603: Leading Through Chaos: 7 Superpowers for Uncertain Times with Angel Pérez

The College Essay Guy - Episode 603 - Angel Perez - Leadership V2_otter_ai

The College Essay Guy - Episod... - Angel Perez - Leadership V2

Mon, Mar 31, 2025 1:40PM 1:24:39

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Leadership, self-care, solitude, detachment, inclusivity, self-management, deep work, crisis management, organizational culture, team building, digital detox, boundaries, mission focus, problem-solving, emotional intelligence., Leadership, performance reviews, 360 feedback, culture building, vulnerability, deep work, self-management, inclusivity, stoicism, schedule management, saying no, equanimity, calm in the storm, personal growth, accountability.

SPEAKERS

Ethan Sawyer, Angel Perez

00:00

Music.

Ethan Sawyer 00:08

E

Hi friends, and welcome back to the podcast. So today I'm joined by the one and only Angel Perez, the CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. That's NACAC. Angel has just written a new book on leadership. It's called the hottest seat on campus. Now, even though the book is technically written for leaders on college campuses, it's got advice that's applicable for college counselors, for parents and for students, and Angel will explain the relevance here. In a few minutes, we get into a whole range of things, and Angel shares his seven superpowers of leadership. We take turns sharing a little bit about our weaknesses, including my tendency to take things personally, and our strengths, including Angel's ability to practice detachment. And there's a really cool, practical tactical technique that he offers for doing this that I'm excited for you to hear. The advice is, we hope practical so like, there's stuff you can do, given the challenges facing higher education right now, we believe it's timely, and we hope you find it useful. If you've never met angel, he is the CEO of NACAC, and in this role, represents more than 25,000 admission and counseling professionals worldwide committed to post secondary access and success in 2019 Forbes named Angel the most influential voice in college admission. And I think by the way, that still stands prior to joining NACAC Dr Perez served in secondary and higher education leadership positions across America, most recently as the VP for enrollment at Trinity College in Connecticut. He is an advocate for counselors everywhere, an important ally in the work of increasing access to higher education, and I'm so lucky to call him my friend. Hope you enjoy music. Hi Angel, welcome to the podcast. So good to see you again. So here we are in my little studio in my house. It's been, I think, like, a year, maybe, since we recorded. The last time we talked about self care and a little bit about leadership, which is going to be the main thing we talk about today. But I just want to, like, start with, just like, checking in. How are you

A

Angel Perez 02:24

well, can I be honest? Yeah, please. I'll start with the saying, The struggle is real. You know, we are living through a really difficult moment in our history right now, and as someone who runs an organization that's deeply impacted by what happens in Washington, DC. Things are tough right now. Things are tough, and I am trying to engage all those wonderful things that we talked about in the podcast around self care. And some days I do really well. Other days, not so much, you know. So I think one of the things that's important to acknowledge is I'm imagining that it's not just me and you, and I'm assuming for you, but that might be struggling at this particular moment. But you know, the way that I describe my sentiment right now, Ethan is the body is tired, but the brain is on fire. And what I mean by that is that, yeah, I'm physically exhausted because I have been going non stop since January. But I'm also fired up because I do feel like this is a really important moment in our history, and particularly my organization. This is our moment to step, step up and lead. I feel a great sense of responsibility, but I also have to go back to those self care practices, which you know I care deeply about, and I know we're going to talk a little bit about that as well. Yeah,

E

Ethan Sawyer 03:40

so our theme is, is leadership in challenging times, which, as you've noted, it's, it's this is that first I want you to set context. You've written a book, which I'd just love for you to just let folks know a little bit about what is this book, who is it for? And why did you write it?

Angel Perez 03:56

A

Sure, the so the title of the book is the hottest seat on campus. It's actually coming out late summer, early fall, hopefully by conference. It's published by Harvard Ed press, and it's a book written first and foremost for either sitting or aspiring deans of admission. And the inspiration for the book came from the fact that I was having so many conversations over the past five years that I've been in this role with admission Deans across the country, who they themselves, were really struggling. And the theme I kept hearing over and over again was joy is not the word I would use for this job. And that made me really sad, because I did that job for a long time, and I felt an incredible amount of joy, even though I also, as you will read in the book, had many, many struggles while I was in the job, and what I started to realize, especially as we went through COVID, as we went through crisis, as we are going through this particular moment in our history, that the old leadership playbook is not going to set people up for success in the future. And so I actually took time to interview deans of admission. And across the country who I thought were doing extraordinary work and were leading well. And so the book is basically a book about leadership, but basically what I'm gonna call new superpowers. That's not the subtitle of the book, but a way to think about how to one choose a deanship, because I think that's really half the battle. But then once you're in that role, how do you set yourself up for success? And what are some of the ways that you can lead in crisis, for example, what are some of the ways that you can care for yourself and use particular leadership strategies? So I'm really excited about it. And the other thing I wanted to mention is, while the book is written with deans of admission in mind, because it's the my lived experience, really, if you strip the title admission off of the subtitle of the book, this is really a book about leading in today's world, which is extraordinarily complicated. Why

E

Ethan Sawyer 05:50

do you feel like this is especially important right now?

A

Angel Perez 05:53

I think it's really important right now because as we are seeing the world is shifting right before our eyes. I think a lot of again, the phrase that I would use here is that the old leadership playbook that many of us grew up with has to evolve, because the world is moving very quickly. I think we are living in an age where there is so much anger, there's so much outrage, and one of the things that I'm a firm believer in, but also have been the recipient of, is that when people are angry at the world, they usually do take it out at organizations where they feel they have a sense of control. We are seeing this on college campuses right now, right when students are angry, they take it out on the administration, or they want the university to do something. I have been on college campuses where faculty want the administration to do something, and I've also been at NACAC for five years, where you know when things have happened in the world, our members want us to respond in a particular way, and so that creates an extraordinary amount of pressure on leaders, but also we are living in really divided times, and I think it's really difficult to break through all of that noise find some sort of consensus, if you can. And the other piece that I think about, and this keeps me up at night all the time, is with all this noise and constantly responding to crisis, how do you continue to move your mission forward? How do you make sure that you are meeting the goals that you have set for your organization. If you're constantly responding to crisis, you're not moving the organization forward. So again, it's going to take really different kinds of skills in order to succeed in today's leadership roles. And I do want to mention Ethan, because you and I throw the word leadership around a lot, and I like to define that for people that I think leadership is a mindset. It's not a position. It does not mean you run an organization. It doesn't mean you're the president or dean or the Director of College Counseling. To me, it's you lead your family, you lead your students, you lead a department, whatever it is. You know, leadership, to me, is more of a mindset. So again, I want to make sure that as many people feel included in this conversation as possible.

E

Ethan Sawyer 08:09

One of the things that I love that you wrote in an article that you wrote recently, which we'll link to in the show notes, is this quote from Justin Trudeau, which is, this is from a few years ago at the World Economic Forum, he said, the pace of change has never been this fast, and it will never be this slow again.

Angel Perez 08:28

A

I appreciate that. Can you? Can we take a pause there, though? Because when I first read that, it like really blew me out of the water, and it depressed me a little bit again, in the spirit of, why are we talking about this? Because this is so true. I think all of us feel like, when is it going to go back to normal? The answer is, actually never. The pace of change is going to continue to evolve. And so how do we learn how to function in that kind of pace and still care for ourselves and still move organizations and goals forward, and, and, and

E

Ethan Sawyer 09:04

let's get into this. You've in this article, you shared some of these superpowers, these qualities that you believe leaders need to embody. Start us off with the first one. What's this first quality that you feel like is important for leaders to to work on?

A

Angel Perez 09:17

Yeah, so the first one goes. It gets very operational to a certain extent. I And for me, I want, I want to share that these superpowers I've become really passionate about because I personally experienced them, and I've also personally experienced what happens when you don't practice this. So the first one is the power of solitude. I think the world is so incredibly noisy. Leaders are called upon to constantly respond, react, engage, put out fires, talk to constituents. I mean, the to do list is so endless if you do not figure out ways to. To find quiet in solitude, you are always going to be reacting. You're actually not going to be leading, and you're not going to actually be making really good decisions. There's actually research by scientists that talk about the fact that when you spend time in solitude, when you spend time in quiet, you actually make better decisions, and I have experienced that myself. I think the first couple of years in this job, I did not do a good job of that, and I was constantly going, going, going. It led to burnout. But one of the things that I do now is when I have really difficult decisions to make, or things are going, you know, what feels like 1000 miles an hour, I actually intentionally try to find places to be quiet and be alone. Now sometimes that's really difficult. Sometimes that means, like, 10 minutes closing the door in my office, meditating and being quiet because I know I'm going to go into a really difficult meeting or situation. But I also have found that it's in that quiet and solitude where I actually find the answers to the problems. So that might be I went out for a long run by myself in nature, and it's like, oh my gosh, the answer was right there all along. But if I'm in my office, I'm constantly surrounded by people. And in this job, which, by the way, I have to say I love, despite the challenges, I'm constantly surrounded by people, sometimes 1000s of people. You can't really make good decisions that way. And so for me, the power of solitude is so important, and that means different things to different people. I'd be curious to see if you find time for solitude yourself. But for me, it's I wake up every morning I actually meditate, but sometimes I will take weekends where I have a solitude weekend might be at home, it might be away, or again, sometimes it's those 10 minutes where I just close my door and sit in silence, but it's so critically important, especially because it's so noisy out there today.

Ethan Sawyer 11:55

E

Yeah, so I'll share about my experience in just a second. But I'm curious when you're in a tough moment, either in a given day or given week, what? What signals are you listening to in your body or in your world that's giving you the sense that like, oh, I probably need some alone time.

A

Angel Perez 12:15

Yeah, it's funny. I called I know exactly what you're talking about. I go into overdrive mode. I actually call it high beta. And what I mean by that is I feel my body tensing up. I just have, like, this extraordinary adrenaline rush, but not in a good way, in the sense that I just feel like I'm on overdrive here. I'm not thinking clearly. I'm just going from the next thing to the next thing. And I tend to carry my stress in my shoulders. And so like when my shoulders start to tense up, I know, okay, some things, something's going on here, and you need to figure out a way to bring yourself back down a little bit. And so again, that's where I'll look for solitude. I might meditate. I might do some breathing. To be 100% honest, I was there earlier today because we got a letter from the Department of Education that was quite stressful, and so I found myself just getting wound up. But instead of, you know, immediately reacting, I spent time really trying to bring it back down a level, meditating a little bit and thinking about what is the right response here. Unfortunately, I think we're living in a time where everybody expects us to have the answer immediately. And you know, my team would tell you this, that there's a lot of times where they'll bring things to me, and I'll say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna think about that, and I'll tell you about it tomorrow. Now, sometimes it's a crisis and you have to respond immediately, but most things you can say, Let me think about that, and I actually think you always make better decisions when you take the intentional pause. Yeah, this is curious. Does this resonate? Yeah,

E

Ethan Sawyer 13:53

totally. Well, I think that in past years, I felt like I was so over scheduled and over meeting that I was the feeling was, like, the way I would describe it as, like, I was everywhere and I was

A

Angel Perez 14:07

nowhere. Yes, that resonates deeply, yeah.

Ethan Sawyer 14:11

E

And so like, hearing you say this, I'm so glad this is the first one, because I'm like, this is, I'm not perfect by any means on any of these, but this is one where I like was like, I need more of this in my life. And so if you look at my calendar, it says from nine to 12. It says deep work, which I think we're going to talk about today, but it's three hours of just alone time, and it's a time for me to right now I'm reading. I'm reading a lot. I'm going through this book that I mentioned to you before we started recording Immunity to Change to change, and I'm spending a lot of time reading and thinking and writing, frankly, because I'm in a big like, usually January to May, ish is like a writing time for me. So I think that among these, I think this is one that I've gotten better at over the years. And I'll say that like I. Setting this time aside, to be on my own and to just think or to just write, has transformed my life. And I think that I'm in a privileged position, you know, being able to, like, do that, and I don't have, you know, I've got a situation, you know, where I'm able to actually do that. But, yeah,

Angel Perez 15:18

A

Angel Perez 15:18

you said nine to 12, and I was like, hashtag, goals.

E

Ethan Sawyer 15:23

Part of that is the way that my role has shifted at my organization, where I'm, you know, I have a leadership team that can, you know, do the operations through a lot of the things, and I can do the things that I like to do best, which is, like, you know, writing and and creating. Let's get into the second one. Okay, so the art of detachment. What is it, and how do we find it?

A

Angel Perez 15:47

Yeah, this is, this is a hard one, but it's so incredibly important for anyone these days to learn it, and that's really the fact that we have to learn how not to take things personally, and we have to learn how to have a healthy distance from situations, especially at work, I would say, in life. But here, let's talk about work. I learned this during my time as a dean of admission on college campuses. A lot of people don't realize that it's actually a really contentious role, because you have so many different constituents who need to please, and oftentimes you're not pleasing a lot of people on campus, and you're a highly visible figure. And so there were many times where I found myself in situations, whether it was with the coaches or whether it was with the faculty or the alumni who weren't happy about some of the policies that I was implementing or changes that I was making, and I would say I would almost define it as vitriol that was coming my way. And I had to learn over time to remind myself that when anger was coming my way, whether it was through email, whether it was in faculty senate meetings that people were talking to my position. They were not talking to Angel Perez, the person. And so I actually have a practice when I'm in really difficult situations or in meetings where people are just sort of, you know, throwing anger my way, which, you know, has happened a lot in my career. I actually float above the room. I have this practice where I imagine myself floating above the room and becoming an observer. So you want to be a participant, but you want to be an observer at the same time. And it's an incredibly healthy way to detach from the situation where you're present. You are taking things in, and you're listening very carefully. Because I also think when people are angry, it's usually because there's fear involved. And so you have to sort of get to the bottom of that, but it's really important that in order to go the long haul, to stay in these roles for a long time, and to engage this in a healthy way, that you learn to detach, and there's lots of different ways that you can do that, but I find it's incredibly important, especially today, because we are living in an age that I would Call the age of outrage, and I've actually read a book about this recently. But everyone's angry and everyone's outrage, and at some point, as a leader, the outrage will come to you.

Ethan Sawyer 18:09

E

I love this. I love the image, too, this practical thing. It reminds me of advice I got once in a men's group of all things, where we were preparing for a roast where we were gonna, like, be doing a roast each other. Roast each other. Okay? And the facilitator said, here are two tools you can use when someone's throwing stuff at you. Is you can imagine that there's a shield in front of you, and then the other thing you can imagine is you are just air, and it's just passing right through you. That's right. Whatever the thing is, that's right, but so here's what I

A

Angel Perez 18:42

want to acknowledge, because this is a practice I want to acknowledge. I think a lot of people listening will say, how the heck do you do that? It is a muscle to be work, just like you go to the gym. I did not do this when I was 22 right? And there were many years where I took everything personally. I lost sleep, I was angry about everything, because how could that person treat me this way? And now I realize that the only thing I can control in life is my reaction, right? And so if I don't allow that stuff in I love in Jay shetty's book. Jay Shetty, as you know, was one of our speakers at NACAC. He wrote a book called Think like a monk, and I love one of the quotes in his book. He's actually quoting a Catholic monk who said, there is no testament that says that we have to be offended by the way people treat us, you know. And I read that in the book, and I was like, Yes, more people should really think this way, and I acknowledge that's really hard to do, but I think as we get older and as we move into these leadership roles, it's really important to use that muscle as much as possible. So

E

Ethan Sawyer 19:40

here's one that I'm not good at, and I think that I am part of it as being an intuitive feeler is I take almost everything personally, like I will find a way to think, Oh, this is somehow about me. So here's my question, how in a moment when someone is really pissed off, how do you. Uh, detach, and also still have the person feel heard and feel seen and feel like feel gotten.

A

Angel Perez 20:09

I think what's been helpful for me is I actually go into inquiry mode at that point, because again, I I have come to realize that when people are angry, My job as the person receiving that anger is to figure out where is this coming from, what is underneath this, and how can I help in any way, and if because I go into inquiry mode, this book I read called humble inquiry, which I love and I actually write about in my book, which is really about the art of truly listening to people. And so if instead of sitting there and already thinking about I'm so offended I can't believe that person said that to me, or in thinking you're really thinking about your own emotions, what you need to do is actually think about, how do I get to the bottom of what this is really about? Because what I've also found is a lot of anger isn't always about what the person is actually saying. There's something beneath that, right? And so I go almost into investigative mode. And by the way, I do want to put out there. I am not perfect. Yes, I have feelings. And there are times I'm like, Did she really just say that to me in my head? But then I try to, again, bring out the practice and try to really, you know, move beyond it. Because the other thing that I try to think about all the time is like, well, I care about this in a week or two or in a year, the answer is usually no. And so why am I going to give it the time, energy, effort, mental space that it probably doesn't deserve? Yeah,

Ethan Sawyer 21:39

E

as you say that I think about the difference between the content of what someone is sharing and the context of what they're sharing. And what I mean by that is like, sometimes I think that the thing that's coming at me is probably part of something much larger, yes, and it's like zooming back, and sometimes

Angel Perez 21:57

A

you just happen to be the person, right? You're the person there to take the heat, and we're seeing that in our history right now. You know, again, going back to the college campuses or schools where we're seeing protests, the leaders in those organizations are taking the heat for worldwide problems, often that they cannot solve in any way, shape or form, and so those leaders need to learn detachment. They can't take these things personally, and they really need to get to the bottom of where is this coming from, and also, what are the ways that I can really engage this individual to try to move us to some point of consensus. But I will add, and most people know I'm a meditator. I do meditate when I know I'm going into difficult situations, and so a lot of times you don't know that a meeting is going to be difficult. But one of the stories I tell in the book is about a meeting that I had when the athletics department beckoned me, and it was all of the coaches, and they were not happy with some of the changes that I was making to the admissions process when I arrived at an institution, and as I was walking to the Athletic Center, I just knew I was like going into the lion's den, right? I knew that was going to be a really difficult moment, so I snuck into the bathroom and closed the door before I went in, and I meditated for five minutes, and I was so calm while I was in that meeting. And for over an hour, they just took turns, one after the other, after the other, telling me everything that they felt I was doing wrong. And I floated above the room while I was at it. But when I walked into that room, because I had meditated and done a little bit of breathing, I was already really calm. You can't walk into those situations that I call the lion's den already hyper. You need to make sure that you almost do some preparation work. And by the way, this is the same thing. If you're a school counselor, you know when an angry parent is coming your way. If you are a dean, you know when a staff member might be angry, you can prepare yourself before you go into those meetings. That's part, part of being intentional. Great. What's the next one. So the next one is inspiration through inclusivity. And what I mean by that is that the old model of leadership is I am the leader. This is what you need to go do. Go do it, right? Yeah, that doesn't work anymore. No, no, not so much. And as most of us who grew up in that era. No, it also doesn't feel very good. And so I am a huge believer. I love this quote, people will support what they help build. And so the leaders of today need to inspire people towards a goal, a movement, a mission. And you do that through inclusivity, because people want to be part of something greater than themselves. I'm a fundamental believer in that. So you don't go to a new organization and say, This is what we're going to do. You can go to a new organization and say, here's the vision. How do we get there together? An example that I'd like to use is when I got to NACAC, one of the things that I did is I paid very close attention to organizational culture. I'm a big believer. Peter Drucker, the management guru, said that culture eats strategy for breakfast, you know. And if you have a culture that sucks, your organization is not going to thrive, it's just proven. And so moving into a new organization, I felt really strongly that I wanted to build a really healthy, positive culture. But I didn't come to the organization and say, so we're going to have this really healthy, positive culture. I basically said to the team, we're going to build this together, and we did that intentionally, through we actually have our own staff mission statement, not the the organizational mission statement, but our own. And then we also have a set of values that we hold each other accountable for. We ask ourselves the question, what does it mean to come to work here every single day? How do we want to show up and what do we want to hold each other accountable for? So any another example of this leadership through inclusivity is that when I have to make tough decisions, and I've been making some tough decisions recently. Part of what I try to do is I try to ask as many people as possible for advice, right? And so in the NACA context is I call as many members and leaders and staff members and advisors as I can. Eventually, in the end, the decision is mine, but I want to make sure that as many people feel included as possible, and then when I'm done with the decision, I explain my why to everyone. I think the way of doing it in the past was like, well, the leader said, this is the way it is, or this is the decision that doesn't work so much anymore. Again, because if you are going to inspire people towards a vision, and you're going to keep them inspired and motivated. You also have to explain to them, like, Why did I make that decision, especially if you disagree with the decision. We're living in an interesting age. People are not definitely. There's very few decisions I make on a daily basis that everybody agrees with, but I try to explain as much as possible along the way. So this notion of inclusivity is so important, and I'm so sad that so many leaders get it wrong.

E

Ethan Sawyer 27:08

make up that explaining the why was something that you had to learn the hard way? Yes. I just wonder if there were there, and this is kind of a leading question, but were there situations where you didn't explain

A

Angel Perez 27:19

your why? Yes, oh, it threw out, like a lot of my career. And here's the thing, in the absence of a narrative, people will create their own. That is the lesson I learned over time. And so I realized that if you don't explain the why, people are just gonna create whatever story they have in their mind, and then you're not going to be able to move forward. And so there were a lot of times, especially when I was younger in my career, because, by the way, I grew up with a different generation of leadership, and it was like, well, the dean said, you're going to do it that way, so that's why we should do it. And so obviously in my earlier years, that's how I thought about leadership. And then I realized, wow, if I don't bring people along and include them in the decision making, but then also, when I make the decision as a leader, explain the why they are going to make up all kinds of narratives. And I will also mention it's really hard today with social media, like the narrative can get so out of control so quickly, and so again, it's really important to include as many people as possible.

E

Ethan Sawyer 28:21

Yeah, it's one of the things I'm present too. Is when I think about the process of, like, getting, you know, input from a bunch of folks, and then sharing it out, and then sharing the why it takes time, and sometimes it takes,

A

Angel Perez 28:38

oh my gosh, a lot of sorry I said the O so deeply, because it's resonating so deeply with me right now, because I just went through that for the last few weeks. I mean, it takes sometimes days and days and days and but it's time well spent. There's time well spent,

Ethan Sawyer 28:55

E

E

Ethan Sawyer 28:55

yeah, I can't help but name this African proverb that's like, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Yeah, and I think about that a lot, about situations where I've tried to just go fast and not explain or not get input and just sort of make the decision for some anxiety, of like, you know, either real urgency or manufactured urgency where I thought a thing just needed to let's just make the call here, and how many times it's blown up in my face? Yeah, and

A

Angel Perez 29:28

I again, I am not perfect. I am learning. I will tell you that every single supervisor that I have ever had, including college presidents and NACAC board chairs, the one criticism they've always had of me is, Angel, you move too fast, and not everyone moves at your pace, and you always have to remember to bring people along. And so I would like to say that I'm doing a lot better at it, and I have evolved over time. But if I could go back in time, especially when I was a dean of admission, i. I would have gone a little slower and tried to build a little bit more consensus, because again, and it doesn't mean everyone's going to agree with you, but at least people see the direction you're moving in and they feel like they were at least included in the conversation.

E

Ethan Sawyer 30:13

I want to share an image of this, the way that I'm resonating with this on a kinesthetic like physical level. There was an exercise that I did as an actor as part of a physical theater workshop where we took turns. Imagine that there are eight people, and let's say I'm at the front and everybody else is behind me. And the exercise was I have to move in such a way that the seven people behind me can mimic my gestures, and so I couldn't move so fast that they couldn't stay with me. The idea was that we were going to be moving in sync and in unison, and so I would have to move at a certain pace so that I was literally physically bringing them along with me. And then the cool part of the exercise is we would kind of turn the corner, and then someone else would be at the lead of the pack, and it was their turn to move at a certain pace that allowed them to bring everyone along with them. But I think about situations where I've moved too quickly and I know that my move was too fast, or my just I've skipped steps where I didn't explain, sort of my thinking along the way. It just sort of, I do this. I sort of assume people are in my head and assume that there's like that my logic is their logic. But I have this image in my head of like a flock of, you know, birds, sort of like, well, if you're the person at the start, you can't just bank right without, you know, giving folks a heads up. Well.

Angel Perez 31:32

A

But in the same I want to take that a step further and talk about operationalization, which is always like a heavy word. But the other lesson that I learned the hard way in leadership is you have a vision and you're like, Okay, let's go. This is what's going to happen. You have to have a whole team of people who are going to make that happen. And so if you're moving super fast, and you make a decision, all right, this is where we're going, right? And you haven't consulted, what could be some of the challenges? What could be some of the barriers, you might end up in a roadblock, and you might end up failing as a result. And so again, this is where including people in the beginning is probably a better idea. And again, I'm not saying I always get that right. I can almost hear some of my staff members listening to this and saying, like, yeah, last week, that's not what you said, but it's a lesson I've learned the hard way, and I've been really trying to implement. Well, let

E

Ethan Sawyer 32:27

me ask a hard question here, because I and I say it's hard because I wouldn't want to be asked this question personally. But so how do you know when it's time to get input and when it's time to just make the call, like, what's happening for you internally in those moments?

Angel Perez 32:39

A

I love this question, because I've really evolved in my thinking around this. It's important to get input in the beginning, but it's also really important that you don't get into what I call input paralysis, which is you get so much advice, and you're trying to get everybody's opinion under the sun, and by the way, they're all going to be conflicting in some way, shape or form, that you end up in a paralysis state where you don't know how to move forward. And so I think, you know, knowing who your core constituents are. You know, in my organization, it would be like, okay if I'm thinking about hosting a particular event, well, who are the component owners of that who might be able to give me some advice? But in the end, you have to make the decision, and I will say, going back to solitude, I think it's always really important to sit in silence with yourself and make the decision, because in the end, you are the one that has to live with that decision. I will tell you that there's been many times in my career, including recently, where I have made decisions that have gone against all of the advice that I have received. Does it make me a little nervous? Yes, but in the end, I have to be the first of all, as a leader, you own the decision, and so you have to be comfortable justifying it. But I will tell you this Ethan, where I feel like I have had some of the most difficult moments of my career is when I get I went against my own sort of, what's the word that I'm thinking? Spidey sense? Yeah, yeah. No, that's it intuition, my own intuition. And an example I will share, I won't say where or when, but I hired a person who I knew from the minute I interviewed. This was not the person, but everyone else on the committees, even though this person was reporting to me, kept saying, Oh, this is the person. This is the person. And I didn't want to disappoint all these people, and so I hired this person. They were a disaster. And it was a very painful year for me. And so that was one of the moments where I said, You know what, you got to go you got to trust your gut. You got to live with the decision. What's the next one. All right, so the next one is the art of self management, yeah, and, you know, we've been talking about a lot of heavy stuff, and there's a lot of wear and tear on the body and the mind and the soul as a result of these jobs. And what. I have learned over time, and by the way, the impetus for writing the book was that people were not taking care of themselves in these jobs. And you and I have talked a lot about this. We've done podcasts on self care, and I call it self management, because it's a little bit more than just self care, you know, making sure you eat right, and exercise and meditate and find time for joy. But I think it's really that in the world we are living in today, these jobs can really consume you and take you over in a way where you almost lose your own identity and you almost lose a sense of self. And so for me, I think it's really important that leaders today really figure out how to manage themselves. What are the guard rails that you are going to build around you? What are the things that are just so sacred to you that despite what your schedule says or despite what crisis drops, you're always going to make sure that you do how are you going to make sure that you prioritize yourself? And detachment, by the way, is a part of this. I felt detachment was so important, like I had to have a whole different section about it. But learning how to detach yourself from the identity of the role is so critical. And again, I learned that the hard way. When I first became a dean of admission, I burned out fast and hard because it's all I did. I let everything else in my life just go when I first arrived at NACAC, I did it again. I learned the hard way. I ended up in burnout. That's how you and I ended up doing a podcast together, and I wrote an article about it. And so the art of self management is so critical, and I do think it will be the number one thing that will lead leaders to success in the future.

E

Ethan Sawyer 36:45

So let's just check in right now, like, how's it going right now in terms of your own self? You know what

A

Angel Perez 36:50

I mean? How could you ask me that question? Not fair? You know, there are things I'm proud of and things I'm struggling with. The start of the year has been rough, even though I now realize it's March, and I can't believe that, but it has been a really tough year. I've been traveling a lot. I have been in response mode a lot. Most people know what's happening in Washington, DC, and the kinds of things we're doing at NACAC, and so as I'm speaking to you, even though I'm energized by this conversation, I am pretty tired, and I flew across the country and took a 6am flight to be here today with you, and I was in the UK a week ago. I mean, I've been on the go, go, go. And so for me, it's it's been really important. First of all, writing these things and sort of checking back in and reminding myself, and again, I'm energized just by talking about it, that I have to continue to put these things into practice. But in the spirit of self management, Ethan, there are things that are sacred to me that are not regardless of where I am in the world or how busy things are, I am always going to meditate in the morning. I am always going to exercise. I didn't do it today because it was a 6am flight that was rough. But I you know, if I am home or if I'm in a hotel, I will always exercise and I have guard rails, you know, I will not take meetings after a certain hour when I am in the office. I want to make sure that, you know, my schedule is blocked in a way where I can do some deep work, which we're going to talk about in a little bit. So despite all the noise and the fact that things feel really intense for me right now, and I am in that high beta mode, and my shoulders hurt a little bit, I still am trying to do the things that keep me grounded.

E

Ethan Sawyer 38:34

Yeah, interesting. As you say, self management, there's like, what I'm hearing you say is, is self care and, and, and thinking about, as you said, where you kind of implied boundaries. Now, I could imagine someone hearing self management and thinking, well, it's doing, quote, unquote, everything on my own. And I don't think you know leadership has to be lonely, necessarily. No,

Angel Perez 39:00

A

I think part of self management is about finding community as well, and it's also about finding people who are either in similar roles. And by the way, this is beautifully done in the admission deanship. The admission deanship community is like strong and lots of people form cohorts, and I will tell you, I probably would not have succeeded as a dean had I not had other deans who supported me? I also have other Association CEOs in Washington, DC, that support me and we support each other. And you know you and I have really developed a friendship as people who run very different kinds of organizations, but still feel some similar pressures around running organizations. And so the other piece around self management is what Michelle Obama calls her kitchen cabinet, right? She has these people around her who keep her grounded when she has to make tough decisions. She talks to those people think it's important to also bring people into that conversation, and also those are the people that hold you accountable Absolutely.

E

Ethan Sawyer 39:57

And I want to name the I think this is. Been, I've really, really valued our conversations and just so that, you know, like, what does it actually look like? Like, what Angel and I will do sometimes is we'll just, like, block out an hour, hour and a half, and we'll just sometimes split the time and just go, Okay, let's work 45 minutes on your stuff, and then we'll work 45 minutes on my stuff. And I want to just say this explicitly out loud, because this has been so valuable to me, and I have a few other relationships like this. I don't know if you knew we were in an open relationship, but I'm revealing it. But I have, you know, a friend yesterday, for instance, that was helping me. I'm preparing for a leadership retreat next week with my own organization, and I'm trying to figure out one particular thing, and I got on a zoom call with my good friend yesterday, and was like, hey, I need to and he's like, let's do this. Then we hopped on and he was just like, we're focused on you. And then this morning, I was sending WhatsApp messages to another friend who leads an organization with investing advice of all things, but I want to just name this and say, like, it's been so valuable, because I think I didn't, I think I did a lot of it, or tried to do a lot of it on my own, because I was sort of like, well, you know, I don't know. I felt lonely, and I felt like reading

A

Angel Perez 41:09

a book is not enough, right? I think when you get into leadership roles, and again, I'm defining leadership very broadly here, you know, you'll read a book, and that's lovely and beautiful in theory, but you need people to talk through it with. And I think the other thing, and this is what I appreciate about our friendship, is that we're not heads of organizations with each other, right? That we can, like, let our hair loose. I walked in your into your house today, and I said, yeah, the world kind of sucks right now, and I'm feeling kind of heavy, right? And we were able to just be real. Obviously, I'm sharing that on a podcast right now, but I don't normally say that to people, because I think you know, when you are a leader, often people are turning to you to be the problem solver, right? Have it together, yeah? But you need, you need people around you who are going to uplift you and support you as well. And I

Ethan Sawyer 41:57

E

want to just put in a bid for that, for for folks who are listening like, there, and many people are listening is going like, Yep, got it. Got those people. I already know who those people are. I talked to those people this week, but it's reciprocal peer coaching. And I think you can do it sort of whether you're a counselor, whether you're, you know, you know, just being at home with family. And I find this to be so so, so life giving, so nourishing, and

A

Angel Perez 42:21

there is a hunger for connection right now, yeah. So I think if you're out there, you're listening and you are seeking this, I know that you will find others who are seeking the same thing.

E

Ethan Sawyer 42:31

Number five, you talk about the power of showing up. Oh

A

Angel Perez 42:35

yes, talk to us. Yeah. You know, I cringe these days when I read statements from leaders, letters, statements on social media, and they haven't showed up in the room, or the zoom, depending on whether you lead an online organization or in person, to just look people in the eye and have the conversation, I have found, again, In my experience that it's important to show up even when actually, even more importantly, when it's really hard, and when you know that it's going to be a contentious situation.

E

Ethan Sawyer 43:10

I want to interrupt you for a second because I saw you do this really recently, and I want to say it so that you don't have to, so that no one thinks that it's like virtue signaling or anything but Angel. I'm just going to speak to everybody else for a second. I'm going to speak gonna speak about you behind your back, in front of your back, there were some fires in LA, as some of y'all know, you know, Altadena, which is not far from here, was on fire. And Angel used to live in Pasadena. And he said, I'm coming to LA. And I said, What are you doing? He said, I'm just coming to volunteer to support because there's, there's a need right now. And I was like, Dang what? And I didn't, like, make a big deal out of it, but in my heart, and I haven't said this to you, but in my heart, I was like, Angel showing up. So I've seen you do this, and I just want to say that I it's something I really appreciate, admire about you.

A

Angel Perez 43:53

I appreciate that. Yeah, love, love Pasadena, love California. So I felt the need to show up. But yeah, that to me, is so critically important, like you've got to show up for the moments, but also in the context of this contentious and divisive environment that we're living in, I'm seeing so many leaders. They don't want to sit in the hot seat again, hottest seat on campus, and so they'll send an email, or they'll send a representative to go and you know,

Ethan Sawyer 44:21

E

what happens groups? What happens when someone sends a representative? What have you seen happen? Heather, in your experience, or you've,

A

Angel Perez 44:27

you've the rage climbs. The Rage climbs. And to be fair, sometimes you're not able to avoid the rage. You may be walking into situations, and again, I've done this many times where you know everybody's going to be angry, but I will tell you that they may not say it to your face, but people respect you for showing up. It's like, wow, that person showed up, even though they knew this was going to be hot. Lots of experience on that front on college campuses. Certainly have had experiences with this at NACAC and so to me, I just. I want to remind people that one of the best ways that, first of all, you can bring down the temperature is by showing up. Because my other experience is that lot of people will say things on social media that they will not say to your face, and so it's really and the other thing is that showing up humanizes you. You know, oftentimes when you are a leader, people only know you through when they see you on a podcast or when they see you on stage, or maybe they see you at a staff or faculty meeting. They don't know you personally when you show up in person. It does sort of humanize you, and people are often reminding that's an actual human being, and so I just really believe in the power of showing up, especially when it's hard.

E

Ethan Sawyer 45:45

I want to name something that I was came to my attention through a guy named Jim Dettmer from the conscious leadership group, where he he talks about showing up in a slightly different way, but he talks about it as it relates to leadership. And one of the questions that he asks, and he's got a whole book on this that we'll link to in the show notes. But is, can you reliably show up in such a way that your very presence creates transformation? And the idea here is that there's a way that we can show up as humans with one another and be in presence with one another, that just that presence can start to shift the room. And one of the things that I think part of like doing the inner work is being able to be and hold, you know, folks call it holding space, but being able to sort of relax into into the larger trust and a larger sense of like dropping in. Sometimes folks call it dropping in, but being in such a way that someone goes, Ah, okay, I can look you in the eye. I can see here we are both humans, humaning together. And it bring folks into presence in such a way that has a just on its own, a co regulating, yeah, calming effect.

Angel Perez 47:08

A

Yeah. You call it co regulating. I say it's, it's bringing down the temperature, because, again, there's so many heated moments. There's a I actually write about just be a human. And I think so many leaders are not being human right now, not because they don't intend to, but again, because they feel like they need to play this role. And I think in the new age of leadership, this would be another superpower. It's just be a human. People want to know that you have empathy. People want to know that you have struggle. You know, one of the things that I do after I make a difficult decision, is I also let people know that was really hard, that was a really difficult decision. I struggled with that. And here's the why that people want to know that you have empathy, that you have deep concern, that you struggle as well. I think it's one of the reasons you know you and I do a podcast about self care or burnout, and we put ourselves out there and say, Yeah, we struggle with this too. And 1000s of people want to listen to it, right? Because we're just trying to be human. We're not special. We just happen to hold these roles, but we're just like everybody else.

E

Ethan Sawyer 48:13

The way I talk about it to the coaches that I work with at CEG is like, we we need to be the calm in the storm. And I don't mean we always need to be the calm in the storm, and that every single interaction needs to be totally calm, but I think that what we can work on cultivating is access to the calm when the storm is happening. Yes, and I think that's, to me, work really worth doing,

A

Angel Perez 48:46

absolutely, and it's hard work doing, but most people don't. I think that's the challenge that most people are so concerned with the to do list, and this has to happen in an organization that that kind of work is actually what builds trust. It's actually what builds community, and it's what moves organizations forward. But most people put it as like, Oh, that's a that's a touchy feely thing that you need to do. Again, this is my experience. But every organization that I've been a part of and where I've served as a leader investing strategically in that is really what's made the organization successful. Yeah,

E

Ethan Sawyer 49:25

it's interesting. When I think about the coaches that I've interviewed over the years, or that I've worked with, you can sort of sense this, like there's sort of a presence, a willingness to be with self and with other in a way that you know you can sort of sense if someone's willing to access that calm within themselves, and I think that that's something that that can be cultivated

A

Angel Perez 49:47

well, and I will say it has to start with the leader, because that isn't something that happens unless people feel like they have permission. And I've learned that over time that people come into a lot. Workspaces, I will tell you, I have learned there's a lot of workplace trauma out there, and people come into a lot of work spaces not knowing, can I show up? Can I be my full self? Can I be vulnerable here? And unless the leader is saying, yes, that's okay, and by the way, not just saying but doing themselves and modeling the behavior, it's never going to trickle down.

Ethan Sawyer 50:24

E

We've mentioned deep work a few times. The Deep Work hypothesis, this is from Colin Newport, is this deep work is becoming increasingly valuable at the same time that it's becoming increasingly rare. Therefore, if you cultivate this skill, you'll thrive. How do you think about deep work and how has it become important in your life? Yeah, well,

A

Angel Perez 50:48

first of all, kudos to you, because you introduced me to Cal Newport. I didn't know who the guy was, and now I'm his number one fan, or maybe number two after you. But you know, have read his book slow productivity, and have become a fan of deep work and in today's challenging leadership environment where you're always being asked to react, respond, do, what I'm realizing is that if you don't set out time to do deep work. And for me, deep work means writing, thinking strategy, maybe it's creating content or thinking about what are some of the things that I want to produce in the next year, or writing a book that was deep work as well. You're never going to move things forward again. You're always going to be in reaction mode. And I will say this is a relatively new thing for me. I would say probably in the last year and a half, I was not someone who did a lot of deep work. Or when I did it was in the sidelines, which means it didn't happen very often, but now I dedicate time to it. I have time on my calendar, usually it's Mondays and Fridays that I have deep work days where it's like, okay, that's when I want to write the article. That's when I'm going to work on the strategic plan. Or for me, deep work could also be like board presentations, like, what's the story that I want to tell to the board, and how do I want to inspire them to move along with me? So anything that requires really like what I call heavy level thinking and strategy. But what I found is that if you don't plan for it, if you don't put it on the calendar, it's not going to happen. And again, a lot of us see it as an extracurricular. I've now come to realize that, because the world is moving at such a fast pace, as Justin Trudeau said, if we don't put deep work on, it's never going to happen. And again, I have to give kudos to you, not just for the intro to Cal Newport, but also I think you do deep work really, really well, like I'm trying to follow your lead here.

Ethan Sawyer 52:42

E

Thanks. Yeah, it's, I appreciate that affirmation. It's something that, again, I think there's like a privileged position that I'm coming from where I've got enough folks that I'm working with, who are, you know, working on different parts of the thing. I imagine a counselor listening to this and going, how do I do that? I just can't do that. Yeah, I just that's just not realistic for me. And so what I want to say, and actually, I also know that there are exceptions to this, because I know counselors High School, counselors in, you know, public and charter schools, who are also able to find time to do this. There's a little article that we'll link in the show notes to this. It's like maker time versus manager time. And that's a little bit we're talking about here, that there's certain things that you just need to block out time, and you need to just, you know, be boundaried around it. But what I want to say is, like, as an experiment, you know, a way that you could try this would be potentially to go, okay for this hour at whatever time, one day a week, I'm just gonna shut my door and I'm gonna just protect this time for you know, have no meetings and just see what happens, see what that's like. And again, some people were like, preaching to the choir here, and they're like, Yep, I totally do that after, you know, my lunch hour is my hour, yeah. And I just want to just suggest it as an experiment, one hour a week to just see what would that look like and what could potentially happen during that time. Because the like you said earlier, those those insights, those moments, that the time to just slow down, to think, for me, has been absolutely transformational, such so much so that I got greedy about it, and I was like, could I do this every day? Could I get away with that, yeah, and it's gotten to the point where, yeah, I feel really protective of it. And like you said earlier, about a different point, it's a muscle that that has to be built, because I was meeting, you know, 12 meetings a day, you know, just back to back to back to back. And you look at

A

Angel Perez 54:35

was my Wednesday. So let's talk about that.

E

Ethan Sawyer 54:38

Well, we got a different we got different jobs now, but, you know, and I also held it as a badge of pride to be honest. Yes, yes, you know, I would like, I would like, I think, if I'm honest, I would hope that sometimes, when I was screen sharing, that people could see my Google Calendar, because they would see how busy I was and how look how important I am. But

A

Angel Perez 54:55

it takes a mindset shift, because we shouldn't be proud of that, right? And I do think I want to double click on what Ethan just said, because I'd like to challenge every single person listening to really think about your calendar, even if you're working in some of the most hectic environments, there is some control that you have. I think for so many years, I made the excuse that I just don't have control, I just don't control my calendar. And now looking back, I'm like, Yeah, I could have done. I could have found an hour, even an hour a week to start with, right? And I worked at a high school. A lot of people don't know this about me. I worked for at a public high school in New York City for several years, and so I know what it's like to have kids at your door, you know, banging down your door and saying, Mr. Perez, I got an S, A, T question that you there are ways that you can also, again, create the boundaries and the guard rails, and maybe that means not doing it in the building, that that hour might be somewhere else. So I really would like to challenge everyone, because it has been transformative for the both of us. Yeah,

E

Ethan Sawyer 55:57

yeah, there's a whole separate thing we could talk at some point about boundaries. And I know that I've, I've been worse with boundaries in the past. You know, there were times when I was working on weekends and working at nights and texting with, you know, students or, you know, and there sort of were no boundaries. And it was, you know, I sometimes joke that like you you do it one way until it gets too hard and it got too hard, and so I started

Angel Perez 56:24

A

with the boundaries thing. So I really, I'd be delighted to take some lessons. Yeah, I'm very, as a lot of people know, I'm very accessible. Lots of people have my cell phone number, and so, which I love in some ways, again, because I want to be able to have that access to NACAC members and to our community, but that also means text all weekend, all night, and so that's that's one area I'm putting some some boundaries around. Especially love the Do Not Disturb button on my phone. But sometimes I wonder, like, how do I get better at this? So I'll take any advice you got.

E

Ethan Sawyer 56:59

Well, yeah, it just actually makes me curious to, like, dig deeper for a second is, like, what's what's wrong with that? Like, why is that actually a bad

A

Angel Perez 57:06

thing? You mean the constant texting,

E

Ethan Sawyer 57:10

yeah, just that people have this access to you and that you're texting, yeah, I don't.

A

Angel Perez 57:14

I think the access piece isn't the part that bothers me, because, again, I I grew up in this community, and so I know the community so well, and consider many people in the profession, friends, it's more that I think something happens when you get a text at 9pm on a Saturday night, that if you've had a day where you've kind of shut it down, you're giving it's really important to take mental breaks. It's really important to have time when you're just not thinking about the work, because I think you come back at it more refreshed. You come back at it. And all the research study shows this right, like you actually make better decisions as a result. And so for me, I think I'm trying to figure out, how do I find a little bit of healthy distance? And really the only way that I've been able to do it now is through some digital detoxes that I will intentionally say, Okay, on Saturday, digital detox, the phone is on, do not disturb. It's in the room. I don't look at it. Sometimes I'll let some of my staff members know, like, Hey, if you need me, it's not going to happen that day. You know, that's, that's the only way I've, I've done it,

Ethan Sawyer 58:18

E

yeah, you know, as you say that, I realize I present. I think is very accessible, and I think that's very true. Like, if you meet me at a conference, or, you know something, I'm I'm pretty present, and I'm like, down to be there with you. I do not text with my staff, you know, my organization, unless, unless we're, like, planning a thing that day, and it's like, hey, I'll be there in a few minutes. Or it's like, hey, we really need to talk. And if you look at our Slack channel on the weekends, is dead like crickets and good, and I'm glad. And that's something that I you know, if I have an itch to like, Ooh, I want to share this with folks, I will oftentimes be like, it can wait, you know, I'll send myself an email and send it, or I'll schedule my emails to come on Monday so that folks aren't getting stuff on the weekend. I gotta get better about that, because I know when I would get something from somebody, especially if they were in a position of, you know, power, it's like, oh, I should probably respond to this, and I don't want folks to have that expectation. So I think I set pretty strong boundaries. And I don't text with, like, people that I you know, not only people I work with, but like, you know, students and parents, unless there's, like, against some, you know, exception. And so I think there's a way that I've just set really clear boundaries around that I think because I was too anxious, honestly, like in other situations, I was just getting because I'm such a people pleaser and I'm such a caretaker, that I think I had to, you know, draw that boundary. And so that's actually I say that, and I realize there's like, a point of pride that, like, I'm proud that we

A

Angel Perez 59:46

don't slack on weekends. Yeah, no, I think that's a beautiful thing. Before we get

E

Ethan Sawyer 59:49

to the last one, I want to name something that you say in the article that really landed for me. You say this, many leaders are caught off guard when adversity strikes. Weeks responding with frustration or even disbelief. But the truth is, challenges are not interruptions to leadership. They are leadership, yes,

A

Angel Perez 1:00:09

especially in the world we're living in right now. And I know I keep saying that, but I think most of our listeners will know we're living in extraordinary times. I think for a really long time, I when I moved into leadership roles, I was frustrated all the time because I'm like, gosh, here's another problem, here's another challenge, here's another crisis. And it really took me a long time to figure out, oh, that's what leadership is. But I think so many of us are we need to do a mindset shift. So that's that's a big one for me, that if we shift our minds to understand that leadership is the crisis management and the problem solving. You know, I said this to some of my leadership team members. I said, if I were to strip away all of your titles and give you all a new one, it would be CPS, chief problem solver. So I now wake up with the mentality that every day I am going to work and I am going to solve some really, or maybe not solve, but be presented with really meaty, chunky problems, and that, to a certain extent, that is what I am here for. And if it doesn't happen, then it's like, Oh, wow. I'm actually surprised when that doesn't happen. But when you shift your mind to believe that that is your number one function and role. All of a sudden, when it arrives, you're almost excited, right? You're like, oh, here it is. It is. I was expecting you, you know? I mean, these days, I'll be honest. I'm like, Could we just go a little slower on the crises? I don't need them every day, but, but I think it shifts your mindset. And the other thing that's really shifted my mindset is I now ask myself, instead of saying what I used to say, which is, why is this happening, I now say, what can I learn from this? What am I here to learn? Because I now realize that I am a stronger leader today, because some of the adversity that I faced as a leader, a younger leader, and so now I just go into this mindset that I think I'm being prepared for larger, chunkier problems that are coming, and this is just a training ground. So I think more leaders should, should adopt that mindset.

Ethan Sawyer 1:02:14

E

This is so good, and it's I'm going to invoke my acting training again with something that my acting teacher in grad school actually said to me, which was, he said, When you go into an audition, you know, and it's a high stakes situation, you can sort of like, go in and shield yourself and hope that nothing goes wrong, and then what ends up happening, invariably, is like, someone that you're reading with forgets a line, or they somebody makes a sound, or something gets dropped in The corner, and it kind of throws you all off. Throws you all off. He said, Instead, I want you to go in and I want you to expect something to go wrong in the audition. Yes, just expect it. So then when it happens, you're like, up there it is. There it is. And second, well, this is now the third theater story slash example. But there was a director who every time he would lead a dress he would he would do an invited dress rehearsal. So a dress rehearsal, for those who aren't in the theater world, is when you invite people from, oftentimes from the outside, who are like friends and family, to come and watch, hey, this is our final practice before we're actually going to do this, quote, unquote, for real. And when he would bring people into the dress rehearsal, because it was sort of the actors were nervous, because this was the first time they had an audience, he would intentionally have the lighting person mess up the first lighting cue, nice, so that something would go wrong initially, and then the audience had that expectation of, well, this is a dress rehearsal. And so what it did is it sort of set everyone at ease where they weren't holding the expectation that everything had to go perfect. And the analogy here, for me is like, I think we can prepare folks for this as well. So not only hold ourselves with something is going to go wrong, but to just equip folks with that awareness and to say something's gonna go wrong. Yeah, let's expect it to so when it happens.

A

Angel Perez 1:04:00

I wish it was an equivalent of that for like, Leadership School, MBA school, or PhD school, you know, because, again, I think if we had adopted that mindset earlier in our careers, something is going to go wrong, yeah, and if it doesn't, lovely, right? But if you go in, it's almost like you're expecting it, and when it arrives, I love the you know, same thing you said, which is, oh, there you are. That's, that's my mindset now,

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:04:26

Angel, how do you keep an organization moving forward when it feels like you're, as you've said, putting out fires a lot of the time? Yeah,

Angel Perez 1:04:34

A

I think I first want to acknowledge that it's hard, and a lot of people are struggling with it right now, but I think there's a couple of things. One is you have to come into work every single day reminding of what your mission is. And at NACAC, it's a little bit easier. And the reason why is because when I get off the elevator on the fourth floor of our building, the first thing that hits you when you walk in is the mission and the vision of the. Organization. We did that purposefully. We painted it on the wall. We want people to know why we are here. But I think there's some practical things that you need to do. One is you need to build a strong team, because sometimes the leader is the person maybe putting out the fires, or is the one responding to crisis or media or so on and so forth. So you need a really strong team who has bought into the culture. Who's bought into the vision. And so I'm very fortunate that we have that at NACAC, but then there's some practical things I think that you can do as well. So I have an email management system actually called SaneBox. And this is not an advertisement for Sanebox, but I do love

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:05:34

them. Check out our link in the description for our promo code. I promise

A

Angel Perez 1:05:37

you Sanebox is not pay me, but my friends always say, like, you should do an ad for them. You love them so much, but it helps me to manage my my email. And one of the things that I do is there are two emails that pop up the first of the month. I have it programmed. They will pop up the first of the month, and it's the same thing that I see every month. The first is the first day letter that I wrote to the membership at NACAC, what did I say I was going to do? And I ask myself every month, when I read it on the first of the month, am I on course? Am I doing what I promised I would deliver on? The second is, every year, the board has goals for me and the board has goals for the organization, and we have organizational goals as well staff goals. Those pop up on the beginning of the month every single month. And so it sounds really simple, but it's actually really powerful, because on the months where I feel like we're off, I'm like, oh, whoa, we need to course correct. I haven't done anything to move us in that direction yet, and it's already the third month of the year, and we have goals, tracking systems, things like that. But I think constant reminders is really important because the distractions are so loud that there's, there's a it's really easy these days to just not move in the direction of what you said you were going to do. I

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:07:00

love this. I'm I'm gonna start doing this, like, I'm just hearing that, and I'm like, yo, that's something there with my leadership team. And the way that I'm gonna take it and, you know, tweak it, is, I think what I'd like to do is to create like, five commitments for myself, and I can write these down and and then, like you said, just email them to myself once a month. That feels so simple and so doable, if

A

Angel Perez 1:07:25

not. What happens is November rolls around, and you might ask yourself, what did we say we were going to do this year? Right? You know? And for me, because I report to a board, I have to be very accountable, right? And so I need to show that we've done this. But I also think it's powerful, because you can, you can actually bring your whole team along in doing that, and everybody could feel accountable, because it's important also to move the organization forward, that everyone feels like they have a role to play in doing that.

Ethan Sawyer 1:07:51

E

Yeah, and there's a way that we do that with our objectives and key results, like with our OKRs, they're woven into like our weekly check ins. We use software called 15 five, also not an ad, but just the software that does this. And when folks are doing their weekly check ins, did I do the things that I said I wanted to do? There's like, hey, and to what extent Am I moving forward on my objectives, the things that I set out at the start of the year? What I like about the word commitment is, I think there's something a little more vibes about it, like it's, it's a little bit less like, Am I hitting my numbers? Am I hitting my targets? And a little more like, my heart commitment. Like, how am I bought into? Like you said, the larger enterprise, the larger thing that we're doing, the part of this that's that that is asking a little bit more of me as a human that feels really, really good. There's a thing that we do that I think I've told I don't know if I've told you about this, but a thing that we do in terms of our leadership team. When we do performance reviews, we do it fly on the wall style. And so I joked earlier that I was going to talk about you behind your back, in front of you, like that's how we do our reviews. So we will gather in a room and we'll be doing Devon's review. And we go, okay, Devin, we're gonna do your review now. And the three of us will talk about Devin as though he's not there while he's there, okay? And we will check in with, like, how, what level spicy does he want? You know, medium, mild or, you know, or hot? Oh, I like that. And we will basically say, and we speak about him the third person, and we do this over zoom, we go, you know, here's the thing I think Devin really needs to work on. And I don't know if he's really looking at it right now.

A

Angel Perez 1:09:30

And when you say three people, is this Devin and his supervisor assuming, well, so,

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:09:35

so it's, it's four of us who sort of, like, we're sort of, because

A

Angel Perez 1:09:39

this is unusual to have performance evaluations who are more than one person, yeah,

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:09:45

well, it's more of a 360 situation. So, so we've got, you know, each of us are sort of writing these for one another. Got it, and it's, it's sort of discussing the 360 and we do it for half an hour. We set a timer, and then we once the timer goes off, we i. Quote, unquote, let him into the room and we check for impact. How was that? What did you notice? What resonated? And it felt super edgy to try to do this. We've done this two years in a row now, and we were like, this could go bad, wrong, but it's actually been incredibly connective and an opportunity for us to be even more transparent. And you know, you'd think it would be vulnerable for the person sitting outside the circle, but it's actually pretty vulnerable for, you know, for the people who are doing the sharing. But it's a little one that, in terms of, like, culture building, it was one that I thought of, I don't know what you said that made me think of it, but it's, it's a fun one. Well, you're

Angel Perez 1:10:34

A

doing something right? Because one thing that I'm in awe of your organization, if you don't have a lot of turnover, it really is extraordinary. And so there's something about the culture you've built that really lends itself to that. Yeah, I mean,

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:10:45

I think part of it too, is that we're, we're young, in a way, and, you know, we don't have, sort of, like, anything that's had time to be, like, entrenched, to sort of, you know, but talk to me in three years, and we'll,

A

Angel Perez 1:10:55

we'll see. Don't worry. I'll keep you honest. I'd love to talk about

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:10:59

this phrase, I don't know, how do you relate to when you're in a situation and you're being asked to know and you just don't know, like, how do you handle that?

A

Angel Perez 1:11:12

This is another thing where I've evolved over time. I think in the beginning, when I took on leadership roles, I felt like, oh my god, I should know everything. And now I'm actually in a very different phase where I realize the leader should know everything. If the leader knows everything, there's you said, shouldn't, should not, yeah, let me be clear, the leader should not know everything. If they know everything, there's some serious micromanaging going on in the organization, and there's just no human possible way of knowing everything. And so I am actually very comfortable saying I don't know. I will even say this during a board meeting where someone asked me a question, and I will say I actually don't have the answer to that, but I know where to get it, and I will get back to you on that. I think it's really important for leaders to be vulnerable in that way, it also empowers your staff. And so one of the things we do this is like, NACA insider speak here, but at our board meeting, we have our boards sit together, but then my leadership team actually is in the board meeting as well. And by the way, I have come to realize that that is not necessarily a normal practice, but I feel that's really important one, because I want them to observe and understand everything that's going on, but also because it takes the pressure off of me knowing everything. So when the board asks something about policy and advocacy, I turn over to David Hawkins, who is our Chief education and policy officer and say, Why doesn't David tell us about that? Right? So it takes a little bit of the pressure off. But I think more leaders need to be comfortable saying, I don't know, and you can really get yourself into a lot of trouble trying to wing it and pretend like you know, that's where you lose trust.

Ethan Sawyer 1:12:57

E

Yeah, I'm so with you. So let's just do a little self evaluation moment in terms of these seven superpowers that you shared. And I'm gonna repeat them for folks, just for folks who like taking notes, who are like, What were they talking about? We've talked so far. Actually, let me give you the question ahead of time, and then I'm gonna say 'em. And I wanna, I wanna add the question is, which of these you feel like you could kind of pat yourself on the back and be like, Yeah, I've really, I've got that one locked in, and which is the one that you're like, that's the one I hope to work on, and a year from now, you hope to have made progress on. So I'm going to repeat them here. Solitude, the art of detachment, inspiration through inclusivity, mastering self management, the power of showing up deep work and shifting your mindset. Which one of you got locked in feeling proud of and which one of you like? That's the one I want to work on most. Yeah,

A

Angel Perez 1:13:54

several can be the answer to both, but I think I will start with, you know, I feel like I've gotten pretty good at detachment, and I'm grateful for it, because we are living in times that require some serious detachment, and so again, not that there aren't moments that that get to me, but I've become so practiced at the art of not taking things personally. I read a lot about stoicism, and that's actually been very helpful to me. I'm a big fan of Ryan Holiday and his work. I actually have gifted those books to my team, and we now read them together. And actually, we're sitting in a room with a stoicism quote right here from Marcus Aurelius. So I know that you're a fan as well. And so I think through my own study, philosophical study, but then the practice, I think that's, that's the part again, it's never going to be 100% but I feel, I feel pretty good about that one.

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:14:45

Which one you a year from now, you'll be like, that's the one that I've I've been working on.

A

Angel Perez 1:14:49

I'm going to say two. So I'm going to cheat here. One is deep work. You know, my schedule is highly interrupted, and so while the deep work is on the calendar, it gets in. Corrupted a lot. I'm proud that I push back as much as I can, but there are a lot of fires that I put out, and so I want to do more deep work, because when I do it, I get to produce at such a high level. And I think the organization benefits, our members benefit. But then the other piece that I will, I think it will be a lifetime commitment, which is self management, you know, I think caring for ourselves and having healthy practices and doing, you know, setting boundaries, all of those things, particularly when you're in leadership roles where you are being pushed in so many different directions, are really challenging. So I'm really proud that I've been able to practice some things that I'm really committed to, but then I fall off the wagon on other things. And so I know you and I hold each other accountable for those things sometimes. So a year from now, I'd like to say that I've, I've continued to build that muscle. So I'm curious, what about you,

Ethan Sawyer 1:15:59

E

like I said at the start, I think the deep work one, I want to, like, pat myself on the back, or, you know, give myself a toast or something. Because I think I've done that one to a large extent I'm doing as much as I would like right now. In terms of deep work, I don't want to be like, let me take six hours a day. No, I the three is great. I think the one that I need to work on most is, again, coming back to that quote of like, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. I think there are times still speaking about inclusivity, where I want to, like, sort of muscle the thing up the hill on my own, and I really need to just, like, ask myself, like, what is this about? Like, what's driving me? Because it's usually some form of anxiety, or some form of, like, I said, manufactured urgency that doesn't actually exist. Or I'm just sort of telling myself, like, well, I need to do this. Or, you know, there's some sort of extra efforting that kicks in and I get, kind of, like, I would call it like, kind of, I'm the oldest of five siblings, so kind of like, big big like, brother energy, not big brother, like the government. But I'm kind of like, well, I'm gonna do this. I'm just hand Give it to me, and I sort of like, kind of steamroll, and I kind of like, push the thing forward. And I think it's not good for anyone. Like, it's not good for me. It ends up being sort of not just not productive, but sometimes counterproductive. And I think I can leave folks feeling a little bit like, you know, not bought in, is the word, but like, not not like, I don't know, not included, you know, and sometimes not heard. And so I think that's something that I really need to work on. I think it's the thing that I hope to say a year from now that, like, I had fewer instances than the year prior where I was like, just sort of being like, well, I'll do it.

A

Angel Perez 1:17:47

I wonder if shifting your mindset would help. One of the things that's helped me, and again, I'm not perfect at it, but I shifted my mindset around this because I too, like to move very fast that when you shift your mindset to I need to test these ideas with other people to make sure that I'm not making a poor decision here. It helps you go a little bit slower, because oftentimes I used to come up and probably still do with all kinds of ideas that are not great and or that there is a train wreck that is coming, and someone on my team is saying, like, you're not seeing this because you have blinders on. You're so excited about this idea. Here are some of the things that you sort of need to think about. And so I've come to appreciate moving a little bit slower. But the Before, I used to think about it as like, why aren't they excited about this idea? I'm just frustrated that they're not coming again. Aren't they on board, plus people, and now I realize, especially because I have a team that I've worked with for a long time now, and they all care so much about the organization and the mission that I know that they wouldn't want to do anything to put the organization in jeopardy, that when they push back on me and they do a lot, they do it out of care. And I think having shifted my mindset around that again doesn't make me take it personal, but sometimes it makes me slow down, and sometimes it makes me go, that is not the hill I want to die on. I'm gonna let that idea go. Yeah,

Ethan Sawyer 1:19:17

E

and as I hear you say that I'm like, there's some part of me that like that goes, Wait, no, but I do do this sometimes, and that's true. There are times when I definitely do get buy in and ask for a lot of people, but it's just like, there's sometimes this something that clicks in, where I sort of go, it's gonna take a force of will to get this done. And I'm so here for it, and I'm sort of like wanting to like, exercise that force of will and wanting to, like, I hear pride, yeah, yeah. Like, I want to, I mean, it's sort of like, well, it's almost like I want to, like, exercise this muscle where it's sort of like I can, you know, show my, I don't know what it is my ability to execute things or something, and I think that's something that I really need to look at. Is. Like, what's the what's driving that? You know, I think

A

Angel Perez 1:20:03

we all have a piece of it, so I think this resonates deeply. So

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:20:07

at the end of our last podcast, I said to you, what a year from now, would you like to be able to say that you are better at or that you've shifted in your life? And I said the same thing, and what you said, because I just listened to it, was, you wanted to be better at schedule management, and you wanted to be better about saying no. And I said I wanted to have a regular workout routine with cardio and strength training so check in, time, accountability time. How are you doing as it relates to schedule management and saying no,

A

Angel Perez 1:20:43

yeah, so I'm actually proud to say that both are better. They're definitely not where I would like them to be. But Major shout out to my assistant, Helen Hernandez, who has really helped me with schedule management and really tries to help me put in time blocks for deep work, and all of that this year has just been so chaotic that it's been really challenging to stick to the intention. And so that part is where I need to work a little bit more. The saying no is also something that I'm so excited I am saying no more, but I am not saying no enough. And so that is a work in progress, but I am excited that, like, I say no or on a more regular basis now than I ever have before. And every time I do it, it's, it's almost like I get a little endorphin. Like, yes, I did that, because it's actually really hard for me to say no. Same,

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:21:41

my check in is, I am proud to report that I have a coach now that I work with once a week. Nice. I do too. Do you? Yeah, we work virtually, which is really great. And so I'm and I'm playing pickleball so and to me, gives me exercises during the week. On a good week, I do them five times a week on a So, so week, I'll do them two times a week, you know. So I would say that I'm like 50% there with that one. In terms of cardio, I'm playing pickleball three times a week, so that's feeling like pretty good, pretty awkward, and sometimes even four times a week. So I would say that I would give myself like, if I'm being hard, I would give myself a c plus, but maybe I could be generous enough to give myself a b minus in terms of, like, because I really wanted to have something every day. So I'm feeling called in to to, like, renew that commitment, and to be like, No, actually, I'd like to get be getting an A in a year, but let's just, let's do a new one. So what would you like to say a year from now, when we do this again, that you have shifted in your life. What's changed for you a year from now? I

Angel Perez 1:22:45

A

don't know about change. Maybe that's not what I'm going to lead with. But the immediate thing that I thought of when you asked the question was that a year from now, I would like to say I was the calm in the storm. I do feel like we're living in a storm right now, but in order to get through that, like I keep thinking of the word equanimity and, you know, peace and stillness, that in order to get through that, you do have to find a way to be still and to be quiet and thoughtful and meditate and solitude, all of that. And I also think it's not just on a personal level, but also from a leadership perspective, that I do think a leader's job is to be the calm in the storm. And I think this year will test all of us tremendously. And it's an intention I'm setting, and I'd love for you to ask me this question a year from now and see how we did.

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:23:37

And I actually love to get maybe as preparation, I'll ask people around you, like, I'll ask your staff, or I'll do a little poll and be like, hey, to what extent was angel to call him the stuff,

A

Angel Perez 1:23:48

yeah, and, you know, they'll be honest.

E

Ethan Sawyer 1:23:52

So Angel, thanks. Thanks for being here and sharing time with me. I'm really grateful.

A

Angel Perez 1:23:56

It's always so fun to be here. Good to see you, my friend.

Ethan Sawyer 1:24:02

E

You Thanks friends as ever for listening. You can catch the show notes at college essay guy.com/podcast if you want to find out about any of our upcoming events, including our free webinars, our pay what you can courses, just go to college essay guy.com and opt into pretty much anything, including a free guide to the personal statement. If you're a student working on the personal statement, we've got a parent's handbook to the admission process and a whole bunch of resources for counselors. Thanks again. And stay curious. You.