Leadership & Supervision Paper 1

Leadership & Supervision Interview Paper

Whitney Ballard

California State University, Fresno

HEAL 225- Leadership & Supervision

Dr. Pryor

10/13/2021
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The leader I decided to interview for this Leadership & Supervision paper is my current

boss, Shawna Blair. I decided to interview her because I personally want to work within the

Student Involvement Office at a university and that is what she does. Ms. Blair is currently the

Coordinator for Major Events and Staff Development within the Student Involvement Office at

Fresno State. The major events at Fresno State that fall under her supervision would be Welcome

Week, Homecoming Week, Vintage Days and Commencement. She has been in the profession

for a total of 16 years at Fresno State, she started off as a Program Coordinator in the same office

while within the HEAL program. She was the Program Coordinator for a little over 12-13 years

and she has been in her new position as the Coordinator for Major Events for 3 years.

As the previous Program Coordinator she worked with the USU Board of Directors,

Alternative Spring Break and USU Productions. At the moment she currently wears multiple hats

because in our office there no longer is a Program Coordinator to put on events. I’m currently her

graduate assistant so we are balancing between planning out program events and university

events for the campus. Ms. Blair completed her undergraduate degree at Fresno State majoring

in Recreation Administration, a year later she was given the Program Coordinator position. She

mentioned how she was a part of the HEAL program where they restarted the program, so a lot

of her colleagues were already people in the field. She supervises multiple groups of students

such as the Homecoming student committee, the Vintage Days student committee, USU

Productions student event coordinators, two graduate assistants and student interns.

This interview was valuable for me to gain insight into what it’s like working within

student affairs. It’s important within student affairs to have a passion for advocating for students,

to make sure that the student voices are being heard. Most of the time students are left out of
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those key conversations that are making decisions for them, but not with them. Ms. Blair

understands the value of student input, so she makes sure we as students are able to be a part of

those meetings or she speaks on our behalf. Students are at the forefront of our work, they matter

just as much as we do. In the interview Ms. Blair mentioned “Within groups it's important to

learn how to adjust with each person you are working with” ( S.Blair, personal communication,

September 23,2021). This stuck with me because we have to learn each other's strengths,

leadership styles, personality and adjust to that. Each coworker and each student we work with is

different and you have to find ways to work with them. Also sometimes people are not going to

adjust with you, some people are just stuck in their ways. You have to be willing to adjust with

others, willing to really get to know that person so you can begin to understand their strengths

and values.

How you lead one team may be different then how you lead the other team because each

team dynamic is different. Leadership is about being authentic to yourself and your style and

using that to your strength. You don’t want to lose yourself within your work that you start to

drift away from your mission. Also its leading by example, everyone is on the same playing field

no matter the role so its being willing to do good unto others and not letting the title get in the

way. Since Ms.Blair supervises multiple groups of students, I asked her how it is to balance

between the multiple hats you wear. She responded with ‘ it's about finding a balance and having

a solid support system around you” (S.Blair, personal communication, September 23,2021).

Having those colleagues around you that you can rely on in times of need and also building up

your student teams. As a leader you have to trust the students enough to be able to move forward

on their own and make decisions. This helps with the student’s leadership development, helping

them ulitalize their strengths and giving them opportunities to grow. She also mentioned “how it
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is important to have boundaries because you do not want to stretch yourself thin” (S.Blair,

personal communication, September 23,2021). This goes into building those relationships that

become foundational overtime, having people you can call on in other departments to help you

out.

I asked her about her leadership style and she told me “it's collaborative, because it's the

type of person she is and also it's the job” (S.Blair, personal communication, September

23,2021). You have to be willing to work with others’ not just your coworkers, but working with

students and working with other staff members on campus. Within her role she sometimes works

with alumni, athletics, facilities, branding and marketing, and the associative student body. Being

in a student affairs position you are consistently collaborating with others especially when it

comes to holding events on campus. Seeing what partnerships you can create, to either bring out

student clubs to the events we hold or even see how to get Fresno State Alumni involved. When

hosting events on campus you have to go through facilities to see what locations on campus we

can use, also have to reserve the spot in order to use it, and have to work with our marketing

team to see how we want to market the event. She mentioned how different university

stakeholders play a role in the approval process of events, so it’s important to make sure

everyone is understanding the vision.

This ties into KBs leadership style “Inspire a Shared Vision”, making sure the

partnerships you are creating understand what the end goal is. For example she brought up

Homecoming Week and how we are currently working with different departments on campus to

put together a week of events. We are partnering with Housing, ASI, Alumni, Health Center,

Athletics to create a week long experience for students on campus. With Alumni they are hosting

some alumni virtual events and also a 5K that everyone can participate in. We are working with
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ASI to see how we can enhance the student experience at the student tailgate and have it feel like

it is Homecoming Week. We want to create that Homecoming atmosphere on campus, so we

partner with facilities management to be able to decorate the campus. Ms. Blair goes into these

meetings with an end goal of making Homecoming Week successful for the students and she

partners with others to make it happen. She has the student leaders that are a part of the student

committee coming up with event ideas and from there she is creating the partnerships. It’s about

collaboration, having to work with others in order to successfully put on large scale events.

Within my interview questions I asked her how she models the way, and she said for her student

teams it's about leading by example. If she shows us students this is how it’s supposed to be then

we already know what to expect. She mentioned how one time during their staff training retreat

she felt like her and her colleagues' time was being wasted, so she wanted to come up with a plan

on how to create that cohesion within the office. She partnered together with one of her

coworkers in the office and they were able to lead one of the retreat days. This shows how if you

notice something is not working out do not be afraid to challenge the process or try to make it

better. She found a way to enhance their experience and everyone actually enjoyed the training.

Leaders lead through different lenses and I found out that Ms. Blair leads through a

Human Resource Frame. Throughout the interview she mentioned a lot about building those

relationships with others around you. Whether those are relationships with your student workers

or with your coworkers and how in the end those relationships are beneficial. They become your

support system, you are able to trust the ones around you and you value each other. She also

mentioned how she is the type of person to respect others and how leaders should be respected.

We as humans value those connections and it helps create a positive environment around us.

Those connections also help us empower one another, when we know each other's strengths we
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can encourage one another or rely on each other. Creating that collaborative work environment

or a supportive environment where you know “ I got your back & you got mines” helps foster

growth. For example we had a person on our team who wanted to grow more in videography, so

Ms. Blair had them come up with video ideas that we could start using for our social media. She

even had them take lead on the video projects and come up with the scripts, filming locations,

and edits. In the end this helped the student enhance their skills, so it benefited them but also

benefited our team.

In the article Synergistic Supervision: A Confirmed Key to Retaining Entry-Level Student

Affairs Professionals it talks about how “seasoned student affairs professionals share the

responsibility of training entry- level staff members through their supervision” ( Shupp, M. R., &

Arminio, J. L. (2012). Now since Ms. Blair has moved out of her entry level position, she is

taking on the responsibility of developing student affairs professionals. She even mentioned in

her interview that if she notices that a student of hers continues to make the same mistake she

will help them out. If not she feels like it's on her for not teaching them how the professional

world works. So she makes sure she is modeling the way for her student staff and she is pulling

us into staff meetings/conversations so we can be a part of them.

Upon reflecting on this interview I learned that even when you want to create that

collaborative atmosphere others are not going to be willing to put in the same amount of effort as

you. Now that could depend on having the time or even having the resources, I know personally

a lot of people look to my office Student Involvement specially just for events because we have

knowledgeable people. I’ve seen first hand being a part of staff meetings that the demands from

higher ups are time consuming and stretch a lot of people thin within my office. Right now my

office is currently working on Homecoming Week which is next week and it is stressful, certain
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people are there to help and we know we can rely on them. While others are not willing to be a

part of the effort. So with that being said Ms. Blair let me know that delegation is key when it

comes to making those decisions. In order to build a solid supportive foundation of people who

understand the vision and who are willing to put in the equal amount of effort to get to the end

goal. And sometimes there are bumps in the road that create those challenges and you have to be

able to work through them. You have to be able to let your student team know that unfortunately

you all have been working so hard on this project, but we simply can not make it happen

anymore. In the interview Ms. Blair mentioned “sometimes students have to learn by failing

because we are fighting for something that ultimately we have to cancel”. (S.Blair, personal

communication, September 23,2021) And I’ve been on the receiving side of her telling us this

and we figure out how to move on.

Another point I would like to make is that sometimes you may have to be the one to

challenge the process. When it comes to running programs people are content with how it always

is, not willing to break the mold and figure out a new approach. When it comes to challenging

the process Ms. Blair does a good job of this by figuring out what are the loopholes, how can we

make something better. Also she said “ sometimes you have to challenge students to get them to

think out of the box or about a situation, because they can not learn if you do not do that

challenge piece” (S.Blair, personal communication, September 23,2021). And that personally

stood out to me because I want to carry that one with me. Being able to challenge students to

reach new levels and in the end that challenge piece helps them out. They may not see it helping

them in the process, but the ending is rewarding. Overall conducting this interview was

beneficial for me, I now know some more about what it is like working within student affairs. I

hope to one day become that seasoned professional that helps build up the incoming leaders.
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Reference Page

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (1991). Leadership and management effectiveness: A multi-frame,
multi-sector analysis. Human Resource Management, 30(4), 509–534.
https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.3930300406

Kouzes, J., & Posner, B. (2018). The student leadership challenge: Five practices for becoming
an exemplary leader(3rd ed.). Wiley.

Shupp, M. R., & Arminio, J. L. (2012). Synergistic Supervision: A Confirmed Key to Retaining
Entry-level Student Affairs Professionals. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice,
49(2), 157–174. https://doi.org/10.1515/jsarp-2012-6295