“The Fancy People are on campus,” a cheeky colleague used to say on the days when we would host influential people. Donors, community leaders and trustees all fell into the category, and it was an apt way to characterize how campus was spiffed up for important visitors, from grounds beautification to execs wearing their best suits. You know the feeling: like putting the good dishes out for a special meal.
In the hubbub of coaching your team to help make a great impression, it’s easy to forget the hours of preparation that go into building relationships with external folks who can be impactful for the lives of students. Most of us don’t take Fancy People 101, but once we are in a role that is trustee or donor-facing — or supporting the leader who is — we want to approach those relationships strategically, and to coach our team to do so as well.
As such, below are seven strategies for communicating with stakeholders in higher education.
1. Every conversation is an opportunity.
One of your most critical responsibilities as a campus leader is being ready to explain, in accessible language, the needs of your campus using accurate and reliable data. Work closely with your advancement liaison to ensure you are prepared for incidental interactions and that your engagement aligns with institutional goals.
2. Employ a sense of interest in others.
Long-developed relational skills are standard among skilled educators and student services professionals. To help students, we dial into their aspirations, motivations and backgrounds. Every conversation with an external partner is a chance for you to learn why they have chosen to bring their resources and influence to your campus. Just as you would for a student you mentor, ask story-provoking questions that help paint a picture of the partner’s interests.
3. Meet the current moment in higher education with curiosity.
Increasingly, we know that external partners are concerned about the weakening public trust in higher education and the return on investment for students. They are sensitive to surveys such as Gallup-Lumina data which indicates that confidence of students in college leadership decision-making has declined nearly 20% in the last 10 years. Be sure you are well-versed in the sources that inform those opinions and invite skeptical partners to enrich your understanding.
4. Prepare for blurred and blurring lines between governance and management.
Naturally, people who are investing resources in campus initiatives are interested in how they are spent and the impact they have, and campus leaders have a responsibility to ensure their needs are met. But providing dollars cannot mean that a donor supersedes reporting lines or resets campus priorities. Helping influential people understand how their contributions are part of a larger picture is one of the roles of leaders. Doing so without creating a backchannel of soft power requires deft communication and planning.
5. Help external partners best understand their role.
Formal training for trustees equips them to understand all aspects of your campus. Likewise, informal onboarding helps external partners understand where their work fits into the rest of campus strategy. We cannot expect visitors to recall the roles and responsibilities of all campus portfolios or strategic priorities. Create and maintain a one-page primer on all relevant roles and initiatives, including three key metrics, top risks and expressly defined management responsibilities. Refer to these points when table-setting conversations with your partners.
6. Within your team, deliberately set expectations for communication and information-sharing.
Everyone should align on accuracy of information that is shared externally. For some campuses, that means establishing a main point of contact and referral practices. On other campuses, your team is provided information materials to share. It does no good for external partners to receive documents when individual conversations provide different numbers, intended steps or vision language. Your team should communicate like a well-practiced choir: many voices singing in harmony to provide one song.
7. Practice a “talking points script” … for everyone.
Relationships strike up among people, regardless of role. Just as excellent sports teams provide media training for new athletes, your campus helps everyone when staff know how to answer probing questions from curious partners. We have all been on campuses where the senior team chose to keep relationships so close that it was verboten to even talk to a trustee, and that isn’t a realistic approach. Establishing mutual expectations for external partners is helpful for them as well as your team but can be politically tricky. If needed, hiring a communications expert to prepare information-sharing and boundary guidelines and help train your colleagues can make for great professional development.
Trustees, institutional donors and community leaders are, in the words of my witty colleague, “fancy people.” Don’t forget that you are a fancy person too. You get to introduce these partners to the special culture and experience that is your campus life, the history that has crafted your institution, and most importantly to the students who make your campus feel alive.
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Carrie Lovelace Petr, PhD, PCC, BCC, is a former two-time student affairs cabinet officer who now coaches higher education leaders to show up for themselves so they can better show up for their staff and students. Over 25 years on campus, she led nearly every area of student life and founded an academic minor in leadership studies. She holds a PhD in Educational Leadership from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and is the founder of Carrie Lovelace Petr Coaching & Consulting. She can be reached at carrie@carrielovelacepetr.com.
