Navigating Your Relationship With Your Dean: A Training for Department Chairs

As a Department Chair, one of the most important relationships you have to forge is the one with your Dean. Ideally, this relationship is built on mutual trust, healthy communication, and a shared understanding of what the department—and by extension, the College—is trying to achieve. But such a relationship takes work, and the onus is on you as the Chair to understand how to best manage up and work with your Dean to accomplish these goals.

Join us for a webcast where our speaker will teach you how to effectively set up a positive relationship with your Dean. Our expert, who has served as a Department Chair for over a decade under four different Deans, will review the three key building blocks of an effective Dean-Chair working relationship and offer example-based strategies from his own experience to help you get there.

Who Should Attend

This webcast will help set new Department Chairs up for success when it comes to forging a strong working relationship with their Dean. It will also benefit existing Chairs who are looking to improve or strengthen a relationship with their current Dean.

Agenda

Building Block #1: Understanding the Chair-Dean relationship

• What should this relationship look like?
• What is each party’s responsibility to one another?

Building Block #2: Getting on the same page as your Dean

• Seeing the vision for the College
• Understanding personal and professional aspirations
• Ways to support your Dean’s initiatives

Building Block #3: Establishing effective communication

• Identifying communication styles and preferences
• Making the best use of face time with your Dean
• How to communicate when you disagree

Speaker