Bill Joyner, the leader of UMB’s Office of Community and Civic Engagement, discusses the importance of demonstrating care in the workplace and embodying the values of a learning organization.
Photo: Bill Joyner, assistant vice president of community engagement and partnerships for UMB, delivers his presentation Sept. 30 at the 4MLK building.
Bill Joyner, JD, MSW, thought he was going to get fired.
It was 10 years ago, and he was four months into his job as a project coordinator for the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s (UMB) Office of Community and Civic Engagement (OCCE). He had decided to save money by using real glasses, utensils, and plates rather than disposable ones for an evening event in the President’s Boardroom in the Saratoga Building.
This required him to load and run the dishwasher before he left for the night. As he arrived for work the next morning, he saw an email from the president’s office announcing that the boardroom and offices below it had been damaged by flooding from the dishwasher.
“As you can imagine, I’m still on probation, so in my mind, I’m thinking that they are going to fire me,” Joyner said as the guest speaker for UMB’s inaugural Values in Action Speaker Series event Sept. 30 at the 4MLK building. “So I sprint to the boardroom to talk to the repair workers to figure out if there were any mitigating circumstances that can save my job.”
Before he could reply to the president’s office email, the then-executive director of OCCE had responded and pinned the blame on the office and not on Joyner. Joyner read from the email: “Oh, no, that must have been us. We ran the dishwasher after the meeting. Should we not have?”
“My boss was ready to face the consequences, though it was me who actually caused the damage,” said Joyner, who now leads OCCE as assistant vice president of community engagement and partnerships. “That was one of my first real bonding moments with my new boss that showed she cared about me as a person.
“She also was demonstrating to the president’s office and to me that she could be counted on to do the right thing, even when it put her and her office at risk. And those are some of the qualities that I associate with — showing respect and integrity and demonstrating care, but also being relied upon to do the right thing even when it is inconvenient.”
The UMB core values set of Respect and Integrity, in fact, was the focus of Joyner’s presentation. He said those and UMB’s other core values — Well-Being and Sustainability, Equity and Justice, and Innovation and Discovery — are “deeply intertwined” with his personal values. “To be happy and healthy, I need to feel like where I spend the majority of my time has alignment with my values. That’s important to me,” he said.
Joyner has worked for UMB for most of his professional career, previously serving as director of the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and project coordinator and senior economic inclusion specialist for OCCE. He also holds two degrees from UMB: a Juris Doctor from the Francis King Carey School of Law and a Master of Social Work from the School of Social Work.
“As a UMB employee and alumnus, I’m impacted by our internal decisions,” he said. “I also live in a neighborhood near UMB, so I’m impacted by the University’s external decisions. So UMB’s core values impact me in a number of ways, just like they impact all of us in the room.”
The event was a collaboration between UMB’s Core Values Program and the University of Maryland School of Graduate Studies’ Office of Values and Strategic Initiatives. The hourlong session included in-person and virtual attendees breaking into small groups to discuss scenarios involving team conflict, miscommunication, and lack of communication, including a scenario in which a graduate student hesitates to point out that a colleague is using outdated research protocols.
Joyner saw the latter situation as a potential teaching moment rather than one requiring any form of punishment.
“As a university, it’s critical that we embody the values of a learning organization — that someone’s lack of competence right now does not preclude their potential to demonstrate competence in the future if they are given the proper support,” he said. “This could be an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, did you know that this is not the right way to do that?’
“Oftentimes in academia, I feel we punish people for being wrong, which only erodes their psychological safety in admitting when they’re wrong, because then they might be considered someone who doesn’t know enough, doesn’t do it the right way, and can’t be trusted in a position of leadership or responsibility. So showing empathy and giving people the opportunity to build and demonstrate competency is critical for a learning organization.”
Another scenario involved an employee frequently arriving late for work and not completing tasks, causing frustration among co-workers. An attendee suggested that the supervisor in this case should take into account whether there are personal circumstances making it difficult for the employee to be on time (child care, elder care, etc.), and to show empathy in figuring out reasonable accommodations to allow the employee and co-workers to be successful.
Picking up on that point, Joyner recalled that when there were weather issues causing school closures, he would notice that the overwhelming majority of people leaving the Saratoga Building to pick up their children were women.
“Many men were still in their cubicles or offices and kept working, so it was not the same scenario for the person who, in those sudden instances, has to drop everything to deal with a family issue,” he said. “So, whereas people at work may have the same responsibilities or the same type of duties, we should take into account that societal pressures are different for different people in the classroom and in the workplace.”
The Values in Action Speaker Series was created to recognize the ways that all members of the UMB community bring to life the hallmarks of our community. The organizers want to thank everyone who attended the inaugural event Sept. 30 and extend an invitation to the next event, which will be focused on the core values set of Well-Being and Sustainability. It will be held Tuesday, Dec. 9, with Karen Gordes, PhD, PT, DScPT, as the speaker. Register here