Professional Development for Staff Members: Building Collaboration and Resilience in Higher Education Institutions

The operations within universities have become increasingly complex and challenging for various reasons. Notably, some of those challenges have been combated by developing talent within the organization. Although many professional development opportunities abound at Arizona State University and within the ASU Foundation, the options for developing competencies such as collaboration and resilience were lacking. Thus, the purpose of this action research project was to develop several specific competencies for my team to be successful in their current roles and to develop skills affording success in future roles. The setting for this study was Arizona State University, a four-year, public institution. The specific unit under examination was the Arizona State University Foundation, the unit dedicated to raising resources for the university through philanthropy. The intervention consisted of four professional development workshops including the topics of collaboration, resilience, leadership, and a concluding workshop to debrief the three topics and how participants’ new understandings had been incorporated into their professional roles. Prior to each workshop, participants observed a professional development video specifically associated with the topic of the workshop. During the workshops, participants were actively engaged through facilitated discussion on the topics, proposed scenario narratives, and guided participant activities. Following the workshops, participants reflected on their understandings and use of the skills as they engaged in nine weeks of reflective journaling based on standardized prompts. The prompts alternated among the topics of collaboration, resilience, and leadership. I used a concurrent mixed-method action research approach for this study, where I gathered quantitative and qualitative data over the course of the intervention and at its conclusion. Results centered around the themes of collaboration, resilience, leadership, and meta-topics, which included theme-related components such as asking for help, having a shared goal, locus of control, resilience in the workplace, leadership styles, leadership qualities, comfort zone, learning and growing, relationships, and so on. In the discussion, I explained the outcomes relative to theoretical perspectives and previous research that guided the study, presented limitations, proposed implications for practice and for future research, and reviewed personal lessons learned.