5 Keys to Collaborating with Young Professionals

Wes Johnson: So welcome everyone to the first live audience, live studio audience episode of the Ed Cause Rising Voices podcast where we amplify the voices of young professionals in higher ed. I am Wes Johnson and I'm joined by the amazing, magnificent 2024 Rising Star Award winner.

Sarah J. Buszka: I'm Sarah Buszka

Wes Johnson: And we are your co-host today. And we're also joined by more greatness here. So to my right, we have Jonathan Hardy, who spent many years. I actually had the opportunity to work with him, so I claim him as both boss, old boss and brother where we worked. You ain't so young. He said No, but we spent many years working at the University of Georgia together. He was one of the founding members I believe, of the YPAC Group, the Young Professionals Advisory Committee. Shout out to the Ypac folks and is now the deputy CIO at Villanova. Correct. And also joined by Calvin Groves, who is a director of customer support and outreach. Thank you. Out at UNC. So University of North Carolina and Chapel Hill also spent some time at university in Kentucky. And if I remember correctly, no matter the role, he's a man for the people. Yeah, sure thing. So welcome both of y'all first before we get to the real questions. How are y'all doing today? Good. Made it to Ed.

Calvin Groves: Doing good. EDUCAUSE is fun. Lot of energy, a lot of connections, good networking, seeing people that you see once a year. Otherwise they're a little tiny zoom screen. It's been good.

Wes Johnson: And you?

Calvin Groves: Yeah, I'm loving it.

Jonathan B. Hardy: This conference is always the highlight of my year. Getting to meet new people, see a bunch of people that I know and respect greatly at the conference every year is just such an amazing thing. It gives me the energy to go throughout the rest of the year. These are people personally and professionally I'm going to reach out to all year and to see them in person is fantastic.

Wes Johnson: EDU cause is great. Higher ed community is amazing and I love being a part of it. So today we're going to be talking about five keys to collaborating with young professionals. And so we got a nice list of questions and the hope is is that through the discussion y'all walk away with some nuggets or some tidbits to take back some actionable things or at least some insights to think about when you go back to your institutions. And to get that started, I'll start with Jonathan. What is your superpower?

Jonathan B. Hardy: What is my superpower? So I told Wes right before we got started, this is not one I have a great answer for and I knew it's going to be asked. It's asked every time. But I think the best answer I have is I'm a helper. Most of the people in my network that know me know that no matter how much I have on my plate, whether it's nothing or it's full or there's five of the plates on top of each other, if you ask for help, I'm going to step in and I'm going to do 'em with fun because that's what it's about, being there for other and they will be there for you. And over the last couple of years, I've had some rough patches, I've had a ton of people that have been there for me. And so my superpower is giving that back.

Wes Johnson: Kyle, the same question.

Calvin Groves: Yeah, mine's pretty similar too. You mentioned it in the intro, focusing on people. I like to think that I'm really good at surrounding myself with people that are smarter than I am that can get stuff done. I know it's in basically every job description now, being able to the technical and non-technical stakeholders, but I've always felt like I could translate pretty well for both groups and bring people together.

Wes Johnson: That's awesome. Those are great skills to have. And higher ed is definitely strong on relationships and community. So being for the people, serving the people, understanding the people is a very important power to have. So with that, let's talk a little bit about the people that we're trying to amplify, the young professionals. So we are going to start with the first question, which is on the subject of providing meaningful opportunities. So I can tell you in my own career as a, I would say young, professional, adjacent leaning towards middle age now, it was important to me to have meaningful opportunities, something that felt worthwhile in my position that made me feel like a valued member, someone that was sought out from my knowledge and skills. So I will start with you Calvin. What does a meaningful opportunity look like? And even better, do you have an example of one from your career?

Calvin Groves: Yeah, so I'm actually going to take a step back from that first too because something that one of our friends, Kate Ash, she's my boss and I talk a lot about, it's something that she tries to instill in people is the idea of opportunity hoarding. So there's a lot of people within institutions, everybody's seen this where they lead a team, but the only person on that team is them because anytime there's an opportunity, they're the ones that are on the project, on the committee, whatever it may be. So just making space and being cognizant that you're not doing that, that you give people those opportunities is a big one for me. One that I would say that I came up with when I was thinking about a meaningful opportunity is I had the opportunity when I was at University of Kentucky to be in the CIO's leadership Development program. And that was before I was even a manager. So it was a great program, brought people together, took time during the day during the workday to do different sessions, that kind of thing. And then also an early boss that I had actually invested in sending me to conferences as a young professional. And so just really things that aren't always options for some of the younger staff.

Wes Johnson: So I'm curious in those opportunities, were they ones that you had to seek out? Did you have to put that on your leadership's radar or were they the ones proactively coming to

Calvin Groves: You? They were actually pretty proactive in both of those. So I had the PD that I mentioned fresh out of out of school had a great boss that invested in us and we didn't have set professional development budgets, but they were like, I think you should go to this. Sent me out to Apple conferences and some different things. But the leadership development one, I was actually nominated by somebody and got to participate that way, which was very, very cool. It's

Wes Johnson: Awesome. So I guess we can move to our next one, which is about valuing their input. Sarah, you want to talk a little bit about that?

Sarah J. Buszka: Oh yeah, absolutely. So I think for a lot of us in this room even and even here on the show, we talk a lot about having our value and our input be appreciated and recognized and supported. And I think one of the questions, well, I'm going to ask you Jonathan, is how has a leader or a colleague or someone made you feel like your contribution has been valued and what does that look like?

Jonathan B. Hardy: Yeah, for me, I'm one of those that I feel immensely blessed to have never really had a bad boss. Everyone I've worked for throughout my entire career has been someone that was proactive about asking what I was looking for, what I wanted, even at ages and roles that I had no idea what it was even available to me. They were forcing me to think through those things. And I've also had different temperaments and different approaches to things. Some threw you into stuff, some talked you and convinced it to be your idea, but each of those made me feel valued that they cared enough about me to invest early, ask the questions about what is it that you're wanting, how can I help you, how can I support you? That opens it up for me that the moment they do give me an opportunity, I know it's because they took the time to listen and understand where I was trying to go and put me in a position of success.

Jonathan B. Hardy: I went into all of those opportunities, highly confident because I know my leader has my back if they put me here because they know what my desires are. And one of our former bosses, Mike Lucas, who has since retired at this point, but he was fantastic at that. He would text you while you're doing something. If you're in a committee meeting with him, he'd bring you in. You're not supposed to be on the committee meeting, but he'll bring you with him and during the thing while you're talking, he's texting you. That was a great point, that was a good job. Now afterwards, he may give you some constructive feedback, but he

Sarah J. Buszka: Also what a good leader does,

Jonathan B. Hardy: And he did a lot to invest in me and grow me as a leader. And I've been again blessed to have a lot of leaders that really took a similar approach of finding ways to refine me and invest in

Sarah J. Buszka: I love that. What I'm hearing you say, and this has been a theme actually of my conference this year, even with folks I've been speaking to about leadership and mentorship, is having a leader who asks you, how can I support you? Who goes to you and lets you know, Hey, I'm here for you. I'm thinking about you. This opportunity came up and Jonathan, I think you're perfect for it. But that communication and just letting them know that I see you is one of those critical kind of pivotal moments towards you as a young professional and even any professional feeling like, hey, someone believes in me, someone sees something in me, someone sees this quality or this potential or skill that I didn't know I had, but they think I have it. And even better, they're saying, Hey, I'm going to bring you to this meeting and help you show that off and I'm going to support you and cheer you on during it. I'm going to text you and tell you how great you are when you're freaking out likely. But that's the theme I've been hearing. I'm really glad that you share that story because I think so many of us kind of just assume that our staff or our peers know that they have an opportunity to talk to me about career pathing, but how often are we actually going out there and making that clear and intentional and letting them know I'm here to support you. What does that look like for you specifically?

Jonathan B. Hardy: And I think playing off that, especially given our guest speaker yesterday, one of the quotes, I put a variant of a Brene Brown quote on my board at all times that's unclear is unkind, but her boat says, being clear is being clear is kind, but that's what he's assuming that people are going to come to you and tell you what they want isn't always going to work. You have some people that are going to be more proactive, more extroverted, more type A that may come and do that, but a lot of us may not even know what questions to ask.

Sarah J. Buszka: We

Jonathan B. Hardy: May not know what are available to us or what's reasonable goals. And so we're afraid we don't ask. We don't step out and you've got to give them the opportunity,

Sarah J. Buszka: Be

Jonathan B. Hardy: Clear with them that this is what I want to do.

Sarah J. Buszka: And building on that too, the clear piece also is about the language. Sometimes folks don't have the language to say, this is what I want to do, or they don't quite know how to say it. Even before we started recording, we were talking about a tactful way to say things. So sometimes that requires leaders to demonstrate that and show what a tactful approach is to talking about X, y or Z or what their preference is. But you're right, that point about clear is kind is really necessary.

Calvin Groves: I had a silly one to add just for valuing input.

Sarah J. Buszka: We look silly things on

Calvin Groves: The show, so it's just public acknowledgement. And so the silly story I have is the former CIO at UNC when I was the IT director at the School of education, I was on the CIO advisory committee and taking stuff to them to him for distributed IT things that we were talking about and this was pre pandemic and everybody was buying their own Zoom licenses. And so we would keep saying, and so I ended up being the one that was asking, can we get enterprise Zoom and asking all these things and when we eventually did, he was like, Calvin brought Zoom to campus. I was like, no, I didn't do any of this. But the fact that he would call it out and say that I was, the reason that we had Zoom on our campus was just, it was neat.

Sarah J. Buszka: Yeah, that's not a silly example. All that's fantastic. Yeah, recognition is huge. Absolutely.

Wes Johnson: You probably saved your campus during that COVID thing that happened a few years kind of staying on this topic. This has been pretty intriguing, so I'm going to roll up my sleeves with a little bit. So we talked a little bit about leadership and the environment, but what about to that young professional that for whatever reason, sometimes it's the environment doesn't set them up to be valued or that their input is sought, sought out, and sometimes it's unintentional. Some leaders that are over big organizations or even small organizations are getting pulled in a million directions. What are some things or something a young professional could do to get on the radar regardless of that? What are some steps they can take to just put up their input as valuable?

Jonathan B. Hardy: I think not everyone is comfortable speaking out in a public setting, so leaving those opportunities if you're a leader for them to speak out in a group setting maybe is great, but also take the initiative sometimes almost every CIOI know and almost every deputy CIO, every CISO I know they all want to be engaged. People are scared of the title, people are scared of the tie. They don't want to come in and interrupt them. They're probably busy. I guarantee you they want to talk to you and taking the time to put the initiative out there, even if it's just to start setting a pattern of saying hello to them every once a week, stopping by their office to say hi, just checking in, wanted to say hi, put your face out there. One of the things that one of our former VPs told repeatedly was the first time I'd heard someone that gave feedback that really registered with me at a core, and it was, if you're not telling your story, someone else is. And I take that to mean something as simple as saying hello, like putting your face out there, putting your brand out there. Even if you don't know what that is, start with a hello, then work up to here's what I do and asking questions after that of is there anything else you think I should be looking at? Are there technologies that you're interested in that we could talk about? Just put the opportunities out there. Even if they decline it, you try learn something from it.

Calvin Groves: Yeah, and I'll just add to that, it doesn't have to be the CIO. Maybe it is intimidating to go to the cio, but maybe there's someone on the leadership team that you feel more comfortable talking to or a middle manager. Just find someone who will have your best interest at heart and say, Hey, I'm interested in doing this thing. How can I get involved? Or Hey, I'm interested in learning what is available for me to get involved in and just put yourself out there.

Sarah J. Buszka: I'm going to plug for this podcast too, for anyone listening as well as use this episode as a way to broker a conversation with your leadership team or your CIO say that you heard us talking about this and that you felt inspired to do the same thing and that fellow CIOs, deputy CIOs are encouraging this and use that as a resource. That's what this podcast has meant to be at the end of the day as a resource for all of us.

Jonathan B. Hardy: And I'll do another shameless plug for ed calls stuff as well is the mentorship program. As Calvin said, it doesn't have to be a C-level person. It could be anyone, have an ally, have an advocate talk, engage. If you don't have a mentorship program at your campus or your system office it participate in the ED calls mentorship program. Find someone that can invest in you that you can bounce ideas off of and it has your back when you're not in the room and ideally it's at your award, but it doesn't have to be. Some of my favorite and best mentors are elsewhere on other campuses that I know they're singing my praises when I'm not in the room and vice versa, and it's been a lot of fun.

Wes Johnson: So I'm going to transition this to another thing. So we do thorough scientific research for these questions. So I was on the computer at Google and the other day and one of the things that constantly kept coming up was transparency, particularly in communication. So I'm going to switch over to Calvin here. What does transparent communication look like? What does that actually mean to you?

Calvin Groves: I think there's a couple sides of it. One is just being transparent with what's going on. Don't hide things. I mean, some people don't want to let the cat out of the bag until everything's figured out, but just talk through things. Then the other is actual language. Meet people where they are. Understand who you're talking to, don't weaponize tech jargon. Don't make people feel dumb just so you can belittle them and just make sure that you have those. It's harder now. Have those hallway conversations, whether that's Zoom, talk to people about things other than work. Get to know your colleagues. What I'd say

Wes Johnson: Same question for you Jonathan. What does that look like for you?

Jonathan B. Hardy: I think it starts with being authentic, right? It starts with knowing who you are as an employee, as a person, and leaning into that when you talk with people and all of us have varying levels of identity that we kind of weave together, whether it's as a parent or a friend or athletic person, and we weave those into who we are. And one of the things I appreciate about us is that you bring your full self to the workplace

Jonathan B. Hardy: And that makes me trust you more because you're not trying to hide who you are, you are who you are and you're proud of it. And when you're authentic like that, you already start with more trust with me, and I think most people are that way and then you just have to do what you say you're going to do. Back up your talk when you're telling people being transparent and talking to them about, you know what, I don't quote me like, Brene Brown did this a lot yesterday, don't put this on Twitter, but here's what I think that gives you an opportunity for the person that you're engaging with to understand this isn't a fully fleshed out thought. This may come out horrible, but boom. That way they don't take it as gospel truths. And then when it is something that is difficult, lean into some of those difficult conversations. All of that kind of leads up to fostering a culture of accountability and trust and respect. When you can have those candid conversations that do go beyond the projects, like when real world events are happening, talk about it. Your teams are navigating it some way or the other. Don't hide it. Don't shy away from it. It's uncomfortable. But

Calvin Groves: Yeah, build trust. I mean that's one thing that I wanted to mention too, and I mean it was a theme this morning with the top 10, but build trust. And so when people know that you have their best interest at heart and you support them, then those challenging conversations become easier because they know that's not the only time you come to. You do support them in other things that they want to do. When you give constructive feedback, they're more open to hear it.

Wes Johnson: And it seems like a reoccurring theme of, I posed the question of how do you communicate transparently, but it's really a lot of setup before you ever even get to the actual communication. If you haven't set that up for the plane to fly, then it's not fun. It's going to stay on the ground type of thing. Also, a little nugget for y'all out there. So kind of on the lines of the being your authentic self one. Thank you brother. Two, I'm going to ask a question for the whole group. Do y'all feel that you at least mostly get to show up as your authentic self? And it could be a simple yes. No, I got a follow up depending on where this goes,

Calvin Groves: I do. Yeah, but I mean I'll also acknowledge my privilege in that as a white dude sitting at the table. What about you? I don't like you.

Jonathan B. Hardy: I don't like you. I'll take back everything positive. I said the authentic coming out, real talk. No, I've had plenty of times in my career where I could be fully me the last few years I've been very honest, transparent with where I'm at in life personally and professionally, but I do not feel like I've been able to bring my full authentic self to the workplace and I haven't brought my full authentic self to the workplace. So that is something that has really been a convicting thing for me over the last two months of really trying to get back to that practice of what got me to where I am. I moved quickly through UJ for a reason because of the lessons I learned there and how I led, and I kind of abandoned some of those, some out of fear, some out of plenty of other reasons, but getting back to it. And I have a new CIO that started that I think is going to foster that as well a little bit more. It's very authentic as well, so looking forward to it.

Sarah J. Buszka: Thank you for sharing

Wes Johnson: That. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you both, sir. I'm actually curious, what about you? You're a shining star in the sky now. Do you feel like you get to be your authentic soap most of the time?

Sarah J. Buszka: That's a good question. I think some days yes and some days no. And real talk here. I've had a really interesting career journey and most of my career journey as a woman working in technology has been working with folks who don't look like me in technology. And that can be a very othering and difficult experience. And frankly, I think that's why I've leaned so hard into Ypac and just really building this community here because I didn't feel like I could show up to myself at work for the majority of my career and having this crew having you, you folks here, you're my friends who are in Ypac, I'm looking in our audience and I see my friends and my husband even. So I felt like I didn't have that in my workplace. So I went to create it and that's really been a thing that's buoyed me along my career path and my leadership journey for sure. And I think I do have pockets of excellence, if you will, at Stanford right now, but it's not something I feel like I can answer 100%. I fully feel like I can show up and be myself. And so I found it other ways to augment it,

Wes Johnson: I guess though. Well, one, thank you all for being so open. It was like, yes, a yes or no, and we got way

Sarah J. Buszka: More, which are you going to answer?

Wes Johnson: I was about to say are you answer? I am.

Sarah J. Buszka: Let's do it. We're practicing transparent communication.

Wes Johnson: Be as transparent as we can be. Yeah. So interestingly enough, so it is kind of a weird question, do I feel like I can, I never really thought about it as much until recently. It was more of I had no other way to act. I didn't know how to be, I've definitely watched other people do it. I've been in rings where I see someone and it's almost like fiat in the way that they're able to ramp it up. And I think there's a little bit of that in everything. Even when you're saying speaking authentically, there's still a little bit of a switch because it's showtime. You got to do it a certain way. But it took a moment in my career when I became the help desk manager at UGA and that was probably the first time where I had other individuals kind of talk about this being authentic.

Wes Johnson: We just called it being real at the time and I was kind of like, oh, okay, I didn't know I was doing that. I'm a country boy from Georgia. I don't know any other, I say y'all a bruh. I don't know any other way to be. So it is been an interesting question to kind of get posed as do I feel that way? I think kind of similar to you, it ebbs and flows. There are rooms where I feel more comfortable with that than others, and I don't think it's ever, most times it's not an intentional way. It's set up. There is kind of a theater to doing business and a flow to doing business and sometimes that can counteract just kind of like in my true most authentic self, I'd be up here in a T-shirt, UGA pajamas and some slides. So anyway, thank you all for entertaining me on that. We'll get back on track here. So the next thing that I had was, it actually started as, so again with that scientific research, I was on copilot

Wes Johnson: And one of the things I was seeing there, some of the friends I spoke to before we worked on the episode was we had a discussion about meeting folks where they are. And that's definitely been something that I've heard a lot, especially with a lot of the DEI plus efforts that are ongoing, things that we're pushing to make things a little bit more equitable, I say would be the most standout of all the things. But as part of that, we started to have a discussion about it kind of morphed the statement from meet them where they are to meet them almost where they are. And the thought behind that, and when we get to the question here is that young professionals need all professionals to some extent need some kind of specialized support in their career. Everyone has their own individual goals. They may have their own approach to things and especially particularly leaders if you're particularly good at it, that sometimes there's a little way you got to flip that iceberg as we learned at the University of Georgia to kind of meet folks where they are. But then you also want to challenge them to get to where they want to be. And so that means that there has to be some space there. So I was curious, and I will jump to Jonathan, how do you manage that balance of meeting them where they are but trying to raise them up to where they want to be?

Jonathan B. Hardy: So my approach to that is it starts early, right? It starts in your one-on-ones, it starts in your team meetings as well, like the culture you set there, but it starts in your one-on-ones. How are you talking with people? Are you asking them the questions about what they've enjoyed most in their career so far? Are you asking them about what core values they would like to see instilled in the team? Not just saying what yours are. How are you engaging them in those one-on-ones because that will foster how they behave in the group setting or when you're not in the room. So that's to me where it starts. It all comes back. Trust, respect, transparency, accountability. Anyone that works for me knows those are my four core values and I communicate them quite clearly because without transparency, I'm not going to know what it is you need from me as a leader without accountability, I can't challenge you and push you further.

Jonathan B. Hardy: And I think it, as you noted, has to be right size. I hate giving anyone more than five or six direct reports at any given time because it's difficult to be successful with any more than that because you can't cater it. Then at that point you're managing everyone exactly the same. And while that sounds equitable, not everyone's in the same place. Someone may have something personally happening in their life and you maybe need to give them a little bit more grace. If you don't know that and you don't establish that cadence in your one-on-ones where they'll tell you that kind of stuff, how are you going to know what if you push them too far, give them an opportunity that they would normally be great at, but because they have a sick mother, a sick father, they can't have the energy left in it. If you're not having those continual one-on-ones, you cannot help your teams do that.

Jonathan B. Hardy: But sometimes it's about pushing them out of their comfort zone. The greatest thing that's ever happened to me in my career is Christine Miller, university of Georgia challenged me. She's like, I think you'd be a great leader. I was like, absolutely not. And the next week she had me reclassed and I was ticked. I was so angry at her, I was like, what? No, give me my systems. I like servers. And she's like, I see something and I want you to step into this. And I was like, no, no, I'm going to do it. Three months later I was like, leadership is fun and I've never stopped. I've been in leadership ever since. And I enjoy it because it gives me that opportunity to invest in people. But it took a leader seeing something and knowing all the conversations we had and pushing me past my comfort zone that I would've never taken that step without.

Sarah J. Buszka: I'm doing something too. I can't believe you got something reclassed in a week.

Jonathan B. Hardy: All of us would. I've never seen anyone cut through red tape at an institution more than Christine Miller. I don't know what magic she had, but she was amazing at it.

Sarah J. Buszka: That is incredible. You don't often see my jaw drop on this show, but yeah, that's amazing.

Calvin Groves: What about you, Calvin? Yeah, I would just plus one, everything Jonathan said, but then kind of tie it back to opportunities. Make sure you're giving people the opportunities and giving them the space to fail. So one of the things that is one of my leadership philosophies is give credit, take blame. Don't ever throw people under the bus. Make sure that you're the one taking the blame for your team as the leader out in public. And then you have the conversation behind closed doors, giving them the opportunity and the space to innovate and fail and grow. So important

Jonathan B. Hardy: To be able to make sure your teams feel safe to fail. That was one of my favorite parts of Brene's talk yesterday was I paraphrase this, feel safe, contribute, but that feel safe came first. I loved that. It was

Sarah J. Buszka: Great. Well, this is actually a good transition for one of our next questions. So one of our next questions is really on celebrating achievements. And I think celebrating achievements is both easy to do and easy to forget. We just think about the next project, the next thing. We have so many things going on, not enough time to do it. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And so you mentioned something about failures and I'm curious how do you create that kind of safe space for folks to fail but then still celebrate the effort that went into the project or the initiative? Because folks still did do work

Calvin Groves: The compliment sandwich. So praise first critique, follow up with praise again. And so just make sure that they know you've got their back. So that's something that I like to do. And then also make sure that when there are successes or if there's work that goes into failures, make sure that senior leaders know the good and not just the bad so that you're being public about stuff. Going back to that public praise piece, I guess would be the biggest ones for me.

Sarah J. Buszka: Yeah, that's a really good one too. What about you, Jonathan?

Jonathan B. Hardy: Very similar. I think if the first time, if you're in a position such that you have direct reports and then people report to them, if the first time your indirect reports see you and hear from you, or the only time is when they make mistakes, look in the mirror, reflect, is that what you want as a leader to someone to do to you? You should be talking to them before that, do a handwritten note saying thank you. Dr. Chester is someone that is very efficient human, very driven, but he takes the time to hand write birthday notes.

Sarah J. Buszka: I love that

Jonathan B. Hardy: Every year. And the small things like that add up so that when he does get on you about something that you did wrong, I remember he cares because he does the small things too. So make you're having those first conversations and making sure that even if it's not a direct report, it's the same thing as our service delivery for it stuff. If the only time the campus sees you is when you make mistakes, yeah, they're going to view you as a team that makes mistakes, but if you engage them proactively before those, it give you a lot of grace.

Wes Johnson: Yeah,

Wes Johnson: It sounds like, again, we got this kind of reoccurring theme of there's a lot of upfront work that you need to do and if the first time you're doing that action is the first time you're working on it, then you're just at the beginning and there's a lot more that you need to do. I'm also hearing a theme also stealing from Rene Brown of just this be brave piece. So for the actual professional in question, there is a piece of just being brave enough to do the thing. You need to put yourself on the radar, be yourself at work, communicate. You can start to facilitate those own those attributes long before you become what they call official leader. You can be a leader of transparent communication, at least to an extent. We know that a work environment plays a role in that and the culture of a particular place. So that's important. So I think that now we've got time for some questions from the audience. It is so awesome that we have a audience this year. So we're going to pass it over to the crowd mic so we can get

Speaker 5: Some questions. We have a number of great questions from the audience today and we're going to start with one. Do you all have any advice to any introverts who want to find a place in leadership

Jonathan B. Hardy: Just to take that one? I mean, I'll take it as an introvert. It's kind of that idea of surround yourself in leadership role with people that are different than you do that in your friend ranks. Have someone like an Alicia bagger that makes you uncomfortable. She's outgoing, she likes to do things. Have someone like that in your network. For me that's people like Tina Poppas is another one that comes to mind of if I say something or I am hesitant to do it, they're going to throw my a hat in the ring. Tina will a hundred percent put my name in a recognition thing just because I'm not going to do it. So having yourself friends like that, that kind of encourage you to push your comfort zones. Wes has done that for me a few times as well of why aren't you doing this?

Jonathan B. Hardy: I don't want to. So that's one of the things. And then also just when you do step out, when you do take that opportunity to push yourself when it's uncomfortable as an introvert, make sure you remember to compensate for that. For me, that's riding motorcycles. So after I have a rough day, I'm going to go ride a motorcycle to recharge a bit, whether that's watching movies, reading a book, eating chocolate, whatever that may be for you, remember to put that on your calendar after you have something like that so that you have reserve time to go recharge

Calvin Groves: Anything. I tend to be the other end of the spectrum. So I've moved a little bit towards

Sarah J. Buszka: We

Calvin Groves: Both on the show. I've moved a little towards the middle. I mean the one thing I was going to add that Jonathan already added at the end, if you do push yourself or come to a conference where you're socializing all day, make sure you make space to recharge your social battery. Give yourself some me time.

Speaker 5: Great, thank you. Another question, I think this one was reflecting on some of what we've heard from Dr. Pne Brown and other speakers throughout the conference. A little bit of what you were talking about earlier, but around boundaries. Where's the line between being transparent and honest versus being cringe?

Sarah J. Buszka: Anyone want to take that? You're on a roll, Calvin.

Calvin Groves: That's a good question. I mean, just be real. If you're going back to authentic, be your authentic self. And I mean sometimes it might be cringe, but be comfortable in your own skin. Know yourself and put yourself out there. I don't know. I don't know if that's a great answer. Who else says

Wes Johnson: I can add a little bit in that? I think plus one to that, that's exactly where I would start. And I think you just have to be at least somewhat open to feedback and how that lands with your group and the culture of your organization. There have been times where admittedly, maybe I've overshared on a topic, but I have other venues where folks have come to me and say, Hey, I really appreciated what you were trying to do, but I don't know if it was the right time or if the right place. Or maybe there's another way because I have a difference of opinion on that and I have to be open to that feedback, a leader for everyone at my table. Generally speaking, we all align for the most part on the same values. I went to this institution, to this department strongly in part due to those values, there's already a common place for us and just got to have a little grace as one receiving said transparent communications and have a little grace for yourself to receive feedback on those communications. So I think that is also we will go to our final thoughts then. So I'm going to start with Calvin. So is there a last nugget that you want to share with folks?

Calvin Groves: I think you've seen the trend with me. It's focus on people. If you take care of the people, whatever the business is, the people will take care of that. So as leaders, focus on your people. It's power to the people,

Jonathan B. Hardy: Hurts to the people.

Wes Johnson: What about you?

Jonathan B. Hardy: Mine's going to play off that as well. It's the technology. It's going to last three to 10 years. The processes we put in place, three to seven years tops. What does last? Well beyond that is the ripple effect we have on the people. So taking that time to invest in people, care about them, ask them about their families, show them that you care about their career. These are the things that will have a ripple effect. So seeing I had the privilege of being able to invest in West for a bit, to see him investing in other people. Now that's the lasting impression that leaves that ripple effect for three to seven generations out. That's more important. And so that's what drives me and that's the takeaway I would give anyone. A lot of our institutions, maybe some of them are going away right now, but a lot of them are going to, they've been here for hundreds of years before us. They'll be here after us. But the people you influence in that, that's who carries on that legacy of the institution and what you've made it to be. So set it up to where it's three to seven generations out. Let that investment and time in

Sarah J. Buszka: Long-term thinking, I'd like that. And people matter.

Wes Johnson: They do. They do. Well, thank you all. This has been a great episode. I hope it's been as fulfilling for you as it's been for me. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Calvin, for joining us today. We are the yes, thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you for coming down from the skies above to be with us today. We're so honored to have you here. But we are the Rising Voices podcast and we will see you next time.