Dec 10, 2018
Podcast 15
Rebekah Woods
Dr. Rebekah Woods is the President of Columbia Basin College. A fun
fact about her is she hates putting
the leftovers into the containers when she goes to a restaurant, or
she promised her husband that one
day she would be in a Hall and Oates cover band. Paul and Rebekah
met recently at a TC Regional
Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
Being a person of faith, she knows that her journey was planned and
she knew early on that she wanted
to be a doctor. While in college, she decided she did not want to
be in school that long and after her
undergrad, she decided to go to law school. Nobody ever says, “I
want to be a higher ed administrator,”
and no one even realizes that these jobs exist. While practicing
law, she decided she needed another
challenge and started working on her PhD. It was then that she
started learning about community
colleges and their mission. She fell in love with the focus of
helping people reinvent themselves. She felt
that she wanted to be a leader in the community college realm. She
started to prepare herself for a
presidency and what that would look like and when that day would
come. She loves the Tri-Cities and
Columbia Basin College.
She would tell her 20 year old self to relax! Everything is going
to work out fine. She just spoke at her
first commencement, and one of the things she spoke about was
dreaming big and dreaming small. She
would tell herself not to limit her dreams and aspirations. If
someone had told her that she would be a
college president someday, she would have said no way! She was
quitet and reserved. Dreaming small
simply is recognizing the innocence of what is truly important,
like spending time with your family,
focusing on just sitting down and reading to your child, spending
time with your spouse and your
friends. Making those little differences that people may not see or
recognize but can really be life
changing for the person that you are with. She is an Introvert by
nature, and she can turn it on when
necessary but would rather go read a book by herself.
Her advice to other introverts is that you can do anything you set
your mind to. Every field is going to
have certain requirements that may not come naturally to you, but
you need to understand your
strengths and your weaknesses. A weakness is just another
opportunity to grow. As an “I” you have to
find that time for yourself. Find time to recharge so you can get
ready for what is next.
She has the ability to see the big picture and to see what that end
goal should look like and to see the
path to get there. She is in meetings all day long; so she has to
ask the questions What do you think
about this? Have you thought about that? because she has worked for
a micro-manager and it is the
worst leadership style. What is not natural for her is focusing on
people: she makes sure that the
assistant that is working with her has an affinity for remembering
people’s birthdays, who just had a
child, pay attention to “this”, you should really spend a few
minutes talking to XYZ person.
She has quiet time in the morning. When she gets to work, she hits
the ground running. She makes sure
that she has her water, her notepads, her phones, etc.
She actually loves routines, and it’s what keeps her sane. There is
so much research that needs to be
done in higher education to stay on top: there is a lot of
attending conferences, working with mentors.
She has many mentors that pour into her, and she spends time
learning what they are doing, a lot of
benchmarking against other institutions that are receiving great
results. So being what we want our
student to be, which is life-long learners. She is constantly
learning new information and how to apply it
to where she is and what she is doing. On the DISC Profile she is a
High C and D. She is very detail-
oriented: she likes things precise and a certain way. She believes
this is part of what allows her to see
the path to the big picture. Being able to see the big picture
allows her to delegate and play off other
people’s strengths by asking questions. Together they achieve the
end goal better than she would if she
was trying to achieve it by herself.
Her greatest challenge while sitting the leadership chair, is
staying in balance. There are several types of
balance and the first is work/home life balance--making sure that
she isn’t neglecting her marriage,
family, friends, personal time, things that she is trying to do
with her church. Maintaining that balance is
something she is always focusing on. There is also balance within
her position: identifying what are the
glass balls and which are the rubber balls. So, there is way too
much for anyone to do in 24 hours; so it is
important to identify the priorities. What are the glass balls that
must get done, and if they don’t, they
will in essence shatter and have long-term negative consequences.
On the other hand, the rubber ball,
you can drop it and it will bounce back and catch it down the
road.
If you aren’t actually failing at some point, then you aren’t in
the game. She had a boss that was a
strategic risk taker. It taught her that when you are in the
leadership position, it’s OK to try new things,
and do things differently. Her favorite failure is when she
implemented a new computer system at
another institution and it failed miserably. It actually ended up
being one of the best experiences for her
leadership because when you have something that impacts so many
people that isn’t working, it defines
you as a leader. You are either going to bond with the team to make
it work or you are going to crumble
and fall apart. We came together to get the job done and turned it
around. It was painful but looking
back it was a positive experience.
She is a huge fan of all the Patrick Lencioni books. The book that
boils it down is the 4 Obsessions of an
Extraordinary Executive. Also, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. If you
aren’t over-communicating, then you
aren’t communicating at all. People actually need to hear something
7 times before they actually hear it.
So, if you aren’t sick of communicating, then you are
communicating. Make sure that you have your
processes in line.
Grow where you are planted. Since being in the community for 9
months, she has been trying to learn
the community. So, before she even moved here, she called her
predecessor and asked him who she
should meet with. An hour later she was done writing and had a long
list of wonderful people to meet
with. How can the college be meeting the needs of the community?
She is still trying to find what is
going to work for her to meet her personal needs.