It’s easy for department chairs to view their role as a series of tasks on a to-do list: manage faculty reviews, hold department meetings, implement new university policies, handle unexpected emergencies. After all, it’s an ever-changing list to keep an eye on.
But focusing solely on tasks ignores the ways in which chairs shape how department members interact with each other and the resulting quality of relationships. Meetings are a common example. Chairs can choose how to organize meetings, help employees feel included or excluded, mentor new assistant professors on norms of participation, and assign people to committees. How the chair accomplishes these day-to-day tasks can have a huge impact on the relationships between department members and the quality of the relationships that are built. Cumulatively, small moments of interaction can have a profound impact on a department and its culture, and can be an important factor in helping a department create a healthier workplace.
However, many chairs are not used to noticing the impact of daily chair work on working relationships. To use this opportunity to positively impact relationships within the department, chairs need to develop their relational attentiveness, or the ability to notice opportunities that impact how people connect. Two years ago, I developed a six-part seminar series, The Scholarship of Healthy Relationships at Work, for a small group of people specifically looking at this issue as my chair at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. By engaging in research-based practices, they develop competence and confidence as leaders while improving the quality of relationships within their departments.
Below, I describe four ways chairs can foster relational focus and increase the occurrence of positive, inclusive relationships within their departments. In describing these four recommendations, I share examples from two groups of chairs with whom I have had the privilege to work.
- Invest in one-on-one relationships with department members.
It’s easy for department chairs to take for granted that they know the faculty in their department and, by extension, you. After all, as a faculty member, you’ve probably had many casual conversations with them and attended many meetings. But relying on your past knowledge may leave you with an incomplete view of the chair. We all inevitably have faculty or staff we like and those we avoid, leaving an imbalance in our relationships with them and information about their work, motivations, and lives. Likewise, faculty may have a hard time seeing you as an impartial department chair unless you take the time to prove it. After all, making visible efforts to cultivate relationships is the cornerstone of inclusive leadership.
An important way to lay the foundation for building positive and inclusive relationships with department members is to rebuild relationships with them. You can do this by holding 30-minute one-on-one meetings with each member of the department. Given that chairs often know little about what employees do and how they contribute to the department, it is important to meet with staff and faculty. In some departments, it may also be important to meet students in person.
Before starting these one-on-one conversations, regardless of your relationship history, try to stay open, humble, and genuinely curious. Ideally, these meetings can be held at their workspace (rather than your own office) so you can communicate that you’re interested in them and would like to come to their space. Ask open-ended questions about their interests, motivations, and work. In smaller departments, these meetings may take place over the course of a month, while in larger departments, they may take an entire semester. In larger departments, where one-on-one meetings may seem impractical, you can hold meetings with a small group of people with similar roles or levels. These meetings show that you want everyone’s opinion to be heard, regardless of your past relationships.
You’ll also learn something new that you can use to make your department healthier. For example, you may discover that two faculty members unknowingly share common research or teaching interests. By connecting them, you can help strengthen connections within departments and potentially inspire new collaborations.
What you learn in these sessions can also help resolve unhealthy relationships. For example, one chair learned new information about a grumpy faculty member who was frustrating his colleagues (including the new chair!) because he had a reputation for not playing his role on committees. When the new chair asked him, “What would you like to contribute to the department?” she learned that one of the things he cared about was graduate education. Armed with this new information, she placed him on a committee that suited his interests, to which he fully contributed. By designing his work around his own interests, the faculty member is more intrinsically motivated to participate, and his colleagues are no longer irritated by his behavior on committees.
- Understand the diversity of your staff and students and show your interest in learning from them.
Like all organizations, departments are diverse in both tangible (race and gender) and intangible (political, neurodiversity) dimensions. While there is a lot of debate about DEI right now, understanding the diversity of your faculty can help you become a better leader because you can understand how to help everyone succeed. To develop positive inclusive relationships, chairs must make visible efforts to show respect and express genuine interest in those who are different from themselves.
To build a foundational knowledge of the chair, you can learn about the experiences of different groups in your department, school, or university by reading institutional resources like climate surveys or talking to experts at the college or university level. For example, conversations with your school’s DEI leaders can tell the story of your staff and students’ experiences. A university’s international office can provide insight into immigration-related issues, which may help understand the complexities of managing immigration for international faculty and students.
Enhancing your own knowledge can help you understand the problems that come across your desk. For example, if a student comes to you complaining about a faculty member’s teaching, and you learn that members of that group have to fight for respect in classes at your university, your knowledge of the broader climate can help you think of the complaint in the larger context when considering what an appropriate response is.
If you feel more confident in your knowledge, skills, and abilities to manage DEI, you can reach out more openly. For example, if there is an on-campus employee resource group or off-campus community organization, contact them and tell them you would like to learn from them; ask if there are events that would be suitable for you to attend. Now that you have a stronger foundation in the local DEI environment, you can proactively connect marginalized faculty and staff with on-campus mentors and the community.
The ability of chairs to engage publicly on DEI issues will depend on their own expertise as well as their institutional and local context, as DEI work becomes more fraught in many parts of the country. Some chairs with expertise in DEI or related topics may be happy to host events in their departments. For example, one chair hosts a monthly Social Justice Lunch and Learn, a voluntary reading group for faculty and staff. She chose this article given her expertise and was happy to moderate the discussion herself.
The chair can also create opportunities for critical feedback for the department. For example, if there is tension between groups within a department, don’t ignore it, but develop a game plan for how to receive critical feedback about what’s causing the tension and how to resolve it. Faculty and staff put in a lot of effort in such stressful situations; finding ways to solve problems can be a huge stress reliever and energy freer.
Remember, faculty and staff don’t just evaluate a leader’s inclusion based on one-time events, but look for patterns based on the leader’s efforts around inclusion. You don’t have to know all the answers to how to serve the diversity of members in your department, but you can strengthen your network to include those with knowledge and expertise.
- Think of committees as networking opportunities.
Chairs can use committees, meetings, and other regular ways in which faculty and staff gather as opportunities to build higher-quality connections. By focusing your relationship attention on these daily interactions, you can improve the quality of your relationship. For example, people often don’t know why they are placed on a committee or work group or what others bring to the table. As the chairperson, you can use introductions strategically. Publicly communicating your views on faculty members’ strengths and potential contributions to committees, work groups, and meetings can help them feel respected and make others more likely to view them that way. This increases the chance that these regular interactions will lead to positive connections.
Committees and meetings are also opportunities to increase employee engagement and spread work knowledge. University faculty often feel like second-class citizens, with faculty who don’t understand or care about their expertise. To counter this tension, a chair introduces staff members as experts in their fields and provides them with opportunities to present their areas of expertise at meetings. The chair reported that these innovations created new positive connections among faculty and staff; faculty gained a new appreciation for staff’s work, and staff felt valued and valued.
- Design social events as opportunities to connect.
We are in a moment where many people want, and some have, the ability to work remotely. At the same time, faculty and staff want to make more connections at work. As architects of social relationships, chairs have the opportunity to host meaningful social events that bring people together. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to designing such events: the goal should be to make the event engaging, not mandatory.
First, think creatively about how to bring people together in your specific departments. For example, a department chair knows that all teachers work together to support their students. In his department, faculty want their undergraduates to have a good experience in the major because they truly value undergraduate education. Therefore, the chairman organized an open day for teachers and students. In the process of communicating with students, teachers also deepen their connections with each other.
Another chair held a social event around the dreaded annual teacher review. The day before judging was due, she reserved a conference room and brought snacks so faculty could swap tips on how to fill out the tedious form. Others are hosting department gatherings at home, using department funds to host monthly lunches or upgrading department shared spaces to make them more conducive to shared interactions.
Improving the quality of relationships through social events within the department doesn’t need to rely solely on the chair; it can also be the work of a cultural committee that can brainstorm social events that resonate. Ideally, these activities will become part of the department’s rhythm. A word of caution: It is not recommended to use workplace socializing to try to repair relationships between internal warring factions. In fact, it will make things worse.
Each of these four approaches can help chairs invest in and improve the health of their department’s relationships. Of course, it’s also important to contain and manage negative relationships (another topic I discuss in my Healthy Work Relationships program). But taking advantage of these day-to-day opportunities by strategically investing in your relationships, your knowledge, and how people connect provides critical support in supporting department relationships and ultimately a positive department culture.
