If student success leaders had an anthem, then the catchy closing song from Monty Python’s Life of Brian would certainly be a strong contender.
The opening lyrics describe the conditions that often define universities and colleges across America:
Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
Think about it. Across campuses, tempers are flaring, workloads keep growing, and resources are running thin. Faculty are tense, administrators are frustrated, and students feel greater pressure than almost ever before.
When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best
Student success professionals rarely get hired during easy times of strong cultural alignment and high performance. Just the opposite. We possess a combination of analytical skills, emotional intelligence, and organizational acumen that enables us to collaborate and lead through challenging circumstances. And yet, we are also human. Some days, objections are restated on repeat and silos feel too entrenched to make meaningful progress. It can feel exhausting.
When you’re feeling discouraged, keep the chorus of this jaunty tune in mind:
And
Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the light side of life
Seriously.
For years, student success professionals have insisted that we view today’s students through the lens of their assets rather than their deficits. That’s the premise that drives our work and sends us from one meeting to another seeking to co-create the conditions in which students can succeed. We constantly share the research and best practices that prove what’s possible. Over and over again, we hear the stories and review the data that prove us right.
But what about applying an asset-based approach to our colleagues and our institutions?
More than ever, the effectiveness of our work and the scale of our impact rests on our ability to take an asset-based approach to our colleagues and our institutions. We can’t focus all of our attention on what our institutions lack and what our colleagues will lose through change. Our colleagues will feel as discouraged as our students.
The forces of institutional continuity are strong in higher education, some would even say that they are implacable. Rituals, traditions, policies, practices are just some of the disguises for the defense of comfort and continuity.
An asset-based approach is more than just positivity, optimism, or a can-do attitude. An asset-based approach focuses on strengths. As student success leaders, we must facilitate change from strength so that we can create the trust needed to affect change. We have to structure the majority of our work using a strength’s based approach.
Re-Discover Your Campus
No matter how long you have served in your role or worked at your institution, now is always the right time to look at your campus and colleagues through fresh eyes. Think about the vast difference in the experiences of a first year student in 2018 from the experience of a first year student in 2022. The same is true for our institutions.
Assumptions are the enemy of effectiveness in the work of student success.
Although the buildings and the landscape may look the same, the culture and the community are probably not. Relying on old assumptions or stale data will make you miss the new trends and opportunities that may be hiding in plain sight.
Identify Your Institutional Assets
As a student success leader, your first and most important job is to know your institutional assets better than anyone else on your campus. Just like every student matters, every asset counts. Take the time to inventory all of them, and commit that inventory to a spreadsheet. The size of the asset doesn’t matter at this stage. Compile a list and then start to identify patterns. The inventory will become the cornerstone for all your future work, so it’s important to keep it updated and handy.
Has the first-year experience just been re-designed? Add it to the list. Has IT invested in a new data lake or cloud solution? Update the inventory.
Taking a strengths-based approach creates the space to invite people into the conversation about what is working, repeatable, and possibly transferrable. You’re helping them set the table and say what they bring to the conversation and why they’re important.
Catch Influencers and Stakeholders Doing Good
Success leaves clues, and students often know which staff and professors are the best connectors and catalyzers of success. Rather than focusing on title or positional power, look more broadly and find the key influencers hiding in plain sight.
Have you heard of a professor who runs a program whose students always land great internships? Add it to the list. Do you know a health services manager whose first-generation student workers seem to persist in STEM majors at high rates? Is there a first-year residence hall that has had the highest retention rate three-years running?
Looking on the bright side of institutional life is necessary, but it may not always feel easy. That’s okay. Student success leaders must be three-dimensional advocates: student advocates, stakeholder advocates, and institutional advocates.
Remember: If we lead from deficit, we will promote the status quo and positive change will never emerge. Student success work demands the dual focus on student and institutional assets.
We have to help curate the spaces that allow all stakeholders to imagine the ways in which change helps them win.
So as you move about your campus and participate in meetings, do yourself a favor. Replay our theme song in your mind. Whistle the tune.
Want to deepen your impact? Connect to the EQUISS Accelerator community to receive insights and action steps that will increase your effectiveness. Also, consider making a cheeky song from an old British movie your theme song, and look on the bright side of institutional life.
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