Talking Stick - January/February 2015 - 33

and impact greatly exceed Sarah's, at
the moment. He loses respect for her
a bit more each week. He doesn't feel
supported or encouraged.
For her part, Sarah feels that
Chris is enabling the students' worst
impulses with his attention. She feels
that, in some ways, his new ideas and
new approaches are undermining
everything she achieved in the
previous years. She would rather
focus on taking care of the immediate
priorities.
Perhaps this story of a disengaged
leader sounds familiar. As a speaker
and consultant, I often address the
subject of engagement and try to
help organizations move forward by
leading people from whatever level of
engagement they bring to a situation.
Student officers lament the apathy of
their members. "How do I get people
to step up and care?" they ask. How
do they inspire them? How do they
make them care? Yet at least once a
week, I am pulled aside by student
affairs professionals who only halfjokingly ask, "What do you do when
the disengaged person you have to
deal with is your boss?" What do you
do when you get little encouragement,
guidance, or support from the person
whose job it is to encourage, guide,
and support you?
In a field where a professional can
go from an all-sacrificing, enthusiastic
advocate for student life to a burntout, exhausted mid-level supervisor
in a few years, the problem seems
widespread. This is not to suggest
that all mid-level student affairs
professionals are disengaged, tired,
or low spirited. Anecdotally, however,
it appears that many people who
question the long-term viability of a
career in student affairs do so at the
5- to 10-year mark, a time when they
likely are supervising energetic young
professionals. Similar questions come
from mid-level professionals coping

with upper-level administrators who
have settled into a routine. They say
it's hard to make exciting changes that
keep a program relevant when the boss
is prone to comfortable patterns and
low-drama choices.
If only it were as easy as
confronting the poor supervision.
Surely some will complain up the
food chain, risking hostility in their
immediate supervisory relationship.
Perhaps others will simply move on to
another position or field. But, for most
people, dealing with a disengaged
supervisor comes down to coping with
the situation. For many, that leads to
three coping strategies: demonstrating
overwhelming competence, seeking a
support network from others affected,
and focusing on fulfillment outside of
work.
"My boss has totally checked out,
and that means having to manage
upward," said Laurie, who works at
a large university in the Midwestern
United States. "In order to get my
boss to agree to a new software
management program, I had to make
it so he wouldn't have to do any work
but could be congratulated for it
being successful by our director. As
long as I'm making the office look
good, he tends to leave me alone." In
Laurie's case, she coped by showing
extreme competence and producing
demonstrable results. She positioned
herself as a highly productive asset to
her division. "The higher-ups won't get
rid of him. He's been in the position
for almost 20 years. Yet I'm told that
I've been brought in to change things
up and modernize the department,"
Laurie said. "There is obvious
understanding from everyone that
doing my job well means having to
work around this guy until he retires
or I leave for something else."
For Daniel, who recently left a job
at a large public Southern university,
coping with a checked-out boss

became a team effort. "She made it
clear she was leaving at the end of
the year," Daniel said. "She would
give the team a report once a month
of what she expected us to work on,
then would disappear for weeks at a
time using up her sick and vacation
time. We were very much on our
own." Daniel's team bonded as a
result of their supervisor's neglect,
weathering the negative attitude as a
group and providing support for each
other when needed. "When she would
make her occasional appearances in
the office, she would act as though we
had disappointed her with our results.
She wasn't supervising us at all. No
assistance, no engagement. We felt
completely isolated. It felt like the
whole organization was dying, but at
least we had each other."
For Darryl, a student affairs
professional from a small private
college in the South, repeated attempts
to address his untenable supervisory
situation led to him being labeled as
a complainer and a troublemaker.
"I tried the direct approach, making
it clear that I wasn't getting what I
needed," Darryl said. But it made him
a target. To cope, he resigned himself
to the dysfunction and focused on
finding happiness in other places in
his life. "Eventually, for me, that meant
finding solace and happiness outside
the work place. If going to work feels
like a slog, it really helps to have
something to look forward to after
work," Darryl said. "You realize at a
certain point that you can't let your job
dictate how you feel all day, every day.
As I searched for meaning outside of
work, I found myself feeling better."
Student leaders are taught that
each individual will consciously or
unconsciously choose his or her own
level of engagement within the group.
No matter how many incentive or
penalty programs are in place, each
person will choose how "into it"
or "not into it" they're going to be.

JANUARY + FEBRUARY 2015

33
Talking Stick - January/February 2015

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