On this episode with Lauren Mountain, Director of Housing & Residence Life at Bridgewater State University, we will dive into the impact of creating a positive and successful team culture! In housing and residence life, workplace culture shapes not only how staff experience their roles but also how students are supported. A thriving workplace culture directly impacts staff satisfaction, professional development, and ultimately the student experience. So let’s discuss!
Guest: Lauren Mountain (she/her/hers), Director of Residence Life and Housing, Bridgewater State University
Host: Jasmine Nettles
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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:
Jasmine Nettles:
What’s up y’all? And welcome back to another episode of the Roompact ResEd Chat Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Jas Nettles, an associate director for housing and residence life here at EKU. Today I’m joined by probably someone who needs no introduction to most people that I know, but she is new to you. Lauren, would you please introduce yourself, your title, and how we met to the folks?
Lauren Mountain:
Oh, yes, yes, yes. Hello everyone. My name is Lauren Mountain. I am the director of residence life and housing at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. I had the lovely opportunity to meet Jas in the wonderful memorable year of 2020 when she just moved to Kentucky and joined the EKU staff as a residence hall coordinator.
Jasmine Nettles:
Yeah. So this episode I want to talk about something that really, Lauren, as my supervisor, has made very important to me, or something that became very popular in how I make decisions and how I lead teams. So let’s talk about culture in the workplace or on a team. So if you’ve ever worked in residence life, it can be one or two ways. You can be very close-knit or everyone can be in silos or adrift. And I am very privileged to have never experienced that much, but I know that the role of culture leads to people belonging or feeling like they belong on their team. Also the university that they work at, but also that’s how we recruit students or we get students to understand this is a job, but we also have a great time here. So my first question for you, Lauren, is can you tell me a little bit about why culture in the workplace is important to you as a leader but also as a team member?
Lauren Mountain:
I think culture in the workplace has really started to mean more to me throughout the years because I realized, especially in our work in residence life, we spend a lot of time at work and with each other. I moved away from home, I moved from Massachusetts to Wisconsin for grad school, and then ended up in Kentucky for my first 11 years of full-time work. And I didn’t know anyone when I moved to those places. And so my workplace became my people, became my community when I was moving.
And so I learned that that workplace culture meant so much to me because that was my only sense of community when I was starting out. And so I, throughout the years, kept trying to feed into that workplace culture, making it a positive one. I also do believe in the concept of trickle down. So if you are, as a team, as a live-in team, as a department team, if you’re feeling positive, if you’re feeling connected, if you feel that sense of belonging, I think organically that trickles down to the work you do with your RAs, your student staff, you’re building that sense of belonging with them within your team, but also your overall department, and then as well as with your students.
The work that we do can also be hard. It can be emotionally hard. It can be just takes a lot of time hard. And so I also think, for me, when I think about that workplace culture, I need a soft place to land. I want my team to have a soft place to land. I want to be a soft place to land for team members when the work is tough. And I think that creating the culture where that’s, not just acceptable but expected, like we know that this is the type of culture we have, is really important to me.
Jasmine Nettles:
Yeah. And I know for me, coming from such a small town, coming from a small town in Michigan, Flint is everybody knows everybody there. You’re either in church or the local high schools or everything like that. And so deciding to transition and move and go to grad school, undergrad up in the UP, or near the UP, the Upper Peninsula, no one had done that really in my family. We stayed where we were.
And when I got up there, spent the time there, ended up studying abroad, and it wasn’t so scary to leave. But I still only had people in the pockets of the communities that I was in. So working in the diversity office, working in the dining hall, and then becoming eventually a student staff member. The student staff experience for housing residence life was very different from every other team that I was ever on, which led me to move to Arkansas for grad school. And then from Arkansas, I spent the summer in Virginia, and then the summer in Virginia moving to Kentucky because it stopped being so scary to move around because of that dynamic. And so I wonder, can you talk a little bit about how maybe what steps you take to establish what the culture is going to be, whether in your role as the leader, or just when you’re creating processes and stuff like that with your team, or building those relationships?
Lauren Mountain:
Yeah. I think one of the first things I do, and a number of my team members here as I was moving in, first noted as how many boxes I was bringing into my office. And they were like, “You know live somewhere else. This isn’t where you’re going to live.” And I was like, “Oh yeah.” But I have a lot of stuff in my office. So I know it’s a little blurry, but back here I’ve got door decs hanging up, I’ve got fidgets everywhere, I have coloring books, I have a lot of stuff, Disney ears, Funko Pops that have been gifts from people.
And so I bring my personality to work, and I bring who I am authentically to work. I am not a buttoned up, let’s be business professional 24/7. I sing and laugh and dance down the hallways. I make weird faces and I joke around. And so I think that, for me, one of the first steps is being myself and being that goofy person who can also get down to business when we need to. But I want to be who I am and I want to show people who I am at work. And I think that that inadvertently gives people permission to do the same. I also recognize that I come from a place of privilege to be able to be my whole self at work, and know that that doesn’t come with necessarily severe ramifications most of the time. And so by doing that for me, I want to show others that it is possible and that they can be themselves at work.
I think one of the other things too is really understanding the processes or understanding the culture and how it’s impacting people. So right now as I start, I’ve been here a little over four months, and so one of the biggest things has been understanding the processes and how does that impact our office staff, our live-in staff, our resident directors? How does this process impact our RAs, our securities team, and then the students? And so figuring out how each of our processes plays with each of our positions and each of our teams to then know is it working, is it having a benefit for one but not the other? And doing that through those casual relationship building pieces too. So it’s a mix of formal meetings of let’s talk about these things, but also those informal, I’m just sitting with you eating lunch, and we’re chatting about something. And I’m like, “Oh, okay. So that program sounded like it went well. How did it get there? How did we make sure it went well?”
One of the things that I did, it was last week, we had just a game, like an hour game day. So we brought in a bunch of board games, hung out, played Heads Up for an hour, had snacks, and just came together as a department socially. Took that time with each other to just hang out, be ourselves, which I think has the ripple effect of being comfortable to talk more about those processes, to talk more about the things that are business-y in the workplace. You’re more comfortable diving in and pointing out issues when we’re more comfortable together as people.
Jasmine Nettles:
Yeah. And I know you said a couple things that I know we’ll get to in a second, but I think one of the things that stands out to me the most as someone who’s been supervised by you, but also being able to work directly next to you, allowing space for every personality type in the workplace, it’s so important. Because I think when students see that we’re not all the same, or we don’t all look the same, act the same, care about the same things. I got into heavy metal music because a grad introduced me to it, and was open to just having a conversation about something that had absolutely nothing to do with work. And then similar to me bringing your personality into the spaces that you’re in from the way that you dress, the way that you speak, but also being able to allow for other people like I saw that you looked like you had a question. Do you want to ask your question?
And kind of relying on how much of an impact that actually can be to someone. Because in our field, especially in our functional area of housing and res life, we have to make a lot of decisions. We do a lot of talking. And practicing communicating, especially if it’s not something that you’re used to doing, you only do that when you feel comfortable. And I think that is probably the biggest misnomer of why creating culture is important because a lot of the times people are learning those skills on teams like this. So I wonder, can you talk about some of the challenges maybe you faced in shaping workplace culture as a leader? Because as long as I know you, you’ve always been a leader, an associate director, director, executive director, and the like.
Lauren Mountain:
Yeah, I think some of the challenges that I have had, I think a lot of the challenges I’ve had is a lot of them in my own mind. Challenges that I’ve created or that I think are there that maybe aren’t as big as they once were, or that I made up to be in my mind, I have come into a lot of workplaces that have had people that have been there a very long time. And so understanding that that is very helpful in understanding the work culture and understanding the context that we work in in the institution and those politics that are always at play. But that also can be a challenge as you want to influence workplace culture, as you may want to shift a few things. Walking into a place that has a lot of history and a lot of people that are alums or that have given their whole lives to one institution, if you’re changing things that they helped build, that can sometimes be a challenge.
For me, it’s always been important to communicate about why we might be shifting things, or why this may be a change in the right direction. And then always have the moment of or moments of reflection afterwards of did that work, did this shift to this format work for us? Instead of doing this, instead of doing this type of end of semester celebration, did instituting a trivia game for an end of semester celebration work better or differently than just a luncheon? And so figuring out, having the moment of reflection at the end of did that work or get to what we wanted to?
I think that something that I have experienced since I was an RA probably, I became an RA in January, so I was filling a role of someone that had just left in December. And I had the fear of coming into someone else’s shoes and filling someone else’s role that they had just left. I had that a lot in other positions when a supervisor would leave, I was tapped to be the interim and I had a lot of fear in coming into, stepping in the shoes of someone else.
And so a lot of that challenge was internally reconciling that I didn’t have to be that person, and I didn’t have to lead exactly like them. And the way I lead and the way I show up is just as valid and can create just as positive of over a workplace culture as someone else. And so I think it’s been living out that concept of giving myself the permission to be myself, lead how I am, and knowing that that’s okay. And again, that trickle down idea.
Jasmine Nettles:
Yeah. And I don’t think there’s enough conversation about how leaders transition, especially from long leadership, or maybe spontaneous changes in the team. Or you take on a role that you’re not necessarily anticipating. I had no intentions of staying as long as I have here, but I had conversations with people who have been here longer than me, who had done the job, and they were like, you absolutely, duh, should consider this. What is wrong with you? What are you talking about?
And I’m always the first person to be like, “You sure you want me to be in charge?” Absolutely. And because the difference in my personality from most other people. But I love that you talked about coming into most of your teams have been established already, whether it be the entry level team have been there long, or maybe some of the leadership team.
So when you are making changes or having to make changes, aware that the importance of culture and a positive workplace are key for you on the teams that you’re on, how do you balance that with accountability? Because people are going to make mistakes, people are going to push back. People are not always going to agree. But I know how you lead with the intention of your workplace and how you want people to be, but you still have to essentially discipline them or correct behavior.
Lauren Mountain:
Yeah. I think I see myself as a really good softball coach. So I am in the dugout with the people, with significant assistant coaches, associate coaches, whatever you call them in sports, right? I don’t know. I do like sports, so I don’t know why I’m saying I don’t know. But anyways.
Lauren Mountain:
But the reason why I say softball coach, other than other sports, is softball, I was really bad at it, but I did play it when I was younger. And we always got chants and you have things that you, like batter… You got things that are culturally acceptable in softball that if you did on the football bench, that I think people would look at you like why are-
Jasmine Nettles:
What are you doing?
Lauren Mountain:
Why are you cheering? That’s for people in the stands. But I like to create those cultural norms, I guess, or those team norms. And here’s where I want us to go. Here’s the direction we’re going, let’s all get in this together. And then, as we may not hit the mark, as we may make mistakes, if it’s an individual, really coming down with that individual and talking to them about, help me understand where your mindset was, or help me understand how we got here. I want to hear from my team about where they’re at and how they’re making meaning or understanding the work that we’re doing.
I don’t think it has ever been helpful for a team dynamic for me to walk in and immediately discipline or accuse someone of doing something wrong, or saying, “You’re not meeting the mark with this.” There’s that conversation, and again, that relationship building where hopefully at this point I’ve been able to create a relationship with that person where they can be honest and share with me that something’s going on or they don’t agree with whatever the decision was, or whatever direction we’re in, or whatever policy they’re having to enforce. And then being able to talk to them like that’s understandable. We’re not all going to agree with everything. But there are certain workplace expectations that you have to meet, and how can I help you meet those?
And I think another thing that really comes into the accountability conversations for me is understanding people’s strengths. I know that I pride myself in knowing the strengths of my team members and knowing that we’re not all strong at all things. And so who do I go to for what? And then also if I’m having the conversation with one of my team members, and they’re really struggling with the conflict management within the role, whether it’s their peer members or their RAs, or whatever that may be, I know who on my team I’m going to say, I want you to sit down and talk to Jas about this.
Jasmine Nettles:
About this.
Lauren Mountain:
About how she does it in her work, how she reconciles the two. Because I think she would be a really good resource or a sounding board for you for you to hear how she does it because she does it really well. I think that that’s important for you to be able to connect your team members to other members of the team to help their development as well.
Jasmine Nettles:
Yeah. And I mean, of course, because I can speak directly to it, I know one of the biggest things that I experienced getting to work under you, but also just learning from you anyway, because maybe be in charge of people, is learning how to have conversations that I don’t want to have. And maybe because I’m being stubborn. Who knows? But sometimes it’s just me maybe being afraid. And a lot of times that’s what it is. I really don’t want to start doing this. Because if I start doing it, I’m going to have to keep doing it. But I don’t think people always connect how important it is for you to practice those things, and doing it in a safe environment like on a team like this or with a leader that’s in the trenches with you. Or we’ll go over it, we’ll help you write down your script. And this is just one example, but I know that that’s something that I learned from you a lot too. So I know that was an example-
Lauren Mountain:
Sometimes we have to role play the things.
Jasmine Nettles:
Practice it and talk it out. Because those difficult conversations, difficult situations happen, and we don’t not have them because we have a positive team culture. And it’s just as important to deal with those as it is the fun stuff. And so I wonder, can you think of a time or can you share an example of a time where the culture of the team that you worked on directly affected the performance of your staff as a unit or individual people?
Lauren Mountain:
Yeah, I feel like there’s a lot that I could talk to, and I think one of the problems that I have or one of my, I guess, areas of growth, is to be able, because it’s possible, it certainly is, but be able to tie the workplace culture to tangible, I can show you this chart, and we were 50% more successful because of X. But I think that for me, I can point to the personal stories and the moments of seeing someone develop or seeing someone like the light bulb go off and understand.
I think one of the things that, it was not just me, it was a collective team effort, but creating a culture where it is acceptable and a nurturing culture of understanding that career progression happens. And career progression isn’t always going to be at the same institution. Creating a culture where it is acceptable and valued and celebrated when people talk about I think I might want to start looking for another job. I think I might want to not be in housing and residence life for my whole life. I think I may want to jump into this other area of student affairs. Or maybe I want to leave student affairs and work in business.
And I think creating a culture where that is valued and celebrated has been really important because I think that that shows your team and you can point out to your team what are they getting out of their current roles to help them long term. I think that I’ve seen significant success in that because then they’re investing in their roles in a different way because they’re seeing that value. They know that you are valuing it as well.
Also, that investment piece from a team leader or a leadership of the team of investing in their professional development through formal events or formal programs that you’re putting on. But even like you were saying, those individual conversations, those hard conversations that we’re having where we’re maybe redirecting, or this didn’t go well, and here’s why, the team sees it as a positive measure and can leave that conversation knowing that it is because you are invested in them and their development, and that’s why you are having it. And I think that that’s one of the things. I think something so, okay, so I think it’s small, but I understand that people would say it’s not, we eat a lot of pizza, right?
Jasmine Nettles:
Yes.
Lauren Mountain:
Like in housing and residence life, or we get food for meetings or whatever. So I know that on my team, I have one person who doesn’t eat pizza, and I have another person who’s gluten free. So whenever I’m ordering food, I’m going to make sure, when we get pizza, I order these breadsticks with nacho cheese sauce for dipping, and then I order a gluten free pizza or a gluten free option. And I think that to me, that is showing your team that you know who they are, you know what they need to be successful. And then they feel seen, they feel understood, they feel heard. And so just they’re much more apt to go to bat for you and for your department. They are going to put in the extra effort. They’re going to show up because they know that you show up for them. You’ve shown up for them in this way of you remembered this and you make sure it’s there for me. And so I am then going to give my 110% because my workplace cares for me.
Jasmine Nettles:
Yeah. And I love that. That’s a perfect segue into one of my last two questions. Connecting people to not just the mission, vision, values of the institution, is important because a connection to their job makes them understand things. But how do you ensure, or what steps do you take to make team members feel that immediately. And immediately could be three months, but what does that look like for you?
Lauren Mountain:
I think it’s doing some of the things that come innate to us in residence life. So making sure that when someone shows up, they have a welcome banner, and it has their name on it, their name is spelled correctly, and having it ready to go. Making sure that you and your team are prepared for their arrival day one, and then the next two weeks. They have a plan. You have a plan in place to make sure they get connected and that they’re meeting people right away. And then you’re connecting the dots for them. They’re not just meeting people, and like, oh, okay, great. I don’t know what that means. But they’re meeting people and you’re saying, “Okay, this is Bob. We work with Bob in this context.” And then there’s something, whether it be their onboarding materials or something, that kind of backs that introduction up.
I make it a point to try to always have a one-on-one conversation with people as they start separate from necessarily their significant training onboarding. I mean, it’s part of it, but it’s more of that casual one-on-one, let’s walk and get coffee, and talk about how the week’s been going. What are your outstanding questions? How are you settling in? And then I always from those conversations get at least, if not more, like three to do items. Like, all right, connect them with this person, make sure they get time with our program coordinator to talk more about LLCs because they’re really interested, or they don’t have that experience and they’re going to be working with LLCs. So being able to connect those dots for them.
And then I think, again, making sure that there’s some social opportunities for people at the beginning. Something that I would do at EKU, so we would have hall director staff start usually right after the July 4th holiday, but they would move in before July 4th usually. Richmond has a wonderful fireworks display. And so I would just have a tent and barbecue at the fireworks display. It was optional. People come on by. If you’re already going to the fireworks with another group of friends, that’s totally fine, but just stop on by our tent, grab a hot dog, grab a drink, snack, whatever it may be. But just a easier way to ease into the team. And that usually ended up being if you were new to the team-
Jasmine Nettles:
Yeah, first time we will see each other.
Lauren Mountain:
… [inaudible 00:27:36] for your first day. And so making sure that if you wanted to come, that another member of the team was connecting with you and maybe you were driving together or coming together. But especially if you are starting a new job or you have a cohort of people starting, making sure there’s those social opportunities as people connect to the team, I think is really important.
Jasmine Nettles:
Yeah. And I know that a lot of the things that you’ve shared today are very social, but they’re also very personable. And I think people are forgetting that piece in the workplace as the world is changing and people’s motivations for working are different. But I think if we had to give any piece of advice, for me, and then I’ll let you give yours too, is just don’t forget that these people are still people at the end of the day. Making space for people to talk about the things that they’re passionate about, or that maybe they’re not so passionate about or not comfortable with or upset about. All of those things contribute to a positive workplace culture. What would you add as far as advice to any future leaders or anyone that is building their team with the last few minutes we got?
Lauren Mountain:
Yeah, I would echo those things that you said obviously. I would say getting to know your people and then finding ways to remember them. I know that some of us don’t, like memory is different for all of us, just recalling things is difficult. So the last two jobs I’ve had, I have a spreadsheet of people’s favorite things. So when I am like, okay, that person just planned all of RA training, they did a really good job. I want to tell them that they did a good job. I’m going to write them a note and bring them peanut butter M&Ms because I know that that’s their favorite. I am not going to remember 25 people’s favorite candy all the time. And so I need something to look back to. So have something that you can go back to and be like, okay, yes, that’s their favorite. I’m going to do this thing.
And I think find ways to connect people to their strengths and their passions, whether that’s in their current job title, whether it’s connecting them to someone else in another office so that they can learn from them or collaborate with them in some way or some event. But utilizing people’s strengths in the workplace and allowing them to be themselves and use those strengths. And highlighting those and making sure that you celebrate people for the things they bring to the workplace, who they are as people, but also those strengths in their work.
And knowing that it’s okay. I know that for me, I am not good at a lot of things. Math, we don’t do well. So I find the people on my team who are really good at math, and I’m like, “Hey, come here. Come make sure I did this.” Or conflict, don’t enjoy it. It’s a part of life. We deal with it. So finding the people on your team that are good at things and then being able to utilize those on a whole team front is really important too, I would say.
Jasmine Nettles:
Yeah. And you said earlier too, and I’ll wrap us up, but you said earlier too, allowing for people to just be who they are and bring who they are into the space. I know something else that people don’t always consider too is the individual family dynamics of your people. So if you have someone you know that’s heavily involved in their church, maybe don’t make them have to sign up for stuff to do on a Sunday, or whenever they have their ceremonies. If you know that you have people with children, don’t make things expectations for them because it doesn’t work for them as you would for someone who does not have that type of dynamic.
And honestly, I think it boils down to just being considerate. Consider your team, consider who they are, and give them a chance to tell you about who they are and who they want to be on your team. So I love it. But of course, boss, thank you so much for joining me. As always, it’s always a pleasure talking and yapping with you. Folks, if you’re new here, please make sure you subscribe and follow us, and listen to us on all streaming platforms where you get your podcasts. And I will see you on the next episode of the ResEd Chat Podcast. Bye.
