My department has not had a boss for four months. My boss who was athletic director for 26 years retired leaving big shoes to fill.
Little did we know it would take four months to fill the shoes. No interim athletic director was named and we operated as best as we could without an athletic director.
We were dealt another blow when our associate athletic director and trainer left mid September. I am still working mostly remote so I’m not as affected as I would be in person but it’s been weird. And when I’m on site it’s even more weird.
You might think that’s great you have no boss and no supervision. But it’s actually not as great as you think. It’s confusing. It’s not motivating. It leaves your department feeling unimportant.
When you have a question or need an advocate there wasn’t one (though kudos to the interim VP of Student Affairs who stepped in for our department as best as she could). There’s no clear understanding of who does what. There’s no motivation. It’s weird.
Sure you can feel like you can do what you want but I don’t operate that way. I continued to work as best as I could. I need to prove myself to the new director and even my current coworkers that even though I’m mostly remote I’m working. The articles I write entail a lot of research so I spend almost all day on the computer but I’m working. I’m working on new ways to market our student athletes and improve our website and it’s a lot to tackle.
So Monday we finally meet the new boss. We are all nervous and a bit on edge. First off John our previous boss was amazing and one of the nicest guys you’ve ever met. So that’s going to be hard to replace. But we’ve been functioning unsupervised for four months and now we will be supervised. How’s it going to be?
I hope the new boss is good and understanding regarding my role and health. I hope we can finally have an advocate who can fight for our department and understands the importance of athletics to a college. I hope he can transition smoothly into a role that has been empty for four months.
We shall see. As nervous as I am, it’s good to finally have a clearly defined boss to lead our department that has been left to fend for itself. We should never have been left in the position we were in so to have someone in charge I think will be a good and much needed thing and I hope I’m right.