A peer-to-peer discussion with Dean Emeritus of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia
🎙️In Episode 51 of the Deans Counsel Podcast panelists Ken Kring and David Ikenberry are joined by a true giant in business education, Dr. Bob Bruner. Listen to this exclusive conversation on leadership as Bruner discusses the three qualities he believes make a successful dean, with a deep dive into the often overlooked but essential attribute of temperament.
“Many attributes go into making a great Dean, but three, in my experience, tend to be the make or break issues,” shared Bruner.
During his tenure, Bruner propelled Darden to new heights, spearheading curriculum revisions, expanding executive education programs (despite Darden's location away from a major metropolitan hub), and achieving significant philanthropic success.
Lean into the exclusive conversation with a luminary in business education offering access to their expertise and experience. #highereducation #leadership #podcast #DeansCounsel
Photos courtesy of Darden
Transcript:
Bob Bruner 0:00
Music.
Dave 0:13
Welcome to Deans Counsel, a podcast aimed at supporting university leaders holding one of the more critical jobs on a university campus. Your panelists, Ken Kring, Jim Ellis and Dave eichenberry, engage in conversation with highly accomplished deans and other academic leaders regarding the ever complex array of challenges that Deans face in one of the loneliest and most unique jobs in the academy. If we think about some of the key giants in business education, the deans who really drove their respective institutions to new heights. The list would have quite a few names on it, of course, but surely, one name on that list would be our guest today, Bob Bruner, Dean Emeritus of the Darden School at the University of Virginia, after graduating from Harvard in 1982 Bob joined the faculty at UVA and never looked back. In 2005 he was tapped to be dean of Darden, a role he held for 10 years. During that time, Bob took what was already a renowned business school and put it on a pathway for excellence. He helped drive the school to revise its curriculum. He made huge inroads into executive education, a feat for a school located away from a major metropolitan hub. He advanced the importance of research to the school's success. During his time, he raised over 165 million in philanthropic gifts today, irrespective of what publication you look at, Darden is ranked in the top 10. Princeton Review ranks them as number one today, after stepping away from the deanship in 2015 Bob penned an opinion piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education titled Three qualities that make a good Dean. Published on january 15 of 2017 in this episode of Dean's Council, we review those three key attributes with key focus on one in particular, the attribute Bob calls temperament. Temperament, of course, is so crucial to how others perceive us as leaders. It's one of those human traits which can swing in either direction, and rightly or wrongly, can easily sway the extent to which constituents perceive a dean as either successful or less. So Bob offers plenty to reflect on in this episode, which we hope you enjoy. Our guest today is Bob Bruner, Bob is a legend with respect to business education. It's great to see you today. Bob,
Bob Bruner 2:47
wonderful to be here and glad to join you too in your mission of advancing the preparation and quality of deans worldwide.
Dave 2:58
It's a joy for us to have you with us. Bob, several years ago, after you stepped down from the deanship, you penned, if a I don't know if I want to call it a thought piece or an op ed, but you penned a really thoughtful message published in The Chronicle of Higher Education about what does it take to be a successful dean. And I was wondering if you could share with our listeners this morning what are some of the big messages, and maybe we'll try to unpack a few of those things along the way.
Bob Bruner 3:30
Thank you very much, Dave, my essay then and my thoughts today are that many attributes go into making a great Dean, but three, in my experience, tend to be the make or break issues. The three are what I call readiness, purpose and temperament. Readiness speaks to one's training and or life experience. Purpose speaks to one's values and the temperament speaks to one's personality, one's ability to deal with typically high pressure situations and even many, many low pressure situations. So let me expand on those very briefly. Readiness, for example, might speak to the years in which an academician has worked in his or her field, toiled up a ladder of leadership and responsibility in one school or more. Schools, led committees, led special projects, perhaps directed a center or an institute, served as a senior associate dean, may have been actually considered for other deanships before ultimately gaining an appointment to a Dean's position. All of those experiences in the past, plus the inevitable experience of teaching students. Students gaining a sense of the cycle of the academic year, the challenges of serving students, challenges of understanding other stakeholders of a school, such as alumni or the Parent University, or recruiters, people who hire the students, understanding all of that is absolutely required for great performance as a dean. I've seen people from other fields, such as government, military and business, parachute into Dean's offices. Some have succeeded. Others have met challenges, and quite often the the cut point between the good the bad the ugly had to do with readiness to serve and understanding the second big element I would speak to His purpose, and that really boils down to the question of whom do you serve? Why are you? Why do you want to be a dean? Why are you in that position? I've met many people who wanted to become Deans because of hubris. They believed they were really, really high performers, and they wanted to show their stuff in a senior academic position. They were serving themselves. Other people had finished a great career, either in academia or in other fields outside of academia, and wanted it a kind of semi retirement there too. They were looking to serve themselves first then to serve others at the school, I would say that the the job of being dean is not about you the dean, but it's about serving the community, helping the community rally and pursue its progress towards some overarching goal around which People can come together. So the Dean needs to emanate that purpose out to the wider field and help many, many constituents, many components of the schools community, to come together around a vision and a mission. The third attribute is temperament. I'm reminded of the famous comment about President Franklin D Roosevelt, that he was a second class intellect, but a first class temperament. I can't speak to his intellect, although, in retrospect, he seemed to have been pretty smart, but his temperament made it possible for him to be tough when needed to be jolly and approachable most times, to temper his frustration, inevitable frustration, and perhaps his his anger at important points, and to channel those feelings in productive ways. You might call this being socially intelligent or emotionally intelligent, but I've seen intemperate people hit the wall in performance as a dean, and that issue of a good temperament is among the hardest for search committees to judge purpose can be sometimes hard for a search committee to judge readiness may be more straightforward to judge based on what one's resume has to say, but those three qualities, I think, serve as the foundation for a good deanship, and I would encourage people who are considering their work in the field, and they're a sentence to the leadership of the school, consider their own development along those three lines.
Ken 8:53
That's really fascinating and wonderful, the way you have distilled it into three both distinct, but also some cases overlapping, kind of categories, we'd like you to just explore the temperament piece a little bit, because that is, in fact, to your point, the hardest for search committees and for our audience you know, might be the most nuanced in terms of their own teasing out of their own self assessment as to what temperament looks like, and the extent to which you can talk about some examples that help to characterize what I won't say ideal temperament, but more optimal temperament might might be,
Bob Bruner 9:39
well, I thank you very much for that, Ken, I would say that let's begin with the acknowledgement that the dean's office is ultimately the the premier complaint window for that you as a dean, have staff. You have associate deans. As Senior Associate Deans and others to deal with issues come along, and by the time they rise to your office, the fact of the matter is they must be pretty serious, and how you respond to those issues is a massive influence on the substantive path that those issues can take. We have seen in recent months, presidents of universities fall and some actually retain their positions on the basis of their ability to respond to highly inflammatory issues that surfaced in their institutions, I would say that within a school, the issues that will reach a dean are likely to be tremendously challenging and not given to ready answers. So number one, do you have the the sense of courage and strength and calmness with which to bear the burdens of those issues that finally rise. Do you have the not only the physical resilience, but also the emotional resilience to handle the issues that often get paired with personal attacks or personal criticisms. Dean's many issues are personalized. Well, Dean, if you think some other issue at the school is more important than the issue I'm presenting to you, then you must be inadequate in some regard because of the choices you are making or the priorities you're setting. I think of leaders who responded to very, very challenging issues with a sense of humor. Abraham Lincoln, if you, if you read his biographies, met serious setbacks with, and not, not open mic night kind of humor, you know, at a nightclub, but rather with a shrug of the shoulders and a toss off quip that helped everybody in the room settle back a little bit in their chairs and perhaps think afresh it might be the ability to show genuine empathy in the face of anger without necessarily paving into whatever the demands were that the proponent of that issue brought to you. I could give examples. I prefer to spare individuals involved in detailed issues, but let me pause there am I speaking to your question? Ken, yeah, that's
Ken 13:00
very helpful. And, you know, as we sort of think about the selection of deans, we also think about what should our individual, individual constituents be thinking about in terms of managing their own, you know, their own, you know, trajectory. And, you know, frankly, we have heard that before, but not with such, you know, great nuance to understanding,
Bob Bruner 13:23
well, I would choose members of my staff, senior associate deans, associate deans, on the basis of these three attributes, and because I had risen through the ranks of the Darden School, I knew virtually everyone at the school before my appointment is Dean, and I knew the character of the candidates I was considering, or leadership positions within the school, I was able to judge temperament based on not only my direct observation, but also the word On the street, comments of other students, comments of people who had negotiated with these candidates and came away saying, yeah, that person's tough but fair, or that person took a long time to decide, unnecessarily, blah, blah, blah, but you'll learn a lot coming up through the ranks of a school that can actually help you gage temperament. From the standpoint of a search committee judging people who are candidates from the outside, you really have to work the sample of outside referees, recommenders of that individual. It's got to go farther than just saying you like the person, but saying, give me some examples. How did, how did this person deal with tough situations? What was the situation? How did he or she reply, etc, etc, etc, which is a caution, therefore, to anyone, all of us, that the trail one leaves you. Of leadership is quite important in the judgments people will form about you, even if you failed, the question has to be, well, what did you learn from the failure and how did you respond? How did you adapt your style to the failure in that situation, etc.
Dave 15:24
Bob, digging a little deeper on temperament, the way you are describing temperament, kind of makes me it kind of feels a little bit about as a dean, being conscientious about your brand. In other words, being conscientious about the image you want to portray, about your leadership style and your values, and embedded with that, you had mentioned that there needs to be some flexibility in how you interact with people being emotionally aware enough to swing between being soft versus hard. And you in a moment ago, you actually, if I heard you correctly, you mentioned FDR was was successful in using anger. Is there space for anger as a part of how you engage and drive a program, or talk a little bit about the hard ass part of being a dean and getting that right?
Bob Bruner 16:17
Well, that's one of the toughest things of all. Davis, it's one of those million dollar questions. I think anger is a two edged sword. Anger, appropriately applied, can mobilize people. Can activate a response to an issue that is burning out of control and that demands immediate attention. Anger, however applied to individuals, anger that humiliates people, anger that appears dismissive or repudiating is extremely dangerous and frankly toxic as all of our schools now teach. We want to produce managers who are healthy for organizations, rather than toxic. And I'll give you an example where I I lost my patience, and I think it made a good difference. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August, 2005 this was literally a month into my appointment as dean, and we were approached by Tulane University's business school to to accept, I've forgotten, 100 150 MBA students from their school. These were literally refugees from a devastated city. Darden, at the time, had a full class of MBA students. There were all kinds of reasons to say, No, we didn't have room. We had already started our program. We have a program. It is a highly engineered experience that begins like a chess game from square one and grows. And if you weren't there from the beginning, ah, you know, you probably missed a lot of the culture, setting experience, of the NBA experience we didn't know. We didn't know if we had lodgings for students there. You know, life is hard, and there were probably dozens of other schools that had more space, more lodgings, a different program that would be more accessible to the school. But I, and many of my colleagues, took a different view and said, you know, we ought to rise to the challenge. What would we want if we were in a similar situation, we'd want a school that we could impart our students to, knowing that they would get as good or better in education than what we could provide we would feel enormous responsibility for the welfare of those Students, so we'd hate to send them to just anywhere. I don't know how to. Lane found us and came to us, or at least I've forgotten that detail, but I remember the conversations were going back and forth, back and forth, and almost a 5050 debate among the Senior Associate Deans and the senior staff, and the conversation wasn't going anywhere. And I toward the end of what must have been 90 minutes back and forth with as you can imagine, the dynamic every. Projection would meet a counter response at a higher level of of perhaps emotion or emphasis, and that would be countered by somebody on the other side with yet even higher and by the end of maybe 45 5060, minutes, I'd heard enough, and I just this has to stop. And I remember kind of people shocked and sitting back and, gee, here's here's this guy, Bob Bruner, we knew as an academic colleague, and someone with reasonable temperament, I assume. And wow, he's the way he looks, the way, you know, the sound of his voice, his raised voice. And I, I summarized the argument for going forward, and I summarized what we as a school could learn from it. I said, you know, there's something in it for us. We don't know what it is. Maybe, maybe we'll get even better what we do, learning from these students and carrying forward the mission of service, and frankly, the extremity that these students of Tulane face, and you know what they're going to do. So we were, we were contemplating a wholesale Yes, we'll take them all, package deal. And I said, Let's do it. Let's rally around this opportunity. Let's step up. I'd like you pointing to one colleague to figure out where we're going to seat every one of these students in our classroom. How are we going to fit, let's say 10 more students in a 65 room, 65 student section. We had five sections of MBA students at the time. I don't, I don't remember the details of how many of his students were first year MBAs and how many second year MBAs? But it was going to be quite a squeeze. And how do you explain it to the other MBA students who thought they were, you know, paying some serious money to attend a rather intimate educational experience, and suddenly we're being flooded with students from Tulane. So I turned to another senior associate dean. I really need you to help us figure out what kind of message we're going to present, not only to our faculty, we're going to be asked to grade and teach more students, and to the staff, we're going to be asked to solve the problems of yet more students, and then to the students themselves. How do we make this a plus? How do we how do we enlist everybody around the mission of helping these refugees? And I kind of went around the room pointing to people with different portfolios, different responsibilities, and they rose to the challenge. But I don't recommend just for a dean or a leader to just to randomly jumping into a discussion and cutting it short, to raising a voice, to appearing angry with where the conversation was going. But at that time, I would say it was anger in the service of our mission, our vision, our values, the virtues we were trying to live. In retrospect that that turned out okay, at least to my knowledge, so Tulane, New Orleans, began to turn around. They pumped the streets dry. The population began to come back to lane. Is far enough inland from the river that it was able to resume academic activities. I believe, a year later, in 2006 fall of 2006 and many of the Tulane students wrote very emotional thank you notes to faculty, staff and and their peer students. Some actually wanted to stay, which is a wonderful expression of the bonding that had occurred with them. We declined to keep them out of a tough love response to their desire to stay. And the reason was, if we kept them to lanes, academic revenues would have fall, presumably, quite sharply, and we didn't want to do that to a school that we respected and admired, right? We knew was trying to come back from a devastating experience, but I tried not to lose my temper in other settings, you'd have to ask my staff, I assume they'd say, yeah, he was a pretty even keel guy, but I'm sure I did, and one or two other experiences, but I. Would be an experience of where to where to use anger productively.
Ken 25:07
I'd like to take that and expand on a little. I mean, my experience in three decades plus of in, you know, Academic Search, I have one of my, one of my many sort of observations, is that at any search, someone needs a hard shove at some point, and that, in fact, that hard shove can look different each time. And for someone who appears to be either mild mannered or or mannered, it can be more effective because you're not shouting and yelling. Where I am interested in in going with the question is, you have been a remarkable mentor. I mean, when we've had three from your administration interviewed to date with Tom Steenberg, Erica, James, Peter Rodriguez, all of whom were mentored by by you. So clearly your your temperament has worked well in terms of keeping them in the ranks and projecting them into into additional roles. So hearing your thoughts about professional development, about problem solving with, you know, delegating and and, and yet not micromanaging is you've got to have some wisdom here.
Bob Bruner 26:31
Well, so having, having recruited colleagues, a senior leadership team on the basis of readiness, purpose and temperament, I carried forward a sense of confidence that everyone in that team had the had the capacity to deal with the issues that came along. I wanted to be informed about what was developing in each area, and I tried to meet with members of that team at least once a week, either in a circle or in a one on one setting, because I thought that what mattered in one area of our programs had implications for other areas. And when you have a highly, highly integrated educational experience of the kind that Darden attempts to produce, having that situational awareness of what's going on throughout the institution matters. So people who served in my team had a healthy dose what was happening elsewhere. Erica James, who led our executive education activities, was well briefed on what was going on in our MBA program, what was going on in student life, in alumni relations, in fundraising and development. So it became a little training program, in a sense, or the broader view that a dean needs to have the entire organization. And second, I took the view that leaders need to lead. So I I would say my direct reports would say I was not a micro manager, but that I was a very, very keen coach and wanted to be kept really up to date on what was going on, I would say, because I came up through the ranks of the school, I also knew many of the direct reports to my direct reports, and I made an effort to see those folks casually, at least we have something called morning coffee every morning where the community comes out, faculty, staff and students, and I got more business done at those sessions than many people would Believe. I sometimes took some of those junior staff to lunch, partly in an effort to get to know them, partly in an effort to understand the challenges in their areas, but I did so, trying my utmost to avoid appearing to leapfrog over the discretion and management responsibility of my direct reports, but this was an effort for me to get to know what was going I held social gatherings, a few faculty members and their spouses, going to dinner and doing the same with members of the staff. I posted parties for the entire faculty and staff, and would again use those gatherings to chit chat casually about what was happening. And I, you know, through through all of that, I tried to form a 360 degree view of the institution, in a way. That didn't impair the, as I say, the managerial discretion of my direct reports. I I gave each and every one of my direct reports a formal performance review once a year, I would give them comments along the way that would would be coaching in an attempt to call to their attention issues that might have warranted more ready response than a once a year review would afford. And in my reviews, I addressed two issues. Number one, what was going well, what I liked, what I commended them for. I invited them to talk about what was going well, and I would either acknowledge my agreement with what was going well and my commendation for those things, or I'd say, Well, you know, from from my standpoint, what went well over here, actually, I had this less than helpful reverberation over there in some other part of the institution, and, Gee, why don't you work with so and so over there to see what you can do to manage the blowback. But what was going well, the first issue and the second issue of any annual review was what I'd like to see more of. Now, this is, this is the negative side of any annual review, and one that reviewers hate and that reviewees hate. Nobody likes to be called out on. You know what isn't going well. But if you turn it into, gee, it looks like you worked hard on that. That didn't turn out so well. So, you know, think about next year, taking what you got in this area and possibly doing X and Y and Z with it, you know. So I would turn into more of a coach than a critic. I would do my best to say, yeah, those, those faculty members can be real, real touchy on being told what to do next year. Why not engage them in a mutual problem solving effort that might help them come to their own decision about what, what needs remediated and how you can help, and very frequently that that would turn into a turnaround that helped everybody in the institution. But you know what's going well, what you'd like to see more of are the grounds for a very long conversation. I'd often try to do it over lunch, off grounds and away from the school. With it might turn into a couple three hours where I'd get to know the reviewee much better, where the reviewee would have an opportunity to say, Well, gee, Bob, what you're asking me to do, sounds great. And here's what I'd like for more from you that was often very illuminating and helpful, but that's that's an example of the the coaching style that a development oriented Dean can carry to one's direct reports.
Dave 33:14
Bob, our time has just flown by. What a wonderful conversation we've had today. Thank you so much for carving out your time to share some of these thoughts. Very welcome, Dave.
Bob Bruner 33:26
If I could close with one thought,
Dave 33:28
absolutely
Bob Bruner 33:29
it would be that it was once the subject of great anger by an alum who really wanted the school to go and do an entirely different direction. And this alum, in a phone conversation, you know, became hotter and hotter, and ultimately shouted at me, you've got to control your faculty. You've got to make them go over there, at which point I explained to the the alum that actually I led, was leading a volunteer organization, and this, this brought the alum up short. And
Ken 34:11
what do you mean? What do you mean?
Bob Bruner 34:13
I said, Well, you know, my faculty, my staff, are so good that if I started giving orders of the kind you suggested they'd leave, because they have alternatives. So you see, I actually run a large volunteer organization, and my job is to rally people around a vision, a mission, strategy and sufficient clarity that everyone understands what their role is in helping to achieve the good outcomes toward which we all aspire. In doing what you suggest, would destroy that sense of mutual commitment to the outcomes we need and. And since then, well, that alum and others have come to greater clarity about what we're all trying to achieve in MBA education, what we try to do as a business school, what we what we hope our students learn from the way we teach and the way we lead, but it is the source of the kind of humility that the most effective Deans need to bring to their work. Doesn't mean the Dean needs to be a pushover when the difficult conversations arrive, but it's a square one. It's a starting point from which the best Deans begin their work. Dave Ken, thanks so much for the time we've had today. And I can't commend you enough for the library of interviews putting together here. I hope my little conversation today is a useful addition to
Dave 35:56
you. Oh, undoubtedly, you've done so, Bob, thank you.
Ken 35:59
Yeah.
Bob Bruner 36:00
Cheers.
Dave 36:09
Ken, that was a refreshing dialog we just had with with Bob Bruner, what? What was your takeaway
Ken 36:19
at the very heart, there was such a values driven human being who's who's a human being in the role of leadership, I think that he communicates with a kind of clarity and simplicity. And I don't mean simple minded. I mean simplicity that really all anchors back to extraordinary values and humanity. Really, really, really fascinating and and frankly, it sort of popped up at the end. What a progenitor for talent. Yeah, his leadership has, you know, has been
Dave 36:59
right, right? I couldn't agree more. I really appreciated the opportunity we had to, you know, among the three attributes, you know, readiness, purpose and temperament, I really appreciate the deep dive we had on the temperament question, because so frequently that can be where Deans make or break. You know, their success can hinge on whether they get that temperament issue. So so it's a careful balance, but you got to get it right and and where the institutions can be so unforgiving. And it was really great to hear his advice, particularly up until now, we haven't had a chance to talk much about anger, and I really appreciate, you know, there's a time and place for anger, but there are many other times in places where anger is not the right thing, particularly when it's focused on individuals. And you know, sometimes we get tired, sometimes we get stressed out, and it is, it is easy to lose our temperament. So it's great to hear his reflection on that, and then just that closing message we heard a few moments ago that as leaders, were actually part of a volunteer organization. What a wonderful insight. Yeah, yeah, it was. I was reminded years ago, a close friend of mine was Larry de Brock, former dean at the University of Illinois, and he reminded me, he said, you know, Dave, we don't own the faculty. We just rent them. And it was, it was really, you know, that was essentially his take of Bob's message just a moment ago. I particularly and moreover, the more successful you are with your faculty and your staff, the more this becomes a binding constraint about they are your your intellectual power, your intellectual strength, and they have skills that are needed everywhere and and so it just adds a little one more layer of nuance to the to the challenge of academic leadership. Fascinating issue.
Ken 39:00
Yeah, and you could see in him, it wasn't just that he intellectually grasped that Yeah. It's that he embodied that. He embodied that great, yeah, yeah, that's, that's a very what a great session, great conversation.
Dave 39:16
Thank you for listening to this episode of Dean's Council. This show is supported in part by Korn Ferry leaders in executive search. Dean's Council was produced in Boulder Colorado by Joel Davis of analog digital arts for a catalog of previous shows, please visit our website@deanscouncil.com if you have any feedback for us, please let us know by sending an email to feedback@deanscouncil.com and finally, please hit follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you can automatically receive our latest show you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Bob Bruner notes and bullets
University of Virginia
Episode title: Temperament
Notes:
· Key attributes
1. Readiness – cumulative relevant experiences to provide insight and address diverse stakeholders
2. Purpose – values. Who do you expect to serve. Is it for the institution or is it for yourself.
3. Temperament – personality to deal with tough situations. Tough when needed, but approach. Emotionally intelligent. Perhaps most difficult for search committees to judge.
4. How do we think about Temperament – some examples
a. The dean’s office is the premier complaint window!
i. How you respond can greatly affect the path of those issues
1. The inflamed environment is only getting worse.
b. You need strength, emotional resilience some of which present as personal
i. Deans are often framed as part of the problem.
c. How to show empathy in the face of anger
d. How to use humor to defuse tension
e. He picked his team on these attributes
f. Tough but fair decisions
5. To ascertain, look for examples of temperament even in failures
a. Even in failures, how did you grow, learn & adapt
6. Your “trail” in leadership is long
7. Using anger
a. Two-edged sword aimed at individuals is bad and dangerous
b. Anger used at the institution may have a place
i. Hurrian Katrina example
8. Frequent meetings to help leaders lead
a. Not micro manager, but frequent coaching
b. Occasionally met a layer or two down but needed to be careful
c. Morning Coffee as a way to bring the school together.
i. Great tool to get people to join together
d. Form 360 degree review
9. Formal performance review once a year
a. Took quite a bit of care
b. 1 – what is going well – ask them to share and acknowledge agree and disagree
c. 2 – what I’d like to see more of
d. Spend quite a bit of time to get to know them and to
10. Closing thought
a. We work for in a volunteer organization
Show Notes
· Readiness, Purpose and Temperament
· Getting Temperament Right
· The role of anger
· Knowing how to Lead the Leaders on your team
· Doing performance reviews right
Keywords:
· Leading with grace
· The role of anger
· Leading your team
· Performance reviews
· Emotional awareness
· Leadership traits
Bob Bruner 0:00
Music.
Dave 0:13
Welcome to Dean's Council, a podcast aimed at supporting university leaders holding one of the more critical jobs on a university campus. Your panelists, Ken Kring, Jim Ellis and Dave eichenberry, engage in conversation with highly accomplished deans and other academic leaders regarding the ever complex array of challenges that Deans face in one of the loneliest and most unique jobs in the academy. If we think about some of the key giants in business education, the deans who really drove their respective institutions to new heights. The list would have quite a few names on it, of course, but surely, one name on that list would be our guest today, Bob Bruner, Dean Emeritus of the Darden School at the University of Virginia, after graduating from Harvard in 1982 Bob joined the faculty at UVA and never looked back. In 2005 he was tapped to be dean of Darden, a role he held for 10 years. During that time, Bob took what was already a renowned business school and put it on a pathway for excellence. He helped drive the school to revise its curriculum. He made huge inroads into executive education, a feat for a school located away from a major metropolitan hub. He advanced the importance of research to the school's success. During his time, he raised over 165 million in philanthropic gifts today, irrespective of what publication you look at, Darden is ranked in the top 10. Princeton Review ranks them as number one today, after stepping away from the deanship in 2015 Bob penned an opinion piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education titled Three qualities that make a good Dean. Published on january 15 of 2017 in this episode of Dean's Council, we review those three key attributes with key focus on one in particular, the attribute Bob calls temperament. Temperament, of course, is so crucial to how others perceive us as leaders. It's one of those human traits which can swing in either direction, and rightly or wrongly, can easily sway the extent to which constituents perceive a dean as either successful or less. So Bob offers plenty to reflect on in this episode, which we hope you enjoy. Our guest today is Bob Bruner, Bob is a legend with respect to business education. It's great to see you today. Bob,
Bob Bruner 2:47
wonderful to be here and glad to join you too in your mission of advancing the preparation and quality of deans worldwide.
Dave 2:58
It's a joy for us to have you with us. Bob, several years ago, after you stepped down from the deanship, you penned, if a I don't know if I want to call it a thought piece or an op ed, but you penned a really thoughtful message published in The Chronicle of Higher Education about what does it take to be a successful dean. And I was wondering if you could share with our listeners this morning what are some of the big messages, and maybe we'll try to unpack a few of those things along the way.
Bob Bruner 3:30
Thank you very much, Dave, my essay then and my thoughts today are that many attributes go into making a great Dean, but three, in my experience, tend to be the make or break issues. The three are what I call readiness, purpose and temperament. Readiness speaks to one's training and or life experience. Purpose speaks to one's values and the temperament speaks to one's personality, one's ability to deal with typically high pressure situations and even many, many low pressure situations. So let me expand on those very briefly. Readiness, for example, might speak to the years in which an academician has worked in his or her field, toiled up a ladder of leadership and responsibility in one school or more. Schools, led committees, led special projects, perhaps directed a center or an institute, served as a senior associate dean, may have been actually considered for other deanships before ultimately gaining an appointment to a Dean's position. All of those experiences in the past, plus the inevitable experience of teaching students. Students gaining a sense of the cycle of the academic year, the challenges of serving students, challenges of understanding other stakeholders of a school, such as alumni or the Parent University, or recruiters, people who hire the students, understanding all of that is absolutely required for great performance as a dean. I've seen people from other fields, such as government, military and business, parachute into Dean's offices. Some have succeeded. Others have met challenges, and quite often the the cut point between the good the bad the ugly had to do with readiness to serve and understanding the second big element I would speak to His purpose, and that really boils down to the question of whom do you serve? Why are you? Why do you want to be a dean? Why are you in that position? I've met many people who wanted to become Deans because of hubris. They believed they were really, really high performers, and they wanted to show their stuff in a senior academic position. They were serving themselves. Other people had finished a great career, either in academia or in other fields outside of academia, and wanted it a kind of semi retirement there too. They were looking to serve themselves first then to serve others at the school, I would say that the the job of being dean is not about you the dean, but it's about serving the community, helping the community rally and pursue its progress towards some overarching goal around which People can come together. So the Dean needs to emanate that purpose out to the wider field and help many, many constituents, many components of the schools community, to come together around a vision and a mission. The third attribute is temperament. I'm reminded of the famous comment about President Franklin D Roosevelt, that he was a second class intellect, but a first class temperament. I can't speak to his intellect, although, in retrospect, he seemed to have been pretty smart, but his temperament made it possible for him to be tough when needed to be jolly and approachable most times, to temper his frustration, inevitable frustration, and perhaps his his anger at important points, and to channel those feelings in productive ways. You might call this being socially intelligent or emotionally intelligent, but I've seen intemperate people hit the wall in performance as a dean, and that issue of a good temperament is among the hardest for search committees to judge purpose can be sometimes hard for a search committee to judge readiness may be more straightforward to judge based on what one's resume has to say, but those three qualities, I think, serve as the foundation for a good deanship, and I would encourage people who are considering their work in the field, and they're a sentence to the leadership of the school, consider their own development along those three lines.
Ken 8:53
That's really fascinating and wonderful, the way you have distilled it into three both distinct, but also some cases overlapping, kind of categories, we'd like you to just explore the temperament piece a little bit, because that is, in fact, to your point, the hardest for search committees and for our audience you know, might be the most nuanced in terms of their own teasing out of their own self assessment as to what temperament looks like, and the extent to which you can talk about some examples that help to characterize what I won't say ideal temperament, but more optimal temperament might might be,
Bob Bruner 9:39
well, I thank you very much for that, Ken, I would say that let's begin with the acknowledgement that the dean's office is ultimately the the premier complaint window for that you as a dean, have staff. You have associate deans. As Senior Associate Deans and others to deal with issues come along, and by the time they rise to your office, the fact of the matter is they must be pretty serious, and how you respond to those issues is a massive influence on the substantive path that those issues can take. We have seen in recent months, presidents of universities fall and some actually retain their positions on the basis of their ability to respond to highly inflammatory issues that surfaced in their institutions, I would say that within a school, the issues that will reach a dean are likely to be tremendously challenging and not given to ready answers. So number one, do you have the the sense of courage and strength and calmness with which to bear the burdens of those issues that finally rise. Do you have the not only the physical resilience, but also the emotional resilience to handle the issues that often get paired with personal attacks or personal criticisms. Dean's many issues are personalized. Well, Dean, if you think some other issue at the school is more important than the issue I'm presenting to you, then you must be inadequate in some regard because of the choices you are making or the priorities you're setting. I think of leaders who responded to very, very challenging issues with a sense of humor. Abraham Lincoln, if you, if you read his biographies, met serious setbacks with, and not, not open mic night kind of humor, you know, at a nightclub, but rather with a shrug of the shoulders and a toss off quip that helped everybody in the room settle back a little bit in their chairs and perhaps think afresh it might be the ability to show genuine empathy in the face of anger without necessarily paving into whatever the demands were that the proponent of that issue brought to you. I could give examples. I prefer to spare individuals involved in detailed issues, but let me pause there am I speaking to your question? Ken, yeah, that's
Ken 13:00
very helpful. And, you know, as we sort of think about the selection of deans, we also think about what should our individual, individual constituents be thinking about in terms of managing their own, you know, their own, you know, trajectory. And, you know, frankly, we have heard that before, but not with such, you know, great nuance to understanding,
Bob Bruner 13:23
well, I would choose members of my staff, senior associate deans, associate deans, on the basis of these three attributes, and because I had risen through the ranks of the Darden School, I knew virtually everyone at the school before my appointment is Dean, and I knew the character of the candidates I was considering, or leadership positions within the school, I was able to judge temperament based on not only my direct observation, but also the word On the street, comments of other students, comments of people who had negotiated with these candidates and came away saying, yeah, that person's tough but fair, or that person took a long time to decide, unnecessarily, blah, blah, blah, but you'll learn a lot coming up through the ranks of a school that can actually help you gage temperament. From the standpoint of a search committee judging people who are candidates from the outside, you really have to work the sample of outside referees, recommenders of that individual. It's got to go farther than just saying you like the person, but saying, give me some examples. How did, how did this person deal with tough situations? What was the situation? How did he or she reply, etc, etc, etc, which is a caution, therefore, to anyone, all of us, that the trail one leaves you. Of leadership is quite important in the judgments people will form about you, even if you failed, the question has to be, well, what did you learn from the failure and how did you respond? How did you adapt your style to the failure in that situation, etc.
Dave 15:24
Bob, digging a little deeper on temperament, the way you are describing temperament, kind of makes me it kind of feels a little bit about as a dean, being conscientious about your brand. In other words, being conscientious about the image you want to portray, about your leadership style and your values, and embedded with that, you had mentioned that there needs to be some flexibility in how you interact with people being emotionally aware enough to swing between being soft versus hard. And you in a moment ago, you actually, if I heard you correctly, you mentioned FDR was was successful in using anger. Is there space for anger as a part of how you engage and drive a program, or talk a little bit about the hard ass part of being a dean and getting that right?
Bob Bruner 16:17
Well, that's one of the toughest things of all. Davis, it's one of those million dollar questions. I think anger is a two edged sword. Anger, appropriately applied, can mobilize people. Can activate a response to an issue that is burning out of control and that demands immediate attention. Anger, however applied to individuals, anger that humiliates people, anger that appears dismissive or repudiating is extremely dangerous and frankly toxic as all of our schools now teach. We want to produce managers who are healthy for organizations, rather than toxic. And I'll give you an example where I I lost my patience, and I think it made a good difference. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August, 2005 this was literally a month into my appointment as dean, and we were approached by Tulane University's business school to to accept, I've forgotten, 100 150 MBA students from their school. These were literally refugees from a devastated city. Darden, at the time, had a full class of MBA students. There were all kinds of reasons to say, No, we didn't have room. We had already started our program. We have a program. It is a highly engineered experience that begins like a chess game from square one and grows. And if you weren't there from the beginning, ah, you know, you probably missed a lot of the culture, setting experience, of the NBA experience we didn't know. We didn't know if we had lodgings for students there. You know, life is hard, and there were probably dozens of other schools that had more space, more lodgings, a different program that would be more accessible to the school. But I, and many of my colleagues, took a different view and said, you know, we ought to rise to the challenge. What would we want if we were in a similar situation, we'd want a school that we could impart our students to, knowing that they would get as good or better in education than what we could provide we would feel enormous responsibility for the welfare of those Students, so we'd hate to send them to just anywhere. I don't know how to. Lane found us and came to us, or at least I've forgotten that detail, but I remember the conversations were going back and forth, back and forth, and almost a 5050 debate among the Senior Associate Deans and the senior staff, and the conversation wasn't going anywhere. And I toward the end of what must have been 90 minutes back and forth with as you can imagine, the dynamic every. Projection would meet a counter response at a higher level of of perhaps emotion or emphasis, and that would be countered by somebody on the other side with yet even higher and by the end of maybe 45 5060, minutes, I'd heard enough, and I just this has to stop. And I remember kind of people shocked and sitting back and, gee, here's here's this guy, Bob Bruner, we knew as an academic colleague, and someone with reasonable temperament, I assume. And wow, he's the way he looks, the way, you know, the sound of his voice, his raised voice. And I, I summarized the argument for going forward, and I summarized what we as a school could learn from it. I said, you know, there's something in it for us. We don't know what it is. Maybe, maybe we'll get even better what we do, learning from these students and carrying forward the mission of service, and frankly, the extremity that these students of Tulane face, and you know what they're going to do. So we were, we were contemplating a wholesale Yes, we'll take them all, package deal. And I said, Let's do it. Let's rally around this opportunity. Let's step up. I'd like you pointing to one colleague to figure out where we're going to seat every one of these students in our classroom. How are we going to fit, let's say 10 more students in a 65 room, 65 student section. We had five sections of MBA students at the time. I don't, I don't remember the details of how many of his students were first year MBAs and how many second year MBAs? But it was going to be quite a squeeze. And how do you explain it to the other MBA students who thought they were, you know, paying some serious money to attend a rather intimate educational experience, and suddenly we're being flooded with students from Tulane. So I turned to another senior associate dean. I really need you to help us figure out what kind of message we're going to present, not only to our faculty, we're going to be asked to grade and teach more students, and to the staff, we're going to be asked to solve the problems of yet more students, and then to the students themselves. How do we make this a plus? How do we how do we enlist everybody around the mission of helping these refugees? And I kind of went around the room pointing to people with different portfolios, different responsibilities, and they rose to the challenge. But I don't recommend just for a dean or a leader to just to randomly jumping into a discussion and cutting it short, to raising a voice, to appearing angry with where the conversation was going. But at that time, I would say it was anger in the service of our mission, our vision, our values, the virtues we were trying to live. In retrospect that that turned out okay, at least to my knowledge, so Tulane, New Orleans, began to turn around. They pumped the streets dry. The population began to come back to lane. Is far enough inland from the river that it was able to resume academic activities. I believe, a year later, in 2006 fall of 2006 and many of the Tulane students wrote very emotional thank you notes to faculty, staff and and their peer students. Some actually wanted to stay, which is a wonderful expression of the bonding that had occurred with them. We declined to keep them out of a tough love response to their desire to stay. And the reason was, if we kept them to lanes, academic revenues would have fall, presumably, quite sharply, and we didn't want to do that to a school that we respected and admired, right? We knew was trying to come back from a devastating experience, but I tried not to lose my temper in other settings, you'd have to ask my staff, I assume they'd say, yeah, he was a pretty even keel guy, but I'm sure I did, and one or two other experiences, but I. Would be an experience of where to where to use anger productively.
Ken 25:07
I'd like to take that and expand on a little. I mean, my experience in three decades plus of in, you know, Academic Search, I have one of my, one of my many sort of observations, is that at any search, someone needs a hard shove at some point, and that, in fact, that hard shove can look different each time. And for someone who appears to be either mild mannered or or mannered, it can be more effective because you're not shouting and yelling. Where I am interested in in going with the question is, you have been a remarkable mentor. I mean, when we've had three from your administration interviewed to date with Tom Steenberg, Erica, James, Peter Rodriguez, all of whom were mentored by by you. So clearly your your temperament has worked well in terms of keeping them in the ranks and projecting them into into additional roles. So hearing your thoughts about professional development, about problem solving with, you know, delegating and and, and yet not micromanaging is you've got to have some wisdom here.
Bob Bruner 26:31
Well, so having, having recruited colleagues, a senior leadership team on the basis of readiness, purpose and temperament, I carried forward a sense of confidence that everyone in that team had the had the capacity to deal with the issues that came along. I wanted to be informed about what was developing in each area, and I tried to meet with members of that team at least once a week, either in a circle or in a one on one setting, because I thought that what mattered in one area of our programs had implications for other areas. And when you have a highly, highly integrated educational experience of the kind that Darden attempts to produce, having that situational awareness of what's going on throughout the institution matters. So people who served in my team had a healthy dose what was happening elsewhere. Erica James, who led our executive education activities, was well briefed on what was going on in our MBA program, what was going on in student life, in alumni relations, in fundraising and development. So it became a little training program, in a sense, or the broader view that a dean needs to have the entire organization. And second, I took the view that leaders need to lead. So I I would say my direct reports would say I was not a micro manager, but that I was a very, very keen coach and wanted to be kept really up to date on what was going on, I would say, because I came up through the ranks of the school, I also knew many of the direct reports to my direct reports, and I made an effort to see those folks casually, at least we have something called morning coffee every morning where the community comes out, faculty, staff and students, and I got more business done at those sessions than many people would Believe. I sometimes took some of those junior staff to lunch, partly in an effort to get to know them, partly in an effort to understand the challenges in their areas, but I did so, trying my utmost to avoid appearing to leapfrog over the discretion and management responsibility of my direct reports, but this was an effort for me to get to know what was going I held social gatherings, a few faculty members and their spouses, going to dinner and doing the same with members of the staff. I posted parties for the entire faculty and staff, and would again use those gatherings to chit chat casually about what was happening. And I, you know, through through all of that, I tried to form a 360 degree view of the institution, in a way. That didn't impair the, as I say, the managerial discretion of my direct reports. I I gave each and every one of my direct reports a formal performance review once a year, I would give them comments along the way that would would be coaching in an attempt to call to their attention issues that might have warranted more ready response than a once a year review would afford. And in my reviews, I addressed two issues. Number one, what was going well, what I liked, what I commended them for. I invited them to talk about what was going well, and I would either acknowledge my agreement with what was going well and my commendation for those things, or I'd say, Well, you know, from from my standpoint, what went well over here, actually, I had this less than helpful reverberation over there in some other part of the institution, and, Gee, why don't you work with so and so over there to see what you can do to manage the blowback. But what was going well, the first issue and the second issue of any annual review was what I'd like to see more of. Now, this is, this is the negative side of any annual review, and one that reviewers hate and that reviewees hate. Nobody likes to be called out on. You know what isn't going well. But if you turn it into, gee, it looks like you worked hard on that. That didn't turn out so well. So, you know, think about next year, taking what you got in this area and possibly doing X and Y and Z with it, you know. So I would turn into more of a coach than a critic. I would do my best to say, yeah, those, those faculty members can be real, real touchy on being told what to do next year. Why not engage them in a mutual problem solving effort that might help them come to their own decision about what, what needs remediated and how you can help, and very frequently that that would turn into a turnaround that helped everybody in the institution. But you know what's going well, what you'd like to see more of are the grounds for a very long conversation. I'd often try to do it over lunch, off grounds and away from the school. With it might turn into a couple three hours where I'd get to know the reviewee much better, where the reviewee would have an opportunity to say, Well, gee, Bob, what you're asking me to do, sounds great. And here's what I'd like for more from you that was often very illuminating and helpful, but that's that's an example of the the coaching style that a development oriented Dean can carry to one's direct reports.
Dave 33:14
Bob, our time has just flown by. What a wonderful conversation we've had today. Thank you so much for carving out your time to share some of these thoughts. Very welcome, Dave.
Bob Bruner 33:26
If I could close with one thought,
Dave 33:28
absolutely
Bob Bruner 33:29
it would be that it was once the subject of great anger by an alum who really wanted the school to go and do an entirely different direction. And this alum, in a phone conversation, you know, became hotter and hotter, and ultimately shouted at me, you've got to control your faculty. You've got to make them go over there, at which point I explained to the the alum that actually I led, was leading a volunteer organization, and this, this brought the alum up short. And
Ken 34:11
what do you mean? What do you mean?
Bob Bruner 34:13
I said, Well, you know, my faculty, my staff, are so good that if I started giving orders of the kind you suggested they'd leave, because they have alternatives. So you see, I actually run a large volunteer organization, and my job is to rally people around a vision, a mission, strategy and sufficient clarity that everyone understands what their role is in helping to achieve the good outcomes toward which we all aspire. In doing what you suggest, would destroy that sense of mutual commitment to the outcomes we need and. And since then, well, that alum and others have come to greater clarity about what we're all trying to achieve in MBA education, what we try to do as a business school, what we what we hope our students learn from the way we teach and the way we lead, but it is the source of the kind of humility that the most effective Deans need to bring to their work. Doesn't mean the Dean needs to be a pushover when the difficult conversations arrive, but it's a square one. It's a starting point from which the best Deans begin their work. Dave Ken, thanks so much for the time we've had today. And I can't commend you enough for the library of interviews putting together here. I hope my little conversation today is a useful addition to
Dave 35:56
you. Oh, undoubtedly, you've done so, Bob, thank you.
Ken 35:59
Yeah.
Bob Bruner 36:00
Cheers.
Dave 36:09
Ken, that was a refreshing dialog we just had with with Bob Bruner, what? What was your takeaway
Ken 36:19
at the very heart, there was such a values driven human being who's who's a human being in the role of leadership, I think that he communicates with a kind of clarity and simplicity. And I don't mean simple minded. I mean simplicity that really all anchors back to extraordinary values and humanity. Really, really, really fascinating and and frankly, it sort of popped up at the end. What a progenitor for talent. Yeah, his leadership has, you know, has been
Dave 36:59
right, right? I couldn't agree more. I really appreciated the opportunity we had to, you know, among the three attributes, you know, readiness, purpose and temperament, I really appreciate the deep dive we had on the temperament question, because so frequently that can be where Deans make or break. You know, their success can hinge on whether they get that temperament issue. So so it's a careful balance, but you got to get it right and and where the institutions can be so unforgiving. And it was really great to hear his advice, particularly up until now, we haven't had a chance to talk much about anger, and I really appreciate, you know, there's a time and place for anger, but there are many other times in places where anger is not the right thing, particularly when it's focused on individuals. And you know, sometimes we get tired, sometimes we get stressed out, and it is, it is easy to lose our temperament. So it's great to hear his reflection on that, and then just that closing message we heard a few moments ago that as leaders, were actually part of a volunteer organization. What a wonderful insight. Yeah, yeah, it was. I was reminded years ago, a close friend of mine was Larry de Brock, former dean at the University of Illinois, and he reminded me, he said, you know, Dave, we don't own the faculty. We just rent them. And it was, it was really, you know, that was essentially his take of Bob's message just a moment ago. I particularly and moreover, the more successful you are with your faculty and your staff, the more this becomes a binding constraint about they are your your intellectual power, your intellectual strength, and they have skills that are needed everywhere and and so it just adds a little one more layer of nuance to the to the challenge of academic leadership. Fascinating issue.
Ken 39:00
Yeah, and you could see in him, it wasn't just that he intellectually grasped that Yeah. It's that he embodied that. He embodied that great, yeah, yeah, that's, that's a very what a great session, great conversation.
Dave 39:16
Thank you for listening to this episode of Dean's Council. This show is supported in part by Korn Ferry leaders in executive search. Dean's Council was produced in Boulder Colorado by Joel Davis of analog digital arts for a catalog of previous shows, please visit our website@deanscouncil.com if you have any feedback for us, please let us know by sending an email to feedback@deanscouncil.com and finally, please hit follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you can automatically receive our latest show you.