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The HigherEdJobs Podcast is dedicated to helping higher education professionals find fulfillment in their careers and be the change agents that higher education needs in today's world. Join hosts Andrew Hibel and Kelly Cherwin, along with guest experts, as they examine job search strategies and break down the latest news and trends in higher education.
Andrew Hibel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast. I'm Andy Hibel, the Chief Operating Officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.
Kelly Cherwin: And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the Director of Editorial Strategy. Today we're joined by Dr. Marjorie Hass, the President of Council of Independent Colleges, and we'll be discussing best practices and advice for women in higher education.
Kelly Cherwin: Thank you, Dr. Hass for joining us.
Marjorie Hass: It's an absolute pleasure to be with you.
Kelly Cherwin: Dr. Hass, I know you have an impressive bio that I didn't go through, but a few of your positions here -- you've had leadership positions over the years, including president of Austin College in Texas, as well as President of Rhodes College in Memphis, and of course, as I mentioned, the current president of CIC. So what have you learned about yourself as a female leader in some of these roles?
Marjorie Hass: I love the way you asked that question because I think one of the things about leadership roles is that they absolutely are self-revelatory. There's sort of no place to hide when you take on such a visible role and [00:01:00] in so many ways, you see your strengths and your flaws reflected back to you. It's one of the things that I think makes leadership so difficult. I think for me personally, the biggest surprise was just that \it turned out to be something that I enjoyed and was good at. You know, I -- like most of us in academia -- came up through a very traditional academic route.
Marjorie Hass: My PhD is in philosophy. I was a faculty member. My husband and I were so fortunate to find tenure-track jobs at the same institution when we got out of graduate school. And we just assumed we would live that life as professors and scholars and teachers. And so the administrative part of the work and the leadership part of the work was not really in my mind, but as I began to take on leadership roles as a faculty member, I discovered that I really liked working in a team. I liked being part of a team. I liked looking holistically at systems and structures, and I found that I had the skills to [00:02:00] make change in ways that left people feeling engaged rather than bruised and battered.
Marjorie Hass: So as I began to have more opportunities to do that and to really grow in that, it definitely came to be part of my own professional identity.
Kelly Cherwin: That's great. That actually leads me into my next question. You, you referenced working and developing a team. So I think we met several years ago at AAC&U (another conference) and you were on a panel regarding female leadership and the theme was supporting one another and it kind of, you know, resonated with me so, why is it so important that women gain support from both their female and male colleagues?
Marjorie Hass: I wrote a whole book on this subject, A Leadership Guide to Women in Higher Education. So I will try to try to condense some of that, but I think anytime, you know, you have not been socialized to think of yourself as a leader, I think you need a lot of support to move in that direction, and many of the women that I've worked with in the course of my career have not come [00:03:00] to see themselves in that way.
Marjorie Hass: They tend to be very confident about their skills in areas where they've received explicit training, often they're very confident in being in support roles, but that sort of stepping out in front and being the one to be the voice of the vision and the carrier of the mantle and symbols of the institution are things that often, you know, women just have been raised -- and men too -- to not see that as overlapping with the other ways that we tend to think about women or femininity. So that encouragement really matters. The first time that somebody says to you, "you know, you should think about becoming a dean," or "I think you could be a college president and a good one," that's a very affirming moment, and I think all of us need that.
Marjorie Hass: But I personally have made it my mission to try to help to diversify the leadership roles that we have in higher education. And so I tend to really be on the lookout in particular for women, for people of color, for others who might [00:04:00] need that extra encouragement to take those initial steps.
Kelly Cherwin: Well, thank you for your work. I know diversifying the presidential pipeline and pool was a big theme at ACE.
Marjorie Hass: It is. And you know, the data that they released is encouraging in some ways and very depressing in others. You know, certainly their recent survey of the presidency and the leadership on our campuses does not reflect the diversity of our students currently, and certainly not the diversity that we will see in the future.
Marjorie Hass: And I think that's essential. I think we need to make sure that we are encouraging and bringing people into these fields. It's difficult because the jobs are difficult. They're more difficult often if you are the first or the pioneer in your role. But students need to see themselves reflected at the core of the institution.
Andrew Hibel: So often in these sorts of, and I really look at this as a systemic issue, somebody hears that. They hear what you just said. They absolutely agree with it, but there's always a feeling within those [00:05:00] instances that A, this is a problem much larger than one I can solve on my own. And B, there's a very good likelihood, even if I worked really hard on this for the rest of my life, it's not gonna be during my lifetime, and I know that.
Andrew Hibel: So if you're sitting in that chair right now and you're thinking about what you can do to change that and to do that, I loved one of the things that you said. When you see that, you encourage it, you reaffirm people in that. That's a great idea. Do you have other suggestions like that? Of what people can be doing in their day-to-day practice with others that help move us forward in the right direction for that?
Marjorie Hass: Sure. You know, I think the most important thing is to really get clear about what we mean by terms like leadership. It's a, sometimes kind of an uncomfortable word. In the academy, we sometimes use the word "administration" or "the suits" or "the dark side" and we don't often use the word leadership and yet, good leadership is [00:06:00] essential for institutional flourishing, and it has to happen at every level, from leadership of faculty governance to student leadership, to departmental leadership, all the way through to presidential and board leadership.
Marjorie Hass: So I think we have to get more comfortable thinking about that, and then we have to get more comfortable about really understanding what it is. It's not arrogance, it's not power, it's not status. The key pieces of leadership that we need to focus on are the ability to -- you know, I define leadership in my book and in my work with emerging leaders -- I define leadership as the practice of inspiring others to make positive change in the service of a vision within a structure or an organization.
Marjorie Hass: And I think all of those are really important pieces. One, it's about inspiring others, so it's inherently relational. And those of us who have been socialized as women have had a lot of experience in being the relationship managers. So in that sense, [00:07:00] leadership really benefits from people who are relationally organized, but it's the inspiring others to act in ways that bring about positive change in the service of a shared vision.
Marjorie Hass: And so the leader has to be very attuned to where the institution, the organization, the system, the department is in this moment and very creative and imaginative about what might be possible. And to craft a vision that people can get behind that clearly is better. It has to be a strong vision because it has to overcome the inertia of not changing.
Marjorie Hass: Nobody wants to change. So good leaders do those things well. And I think when we put it that way as a practice and as, uh, not necessarily a job title, but a way of engaging people on behalf of something bigger than any one of us. I think all of a sudden it becomes inspiring in a way that makes people [00:08:00] Want to do it rather than think of it as it's about paper pushing and suit wearing and, uh, the destruction of all things, you know, good and just, and valuable.
Andrew Hibel: That's wonderful. And I'm not trying to be glib in it, but I think if you wanna talk about it from an emotional standpoint and how you feel, it's less of coming away having a conversation and being inspired by a World War II general and more like the feeling what you want in the room of everybody walking out of the room is everybody's just watched a Ted Lasso episode and everybody feels good about themselves when they come out of that. And they feel that life is good, things can be okay.
Marjorie Hass: -- And that they can be better. You know, one of the biggest challenges that I think leaders face and it's become very pressing as we've really faced, you know, significant crises in our sector -- COVID, government intrusion into our curricula, you know, you name it, uh, there's a the demographic cliff -- is striking that balance between motivating the need for [00:09:00] change, right?
Marjorie Hass: A Pollyanna is not gonna encourage change if you just sort of say, well, everything is perfectly fine. And it's rarely true that everything is perfectly fine. On the other hand, if people become overwhelmed with despair, that doesn't lead to action either, right? Then they do have that feeling of sort of the problems are too big, nothing can be done.
Marjorie Hass: We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And so striking that balance in your rhetoric, in your behavior, in your own sense of what is possible for your institution, to me, is one of the most challenging parts of leadership. And I found that even though we're often speaking in higher ed to very well-educated audiences, right, people who do nuance for a living, somehow that nuance is very difficult to grasp when you're talking about your own institution.
Marjorie Hass: And so you have people who want to say they're exaggerating. It's not really a demographic cliff. We don't have to make any changes. There's no crisis. [00:10:00] They're just making a big deal out of nothing. Or people who think the entire operation is all these institutions, we're gonna close in five minutes and I just better be thinking about what I'll be doing after the apocalypse.
Marjorie Hass: You know, I don't know what, storing up canned goods or something. So, you know, how do you help people understand that there are significant challenges and problems, but ones that with creativity, effort, and most importantly, working together, we can start to overcome and reshape. And the people that do that well are really effective leaders.
Kelly Cherwin: Marjorie, I hope you don't mind. You said something before we started recording and I wanna bring that in. You said that if you had a superpower as a leader and what you were just saying there kind of referenced it. So would you tell our listeners what you told us earlier about your superpower?
Marjorie Hass: Sure. Sure. Well, uh, first of all, somehow our shared colleague, Matt Trainum, came up and I hired him at CIC recently, and Andrew said he's familiar with his work and a big fan of [00:11:00] his, and I said, sort of jokingly, but I think there is some truth to this, uh, as there are with most funny jokes that, you know, I sometimes say that my best superpower as a leader is I'm very good at hiring and promoting people.
Marjorie Hass: And that if you're good at that, then you build a great, functional, strong team and that makes you -- you don't have to be that great at a lot of other leadership skills. And there is, I think, something really true to that. You know, we often have an image of leadership as this sort of sole or lone voice in the wilderness.
Marjorie Hass: You know, we look at examples of sort of the heroic leader often and almost always a male leader. And we think that that's what leadership is. You sort of go it alone into battle. But in fact, when you really look at how social change happens, how institutional change happen, it's always the result of a team of people that get behind an idea and get behind a person and do their jobs really well.
Marjorie Hass: So I [00:12:00] firmly believe that we have to build teams, and for me personally, that was an exciting part of stepping into my first leadership roles. I'm a philosopher by training, and philosophy is not a team sport. It's very individualistic. You know, in my field we don't even co-author papers typically. Some fields sort of have this lone genius mythology to them, and I think philosophy, mathematics, those are fields like that.
Marjorie Hass: And you know, I didn't have experience playing a team sport when I was growing up, so I had never really been on a team. And I found I really liked that. I liked seeing what it means to motivate people, to count on them, to have them count on me. We're not doing the same thing, but what we're doing is in concert, we battle it out around the table, and then once we've decided on a direction, we're all in.
Marjorie Hass: I found that invigorating.
Kelly Cherwin: So Marjorie, I know you referenced your book earlier and several months ago you were kind enough to be an author in residence for HigherEdJobs and you wrote several blog posts regarding your book. So I don't know if you remember, but you told [00:13:00] me some reasons why you wrote the book and why you didn't write the book.
Kelly Cherwin: So would you share with our listeners some thoughts behind what inspired you to write the book and kind of what are some key takeaways that you want people to know of your book?
Marjorie Hass: Sure. Well, first of all, although the book is called a "Leadership Guide for Women in Higher Education," my working title and the title I wanted was a "Leadership Guide for women and Those Who Want to Lead Like Them."
Marjorie Hass: So I think there's plenty in the book, not just for women or women-identified people, but for everyone who is interested in leadership. But I came to the book really because when I first became a college president, at that time, and even now, sadly, there just aren't that many of us and there aren't that many of us that are accessible in that way.
Marjorie Hass: And so a lot of the women I knew and had met throughout my career, you know, began to call me and ask for advice, and it eventually became more folks than I could answer one by one by one. So I put them into groups and we would meet once a week using a [00:14:00] primitive form of Zoom called Google Chats, and we would meet and I kind of had eight topics that we would talk about. And I did that the first time thinking that would be it. But then they told their friends and people began to ask me. So for many years, I would try every semester to lead a cohort of somewhere between five and 10 women through a series of conversations.
Marjorie Hass: And the kinds of questions that women wanted to talk about were much less about the nitty gritty of leadership or the hard skills. They wanted to really talk about the identity issues. What does it feel like to be a leader? Who am I? How will this affect the rest of my life? What does it mean to take on a big job like this and be a mother at the same time, or a caregiver for parents or siblings?
Marjorie Hass: What does it mean to have spent a career on the ground, student-facing, sometimes rolling my eyes or, you know, saying mean things about the people in the administrative [00:15:00] building and now all of a sudden I'm being asked to go stand in it and you know, what does that mean to inhabit those spaces and can I keep my integrity and my values?
Marjorie Hass: So it was a lot of those really deep conversations that forced me to become ever clearer about what do I mean by leadership? Where are the joys of it? What does it mean to take on these identities? So the book ultimately was really a way of putting the kind of best of those conversations into written form to make them more accessible to people.
Marjorie Hass: And so the book is, I think, written pretty conversationally and warmly. I, you know, pictured in my mind, the dozens and dozens and maybe hundreds at this point of women that I've worked with throughout my career as though I were in conversation with them. A lot of it starts with this notion of the identity shift -- What does it mean to take this leap and go from thinking of yourself in a student-facing role to all of a sudden thinking of yourself as somebody who is focused on systems, working primarily with faculty and staff, or with external audiences, and [00:16:00] how that feels inside? And then some of the real sort of key pieces that are particularly challenging, and many of them are when you take on leadership roles, you have to do hard things.
Marjorie Hass: You often have to make decisions people don't like. You often wind up being the bad guy in somebody's story. You often become very exposed personally. It's a visible role. You have to take responsibility for a lot of things. You don't sleep all that well, so you know, how do you navigate that and maintain, as I said, your integrity, but also your own sense of value.
Marjorie Hass: And then there's also some very practical advice about seeking the job, getting the job, negotiating the job, etc.
Kelly Cherwin: I think it's a fantastic book. So thank you so much for writing it, and we'll put a link in our information section for listeners to look at. And like I said, I encourage everyone to look at the blog posts that you wrote for us.
Marjorie Hass: Thanks, thanks. And I've actually just started, uh, writing a follow-up book. My working title for that [00:17:00] is "Inspired Academic Leadership." It's focusing on really where is the pleasure and joy in this very difficult work, and how do you sustain yourself so that you can do it over the long haul? I'm very concerned about the rapid turnover that we're seeing, particularly at the presidential level.
Marjorie Hass: I'm concerned as well about -- I think it's gonna be harder and harder to entice talented people into these roles given the way they're structured now. So it's both some sort of personal advice about maintaining that sense of inspiration, but also some suggestions for how we need to make structural change so that these jobs are doable, manageable.
Kelly Cherwin: That's great. Well, I can't wait for that book now.
Andrew Hibel: It's interesting from a leadership perspective that as a Gen Xer raising a Gen Z woman, I can tell you it's really amazing to see kind of the rethinking of what cultural expectations are based on gender. But as you look at job search, one of the [00:18:00] things that we haven't changed with those gender roles is we have not been able to figure out how to share the burden of childbirth.
Andrew Hibel: We could talk about raising children together, but still we're at a place where women go on maternity leaves and have very practical different conversations that they need to have with their employers. What I would ask you in those instances where hopefully we see change in this area, and I think we have seen it, but we see even more over the next five to 10 years, but some of these things probably aren't gonna change.
Andrew Hibel: How do you suggest to women who are in that stage of their career to approach topics? A, I'd probably say in the job search process. And then B, in real time when they have to actually make those requests of their supervisors.
Marjorie Hass: Well, you said a lot there. Let me try to piece it out and say a few things in response.
Marjorie Hass: One, I think you're tying this to generational change is really insightful. I, too, am a Gen Xer and [00:19:00] you know, we were what the first latchkey group, right? We were the latchkey generation, they used to call us, because we had moms that worked and that was unusual. Even those of us who came from socioeconomic backgrounds where perhaps that wasn't strictly necessary for family finances.
Marjorie Hass: And we saw up close what they went through, right? The baby boomers that were our parents were the ones who those women had to sue and fight and put up with an incredible amount of harassment, etc, that we make more visible now. Not that it doesn't happen now too. So I think, you know, from my mother, I certainly learned how one balances or thinks of oneself as having a meaningful career and still having significant, and in her case, primary responsibility for a household and raising children. And so she's been a big inspiration to me in my life. But the specific question you're asking about how do I address issues such as childcare or [00:20:00] family-friendly work policies or maternity leave?
Marjorie Hass: I think it's really important to be as matter of fact as possible, and the advice I would give about this is very similar to the advice that I give people who are thinking about becoming a pioneering president or dean or what have you. The first -- I was the first woman and the first Jewish president in all three of my presidencies.
Marjorie Hass: I've broken some of those barriers. I've worked with a lot of people who are maybe the first president of color or the first person in the dean's office who's openly gay or whatever. You know, one of the things I think that's really important is A, if this cannot be discussed openly and fully in the job search process, then this probably is not the place for you.
Marjorie Hass: There should be some place and ability for you to ask some of the questions about what this might mean, or at least to acknowledge some of these things. So if you think you're gonna lose the job because you say, "I would like to learn a little bit about the schools in the area, because I have children that'll be school age" or whatever.
Marjorie Hass: If [00:21:00] you think that's gonna lose you the job, because you asked that during the interview process, this is probably not a place where you're gonna flourish. You know, if that's really true. So I do think being open and asking some of those kinds of questions is important. I also think it's important to just very matter-of-factly, say things such as, you know, "I will be the first black president, and so when I experience sort of racist resistance, how will we work together?," you say to the board or the hiring manager to respond to that. I have had very frank conversations about "I'll be the first Jewish president at this Presbyterian college, and how will you support me when there is resistance?"
Marjorie Hass: And in the case that you're asking about, "I expect that at some point in my career here, I will be seeking to begin a family or to raise children. And so I'm very interested in knowing how you support employees in that situation," and to just be very matter-of-factly [00:22:00] asking it as a, of course you'll want to do this, and then you listen and evaluate the response, but it saves you because then later when these things occur, you can go back to that conversation.
Marjorie Hass: "Remember we talked about that and you talked about how you would support me. This is the moment where that's gonna be necessary."
Kelly Cherwin: I love all that advice. That's fantastic.
Andrew Hibel: Yes. That's fantastic.
Kelly Cherwin: Looking for more conversations in higher ed? We invite you to join the HigherEdMilitary community as we discuss issues, best practices, news, and general trends affecting our institutions and the higher ed military-affiliated community. Inspired by the deep commitment to service that veterans and military connected faculty, staff, and leaders have towards the academic community, we at HigherEdJobs established HigherEdMilitary as a resource for both original and curated news and information, as well as job opportunities from colleges and universities actively recruiting military connected professionals. Visit us at HigherEdMilitary.com and on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Kelly Cherwin: Marjorie, I think we could talk to you for several more hours. I just, I love talking to you. I'm gonna ask one [00:23:00] final question here, kind of some last words of advice here for those job seekers who are looking to maybe get into a role as a president. Do you have any words of wisdom?
Marjorie Hass: Sure. I think for anybody seeking a presidency or really any other leadership role, it's very important to remember that when we hear about other people's careers, the narrative is always seamless, right? I did this, and then magically I had this other job, and then I was asked to do this, etc.
Marjorie Hass: In fact, you know, retrospectively, that's often how we tell narratives and stories about how we arrived at a particular spot in our life. But the living through it is much messier and much more complicated. Most people apply for jobs they don't get. Many people apply for jobs that they do get an offer and then realize, no, this is not for me.
Marjorie Hass: Or they panic, or their spouse won't move. You know, there's a lot of pieces that make the story more messy and complicated, and if you're feeling as though you're the only one who is not just waltzing without stress from [00:24:00] position to position, you are not alone. The other thing is that that means that you need a certain amount of resilience and a lot of patience.
Marjorie Hass: I always say the hardest part is the waiting. In the Academy, job searches take a long time at every level. There's always a long time before you have a first initial conversation with the hiring manager or the search firm person. And then when you put your materials together and then when you maybe hear back that they wanna meet you and then, uh, you know, and being able to both fall in love enough to be able to imagine yourself in that role and at that institution and yet keep enough critical distance that you don't become devastated if it goes in another direction. And to just trust that this is really a matchmaking process. And you know your bashert, as we say in my tradition, is out there, your fated one, the right job for you is out there and you'll be glad.[00:25:00]
Marjorie Hass: People are never sorry about the jobs they didn't get. They always wind up feeling like there was a good reason for that. So that ability to be patient and to be positive during the process and resilient is very important.
Kelly Cherwin: That's wonderful advice.
Andrew Hibel: Thank you. That's amazing. And I know Kelly said that was the last question, but I actually have one more.
Andrew Hibel: We learned that you're from Chicago and we're based here in Chicago, and I got the sense that you had some strong opinions on pizza, but like I might go a little bit with pizza, but also you mentioned your time down in Austin and there's a place in Driftwood, Texas called the Salt Lake Barbecue. So I'm gonna go very strong on this.
Andrew Hibel: Peqoud's Pizza in Morton Grove, Illinois or Salt Lake Barbecue in Driftwood, Texas. And feel free to take this wherever you want to go with it.
Marjorie Hass: Sure. So those are all very, very good references. And for pizza, I have to say Lou Malnati's, that's the family go-to Unos, the real Unos that's only in Chicago, we know what [00:26:00] Unos really is.
Marjorie Hass: It's not the chain out there. So Unos or Lou Malnati, that's pizza in my world. And you know, Lou's -- they ship the pizzas on dry ice. My mother sends them to me. Wherever we have gone in the world, my mother ships me Lou Malnati's Pizza. So big shout out. If Lou Malnati's is not sponsoring this show, now they probably should be.
Andrew Hibel: Just send us pizza. We don't even need sponsorship.
Marjorie Hass: Yes, exactly. For barbecue? Texas was a revelation because I didn't know until I moved down to Texas that barbecue meant smoked meat. I thought it meant your dad out on the grill flipping hamburgers. So that was a revolution. And we used to go to a place in Tioga, Texas.
Marjorie Hass: It was in the middle of nowhere and you'd drive in and it literally was like a stop sign and a little teeny town. And you could start to smell the smokehouse as you got there. And a lot of these great smokehouses are in dry communities. You gotta become a member if you wanna get a beer or a glass of wine.
Marjorie Hass: So yeah, [00:27:00] we would go to Tioga and get smoked brisket. That's the other thing too. I'm Jewish and so it was great that brisket was the smoked meat of choice.
Andrew Hibel: Thank you so much for being with us, and we'd like to remind folks who are listening, if you have questions for the podcast or thoughts you'd like to share, please email us at podcast@higheredjobs.com or tweet us at @HigherEdJobs. We'd love to hear from you and thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast.
Marjorie Hass: Truly a pleasure, and I really admire that you guys open this space up to allow people to talk about and listen in about the process of finding work and hiring people and finding jobs yourself. We don't often talk about that as much as we should in the academy. And so it's really important the work you're doing. Thanks for having me.
Andrew Hibel: Well, thank you again and we look forward to continuing the conversation and we thank everybody for listening to this episode and hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed recording it.
Kelly Cherwin: Thanks, Marjorie.
Andrew Hibel: Thanks.
Marjorie Hass: Total pleasure. Thanks. [00:28:00]