How Zerina Overcame Her Adversity

Welcome to the next blog post continuing about Zerina’s story! This time, we will be focusing on how Zerina drew on her skills to overcome the challenges she faced, as well as some lessons she learned from this experience. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, feel free to go back and return to this post once you’ve read it!

As we discussed, the massive restructuring in the BBA Office affected a wide variety of people and programs, which is why Zerina was required to change several aspects of her leadership and think critically about how to solve the issues at hand. The most valuable action she took was recognizing the need to rebuild relationships and trust with the team, staff, students, and stakeholders. Looking at the bigger picture as a Strategic Thinker (as named by Clifton Strengths) allowed her to see the “why” behind every decision. In order for McCombs to improve and flourish, communication and trust would be key. This is why Zerina and the rest of her team made a conscious effort to keep everyone in the loop, share changes that would be happening, and connect their vision to the audience in a targeted way so that all stakeholders would be satisfied.

However, before she could build relationships in this brand new environment, Zerina first had to increase her own confidence and become comfortable with ambiguity. Ways in which she did this were self-care, work-life balance, and communicating boundaries with her coworkers. Additionally, she reminded herself that she was picked for this position because she was capable, and this gave her the encouragement she needed to continue. The ambiguity aspect was a little harder and required a larger change in her leadership. Zerina was a perfectionist and a Maximizer (also from Clifton Strengths), but in this situation, she did not always know the right answer. She realized that instead of getting hung up on this and criticizing herself, she should use her strengths to her advantage. This shifted her perspective from perfection to being okay with showing vulnerability, as well as humbling herself with the fact that while she didn’t always have the answer, she could use the resources around her to help make decisions. Self-reflection is a great way to figure out what you are best at and where you may need support from others. As such, Zerina began delegating tasks to peoples’ strengths, a key aspect of leadership, and being versatile in her leadership style based on the person she was talking to (because the way that you want to be led is not how everyone wants to be led). This relates to the Situational Leadership Model, which categorizes behaviors into four categories: Collaborating, Coaching, Empowering, and Teaching. Zerina did not limit herself to one; instead, she adapted her style to the situation, and each team member’s performance and willingness to accomplish their goals.

As you can see, overcoming her adversity was not easy. It took many different approaches to find what would work best. However, it is definitely possible, and McCombs events, organizations, and the Leadership Program have only gotten better over the years. It is surprising to learn what went on behind-the-scenes, but I am glad that everything turned out the way they did. Overall, the greatest gems from Zerina’s story are the power of communication, building trust, and showing up as your full authentic self (even if it sometimes means vulnerability), coming full circle to the Brené Brown quote we started with, “Be awkward, be brave, be kind.”