TITLE: Famous Last Words
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 11, 2014 10:29 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
With respect for Rands, I've adapted a paragraph from
<A HREF="http://randsinrepose.com/archives/what-to-do-when-youre-screwed/">
   one of his engineering management pieces</A>
to my experience:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 You're a department chair now.  Congratulations.  Either you
 sucked at teaching and research and wanted to try a different
 avenue of influence, or you're fed up with every other chair
 you've worked for and now you're going to REALLY GOING TO
 SHOW US how it's done.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

It's much easier to be fed up than to show people how it's really
done.  Trust me.

This week has been a challenge.  I have faced several things that
need to be done well.  Most of them are, in ways, peripheral to
the core mission of the department and university, but they are
important to students, faculty, and external stakeholders.  If
they are handled poorly, the experience people have will undercut
everything else we do well.

So these are the things that a department head must do well, in
the trenches and with not much fanfare.  They consume a lot of
emotional energy an introvert like me, and they don't offer a
lot of immediate, tangible rewards.  But they are worth my
attention.

After a number of years in this position, I have found that
it's a lot easier for me to imagine knocking the ball out
of the park than to make contact.  I keep working at it.

In this regard, I have begun to learn to combine empathy with
the proper application of a scientific mindset to how people
behave.  This idea is echoed in a passage from
<A HREF="https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2012/10/12/on-swarthmores-sorority/">
   Timothy Burke</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 Anything that real people do in the world is by definition
 interesting.  By "interesting", I mean worthy of the kind
 of investigation that puts curiosity and honesty well before
 judgment.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Curiosity about individual people and honest communication
are generally my best tools in the trenches.  Forgetting to
turn off the judgment centers in my brain never works well.
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