A Fresh Look at What It Means to Be a Manager

During the height of COVID, many supervisors found dominant managerial theories and approaches inadequate to fully address issues related to stabilizing employees and tending to morale, all while maintaining team productivity. At the same time, these department, office or division heads may have faced their own identity crisis surrounding what it means to be a manager as they and their teams collectively experienced fear, loss, grief and isolation. Compounding the situation, the myriad demands work and home placed on managers, especially women with children, left little time for reflection or the ability to seek out peers for support.

Now, in the wake of COVID, we find views on work and what employees want from work have changed. The results of the inaugural “Higher Education Employee Retention Survey,” conducted in 2022 by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, or CUPA-HR, indicate approximately 57 percent of higher education employees were very likely, likely or somewhat likely to look for new roles in the coming year. Reasons cited include organizations’ lack of investment in career development, few opportunities for advancement, not receiving recognition, pay disparities, parental leave, remote work policies and inflexibility.

As academic leaders and managers, we are used to contending with obstacles and paradoxes while leading. This is charted territory. During COVID, however, new challenges and questions arose, such as, “What is the balance between the quantity of tasks that must be completed and the attention that these tasks deserve? How do I balance connection and freedom with faculty or staff in a remote environment? How will I ensure employee safety for those reporting in person? How do I take care of myself as well as those whom I lead? How can I plan in this ever-changing environment?” Managers were stretched well beyond their comfort zone and may have begun to question not only their managerial skills but also their overall identity as a manager.

The pandemic and ensuing transition into the new normal have also significantly affected senior leaders as they respond to new sets of systemic challenges. So what can be done to prepare them to best respond to those new challenges? In our experience, we’ve found that site-based managerial communities of practice (COP) can be an effective grassroots approach to help college leaders and their employees deal most effectively with the changes in higher education brought on by COVID and today’s continually shifting landscape.

Introducing Communities of Practice

What are communities of practice, and why are they valuable? According to researchers Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, they are “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” We have found that interacting with peers through groups like a community of practice can help leaders as supervisors avoid idealized notions of managerial work and encourage them to explore and develop more authentic management identities. They do so by focusing on the humanity and complexity of management through dialogue, discussion, and sharing in a safe environment.

This is important because, as organizational management and identity researcher Andrew D. Brown reports, “Identity work … is more necessary, frequent and intense in situations where strains, tensions and surprises are prevalent, as these prompt feelings of confusion, contradiction and self-doubt, which in turn tend to lead to examination of the self.”

Similarly, research from scholars such as Amanda Hay suggests that when dealing with uncomfortable emotions that may arise from identity work, managers first turn their attention inward to explore and challenge aspects of themselves. Yet that can be a destructive process where the person comprehends any emotional response they may be experiencing as a sign of personal identity “weakness.” That person may be able to process more effectively those emotional responses if they open up to others who can help in understanding their feelings and potentially challenge accepted notions of management.

A Healthy Space for Exploring Identity

SUNY Buffalo State University provided just such a dedicated space for directors and supervisors to explore their managerial identities during COVID. It created small communities of practice committed to developing supportive and collegial relationships, as well as opportunities for individuals to realize their full potential. Within the container of facilitated peer groups, managers have been able to explore their identities and be coached to focus and refocus on what was most important and outside of their control as the ever-shifting realities brought by the COVID crisis impacted workers in ways never experienced before.

Thirteen participants registered for COPs through a promoted interest form that asked about the teams they managed and their goals for participating. This information was used to create groups that did not include direct reports and matched participants with same-level peers. That approach ensured participants did not have to perform as a manager, guaranteed privacy and created space for vulnerability. Two management COPs emerged: one group of director-level managers, and one of assistant directors and program directors who, in addition to managing staff, managed student employees.

The COPs had representation from academic affairs, student affairs, information technology and marketing and communications. The two groups met via Zoom every three weeks, discussing topics of mutual interest including managing conflict, supporting employees who lost loved ones, managing a hybrid team, the paradox of taking care of oneself and one’s team, and more.

The size of each COP was limited to seven so all participants would have a chance to speak and be heard. The small-group settings also created opportunities for individuals who wanted to workshop issues happening in their areas of responsibility. A dedicated, experienced facilitator ran each session, which created a sense of safety.

Although the program was all online, a sense of community developed quickly. Group norms, including an understanding that discussions were to be treated confidentially, were established in the first session. Perhaps the remote environment created the ability to be more real without the stressors of being in person. With a nod to the peer counseling model, a supervisor in one cohort commented, “We are treating ourselves and not ‘getting treated.’”

Vulnerability and Reconstruction

Vulnerability is key to bringing one’s whole self to work. The ability to be authentic at work can create organizational—and therefore wider societal—change. As Stephen Fineman observed in Emotion in Organizations, “Not only would the nature of work be different if people’s emotional experiences were regularly honored in a culture, but the nature of social interaction would also shift.”

The COP at Buffalo State built a foundation for relational vulnerability that provided space for participants to explore and reconstruct their managerial identities during the deeply challenging COVID crisis. We were intentional in creating a protected space for managers to come together to share and receive feedback.

COPs to promote research; build leadership, technical or other specialized skills; or to support those in human resources roles are becoming more common in higher education. The COP framework by design is adaptable, and each organization may apply its own imprint. The University of California, Berkeley, hosts a well-established administrative management COP. Stanford University offers a wide collection of COPs to foster connection and collaboration across campus, and the University of Nebraska at Omaha supports faculty leadership forums and COPs.

Creating a grassroots COP is a cost-effective way to help managers move past social identities that focus on idealized notions of managerial work and uncover their true management identities. They allow people to explore the humanity, complexity and art of management through dialogue, discussion and sharing in a safe environment. They reaffirm the fundamental truth that there is no one way to be a manager.

As higher education continues to undergo massive shifts, often creating a sense of urgency and uncertainty, the COP model provides managers with space to process, focus and refocus their energies. And the benefits of this support can reverberate throughout an office or department. Our COP participants reported regaining a sense of connection and stability, which increased their capacity to hold space for their own teams, as well as increased feelings of appreciation for their teams and colleagues across campus.

Despite transitioning back to the office once COVID began to subside, Buffalo State’s COP groups opted to keep going. They continued to provide a touchstone to managers grappling with the residual discomfort of returning to the office and adequately supporting their staff. This experience served to keep managers connected to the institution and supportive colleagues.

Higher education, like other industries, will continue to contend with the complexity of changes in employee expectations about work and ways of working, while balancing diminishing resources. Unlike management training in which the curriculum is informed by promising practices from the past, we recommend institutions establish COPs as a forum for discussing and exploring emergent management strategies that are responsive to new challenges that past practices may not adequately address.