This past year, our Academic Success Center & Writing Center team has engaged in ongoing work on the Division of Student Affairs Strategic Priority. Anna shared about our team’s process for exploring equity topics in her post from Fall 2021. The past two terms, our teams have explored equity and leadership practices. Each team member explored a range of practices specific to their roles, and one that resonated for me was inviting team members’ ideas as a starting point in conversations. Across many contexts, I try to create an environment that invites collaboration. We each bring a unique history, perspective, and approach to our conversations and decision-making. This is part of what makes working in teams and collaborating so valuable. The practice I highlight here is, for me, about how we can help people feel there is space for and value in what they contribute. Across our many interactions, we can create a space that centers team members’ perspectives and ideas. In turn, this also means de-centering supervisor or leader perspective so that is not the focal point of discussion. Given the complexity of our interactions and decisions, it can take intentionality and planning to be mindful of the spaces we create in conversations.
Values of This Practice
I appreciate this strategy as it has the potential to encourage people to bring their knowledge, experience, and perspectives to bear more fully on their work. It contributes to equity by emphasizing the inherent value of each person and the importance of our relationships with each other. I also find value in pushing back on that idea that there is one “right” way to do things. Like many people, at times I come up with an idea or path forward and need to take a step back to consider the full range of possibilities. I’m personally working to attend more to how I can create the type of space that acknowledge and values each person and allows for many pathways and options to be considered. We have the potential to lose these benefits when we lose sight of the relationships we have with others and instead focus primarily on deadlines, products, or a single perspective.
As I reflected on this practice, a reading that added nuance for me was White Supremacy Culture: Still Here by Tema Okun. Okun offers that “we are at our best when we are ‘with’ others (and ourselves)” and encourages prioritizing relationships and acknowledging that we are all worthy and invaluable. In doing so, we can push back on that idea of one “right way” and instead benefit from what we experience and create when we are “with” each other. Another reading that contributed to my thinking on this practice was Critical Supervision by Gray, Johnston, and Noble (Valley Library; Publisher). They emphasize the importance of early, transparent conversations about supervisory relationships and the impact of relationships on work and growth. They advocate for “safe, shared and dialogical relationships that consider individual differences and histories” and where leaders are mindful of how ideas are presented, when and what questions are asked, and opportunities for co-creation of knowledge (159).
Strategies for Interaction
Over the past few months, I’ve considered a number of ways I can better enact this practice in my own work. Some of the strategies shared here lend themselves more to one-on-one conversations, while others might work better with a small group or larger team.
Intentional Plans for Conversations and Meetings
It can help to think in advance of conversations or meetings. Planning for conversation flow and questions can be an important part of creating intentional spaces. Here are a few prompting questions that can encourage individual or team sharing and reflection:
- What ideas do you have?
- What possible options have you identified?
- Want to brainstorm some ideas together?
- Based on your experience, what are you thinking/leaning toward?
- What are the range of ways this [action, project, task, etc.] could be accomplished?
Mindfulness around Responding to Ideas
When people share, it can be helpful to consider a wide range of ways to respond, especially ways that keep thinking open. This can help to avoid immediately jumping to questions, offering advice, or noting additional factors to consider which might limit vs. opening the conversation. Here are a few potential responses that can support more open-ended thinking:
- Affirming what is shared
- Sharing areas of agreement
- Asking open-ended, neutral questions to develop understanding
- Paraphrasing to confirm understanding
- Generating many ideas simultaneously
These are just a few strategies that resonated for me as I reflected on intentional conversation and decision-making spaces. And there are so many more beyond this short list! I’m still exploring strategies and would love to hear ways that you invite team members to bring their ideas, experiences, and perspectives to their work. Feel free to reply to this post or send an me email if you’d like to share.
