Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

Question from Jane

As a new migrator from China who continues career (IT area specifically) in a western country, I wonder whether you can provide some advice what are the major barriers for us migrators to move up to a manager position. If you could provide some insights from employer’s point of view would be super helpful.

Bonni mentioned the work of Geert Hofstede on power distance and other cultural dynamics. Another resource is his book Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind*.

Question from Michael

I am an avid listener and enjoy the show. I am a VP, Sales/Director of Client Services managing a remote team of 11. We have a 30 minute weekly team meeting for which we do set an agenda and stick to it. However, I feel that most of this information can probably be communicated via email. I speak to each person at least once a day and I schedule 1:1 meetings once per month and wondered what your thoughts are on weekly team meetings that are not project related? Is there any benefit to having them or will canceling them have a negative impact?

Dave mentioned episode 173 of Carnegie Coach: Three Ways to a Great Standing Meeting

Here are the three agenda items Dave suggested for standing meetings:

1. A recent accomplishment
2. A recent lesson learned others may benefit from
3. Where you most need assistance

Question from Christina

My division of my company was just merged with another company, a company that has a rather different business model and philosophy than the one I’ve been with for 12 years. I am wondering if you have any suggestions on how to handle the various potential challenges that come along with mergers? Aside from the uncertainty of security (which I am mostly comfortable with), it’s expect there to be some struggles with meshing into a company that appears to want to eliminate or change a lot of our processes. Is it good to push back and try to demonstrate why our model may be a good fit with their model? Or do I just concede that the new company’s way is “the” way?

Bonni and Dave mentioned the Robert Cialdini video on the Science of Persuasion, based on his bestselling book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion*.

Question from Danielle

I am in the process of creating a presentation for a training that will focus on our new employee evaluation system. More specifically, one section of the training will hone in “goal-setting,” however the supervisors create the goals ahead of time and ask the employees to sign off on them. My question is, how can I develop content on “goal-setting,” if the employees goals are already “set” for them? If you have any resources or words of wisdom that could assist me in this process, I would greatly appreciate it.

Bonni and Dave mentioned The Checklist Manifesto* by Atul Gawande. He also wrote a more recent bestseller, Being Mortal*.

Dave also mentioned two Coaching for Leaders resources:

• What To Do When Employees Hesitate On Long-Term Goals
• Coaching for Leaders episode 15: Get Specific With Goals

Question from Marco

I am a huge fan of your podcast. It has pretty much been the sole source of our growth of management and leadership for my brother and I and I am currently heading a leadership curriculum where I use your podcast as a “text book.”

I wanted to reach out because sometimes it is hard for me to apply the knowledge I am learning to our businesses.

It is difficult to apply several of these episodes to our managers and shift leads because our employees don’t have any prior knowledge or experience in leadership or management and our organization is small. I feel a lot of the principles you teach and examples you use are very applicable to larger businesses with degree holding employees who are more capable before coming into work.

Bonni mentioned an article from Jon Malesic titled, Don’t Search for ‘Purpose.’ You Will Fail.

Bonni and Dave both mentioned the GO Team training curriculum from past guests Susan Gerke and David Hutchens.

Question from Ed

I’m a senior manager at a charity and my CEO and trustees have agreed to support and finance me to embark on an MBA. I’m currently researching distance learning MBA’s and putting my application together. I was wondering, within your network are you aware of people from the not for profit sector who have studied the MBA and how relevant they found its content to their sector?

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