California State University Northridge President Dr. Erika D. Beck: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Uncertain & Turbulent Times

Serve others. Show up for your team and they’ll show up for you. A title is just that, but a team is what makes an organization great, so investing in leadership potential all around you is a game changer. Know when your team needs to rest, recuperate and celebrate.

As a part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Erika D. Beck.

Dr. Beck began her leadership of California State University, Northridge in January 2021 and proudly serves as the fourth consecutive female president. A strong advocate for the power of higher education to improve lives, transform communities and promote social mobility, President Beck champions the academic success of students in the attainment of their highest educational aspirations and as future leaders prepared to excel in today’s rapidly changing economy and society.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

As my teen-aged sons like to say, I went to college and never left. From the time that I was very young, my mother taught me that the world was a place to foster my inherent curiosity and that I should set about discovering it. And from the moment I set foot on a college campus with my mother by my side, I knew that she was right.

I earned my Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of California, San Diego and became a research associate at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where I conducted research in cognitive neuroscience and social behavior and subsequently served as a psychology professor.

I have always cherished a life of the mind and teaching and learning, and was nurtured into assuming higher levels of leadership at college campuses throughout my career. This, in turn, provided an opportunity to become engaged in the national dialogue about equity and the use of data to improve student learning outcomes. I have devoted my career to facilitating access to the transformative power of higher education because it doesn’t just impact individual lives — it transforms family trees and elevates entire communities. In my view, the fundamental purpose of an institution of higher learning is to enable human potential.

I’ve served as faculty senate chair, dean, provost, and now president, first at the California State University, Channel Islands, and now at the California State University, Northridge (CSUN).

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

My funniest “mistakes” are really just the silly and spontaneous moments when I’ve agreed to do what students ask me to do — such as carpool karaoke and surfing. Suffice it to say that neither is a core strength. But I’m learning to occasionally say no, such as to the most recent request, to sit in the dunk tank for a student event on campus. I don’t need that memorialized on TikTok or Instagram!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

My grandmother was a tremendous role model for me and her life story inspired me to pursue higher education and, later, leadership roles. She survived the German occupation of not only her country during WWII, but of her literal childhood home in Norway. Through circumstances I can hardly bear to imagine, she came to believe that it is the pressure of the unimaginable that creates the space to envision what is possible.

After immigrating to the United States alone, she worked as a housekeeper and childcare provider to pay for her education, and ultimately earned her college degree. Her courage afforded me the great privilege of knowing from a very young age that I too could write my own story, and she helped me to understand that education was the pen that would write it.

Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven organizations” are more successful in many areas. Has your organization changed its vision or purpose over the years and if so, how?

CSUN has been a trailblazer in advancing racial and social justice, being among the first to establish ethnic studies programs, including our Africana Studies program and our Chicana/o Studies program, the largest in the nation. There is a singular commitment to serving our richly diverse student population across every dimension of identity and lived experience.

To amplify our efforts and more fully realize equitable educational outcomes, we are further aligning all of the important work happening across the university, advancing our core values of equity, inclusion and belonging. With this lens, we undertook a “roadmap to the future” planning process to define our collective priorities and to ensure that an equity lens is embedded into every corner of the campus.

Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?

Having a North Star — a fixed point on which to focus your work — is essential to success in the best of times and becomes critically important and stabilizing in the most difficult times.

My North Star is the opportunity and responsibility to transform lives for the better, so I always strive to keep students at the center of everything we do. And I say we because leadership is a team sport — I rely on all of my colleagues who bring their full talents and perspectives to bear on how we navigate toward our North Star, toward student success and ultimately enabling human potential. Having a North Star means no matter what has come our way — be it devastating wildfires, a local mass shooting, the impacts on campus of racial violence and political division nationally, or a pandemic that forever flipped the classroom — we have remained grounded in the greater purpose of our work.

Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?

I would never give up when the chips are down, that is when leaders need to show up more than ever. It is such a tremendous honor and responsibility to be entrusted with leadership of a university — institutions of higher education are the solution to the challenges that ail us.

We are teaching our students how to learn, how to question and how to lead. We are preparing our students for a future we can scarcely imagine ourselves; a world that is increasingly complex and partisan, where the wicked challenges — the ones that must be solved in order to sustain our society (poverty, energy, climate change, and yes, infectious disease) — are most likely to elicit conflict and will require solutions that are more innovative, collaborative and interdisciplinary than ever. Beyond our doors, our students will need to thrive in the context of ambiguity, cultivate a willingness to think in new ways, and harness their curiosity and creativity.

Universities also serve a critical citizen-building function, encouraging the rigorous exchange of ideas, the ability to see another point of view and learn from it, and the recognition that our knowledge is never complete. It is these abilities that empower our students to skillfully navigate the complexities and contradictions of our rapidly transforming and richly diverse society.

When things get harder, we just keep navigating to our North Star, even if it is not the way we had envisioned traversing when we first set sail. We just find a new path.

I’m an author and I believe that books have the power to change lives. Do you have a book in your life that impacted you and inspired you to be an effective leader? Can you share a story?

I’m a student of leadership, so I have always watched very closely the leadership of others and I read just about everything I can get my hands on. One book that stands out for me is Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, which really helped me think about the future of work and enabling human potential in a very new way, grounded in research.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on the concept of Flow is also provocative to me as an experimental psychologist and university president. He examines personal fulfillment and happiness in a very distinct way.

Both confirmed for me just how important it is, as my grandmother taught me, to write your own story and not the one that others have written for you, and to seek deeper meaning and purpose in your work. It is exactly why I went to college and never left –

because my work quite literally feeds my soul and I want that for every student at my campus. In my estimation, a personal sense of meaning and purpose are the keys to a life well lived.

What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?

To be fully present, humble and honest about the challenges that lie ahead. I think it is critical in those dark times to remember the greater purpose of your work, to truly listen and rely on your team while still navigating to your North Star. Our students and the vitality of the community we are so very proud to serve compels us to ensure that we are able to advance a brighter and more equitable future for generations to come.

When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?

Fostering a culture where everyone recognizes that their unique role, skills and talents play a critical role in advancing your mission is key in my view. While the core of our academic mission at CSUN occurs in the classroom and between our faculty and the students, all the work that transpires outside of the classroom creates the conditions that allow teaching and learning to occur. Our groundskeepers, for example, perform the important work of maintaining a physical environment that is conducive to spending more time on campus outside of the classroom. This in turn engenders a sense of belonging, which supports the learning process and is critical to student success. Each and every member of our campus community plays a direct role in preparing our students to walk across that commencement stage to a life that is forever transformed.

What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?

I believe in being honest and direct, with generous doses of compassion and humility. A leader is only as effective as the trust that others place in them and earning and maintaining that trust is just about the most important thing a leader can do.

How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?

You just do. To me, the heart of strategy is focus and I am always focused on my North Star. I often say that I am clear on the goal and loose on the means. There is always a path forward as long as you rely on the collective wisdom of your team, remain nimble and pivot when circumstances require. Planning helps everyone stay grounded in the mission, but plans themselves always need to be adjusted.

Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide an organization through the ups and downs of turbulent times?

Leadership is about people, and about serving those with whom you are entrusted to lead. The conditions that create that trust are either helped or hindered in every interaction a leader has. In my experience, if people feel valued and connected to the greater purpose of the organization and trust the leadership, they will rise to the occasion in times of crisis and bring solutions you never imagined to get the organization through the turbulence to smoother skies.

Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other organizations make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?

I think sometimes the crisis of the day distracts people from the greater purpose of their work and the fundamental values that should always drive decision making. A sailor doesn’t stop navigating to the North Star in the midst of a storm, they look to it even more closely. From my perspective, taking the long view is especially important in difficult times and when the storm has passed, reaping the lessons learned from the experience will help you prepare for the next challenge.

Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.

Follow your North Star. As a university president, enabling human potential is my North Star. Students need to make progress toward degree completion, so during the height of the pandemic, every decision we made was focused on the health and safety of our entire campus community so that we could continue facilitating educational progression even through the turmoil.

Receive bad news well. Hopefully you’ve cultivated trusting relationships so that people can tell you what you need to know, not just what they think you want to hear.

Serve others. Show up for your team and they’ll show up for you. A title is just that, but a team is what makes an organization great, so investing in leadership potential all around you is a game changer. Know when your team needs to rest, recuperate and celebrate.

Find joy in the work. Our work is enormously rewarding, but it is also hard. I find it helpful to be human, to laugh and to connect with all of the incredible people around me. I want to know our students, faculty and staff and I want them to know me too. I find time to walk the campus and talk to people and ask them questions and I also find time to do the fun things they ask of me, like line dancing and carnival games.

Be grateful. I am so deeply grateful for the collective leadership in every corner of our campus community. They do all the hard work and I make time to thank them for their commitment to our students and to one another. Handwritten notes, cookies, spontaneous visits to personally extend my appreciation, or even just pausing in the moment to engage with a team member to recognize their contributions makes a significant difference.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Chance favors the prepared mind” by Louis Pasteur. It pretty much sums up my belief in the power of higher education to help everyone realize their greatest aspirations. When opportunity knocks on the door, you want to be prepared to open it.

How can our readers further follow your work?

Follow CSUN.edu to see the achievements of our talented students, esteemed faculty and staff, and the 400,000 alumni leading across the globe, all of whom I am privileged to serve.

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!