The Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous Environment: Institutional Responses

This AGB blog post is the third in a series on mental wellness. Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.

If these times feel like crisis, they are. The world at large is in crisis with climate and transportation disasters, increasing authoritarianism, domestic and international crises, and of course, the attacks on higher education in the United States. We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) policy and regulatory environment.

Every individual who is associated with your institution feels it: supporters, alumni, faculty and staff members, students, and families. They also feel the challenges in their own lives that these times stir up. It’s time to plan how you might help your institution and its constituents stay calm, carry on, and survive this new reality.

Responding to crises involves planning, communication, and follow-up to develop and sustain engagement. Engagement starts now: Meet and plan with stakeholders who support leadership development, communications, fundraising, marketing, campus life, and other key functions. Also meet with students and others impacted. Identify everyone’s key concerns. Then, consider each of the action areas below, craft a plan, and implement it.

These “C’s” are part of Kenneth Ginsburg’s “Seven C’s of Resilience.” This evidence-based approach is something to consider using—building tools in each “C” component for leaders, students, and alumni—to help insulate your campus community against the reality of VUCA environments.

Communication

You have a communications department with highly skilled people. Count on them to help you navigate the communication needed as you plan action to counter the impact of living and working in a VUCA environment. Educate them about the impact of crisis on human performance. Set the boundaries by defining tone and strategic priorities for these professionals. This helps them build an organizational campaign.

Can they create a campaign that highlights and focuses on good things that are happening? When and where will be the consistent space be to respond? Is there a place for a talking hub, where people simply listen? How will they publicize it?

This isn’t a campaign of divisiveness. It’s one of keeping people informed, soothing them with good news, letting them know in non-competitive, non-violent language what’s going on.

Community

Rather than medicalizing the misery and anxiety of these times, consider them opportunities to democratize human angst with community response. The four universal needs we all have are recognition, affection, acceptance, and love. At the core is creation of positive, reliable, consistent connections that enable all four needs to be met in healthy ways.

Connections

Connections are the heart of attachment, beginning with helping infants become able to tolerate distress when they experience it. Adults need this skill too, and campuses can create pockets where it happens. For example, the impact of a “Talk and Tea” hub, set up and taken down every day at the same time (or open continuously) can be profound. It is simply a place where people are offered a cup of tea and a place to be listened to.

Coping

When campus organizations host small-group potluck meals to which people bring their favorite dish and talk about what made it their favorite dish, they are bathing their brains in feel-good chemicals while strengthening connections with others. Likewise, this response happens when they talk about their favorite music, favorite gift, or favorite anything. Connection is critical because it fuels coping skills. Coping skills are often underdeveloped, partly because families and caregivers might not have such skills to pass on themselves. Nowadays, your students, faculty, and staff might rely on digital devices to provide most of their self-soothing, trance-inducing coping—we all need better ways to develop and maintain these skills, such as personal interactions.

We all need more skill in “naming and taming” emotions and self-regulation, which we call “elastic emotions.” We also need more skills for coping with chronic fear, which requires individuals to develop a stronger baseline of comfort and confidence.

This is especially true for campus leaders and board members who must continually repress their emotions, which might have tremendous costs for their health.

Presidents and boards need to recognize the VUCA environment facing their colleges and universities. Simple approaches are easier to implement when times are tough, so in this moment, keep it simple and recognize that financial costs aren’t good indicators of success.

Add more mental health clinicians? You can do that—but you probably can’t add enough to deal with everyone’s needs. And, many needs can be reduced by strengthening protective factors like the elements of resilience that lend themselves to broader usage. Do something communitywide and institutionwide first to cement your stakeholders’ commitment to courage and bravery in the face of the onslaught. Start with something low-cost, high yield, like any of the ideas offered in this post or Part 1 and Part 2.

Elizabeth Power, MEd, is the founder of the Trauma Informed Academy and an adjunct instructor in psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center.