Turning Eye-Rolls Into Engagement: Navigating Sharing Next Steps of Intentional Interactions

As a past theater kid who had a few Broadway songs in my top ten from Spotify’s 2023 Wrapped, my reaction was far from an eye-roll since I am here for more musicals. However, the feedback to these surprise musicals has been harsh and there has been confusion from some on why the movie studios hid the musical aspects from the trailers.

This got me thinking about resident reactions to intentional interactions back when I was a Resident Director.  How the feedback to intentional interactions was usually harsh, accompanied by many eye-rolls and confusion about what intentional interactions were meant to be about. When walking these residents through what we used intentional interactions information for, like helping us realize that we should bring in the study abroad office for a Q&A since so many residents wanted to learn about studying abroad, residents got it. By sharing the next steps that come after the intentional interactions and making intentional interactions’ purpose clear, we were able to turn resident eye-rolls into resident engagement.

If I could wave a wand and head back to those days, I would do things a bit differently with sharing what were next steps based on intentional interactions more widely with my residents as a way to help them realize the impact of their participation in intentional interactions. Here are some things that I would do differently (or have kept the same) if I could do it all over.

Share Information with Resident Advisor Staff

This was something that I did back as a Resident Director and I noticed after starting it that it really helped to drive the student staff to understand why we engaged in intentional interactions. This meant sometimes I created some pie graphs to show who we had engaged (for example, by academic year). Sometimes it included line graphs showing when intentional interactions were completed to help showcase when our residents may be most accessible to us. 

I also would pull the big themes that came out of the written sections of the intentional interaction forms. I would do my best to pull these as the “answers” that we were seeing the questions we were supposed to be asking for that round. This helped the student staff see the same things I was seeing, helping them to understand why I might ask for us to change the plan for a strategy we were going to do next month.

Ask Resident Advisor Staff To Help Decide Next Steps

After sharing the patterns you are seeing in the intentional interactions data from your community, build up a few questions to discuss with your student staff about where you go from here. For example, you notice in the data that students are consistently unsure of what different student organizations exist on-campus. You could share that with your student staff and ask them, what ways do you think we could best share information about student organizations to our students? Or perhaps you noticed in your line graph that almost 75% of intentional interactions happen on the same days as staff meetings. You could ask your student staff if this is because they are trying to be strategic with their scheduling or if that is when the residents are most available. If the latter, it means maybe moving the day of staff meetings could be helpful to alleviate some pressure for your student staff and also give them a stronger chance of participants coming to in-person activities they host by shifting those to that day of the week.

While you are the person who will ultimately make the call on what will happen, engaging your student staff around the things you notice in the data is a great way to help them realize the impact of the work they did in completing their intentional interactions and also make sure you aren’t jumping to conclusions based on your own understanding of the information they put into the collection form.

Ask The Hall Council To Help Decide Next Steps

Just like student staff, consider who else are leaders in your community who could provide beneficial insights into the next steps. I would suggest, to protect student data, to only share high-level information with these student leaders. That would mean that I would only share the big finding, like we saw that students want to learn more about what student organizations exist on campus without sharing the actual percentages or any quotes, then pose the same question of what ways do you think we could best share information about student organizations to students? The Hall Council may or may not want to actually be the folks who put the decided strategy into place, so be prepared for that to be a possibility that comes out of these conversations.

Tell Your Residents About The Impact of Their Responses

This is the biggest thing that I wish I would have done differently. I wish I had shared back to our residents some of what we were seeing and the decisions we made based on their intentional interactions data. This could have been a building-wide email or posters sharing what we saw, such as the need for more information about student organizations that are available to students. Then sharing with them exactly what we are doing to meet this need. I would then publicize the next round of intentional interactions and encourage them to sign-up for a time with their Resident Advisor, promising that they would see something similar coming out from this next round of intentional interactions and that we want their voices included.

Conclusion

In essence, turning eye-rolls into engagement involves a continuous cycle of communication, collaboration, and transparency. By implementing these strategies, Resident Directors can create a culture where intentional interactions not only capture the essence of resident voices, but actively involve them in shaping the future of their living community. While a surprise musical may not be everyone’s cup of tea, revealing a narrative of community growth and empowerment is something I hope we can all get behind (with minimal eye-rolling).