In this episode of Roompact’s ResEdChat, Crystal talks with Dr. Joshua Maxwell, Director of University Housing at Colorado State University, about crisis response in residence life. They discuss his research on entry-level professionals and what shapes their responses to crises, from environmental factors to training to self-awareness. The conversation offers practical insights for both new professionals and those who lead them.
Guest: Dr. Joshua Maxwell (he/him/his), Director of University Housing, Colorado State University
Host: Crystal Lay
Listen to the Podcast:
Watch the Video:
Show Notes:
- Discovering the Aspects of Crises, the Environment, and Self That Inform Entry-Level Residence Life Crisis Managers by Maxwell, Joshua Alexander, Ed.D.
- Campus Crisis Management: A Comprehensive Guide to Planning, Prevention, Response, and Recovery
- Teaching Campus Crisis Management Through Case Studies: Moving Between Theory and Practice
About ResEdChat
Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast is a platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. If you have a topic idea for an episode, let us know!
Transcript:
Crystal Lay:
Hello and welcome back to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast, a platform to showcase people doing great things and great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. I’m your host Crystal Lay. I use the she/her series pronouns. So I was thinking about what my next topic would be on the podcast and I try to think about things that we typically would encounter, like it’s inevitable as housing professionals, and what came to mind, crisis response. That’s right. Whether we experienced it firsthand in our role or we just attended training, crisis response, crisis management is a part of the work that we do in housing. I also thought about who is someone that can talk about this with care and intention and has also done some research on it and I found the perfect person. I’m very excited to introduce this human to you today and talk more about crisis response in housing. So I’ll have our guest start off by introducing themselves.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Hi, I’m Dr. Josh Maxwell. I am the Director of University Housing at Colorado State University. And then in addition to that, I also serve as the Treasurer elect for AIMHO. It’s great to be here.
Crystal Lay:
Thank you for being here and thanks for your service to the region, making sure the money spends well.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Yes.
Crystal Lay:
I want to transition to a topic that can be pretty heavy. I want to be mindful of my tone and how we approach this. But I do want to start off with the question for you, Josh, of when you were first starting in residence life, what do you remember about your first crisis response experience? And then also what do you wish someone would’ve told you?
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
This is a fun question because I feel like to answer it, Crystal, I will have to tell you a story that sounds unbelievable but actually is 100% true. This goes back to when I was an RA. When I was an RA, it wasn’t even actually my night of duty, it was my best friend’s night of duty in another building. He was doing his first rounds for the first time. I told him I’d come over and keep him company. I go over, we do rounds of the residence hall. It’s a normal quiet night and then we discover an individual in a lounge space who is asleep, covered up in a blanket, who we later learned was not a student and was not meant to be in that building. And then as we try to work to wake him up, he removes the blanket and a bat flies out.
Crystal Lay:
Oh no.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Not even kidding, an actual bat flies out from under the blanket. We still don’t understand what happened to this day there. And then at the same time, we also discovered that that individual is also currently not wearing anything. At that time, at the campus I worked on, there wasn’t a co-duty model so the fact that I happened to be there as an extra pair of hands to help out turned out to be quite fortuitous because my best friend starts working on trying to usher a bat out while he’s on the phone with our supervisor trying to get assistance and guidance, while I am talking to a person who is not wearing anything currently and is very disoriented and does not know where he is and trying to understand and ascertain who he is and also make it clear at that point that if he’s not currently being escorted by a resident of the building, that he can no longer be there. That was the very first crisis situation.
I put crisis I think in that case with the lowercase c, because definitely on the spectrum of crises that we respond to, I’ve definitely encountered far more severe ones over the course of my career. But I do regularly think back to that situation because A, of how ridiculous it is when you try to describe that out loud, but also sometimes how emblematic that can be of our work in that it can be very unpredictable. A lot of things happen in this work that are not conveniently written down in a process or in a manual. I think that for me is something that I wish somebody would’ve told me is that for me the manual only takes you so far. There was not a protocol for what happens when you discover a person who doesn’t belong in a building, who is wrapped in a blanket with a bat, and also currently not wearing anything. There’s just not a protocol that captured that.
You still have to figure out how to respond in that moment and make good decisions in ambiguous situations. I think, for me, I wish somebody would’ve told me the manual will only take you so far. And two, the key to becoming really good at this crisis management work is developing a strong framework for how you make good decisions in ambiguous situations, especially when there aren’t always right or wrong answers. If that makes sense.
Crystal Lay:
It totally makes sense. I’m also counting the number of potential policy violations in there too. But I think it’s this idea that a former director shared with me, “He said, you cannot prepare for the circus train breaking down in the middle of town.”
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Yes.
Crystal Lay:
That’s what it feels like, and you’re just waiting, what’s the next piece that’s going to happen? But I like this idea of at the end of the day, when a crisis happens, what are the things you need to remember? What are the tried and true pieces that you can harken back to because you can’t plan for everything. I try not to laugh Josh, but that is probably one of the wildest stories I’ve heard. So thank you.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
My friend and I still laugh about it to this day.
Crystal Lay:
I was like Bruce Wayne in the lobby. I don’t understand. So my next question would be entry-level staff typically are the folks who are responding to incidents that take place. So I’m not talking about RAs, I’m not talking about desk staff, I’m talking about hall directors, entry-level coordinators, they handle a lot of crises and I would say that sometimes they’re the least experienced. Why do you think our structure is set up that way?
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
I love this question. It ties into the research that I’ve done. So I did my doctorate in leadership studies at Bowling Green State University, and my dissertation topic was on crisis management with entry-level staff members and specifically trying to understand what it is it about crises, the environment and the crisis manager that informs how they navigate crisis. Part of that was unpacking the paradox that the staff that are least trained in crisis management are the staff that are doing crisis management the most often. And for me, I think the way to understand that is to understand what we actually mean when we talk about the word crisis, what does that actually all encompass. One textbook that for me that was really foundational for my dissertation study was Campus Crisis Management by Zdziarski, Dunkel and Rollo. Phenomenal book and they have a crisis matrix that they put together to really identify different kinds and types of crises. One of the biggest ones that was really foundational for my study was the level of crisis. The authors identified three different levels of, essentially, a scale of crisis.
The first one being from smallest to biggest of being a critical incident, a campus emergency and a disaster. With the idea that a critical incident is one that typically one department or area of campus, maybe a second one is able to solve on its own. A campus emergency is one where it’s reached a level where the whole campus needs to do a concentrated and concerted effort to respond to and contain and manage, and respond to the situation. And then the third one being disaster, where that really encompasses the campus and the surrounding community. When you’re thinking of a disaster, some of the examples that they cite are ones like campuses that had to navigate their response to Hurricane Katrina. Very much a crisis, but one that required not just a university or a college response, but it required the entire community around it to also be part of that response framework.
Campus emergency is looking a little bit different and saying, yep, it’s a full campus emergency but relatively contained to the campus. That could be something that is still a significant or violent crime or severe incident, but something that the rest of the surrounding community doesn’t really need to engage in response on. Critical incidents though, that’s really where I would argue housing residents life, we live in that critical incident piece on a daily basis. We also live in the other two types of crises, but we live in the critical incident far more often than we do those other two. Because, thank goodness we don’t have disasters or campus emergencies to the same level as we do, but we do have a lot of incidents that occur, those critical incidents, that if left unchecked could become campus emergencies that actually do become larger, if they’re not handled in a timely manner or in an appropriate or an effective manner.
So when we think about why is it that entry-level staff end up handling so many crises, it’s because we’ve tasked them to handle this type of crisis that is typically smaller in scale, the impact is typically less far-reaching, but that also doesn’t mean that the severity isn’t there. While the scale of it might not be as big as some of the other ones that happen far fewer and do have more experienced professionals handling them, the frequency of them and the severity doesn’t always necessarily change because we could still be dealing with really sensitive topics that are very triggering or difficult for people to handle, whether that’s residents or staff. Those are going into the areas of forms of physical violence, relationship violence, sexual misconduct, all these different incidents that are occurring, unfortunately, at a cadence that requires us to know and respond to them appropriately on a regular basis.
Crystal Lay:
You know what came to mind? I think there’s the process and protocol in this matrix or chart, of here are the crises, here are the levels. I think sometimes there could be a disconnect in how we respond to them. On paper this could feel like or be described as a critical incident, not a major thing, but to me, this person living in, two months on the job, my reaction might be, this is a disaster. I wonder about the expectations of response and how it maps back to what should be the response. I want to be careful with that. I think you articulated that. Depending on the severity of the incident and also how it lands for that particular human. I think it was a part of your research as well. So my question for you would be how should or how might someone respond to a roommate issue versus a medical emergency? Does that make sense?
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Yeah, absolutely. That was one of the areas of my research study, was looking at how does the type of crisis actually inform how people respond. One of the biggest drivers is well-being of the people involved. So is there a fundamental risk to well-being from a physical or mental health perspective? That was recurringly in the study with the staff that I interviewed. That came up regularly as if there was a concern for someone’s well-being, that automatically changed the flavor of their response very quickly. Beyond even just a roommate issue or medical emergency because even in both of those situations, a concern for well-being could exist in both of those situations. Even though they sound like different ones and one, a medical emergency sounds more severe than a roommate issue, a roommate issue could also have some extremely severe components to it that might actually change your approach. In some cases it’s taking that step back and looking at it in terms of what are the components of this situation that are present even regardless of the type of situation that you’re dealing with.
Sometimes the other big thing was what are the resident dynamics of this crisis? To what extent does a resident involved in the situation going to need additional support after this crisis? That’s something that informs how people have been responding. In addition to that, one of the other biggest things is, to what extent do you know a student in the crisis? That informs the response. How well do you know them? Do you know their prior history? Do you know core aspects of their personality and their identity and who they are as a human being? That informs how people respond. And again, regardless of whether it’s a roommate issue or a medical emergency, etc, that factor can transcend all of those different kinds of crises to say, if I know you better than I know someone else, I may respond in a different way. There are pros and cons to that that have to be unpacked with a crisis manager when they’re looking through that.
Then I think it’s also the other piece of, what’s the presence of the other people involved? Are there other people that are involved in this crisis situation? Are they people that are connected to the crisis? Are they spectators? Are they people that are a part of the community that might get impacted at a later date? That also can impact those different factors. So yeah, I’d say for me, in some cases it was less about the category of the crisis from a protocol perspective and more about the presence of certain factors that would influence behavior. If that makes sense.
Crystal Lay:
It makes sense and I got chills, Josh. I’m going to be honest with you, it makes me think about how do you talk about these things during training for entry-level professionals. I won’t give exact years because I want to protect the situation that took place. But earlier in my career I was called out to an incident and when I got there to the parking lot, there was a student passed out and it was a student I knew very well. I just remember holding the student in my lap. Thankfully they survived, but just there was this reaction and I had to snap myself out of it and say, “I have to help this human.” But all the training, there was nothing at that time that talked about what might you need to do to care for yourself if this is a student that you may know or have some familiarity with.
That, as you were just giving that commentary, I wonder how often do we talk about that in training, but then also should that be included? With that, on that train, what do you believe should be included in crisis response training for our entry level folks and maybe even beyond that because there’s still stuff I know I can learn and I’m not entry level at this point.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a couple things. When we think of training and crisis management, our brains I think tend to default to, let’s talk about the protocols. Let’s get out that duty manual, translate it into a set of PowerPoint slides, go through it step-by-step saying when this type of incident happens, this is what you do with a medical emergency, what you do with a roommate issue, what you do with these different things. We’re training on that, basically training on things that are conveniently in writing. We also know that it’s not necessarily realistic to always remember all of those things because it’s very difficult for any person to do rote memorization of every single policy, practice, and procedure. One of the things that I think is always really important and was in a study by Mahogany Shaw in 2018, they did a study on using interactive sequential case studies as a way to actually engage in teaching staff on crisis management in housing programs.
I really liked that because the emphasis in the sequential interactive case study was, rather than saying how do we just teach you the proper protocol and make sure you follow it, which is important, and I don’t want to understate that. Protocol is important and that keeps us out of major trouble in many cases. But the Shaw’s study really went on to really talk about the importance of how do we replicate the feeling of uncertainty and the feeling of time sensitiveness that comes with crisis management situations. Where when we’re in these situations, we don’t always have the luxury of knowing all the information or having all the information in a quality or accurate manner. And we don’t always sometimes have the luxury of time when it comes to making a decision. Sometimes we have to make it quickly with incomplete or sometimes questionable information. And how do we replicate those aspects of crisis management?
Shaw had proposed the idea, which I’m a very strong advocate of which is, how do you sequence out the information and tell people what’s coming up? Present them a case study in a scenario. Give them some of the story and then put them in a situation where they actually have to make a choice and they don’t have the luxury of time or all the facts. And they still have to make a choice to be able to really give people that sense of what it might be like when you’re in that situation and you’ve got to make that call and figure out something. I think there’s something that’s really helpful to that. The other thing that I think is also really helpful, going back to one of the things I was previously talking about when it comes to how we navigate ambiguous situations is, in my doc program, I took a class on ethical and moral leadership. One of the things that I took from that class that I’ve actually applied to my own crisis management work has been the introduction of different ethical tests to check how you’ve made decisions.
Some of those are different ethical tests that are common in the field of ethics research where it talks about a parent guardian test. Would you be comfortable with telling your parent or guardian the decision that you just made today and how you responded to it and how you handled it? Another one is the gut test. What does your gut tell you about the decision that you just made? Do you feel good about that decision? There’s some subjectivity there that you have to unpack and you need to have some strong self-awareness if you’re using that as a test. The other one that I’m a huge fan of because I think it makes it more real for people, and this is a dated reference based on today’s world, but the front page test. Are you comfortable with everything you’ve done and the decision that you’ve made being printed on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper or ending up in a social media post online? If the answer to that question is no, then that’s your brain telling you you’re uneasy about some part of your decision-making process with how you got to this point.
I think about one of those decisions that always stressed me out the most when I was an entry-level staff member, and it was, did I handle a concern about suicide ideation appropriately and did I call or not call at that moment? If I didn’t call for additional support, was that the right call based on all the information? I remember some nights in my apartment in a residence hall pacing back and forth after I finished that call, wondering if I’ve made the right call. That was my signal to me of saying, Nope, Josh, maybe you didn’t make that right call in that moment, and maybe you need to go back and reevaluate what information did you use to make that choice? Why did you make it and say it out loud and use that as part of the process to reflect and say, okay, maybe I actually do need to revise my decision here. Because there’s some part of me through one of these tests that’s telling me maybe I’m off a little bit.
Crystal Lay:
I love the reflective questions and if those could be a part of training, like here’s a checklist or the litmus test. Some of the questions I think about, I’ve always said, “Can I go to bed tonight without telling anyone else about this thing that happened?” My second is, “Is this above my pay grade?”
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Yep, absolutely.
Crystal Lay:
And then my third is, for myself being a mom, I think about how would I want someone to tell me about this thing that happened with my kiddo?
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Absolutely.
Crystal Lay:
How do I justify this? I know that that last one isn’t applicable to everyone, but it’s like with a loved one or someone I care for, how would I want this delivered? How do we make sure that we’re always being helpful? I like the reflective questions that folks can have that feel real to them. I also appreciate the nod to Dr. Shaw. Folks, look her up. She’s dynamic, does some great research on crisis response. She was a professor at Miami, Ohio when I was there. Just really talented and amazing professional and scholar.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Absolutely.
Crystal Lay:
I think a piece of this, Josh, also is, so I go to training, I got the protocols, I’m doing these reflective questions, and then there’s the piece about do I know how I would typically respond in a crisis? Do I know who I am? I wonder is there a way to help entry-level humans, entry-level staff understand their response style and then also build confidence at the same time? I don’t think we put them through a test and see how you react, but it’s like what’s that self-awareness or how do we encourage that so people have some sense of how they might respond in a crisis or high-stakes situation?
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Oh, absolutely. I made an accidental discovery in my dissertation study, which is that some of my participants voiced in the actual interview for my study, that they actually found the interview and the pre-reflection questions that I asked them to do in advance helpful to actually reflect on and improve their own crisis response. With one person even being vulnerable and telling me that when I asked them to do a set of pre-interview questions and then did the interview, they realized through that process that they had biases in how they were responding to students that they hadn’t really unpacked until that moment of that interview. And that they were realizing that in some cases they were doing things differently based on factors related to their own biases that they identified actually probably wasn’t okay and probably not a good thing. They were willing to be vulnerable with me in that moment in that interview. I’m super appreciated them for it.
One participant shared with me, for example, they felt they were responding to a situation where a student’s staff member was experiencing feelings of suicide ideation. They did their job, they asked the follow up questions and they were really trying to unpack whether or not this needed to escalate to a new form of support. Then I asked them, “Would your response to that situation have changed if this wasn’t a student staff member? If it was a resident you had never met before, would your response have changed in that situation?” They had said in that moment, “Yeah, it probably would have. I don’t think I would’ve been comfortable asking them the questions that I did about their feelings about suicidal ideation had I not had a prior relationship with them.” After they said that sentence out loud, they had unpacked and realized, “Oh, that’s a issue that I’ve got to unpack and address for myself. Why don’t I feel comfortable asking those same questions? And what’s my obligation to the resident I don’t know just as much as the residents or student staff that I do know.”
Even just having that conversation and having people impact, tell me about an incident that you responded to, why did you respond to it in this manner? What was it about the crisis, the environment or yourself that made you do what you did in a certain way? And then even asking a follow-up question to say, “Hey, would you have done something differently if this part of the crisis were different or if this part of the resident or the situation were different?” Unpacking those answers, that can help people really self-reflect on what is it that’s actually informing their decision-making skills as well as unpacking their own previous experiences. Because part of this too is that several participants, some of the things that impacted their response were things like experience, which to a certain extent we expect. Your past experience is likely going to inform your future ways of responding to crisis. But then also another major factor was you were recipient of similar behavior in the past?
So if you were a recipient or a victim of prior harmful behavior that you, yourself are now responding to because another student was the recipient of it, that in some cases people shared, informed their response. And in some cases they shared that as a plus. In some cases they shared that as a challenge in terms of how they responded. I think it’s that ability to actually have that dialogue I think is just so critical to allow people to grow and unpack the things that are motivating, that are influencing how they respond to crises, both in positive and negative ways.
Crystal Lay:
I don’t have stats readily available, but you think about some folks get into this field, housing because someone has helped them or they had an experience that they don’t want to be recreated. So some of that potentially could be tied to a crisis or heavy or tricky or conflict-laden experience, and they’re like, “Ooh, I’m inspired. I’m motivated. I want to go ahead and do this work.” I think this idea of knowing what past things may come up or as we commonly say, what might trigger you, when do you tag in and out and having permission to do that is really important to pay attention to. How do we invite that in a way that feels safe and comfortable and/or we are really highlighting the resources that are available to help our staff navigate these different things. I think a part of this too, I wonder if you found anything about comfortability in the work environment with crisis response. I’m thinking about team culture. I’m thinking about supervision. Are there parts of the work environment that impact folks’ ability to respond to crises?
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Yeah, absolutely. Some of the things that definitely impacted it are stuff like, do I have the ability to collaborate with other people? Am I on an island on my own in this crisis, or do I have other people I can call for support or even consultation to say, “I need to talk this through with another human being.” Whether that’s a peer that’s also on call with me or it’s a supervisor, et cetera. What is the structure there to be able to help provide additional ways to reflect upon a decision when it needs to be made? Some of that is also role clarification on what is the authority of the person that’s actually in that crisis situation to make a decision and stick with it, and how that’s going to be supported by the senior leadership of that group. That one I think is a very critical one to have. Because several participants that I had talked to when I had done my study had talked about how the need to call up informed how they responded to a crisis.
That could be either in a good way or in a way that was challenging because they would know that either they would have a hard time getting response or that they would be concerned about what the response would be when they made that phone call. Also, the other part being, do I have the authority to actually make the decision? Which also goes back into, do I need to call up to senior leadership for every decision or do I have the autonomy and the authority to make a call on a certain thing when it’s 2:00 in the morning and nerves are frayed and people are stressed and something has to be done in this moment to resolve the situation. Those were definitely things that were very much important. And I think the other part being, what are the expectations that have been set for what kind of support is being given in that moment and how a crisis should be responded to or also very key. Probably to the surprise of no one listening to this podcast.
Crystal Lay:
But you’re talking about there’s trust, there’s training, there’s communication. Also, I have heard folks say, “I was afraid to call up because I thought maybe I would get fired,” or, “I didn’t want to wake someone up at 3:00 AM and I thought it could wait.” The goal of an on-call system is, I think, folks are trained well enough to kind of band-aid situations, if you will, until offices open back up the next business day, ideally.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Yep.
Crystal Lay:
I think if there’s a system to where folks feel like they are truly alone and on an island when the other offices are closed, I think that needs to be reevaluated. That’s a systems issue. I think if there is a structure in place and someone feels like they can’t call up or over or activate the system, that is a trust and culture issue. I wonder how do you start to maybe assess the structure you have for crisis response in on-call and whether or not folks feel comfortable to provide that feedback. Here we try to do this annual, “How are things going on call?” But I don’t know if that’s a institutionalized practice of let’s reevaluate comfort ability with how we respond to crisis across our field.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Well, and I’m glad you said that because one of the things that we actually started doing that I instituted at Colorado State this past cycle, and that one of our staff members is now facilitating, is a duty debrief meeting that we actually do every Monday morning at 9:00 AM. The required attendees are every person in the on-call structure that was on-call the past week. It’s a structured agenda. It’s the same structure every week where we go through and say, “What are the areas that we know that we did really well in this past week?” Where we’re like, “Yep, this was my jam. We responded to this well.” “What are the areas of growth that different staff have that they know they want to work on.” Protocol wise, “How did our protocols work this week? Did we notice any gaps, any things that need to be taken care of?” And then also answering, “How was working with our partners this past week? Did we have anything where we felt like we were off that we need to follow up with a partner?”
And then, “Are there any big items that did happen in the last week that still require follow-up and that we need to keep paying attention to because they’re outstanding?” Just doing that has been really helpful to build this culture of regular reflection on crisis management as opposed to saying, “We only unpack crisis management when we had a really bad thing happen.” Which I don’t think is the most effective way to do debriefing on how crisis management works. We’ve been experimenting with doing that for this past year of having a standing meeting, 9:00 AM. every Monday. It’s virtual so that way nobody has to worry about getting into a room together. Sometimes it’s shorter. Sometimes it’s longer, but it builds in that piece of constantly reflecting and improving on our work is a weekly conversation that is literally happening every week in our department. As opposed to very infrequently, which is what sometimes has been the case at other places I’ve been.
Crystal Lay:
I really love that. I’m like, must do weekly debrief. I think that’s really powerful because it normalizes that this is a part of our work. It also normalizes peer-to-peer learning and that we can succeed together and we can be a little tricky together and we’ll figure it out. I think it’s that teamwork mentality. I really, really like that that’s something that you’re doing. I can probably imagine that it helps with morale too. It helps build trust in community as you all navigate through hard stuff. It’s easier to celebrate your wins, is something I anticipate. I want to talk about supervisors directly, Josh. How can supervisors encourage boundaries and self-care when they live where they work and they’re on call? You can expand to maybe the on-call situation you had. It’s the students above you or they walk past your door every day and you have to see them again, so that’s that ongoing, are they okay and I see them all the time? But what can supervisors do to encourage boundaries?
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
This is a fascinating question because I think is entangled up in our philosophies of on-call work that we have to unpack in some cases as a field still because we have some models where when you hold the phone, you’re the one that’s getting called. We have other models in other campuses where if it’s your building or your area, you’re getting called first and then there’s a backup in case you’re not able to be reached. When you mix up all those models together, you then have to have the conversation of, “Okay, how are we setting appropriate boundaries to make sure that people are still able to be themselves, to be human, to live their lives. That way when they’re not working, they’re not working, they truly feel that way.” Partially because there’s a lot of good research out there that shows that, and not just in our field of housing in higher ed, that when you’re in an on-call job, there’s automatically an impact the moment you’re on call.
While I was doing my lit review for my dissertation, I was reading a study about a group of IT professionals. I did not expect that I would learn something about housing from reading a study about IT professionals. But it was a study that very much related to our work in that it impact all the impacts that these IT professionals were reporting about the impacts to their personal lives, just by the fact that they were in an on-call capacity having to be ready at a moment’s notice to address an IT outage issue and the stressors and the impacts of their personal lives and their routines that occurred from that. We know that those same impacts are impacting our staff on a daily basis when they’re doing this on-call work. I think it’s setting those appropriate boundaries is very key and crucial.
I think the other part is proactively working with staff for them to take their time away. I think sometimes we can fall into the trap of saying, “Tell me what you need,” and trusting that the staff member is going to then advocate for themselves and say, “This is what I need.” When in reality, sometimes some of the most effective conversations I have had have not been, “Tell me if you’d like a day off.” It’s, “Hey, you’re taking a day off. I need you to tell me when and the day off needs to be taken by this date.” And being a little bit more directive with that to say, “Hey, I need you to make sure you’re taking care of yourself.” There’s a certain sense of relief that I’ve received from some staff where I just remove the ambiguity of whether or not it’s okay to ask for that day because you’ve just come out and said it.
Like, “Hey, I’m not telling you you can take a day if you’d like. I’m saying you need to take a day.” Doing that a little bit more proactively helps remove that ambiguity and helps add some more certainty to the fact that what you’re asking for and communicating is actually really important, that that time away is not really something that we should be viewing as optional. It’s a necessity to help restore the balance. So that way when you’re coming back to work, you’re coming back and you’re able to fire on all cylinders and you’re not feeling like you are burnt to a crisp.
Crystal Lay:
I think practical tips, as you think about your department, what are some practical, tangible things that you can say, is it folks are not giving out their personal cell phone numbers.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Right.
Crystal Lay:
There’s a separate duty phone if your department can afford that and IT’s cool with it. There’s stuff at every campus. I think too, there are some campuses I’ve been in the past where your on-call rang to your apartment phone landline after the office closed at 5:00. It was just a different way of being at that time.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Yep.
Crystal Lay:
If you feel tethered or you feel the sense of responsibility, I have to care for these hundreds of students. This is my small town, I have to be here all the time. That’s tricky. So what are the things that the department and supervisor can help provide? And then where are the places where folks need to understand and know their own boundaries? I feel like it is a little bit of a both end. But yeah, I think the on-call phone, giving out your number. I think some places mark the hall director door apartment so folks know where they are and some places don’t. Right?
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Right.
Crystal Lay:
I think it’s understanding the structure of your department and what’s possible and reasonable to still get the work done because they have live-in for a reason too. I don’t want to take away from that. I want to ask you very quickly, you talked about the debriefing Mondays. But let’s say there’s one staff member and they come to you, it’s a really high level position where your phone rings, Josh. It was really challenging and I can only imagine that you’re probably the type of person who will reach out and say, “I know this thing happened. How can I support you?” As a professional and someone who has this expert insight into crisis management, how would you create that space? Or what are some tips on creating that space for that individual staff member to emotionally process yet also grow as a professional?
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Yeah. I think for me, part of that is it starts with a relationship before. I think the hard part is it’s harder to show support in those really intense moments when there isn’t a relationship that’s been previously established. Sometimes we don’t get the luxury of that. Even after arriving at Colorado State soon after I arrived, I started getting into a couple of very severe incidents very early on where I didn’t always have the luxury of getting to know everybody in advance as much as I would’ve loved to. I think part of that is showing up and actually being there and being on site when the problems are occurring and when that follow-up is needed, offering to do tangible help to show that you’re not just offering to be there as a helpful ear, but that you’re offering to be in there and do the work alongside the staff, I think is meaningful and very impactful for staff. I think it’s also a time and a place and a manner of what kind of conversation you’re having.
The two conversations that you mentioned, that for me have very different objectives, which are, how am I emotionally processing this incident that was really impactful and heavy for me? And then the other one is, how do I take what I learned from this situation and grow as a professional in terms of what I’ve learned about how it’s going to inform my future response to crises of all sorts or other different work? I think there’s a time and a place for both of those conversations, and they’re not always at the same time. I think it’s having the wherewithal to know where is that staff member in that moment? What are they looking for in terms of support? And also, answering the honest question of are you the person that actually they want support from? Because sometimes you might not be that person, and that might be because of the relationship, positionality, do they feel comfortable talking to you based on who you are?
One of the things that I’ve also done for some of the severe incidents that we’ve had at CSU during my time here has been working with our HR professional staff member to actually have office hours on site, in our own main office building, to be able to say, “If you want to unpack and talk through some resources or ways to unpack this incident, and you want to talk to somebody that doesn’t work in housing because you don’t want to have the implication of talking with other coworkers and being vulnerable in that space, maybe you want to talk with somebody completely outside of that system.” Providing that avenue as well, and recognizing that for some people that may be the more valuable and helpful outlet while also still making yourself available as an option. But I think that to me, I think is very important.
Crystal Lay:
Yeah, I like that you named that you might not be the person, and it’s not taking it personally. Everyone typically knows what they need and what might be helpful. So it’s respecting that person and the time and space that they need and offering resources. Don’t like, “Oh, they don’t want to talk to me. Bye.” Offer resources. And then you talked about the relationship piece. Sometimes a crisis happens on the first day of school and you might be that brand new director and not have had the opportunity to build that and so being aware of that too, the importance of relationship and not making it about you in that moment. I always lean into two ears, one mouth when supporting someone, especially during a difficult time. This has been so enlightening. I have a lot of practical tips and things I want to think about for my own practice here at my campus. I’m grateful for you. We are coming to the end of our time. If folks wanted to learn more about this topic, like crisis management response, your dissertation, where should they start? Are there resources that you would recommend?
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Yeah, absolutely. Campus Crisis Management by Zdziarski, Dunkel, and Rollo, I mentioned it earlier. Highly recommend it. It’s a seminal text and to understand campus crisis management and the work that we do. And one of the reasons why I did my dissertation study on crisis management and housing programs and with entry-level staff is because I saw it as a very under-researched area, disproportionately to the amount of work that’s done in that area. That for me is one of the reasons why I wanted to do that was to help compliment that work and unpack that a little bit more. I also think Shaw’s study on interactive sequential case studies from 2018 is a really great resource that I highly recommend for people. Definitely look at that.
And then folks are always welcome, if you would like to read an exceptionally long paper with a lot of different charts and a mixed method study to look at my own dissertation on the topic. For those that like qualitative and quantitative data, it is mixed methods, so you get interview quotes along with some data from staff members about those results. If you search Joshua Maxwell and entry-level crisis management, you’ll probably find that online as well.
Crystal Lay:
You know Josh, I did look up your dissertation and I was like, I need to add about 50 more pages to mine. But it’s good stuff. It’s good stuff and it inspired me to reach out to you and learn more because I think this is stuff that we need to be thinking about as we support our entry-level folks who are just beginning the work. But then just, I think there’s this idea too, of trauma-informed leadership too. We’re all coming with stuff and we’re going to experience stuff and so how can we be better leaders and colleagues to each other. This is just one of the ways by talking more about this really important topic. So thank you for your research in addition to our field in that area. This has been so much great information, and I’m so grateful to you, Josh, for joining me today. Thank you.
Dr. Joshua Maxwell:
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Crystal Lay:
And to everyone listening, watching, thanks for joining us on this episode of ResEdChat. If you have an idea of a topic or person that you would like us to have on the show, please let us know by reaching out to Roompact. Take care.
