Competition & Collaboration With The Atlantic 10’s Bernadette V. McGlade

Guest Bernadette V. McGlade, Atlantic 10

16:14 min watch

Summary

Atlantic 10 Conference Commissioner Bernadette V. McGlade sits down with ADU’s Tai M. Brown at the 2024 Women Leaders Convention to discuss the evolving role of university presidents, managing a team of veteran leaders and cultivating consensus among competitive peer institutions. McGlade: “At the end of the day, my role as commissioner is to try to bring everyone to the point where it’s going to be a positive decision for the entire league, not just one institution. … you have to be very careful at the league level to make decisions that are in the best interest of the whole operation of the full enterprise because if it’s not, you’ll start to see cracks in the armor as you go from year to year and get older and more mature as a league.”

On hiring veteran administrators, such as former UNC Greensboro AD Kim Record as the A10’s Senior Associate Commissioner/Chief of Staff: “It [is] critically important to have a deep, experienced staff… you have to have individuals who are professional adept and capable of doing more than just one responsibility within the league office for our membership.”

McGlade and Brown also discuss the dynamics of technology and impact of social media on storytelling, with McGlade noting: “We focus on everything that we can deliver through the messaging and the brand of Atlantic 10 basketball” in an effort to support the league’s 22 other championships.

The conversation is indexed below for efficient viewing (click the time stamp to jump to a specific question/topic).

- From the outside, it seems like the main focus of conference leadership is to get everyone to collaborate and prioritize the greater good rather than individual goals. Tell me about the balance of competition and collaboration in terms of decision-making at the conference level.
- In the league office, is decision-making done by consensus or majority? How do you handle that?
- Walk me through the evolving nature of the role of a university president and how their involvement in Athletics has changed.
- Even going back to your time with the ACC, can you remember when the trend of greater presidential involvement started?
- Social media makes storytelling more prominent, directly to intended or targeted audiences - so I imagine presidents are paying more attention in order to effectively craft the appropriate message for their institution.
- Walk me through the thought process of hiring someone with significant on-campus leadership experience, like your recent hire of former UNCG AD Kim Record.
- When making new hires, you want to maintain the vision of the conference, the culture of the office, but with every incremental change, the culture will change that much as well... how do you manage that when hiring veteran administrators who have their own sense of culture, experience and vision?
- When you think about staff development - whether in the conference office or on individual campuses - what's the A10's role in helping member institutions develop leaders within their own departments (administrators and coaches)?

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