Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

I attended a campus event to celebrate the retirement of UCSB Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Dr. Michael Young yesterday, January 23, 2015. Dr. Young will retire at the end of this month after 25 years as the VC for Student Affairs starting in 1990. It was an event attended by former and current students, staff and faculty, campus administrators, and local politicians. Throughout the three-hour event, speakers on stage shared Dr. Young’s accomplishments, the differences he made to the community, and most importantly, the differences he made to them as human beings. During the 24 years I’ve known Dr. Young, he has had a profound impact on me, greater than he will realize, as a student, professional, and human being. As I shared in this post dedicated to Dr. Young as my mentor/role model, I admired how he led, his integrity, and how he made others feel special. Even as a student new to UCSB, I saw Dr. Young as my possibility model. Dr. Young embodies the possibility that I, too, a person of color (PoC), can hold a leadership position at the highest level of the university. And, I can do so without compromising my value systems and my experience – my identity.

The event yesterday reminded me of the significance of possibility/role models and the impact  Dr. Young has had on others. Dr. Young inspires others through the virtue of his accomplishments and how he handles himself, especially with other folks who share similar experiences and backgrounds.

I became student affairs professional because of Dr. Young. Two primary reasons led me to my career path. For one, I had a positive experience as an undergraduate student, a student leader, and a student worker at UCSB because of the support many student affairs professionals provided. I chose this profession because I saw how Dr. Young effectively used his experience and value systems to create positive changes for the students and staff at UCSB.  At times, these changes needed principled leaders, like Dr. Young, who brought a sense of dignity and respect to the process leading to the appropriate outcomes. At times, these changes needed strong leaders, like Dr. Young, who was not afraid to challenge the institution. As one of the speakers said yesterday, Dr. Young brought conscience to the institution. Through him, I saw how a PoC could overcome racism and other institutional obstacles to get to its position. In addition, I saw how a PoC could bring their unique perspective, experience, and value systems only persons of color can only understand and use to promote the benefit of others.

My positive experience as an undergraduate student at UCSB was due to the help of many student affairs professionals during times of personal struggles and in helping me develop my sense of self. As a first-generation Filipino-American student, I faced many challenges during my times at UCSB from culture shock, limited financial resources, micro-aggressions, academic challenges, and just going through the process of growing up. How these professionals viewed, their work was shaped by Dr. Young.  Collectively, the student affairs professionals shared a common set of values of putting the needs of students first and treating them like they matter. These are value systems that were developed under the leadership of Dr. Young. Throughout the division of student affairs and the campus, his value systems were on display through the work of his staff and his relationships with students. These are values that matter to Dr. Young. These include freedom of speech, student activism, mental health and wellness, sustainability, technology, professional development, teamwork, and treating others with dignity.

I worked for a corporation that owned/managed hospitals a few months after I graduated from UCSB as a web developer. A few times, I was invited to meetings attended by hospital CEOs. I still remember walking into those meetings looking at the room and the folks sitting at the table. I sat in the corner of the room. They were all white males, middle-aged or older. I was the only person of color in the room. It was very intimidating. There were a couple of times when I joked to myself how I could never be one of them because I would fail one of the requirements – that I needed to be a white male. After a few months, I left the position to go back and work at UCSB in student affairs. I just didn’t feel like I belonged in the corporate world.

My experience in those meetings highlighted the significance of having folks in leadership/management positions who share similar backgrounds/values/experiences. At the very least, having persons of color at the highest leadership positions in an organization could suggest the org values diversity, or it could be just tokenism. So, as I describe the significance of Dr. Young and possibility models to PoCs like me, it goes beyond skin colors. It’s also how those folks like Dr. Young conduct themselves. It’s about how they overcame obstacles and how they can use their value systems and positively influence them to provide opportunities for others. Dr. Young embodies the qualities I was looking for in someone I admire and why he’s profoundly impacted my personal life and career as my possibility/role model.

One of the important lessons I have learned in my career is the value of sharing my responsibilities (and accolades) with others and being careful about taking on more duties than I am able to handle. I’ve come to learn that over-committing myself and not being able to fulfill my part do result in me becoming a bottleneck to my organization and to other colleagues. The ability to say no and to remain focus on key priorities, in my opinion, are very important management skills I am in the process of learning. Too often, in our effort to please our customers/partners by trying to meet all their demands, we find ourselves having to compromise in the quality of our work and worse, we end up failing to deliver quality work in a timely manner. This is easier said than done given the seemingly infinite projects that need to be done with scarce resources. In addition to trying to please customers beyond my capacity, there were other reasons as to why I found myself over-extended. As I reflect back on my career, I think about why was it that I fell into the trap of committing beyond what I was able to deliver. Here are just a few reasons:

– Saying “no” meant jeopardizing future opportunities. Especially during my early part of my career, I thought I had to accept every tasks given to me or risk not advancing in my career.

– I fell into the trap of “hero mentality”. I felt I had to solve every problem that came my way, because that’s what heroes do. Did it feel good being recognized for being the “hero”? Absolutely, but I soon found out I was getting burnt out as I was working too many hours. I also found out being a “hero” also brought out professional jealousy from others who may have also wanted to be the “hero”.

– I felt the need to establish my areas of authority/boundaries when I was promoted to a higher position. Areas of responsibilities don’t always match what is in the job description as duties are not always exclusive to a position. Sometimes, there are more than one person responsible for the same duties.

– I thought I was the only one capable enough to do the job. I had the “expert” mentality. This was a bad mentality, especially in a team lead role. Not only is it a selfish/arrogant mentality, it’s also not sustainable nor is it scalable. When I was the only person who knew how the applications I developed work, I had to do the maintenance myself and that prevented me from moving on to new projects.

– I viewed every projects/tasks as critical/high priorities requiring immediate resolutions. Instead of spending some time analyzing the appropriate response required and planning what needed to be done, I immediately went to work fixing issues/projects that came my way.

I think I’ve changed my ways as I became more experienced and more mature in how I deal with my responsibilities/career. I’ve learned to “let go” and not feel as if I have to take on every responsibilities that come my way. In a way, taking on too much beyond my means seems selfish. I had to change my ways in part, it was out of necessity as I found myself being burned out and not having the appropriate blend of work/personal lifestyle. It was also a commitment on my end as a supervisor to model what I think is the right approach to work to my team members and other colleagues. I’ve come to learn, through experience, the benefits of not always being the one to take on every responsibility. Do I always succeed in my attempt to stop over-extending myself? Of course not. But, I am more careful about putting myself in situations where I may not be able to fulfill my responsibilities.

Easter Sunday is one of the days when many folks bemoan the privileges afforded to other folks who may not conform to their own beliefs. That we are able to express our discontents is a privilege in itself. I’m reminded of the image above which illustrates the point that when we point one finger to point out faults in others, there are three fingers pointing back at us. By no means am I suggesting for anyone to stop questioning things around us. On the contrary, I’m suggesting to question more. In the process of critiquing the beliefs and privileges of others, might as well take the time to examine our own as well.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the success and accolades given to others are not taken as threats to our own? One of the wonderful things about social media is that I get to read about the personal and professional accomplishments of my friends and colleagues. Life can be hard at times for everyone and so I welcome and enjoy the good things that happen to folks I know. I have so many colleagues who work hard behind the scenes and they unfortunately never get the recognition they deserve. I also think we live in a world wherein we don’t share our appreciations of others enough.

In a perfect world, we’d all be cheering for each other and we should be able to freely share our successes. Unfortunately, we live in a world of scarcity where the success of others can be seen as taking credit away from someone else. This can lead to crab mentality, and as described on wikipedia – “members of a group will attempt to ‘pull down’ (negate or diminish the importance of) any member who achieves success beyond the others, out of envy, conspiracy or competitive feelings.” In my life, I’ve been on both sides. I’m not perfect after all and there were times when negative emotions got the better of me where I became jealous of other people’s success.This is something I’ve worked on as I matured and  I’ve learned to adopt the mentality that people should get the credit that they deserve. I’ve also been a victim of crab mentality in my career which almost caused me a job.

Given the negative reactions folks receive when they share their accomplishments, I think this has lead some to either stop sharing them and/or sharing them in self-effacing manner so as not to be seen as bragging. There are those who definitely can be excessive in how they talk about their good fortunes and possessions but there are also others who I think are genuine in appreciating about their accomplishments and they are excited to share them with their colleagues and friends.

We all need some encouragement from time to time and I do hope that when folks are recognized for the work and contributions they truly deserve, let’s just congratulate them.

This year has been an intense learning experience for me. It was a year of learning driven by curiosity, the need for background information for projects with folks I met via social media, and in preparation for major projects at work. In addition, a significant portion of my learning came through reading, mostly on my iPhone and kindle app. The topics I read include the following:

• Change & Innovation
• Communication – Public Speaking
• Communication – Writing
• General Business & Productivity
• Higher Education
• Information Technology
• Leadership/Management
• Technology (Social Media, Big Data, Wearable Computing, Cloud, Mobile, …)

For the most part, I went through these books by skimming and scanning them. I then went back and deep-read those I found really interesting and/or those requiring more analysis. There are some books that could have been better written, but I always start a book with an open mind so I try to find new ideas from them. However, there have been some books I have had to return (Amazon allows electronic refund within a couple of days after purchase) as I either found them to be too hard to read (the author uses too many big words I don’t understand and I fall asleep/get headaches), or ideas are not well thought out, or just not very interesting. I found that in reading enough books on similar topics, I came to find themes. It is during times when I could combine themes from across disciplines/industries and analyze them as they relate to my current work and future of higher education that I find myself thinking about possibilities of where my world could be heading.

(continue reading…)