PODCAST | How To Hire Like A President (Feat. Dr. Philip Ryken)

Resources:

https://www.wheaton.edu/about-wheaton/

https://www.wheaton.edu/admissions-and-aid/

Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, manager of Marketing and Business Development here at Vanderbloemen.
In today's podcast, William talks with Dr. Philip Ryken. Dr. Ryken is a minister, author, and now, president of Wheaton College. Dr. Ryken grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, and has worked there for 13 years. They discuss what to look for when hiring and how to have an effective hiring process in Christian higher education. Dr. Ryken shares tangible tips for bringing on new team members to the staff and the benefits of having a diverse staff. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

William Vanderbloemen:
Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. I'm thrilled to have with me Phil Ryken. Phil is the president at Wheaton College. Phil, thank you so much for being with us today.

Dr. Philip Ryken:
For sure. God bless you, William. I do think Wheaton is blessed to have a global influence. That was the vision of the very simple men and women that just knelt down in the grass to pray that God would help them start a college. They didn't have any money. They didn't have any students. They didn't have any faculty. But they didn't have a lot of vision, and they really had a lot of trust in a God who answers prayer. We're grateful for that, for sure.
This is my 13th year at Wheaton College. Although, I grew up here, so I've spent more than half a lifetime here. But most recently, I served as senior minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in downtown Philadelphia. My wife, Lisa, and I and our five children were in Philadelphia for 15 years before coming to Wheaton.

William Vanderbloemen:
Folks, you really shouldn't brag on biblical qualities, but I think Phil and I are both showing the ability to love our enemies at this point. Because tonight, as we're recording, the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies will square off in a pretty important game.

Dr. Philip Ryken:
Yeah. I'll try not to say anything kind about the Houston organization. I'm actually a St. Louis Cardinal fan, die hard. But we absolutely do, as a family, root for the Phillies. We're a little disappointed not to see the Phanatic in some kind of Halloween outfit last night.

William:
It's love your enemy day on the podcast then. Yeah, here's to a good game.
Well, Phil, let's jump in. You have done a marvelous job of building your presidential cabinet, or if you're a headmaster to school, your direct reports, your circle of leadership team. I just wonder if you could tell us what are some of the building blocks for looking for the people that are going to report directly to you? And then after you run through the building blocks, I'd love to hear what, if anything, has changed since the world fell apart and is getting rebuilt with the pandemic.

Dr. Philip Ryken:
Yeah. Those are great questions, William. I'll say, I've been in a primary leadership role for 25 years plus now, and I have been so greatly blessed to work with outstanding people every one of those years, both at Tenth Presbyterian Church and here at Wheaton College. One of the things I really like about these roles, first of all, I love being on a team. I love just the atmosphere, the mutual support, that sense of working together for a common cause. One of the things I really love about it is working with gifted people who have expertise, and maybe even some character traits, certainly relational abilities that you don't have but that your team needs. I've just learned so much from my colleagues over the years.
In terms of the whole hiring process, I took a view when I came to Wheaton College, one of the first things I communicated to the leadership team is, "I am absolutely not expecting anyone on this leadership team to resign. I'm hoping that you feel good about the ongoing mission of Wheaton College and believe that we could try to work together to fulfill that mission." Not that there's never a place for making transitions and having, as it were, your people. But I also think, I'm think good leaders can work with a wide variety of people and really try to get the best out of them. So, I was glad to inherit a really good team. And then as time has gone on for all kinds of different reasons, I have had to hire, and also made a decision to expand our team.
I'll just comment, first of all, I absolutely am looking for somebody who understands and wholeheartedly supports the mission of Wheaton College, its Christ-centered, liberal arts, higher education mission, and really understands that in a deep way. It doesn't have to be somebody that was educated at Wheaton. It doesn't have to be somebody that had a connection with Wheaton at all, but they do have to have a sense of that shared mission.
I'm not a big person for a lot of ego, I have to say. People that are more concerned about the mission than about their own reputation or careers, that's very highly valued for me. I think we just get a lot more done when we're less concerned about who gets the credit. Don't feel like we have to have turf wars with other people on our leadership team. But bring a lot of Christ-honoring humility to our work. Not taking ourselves too seriously, but taking the work seriously.
I really like what Paul says early on in Romans 12. I think people are very familiar with the opening two versus of that chapter, but he goes on to talk about how, according to the grace that is given to each one of us, we should look at ourselves with sober judgment, is the word that he used. Not thinking too highly of ourselves, which is really easy to do. But it's part of God's gracious work in us to understand what our gifts are, how they fit in, not to be self-deprecating about them, but actually, just to use them, and not to be self-aggrandizing. That whole constellation of character traits is really important for me.
I will also say a real capacity for hard work. I really like working with people that are high energy, and therefore, productive, and really give themselves to the work in that sense. That's something I'm looking for. I definitely value highly an ability to consider somebody else's point of view, a different argument or perspective, and not to dismiss it but actually enter into it and receive it, so that we can have a give and take that leads to good outcomes. I like to work towards consensus whenever possible, but that takes certain relational dispositions within a leadership team.
I'll just say one more thing. I know I've said a lot in this answer. I mean, if you're asking me what I'm looking for in a team, that's just a really rich topic.

William:
Yeah.

Dr. Philip Ryken:
In terms of things that have changed because of COVID. I'll mention two. One is placing a higher value on the need for innovation. When I came to Wheaton College, I said to the trustees, "Look, if you're looking for somebody who's highly innovative and kind of a visionary, that's really not something I can do just individually out of my gifts. What I think I can do is collaborate with a team and lead a team that captures a vision and is innovative." You have to have people on your team that have that innovative spark. It's not something, historically, we've been particularly good at Wheaton College, but it's become more important. We've demonstrated that I think during this COVID season.
I also have to say, and we could get into the world of remote work and all of that, I value people who place a value on deeply human connections. We can use digital media, like the conversation we're having, to build on a relationship. It's hard to do that, to use that as the place of really establishing that relationship. So, people need to enter into the residential community that Wheaton College has, even though we make somewhat greater allowances for remote work than we have before. That's probably a longer answer than you wanted, but those are things that are top of mind for me, William.

William:
No, no. I'm hearing more and more that the digital is an enhancement. It's better than a phone call, but I think ... I've said for a long time, if digital were all it's cracked up to be, wouldn't Jesus have just Zoomed it in, right? It's something-

Dr. Philip Ryken:
Well, no, I actually think ... One thing I'll say as a theologian, sometimes people are making an argument for doing a certain thing online that I think we could do better life on life. I'll just say, that's too gnostic for us. That was the heresy that denied the importance of physical humanity. The reason gnosticism is wrong is because the incarnation is right. That's how God has chosen to give Himself to us, in the incarnate Christ. That has analogies, I think, for how we live our embodied lives.

William:
That's right. How do you test for innovation when you're interviewing somebody? You need this new sense of- I mean, there's innovative and then there's just wild ideas, right?

Dr. Philip Ryken:
Yeah. I'll just say maybe a word of encouragement to school leaders that are out there, maybe some other folks in higher education, hiring is really tough. That's why Wheaton has been grateful to partner with Vanderbloemen, I don't mind saying, for a really important hire. I remember a time, it was early on in my pastoral career, I was like, "I feel like I need to do a better job with hiring. I've got an important hire coming up. This is an area I need to learn more about."
So, I contacted a businessman in our church who I knew was very successful. I knew he was successful because when I went to visit him, he was in a corner office way up in a building in Philadelphia. If you got a corner office, you know what you're doing. I said, "Hey, tell me about hiring. What do you know about ... I want to learn everything you know about hiring." He said, "I don't know anything about hiring. The only thing I know about hiring is that I usually know within a half hour of when somebody has started, whether it was a good decision or a mistake, and by then it's too late." That's just a word on how difficult it is to make a good hire.
A couple of things that we've found helpful in a hiring process. One is having a pretty diverse team doing the hire. We have tended at Wheaton to use larger teams. I mean, it's not uncommon for us to have 10 people on a hiring team. It's less efficient. It takes longer. But I also think you get to know a candidate better. And I always feel like every person has contributed to a deeper understanding of these candidates, what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are.
On innovation specifically, I think past record is the best thing to go on for innovation. I think that's true for a lot of things. But you don't suddenly become innovative, you've been demonstrating that with the changes that you've brought to the organizations that you serve. I think the true innovators, it's pretty obvious that they are truly innovative. If you're trying to figure out, "Is this person innovative or not?" It's kind of like the Chicago Bears right now trying to figure out if Justin Fields is a great quarterback or not. If you're asking that question, he's not a great quarterback. He's got to really show it on the field, which I think he kind of did this last week. But anyway, for innovation specifically, even more so than other areas, I would value past experience and track record.

William:
Yeah, my experience is nearly everyone gets less innovative with age. It's kind of like flexibility. Your body just gets less flexible as you get older. That's a biological fact. I think if you don't see innovation in the past, of their body of work, you're not going to see it in the future [inaudible 00:12:12].

Dr. Philip Ryken:
Yeah, great comment. I think we need to be looking for our positions just across a wide spectrum of ages. But I do think that oftentimes there is ... you're looking for so many more experienced because you don't want to make a risky hire. I really think in hiring, that can be a great opportunity for organizations to get somebody with outstanding potential that's going to make maybe even after your organization an even bigger contribution down the road. Don't be afraid to notice the talent that somebody has, and to recognize the importance of that and the opportunity of shaping that. That's probably more true for innovation than anything else.
I think over time, the other thing that happens, and I've been thinking about this a bit, I love the team I work with right now. Am I going to love it the same way five years and 10 years from now? No. We're going to need to bring in some new talent in some way, or at least get that innovative spark emerging leaders actively present within the life of our institution, even if it's not on the top leadership team. So, hire that young talent is what I'm encouraging.

Christa Neidig:
Hiring is getting harder, and you need the right people to accomplish your mission. Learn how we can help you find the right people for your team today. Contact us to get started. We would love to help.

William:
Talk to me about span of care. How many people are in that cabinet? How many are directly reporting to you?

Dr. Philip Ryken:
Yeah, great question. I have a bias towards fewer rather than more direct reports, partly just for my own bandwidth and own time, and what I can invest in those relationships. I inherited a cabinet of only six, including me. So, that cabinet had five direct reports. I have other direct reports, which I'll mention in a moment. We expanded to a cabinet of eight. We did that for constellation of mission critical reasons. One is we had some areas where we felt we needed to improve, and we needed top leadership at the cabinet level to do that. One of those areas was admissions and enrollment. The other area was intercultural engagement. Everything it means to deal with people from diverse backgrounds, both in a North American and in a global context. We needed somebody with real expertise in that area within the cabinet.
Also, growing the cabinet gave us an opportunity to have a more diverse team with people from more ethnic backgrounds, having more women on the cabinet. Those things have all been super valuable for us. I don't really care how well you think you understand other people's life context, you do not understand it the way they understand it from the inside. Just the connections you can make across your community with a more diverse team. Those are some of the reasons we expanded.
Of those seven cabinet members, six ... well, really, all seven are direct reports. One of them has a dual reporting relationship, but those are my seven primary reporting relationships. Also, the Wheaton College chaplain does not serve on our cabinet for a variety of reasons, but is a direct report. And then the head of my own office staff is also a direct report. So, I have nine, which is about as many as I would want to have.

William:
Yeah, that's about eight more than I have right now. I've gone back and forth with different models as our company has grown and changed. I don't know if there's a ... a perfect number is probably perfect for the organization in the season that you're in. [inaudible 00:15:54].

Dr. Philip Ryken:
And for the leader, frankly. I like to have pretty direct information about all the different aspects of what's happening at Wheaton College. I don't want to be too ... I don't want it to be too mediated. I want it to be more immediate. If that's what you want, you probably need more direct reports.

William:
Yeah. Yeah. That's good. If you had to whittle your cabinet down to three ... if you could only have three direct reports, in your context, I know it's different than everywhere else, but in your context, what are the three most mission critical roles at this moment in your work?

Dr. Philip Ryken:
Yeah. I actually think that that cannot be done, and here's why. Our finance and operations, with its care of our campus landscape and facilities and finance, I couldn't just say, "Ah, no, we don't need that." Academics is our mission, so we need our chief academic officer involved. We've got steady flow of gifted students from all over the world for our graduate and undergraduate programs. Our advancement team, we're dependent on not just tuition but also generous giving to Wheaton College. Just all of those roles. I think we've got the roles that are really critical.
Now, if we were a smaller campus, possibly some of those roles could be combined or something. But we're a large organization with a hundred million dollar budget, with 750 employees. This is a big operation. I don't see too much ... I certainly couldn't whittle it down to three. I don't like the question, William. I like the question in this regard. It's worth thinking about and not just assuming you've got the structure you need. But actually stepping back to assess that, and also trying to do things as efficiently as possible. It's a good question from that standpoint.

William:
Excellent. Excellent. We've hit the core of what I want to touch on, but let's jump to a couple different things. One that we were talking about before we started the interview. We were talking about your chaplain. You said he has a very rare gift on a college campus. Tell our listeners kind of what you [inaudible 00:18:09].

Dr. Philip Ryken:
Yeah. Well, Angulus Wilson has a lot of gifts. Just a tremendous heart for ministry and commitment to prayer. He sends a little video at the beginning of each week to the entire community, just setting a spiritual tone. Just one verse, a scripture, and a few comments and a beautiful prayer. I mean, he has a lot of gifts. But not every preacher can go short as well as long. I'm often asked on our campus to give a few remarks, a few remarks. People don't want more than that. They don't want a lot of remarks, they just want a few remarks. The ability to minister to people in deep and meaningful ways with brevity as well as a greater length is a real gift. That's not a gift you can necessarily expect. I think it's a bit rarer.

William:
My preaching professor at Princeton said, the sign of a good sermon is a full trash can.

Dr. Philip Ryken:
There you go. Well, that's one sign. Yeah. No, that's true. I mean, I had an experience last week. I'm doing a series in chapel at Wheaton on doubt. Just all different dimensions of doubt in the Christian life. I did a recent talk on Naomi and some of the doubts that she went through. Two weeks later, we had our parents on campus for family weekend. We had this beautiful prayer breakfast, 250 parents gathered to pray for Wheaton College. I said, "I'm talking from the same passage. I'm going to tell you all the things I didn't have time to tell our students, because I only had 20 minutes. I've got all these other things I want to say." You got to whittle it down and reduce it, just to its bare essence, if you can, and a lot of context.

William:
That's great. Also would love to hear ... I've been asking college presidents this question because I haven't been one. I've been a pastor, but I'm learning the academic world. You've been both. You know in the pastoral world, there's the multiple hats a pastor wears. You got to be part of the community, you've got to be part of the cause, and you've got to run the corporation. That's at least three. Or if you wanted to be reformed, since we both are, you could make it congruent to the threefold office of Christ. You have to be a prophet, you have to be a priest, you have to function somewhat like the leader of the organization, or king.
In the college presidency world, what would you say ... It feels like you ... I mean, you're forever fundraising if you're a president. I don't know how don't. You're responsible for these students and their formations. You've got to be part of that. And then you've got this 750 employee team to run. Are those the three big stressors? Are those the three big hats you find yourself wearing or are there more?

Dr. Philip Ryken:
Yeah. Well, first of all, love referencing prophet, priest, and king. I've actually done some writing on that, specific for college presidencies, prophetic, priestly, kingly leadership. I think that's needed in any leadership context. One of the things that's challenging about college presidency is the different constituencies you have, which is a little different than the hats question, which I'll come back to. What students want, what their parents want, what your alumni want, what your staff want, and what your faculty want, those can be very different things. Even if you have a really strong sense of mission, as we definitely do at Wheaton College, those interests are not always fully aligned. I think that is a built in tension, possibly recipe for conflict that goes beyond the structure of most congregations. Congregations too have different factions or different groups. You need to minister differently perhaps to children in the congregation and then to older adults and things like that. They don't feel the same way in terms of their interest in your mission in the same way in a local church context. So, you do feel yourself pulled in some of those different directions.
I will also agree with you, there's a complexity to the leadership role as a result. I think it's tempting to tell one group what they want to hear, in a way that, if another group overheard you, they'd be like, "Well, wait a second. That sounds a lot different from what you said to us." It has to have integrity within itself and cast a complete picture of what God is doing at Wheaton College. That's one of the tensions that I think you feel in the role.
I think you've mentioned some of the key hats, and I think you have to wear ... It's definitely a whack-a-mole kind of role, where there's always more to do than you can do. And when you're doing one thing, you're worried that you're neglecting another thing. I find it very helpful to remind myself, and often to remind others, "We are primarily here for our students." We're concerned about staff welfare, ultimately because of the impact that our staff has in the lives of our students. So, having an orienting priority I think gives some guidance for how those different constituencies need to relate to one another, and may help you understand which hat you have to pull out and wear most frequently.

William:
That's super helpful. That's going to be golden, whether you're a headmaster at a secondary school or in a cabinet, or head of a college or a university. Thank you so much. I would encourage you to go to the Wheaton site where you can learn more about the school. Particularly if you're a headmaster of a secondary school and you've got parents coming to you saying, "Where should we send our kids?" But Phil, thank you for your time, for your partnership with us. We just wish you every good wish in a season that's probably one of the more unique ones to navigate in higher education.

Dr. Philip Ryken:
Yeah, we are living in what the Chinese call interesting times, for sure. God bless you, William. God bless anybody listening to this and trying to do your very best in God-honoring leadership for the school you're called to serve, or whatever the institution is.

William:
Thanks and thanks to everybody for listening today. Look forward to visiting again soon.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderbloemen, we help Christian organizations build their best teams, through hiring, succession, compensation, and diversity consulting services. Visit our website, vanderbloemen.com, to learn more. And subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with our newest episodes. Thanks for listening.