Host Annmarie Caño speaks with academic leaders at Wayne State University to learn how they have developed their careers while empowering themselves and others.

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Episode notes

Ashley Flintoff is the director of planning and space management at Wayne State University. In this episode of EmpowerED to Lead, Flintoff sits down to discuss her empathic approach to leadership. She'll share how leadership is a lesson in expertise and humility, and why creative tension can strengthen professional relationships.  

About Ashley Flintoff

Ashley Flintoff is the director of planning and space management at Wayne State University, where she is responsible for developing the campus master plan, prioritizing capital projects and taking a closer look at how space is used across the university. Flintoff, who earned her master's in urban planning from Wayne State, has spent her career working to create meaningful spaces that cultivate success.

Additional resources

Follow Ashley Flintoff on Twitter @AshleySFlintoff, Facebook and Instagram. 

Follow EmpowerED to Lead on Twitter @WSUFacSuccess.

Transcript

Annmarie Caño:
Welcome to EmpowerED to Lead, a Wayne State University podcast for academic leaders who are committed to empowering their community to succeed. I'm your host, Annmarie Caño, associate provost for faculty development and faculty success at Wayne State. In this podcast, we'll explore the personal journeys of academic leaders, both current and emerging to learn more about how they've developed their careers. We'll speak with faculty and staff about their work and how they have empowered themselves and others along the way. By doing this, we hope to empower listeners like you as you continue on your leadership path.

Today, we're speaking with Wayne State director of planning and space management, Ashley Flintoff. Ashley is responsible for the campus Master Plan, prioritizing and planning for annual capital projects and the allocation and documentation of space utilization on campus. She holds degrees in architecture and community development from the University of Detroit Mercy and a degree in urban planning from Wayne State. Ashley has spent her career working to create meaningful spaces that allow people to feel welcome and to be successful. Welcome to the podcast, Ashley.

Ashley Flintoff:
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

Annmarie Caño:
Tell me more about your role and what you love about it.

Ashley Flintoff:
My role is really dealing on an everyday basis with the spaces that the university has and how people utilize them. And the thing that I really love the most I think about my job is the ability to build relationships with people and then to be able to see how the spaces we create for them allow them to be successful.

I was just at TEDxDetroit last week and Dr. Tracie Baker presented, and it was so cool because I worked on her lab when she first came to the university. And so being able to see all of the amazing things that she's doing and hear about her work with the zebrafish and go, "Oh, I know about those fish because I worked on that lab and we walked through and she explained to me all this stuff about how these fish work." And it's moments like that, that I really, it makes me really love what I do. Going through a space like the student center or seeing this new STEM building come out of the ground, essentially come out of the ground, and seeing students and faculty and the community be able to use these spaces and enjoy them, that's what I think brings me the most joy in my job.

Annmarie Caño:
You mentioned building relationships with people. I wonder in a place like a university where people are, they're doing their research or their teaching or they're taking classes or doing all the aspects of university work, we often don't think about how our spaces influence us or who made the space possible to be able to do that work.

Ashley Flintoff:
Until it doesn't work.

Annmarie Caño:
Right.

Ashley Flintoff:
And then we think like, "Why did they make this decision? Why did they put this wall here? Why is ... " You know, we often come in facilities, we often come in when something has gone wrong and not often do people ... If it's working well, you're not thinking about us. And so if we've done our job well, you're actually not thinking about facilities at all. We think about it every day, of course. But we often come in when someone has an issue or they need something different or they need a new space. And so it's really building relationships around understanding that you're coming in at a moment where there's some tension and trying to be able to very quickly kind of assess the situation, triage it if you will, and then think outside the box and creatively about ways that we can make it work.

As we know, in higher ed, especially at Wayne state, but higher ed across the board, resources are not necessarily always there for the things that you want to do. And so we spend a lot of time thinking about ways that we can be creative, that we can make the resources stretch further. And how can we be the most effective stewards of our space and of our resources. And so we spend a lot of time doing that. But I think the thing that makes that easier is when you're able to build those relationships when you're able to see people and help them understand, you know, I get what you need and if you can explain it to me, if we can work together, we can find a way to make this space be what you need it to be in order to do your research, in order to learn or teach or grow or whatever those things are. And so it's really all about the relationships

Annmarie Caño:
you're making me think back to when I was a new assistant professor and I was given a lab, but the design of it didn't work for the purposes I was going to use it for. And someone saying, "You need to talk to FP&M." And I didn't even know what that was. And then they came back with a couple of different plans and they said, "Well, it kind of depends on your budget." But there are things that I just was never trained in or didn't know because it wasn't on my radar screen, but it was really useful to have those options and then to see, oh, even what I thought I wanted might actually be better in this other configuration. So I thought that was really helpful. But also I was coming into it not knowing anything about design.

Ashley Flintoff:
I think that's where you can be really effective in the job that we do is if you're able to learn how to explain to different people coming from different perspectives, how design works in a way that they can sort of think about it in terms of what they're trying to do. Sometimes you to step back and go, oh yeah, not everybody knows about how to read a floor plan, or if I just shove a floor plan across the table to you, you may understand it, you may not. And I've had projects where I didn't ... Early in my career and I didn't understand that that was the thing, that everybody wasn't just thinking about space the way that I was thinking about space. And so you shove a floor plan across the table and they look at it and go, "Oh yeah, sure, that looks fine." Because you don't want to tell someone, "Oh, I don't know." And then it gets built and they walk into the room and they go, "Well, this isn't what I wanted at all.".

Annmarie Caño:
Oh, no.

Ashley Flintoff:
That's terrible. And so then you have to scramble and figure out how you make it work for them. And so I learned early in my career that it's not enough to just communicate in one way. You have to actually make sure that you're understanding to the best of your ability, where the person across the table is coming from and how they're looking at the space and how they're looking at how they use space. And so one of the things that I like to do, especially when ... I did a lot of lab design work and research work when I first started the university.

And so one of the things that I always love to do with the PIs when I'd come in and say, "Okay, walk me through a typical day. Like, walk me through an experiment." And they'd look at me and they say ... Assume that I know nothing about what you do. So if you go to the ice machine, assume I don't know that you need an ice machine, right? Like you have to assume that I know nothing about your process and just walk me through like you come in in the morning and you've walked in the door, what are you doing next? Are you taking your coat off? Where do you put it? You're doing this experiment, what is the order in which you have to hit each piece of equipment? Do you have to run down for an ice machine? Do you have to run to the glass washer? What are the things that you have to do so that when we're designing the space, we're making sure that we're incorporating in all of it.

Because the worst thing you can do, especially when you're dealing with people who the space is really vital to what they're doing, such as in research or in higher ed really in general, learning happens in physical space. And so the worst thing that you can do is create a space where they walk in and they can't do the thing that they need to do. They can't learn, students can't learn in that space because they don't have the right equipment or the right furniture or the right AB or whatever it is. A researcher walks in and has all of this grant money and they can't actually do an experiment.

Annmarie Caño:
Right.

Ashley Flintoff:
And that's the thing that we try to avoid. We don't always get it right, but we try and I think we're doing really a lot of work to try and really learn from those experiences and move them forward.

Annmarie Caño:
So it's not only the design work and the materials and all of the building piece, but it's really taking people's perspective.

Ashley Flintoff:
Yes.

Annmarie Caño:
And then helping people ... So I'm just thinking when you're talking to a researcher and saying, "Tell me what you do in a day." You're also helping them take perspective in a way that they might not have before.

Ashley Flintoff:
Right, yeah.

Annmarie Caño:
And then the other piece that you mentioned is the communication. So here's a picture, but also let me tell you what this picture is about and these little symbols or if something has ... I'm just thinking about how glass is representative in things like that.

Ashley Flintoff:
It looks like a hatching pattern or like, this actually represents a wall. So as much as you would like to put a countertop across the ... There's a wall in the middle or there's a column and I can't move the column because the building will fall down. You know what I mean? And it's on one hand, I'll go back and think, "Oh, that was ridiculous." Like, "That's such a silly question." And then I have to stop myself and say, "No, actually it's not because, you know, I don't know, I can't do what they do." Right? I'm not a biologist, I'm not a geologist. I'm not one of these people that can go out and figure out the chemical makeup of X, Y, Z. So I can't do that. So if I'm asking them questions, they're probably thinking like, "Oh, that's really silly."

But that's their expertise in this. So my expertise is like, I can read the drawing, I can look at the space and kind of go, okay, this is going to work." Or, no, I can't take out that column, or maybe we can put a hole in that wall. We have to check." But you know it's somewhat of a humility thing, right? It's like remembering to step back and say, I know a lot about this thing. I don't know about all of the things and how someone needs to use the space. And so it's being able to be humble enough to own your expertise and bring it to the table, but also acknowledge that you're not the only one with expertise and that you have to kind of join those together in order to make one successful project.

Annmarie Caño:
And we all have our bodies of knowledge. How do you handle the situation? Because I'm sure this has happened before, where someone comes to you and it feels adversarial or they feel like someone is trying to block them from doing what they want to do. How do you manage that kind of interaction?

Ashley Flintoff:
So there's a lot of emotion that people are dealing with. Sometimes they're really excited and they're new or they're getting some new space or new equipment. And so they can't wait for the things that they can do with it. Sometimes you're frustrated, sometimes they're feeling that their desires or their needs haven't fully been met. You're dealing with situations where you don't necessarily have tons of money floating around. And so we're really working to try and understand all of those emotions, all of those desires and needs that go into a space and how we can responsibly, within limited budgets and limited space needs, actually meet those needs. So it's just thinking about how can we make this space work the best for you? How can we support what you're doing? And knowing that this is not necessarily their area of expertise.

They're not trained to read drawings and nor should they be. That's my job. My job is to read the drawings. My job is to look at the space and understand what we can and can't do in it, and then work with the customer, work with the PI, work with the faculty, whoever it is to really help them visualize and be able to work in that space effectively. And so we deal with a lot of emotions, but I think it's building the relationships and really kind of having that understanding that the base understanding of each other and where everyone is coming from, that helps you then move that project forward.

Annmarie Caño:
And that takes work, right?

Ashley Flintoff:
A lot of work.

Annmarie Caño:
Because you need to be calming yourself down or bring yourself down, being aware of how you're feeling if you're starting to get hot because someone is accusing you of something that you have no control over. How do you manage that? Or what kind of advice would you give to listeners who want to emulate that emphatic way, but their own emotions are getting in the way?

Ashley Flintoff:
And I want to say, I don't do this well all the time. I'm not perfect.

Annmarie Caño:
You're a human being.

Ashley Flintoff:
I'm human.

Annmarie Caño:
Yeah.

Ashley Flintoff:
No, I think deep breaths was the one thing for me. Sometimes I just have to step back and listen and force myself to just not respond, and it's hard. It's super hard. It's super hard, especially when someone is talking about something that you know that you either have the ability to impact or might not be entirely correct or is really frustrated with a team member of mine that I'm going, I know that they're working really hard and that's not what they intended, but that's how it came across.

So deep breaths help. Honestly, having an ally helps. So I have a couple of coworkers that know me really well. One of my coworkers, honestly, we've known each other since college, so it's basically like a brother-sister relationship at this point. And so sometimes when you're in ... I've been in meetings with those coworkers who know me really well or I know them really well and so I can reciprocate this with them. Sometimes all it takes is somebody who knows you, who just can kind of reach off and put a hand on your arm and be like, "Okay, I can sense that you're starting to get up there and I know that you don't want to get into some sort of like he said, she said match here. Sometimes it just takes someone putting a hand on your arm or just kind of like giving you a look or a nudge. Like, "Hey," and then you go, "Oh yeah, Oh yeah, okay." Step back, calm down, take a deep breath.

And it's going to be different for everybody. The things that work for me or sometimes having that person or just kind of taking a deep breath and stopping myself and just, you know, if it's a doodle or if it's just kind of like writing a note or something, kind of mentally stepping out of that situation.

Annmarie Caño:
Disengaging a little bit.

Ashley Flintoff:
Yeah, disengaging a little bit to make sure that I'm not just being super reactive. And then another thing that I've found actually that I've been trying to use more recently is when you're in a conversation or you're in a meeting and someone's going off and they go off and you let them do their thing. And then when they're done, when they take a break when they stop, you say, "Okay, so what I heard was ... " And kind of repeat it back to them in a way that is not accusatory, not saying, "Well, you said this." It's, "I think I heard you say that this is the problem. Is that correct?" And it often allows that person to kind of step back and disengage and go, "Oh, well actually what I meant was this." Or, "Yeah, absolutely, that's what I said and I'm really angry about it." And you go, "Okay, well, now that we know that, like this is the problem, let's figure out how we can like start to solve that problem or how we can think about ways to address it.".

And so I think it's kind of figuring out your own coping mechanisms and ways that you can kind of step yourself back. Sometimes I'm too proud to admit it, but sometimes I'll stop and I'll just look at my email real quick on my phone. It's probably not the best way to do it, right? It's probably not the best thing to do in the middle of a meeting, but sometimes it just need that jolt of, I'm not in this moment, but I'm in the moment, I'm listening. I needed something to kind of break my brain out of this. I don't necessarily recommend that kids. Don't do that. Definitely, it's not a good idea.

Annmarie Caño:
But the taking a deep breath.

Ashley Flintoff:
It's the taking a deep breath, stepping back and just-

Annmarie Caño:
Making eye contact with a trusted coworker.

Ashley Flintoff:
Yes, especially someone who knows and can sense when like ... If you have somebody like that, who can kind of sense like, Hey, I know that you're getting to a point. Just hey. And I've done that for those coworkers too. And not everybody has those coworkers, I get it. But having those coworkers really helps, having someone that has an understanding or you can do the same thing for them and look at them or kind of nudge them or pass them a little note and be brief, it'll be okay. Like we'll get through this. And then [crosstalk 00:17:32].

Annmarie Caño:
And if you don't have that person in the room, if you can catch yourself, think of that person. Or if you have a dog or a child or a favorite auntie, but just to get that person's ...

Ashley Flintoff:
Someone who's kind of your therapy, right? It's like a mini therapy. So like I have two dogs and cats, so sometimes I'll just look in the front of my phone, which is one of my dogs, and like ... And it's just ridiculous.

Annmarie Caño:
I see. I like that. So if you have on your phone something that is a calming image, or seashore or the woods. Because that way you could look like you're checking the clock or something, but you see the image and it reminds you to take a breath.

Ashley Flintoff:
Yeah. Mine is my ridiculous dog, right off the camera is a big turkey leg. And so he's got this goofy look that is just like, oh my god, turkey leg! But it calms me. It makes me kind of giggle because I remember what a goofball he is and it's like the, okay, I got it, I can do this. You just step back and then you go, "Okay, let's figure out how we can maybe fix this situation.".

Annmarie Caño:
And what a favor you're doing for the other person who obviously, they were not able to catch themselves. And so they are feeling a lot of feelings.

Ashley Flintoff:
Yes.

Annmarie Caño:
And it may not really be you that they're taking it out on.

Ashley Flintoff:
Yeah, that's the thing.

Annmarie Caño:
But by you taking that time and then reframing kind of helps them disconnect a little bit and get back to, okay, we have a problem here that we're trying to solve together. And let's try to do that instead of it becoming something else that's not going to be useful to either person.

Ashley Flintoff:
Right, exactly. Because if everybody's all emotional and everyone's all kind of worked up, you're not actually going to solve the problem and then you're all going to leave and you're all going to still feel frustrated and you're going to go back to your office and you'd be like, "Oh my god, that was the worst meeting, and ... ".

Annmarie Caño:
Right.

Ashley Flintoff:
It just manifests and it festers and it builds and then it ends up blowing up into something way bigger that you could have resolved if everyone just kind of was able to disengage, step back and break it down, break it down into pieces. I mean this is the way I deal with everything. I think everyone should try and deal with the big crazy, scary things in your life. It's like break it into pieces. You can't impact the whole thing, but sometimes you can change one thing and that can have an impact across the board.

Annmarie Caño:
What you've just described, all the project management and strategic planning principles right there.

Ashley Flintoff:
Yes.

Annmarie Caño:
Tell us more about the Master Plan.

Ashley Flintoff:
Sure. So this is a process that we've been working on for the past about 14 months, and it's really building a framework to guide decision making for the university. And so we've done quite a bit of analysis, of research, of looking at the university's current space of the programs, of the needs of the university, where we're going in the future, where we've been in the past. Because I think it's ultimately important to understand how we got to the point that we are so that we can understand how we can move and we're really thinking about ways that we can engage the university community, we can evolve how the university is thinking about its physical space both now and in the future. And then it's all about kind of renewing space.

So thinking about where are the areas where we can consolidate, where we can colocate programs that may have been kind of opportunistically dispersed across the campus. Are there ways that we can concentrate academic activity, make better spaces with the resources that we have, and then think about longterm growth and development if in one the university needs to do it.

It's been a really exciting process. I've had the opportunity to talk to so many people from so many different areas of the university. It has been really exciting to hear what they think about the university, how they want it to move forward. And then to really put together a plan that allows us to think about the next 10-15 years of this university and how we're going to move ourselves forward and continue to be a leader in all of these areas that we are, and be a good anchor institution, good neighbor to Midtown. It's been a really fun process to do.

Annmarie Caño:
And your leadership of that project now, it's kind of a boundary-spanning, right?

Ashley Flintoff:
Yeah.

Annmarie Caño:
It's not just an individual researcher, PI, or only just a department, but now you're talking about departments, colleges, schools, faculty, staff.

Ashley Flintoff:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, which has been really interesting. It's been an interesting and exciting transition to go from just dealing with one lab or one small group of spaces to thinking about the entire, almost 12 million gross square feet of space that the university has. And so how do you scale that up and how do I take those same tools and tricks that I've learned working with individual PIs and individual faculty and scale it up to working with larger groups, working with the schools and colleges, thinking about what is the future of different spaces on campus; how do we engage students? How do we engage the faculty? How do we make this a space that students continue to want to come to, parents want to send their students to? But also, how do we make these spaces that really benefit the people who are here? How do we make spaces that allow us to be the type of university that we want to be?

Annmarie Caño:
I also imagine that for the listeners who are doing something similar, maybe they started with smaller projects or more circumscribed projects and now are doing larger projects that span departments or units, what advice could you extrapolate from this experience that might be useful for people just generally doing that kind of work?

Ashley Flintoff:
I think the biggest thing is to ... It's something that actually a mentor told me a few years ago and that I've found applies is you don't know what you don't know. And so it sounds pretty simple, but I think when you're trying to scale up, I think what you need to do is you take the skills and the things that you've learned, but don't assume that that is it. Don't assume that you know all of the people, for instance, that you need to talk to.

One of the things we learned pretty early on with this process was, there were way more stakeholders than we could have even imagined. There was so many groups and so many people and we kept ... At the beginning of the process, we kept going like ... We'd have these meetings and someone will say, "Oh, well, you've talked to this person, right?" And it's like, "No, should I talk to that person?" "Well, yeah." So very early on, we learned that rather than just assume that we knew all the people we needed to talk to, we needed to start our meetings and start our conversations with, "Hey, we're talking to you and you're fantastic. Who else should we talk to?" Like, who am I missing? Who's not at the table that I should be engaging with? And what is the best way to engage it?

We really wanted to engage with students. We really wanted to understand how students viewed the campus and what they thought of it. And so one of the things we did was we went to the student senate and we said, "Hey, we want to do this thing. We want to talk to as many students as possible. You tell us like how should we be engaging with students." Because we're not the experts in that, right? They're the representatives, they're the ones that ... Their whole role as student senate is to engage with and represent all the student body.

So it was going to people and saying, look, we're not the experts in talking to this group of people or understanding this kind of contingent of stakeholders. Talk to us about the best way to reach out to them. Talk to us about who we should be talking to. How can we reach them? Is it email, is it phone calls? Is in-person? Is it surveys? Is it me and my staff sitting at a table at FestiFall with a big banner that just says like, "Hey, come talk to us. We want to hear what you have to say?" Which actually works out really well for students actually, especially if you have candy. They really like candy.

And then we're talking about a renovation of State Hall is kind of one of the first projects coming out of the Master Plan. We did it again. We went to FestiFall and we went to Student Org Day and we had a table and we just had a big poster with a picture of State Hall and we said, "What do you want to see here?" And had a pile of sticky notes and a pile of pens. And we got so much amazing feedback. But it was because we went to people. And so it's a lot of that engagement is really meeting people where they are and saying, look, I'm not the expert, you are. I want to hear from you. And then being able to then take that information and incorporate it.

So that was one of the big things I think we learned about scaling up. So when I'm doing a small project, it's like one PI or maybe a couple PIs that I'm going to and I'm talking to them, they're the experts, and we do this thing. When you scale it up to a larger process like that, there's so many more stakeholders and there's so many more impacts on your decision making that you really need to keep an open mind and constantly I think ask the question of who else needs to be at this table, who have I not talked to or not engaged with or not seen that I need to see, that I need to talk to in order to make sure that I am getting as holistic of a swath of information as I possibly can.

Annmarie Caño:
Great. What advice would you like to share with listeners about exemplary leadership?

Ashley Flintoff:
Oh goodness. I think for me, in my career, one thing that has really stood out is I've been very, very lucky to have some very good mentors, some that I sought out and some that just kind of came into being. The thing that those mentors really did for me, I think more so than anything else, was it's a validation and really just giving me opportunities. So putting me into situations where I wasn't necessarily 100% comfortable as far as like feeling that I was ready for that situation.

But having someone who says, "You know what? I think that you're ready for it and if nothing else, you're going to learn from it." It's not putting you in a situation where they're setting you up to fail, but it's putting you in a situation where they truly believe that you are ready for it, but you just need some experience. And so you go through and that you can struggle through or you work through something, and then at the end of it you go, "Oh, I can do this." Like, "I can do this thing.".

And so I've had a lot of mentors who have really pushed me outside of my comfort zone and given me opportunities that I wouldn't normally have had if they hadn't advocated for me. And so for me ... And I'm a relatively new director, right? I've only been a director for just about three years. And so one of the things that I've been really trying to do with my staff, I have very small staff, but one of the things I've tried to do with my staff is to trust them, let them know that I trust them to do what they're doing. But also to give them opportunities, to put them into those situations where, you know, I believe that you have the ability to do this. I will be here. I'm here for you 100%. if you want me to sit next to you in this meeting and not say anything, I will do it. But I think that you can lead it. I think that you can do this thing. You can lead this project, you can go to this meeting, you can have this interaction.

Because I had so many mentors that did that for me, that put me in these situations and said, "You know what? I believe that you can do it. You may not have as much experience as the next person across the table, but you have the tenacity, you the knowledge, you have the the passion for it. And so you can do this." And so I think that is a really ... To me, that is a really strong hallmark of leadership. And it's also about trusting the people that you're leading and trusting that just because you're the "leader", you don't have to be the one doing all of the things. That's not necessarily what makes you a leader. You're not a leader just because you did everything. You're a leader if you can empower and grow the people below you, the people that report to you. If you can empower them to grow and to learn and to elevate themselves up, then I think that's honestly better leadership than just, I'm going to do all the things cause I don't trust that you guys can do this.

Annmarie Caño:
Right. Which is more micromanaging.

Ashley Flintoff:
Yes. Yes. And I've had those managers too. I've had the micromanagers who had to know what you're doing every minute and then criticized you for the things that you were doing, even though that was what they told you to do. I've done all that. So I've gone through those experiences, but then I've had some really great leaders as well. And so I try to emulate those leaders. And the thing is, it's really about trusting and empowering your staff and your team to do the things that you know that they can do, they just need the opportunity to do it.

Annmarie Caño:
In answering that last question, you also answered the very last question, which is what does it mean to empower someone to lead? And what I hear you saying is that it means trusting. It means letting people know that you see their skills and qualities that they may not always see for themselves and helping them build confidence to take ownership.

Ashley Flintoff:
Absolutely. And I think really checking in, checking in with people. So it's one thing to just kind of give them their tasks for the week or give them their tasks for the month and then say like, "Oh yeah, I trust you to do it, and just go do it." But it's another thing I think to do that, but then to also kind of continually checking in, not checking in in a way that's like, I need to know what you're doing. But, "Hey, how's it going?" Like, "Do you have all the resources you need? Do you have the support you need? Are you feeling overwhelmed? Are you feeling that you need some help? Do you have capacity? Could you take on more?" And my staff knows this and I've told them, at any point, come into my office, tell me like, "Hey, I need more ..." Or, "I'm feeling really overwhelmed, can we talk about balance?".

I also ... You know, delegation is really hard. And I'm that type A personality, so delegation is something that I work on a lot because I have the tendency to like, I'm just going to do the thing. I can do it all. I can do all these things. And so my staff knows and they've done it and I've told them that they can do it, they've done it and then I've thanked them for doing it. They'll come in and they'll say, "Hey, you're taking on all of the stuff. Give us some of the stuff to do." "Oh yeah, you guys can ... Like you're sitting right there, you can, of course, do this." And so being able ... And it's such a great feeling, honestly, to have cultivated a team where they feel comfortable doing that. But also that I know that I trust them. So it's not a ... They come in and say, "Hey, you're kind of taking on all of the things, do you need some help?" And I go, "Oh yeah, can you do this?" And then I know that they can. It's not that I feel like, oh god, I got to delegate, but they're not going to be able to do it. No, I know that they can do it. I trust them to do it.

It's just sometimes you need that reminder. Even as a leader, you need that reminder to be like, you can't do everything. You have a staff for a reason. This is why you've cultivated this team. And so they'll come in and they'll say, "Hey, give us this thing." "Okay, here you go." And they do it and they're fantastic and they're wonderful, and it works. But I think it's all about that trust and communication and just having that rapport with your team.

Annmarie Caño:
Yeah. And with you empowering them, they're returning the favor. So they are empowering you to do what you need to do.

Ashley Flintoff:
Absolutely.

Annmarie Caño:
Yeah. That's awesome.

Ashley Flintoff:
Yeah.

Annmarie Caño:
Well, thanks so much for sharing your insights today, Ashley.

Ashley Flintoff:
Thank you. This was so much fun.

Annmarie Caño:
Great. Where can our listeners find you online?

Ashley Flintoff:
I'm a little bit of a social media junkie, so I'm on all the social media. I have the same handle for everything, so I'm super easy to find. It's @AshleySFlintoff, which is my name. I'm at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I think just the main ... Like the big things. But yeah, follow me. I'm pretty prolific I think. I don't know. It's a lot of dog pictures and food pictures too. So you know, if you're cool with food and space pictures, there's a lot of pictures across campus, but yeah. Yeah, so those are where they can find me.

Annmarie Caño:
Great. Thank you.

Ashley Flintoff:
Thank you so much.

Annmarie Caño:
We're glad to have you listening to EmpowerED to Lead. To learn more about our podcast, follow us on Twitter @WSUFacSuccess.