Transcription from the session

Julianna Goldring [00:00:17]:
Hi, everyone. Welcome. Thanks for being here today. We will just give everyone, like, thirty seconds to get situated. Hopefully, everyone's having a good week. Midway point. Feel free to throw in your location in the chat, and then just make sure that, you're set to chat with everyone. Sometimes the default goes to host and panelists.

Julianna Goldring [00:00:52]:
I've definitely sent some general messages before to one person. I'll add mine too. Nice. A lot of geographic representation here. Cool. Alright. I'm gonna get us started in the interest of time. But, yes, thank you all so much for being here today.

Julianna Goldring [00:01:22]:
We are just halfway through our summit. It's the midweek point. So, hopefully, you were able to join us earlier in the week, and we'll be able to join for the rest of the week as well. We still have some great sessions lined up. So just wanted to give some context on the theme of our summit. So we really created the summit with higher per higher ed professionals in mind. We wanted to give you different ways to create stronger connections on your campus. So whether it be through staff retention, digital accessibility, some peer networking opportunities, or, of course, leadership strategies, which we have today.

Julianna Goldring [00:01:56]:
We just wanted to give you all, like, some great resources, in order to strengthen your connections on campus. Before I pass it to Carrie, I also wanted to introduce Concept three d, and who we are and share a little bit about us as a company. So we were founded in 02/2006, which means we have almost two decades of experience serving higher ed institutions. Our main suite of products offers immersive and accessible solutions, including interactive maps, virtual tours, event calendars, and, a newly launched product called Broom Reservations. We really embrace a digital first and inclusive approach to marketing and recruitment. We're proud to share that we currently work with over 700 campuses, anywhere from four year traditionals to community colleges, medical schools, law schools, libraries. We really work with a whole breadth of higher ed, institutions. So hopefully, you are excited to be here today, and I'm so excited to have Carrie, who is our chief who is the chief communications and marketing officer at UA Little Rock.

Julianna Goldring [00:03:03]:
She's also an honored member of our insights panel, which is where we first connected. So Carrie's expertise and leadership are really unmatched, and we are so happy to have her present today as part of our summit. And, just before she gets started, I'm just gonna launch a brief poll in case you're interested in learning more about working with us. And then with that, I will pass it over to Carrie. Alright, Carrie. You should be good to go.

Carrie Phillips [00:03:53]:
Okay. Well, hello, everyone. I am so excited to be with you. This is Leadership When It Matters the Most. And so as we jump in, I'll tell you a little bit more about me. I'm Carrie Phillips. I'm part creative, part analyst, and so let me clarify what that means. I say I'm creative in the sense that I love design, I love aesthetic, and Myers Briggs, I am an off the chart feeler.

Carrie Phillips [00:04:18]:
My husband understood and learned about this and he will never build another house with me because I felt the doorknobs deeply when we built our house. So I'm really intense on design and intentionality and that piece, but I'm also an analyst. I'm a data dork. I love my way around a spreadsheet, a pivot table. Nothing makes me happier than to crunch numbers and reformat data and look at different approaches and I say that I'm fully curious because I think we're better together in higher ed and we have an opportunity to really make our space better as we work together And so after I finished my doctorate, I also took a new job within two months, and so every bit of my identity as a professional really changed. And so I remember having this kind of crisis of conscious moment, and I called one of my professors and she said, well, you love to write, just go write. And so that started me carrying on about higher education, marketing, and leadership on my website and carryon.com. I love college football.

Carrie Phillips [00:05:16]:
I'm a puppy mama to Eleanor Bell. Eleanor is my Maltipoo. She is eleven pounds. She is named after Eleanor Roosevelt, so she can be a strong confident puppy, and she is also named Bell because all true southerners have two names. So we have Eleanor Bell. And then I have the opportunity to serve as a creator on the Enrollify network where I'm helping to give back to higher education, providing leadership specific content. So that is a little bit about me, but this is really about leadership, and so I wanna start the conversation and learn more about you. So I'm gonna ask everybody if this loads to, scan that QR code and tell me about your leadership.

Carrie Phillips [00:05:57]:
Where are you? Are you in that formalized role but you're, you know, maybe curious if you want to think about leadership? Is this your first role and you want to learn more? You've been doing this a while and you're trying to figure out what are maybe next steps or you're a seasoned leader and, you know, we can always, though, do better, and so you're looking at ways to improve. So take just a second and fill that out and help me understand who I'm talking to today. Okay. So we've got some folks that are curious if this is for you, got some folks that are not in a formalized role but wanting to learn more, got people that are are trying to learn new skills. So, yeah, we've got everybody in the room. Not surprisingly, in higher ed, we're we tend to kind of be be pretty split. So thank you for that. That helps me to kind of understand how to talk through today's conversation.

Carrie Phillips [00:06:44]:
So, again, excited to be here. Wanna share as well some of my leadership challenges because I think it helps paint how I approach to leadership. So first, I've had to navigate a tornado that hit our town a couple of years ago, here at UA Little Rock. I've had to navigate the retrenchment process where we unfortunately had to, you know, make program cuts, and that program cut also then led to cutting, people and personnel, and those are really hard conversations. I've had to navigate a shooting on a campus. I've had to navigate a fire. Budget transitions, you know, where we didn't meet our budget. We maybe enrollment wasn't where it needed to be or we didn't hit our development dollars, whatever that case may be.

Carrie Phillips [00:07:26]:
And we then had to figure out how to cut our budget mid cycle and how to do that, you know, across the university. Also had to do some leadership transition, and as you get a new leader in, all the change that happens with that. So I say this to say, managing these crises moments on our campus are not new. It's not my first rodeo. It doesn't mean I have everything answered. In fact, I would be the first to tell you I've got a lot of room to grow in some spaces, but I hope that I can share some lessons learned through the five strategies that I'm gonna talk about. Again, these are really based on my experience and how I try to think about how we as leaders can help support our people and help make the world a little bit better in the work that we do. And so with that, I'm gonna jump right into the five strategies.

Carrie Phillips [00:08:12]:
So the first strategy is reframing our mindset, and I think this is really where leaders have a unique opportunity to make things a better place for our organizations. You know, so often when we hear about change, we immediately go to this really scary dark place, and instead, we sometimes would be better served to give the change a chance. So I've had three, promotions that I've gotten because of an organizational structure and an organizational change. You know, it was a situation that I just let the change happen and kinda took this let's wait and see approach, and let's see how this works. And it worked out better for me. But I think sometimes we get really scared about change, and it's this desire of where all of a sudden not in control. And so when we wanna be in control, we say, oh, well, there's a change coming. I'm gonna start looking or I'm gonna start figuring something out.

Carrie Phillips [00:09:02]:
And I think sometimes we as leaders could help our teams manage these processes better if we could just change our mindset and say, let's let's see what this new world looks like. Let's see if we like this new normal, and then we can assess where we go from here. I think that mindset change of a little bit of a pause and wait and see could really help us out. Another reason that I think reframing our mindset really helps is change can sometimes helps us fix what's broken. You know? I have an agency that I work with, and I'm getting a new account, rep. We love our current account rep. There's absolutely nothing wrong. She does a great job, but she got an engagement ring.

Carrie Phillips [00:09:40]:
And so she's moving to be with her fiance and leaving the state. And so this is a happy news for her. We're excited for her. But as we're having this leadership team conversation, we're saying, okay. But if we've got a change, which is coming, what are some things that we wanna put into place? What are some processes we wanna add? What are some things we wanna do different? Because the new person coming in isn't gonna know any better. They don't have any bad habits that maybe they've gotten comfortable. So let's use this change to be a good thing. Let's fix something that's not working.

Carrie Phillips [00:10:10]:
You know, I also think about, our teams. And, you know, when I started at UA Little Rock, one of the first things I was doing is trying to see what are the operational gaps in our work. Where are the places that we need people that we don't have people? And we had a few of those, but we also had a fully staffed team of great professionals. So it was like, well, we're just gonna have to do the best we can with what we have right now. And so as we've had change and we've had attrition and we've had some turnover, we use that change to say, okay, is this a turnover an opportunity to do something different? And so we now have some new people in new places on our campus, so it allowed us to add a social media coordinator. We're hiring right now for another role, but it's all because we reframed our mindset around change instead of going, oh, the sky is falling. We went, How might we do this different? And that's what when we can reframe our mindset, change really gives us license to be able to do. And so as I talk about each of the strategies I'm gonna share with you today, my goal is to give you some practical tips.

Carrie Phillips [00:11:12]:
I hope that this is something that you not only get some insight and some context, but you also get some actionable things. So at each of these, there's gonna be this idea of how though. And so that's, I hope gonna help you figure out ways that you can lead in your own spaces, lead where you are, and make change maybe a little less scary. And so the how, though, is I've got a couple of these. One is invest now in the relational piggy bank. So, you know, if you know change is coming, you know things are gonna gonna change, you know, the average tenure of a presidency on a campus is now six years, we know that there's gonna be a lot of change, invest in your people now. Take the time before there's change to build trust, to understand how people operate, what's important to people, what things do people need to know when, Understand all of that so that when that change happens, you have the trust to make that withdrawal and say, it's okay. I need you to trust me.

Carrie Phillips [00:12:06]:
This is gonna be okay. We're gonna navigate it together. So I think that's a really important way that we can, as leaders or as aspiring leaders, talk to our leaders about how do we invest now before the change starts so that we're in a better place. I also think sometimes we as, leaders have to know how to balance. You know, I was talking to a colleague of mine that their president retired after about, I don't know, twenty, thirty years in the role, a long time, and that they had an incumbent, that moved into the role as interim. And my colleague was a vice president at the at the institution, loved this interim person, so did the entire campus. They loved it. He was gonna get the gig.

Carrie Phillips [00:12:49]:
Well, he didn't. And so now he said, you know, I've got a I'm a vice president, and I've got a team that's having this moment. And he was like, you know, part of my job as a leader is I had to give them that moment to to have that sky as falling. You know? The the world is ending, and then I had to pull everybody back into the room and say, okay. But this person is gonna outlive you. It's gonna outlive us. The institution is gonna outlive this person. So how do we get back around? How do we we've had our moment.

Carrie Phillips [00:13:18]:
How do we move forward? And I think that's part of what we as leaders have to do is gauge that temperature check, give our teams the time they need to process, to have that moment of of pity and that moment of panic, and then say, okay. But how do we move forward? And that's, I think, one of the biggest things that we can do as leaders is to know when is the right moment to do that. And then I think the other piece of this in reframing our mindset is we have to model the behavior. You know, our teams are looking to us as leaders and looking to us to see how we react. So, you know, if you're, on a team and you're not in a formalized leadership role, but everybody else around you is having a panic moment and you're the person that's being the calm, steady, let's try to figure this out, let's take a breath, it's gonna be okay, you're leading in your lane, and so you're modeling the behavior, and so that's what we need to be doing as leaders, whether that's a formalized role or an informal role. It's okay to say, hey, I'm a little nervous, I'm a little concerned, but I think at some point we as leaders have to manage moving on, getting our teams together, and a great way to do that is modeling the behavior and saying, hey, we're gonna figure this out. It may be a little messy in the middle, but we're gonna get there. And I think that's an important thing that we can do as we help reframe mindset is model the behavior Because if we're confident and we have a good face about it and we're able to show that it change it happens, the change is okay, that's gonna prepare our teams to feel a little more comfortable with change.

Carrie Phillips [00:14:46]:
Okay. So the second thing is lead with empathy. And this is really, really important, and it's really sometimes hard to do. So I'm gonna go back to this tornado that I was telling you about. This hit our campus a couple of years ago now, and, you know, I live one town over. So when I drove home after I got out of Little Rock, you know, my town was unscathed, homes no traffic was concerned, nothing. I had team members that had hours long commutes. I had a team member that it took her three hours to get home.

Carrie Phillips [00:15:18]:
Her commute is normally fifteen minutes. So extremely long commutes, power outage, lots of, you know, damage that they were having to manage. But then taking that a step further, I had team members that I was like, look. You've got a family. We have an upstairs that we literally don't use. Do you don't have power, and it's starting to get warm out. Do y'all need to come stay with us? We had team members that we were inviting to our home. I also had you know, we were hearing reports in towns in the town that the power grid was so unstable with so many places in and out that we went, You know, our grocery store is fully stocked.

Carrie Phillips [00:15:55]:
You've got kids. Can I bring you some milk? Can I bring you macaroni and cheese, you know, or chicken nuggets? Whatever it is you need, how can we be helpful? Because while, yes, we had a bunch of print projects, yes, we had a bunch of activities happening on campus, the same time, if we're real leaders, like, our heart was hurting because our town, our neighbors, our families were impacted. So it was that pulse check of, you know, we need to worry about that first. We'll get all the other stuff figured out and sorted. We'll come back to it, but it's really important that we take care of our people first, and so that is one example of of how I've tried to do that. You know, I love to ask my teams this idea of how's the weather between your ears. That's how I like to ask that question because I feel like in one on ones when you say, how are you doing? Checking in. How are things going? People just go, oh, yeah.

Carrie Phillips [00:16:43]:
I'm good. It's fine. Whatever. But we're not giving people a language that they can use. So when you ask how's the weather between your ears? It gives people the language to say, oh, it's partly cloudy or oh, it's really stormy, or it was stormy last week, but now it's sunny. So it gives people kind of this analogy that they can talk through. And I asked that in a conversation once, and I had a team member burst into tears. And I I paused.

Carrie Phillips [00:17:08]:
I said, okay. Obviously, the weather is stormy. Talk to me about what's happening. And she shared she was like, you know, my husband and I, our child is married. Our child graduated, you know, living on their own. We are empty nesters. And so last night, a family friend called and dropped off and signed over custody of their two children. So I'm now a parent to a one year old and a three year old.

Carrie Phillips [00:17:32]:
Like, I don't even have a car seat. I don't have childcare. I don't I I don't have and just started to really get frustrated and overwhelmed and rightfully so. And I said, look. I need you to take a second, take a deep breath, and I want you to go home and figure all this out. And her response back was, I'm the only campus designer. This is summer. It's our busiest time of year.

Carrie Phillips [00:17:52]:
We have to get everything done for the fall. And I said, okay. Before you leave, I need you to package up everything that's on the production calendar for this week. And so she packaged those things up, and I called the designer that we had a third party relationship with, and I said, look. I need you to to take the lead on this. These things have to keep moving this week. This other employee needs to go home, has some family things. And so the third party person we worked with did a great job.

Carrie Phillips [00:18:18]:
It was about a $7,000 cost that I incurred that day because I prioritized that employee. But that employee had the opportunity to go home, take the week, get her head on straight, figure out up from down what the new normal looked like, what a childcare path was, what a new, you know, routine in the mornings was gonna look like, all those things. And when she came back, she came back not only ready to dump back in into the work and to get the work done, but she came back knowing that we cared. And I think that's really the core of leading with empathy is that, you know, in that moment, we put the person ahead of the work. And we can't you know, that's hard to do, but we really took this people first moment or mentality. And so she felt so supported. And it's a balance, and it's a little bit of a gut call because I wanna say the other caveat here is that sometimes, you know, we've all met those people that everything is a crisis, everything is a disaster, everything is urgent or a project. And so, you know, we have to figure out that balance.

Carrie Phillips [00:19:19]:
But in that moment, this was an employee that was always doing what she could, always going above and beyond, and having a personal moment. It was the right thing to do to put people first and help. And so as we think about how, though, I wanna start with the good times. You know, I'm a firm believer that when times are great, that's the time to push. You know, when enrollment's looking great, when your development dollars are raising the dollars, when your team you've got the right people in the right seats on the bus, that's the time to go 90 to nothing, no holds barred, and get a lot accomplished. And the reason for that is then when the storms hit, you have can pull up. You can let off the gas. You can give people the grace they need.

Carrie Phillips [00:19:57]:
You can give people the time they need. But it's hard to do that if you're always, you know, running it kind of a par. So push when the good times and then be able to let out when it's when it's tough. And, you know, again, yes, in the chat, lean in when the headwinds are in your favor. Absolutely. I think that's really, really important. And I also think, you know, as we think about how to know when to lead with empathy, one of the things that I say is look at the outliers, and I'm gonna be very transparent with y'all today. I failed on this one last week.

Carrie Phillips [00:20:28]:
You know, I we we had an employee that I'd worked with who's a faculty member we'd worked with on several projects. Last fall, he had a great social media campaign. He wanted to help put together, wanted to collaborate on. He was all in. And then this semester, he's been oddly quiet, and several members of my team were working with him, and they'd all kinda made that comment. And I just and I had this little spidey sense, and I just didn't do anything with it. And I I regret that. But come to find out he's been very nonresponsive in this process.

Carrie Phillips [00:21:00]:
It's been frustrating for our team, but what I learned after the fact is he had a pretty major health issue that popped up this semester, and he also had a pretty serious family issue that popped up this semester and you know that's an outlier. He'd always been very communicative, very responsive, very easy to work with and then now all of a sudden he goes radio silent. I should have put out that moment and just said, hey just wanted to check-in with you. Is everything good? Anything you need? Anything I can do to be helpful? Just had you on my mind. You know? That was the out his behavior was an outlier, and he probably could have used that empathetic check-in, because life's been hard lately. And so, you know, look for the outliers and I'm sad to say I missed that one because my spidey senses told me to check-in on him. So the next thing is communicate and communicate, communicate. There's real power in communication.

Carrie Phillips [00:21:54]:
You know, especially in low trust environments where there's a lot of change, there's things are scary, you can't over communicate. So my team will tell you I walk down the hall almost daily and say, hey. I don't know if this is important, but I heard about this thing over here that might intersect with this project you're doing over here. Just looping you in in the event that's important information. Maybe it is. Maybe it's not. I'm not a % sure, but I just I don't wanna have not told you if it was important. And then I'll walk down the hall a little bit later and say, hey.

Carrie Phillips [00:22:27]:
I heard something in this meeting that might pertain to you. And sometimes my team is amazing, and they're like, oh my gosh. I needed to know that. And other times, they're like, thanks. I'll file it away. But what I don't want is I don't want them that one nugget that I heard in a meeting, that to have been the thing they really could have used and benefited them knowing. So I try really hard not to surprise them. I'm not perfect at it, but I also ask that they don't surprise me, and they try really hard not to surprise me.

Carrie Phillips [00:22:55]:
So if you're in a formal leadership role, try to over communicate what you can to your team. If you're not in that formalized role, do the same thing. It helps your leader, it helps your teammates to know what's coming. So a great example of that, you know, we launched a new website a couple of weeks ago, really really exciting. We had our first person that, maybe did some things once they got their access back that they they didn't need to do. And so our web person said, hey. This person sat in on the training. This person, got their access on Monday.

Carrie Phillips [00:23:26]:
It's now Tuesday, and they've already messed x, y, and z up that we need to fix. She's like, I'm gonna give them a heads up, but I just wanted you to have a context of it. And so, like, that's really good insight to know because then I can back her up. Then if I'm in a meeting and it comes up, I can just have an awareness of it and can speak to the issue. And so we try really hard to close the loop both directions to make sure that we aren't surprised. We are not perfect at it by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it helps us be better. And especially when you're in low trust environments, lack of communication can, amplify big time, and let me give you an example of that. So this is a tape measure.

Carrie Phillips [00:24:09]:
I was working at a university, and in the university, we were going through the retrenchment process. So that meant that we were cutting we were looking at all the programs and ultimately personnel and people that might not have jobs. Very scary time. As you might imagine, that, process was brought with angst. People were on edge. There was a lot of communication that went out about it. People, you know, the grapevine was also running rampant in the rumor mill, and people wanted to kind of get a pulse check on things. And so one of the the challenges I faced and one of the things I learned really hard is that in the absence of communication in low trust environments, people will fill that void with fear.

Carrie Phillips [00:24:51]:
People and let me say that again. In the absence of communication, people will fill voids with fear, and so let me give you that example. So I was in a meeting across campus. I don't even remember what it was. It might have been something related to the retrenchment conversation. It might have been something completely different. Anyways, I got out of the meeting. I'd gone in.

Carrie Phillips [00:25:11]:
I put my phone on silent, not so different than what you might normally do in a meeting. Put my phone on silent, got out of the meeting. I had 18 phone calls, 12 voice mails from my team. It's like, what is happening? Right? Like, I panicked. So I got on the phone, started calling, texting. And what happened is somebody came into the office with a tape measure. There was an empty office in the suite, and they started measuring with the tape measure, the doorways, the wall space. And my team, in the absence of me being in the room, had fear.

Carrie Phillips [00:25:47]:
They filled that void with fear. They didn't feel because of the retrenchment piece like they could go ask, a. I wasn't there to ask, b. And so by the time I got back over across campus from the meeting I was in, the team was convinced that we were, a, gonna be fired, b, that all of marketing and comms was gonna get outsourced, and, c, our offices were gonna be repurposed for another department on campus. In the absence of communication, people will fill it with fear. And so that really resonated with me that, you know, as a leader, we have to be the ones that are communicating and telling people what's going to happen or where things are. You know, I picked up the phone and I called and said, hey somebody's over here with a tape measure, can we get some context? This got us kind of on edge. Well it turned out that it was a faculty member that needed to meet with a student that had some very specific accommodations.

Carrie Phillips [00:26:42]:
So it had nothing to do with this idea that we were all going to be, you know, cut from our positions or what have you, but people were nervous and scared, and so there was no one there to kind of fill in that void in that moment. And so that stuck with me that we cannot over communicate when there are low trust environments and when there are turbulent times. It is better to tell somebody something two or three times than to not tell them something at all. So over communicate, over communicate, over communicate, and sometimes the communication is, hey, I don't know. I have said that on more than one occasion when I've had a team member ask about something and I'll just be very transparent, I have no idea. I don't have that information. I'd be happy to ask, but I may not get that information. But I assure you if I get it and I'm allowed to share it, I'll make sure that you know.

Carrie Phillips [00:27:30]:
And so sometimes that's all we can say as leaders, and that's tough for our teams, but it's important that we at least tell them that. Because then instead our teams are hearing, I don't know the information, versus them suspecting we know the information and are withholding it. And so all of a sudden, again, going back to that mind shift change, it helps us change our mind shift. And so how do we do this? Right? So the first thing is lead in the lanes that you can control. You know, when when we think about our org structure, whether you're formalized in leadership or not, chances are you have a sphere of influence. And so lead within the sphere of influence that you have. Lead in that lane. So, you know, when I was at this university that was doing this major retrenchment piece, campus culture wasn't wasn't the greatest at that moment.

Carrie Phillips [00:28:19]:
It's tough. Right? But within our own team, we worked really hard. I played a little bit of a blocker to make sure that information coming in was as complete as it could be, that they had the ability to get information out. But internally, our department had a phenomenal culture, and so I think that's a really important testament that you can't control all the things of the university, but you can control your part. And so it's really important that we communicate the pieces we can control, and we can control the parts that we can. And then I think we can do a lot in culture work in our own sphere of influence. I also think it's important as we think about the power of communication that we make sure people receive information in the same time, in the same way. So in that retrenchment process, there was a dean on campus, and I know this because I was an adjunct member of his department.

Carrie Phillips [00:29:10]:
But he was a dean, and so every Friday afternoon, he would send out a campus update. And that campus update went to his assistant dean, but it also went to every adjunct faculty, every faculty, every administrator, every admin, every custodial support person. Literally, any person that was under his purview in this process got this mass email from the dean that just said, here's where we are this week. Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know, here are what I perceive are gonna be next steps, here are the ways you can help. And everybody got that information at the same time. It wasn't something that it was told to two or three people and then cascaded down and got telephone gamed on it. It wasn't something that certain people got it and others didn't hear it, and so they were left in the dark, and it created this power imbalance over knowledge.

Carrie Phillips [00:30:00]:
It was sharing what you could, when you could, in a consistent way, so everybody got that information. And that really stuck with me as an important way as leaders that we can communicate. You know, maybe it's not an email, maybe it's pulling everybody into a staff conversation, but find a way when you need to communicate those big messages that everybody receives that information all at once. It's really, really important. Then, also, remember, sometimes we have things that we know in confidence that we can't share. It's really important that we say that to our teams. You know, if we're in a conversation that's happening, it's really important that we say, oh, I can't talk about that, but I have some information. That's important because, a, that tells our teams we're in the room that we need to be in for that.

Carrie Phillips [00:30:46]:
But, b, it also tells them that they can share confidences with us and those are gonna be protected. So as we talk about building trust and communication, finding a way to have that confidence and to be able to be in those rooms and letting people know that their confidences are gonna be maintained. But though it also you know, if we hold and protect those confidences, we can stay in those rooms. So it allows us to continually to be advocating for what we know. You know, we all know those people in our teams that it's like, oh, if we tell them, the world knows. So we very much want to be people as leaders and as those who are aspiring to be leaders, want our word to have value. And so when we say something's gonna be held in confidence, it really inspires positive communication if people know that that is true. And then the last piece here is very much own your mistakes.

Carrie Phillips [00:31:37]:
You know, we're not all perfect and I think sometimes you know, especially in high, high stress, low culture environments, mistakes become these giant finger pointing games. And so somebody needs to take the fall, so to speak, for a challenge. And so I think that one of the best things we can do as leaders is communicate, hey. I made this mistake. I own it. I screwed up. That's on me. And then let our team see that life went on, that it was okay, that we could recover from that.

Carrie Phillips [00:32:10]:
You know? I think that is the best communication message we can send. You know? And chances are 90 of those mistakes are things that we could kinda sweep under the rug that we could just handle quietly and nobody would be any the wiser. But I also think it's really important that our teams know when we make mistakes because it shows them that, a, we're human, but, b, it shows them that, you know, we can carry on from mistakes, that they watch how those mistakes are handled and what people learn from them. And so I think that helps us all be better. Okay. So we're going a little wicked here. But use your power for good. Whether you're in a formal leadership role or an informal one, I hope that the takeaway is that you will really work to use the power and influence that you have for good.

Carrie Phillips [00:32:55]:
You know, what is your purpose? I am very much drawn to do higher education work that matters, that fulfills me personally, and I know my purpose on this team is to really make sure my team has what they need when they need it, and we have the right collaborations across campus. So part of the way I'm trying to use my power for good is trying to build partnership with our campus. You know, there are unless you're the the president or maybe the chancellor, you very much have to work with people who don't report to you, so you've got to find a way to build that collaboration, And so one way that I love to do that is what I call the four A's. So the first two are admissions and advancement, those are people that in Marcom, chances are we want to have a strong collaboration with, you know, those are people that we have tons of great images, tons of great content, and guess what? They have tons of people they talk to, and they need tons of great images and tons of great content, so there should be a natural partnership there. You know, we're reciprocal in that we help each other out. Athletics, that's a huge front door of the university. That's the way many people discover a university is that community engagement and involvement piece, so being having athletics that that conversation is important. And then academics, you know, at the end of the day we're institutions of higher ed learning, and so what are the academic programs that help showcase the work that we're doing, you know, and figuring out how to build partnerships with those programs to help tell their story, but to also help them, gain students and to capitalize on all the great things that we're doing.

Carrie Phillips [00:34:32]:
So that's a great place to start as you're thinking about partnerships. If you're not sure where to begin, not sure how to have those starting conversations or where to start, I would absolutely encourage you start with the four a's, you know, admission, advancement, athletics, academics. And one of the things I love to do is called, a gap analysis, and so I look at the relationship gaps that I have. Who are the people that I have that, you know, my team would really benefit if there was a stronger partnership with x? Maybe it's a department, maybe it's a person, and that's what I say my job as the leader to do is to use that power that I have sitting at the head of the marketing table to say, oh, I'm gonna go cultivate that relationship because then it's gonna open up avenues for other conversations that need to happen. So I tried really hard to do that, and I think we can all do that within our own lanes. So, you know, maybe if you're in charge of social media, who are the content creators that you need collaborations with? Who are the student groups that you need to make sure that you're engaged with? If you're overseeing, you know, alumni, who are the people that you need to work with on campus that are programs that have seen growth that we need to make sure we're telling that story. So there are lots of ways you can approach this, but I think that's something that we can all do regardless of where our seat is, is to be leaders and to start making those, relationship and collaboration asks and using the power that we have as leaders to do that. You know, that's one of the things that I think marketing teams do so well is they are change agents.

Carrie Phillips [00:36:03]:
They often see where processes are broken. And because we work with everybody across campus, we have a unique position to be able to talk through that and to be able to bring people together. And so this is a great way that regardless of what seat you sit in, just by default of being in that Marcom space, you're a leader, and so using that to do good. And so how, though? And I'm gonna talk sound a little bit like my my dad here. And my dad used to always say, you eat an elephant. What? Yep. One bite at a time. And, he said this so much that when he was working on his dissertation, he put a giant elephant on butcher paper in he and my mom's dining room.

Carrie Phillips [00:36:45]:
So my mom was really excited when the elephant finally got colored in and got out of her dining room. She said, you know, holiday dinners just were not quite the same with a giant elephant in the dining room. But that is, I think, the way we approach this. You know, one bite at a time. Let's start with one relationship. Let's pick up a phone. Let's send an email. We can start with one, and then when we get that moving, we can easily add a second or a third or a fourth.

Carrie Phillips [00:37:10]:
We don't have to do all the relationships right away, but I think it's really important that we start. So I think that's one way that we, as leaders, can use our power for good is to pick up the phone and take that space, use that to start building those relationships, as my dad would say, one bite at a time. The other piece is take the victory lap with our teams. You know, our teams do incredible work, and especially in high stress times, low culture times, time when there's a lot of change, we get so head down focused on the to do list that we miss all the things that are happening across campus and all the accomplishments our teams are doing. So it's really important that we take the victory lap. I've shared earlier we just launched this new website. Right? And so it was really important for our team that we celebrate that. So we celebrated that in our staff meeting.

Carrie Phillips [00:38:01]:
The web team went out to lunch. As we got back, we worked with the chancellor to put out a press release that recognized those leaders. We then sent, a communication out to our governing bodies to all alumni recognizing the work that this team had put in. So we found a lot of different touch points to take a victory lap with that team. And I think victory laps are really important, but I think you have to know what works for your team. And so what I wanna ask from all of you, what's your favorite victory lap? How do you like to be celebrated? So go ahead and answer that in the poll that I just popped up and tell us, you know, maybe that you love lunch or going out to be celebrated. You love public recognition. Maybe it's a happy hour.

Carrie Phillips [00:38:46]:
Maybe it's getting to to leave work an afternoon early. What is the way that you love to show that you're being celebrated? So take just a second and do that. I've got some answers coming in. Time off. Oh, yeah. Time off, free lunch, leaving early. Public recognition. Yeah.

Carrie Phillips [00:39:12]:
Agree. Recognition for sure. Afternoon off lunch. Yeah. Food motivates us. Recognition. You know, time off. Bacon, avocado.

Carrie Phillips [00:39:28]:
Oh, now I'm getting hungry. Celebrating with your team. Yeah. Financial compensation. Great great points. Lots of different ways that people can be recognized, and lots of different ways. You know, some people are words of affirmation. They very, much want that, you know, hand I have a member of my team that wants a that handwritten note is her love language, and if I give her a handwritten note that says I see you, I could have hung the moon and the stars.

Carrie Phillips [00:39:55]:
That's the way she loves it. You know, trust in new processes. Yeah. Lots of good ideas here. Recognition when it includes the full team. Yes. So many good ideas. Thank y'all.

Carrie Phillips [00:40:05]:
I hope that was helpful. But the reality is is I think it's important that we understand what matters for us and what matters for our team. So I have right now for my team, I have a I call it the the cheat sheet, and I want to know their favorite Starbucks drink, their favorite sweet snack, and their favorite savory snack. And so we use that, and so sometimes I'll go pick up a coffee and I'll be like, hey. I'm gonna grab a coffee. Can I get you a mocha? That's your favorite drink. But, you know, it's really important that we find that victory lap. I also think it's important that we create culture where it's fun.

Carrie Phillips [00:40:38]:
So at UA Little Rock, Halloween is a deal. It is there's just something about Halloween that on our campus, it kinda naturally is a thing. So we all get together, we wear our costumes, we meet for breakfast, we take a million pictures, and then we go about our day. And then in the afternoon at the Halloween costume contest for campus we ride around on our golf cart and hand out candy. So I'm there in the middle is Daphne from Scooby Doo. I hope you I hope you got it. We got a couple of Taylors in this picture. We got a whole different variety of folks but this is one of my favorite things is you know that thirty minutes where our team comes together, we all wear our outfits and we take a bunch of pictures and have a moment on it.

Carrie Phillips [00:41:22]:
One year we won the entire costume contest, the year we were pantone colors, and we all dressed up in different solid colors across campus. So anyways, I think find those things that are organic to your team and organic to the work that you do, and I think that's a really good place to start and how you can kind of create that culture work. And find the ways to say thank you, to take that victory lap with your team, and I think it is really really impactful. Yes to those of you wanting to see a picture of that, I didn't have it and, another member of my team sent it to me the other day because I was asking about it, but find the way to say thank you. And then I also think, you know, thanking our external partners. As you're trying to build those relationships, what are those external ways that you can build partnership? You know, after we hit our census day goals this year, our admissions team sent over cookies to say, hey, Marcom, we couldn't have done this without you, and we appreciate you. So we got a lovely platter of cookies. You know, at another university when we had a visit day, after every single visit day, we'd buy lunch for their team.

Carrie Phillips [00:42:30]:
What are ways that we can partner and build collaboration with others, other departments, but also show them that we see you and we're taking the victory lap with you? And I will say the important thing of using your your voice in your work for good is that sometimes you have to course correct. So when you hit those moments, it's really important that you praise in public and critique in private. That is so so so important, and this is the model that I like to use for having those tough conversations. It's called state, and this is the model for crucial conversations, and I'll go through this really quickly. But as you're thinking about how you do this, you know, let's say Susie is always late to your office, and so you need to have a really tough conversation with Susie about this. And so instead of just saying, Susie, why were you late again? You might say, Susie, I noticed that you were late for four days in a row. You're sharing your facts. Then you're gonna tell your story.

Carrie Phillips [00:43:27]:
So, Susie, to me, when you're late for four days in a row, that makes me think you don't care about the office. Then, but, you know, Susie, again, thinking about those outliers, this hasn't always been the case. So I'm curious if there's more at play. Maybe I'm not understanding something. Can you can you work with me from your perspective? And then you shush, and you let Susie talk. And then after Susie's had a time to had some time to talk and kind of talk through her experience, maybe you realize, Susie, what I'm hearing is that, you know, you've got a family of two and you your husband's vehicle was in a wreck and it's totaled and you're waiting on insurance. So now you're having to get two kids and four adults to the office in the mornings, and that's added a whole level of complexity. You know? We're talking tentatively to make sure we're understanding.

Carrie Phillips [00:44:19]:
And then that last piece is encouraging testing. And so, Susie, maybe for the next two weeks until that car is ready, maybe we adjust your hours and you can come in a little later so you have that flexibility. You can make that up, you know, maybe by bringing a lunch and doing a shorter lunch or working late or maybe you come in, you know, at a different time and we figure this out. Maybe we try that for a week or so and let's touch base, and so, again, we're encouraging testing, and I think that piece is really important in this conversation too is that we don't just stop and say, oh, we had the crucial conversation. All is good. Instead, we say, no. Let's try this again. Let's test this.

Carrie Phillips [00:44:55]:
Let's come back, and let's keep working on it. And I find when we have these really tough conversations this way, it allows us to get to better solutions that really understand the needs that are wins for everybody and not just a supervisor power dynamic, so we're using our space for good. But it's really important that you sometimes have to do that work because if you're not willing to have those critiques in private to the rest of the team, it says two things. It says either one, you're not willing to do the hard things, which probably isn't a good message, Or, b, maybe the second even worse message is you see it you you don't even see it. You're so aloof as a leader that you don't see it. I don't think I want my team to think of either of those. So those aren't fun things, but I think it is using our leadership for good. And I also say find those people outside of your space that you can talk to.

Carrie Phillips [00:45:49]:
So these are some of my, girl gang. We have text messages, we call each other, and it is not uncommon that I get, feedback of, hey Carrie, you might want to think about this other perspective on that issue when I ask, or I'll say, hey I've dealt with that before, here's how I handled it, and so I can help them. Because what I find as as a leader sitting at that CMO seat is I'm the only person that does my exact job on campus, so it's pretty lonely. The people that get my work that I can talk to are sometimes my colleagues, so they're the people that work for me, report up to me, and so that means I can't always talk to them about things. And then people across campus that I could maybe talk to that are at my same level, they don't understand the nuances of marketing work, so I have had to go outside my own university to find those relationships and to find those people I can talk to. So I highly encourage you to do the same. And so our final strategy is don't forget the students. They are 1000% why we have jobs and why we are here, and so it's really important that as we think about leadership that we keep them in the back of our mind in any conversation and think about things from their perspective.

Carrie Phillips [00:47:00]:
So when I was at a prior university, we decided, okay, we're gonna map the leadership funnel, and, you know, a student decides, hey, I wanna come here this day. From the day they make that decision to the day they step foot on campus, what's the process? Y'all across 17 offices and five divisions. Let me see that again. 17 offices, five divisions. It's like, well, no wonder they got lost. There was so much red tape. And so I think that's part of our job is, you know, how can we make this better for the students? And so a way that we were talking about is, you know, for the website, we were in the middle of a redesign. I feel like that's a theme.

Carrie Phillips [00:47:37]:
But as we were, you know, redesigning that it was like maybe instead of financial aid has a web page and student accounts has a web page and housing has a web page, what if we just had a your next steps web page and the content from all of those areas lived on that one page? How transformational would that make it for the student so they could follow what they needed to do? So it's things like that, finding ways to get your students engaged and involved. Also, I think it's really important, again, lead and control the influence in the sphere of influence that you can. You may not be able to fix everything for every student, but, you know, I bet the students that you come in contact with, maybe it's the students you work with on social, you can help them by getting answers to their questions, or the students who are interns in your offices, you can help them by providing some real world experiences. And we have our interns, we do resume critiques with them where they have to sit down and work with us on their resume so that when they leave, they not only have their portfolio, but we've seen their resume. We've worked with them on an elevator pitch. So we're we maybe can't control everything across campus on the student experience, but how can we help the students we interact with? And so as we think about that how though, you know, I think the first piece, use your student government. You know? All the time, go to our student government and say, hey. We're talking about this.

Carrie Phillips [00:48:52]:
I'd love to get your feedback and love to get your perspective. They have great ideas. Sometimes they have ideas that don't work for a myriad of reasons, but how important is it for them that they feel like they matter? And sometimes they've given us some advice that saved us on some things, so really important there. We make sure our interns, once a month, they're sitting in on our staff meetings. And the more and more you do that, the more comfortable they get telling us, that's not a good idea. That wouldn't work from a student perspective. Or sometimes we bring them in and say, hey. We want you to creatively come up with an idea for this, and we give them an assignment and let them pitch it.

Carrie Phillips [00:49:25]:
So they're getting that practice. So, again, we're finding ways to make things really practical for the students we intersect with. Then we also have what we call the next spaces. I'm sure you all have something similar at your institution, but we invite students to come forward and tell their own stories. And I think, again, making sure that it feels authentic is one of the best ways we can help our students. So the more students that we have telling their authentic story of campus, the better we make that overall. And so my closing kind of thoughts, and then I think we'll have some time for questions, is first, this work takes time. The relational work of leadership takes time.

Carrie Phillips [00:50:00]:
It's so much faster to just sit in your office and do the things, but you're not helping your team. You're not helping your organization. So I would really, really, really encourage you to take the time and do this work. Culture change also takes time. Sometimes it takes years to move that needle. And a way that I find that helps me to not get so, down when those things take time is think about two degrees or 2% every time you do a project. How can you move the needle a little bit? So perfect example is a ViewBook. You know, we may look at and go the pictures are wrong, the size is wrong, the content's wrong, the tone's wrong, but if we try to fix all of that in one fell swoop, we're setting ourselves up for failure.

Carrie Phillips [00:50:37]:
So maybe this time we just work on copy, then maybe next time we just work on imagery, and then maybe next time we look at the size and the design style. So time and time again we're iterating, we never arrive, we can always be better, so it helps us change that mindset, but because we're doing the change in small bites, it doesn't panic other people across our campus, and so we actually get more long term momentum toward the change. So the final thing, as you're thinking about leadership and trying to decide if it's for you, there are days that you were gonna be amazing and you feel like I nailed it. I did everything right today. There are days that you were gonna feel like you were the biggest loser. Sometimes you're gonna feel both sets of emotions in the exact same day, but I would just wanna close and say that if you do this work and you really try to do well by your people, I think you can make a positive impact, and it's really rewarding on those days that you feel like you've done just that. And so with that, I will stop sharing and answer any questions. And, of course, if you want to find me, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Carrie Phillips [00:51:42]:
There's my email address and my website and carryon.com as well. So thank you all so much, and I'm gonna stop sharing now.

Julianna Goldring [00:51:51]:
Thank you so much, Carrie. I have to say, I love a good pun, and so your website being and carry on is just so amazing. So we're gonna do some claps for that before we get

Carrie Phillips [00:52:01]:
I love it. I love it.

Julianna Goldring [00:52:04]:
But, yes, thank you so much. That was so, so good. I loved all your examples. We had a couple questions come in. The first is from Will. He said, how do you approach the conversations when you had to suspend or cut programs both with staff and faculty and also to the students?

Carrie Phillips [00:52:22]:
Yeah. That's a really, tough question, and there's not a great answer to be honest. But what I have figured out is, be direct, be very clear with what it is. You know, at first the first time I started thinking through those, I wanted to say, like, we value you and all this. And as I was thinking about it, I was like, they don't care in that moment. In that moment, they want the information. So start lead with the information. Be direct about what it is.

Carrie Phillips [00:52:49]:
You know, be kind, but be very clear and be direct. And that's gonna sting, and it's gonna hurt, and it's not gonna be pleasant. But I think it's better than trying to overly fluff so that maybe people don't even know what the what you're saying because we've all been guilty of that. But I also think in that moment, people just wanna know what the answer is and what the outcome is gonna be and then also how it affects them. And I think that's really important, of how that's gonna affect them and what they are needing or looking for.

Julianna Goldring [00:53:20]:
Yeah. That's great. Thank you. And then this question came from Grace. She was referencing back to kind of all the fun culture activities that you had mentioned. But she said, I love fun things too, but how do you make introverts feel included?

Carrie Phillips [00:53:34]:
That is a great question. So, a, I'm an introvert. So I feel this deeply. So that's step one, is I think recognizing that introverts are there. And so one of the ways that I've tried to do this is through what I call deliberative time. So I work I try, and I'm not perfect at it, but I try really hard to, you know, think through these things in advance. Because what I find is that our introverts in conversations and ideas, they often have great ideas. They often have sometimes better ideas, but they're not that person that wants to speak up in the moment.

Carrie Phillips [00:54:10]:
So So sometimes I like to give them the answers in advance. I had a member of my team that used to drive me nuts because we would brainstorm something, and she was an introvert, and then she would come back and say, oh, what about this? Like, two days later. And it was a great idea, but we had we're already too far down the train track. And so I finally realized she needed that deliberative time to think and process. And so we sat down and had a conversation about it, and I said, you know, if I can give you this early, would that help you to have time to process your thoughts and be able to add to the conversation? So did that, a, and I think do that same thing and talk to your team about what are ideas or things that might be fun. What are those group ideas? You know, not everybody loves to get together, and go out to lunch or whatever. So maybe that's something you have there, but talk to those folks who are in that introvert scale. What's value to them? You know, maybe for them it's a book club that you read over lunch and they have an opportunity to engage, in a more private, less public space.

Carrie Phillips [00:55:12]:
So I think it's really hearing your people, knowing your people, listening to them, and asking those questions in a, again, in private, in conversations that don't put anyone on the spot, but giving them an opportunity to kind of, weigh in and be part of the the conversation.

Julianna Goldring [00:55:30]:
Yeah. That's great. It's pretty much just like meeting them where they are, giving them the chance to speak up. That's in a way that's comfortable for them.

Carrie Phillips [00:55:38]:
Sandra, I saw that you asked to, see my contact information again. So I'm gonna share that real quick for you, and, hopefully, that will be helpful. Perfect. Because I'm double sharing now. I don't know how I managed to do that. Maybe I'm gonna share. Let's try that.

Julianna Goldring [00:55:56]:
Carrie, I had a question as well. Yeah. So you kind of alluded to this as being a turbulent time, and I think that's, also where a lot of the, theme of the summit came from, trying to create this stronger connection on campus. Yeah. So I was hoping you could address what advice you would share with other higher ed professionals in terms of navigating tough times, like, in this current state and how to, I guess, maintain a keep calm and carry on mindset and, do that.

Carrie Phillips [00:56:26]:
So I think a couple of things. I think one is know our role. I tell our our chancellor and our leadership all the time, my job is to say is to so let me back up. I got in trouble at seven when a teacher asked me, what she thought of her haircut, and I told her. And that's when I figured authenticity is my core value is that, like, don't ask me a question if you don't legitimately want the answer. And I've had to learn tact, but that's part of what I think our job is as leaders is to raise the the uncomfortable conversations with our leaders and to say, hey. Devil's advocate here. Have we thought about it from this perspective? Or this may be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like it's something we at least need to privately have a conversation around.

Carrie Phillips [00:57:11]:
So I think that's one thing is that I've tried really hard and part of what I would encourage other leaders is to push, you know, nicely to have those conversations. It's really important that you build trust so that your leaders know, you know, they may hear that conversation and go, yeah, that's really important, but these other things over here, we're gonna go a different path. And so it's important they that you have built the trust so that they know you're gonna support regardless of what they decide, but it's our job to bring up the tough points, I think, is one thing. I think the other thing, especially on email communication, I have, b two, b three. Sometimes I have to send b five. And so, like, if you have that person that gets under your skin and they are rude or disrespectful or what what have you, like, write the email, get the words out, say all the things. I would even say go so far as to write it in a Word doc so you don't inadvertently send it. And then practice, sending a version that's maybe a little more polished when you've had a second to breathe.

Carrie Phillips [00:58:12]:
But there is nothing wrong with taking a moment and getting that out. I am in no way saying you can't get those frustrations out, but probably not gonna help build collaboration if that email gets sent and it's, version one draft. So, like, my team will, sometimes come in and be like, that was a good response on that. I was like, yep. That was v five. It took me a few to get there. But go ahead and say the thing you need to say. Get it out of your system.

Carrie Phillips [00:58:36]:
Just don't necessarily send it. And I think those are the kinda two pieces that are biggest to help me keep calm.

Julianna Goldring [00:58:44]:
I love that. That's really great advice. Amazing. Well, I think that's all of our questions for today, but thank you so so much for presenting, with us, and thank you all for being here. Have a great rest of your week.

Carrie Phillips [00:58:57]:
Great. Have a great day, everybody. Bye.