 My name is Cheryl Stenstrom and along with doctors Susan Allman and Deborah Hicks I co-chair the leadership and management advisory committee at San Jose State University's iSchool. We have a number of advisory committees at the iSchool but this one is very active and so following a successful four-part webinar series on leadership that we presented last spring the members of that advisory committee recommended that we continue to present featured guests at least once a year. So this is the fifth in our day in the life of a leader webinar series. You can find recordings of the previous four webinars on the iSchool's website and this session is also being recorded and I see that the recording has just been turned on so you can refer your colleagues to it after the fact as well. I'd like to quickly move on and introduce our guest Tamika Barnes is with us today and she came to us very highly recommended as someone who could speak to what it means to be an effective leader so we're really thrilled that she's agreed to do this for us. She's the department head for perimeter library services at Georgia State University and that's a position that oversees the work of five libraries on the campuses in the Metro Atlanta area, pardon me. She was previously the library director at Georgia Perimeter College at Dunwoody campus. Tamika's also worked in a variety of other library settings including being the library director at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the head of reference at North Carolina A&T State University and the engineering services librarian at North Carolina State University. She received her MLS from NCCU and her BA in biology from UNC Chapel Hill and she stays very active in the profession and has served in a variety of positions for the Special Libraries Association, the North Carolina Chapter of SLA, the American Library Association and the North Carolina Library Association as well as the Georgia Library Association now that she's moved and she's currently serving on the executive board for the ALA and is Georgia's ALA counselor. So I would like to give Tamika a very warm welcome on behalf of my colleagues and the whole committee and I will say that she is going to speak for the first part of our hour together and then we'll open the floor for questions when she's done giving her presentation. So welcome Tamika, I will turn it over to you and you can start sharing your desktop anytime you're ready. Thanks again for participating in today's webinar. Once again my name is Tamika Barnes and the department head at Georgia State University for the Perimeter Library Services. So can you say that three times fast? I think each time I've moved up in positions my titles gotten longer. But what I want to talk about today is why I chose a leadership position. Kind of my career path responsibilities and challenges some rewards and advice that I would share with those who want to pursue this path in leadership and then also allow plenty of time for us to have a dialogue with each other just about this and any questions that you may have. Excuse me. So to get started because I want to make sure that we get through this I want everyone has different reasons for moving into leadership. Some may say they you know enjoy being the the go-to top person, the power. Some may say that they want to be honestly the financial benefits of it and for some people it's part of their plan from beginning when they are entering library school and for others it's maybe like a slower trajectory in going into management. I would say that for me personally it was one that I thought I would go into but it happened a lot faster than I anticipated. I would also say that I would probably went into it like some with a little bit of reservation about can I do this is this the right time for me to do it and so forth. So I chose it once I did decide to go for it. I chose leadership because I wanted to make a difference so I wanted to make a difference both to late people that I worked with and then also the users of the library. I was one that you know if I had opinions about how things may could work differently then I wanted to be one where not just to give my suggestions to make things better and have them maybe considered I wanted to actually be at the table and could influence change. I also saw leadership as part of being kind of an advocate for those that didn't currently have a voice at the table whether that was for diversity issues pay issues or even services that we provided to our users and suggestions from them and from the staff and that's just kind of you know a few things that I consider along the way. So I want to just kind of take you those that that know me now I'm like kind of the there's the theory in the case studies I'm a case study type person so I'm one that kind of want to walk you through I did it as a case study like this is how I did it this is one way but kind of a way to kind of see if there's any ways that you can kind of relate to my my path into leadership. So one thing I I want to say is that I didn't always start in leadership position so how I officially got there I began my library career as a paraprofessional at North Carolina State University in the acquisitions department so I worked there full-time while attending library school and after receiving my degree I became the engineering reference services librarian right there at North Carolina State University so as the title hints I was the subject specialist one of two who provided references in instruction for the College of Engineering in that position I also work at the mean library desk providing reference services and in person on the phone and via chat during that time chat was like one of the newest things that we were doing and very busy my time there I worked at both the main library the textiles branch library which was actually located on a different campus but within the same city and then was relocated back to the main library after some organizational changes and despite despite my physical location I work the general reference desk like I said and monitor chat so I'm not sure about many of you on the call but I've always been one to kind of look at job announcements and descriptions of what I thought my next job or my dream job would be and as I was looking at positions that I thought I wanted to go into next I saw that a lot of the supervisory positions wanted you to already have supervisory skills and so I was like well how am I supposed to do that it was kind of like a catch 22 because the way our positions were structured in our library and lots of other libraries there wasn't kind of that transitional step to get you those type skills within the organization so what I did is that I went to my assistant department head at the time and kind of told her explain to her just kind of my career goals and that I was interested in supervising in the future and asked if I could shadow her and then assist her with supervising the library school graduate students that worked our reference desk mainly in the evenings and weekends she was amenable with and allowed me to assist at first just helping out with hiring so sitting in the interviews helping develop the questions that we were going to ask and even in the decision-making of who we were actually going to bring on she then later gave me the responsibility to organize the training for our new hires and within a year I was given the responsibility of supervising the graduate students full-time I would like to think it was because I was doing a really good job but it was probably also honestly a win-win for both of us because also managing the graduate students was a highlight in her day allowed me to do it gave her the time to work on more of the street strategic initiatives and programs and things like that that were required of her position but it also helped me because it allowed me to get that kind of supervisory experience under my belt to help me get my next job and so now is in a leadership role but did not necessarily have a title and for me that was okay because this was like I said my first go-round at supervisory librarianship was my first career so I didn't have like other experiences to bring into it so I looked at this as a safe way to kind of develop my skills and still have the safety net of my assistant department right head right there to assist me when I needed to or give me guidance and feedback so in this position I was actually able to make some changes and help develop some future librarians some of which I'm fortunate enough to still be in contact with today and they are doing like awesome things so so this first experience allowed me to make my next news surprisingly into a department head position at North Carolina agricultural and technical State University which is located in Greensboro North Carolina in this position I was able to supervise five librarians and a student workroom so as you can imagine it was very different experience supervising and having to support librarians versus graduate students the needs are different and what they have the requirements of them are different and so that was kind of something I had to work through in that role but here using some past experiences that I had at NC State I was able to kind of implement a curriculum integrated instruction program that was modeled from something that we had done at North Carolina State in the College of Engineering so as in with lots of roles as we move into them you know you will find that you will reach back and use various experiences to build upon and I feel like that first position was just laying what I feel was a very solid foundation for me to build on from there my next step in the career path was to the environmental protection agency as a contract employee and there I was considered the library director and just a little bit of brief background with this type of position the contract was actually under the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill their library school and they had had the contract for a number of years whereas other EPA location libraries are under more of a management company so here I was able to supervise less librarians that I had at A&T so I only had three but now I was able to kind of add to my tools supervising peer professionals and responsible for an internship program that had about seven to ten library school students dependent on the year and the funding that we had and those library school students were able to work with us 20 hours a week and get tuition assistance and also get paid so it was like they're in a professional type environment and position but you know only had to work 20 hours a week so this program really helped shape more librarians out there into the future and so it was a really sense of pride and in the library there at the EPA both for the contract workers who worked there and then also the federal workers who have been working with us over the years in that library my responsibility kind of increased even though I had less library staff but I had now responsibilities for overseeing you know the traditional services of a library which included reference and instruction in a library loan and now really the responsibility for providing print and electronic resources to the scientists there in this position here um one of the things that I feel like I learned and kind of started advocating or using some of my advocacy skills which I think is important in a leader was to work with when we got our contract renewed again was to allow the hiring library school students from the area library schools and not just from UNC who had the contract and so that took some negotiation and some both between the federal side and within the library school to figure out you know how we would get them paid and things like that but I felt it was important to kind of open that experience up since in that area there's a number of library schools just so that everybody had that kind of opportunity to to participate in but after five years of being in that contract position and going through one of the times that they had the furlough nothing compared to what they recently went through um that and other things I just decided that really I felt like I could be more effective in academia and so I made the transition so not only did I leave and come back to academia but I moved to an entirely new state um so I I kind of left my close network and support system and just kind of went for it for a new role and so my next job was the library director at the Dunwoody campus at georgia perennum burger college which is or was an associates or two-year degree granting institution um so the way in this role I increased the number of people I was responsible for and now led to Dunwoody campus which had five librarians three staff members and a number of student workers so still a relatively small staff that I was responsible for and we um we service probably close to 9 000 students on this campus but one of the things and kind of the transitional moment in my uh leadership and professional career is that I was specifically told by my manager that I was hired to implement change so all those things that I've been reading about and learning about as far as being a leader I was like oh now now I'm actually going to have to put those things in practice and implement the change that he was expecting from me so um little did I know that was going to be kind of the initial beginning of some involvement with some major change management um that was going to happen with our institution which leads me to where I am now um so as a department head of the library services now oversee the five perimeter campuses that have a total of 16 librarians 24 so give or take full and part-time staff it's always ebb and flow I feel like every time I feel like we're going to be 100% fully staff I get a new resignation usually for um promotional things and so you know we want people to move and grow but it's just like oh no we can never get that 100% um and we also employ student workers at our five campuses um and those numbers vary from semester to semesters one of the major challenges in moving into this role um which happened after our consolidation and I'll tell you a little bit about that next but we kind of operated our five libraries independently and now we were being asked to operate as one department um and me in this role in our campuses for those who aren't familiar are geographically dispersed in out-naturel Atlanta so the thirdest campus is my mutant campus which is a good hour away mileage wise not including Atlanta traffic so um so kind of being over and supervising people in various campuses can be a challenge and and I just feel like that's where one of the other things that I feel is very important with the leader is kind of communication in any way we can get it so we we are using web ads and our phone and email and picking up the phone sometimes it's just the easiest and fastest way to to get things done but also in this role trying to make sure that now that we are one department and need to function that way and follow like all the policies and procedures because our students also go from campus to campus sometimes they may take classes at our main campus um at our Dunwoody campus and then the following semester take it at a neighboring campus and so we just don't know um so we want to make sure that we are providing the same surface across the board so as you can see kind of moving through my career path and having these various titles like sometimes the title doesn't necessarily dictate the level of responsibility that you may or may not have so I have department head now which is very different from when I was a department head at um North Carolina ANT so so that's one thing I would say as you're kind of moving and looking at and new roles and things like that to just really have a good understanding about what it will entail like what this position will have you do I feel like looking back over my time and leadership positions that at the beginning it was really about the mechanics like almost like a checklist like how do I do like this is how I higher step one step two step three you know this is what I need to do um learning about the best practices for scheduling and things like that using the systems to approve time cards that's like at every institution that I've been to it's always a little different um and then really starting to understand more of the HR processes such as hiring um and unfortunately sometimes terminating employees and then a transition to being kind of responsible um for the training of staff and whether that was me actually doing it or delegating and bringing in teams of people to help throughout I've had some aspect of budget whether it was just you know when I was at North Carolina State where it was just my student budget and to make sure that we didn't go over or seeing if there were times that we could bring them in to do extra projects and things like that so really having an understanding about how the budget work when the budget cycles were because at each institution I've worked at it's a little different um and now my kind of budget responsibilities have increased and extended to pass just the staff but also including like resources furniture travel budgets and allocating that and how do you you know do that and be equitable um so that all staff kind of have that opportunity to travel and things like that and now more with the responsibilities I see it more like transitioning more into the visionary and so before in my other positions I can be like oh I wish we did this and now it's like my expectation is that I will be that visionary and the person who's going to help with the goal setting for not just the individuals but us as the department and how we fit in to just kind of the strategic plan of the library as a whole and then also within the university so of course with all these various responsibilities that you have and usually in addition to other job responsibilities um because it's not just a supervisor in some cases people are still you know working the reference desk um and supervising or responsible for a program and supervising I'm fortunate now that the majority of my time can be spent on the administrative aspects of things but there's still other responsibilities that I have as well and with all this of course there are some challenges um so the making and communicating difficult decisions sometimes the decisions are made for you and you have to communicate them you may not always agree with them but that's the decision that is me and I would say some of the other challenges were like having to take disciplinary actions when necessary um I had to kind of learn that and sometimes it's easier to kind of just kind of ignore it and hope that it fixes itself but uh as I've been in this position for or in this role in librarianship for almost 20 years now ignoring it doesn't really solve it um and I've worked at places where it's kind of been me the workplace in some cases almost toxic and so you and I kind of really have to deal with those those things whether they happened while you were there or you inherited situations coming in like I've had in some situations however um it's just those situations that you have to deal with one of the other things I also had to kind of learn and work through is that when I would initially set up meetings with um staff they would instantly go into panic mode and think something was wrong and I was like no I just kind of want to check in and see how you are doing um see how I can help you I know you're working on a project um and then later I found out that everybody hasn't had that experience with um someone in leadership roles or management roles that were like that and most of the time their experience their past experiences have been that the only time that they met with the supervisor was when something was wrong or when they were getting their evaluations and so that was kind of a culture shift that I had to do here in my current situation um I then also had it a lot of times my door is open probably to my own detriment it's my open door policy but I had a part-time person at the time kind of come close and I was like come in and they were like I've worked here at this institution for like you know five years at that point and they had never been in the manager's office and I was like oh so those are kind of the challenges just kind of culture um that sometimes you may have to deal with um conflict management whether that is I would say peer-to-peer or now in my case dealing with supervisors and staff and just kind of working through that or even patron staff um conflict management or you know faculty and how they may interact with my staff um or just the expectations on both fronts and kind of managing that is one of those things that I really had to work on personally for myself and then no mistakes are going to happen sometimes we have to make um decisions really quickly for whatever reason and then sometimes we made a decision that we thought was the best at the time and I feel like it's more about how you handle those missteps that's important um and then sometimes your external factors change which you know will cause like what decision you make to seem like not the best one the fortunate thing is a lot of times we can revisit and revise and move forward um and just kind of making sure that if that's a mistake that I mean or even my staff I feel like as far as in this leadership role to be like that's going to happen and it's okay I feel like if we're going to be as innovative as we want to be everything's not going to work and then that's why we have pilots and tests and things like that so that we can make the necessary changes um and then I would say one of the the challenges if it happens with you is that I have moved from a co-worker peer-to-peer to then like a supervisor employee relationship with people um which can be kind of awkward for both parties involved um but however I feel like that's something that can be overcome with good communication and kind of sometimes in some cases some some boundaries that are set you know for things um and then also now just kind of side note type thing um my after-hour invitations to pleases kind of diminished because you know nobody wants to boss around in case they want to talk about work so that was just one of the the things where I'm like oh this isn't what I anticipated or expected so with all of that there is a silver lining and sunshine in all of this and being in leadership allows you to be um and and that's rewarding um to be able to recognize people's talents and strengths and exciting them you know tasks that kind of highlight those and gets them excited excites me right um it's a very rewarding experience and then as you're in these various leadership roles and you're able to develop your team whether that means provides them the training that's necessary or hiring um a person that kind of sees your vision and can move it forward is also a rewarding experience and then also the implementing positive change so not just change for change states but change that will benefit our users or something that they really requested and we were able to make it happen so for instance our students here at one of the campuses have been asking for extended hours for during finals since I got here five years ago and we were finally able um with this consolidation and everything able to do that for them for the first time and they were truly appreciative of that because they realized that we were listening to them um but also that there were other things that we had to work through and we brought them in on that process and they really appreciated that and that just comes also with building relationships with possible organizations so really getting outside of the library I feel um as my leadership roles have expanded it's kind of helped me and pushed me outside of the confines of the library building itself um which has been beneficial too because we can be part of larger conversations within the organization and there's things that we've been involved with whereas even a year or so ago I don't think we would have because they don't always think of the library as a place to kind of help with things sometimes and so you know for instance with this one we've been involved with the conversation of setting up food pantries on two of our five campuses so on the perimeter side because of the food insecurity that our students are facing and that's just kind of one of those things that just you are part of the holistic experience of the students and the library can play an important part in that. I want to give you just a kind of example of really what I've been going through as far as leading to change since 2016 I can't believe it that we're still working through this but in January 2015 the Georgia Board of Regents announced the consolidation of Georgia Perimeter College and Georgia State University so a two-year granting institution and a university so as you can imagine there was a lot of stress anxiety excitement as well that went along with that um and at the time I was just over the Dunwoody campus so when we consolidated and the slide right here just kind of gives you an idea of our student populations for the various institutions whereas our downtown campus Georgia State University their demographics were 25 percent of their students were part-time various our two-year institution about 63 percent of our students were and you can see the other things where you know our age percentage of students 25 and older was a little different but as far as like first generation our student to faculty ratio they were close to similar in that but one of the other things that was a big difference is that 19 percent of our students were enrolled only in online classes which kind of lends itself because a lot of our things are workplace development in addition to those issues granting institution so with this consolidation now it allows our students a more direct pipeline in case they wanted to move on in their academic career and get a four-year degree so some of the things that I had to manage with myself and the staff included because a lot of things were happening and it seemed like they were happening fast um so a new dean was announced for the libraries who was not part of either institution in january 2016 that's when we were officially consolidating that march the new structure for perimeter was announced where we were now going to be under the dean and that our titles would change from library directors to now maybe a department head and those at each of the other campuses who were library directors are now associate department heads so a little title shift some responsibility shift too but mainly with that it was titles and I was promoted in April 2016 to department head after my then manager retired our technical services department that we had here at georgia perimeter was distributed because they consolidated that department so we no longer needed it for um on the georgia perimeter side which one goes to one of those hard decisions that we had to make um and then redistribute staff throughout the library but fortunately some people chose to fortunately we didn't have to um riff anyone or let anyone go some people chose to and then others we were able to find other departments and positions for them to go to i was able to hire associate department heads then my faculty my librarians had to go through a new evaluation and promotion process which was very different than what we were currently on um we announced that the way we had our part timers we found out was not um it wasn't uh following processes and procedures that it needed to so we were going to have to let them go as of July of that 2017 and then on top of all that we switched from voyager to Alma like we didn't have enough stress and anxiety and new responsibilities going on so that's just kind of some of the things and leading through change and making those hard decisions um but still moving forward that i had to do so i would say as far as advice to um any of you that are listening i would say apply your skills from previous experiences i was one that didn't have a career prior to coming in and i think sometimes people um don't highlight what they've done in other things or either other associations or volunteer organizations and things like that seek out mentors sometimes mentors are for a season and not forever and that's okay i've participated in both formal mentoring programs and then also informal and they both um have benefited me at different times um be introspective of yourself to you as a leader because as you develop and work on yourself i think it helps with um helping lead others i recently just did the strength finders um was fascinated at what my five top strengths they said i had but one of the things was in what my five lower strengths were where i was like oh yes and this is why i depend on this person because they have that strength and can help me with that and i would say look for opportunities to develop your skills whether that's within professional associations um formal leadership institutes or even at work our university had various programs and things that we can participate in that i feel like sometimes we don't take advantage of like we we could so those are just kind of some of the things of course depending on your situation and the type of environment you're in um there would be other things that i would suggest but kind of overall no matter what i think these are some of the things that um one should focus on so i thank you for that formal part and um would like to open it up to any questions that any of you may have well thank you to mika that was wonderful um i've got two questions and i don't want to um take up all the time from other people but you have um been very involved in the american library association and if you could talk about your path through professional associations and the kinds of opportunities that people should take um if we've got some current students and we have professionals here with us today but if you could talk about um what people need to do um for networking and professional associations and i also see that um debora's put something in the chat as well so i'll let her have the second question okay so yeah um my path has been probably from the very beginning when i was a student because i was um part of the spectrum scholars program so i was part of that first cohort and so being involved in something like that kind of exposed me to the association i think um more than others initially have um and so that kind of helped me pinpoint kind of where i wanted to be i would say not working is key some of the committees and the projects i've been able to assist with has been because of just kind of being there and helping out and participating and then moving up into kind of leading those efforts i think um it can you know professional associations can kind of be what you make of it and how much you put into it um right now i know we are have a situation in our hands that we're dealing with but that's part of it i'm just kind of working and and growing and and learning um with each other i would say that you know when those calls for volunteers come out fill out those forms because we can't select people if they don't fill the information out um and then also just kind of reach out to people who are in those roles to see how you can assist kind of much like i did with my you know first thing with uh supervising graduate students and then you know moving into other things it happens that way in the association too when i'm like can i help and then they see what to do and then also see your capabilities and your commitment and then willing to give you other things to do as well thank you and i see um the deborah's question was the same we have another question over here in the chat um saying i want to pursue a leadership career track i learned i must be willing to seek out job opportunities which will allow me to have supervisory leadership roles so if you would like to address that um tamika and to maybe make a distinction on um management versus leadership that's something that we're talking about in our management course this week yeah if you look at that and then the second one i believe um i appreciated your comments about how to get supervisory experience when all the job announcements require it your strategy of offering to assist your supervisor to obtain some of these skills was brilliant so um i'll let you respond to both of those yeah um wanting to take that career track and knowing that sometimes is really beneficial too um and then i would say also in those cases and it kind of loops in with the job announcements saying that they want certain skills and sometimes they're required and then sometimes they're desired and then what i found is that some people if they don't meet all the desires they also don't go for it and i say go for it to me you let them tell you know you don't exclude yourself from the search from the beginning um and then trying to make that first leap into it i think that's when you really have to leverage kind of your past experiences so you know maybe you haven't had the supervisory experience but you led a group or a project within you know a sorority or a volunteer organization or things like that to show that you know kind of that process and how to motivate and get something done um i would say late and also in the cases with the professional association that's where i got some of my budget experience that i could then have an example to talk about like we had to put on a program we had x amount of money we had to stay within budget or we you know sought out other resources to kind of supplement and then to kind of show that you are one that's willing to kind of look at other avenues and opportunities and and be innovative in your approach i think it is one of those things in the managing versus leading i feel like with me at the beginning i feel like i was just truly just kind of managing like really just kind of this is what i'm supposed to do i'm supposed to approve time i'm supposed to you know follow this hr process to hire people on and and i did it but now as far as leading you within leadership yes you've got to still manage but with the leadership i just feel like it's opening up so much more like you really have to be that visionary um to help assist with um bring in for um what the the plan is whether it's your plan or the college president's plan or the business owner's plan no matter what the environment is in like you really have to think outside of your your day-to-day in that leadership role um and then with some you know some people just have it where leadership is you're inspiring others you know how to delegate you know you know how to kind of work as a team to to move that vision forward and i think that's important as well but it is hard it is hard to that first getting your foot in the door for those leader leadership positions can it can be a tough road but i say kind of just keep going for it and look for people who are willing to kind of help you in that process or provide you with some projects or things like that to to add to your your skill set along the way well i know with some of our current students they are coming in as career changers but many of the students are coming straight from undergrad and as you said to mika um any kind of a leadership role whether it was in an extracurricular activity if it was in academics and i would encourage everybody to join student organizations now and they're looking for officers that's one great way to show your leadership as well as through internships so i think that there's some ways that you can get skills that can transfer into the skills that are needed in libraries and i would say even those especially those that are coming no second career and have those other experiences actually doing an internship and working in the library can be very beneficial because it can tell you what you like and even things that you don't like as much um and i know plenty of people who thought they were going to be you know all about technical services or whatever and how they experienced the internships and worked a reference desk and fell in love with that aspect or realized they really don't like teaching as much as they thought they would so it can work both ways to kind of help you um experiment and figure it out now um before moving forward into your permanent job does anybody else have any questions you can either take the microphone or type something in chat you've got an expert here so take advantage of it soon to Mika this is Cheryl just while we're waiting to see if anyone else has any questions i have a quick one to Mika for you uh and i'm not sure if i've got the wording right but um you've moved around to a number of different workplaces so you've moved within those organizations but also you've gone to new organizations and i'm wondering if there are any um characteristics or traits or things that you do specifically when you are new to an organization that uh help you assert yourself as a leader regardless of your position so if there are things that you consciously or unconsciously maybe ensure that you do right at the beginning when you're uh you know people don't know you they don't know your style yet and things that you want to kind of um portray to make put people at ease uh with your leadership style oh excellent question um one of the things that i have done at each kind of new organization that i've gone to is really let them know that i need to listen first like i may have ideas coming in the door but i really want to listen and understand both their what they do in the organization more um and so i would set up i set up initial meetings with people when i first start um and then also maybe like a month or so into it because as i learn things and have questions i want to depend on them as the experts that have been going through this um and use their like i said their talents and skills so i've done that um and then i kind of also set up where in some organizations they didn't have regular meetings for them to kind of meet as a group so i make sure to establish that as well sometimes our meetings are more just kind of idea sharing and then other times it's been more kind of a formal structure reporting out um so it gives them a chance to kind of see that i am willing to listen to them um and solicit their ideas i also slowly just kind of communicating various things to them upfront whether that's in those meetings and then following it up in email so that they know that you know i'm serious about certain things um like policies and procedures we just have to follow um and things like that but there's flexibility and things like that and i also communicate with them like if they have a problem something i've done something that we're going through to make sure that we have that dialogue and i know that i can't be easy for some people like i said depending on what their their relationship with their supervisors have been in the past but also i know that sometimes i have to practice patience because it's going to take people change at different rates and realizing that um has been beneficial to me as well that's great and certainly those are key points that you uh showed that you know you kind of you really walk that talk when you talked earlier about making sure you have an open door and you know disarming that sort of people who always thought meetings were bad news only and and changing the culture in the tone so that's wonderful and i think um you know that formal and informal communication both sides of that are really important in terms of uh making uh people demonstrating that you listen to them great well i think we're out of time um but thank you tamika so much um we really appreciate you taking time um we know you're you're very busy with professional activities with the associations with your job and the information that you've given here will be really valuable we get lots of people who download the uh the webinars so this will be spread widely um debora or sheryl any last things and i will sign off for now just to thank you so much for participating tamika was really wonderful enjoyed it um and we're thrilled that you could uh uh take the time out for us at the high school debora i appreciate it very much and my email is up there and i put it up there for you to use so please if anybody thinks in some questions afterwards feel free to reach out yeah i just want to echo what both sue and uh charol have said to me i think you so much i'm really excited to share this with uh my students i think that a lot of what you said will uh be inspirational and sort of give them an idea of just how realistic these jobs are and how exciting they can be so thank you very much