We build strategic plans for our institutions — multi-year, carefully aligned, revisited every quarter. Almost none of us build one for ourselves. That gap is where good mentoring lives, and it's where Bradley Olin spent the past year as a mentor in the WACUBO Mentor Program.
The idea Bradley keeps circling is bracing in its generosity: you can't want someone's growth more than they want it themselves. It can sound like defeat. He treats it as the real skill — learning to tell the person who is only waiting for someone to convince her she's ready from the person who genuinely doesn't want the next thing, and offering the first not a shove but the nerve to step. He and Howard get into why the technician who excels rarely becomes the manager who thrives, why transparency beats the false comfort of certainty, and how a finance officer taught himself to stop scripting his presentations and start trusting the room.
It's a short conversation caught almost by accident at the WACUBO Annual Meeting, hours after a momentous morning in Bradley's own life. Its through-line outlasts any single career move: change is emotional long before it is operational, and you can't project-manage your way through the unknown. You can only know your own values, leave room, and find the nerve to begin.
Links & Notes
What is Navigating Change from Teibel Education?
Navigating Change is a platform for understanding the complex and uncertain waters of change in higher education. Each week, Howard Teibel, Pete Wright, and guests dissect issues facing institutions and teams in transition and offer solutions for the most troubling process challenges