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MANY subjects of interest to department chairs—budgeting, personnel development, curriculum, and research development, for example—involve projects and problems the scope of which is best measured in years. The first year of service is often crucial to later success, however, and some chairs have spent much of their terms trying to undo the damage that inexperience produced in their first months. Departments differ tremendously, but there are certain principles and techniques of leadership that apply to almost all of them and that you should consider before taking office as chair.
Get acquainted with your colleagues. If you're joining a new department as chair, this need will be obvious, but otherwise it's important to remember that, when you are chair, none of your colleagues will seem exactly the same as they did before; people you think you know well will surprise you. The sooner you can learn the details of these new relationships, the better. Go to lunch with colleagues, invest in “hall time” if that works well in your department, meet more formally if you must, but take the initiative to get reacquainted with each faculty member if you can. Listen more than you talk, ask about their views and goals, and take note of each apparent change in people you thought you knew well.
Forget the hundred-days syndrome; set modest goals at first. It takes time to work into the job, establish priorities, and identify the people who will get things done. You may know what you want to do, but the rest of the department doesn't, and you'll probably change your mind before the first year is up. Give yourself time to discover what kind of chair you are. For major changes and broad schemes, the second year is often much better than the first.
Do set goals right away. Although your initial aims may be modest, don't spend your first semester doing just housekeeping activities. Establish goals for yourself and the department early, and then publicly go to work on them. Do your best to ensure that faculty members know what you're trying to accomplish, why they should value it, and when you've achieved it. The most important evaluations of your work as chair will be made not on questionnaires but in people's minds as they see you act. Develop ways to let colleagues know what you're doing without sounding as if you're blowing your own horn. The recruitment of new faculty members may well be your most significant contribution to the department in the end; why not make that one of your first plans? In today's market, it's not too hard to attract candidates who are a bit stronger than those your department has found in the past.
Assemble teams to help you; risk delegating too much. In small departments as well as large ones, each delegation of a task is usually a step in the right direction, but it's always educational. You'll never really know what the members of your department can do until you give them a chance. When you can, involve more than one person in each general task; it is likely one of them will do well, and you need identify such colleagues as soon as possible.
Discover what the faculty has in mind first. However wonderful your plans may be, you can't accomplish them alone, which is exactly how you'll be working if you finalize your plans the summer before you take office. During your first year, shine as an organizer who allows the faculty to develop plans, then get three feet out in front of them and lead brilliantly the next year.
Be accessible on a predictable basis. Secretaries, students, faculty members, and administrators alike hate to waste time trying to get in touch with you. Whatever your style—hallway encounters, open-door office, closed-door office, “catch me at home if you can”—make clear when and how you can be reached. If you're going to irritate people, do it over something worthwhile, not over the expense and trouble of trying to communicate with you.
Allow yourself the time and circumstances to get your own work done. One of your greatest problems will be finding sufficient uninterrupted time to do your essential work: writing, thinking, telephoning, reading. You must have that time, and the first year is when most people are worst at this task. Learn to close your door, ignore your phone, and bring conversations to a polite close. Be accessible, but not always.
Be a good listener and prove it. Some faculty members automatically dismiss a new chair as harmless until they are proven wrong. Others, however, view a new chair as a threatening loose gun until they are reassured. Make your careful (and therefore reassuring) listening skills evident, and be sure to reassess those skills regularly. Ask questions that show you've been listening. Paraphrase what you think you've heard. Summarize your thoughts and theirs and see how the other person responds. If you're going to develop a reputation as a great talker, do it during your second year as chair.
Learn all the administrative details you can. Don't do everything, just know how everything is done. Until you know exactly how work is done and who does it, people can pull the wool over your eyes. Ask questions, take notes, pay attention. Don't just “let George do it, since it's his job.” Supervise your office staff by learning as much about their jobs as you can right away. Remember, they may all quit in November or, worse yet, reorganize themselves next week. Become your department's best ambassador to other parts of campus, especially to those offices involved in vital administrative areas: accounting, personnel, travel, purchasing, and so on. Visit, act interested, find out what they can do for you and how.
Handle each piece of paper just once, and get somebody else to handle most of it. Paper can kill you faster than budget cuts or grieving faculty members. On your first day, develop a system for prioritizing the papers that come in:
Make it look easy. No one appreciates sacrifice very much or for very long, and no one will be grateful for your sacrifice. Go home when everyone else does, even if you're lugging papers in your briefcase to read before you go to bed. Look fresh, smile, be happy. Act as if you know what the heck you are doing and sooner or later you will. The image of quiet competence is worth a great deal. Meet deadlines a bit ahead of time, follow the rules, and save the innovative and exotic stuff for later.
Prove Orwell wrong, especially to the dean. George Orwell posited that bureaucrats didn't dare tell the truth about what they did because the public wouldn't accept the theory behind the actions; as a result, he said, they invented doublespeak. Your reputation will be established in your first year. Make refreshing candor your hallmark; it's worth a great deal in the long run—for its novelty if nothing else—and it will save you precious hours each week.
Make decisions; don't waffle. Many of your decisions will turn out badly no matter what you do. Accept that fact and develop a reputation early for holding reasonable discussions, then acting decisively. Change your mind later if you must, but remember that dawdlers come to be both avoided and ignored. Leaders make decisions, and good leaders make hard decisions.
Precedent is a guideline and a gift, not a prison. Faculty members will take advantage of you if they discover that an appeal to the way things have always been done will always win the day, and of course no two people will agree on just what the precedent is. Let things run as they have been as much as you can, but never be afraid to abandon a precedent when you need to. Half the people in a department are unhappy with most precedents anyway.
Don't plan on serving only one term. By the end of your first few years you will have just learned to do your job well. It's unlikely that at that point you'll feel like saying, “I'm ready to go back to my first love, teaching.” Plan on accomplishing most of what you'll be remembered for during your second term in office.
If you haven't inherited a procedures manual, create one. If your predecessor hasn't left you a thick and up-to-date book explaining how everything is done, you are unfortunate, but not uncommonly so. Accept your lot but don't pass it on. Start a procedures manual in your first week mainly for yourself—you can't remember everything anyway—then leave it as a godsend for the next poor soul. Write down everything as soon as you learn how to do it, from procedures for handling the mail to minutes for department meetings to budget transfers.
Neither surprise nor wait for a committee. Committees require leadership. Raise issues ahead of time when you can, establish clear and reasonable timelines, and try to keep yourself from being surprised by committee decisions. Committees don't, or shouldn't, run departments, however much vital decision-making responsibility they may have. Work with your committees so that they help rather than hinder and so that they provide for faculty governance without sapping too much faculty time.
Be a good outside chair. Regardless of your previous inclinations, accept that you are the principal representative of your department in many situations and act accordingly. Attend those functions you used to avoid. Make sure your department is always represented. Promote your department with the public, secondary school colleagues, administrators, and your own students. (For example, does your department have a videotape that explains its special achievements?) Meet new people, seek new connections, function as a conduit of information. Contact principals of secondary schools who have sent your department its top students. Perhaps most important, don't give up your old activities and associations because you think you lack the time for them now. They may be among the most valuable resources you bring to your new job.
Be chair of all the department. Unless your unit is particularly small, you probably didn't know all segments of it equally well before you became chair. Get to know the part-time people, the graduate assistants, the staff, and the rest of the department better than you used to. Don't allow your old friends to appear closer to you than anyone else, even if they are so in private. Make peace with old adversaries if you can, but treat them fairly in any event.
Be an individual, not a category. If you're a woman, don't let men tell you that you have a different style or let women tell you that you should. If you're a man, don't let men tell you sexist jokes or let women tell you that you can never understand them. You needn't be treated as “the minority chair,” “the dreamy boomer chair,” or any other manifestation of a category unless you allow yourself to be. Insist that you intend your leadership to benefit all members of the department.
Attend the ADFL Summer Seminar Workshop for New Chairs. Do this before your first semester, not after. Many new chairs have found this experience tremendously valuable. It's amazing how much more productive it is to discuss techniques, problems, warnings, and so forth before the issues come up rather than after the battles have been fought. And you'll feel better knowing that you have company on almost every issue.
© 1994 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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