that there simply was no way to live in between these two warring groups. Although he believed himself to be the consummate diplomat, none of the gunslingers involved in this fight seemed to be much interested in letting their weapons cool and engage in team- or trust-building.

Teller, simply, didn’t know what to do.

On Integrity

I recently provided some observations about the Four-Fold Way and the difficulty level associated with the concept of surrender. Now, don’t get me wrong: I continue to think that letting go of outcome is truly a hard thing to do. Wow, yes, of course.

However, recent events have me thinking a lot about the difficulty of, and price associated with, maintaining one’s integrity – and what it means to continue to speak one’s own truth in the face of remarkable resistance. That’s what it feels like I’ve been doing lately, and, frankly, I’m exhausted.

In a meeting two weeks ago, I found myself, unexpectedly, on the hot seat. Our CEO dropped by, sat down (as a result of an impromptu invitation), and joined us in a group discussion; as fate would have it, I wound up being the featured attraction. I was asked, at least a couple of times, for my views regarding some of our challenges, and, since I was specifically prompted, I answered directly and honestly. I told about my personal experience of trying to function at the nexus of two warring factions (i.e., with great levels of difficulty and stress); of an organization that lacks trust in its leadership (two individuals specifically); and of a place that is “stuck” and in dire need of a focused, protracted healing process.

I spoke for almost an hour on this occasion, in front of a small group that included a handful of the organization’s leaders. I received verbal support from only one other person, and even that was quite tentative. I felt very much alone. Isolated. And somewhat afraid.

Just that one hour totally drained me. To speak out loud a reality that is in opposition to a group’s is very hard work. It reminds me a lot of the “obedience to authority” social-psychology experiments, conducted in the 1960s by Stanley Milgram. The primary value of Milgram’s work was documentation for the willingness of individuals to engage in activities contrary to their own consciences, simply upon the command of an authority figure. Of course, I feel the desire to conform to the press of the environment and “go along” – who among us does not want to live in harmony with others around them? Especially our “bosses?” Certainly I am not immune to such forces.

I would love to be able to tell people what they want to hear. To be able to do what they want me to do. To conform. To fit in. To belong. Who doesn’t want that?

To resist. To persist. Steadfastness. To remain true to oneself. Honesty. Integrity.

Difficult. Taxing. Necessary.