Management By Walking Around and the Department Chair

Found in Scholarship and Professional Development > Leadership Development Resources

by Kina S. Mallard, Academic Dean, Gordon College

When I walked into the dean's office after my second year as department chair, I was anxious to hear his assessment of my performance. After the usual chitchat, he said "You know, I think you need to get out of the office more and visit. People need to get to know you." A little stunned by this advice, I thanked him for his time and left the office. A gregarious person by nature, I thought I already was "visiting," building relationships, and networking on campus. Certainly, in my own department I had developed friendships with my faculty, inviting them into my home, laughing often, and sharing life stories.

I didn't think much about his advice until several years later. Like many department chairs, my "to do" list always far exceeded the amount of time I had allocated to chair duties. When I moved from faculty to chair, my workstyle changed from people-oriented to task-oriented. A successful day was when I met all of my deadlines. Looking back, I realized that I was possibly spending too much time at the computer and not enough on relationship building in and outside my department. Simply put, I was not walking around.

Learning how to manage an academic department is a challenge. An institution of higher learning, a rare breed of an organization, usually operates 15-20 years behind current management trends. Teachers/scholars are the most highly educated and highly motivated workgroup you would find anywhere. They are not only brilliant, they are taught to be critical. And when you combine critical thinking with the stresses and low pay of higher education, you often get cynicism. These traits make choosing a management style difficult.

Getting out of the office and walking around can increase your faculty's morale and productivity. Quality management expert W. Edwards Deming has said, "If you wait for people to come to you, you'll only get small problems. You must go and find them. The big problems are where people don't realize they have one in the first place." Some of the benefits of managing by walking around (MBWA) are:

Relationship-building. Faculty will see you as a person, not merely as a boss. And you will get to know them as they are without having to rely on hearsay.
Trust. Developing personal relationships builds trust. Without the trust of your faculty, you cannot lead.
Knowledge. You will learn firsthand of faculty needs and concerns as well as their accomplishments and strengths.
Accountability. You will feel uncomfortable facing the person again if you haven't addressed their concerns.
Increased efficiency. By staying in touch with your faculty's work habits you can help your department work smarter, not just harder.
Other-directed. When you focus your attention on your faculty's needs and interests you not only learn to care about your faculty, but you can see the bigger departmental picture. Being other-directed reminds the chair that his/her ideas are not always the best.

MBWA should also apply to chairs visiting the classroom, although this is trickier. To me, the ideal academic working environment would be one where faculty look forward to dropping in on their colleague's classes and vise versa. The chair visits faculty classes, faculty visit the chair's classes, and faculty visit each other. What better way to learn about teaching than by observing others in action? Unfortunately, a chair visit is usually seen as threatening to most faculty. However, as you build trust during office visits you might ask the faculty member if you could drop in on the class and when would be convenient. Keep in mind that these classroom visits should only be to encourage, not to evaluate. If the faculty agrees, visit the class and then send a quick note back highlighting what you enjoyed about your classroom visit. Soon, word will get around that having the chair drop in on class is a positive experience, and more invitations will come.

MBWA also makes you a better campus leader. Building relationships outside the department is almost as important as within the department. A friend of mine, Robert, was dean of the School of Business Administration and the director of a student club called SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise). Wanting to attract the best and brightest students to this competitive, national group, he wanted to give academic credit for participating in the group. Knowing there would be resistance among some of the faculty, he set out to build support.

After several months of visiting offices, lunching with colleagues, and quietly selling SIFE one-on-one, he was ready to bring the proposal before the faculty. Even though some faculty still opposed giving academic credit to this club, the were silent during the discussion, and the proposal passed. Robert was successful because his colleagues had grown to know him as a person. He had built trust which in turn built coalitions to help him achieve his goal.

This approach takes time and effort, but it reduces resistance and skepticism. It can be seen as checking the blood pressure of your faculty. If the pressure is high, faculty will appreciate your encouragement. If the pressure is low, they may be in need of some motivation. As much as faculty enjoy their autonomy, they also don't want to be ignored. The "my door is always open" policy no longer cuts the mustard in higher education. Chairs need to go to the faculty, sit down over a cup of coffee, listen, and learn. Managing by walking around is not time spent; it's time invested.

Source: The Department Chair, Fall 1999, Vol. 10, No. 2
Reprinted with permission by:
Anker Publishing Company, 176 Ballville Rd., P.O. Box 249, Bolton, MA 01740
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