Team Leader and Vision

Dr. Nat: How did you as a team leader impart your vision to be a team?

Dr. Atkins: There was multiple elements I used to get the vision to them. Obviously the spoken word. The walk talk, to get out and discuss with the teams and with the people what my vision was. What direction I wanted to go? That seemed to be what they wanted to hear, they wanted to hear which way we were going. And if going that way, what does that mean to me? Therefore if you can make it as close to one on one as you possibly can, then you start getting buy in to your vision. They start accepting it, they start moving in the direction with you and starting to support you. Other routes are written documents I would put out in our local newspaper, there would be a general managers corner. And I was able from week to week, month to month to reinforce what I was saying when I was walking out and talking to them. I noticed that Dr. Bell does that quite well here at Tech. He has this icon of his vision is surrounded around Tech. The T stands for technology leadership, the E stands for enrollment growth, the C stands for caring campus, and the H stands for high quality. So there is a form of using an icon to pass your vision on and allow people to codify it in there own manner. And then give them something that when you come around they say “do you really mean that?” and you say “yes I mean that, and here is how we are doing it. And here is what we are doing.” And when they see the written word, they see again that you reinforcing that, and when you get out and walk the talk. They really see that is a vision you want to carry through.