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Pathway to the top

NCAA program develops women, minorities for AD role

By Brian Hendrickson
NCAA.org

Sherie Cornish Gordon had taken other leadership courses geared toward administrative advancement. But never in those experiences had the playbook for success been opened and explained the way Middle Tennessee State President Sidney McPhee provided for her as part of the NCAA’s Pathways program.

McPhee had agreed to mentor the Norfolk State associate athletics director during the year-long program, which started in 1997 to enhance the skills of talented women and people of color for future roles as athletics department leaders. Rather than focus on abstract theories and philosophies, McPhee turned directly to practical matters: He explained his vision for the university and what he would seek in an athletics director. The two engaged in personal discussions, and McPhee mapped for her a career strategy. Within a couple of days, McPhee had briefed Gordon on many of his hiring and leadership strategies, providing her with a valuable insider’s perspective.

Career development had already been a regular facet of Gordon’s advancement. She held a master’s of sport management from Temple and had graduated from NACWAA’s Administrative Advancement program as well as the NCAA’s Leadership Institute for Ethnic Minority Males and Females.

But Pathways was different. Talking with McPhee and participating in the program’s curriculum was like discovering which plays the other team would run in a critical game.

“It’s been the most beneficial professional development experience that I’ve had in my career, and certainly the most influential,” Gordon said. “When you think about wanting to be an AD, you don’t think about all the things that come with it. And this program deals with all the things that come with it, and it prepares you.”

That preparation started years earlier for most Pathways participants. It’s not a program for green newcomers. Each class is picked from an accomplished group of associate athletics directors and senior women’s administrators who boast the background and talent necessary to make the leap to leadership positions. Pathways helps them understand how to use the tools they have already cultivated in an AD’s role by allowing them to step back from their daily routines to take a broad view of the position. It allows them to consider the unanticipated challenges an athletics director faces and the importance of strong leadership.

Pathways aids that education by providing insider perspectives of university operations. Participants are paired with athletics director mentor, who can explain their philosophies toward building and leading staffs, answer questions and share experiences with each participant. And for the first time this year, each participant was also mentored by a university president who could provide broader perspectives on leadership in higher education, the role athletics plays in the university’s mission and insight into their desired characteristics for an ideal athletics director. Pathways participants traveled to their presidential mentor’s campus for one-on-one discussions and personal feedback.

“I appreciated having a conversation with a university president who is so engaged in athletics and the NCAA and so interested in helping resolve issues,” said UC Santa Barbara Executive Associate Athletics Director Diane O’Brien, who has been mentored by Weber State President Ann Millner. “Her attitude is very influential to me because she fully realizes all the issues that face universities and athletics departments today but encourages solutions, not complaints.”

Participants also convene for workshops every couple of months for self-evaluations and practical problem-solving discussions, focusing on questions that aren’t commonly asked in their work environments. They identify the strengths and weaknesses in their leadership styles. They role-play crisis scenarios that athletics directors are likely to face and evaluate their responses and the potential outcomes.

Participants also learn to define the core values that shape their decisions so those principles will be recognized as part of a personal brand. It’s a critical skill for athletics directors to develop, said Peter Roby, the athletics director at Northeastern University and Pathways’ lead consultant. Administrators may recognize their values, Roby said, but clearly conveying them to others is essential to good leadership.

“As much as they’ve been living their lives and doing their jobs a certain way, that’s not enough,” Roby said. “You have to articulate what’s important to you so others can understand it, so they will hold you accountable to doing that every day, and you will as well.”

The Pathways education has a solid legacy of developing leaders: 12 former participants have been promoted to athletics directors (three from the 2010 class alone) and 2000 alumnus Dell Robinson is now the commissioner of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

That track record made Pathways an obvious choice for Kim Johnson, associate athletics director at TCU. She saw 2010 graduate Derek Horne get hired as Florida A&M’s athletics director in August 2010, followed six months later by 2006 alumnus Grace Calhoun at Loyola Chicago. The program’s benefits were in plain sight.

But midway through Pathways, Johnson understood that the curriculum’s practical nature is what made the program effective. Participants had to consider their actions on a hypothetical first day as an athletics director. What would they say to their staff? How would they handle being awoken at 2 a.m. to a crisis? How would they compose themselves in the press conference?

Those simulations weren’t based around procedure checklists or theories in books. Instead, Johnson appreciated that Roby steered discussions so the answers would relate to each participant’s core values and philosophies. He would tell the class repeatedly, “We’re mission driven, but values led.”

That real-world focus made the instruction effective, Johnson said.

“I’ve been very, very pleased with the fact that they are really making us focus on what we already know about ourselves, but also about our core values because that translates into the type of leader that you are,” Johnson said. “It’s about principles and values. And if you think about what your principles and values are, you can be an effective leader.”