Episode 112: Francesca Schuler on Building EQ Habits for Student Success
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How can you build the skills and habits around empathy and emotional intelligence to elevate students' EQ so that they can be effective, inspiring leaders and people who can just get stuff done and move things forward? What are the habits and norms from phones and social media that we all have to unlearn to do this? How does this help students show up differently in school, work, and life? We talk through these questions with Francesca Schuler, Executive Director of Dialogue Vanderbilt.
From Private Sector to Public Good: Building EQ Habits for Student Success
In the modern landscape of higher education, the definition of student success is shifting. While high grade point averages and technical proficiency—often referred to as IQ—remain important, they are no longer the sole predictors of a flourishing career or a meaningful life. Francesca Schuler, Executive Director of Dialogue Vanderbilt, argues that the missing link is Emotional Intelligence (EQ). By treating EQ as a set of practical, daily habits rather than abstract traits, universities can better prepare the next generation to navigate a polarized, tech-driven world.
Redefining Student Success through Emotional Intelligence
For many, student success is measured by the ability to pass exams and secure a first job. However, Schuler suggests that true success lies in the ability to solve problems with others and move things forward in high-pressure environments. At Vanderbilt, this is defined as building "healthy dialogue habits."
While many students entering elite institutions possess exceptional academic intelligence, they often lack the "EQ muscle" necessary to handle conflict or collaborate across differences. Success, therefore, is the successful balancing of EQ and IQ, ensuring that students don't just know the answers, but know how to show up in the world as effective, inspiring leaders.
Unlearning the "Performative" Habits of Social Media
One of the greatest challenges facing Gen Z—and indeed, all of us—is the impact of technology on our communication. Social media has trained us to speak in 280-character sound bites and react with instant emojis rather than thoughtful responses. This creates a "performative" style of leadership where we worry more about how we look than who we actually are.
Schuler points out that we have inadvertently learned non-constructive habits: listening to win rather than listening to learn, making rapid assumptions based on political leanings, and losing the ability to see nuance. To be successful, students must "unlearn" these digital reflexes. This means moving away from "hot takes" and back toward authentic, face-to-face engagement where the goal is understanding, not victory.
Building Essential Skills for the 2030 Workplace
The World Economic Forum identifies the ability to work on diverse teams and navigate conflict as critical skills for the 2030 workplace. Schuler prefers to call these "essential skills" rather than "soft skills." Labeling them as "soft" often leads people to believe they are optional or easy, when in reality, they are often the hardest skills to master.
Research consistently shows that while people are often hired for their IQ, they are frequently fired for a lack of EQ. By practicing habits like assuming goodwill and seeking out the values behind someone’s beliefs, students prepare themselves for a workplace where productivity is often lost due to friction and misunderstanding.
Creating the "Third Place" for Open Dialogue
To foster these habits, Vanderbilt has implemented innovative physical and social "nudges." One such initiative is the "Vandy Speakeasy"—a tech-free environment where students, faculty, and even congressmen gather to share food and conversation without the distraction of phones.
These "third places"—spaces that are neither the dorm nor the classroom—allow for the "joy of conversation" to return. In these settings, students practice being uncomfortable and sharing points of view without the fear of being filmed or judged online. By creating these intentional spaces, the university sets a cultural norm where open dialogue is not just a value on a brochure, but a practiced reality.
Conclusion: The Future of Collaborative Leadership
As higher education evolves, the integration of EQ into the student experience will likely move from the periphery to the core. Whether through peer-to-peer workshops, orientation programs, or global fellowships, the goal remains the same: to graduate students who have the courage to have a point of view and the humility to change their minds. In the end, leadership isn't about having the genius idea alone; it’s about having the EQ habits to wrestle through healthy conflict and create a solution that moves everyone forward.
Episode 112 Transcript
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Francesca Schuler: So student success is really about building the EQ habits that'll enable you to navigate a range of environments, whether you're a doctor treating a patient, a teacher with a preschooler who may be out of hand, or more importantly, a parent who may have lots of demands, or a investment banker.
Francesca Schuler: Helping our students build these habits so it becomes just how they show up in the world, that's really what we're working on.
Elliot Felix: That was Francesca Schuler, an accomplished executive who now leads the Dialogue Vanderbilt program we had a great conversation about how they're building the skills and habits around empathy and emotional intelligence to elevate students' EQ so that they can be effective, inspiring leaders and people who can just get stuff done, move things forward.
Elliot Felix: We talked about the lessons from phones and social media that we all have to unlearn, the programs they put in place at Vanderbilt, and how this shows up in school, work, and life. Let's dive in.
Elliot Felix: Welcome to the Connected College podcast. I'm your host, Elliot. Felix. I've helped more than a hundred colleges and universities change what they offer, how they operate, and the way they're organized to enable student success. Join me for insightful interviews with higher ed innovators, sharing the stories, stats, and strategies to create better connected colleges and universities.
Elliot Felix: Welcome Francesca. I'm so excited about our conversation on EQ and student success. I think it's such a critical and important topic, and I'm really excited to hear all the great stuff you're doing and help folks learn from it.
Francesca Schuler: Thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to our conversation.
Elliot Felix: I'd love to hear how you got started. I know you're a relatively recent convert to higher ed, and tell us a little bit about how you got started in higher ed and what you're up to today.
Francesca Schuler: Yes, definitely new to the industry, as it were, which has been great actually. But spent most of my career in the private sector, really in leadership roles in mostly consumer businesses, also led a nonprofit.
Francesca Schuler: But I came at this really through a long career in business where leadership development was my passion, and spent a lot of time on it and worked with some amazing teams to develop some great cultures where people could really progress. And really started to realize that so many of the fundamental leadership habits that I think make you successful from your first job all the way to your last job you start developing those really early, and college is one of the key places where you can really develop them.
Francesca Schuler: And you can also experiment with them a little bit in college, which I think is nice which often in a new job or once you've started your career you're more reluctant to experiment with 'cause you're busy just trying to do a good job. So that was one thing that brought me really, passionate about how do we help the next generation develop better leadership skills than we have.
Francesca Schuler: We always want the next generation to be better than us. And how could we take experience and apply it in the new world in the college setting to help currently Gen Z develop some of those skills, start practicing them and learning them in the college setting? That's really what brought me to it.
Francesca Schuler: I have a 25 and a 21-year-old. I have huge optimism about the generation that's coming through, but I do think there are some challenges that have impacted their ability to develop leadership skills early. So thought that would be a good use to take my experience and hopefully apply it in partnership with all the amazing leaders and faculty members at Vanderbilt.
Elliot Felix: I think that's really great, and it reminds me of they say what-- "When's the best time to plant a tree? 100 years ago." And, when's the second best time? Right now. So I think you're moving- To think about how you build those skills, how you plant those trees as early as possible so that we do have an amazing next generation of leaders.
Elliot Felix: And I think, leadership is one of those areas that's so great at making these connections and busting the silos across campus because you can have student affairs and academic affairs and athletics and alumni relations, mentoring, all these things can can play their part. So it's really cool, and I would love to hear a little bit more about how you're doing that. What's your program called? What are you doing to tackle this area?
Francesca Schuler: The other thing that I would add is I was in marketing for a long time, so I believe in getting to know your customer before you try to solve their problems.
Francesca Schuler: Yeah. And I think often as experienced leaders we all wanna share and impart our wisdom- but we often do it through the lens of our own life, which is only really relevant to us. It is not relevant to a 21-year-old. And I can still remember rolling my eyes when, my previous boss would be like when I was doing what you were doing..."
Francesca Schuler: So I didn't wanna I don't think that's a helpful way to share wisdom. I think you have to really understand the context in which young people are operating today, and then what are the skills that we can help, and how do we share that in their language effectively. So that's what really led me.
Francesca Schuler: I am the exec director of Dialogue Vanderbilt, which is an initiative that was launched at Vanderbilt a few years ago to really- Accelerate and continue Vanderbilt's commitment to creating a campus culture of free expression and civil discourse. It's something that's a core- I disagree. No, I'm just kidding.
Francesca Schuler: One of my favorite questions to ask is when was the last time you changed your mind? Because we're quite- Oh, that's a great one eager to say "I disagree." That's our instinct is to do that, and we're gonna ... I'm sure we'll talk more about some of our hypotheses on that. But one of the questions we open a lot of our work with is when is the last time you changed your mind?
Francesca Schuler: And it stumps a lot of adults, actually. Our students tend to answer that question faster than adults. But really, Vanderbilt's had a commitment to free expression and civil discourse since the university was founded. And while some may wonder, Dialogue Vanderbilt, what does that have to do with leadership?
Francesca Schuler: Really, my experience, and I think research shows, that the great leaders are the ones that have both high IQ and high EQ. And I view the ability to express your opinion effectively, to navigate a range of different opinions to get things done, to work with a diverse group of people an essential part of leadership.
Francesca Schuler: To do that well, you really have to do it through conversation. That's how it works. And so there is a very direct linkage between constructive dialogue and civil discourse and great leadership. Whether you're in the public sector, private sector, higher ed, it doesn't matter. Those skills really apply.
Francesca Schuler: And so this role has given me an opportunity to jump in and really figure out how do we complement what's in the classroom, what's in student life, and help our students really build that EQ muscle, which I call healthy dialogue habits. One of the things I always say is one of the number one rules in business is don't hire yourself.
Francesca Schuler: Surround yourself with people- different than you, and I adhere to that wholeheartedly. But if you do that and you don't know how to effectively navigate conversation, unleash potential, work with them effectively, it defeats the purpose. In today's world, I think that's a skill that has been diminished for a long list of reasons, and happy to chat about that.
Francesca Schuler: So that's what we're working on at Vanderbilt.
Elliot Felix: It sounds like an amazing, inspiring program. And, you're talking about all the things you're trying to encourage, the dialogue, the collaboration, igniting potential, the communication. As you're defining leadership, I feel like the Venn diagram of leadership and student success has a lot of overlap, and I'm wondering as you're trying to help students be successful as leaders how do you define that? Like, how do you define student success, and what's the role that these kind of leadership competencies and mindsets and tools play in that?
Francesca Schuler: There's lots of dimensions, I think, of student success. So I'm gonna stick to where I'm playing because I think there's success in the classroom, success in making friends, success in finding your interest in a lot of places. But I think one of the key areas that we're really focused on and defines student success is the ability to not just identify problems and figure out how to solve them, but how to solve them with others and get things done, and that means building healthy daily habits, and that's something we talk a lot about.
Francesca Schuler: I'm a big believer in habits. As a leader, you find it's easy to be a, quote, "good leader" when there's not a lot of stress and you're not under the gun, so you can practice all your great leadership skills. But your true test of what you are as a leader is when you're under pressure, and that's when you really fall back on your habits.
Francesca Schuler: And if you have- built habits that are about, my way or the highway or I'm not gonna listen to anyone else or I'm just gonna drive ahead and just hope for the best and not ask for any additional input. Anyway, a long list of things, that's what you're gonna fall back on. And as we all know, whether you're in your first job or your 10th job out of college, there's gonna be many moments of stress.
Francesca Schuler: So student success is really about building the EQ habits that'll enable you to navigate a range of environments, whether you're a doctor treating a patient, a teacher with a preschooler who may be out of hand, or more importantly, a parent who may have lots of demands , or a investment banker.
Francesca Schuler: Helping our students build these habits so it becomes just how they show up in the world, that's really what we're working on. And so our students, we know, have incredible IQs to get into a school like Vanderbilt and many elite colleges. They're really smart really curious, doing a lot of things, and we wanna make sure that we balance the EQ and the IQ successfully.
Francesca Schuler: So that's how we're defining it at Dialogue Vanderbilt. It's building healthy dialogue habits, which is really about healthy EQ.
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Elliot Felix: Yeah, and that's what enables you to solve problems with others and get things done, which I really, I love both of those things. What are some of the, what are some of these healthy habits? I feel- Immediately self-conscious, by the way, 'cause as we're talking about this, I'm gonna be the whole time I'm gonna be like, "Ooh, do I do that or not?"
Francesca Schuler: You probably do. Yeah. Hope like- I'm just gonna say, and I do, too let's hope.
Elliot Felix: I'm sure there's some things I could learn, though, from your program.
Francesca Schuler: And I think, the World Economic Forum did a great analysis of what skills are gonna be needed in 2030, particularly in a very AI-driven world, and those are the things you'd expect: work on diverse teams, navigate conflict. But if we boil it down to day-to-day practical habits, the way I frame the discussion is, what habits are we not developing or are we unlearning if we had them?
Francesca Schuler: And those are in a large part due to technology. So technology has many amazing things, but what it really has done is help us learn what I would consider non-constructive habits. So examples would be, we now say things in 280-character sound bites. That is not usually a very thoughtful or intentional point of view.
Francesca Schuler: That would be probably a hot, fast take. We are learning to react versus respond. Even on Zoom now, people are clapping and sending emojis, et cetera. We're learning that the way you say good or bad is through a happy or an angry emoji or a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Francesca Schuler: And what you realize is if you're doing that a lot on your phone, on your computer, you start doing that in conversation. You start really being immediately reacting and not really responding. Technology's taught us to be quite performative. Just think about Zoom. We're always "How do we look on Zoom?
Francesca Schuler: How do we look on social media?" Versus authentic leadership. That sort of, thinking about how you're coming across or versus thinking about who do you really wanna be, technology has really moved us so much more in the performative or the, versus the authentic leadership.
Francesca Schuler: And then think about comments. It's if you and I had a discussion and you made a point, and I managed to not give you a thumbs up or thumbs down, but I disagreed with you, I can just pontificate in the comments section, yeah. And say whatever I want, and we don't engage. And so those are some examples of the habits that we're all unfortunately being trained.
Francesca Schuler: Everyone thinks it's a Gen Z problem. Adults are having the same issue. We're on our phones a lot. We're using technology a lot. So the things that we're really working on are things like listening to learn and understand versus listening to win. And we all I think struggle when you're in there and you're listening to a point, particularly something you feel passionate about, and you shut out what the person's actually saying, and you're like, "Okay, I'm just gonna get in.
Francesca Schuler: I'm gonna get in there, I'm gonna wait for a breath, and then I'm gonna go in and win." So listening to learn and understand is one. Asking with curiosity versus making a series of assumptions or interrogating, we all are guilty of this. Anyone who's seen The Breakfast Club, we all make assumptions. That's a high school thing, a college thing, a grown-up thing. Yeah.
Francesca Schuler: But how do you ask questions with real curiosity versus making assumptions that you know what political background this person has because they made one comment about something? Another one we think a lot about is recognizing nuance.
Francesca Schuler: So we've become a very polarized society. We're, we have a big program right now called 250 Conversations on America: Civil Discourse in Action, and it is not about modeling how people disagree better. It is that, but it's also modeling how people agree better. Because where we are right now, the habit we're building is that if I have sort of 10 points in a philosophy, and you have 10 points, and we don't exactly match our 10 points, I assume you're on the other team.
Francesca Schuler: That's what polarization has done for us. So the habit of understanding nuance and realizing we can agree to disagree on five of the 10 points, but we still generally play in the same sandbox, and we can get things done, and get things across the line.
Francesca Schuler: One more that I would say is assuming goodwill is a habit- we work on all the time. To the performative nature of technology, no one puts their real self for- On Instagram or TikTok or even on LinkedIn these days. And so we all are at this point where we're constantly passing judgment, and we assume when someone says something we dis- disagree with, it's with bad intent.
Francesca Schuler: So we're really focused on this idea of assume goodwill. Don't assume this person is coming from a bad place of values. So a lot of the work we're doing is how do you get to know other people's values before you debate beliefs?
Francesca Schuler: Because if you understand their values, then you know that where they're coming from- doesn't mean you have to agree with their beliefs. That's okay. But if you know the intent they're coming from, that completely changes the tone of the conversation. So those are some examples of the things we, we think about as healthy habits.
Elliot Felix: Those are great habits for students and I think for the rest of us. I think in a way, we're all students. Those sounded like really good things that would help our Congress too.
Trends Impacting Dialogue and Technology
Francesca Schuler: They would literally help all of us. It's- Yeah been interesting doing this work because it's forced me to be a lot more disciplined about, what makes a good leader, what are EQ skills, et cetera.
Francesca Schuler: And so now I'm constantly assessing myself. I thought I s- assessed myself in the past, but now I'm doing it a lot more just in the moment. Am I really listening to understand? Or am I listening to win? And so a lot of this is just about awareness, and why we use, as I mentioned, the word habits, is then if you just practice them over and over again, you're gonna have some bad days.
Francesca Schuler: You're gonna have that Thanksgiving dinner where it goes awry, or that meeting where you just didn't listen to your team and went driving forward. But for the most part, if it's something you practice every day, I always say it's just like going to the gym. If you keep doing it and you establish the routines, it will be how you naturally show up.
Francesca Schuler: And research shows that people get hired for IQ and get fired for EQ. And so if you have EQ habits, it prepares you well for the workplace.
Elliot Felix: Such a great set of habits, and it's such a great approach to inculcate these ideas now so that they're there when you need them. And one of my favorite change frameworks is the behavioral change wheel that, the thesis of which is people change at the intersection of motivation, ability, and opportunity, right? And I wonder besides the fabulous programming you're doing to build these habits, are there things you're doing to nudge students toward success? Like I'm seeing now campuses do phone-free spaces, adjust the environment, the calendar. Some campuses have wellness days or spots in the weekly calendar where there's no classes. Is there anything the environment can do to contribute to forming and sustaining these habits?
Francesca Schuler: A great question, and I do think environment matters. Being intentional about space and time, not just about one more program that a student has to go through. So we have a variety of these because I do think tech-free creating space and time, as I mentioned, matters. So we launched a new concept last fall called the Vandy Speakeasy.
Francesca Schuler: And pun completely intended. Yeah. So the idea is we create spaces on campus, they're tech-free. We bring students together. We bring students and faculty together. We now are getting lots of requests from alum and parents to do them, so we're doing them with alum and parents. And really, the spirit of it is as follows, is we bring... Sometimes they're 25 people that have never met before.
Francesca Schuler: Sometimes they're a bunch of student athletes and, who again, are athletes but don't necessarily know each other that well, and we talk about leadership on campus. There's some loose conversation topics just to get it going. There's usually food, because that matters, as we know with students- everyone and adults, they like to be fed. Yeah.
Francesca Schuler: And we just let the conversation go, and every single one of them that we have done has gone over two hours, which is, as when on a college campus- Amazing. No one does anything for two hours. Yeah. Everyone is so busy and pre-programmed. And the joy you feel in the room, it is experiencing the joy of conversation again.
Francesca Schuler: So if you think about Ray Oldenburg's book on the third place. We've essentially created a third place. So it's not your dorm, it's not the classroom, it's a place where you can come and have a conversation. And it's been amazing the impact that's had. We're doing it with faculty as well.
Francesca Schuler: One of the things we're quite interested in doing more of is multi-generational conversations, 'cause I think a lot of the conflict or misunderstanding of each other happens to be because, and when I was started my career, we didn't have Slack and we didn't have, Zoom and a variety of things, and so you interacted in a certain way.
Francesca Schuler: And now young people, that's all they use, and that creates friction, and you for- you don't know how to have a good conversation about it. So the Vandy Speakeasy, I think, is one of our best examples of creating space and time. We did one recently where a student walked in and said, "I have not been invited to a tech-free environment since middle school, and I'm so excited."
Francesca Schuler: And- Nice many of them have opened up new friendships new relationships, and just new... Just, I think, a reminder of how good it feels to just take a couple hours and have a conversation. And they've ranged from, big, meaty geopolitical topics to w- you know, what does leadership mean on campus at Vanderbilt? Sometimes they're even, lighter touch than that. What do you do to just- Unwind. And usually we cover all of the above in the two hours.
Francesca Schuler: Another example, we just brought in a bunch of student leaders from very disparate organizations who really probably never interact. And they came in and had this incredible conversation on how are you a leader on campus? How are you forwarding the mission? How can they work together to maybe help each other? So that's an example of something that sounds so obvious, creating space and time for a couple hour conversation, but it's easy to forget to do that.
Francesca Schuler: Our residential colleges at Vanderbilt are designed around this as well. We do a lot of programming in our residential colleges as well for students to come do that. But I think we get so busy that if we don't make time and space, you think you're having conversations, and there can be a week that goes by or a month that goes by that your conversations have been purely about getting something done, something in class, your social life with your friends, but you haven't really had a thoughtful conversation with someone maybe you didn't know that well.
Francesca Schuler: So now we have guests who are coming. We had a congressman come on Monday who did a speakeasy with 25 students. He's "This is great." His wife had to drag him out there. He was having such a good time. 'Cause it changes the tone, it's just- Yeah a conversation.
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Francesca Schuler: They would literally help all of us. It's- Yeah been interesting doing this work because it's forced me to be a lot more disciplined about, what makes a good leader, what are EQ skills, et cetera.
Francesca Schuler: And so now I'm constantly assessing myself. I thought I s- assessed myself in the past, but now I'm doing it a lot more just in the moment. Am I really listening to understand? Or am I listening to win? And so a lot of this is just about awareness, and why we use, as I mentioned, the word habits, is then if you just practice them over and over again, you're gonna have some bad days.
Francesca Schuler: You're gonna have that Thanksgiving dinner where it goes awry, or that meeting where you just didn't listen to your team and went driving forward. But for the most part, if it's something you practice every day, I always say it's just like going to the gym. If you keep doing it and you establish the routines, it will be how you naturally show up.
Francesca Schuler: And research shows that people get hired for IQ and get fired for EQ. And so if you have EQ habits, it prepares you well for the workplace.
Elliot Felix: Such a great set of habits, and it's such a great approach to inculcate these ideas now so that they're there when you need them. And one of my favorite change frameworks is the behavioral change wheel that, the thesis of which is people change at the intersection of motivation, ability, and opportunity, right? And I wonder besides the fabulous programming you're doing to build these habits, are there things you're doing to nudge students toward success? Like I'm seeing now campuses do phone-free spaces, adjust the environment, the calendar. Some campuses have wellness days or spots in the weekly calendar where there's no classes. Is there anything the environment can do to contribute to forming and sustaining these habits?
Francesca Schuler: A great question, and I do think environment matters. Being intentional about space and time, not just about one more program that a student has to go through. So we have a variety of these because I do think tech-free creating space and time, as I mentioned, matters. So we launched a new concept last fall called the Vandy Speakeasy.
Francesca Schuler: And pun completely intended. Yeah. So the idea is we create spaces on campus, they're tech-free. We bring students together. We bring students and faculty together. We now are getting lots of requests from alum and parents to do them, so we're doing them with alum and parents. And really, the spirit of it is as follows, is we bring... Sometimes they're 25 people that have never met before.
Francesca Schuler: Sometimes they're a bunch of student athletes and, who again, are athletes but don't necessarily know each other that well, and we talk about leadership on campus. There's some loose conversation topics just to get it going. There's usually food, because that matters, as we know with students- everyone and adults, they like to be fed. Yeah.
Francesca Schuler: And we just let the conversation go, and every single one of them that we have done has gone over two hours, which is, as when on a college campus- Amazing. No one does anything for two hours. Yeah. Everyone is so busy and pre-programmed. And the joy you feel in the room, it is experiencing the joy of conversation again.
Francesca Schuler: So if you think about Ray Oldenburg's book on the third place. We've essentially created a third place. So it's not your dorm, it's not the classroom, it's a place where you can come and have a conversation. And it's been amazing the impact that's had. We're doing it with faculty as well.
Francesca Schuler: One of the things we're quite interested in doing more of is multi-generational conversations, 'cause I think a lot of the conflict or misunderstanding of each other happens to be because, and when I was started my career, we didn't have Slack and we didn't have, Zoom and a variety of things, and so you interacted in a certain way.
Francesca Schuler: And now young people, that's all they use, and that creates friction, and you for- you don't know how to have a good conversation about it. So the Vandy Speakeasy, I think, is one of our best examples of creating space and time. We did one recently where a student walked in and said, "I have not been invited to a tech-free environment since middle school, and I'm so excited."
Francesca Schuler: And- Nice many of them have opened up new friendships new relationships, and just new... Just, I think, a reminder of how good it feels to just take a couple hours and have a conversation. And they've ranged from, big, meaty geopolitical topics to w- you know, what does leadership mean on campus at Vanderbilt? Sometimes they're even, lighter touch than that. What do you do to just- Unwind. And usually we cover all of the above in the two hours.
Francesca Schuler: Another example, we just brought in a bunch of student leaders from very disparate organizations who really probably never interact. And they came in and had this incredible conversation on how are you a leader on campus? How are you forwarding the mission? How can they work together to maybe help each other? So that's an example of something that sounds so obvious, creating space and time for a couple hour conversation, but it's easy to forget to do that.
Francesca Schuler: Our residential colleges at Vanderbilt are designed around this as well. We do a lot of programming in our residential colleges as well for students to come do that. But I think we get so busy that if we don't make time and space, you think you're having conversations, and there can be a week that goes by or a month that goes by that your conversations have been purely about getting something done, something in class, your social life with your friends, but you haven't really had a thoughtful conversation with someone maybe you didn't know that well.
Francesca Schuler: So now we have guests who are coming. We had a congressman come on Monday who did a speakeasy with 25 students. He's "This is great." His wife had to drag him out there. He was having such a good time. 'Cause it changes the tone, it's just- Yeah a conversation.
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Elliot Felix: it makes me think that norms are so closely related to habits, right? Creating the space and time has to do with how you set cultural norms, and they can either encourage or discourage the kinds of habit formation you're looking for. So creating the norms around this is a phone-free space, or this is a place for open dialogue, or this is a place where everyone's welcome or whatever. However you set those norms, you're, creating the condition for the right kinds of conversations, I think is so powerful. And then the other thing that seems related is, maybe the cousin of norms and habits is rituals. In a way, those are what define a culture so are there milestone rituals in Dialogue Vanderbilt? Do people graduate? Is there a certification? What are the rituals you're building as part of this program?
Francesca Schuler: So we have a variety of leadership opportunities that we offer in Dialogue Vanderbilt for students who really want to be role models on campus. They help us with programming, so we design student relevant programming. But really, one of their core roles is to model what's it like to build a team together and what's it like to be a role model of- open dialogue with people that are very different than you.
Francesca Schuler: Now, at Vanderbilt, free expression on campus is a core value, so we have already set the stage. To your point, there is a norm of that on campus, which is very helpful. I know other campuses struggle with that. That is not something we struggle with at Vanderbilt. That's a core foundational university principle, and why a lot of students attend Vanderbilt and faculty work there.
Francesca Schuler: But our student leaders end up doing a variety of things. So they end up creating a whole series of programs to engage students. So the speakeasy is one. Another one that students designed was the free expression board. So they put a fun question up, and people can respond their thoughts on it, anything from where do you think America is today to what's your favorite class at Vandy?
Francesca Schuler: They lead a whole series of lunch and learns, where they invite professors that they think other students would benefit from and engage in very open dialogue with them. So it's a leadership role that is, it's quite competitive but they serve as great role models and also help us design programming.
Francesca Schuler: I think the biggest thing for them, though, is what they do well, is they spend time getting to know each other and really operate as a team. And in so many club environments that people are there because it's like, "We gotta get done what the club's supposed to be doing," whatever the club is- or the fraternity or the sorority.
Francesca Schuler: So you're so busy focusing on doing that you don't spend enough time doing team building, and our students really spend time getting to know each other. They have a speakeasy just for them. They do several times a month. The conversations, I'm telling you, we have covered it all. It's great. Yeah. And there's no conversation off the table.
Francesca Schuler: And you realize that a lot of the struggles in the workplace that people are having in terms of strong cultures with hybrid work, people on Zoom, all of us back-to-back meetings , we haven't built in enough time just to get to know each other at work. So the good news about these students is they are gonna show up in whatever environment that they go to and make time for this.
Francesca Schuler: They will be role models not just at Vanderbilt, but role models in their workplaces. The other thing we're doing is we're putting it into a global setting. So we just launched a new fellowship where students can take the skills they're building and think about it in a very different context.
Francesca Schuler: We're taking a group of students to Northern Ireland. How do you think about using these skills in a part of the world that was very divided for a long time and still essentially in peace-building mode? Another group's going to think about democracy, and we're working with a university in Denmark, and how do we think about dialogue and democracy?
Francesca Schuler: Because if you just follow the news, you assume there is no dialogue and democracy anymore. So how can these students be role models? We're trying to really have our students not just engage for themselves, but show up in the world as examples for others, which hopefully then others will follow.
Elliot Felix: I love that, and you were hinting at how as students build these skills, listening to learn, asking with curiosity, understanding nuance, Understanding how technology can be performative and so forth. How do these enable student success? So how does this show up in, in the classroom, outside of it, and in careers and in the workplace? What does this enable them to do?
Francesca Schuler: It enables students to show up both in the classroom and in their student life, and also in their careers as, one, just a team player, which sounds so obvious, but when you've been in a very competitive, competitive to get into college, competitive to do well at school.
Francesca Schuler: I think one of the things I love about Vanderbilt, it's while it's a highly competitive school from in terms of level of academics, the students themselves, there's no jabbing elbows. It is a community-driven school. But these students are gonna show up able and confident to have a point of view, even though they may feel uncomfortable.
Francesca Schuler: That's a big thing that social media has shut down. When I went to college or even early in my career, I'd offer in a point of view probably sometimes I shouldn't have. I'll acknowledge that. But there wasn't this sense of "Oh my God, someone's gonna film me," or, "Someone's gonna post about me."
Francesca Schuler: You didn't have that fear, and that has impacted all of us. It's impacted all of us as managers in the workplace, as faculty, as students. And by building these skills of being okay feeling uncomfortable learning how to share your point of view and listen to others effectively versus having it be combative, our students are gonna graduate with an ability to move things forward, which is really the goal.
Francesca Schuler: In the end, yes, great conversation matters. We all love having great conversations, but in the end, what we really wanna do is help our students be someone who moves things forward, whatever that is that they're trying to move forward, and that's what I think our students are gonna be able to do.
Francesca Schuler: They're gonna have the courage to have a point of view. They are not gonna be afraid to engage with someone who may have a very different point of view. And definitely from my experience, the best ideas came when two people came at it from a completely different way, wrestled through some healthy conflict, and created an incredible solution.
Francesca Schuler: It's very rare that one person had the genius idea all by themselves, and so I, I think our students can be very prepared to do this.
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Elliot Felix: Yeah, for sure. There's the Kanter Isaacs model of group dynamics, and it's for an effective team, you have to have a proposer, an opposer, an advisor, and an implementer basically, right? So unless you have someone who's not just proposing ideas but also opposing it and challenging it and making it better, and then someone who's giving impartial advice and someone who wants to see it, executed, nothing goes anywhere, and these skills seem so super valuable. As we wrap up, As you carry this forward, as you think about the future, how is building these EQ habits, norms, skills, how might that change and evolve? You're co-curricular now. Do you see a future where you're integrated into the first year experience or there's a required class or Shine up your crystal ball and tell us a little bit about how this may grow and change and evolve in the future.
Francesca Schuler: So we are already, big on collaboration. As someone who's new to higher ed, it's been awesome to see how welcoming everyone has been to collaborate at Vanderbilt. We are not here to compete with curricular. We have many faculty teaching leadership classes and things like that.
Francesca Schuler: Where we have been of service are workshops we have a civil discourse lab that has workshops that we develop in partnership with faculty. Where those have been helpful is, we are part of the orientation we call it Visions. It's a six weeks orientation program. Several of our workshops are part of that now.
Francesca Schuler: So in, in both in terms of how do you dialogue about across difference, but also how do you get to know someone? I think one of the things I've seen in this work in higher ed and even outside higher ed, is everyone is so focused on just the dialogue part, like how do you interact and, how do you debate effectively, that they forget step one, which is really about how do you wanna show up?
Francesca Schuler: So our workshops start with, what are your values? How do you think about your beliefs? How do you think about updating your beliefs? How do your behaviors align with your beliefs? So we have a more holistic approach, and so some of that's in our orientation program. Our workshops go into the classroom, so we've had situations where maybe a class is very big, a lot of people aren't speaking up.
Francesca Schuler: A professor will be like, "Hey, can we come do a workshop and maybe break down some of the barriers?" We're doing this with staff and with faculty as well, so we view our role as a very practical solution to practice and build habits across campus in support of the amazing work that's going on in the classroom, all the things going on in student life, residential life, et cetera.
Francesca Schuler: So we view ourselves very much as complimentary, and I would say this is where my, I think, business and operating background comes in, is if they're practical, they're short. And what's really unique about our workshops is we're really leaning into peer-to-peer learning, so our students are facilitators.
Francesca Schuler: So we have a whole program that's trained student facilitators, and they facilitate the workshop. We've even sent our students to facilitate our workshops with alumni we're now getting all these requests. We've done a couple of them. People are like, "Yeah, I need to practice that. Can I have more of that?"
Francesca Schuler: And so what a great opportunity for- Yeah a student. We had a student recently go back to his high school and take seniors and the faculty through one of our workshops. So that's how the impact spreads, I think. And again we're a complimentary solution, which I think often people think I'm doing this and you're doing that, and it can feel competitive, and we've very much designed our programming to think about what are challenges that exist and how do we create a complementary solution, and how are we really focused on practical solutions where you practice them in that immediate workshop.
Francesca Schuler: It's not an hour of PowerPoint. It's literally you are doing and practicing and all of that. So we're involved in a lot of parts of campus already. I'm sure and hope that we will be involved in a lot more. We're also quite interested in working with alum and even one of the areas that we're quite interested in is multi-generational conversations.
Francesca Schuler: That's a real friction in the workplace right now, and we think- it could be helpful both to our students, preparing them well, but also to alum and others who may be like, "How do I interact effectively as a manager?" How can we help bridge that? Because there's a lot of research that's showing a lot of productivity is lost because that conversation isn't working well.
Francesca Schuler: So we see lots of different places we could go and we're excited about the opportunity, but most of all, really excited about how students have been engaging in this, understanding it, and see- and wanting to be leaders who demonstrate IQ and EQ.
Elliot Felix: As we close this out, what's one final piece of advice you have for folks?
Francesca Schuler: I think the thing that I really hope is that everyone stops referring to EQs skills as soft skills. They are actually harder and so I always refer to them as essential skills and because the minute you hear soft, you think, Ugh, I don't need that. They are not optional. These are, these really are essential.
Francesca Schuler: So my one hope is that we all start leaning in and viewing that these skills are essential and as critical as hard skills. So that would be my hope.
Elliot Felix: I have that hope too. And I love that. And I think the essential is better than durable, which I think is the other swing people are taking at rebranding soft skills. And when I hear durable, I think like durable goods, I think like we're talking about like commodities or something, and these are even more valuable. So great stuff. Francesca, thanks so much for a great conversation and all the great work you're doing at Dialogue Vanderbilt. It's so valuable, so timely, and so inspiring. So thanks very much.
Francesca Schuler: Thanks so much for having me, and thank you for your work. It helps all of us as well, so appreciate the contribution you're making to, to higher ed and having all of us think about student success. So I appreciate your leadership in that, so thank you so much.
Elliot Felix: Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to the Connected College podcast. Go to Elliot felix.com for more information about my book, the Connected College articles I've written and talks I've given. There's also tools you can download information on upcoming events and information on booking me to speak at your institution or organization. Please support the podcast by rating it and reviewing it wherever you're listening. Let's create connected colleges where all students succeed.