Let’s be honest…working in Career Services can be tough. We simultaneously balance preparing our students to thrive in the 21st Century workforce, persisting in the goal-driven environment that is higher education, and nurturing collaborative partnerships across the entirety of our campuses. We need to be surrounded by the best, and to keep them engaged. So how do we as leaders recruit and retain our “Dream Teams”? Last week a friend and frequent collaborator left the univers

“What is your superpower?” This question has come up several times for me during the past few weeks, usually as part of an icebreaker activity. Other times, it has been disguised in strategic planning or hiring language, “what is your special sauce?” or “what is your value add?” Let us start out with a certainty: we each have superpowers. If we can figure out how to best fuel those superpowers, we will be able to harness their powers for good - both personal, and collective.

There are two common operational pain points that usually stand out in neon lights as I interact with career center teams. In fact they have been around for quite some time, but in this era of change and growth, they are becoming more prominent. Our volume of work is high - often overwhelming We stink at saying no - this perpetuates #1 If this is you, don't feel guilty, feel normal. But the time is now for a new normal. And many are figuring out the amazing benefits of co

Evaluating and honing our staff competencies is at the heart of any re-imagine effort. In Part 3, our final video on How to Re-Imagine Career Services, sponsored by PeopleGrove and Handshake, Jeremy Podany, Founder of The Collective, sat down with Christine Cruzvergara, Associate Provost and Executive Director of Career Education at Wellesley College, to unpack the role of new staff in leading massive change. The following questions highlight themes from Part 3 that you migh

Do you and your team know your purpose or do you believe it? Understanding the difference is critical to building a purposeful team. You've most likely heard this story before. John F. Kennedy was about to give a huge speech to inspire the nation to rally behind the Apollo missions. While he prepared in one of the hangars at NASA he took a wrong turn and found himself in a janitors' closet. Inside, he saw a janitor cleaning his mop. "Hey," said JFK., "What do you do here?" Wi

I started thinking about this topic about 10 years ago when I was a newly minted associate director. I was trying to figure out our office’s role on our campus. I was trying to understand why our team was a footnote on the student experience and maybe not as relevant as we could be to the work being done in student affairs, advancement or within academics. We were going through a leadership transition of huge proportions at the institution and there was an opportunity. A wind

Good leaders understand the importance of causality. Great leaders understand how to influence it. To adapt a popular saying from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Shallow [leaders] believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong [leaders] believe in cause and effect.” Indeed, a deep understanding of causation proves vital to successful leadership, and those in the business world who vigorously investigate causality in a variety of relevant areas—from productivity to customer relations, to em

Nobody comes to the discussion on trust empty handed. We all have strong feelings about it. We know how it feels when trust is misused, betrayed, or withheld. Our perspectives are real and have been informed by a lifetime of experiences, pain and broken relationships. Sometimes these conclusions are helpful and sometimes they hold us hostage. Over the years I’ve come to a surprising conclusion: our most popular theories about trust are often untrue and almost always unhelpful

We’ve all heard the cliché that there is no i in team. However, there are two of them in innovation, and to do our best work, we need all staff members to understand how they are an important part of the innovation process. Creating a culture of innovation is vital for those seeking to move their office forward. Unfortunately the word innovation can conjure up competing perceptions of either a useless corporate buzzword or a solo, untouchable leader. Neither of these stere