{"id":1411,"date":"2025-07-14T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/?p=1411"},"modified":"2025-07-08T10:47:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T15:47:52","slug":"leadership-lessons-from-the-land-of-cancer-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/leadership-lessons-from-the-land-of-cancer-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership Lessons from the Land of Cancer, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As I continue to dwell in the land of cancer and its treatment, I am learning lessons that can be applied to leadership (and to life).&nbsp; This is the second post in a series offering some of the lessons I\u2019m (re)learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Lesson:\u00a0 <em>It\u2019s okay to ask for help<\/em>.\u00a0 I have always struggled with asking for help regarding personal matters.\u00a0 And while I think I\u2019m pretty good about asking for input or ideas on professional matters, I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m very good at asking for help.\u00a0 Help means acknowledging gaps in your time or your understanding or your knowledge or your bandwidth or your commitments.\u00a0 ACC\u2019s values include compassion, yes, and courage (with joy being the fourth).\u00a0 Asking for help, for me, can sometimes take courage.\u00a0 My compassionate and caring colleagues are always willing to say yes.\u00a0 So really, what cancer is teaching me is that I need to get over this reluctance and just acknowledge that I sometimes need help.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lesson:\u00a0 <em>It\u2019s okay to accept help<\/em>.\u00a0 This is obviously a corollary to the lesson above.\u00a0 When help is offered, accept it.\u00a0 The offer of help comes from a genuine place of compassion and care, and if possible it should be accepted graciously and willingly.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s worthwhile to struggle with an idea or an initiative, but more often than not it\u2019s more productive to accept the help, ideas, and support of others.\u00a0 It makes you stronger, it makes the idea or initiative stronger, and it makes your leadership stronger because it\u2019s built on a collaborative foundation.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lesson:\u00a0 <em>Distribute leadership work so that you are building leadership capacity throughout your organization.<\/em>\u00a0 I have long believed that we all can and should be leaders.\u00a0 Leadership is the opportunity to engage in a meaningful way in the work of the college, whether it\u2019s leading a curriculum update or leading a faculty development workshop or leading a department or division or leading the development of a new policy or mentoring a new faculty member or participating in a shared governance committee or leading a big new initiative.\u00a0 Just as it takes a variety of leaders, voices, and expertise to treat my cancer, it takes a variety of leaders, voices, and expertise to help ACC meet its North Star goal.\u00a0 The more we distribute the leadership load, the stronger we will be as an organization.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lesson:\u00a0 <em>Plan for the future.<\/em>\u00a0 My cancer is treatable, and while the treatment is arduous, it has a high success rate.\u00a0 Nonetheless, I won\u2019t work at ACC forever, and I want to ensure that the instructional leaders are equipped to lead in the future.\u00a0 This is a corollary to the lesson above:\u00a0 if you distribute the leadership responsibilities throughout the organization, then you are ensuring a solid foundation for what\u2019s to come &#8211; for new leaders and new opportunities and new impactful work.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>I find joy in my work. &nbsp; I find cancer to be a bother and an impediment to my work.&nbsp; But I know that I will be fine, and I know that the great and good work of supporting our instructional mission is in good hands, both now and in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I continue to dwell in the land of cancer and its treatment, I am learning lessons that can be applied to leadership (and to life).&nbsp; This is the second post in a series offering some of the lessons I\u2019m (re)learning. I find joy in my work. &nbsp; I find cancer to be a bother [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}