Interim Spotlight: Dr. Carol Seavor, MSN

Interim Dean of the School of Nursing
Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, Washington)
June 2018 – May 2019

What do you think is the single most important piece of advice you could give to someone assuming an interim Dean of Nursing role?

What works best for me is to immediately engage in conversations with as many people as possible. Set up times to introduce yourself and share whatever makes you an approachable human being: who you are, why you are there, what your your leadership philosophy is, and what your past professional and personal experiences are. The more of these conversations you can have in an informal and non-threatening way, the more information you can gather and the more recurring themes you can begin to identify.   

Knowing what the rank-and-file see as priorities will help you to better understand what they feel is important. I am very aware that leadership is most effective when goals, aspirations, and vision are shared, and that most faculty members and administrators want the same thing: a quality, effective academic program.  

What has been the greatest lesson you’ve learned in this assignment thus far?

You can’t rush trust and you can’t mandate instant working relationships. You have to engage quickly with “hands on” help and learn the “way we do things here.” It may take some extra time during the first few weeks to get immersed in the tempo and climate of the culture, but accepting and learning how things are is the first step toward understanding and communicating a vision of how the institution can move forward. Patience is a virtue and honesty, forthrightness and hard work go a long way toward building mutual respect, cooperation and shared vision.

What have been the biggest challenges of this assignment?

Time. As an interim, you don’t have the luxury of spending 6 months learning the details of the assignment. Succeeding as an interim requires a depth of experience and knowledge and a confidence in your intuition. Since I didn’t have the luxury of time, I’ve learned to identify the significance of patterns in performance, attitudes, communications, engagement, etc. There are clues to who my allies are on campus and what the obstacles are going to be.

The other challenge is to acknowledge when I’ve made a mistake. In those cases, I admit I was wrong and make time for the necessary conversations to restart and rebuild any trust that may have been lost.