By Laurie Braden
Last month, I wrote in my President’s Notes about taking risks and experiencing the reward of success. Many members contacted me to say how much they liked the personal element of that entry, how they enjoyed that I’d shared my experience with Molly and blended it into the article’s theme of risk and reward. Given the feedback, I intend to share more stories like that over the coming months. To that end, I’ve decided to pluck up the courage to tell you about one of my failures.
I barely mentioned failure in my meditation about risk and reward, so I think now is a great time to talk about what happens when we fail.
Molly and I totally nailed the puppy school graduation test—and then we promptly got too big for our britches and slacked off on practicing.
Guess what?
That led to some failures.
In the face of that failure, I had to reevaluate, take some steps backward in training for a few weeks, and then reset.
I’m happy to report that we are now back on track for continued success in puppy training.
Our lapse in puppy training wasn’t our only failure this month by the way…We also failed when it came to our Halloween costume. “Jack Hanna and a live wiggle zebra” didn’t work out so well. It turns out that five month old fuzzy black puppies don’t like to be hairspray painted to look like a wild zebra. But, we didn’t let that keep us down; some quick thinking and a little improvisation and we became Jack Hanna and a baby black bear!So what does all of this have to do with NIRSA, our members, and the populations we serve? Well a lot if you consider that we can learn a great deal from when we fail and how we respond to failure. John Dugan’s recent research findings offer an important look at how the work that we as campus recreation professionals—aspiring and veteran alike—help to support not just students’ resilience, but also other aspects of their leadership development. His findings include the measurement of a wide-array of educational outcomes associated with leadership (e.g., complex cognitive reasoning, identity) as well as the educational experiences that influence them (e.g., mentoring, involvement in student organizations, research with faculty).
The good news is that I do not have any NIRSA failures to report here today. Instead, what I want to tell you is that we each have an opportunity to respond to changing circumstances in many ways. We can instantly label a situation that did not go according to plan as a failure and leave it at that, or we can reflect on our failures and take what we learn from the situation and move forward a little wiser and hopefully with a deepened capacity for empathy.
By acknowledging what could have been done to produce a different outcome, and understanding how conditions changed and impacted the outcome—possibly in ways we didn’t or couldn’t have anticipated—we might approach communication and the inclusion of others in a different way the next time or ask questions that had occurred to us the first time around. But what true leaders never do is to simply give in and accept failure, assign blame to someone else, and simply get down on themselves or others about it all. But this is not the NIRSA way.
NIRSA is up to many great things and our strategic plan and strategic values continue to guide our work and the over 1,800 members who volunteer in some capacity—over and above their responsibilities to their families and campuses—to help bring our Association’s strategic plan to life. I hope you will consider putting your name up for consideration for a volunteer leadership position—applications for the majority of NIRSA volunteer leadership opportunities are due December 15. Pursuing our strategic plan will position us to meet our mission, realize our vision, and be valued as relevant educators and administrators who positively impact the college and university student experience.
Our Executive Director, Pam Watts, was recently asked to chair the Council of Higher Education Management Associations (CHEMA) planning committee. This is a big deal! It’s signifies that our Association and Executive Director are being recognized for the work they’ve done—for what they’ve accomplished on behalf of all NIRSA members—and that the work that we are doing is valued by other higher education leadership associations.
The Executive Education Task Force is now in motion (read more here) and will report back on options for how the Association might consider addressing the important topic of professional development opportunities for NIRSA members who are at or approaching the executive level of leadership. The Regional Realignment Task Force has gathered and is in the initial stages of exploring how NIRSA might best align and constitute its regional networks (read more here). This work will take the Association as long as it needs to take, the process will be open and inclusive, and we will all have an opportunity to become involved in the work. I’m excited to see the outcomes unfold!
Our values continue to blur and swirl within the Association as well as on our campuses. Through the vehicle of play, we have many opportunities to impact colleagues and students, and we can choose to take some risks and possibly make our return on impact even greater.
Just remember that if you stumble and the outcome is not what you dreamed, pick yourself up, adjust your approach, apply what you learned, and keep moving forward toward success. Your journey will be richer and you will experience many great adventures.
From Jack Hanna* and the wiggly black bear, have an awesome day and get out there and enjoy life!
