Podcast 15
Rebekah Woods
Dr. Rebekah Woods is the President of Columbia Basin College. A fun fact about her is she hates putting
the leftovers into the containers when she goes to a restaurant, or she promised her husband that one
day she would be in a Hall and Oates cover band. Paul and Rebekah met recently at a TC Regional
Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
Being a person of faith, she knows that her journey was planned and she knew early on that she wanted
to be a doctor. While in college, she decided she did not want to be in school that long and after her
undergrad, she decided to go to law school. Nobody ever says, “I want to be a higher ed administrator,”
and no one even realizes that these jobs exist. While practicing law, she decided she needed another
challenge and started working on her PhD. It was then that she started learning about community
colleges and their mission. She fell in love with the focus of helping people reinvent themselves. She felt
that she wanted to be a leader in the community college realm. She started to prepare herself for a
presidency and what that would look like and when that day would come. She loves the Tri-Cities and
Columbia Basin College.
She would tell her 20 year old self to relax! Everything is going to work out fine. She just spoke at her
first commencement, and one of the things she spoke about was dreaming big and dreaming small. She
would tell herself not to limit her dreams and aspirations. If someone had told her that she would be a
college president someday, she would have said no way! She was quitet and reserved. Dreaming small
simply is recognizing the innocence of what is truly important, like spending time with your family,
focusing on just sitting down and reading to your child, spending time with your spouse and your
friends. Making those little differences that people may not see or recognize but can really be life
changing for the person that you are with. She is an Introvert by nature, and she can turn it on when
necessary but would rather go read a book by herself.
Her advice to other introverts is that you can do anything you set your mind to. Every field is going to
have certain requirements that may not come naturally to you, but you need to understand your
strengths and your weaknesses. A weakness is just another opportunity to grow. As an “I” you have to
find that time for yourself. Find time to recharge so you can get ready for what is next.
She has the ability to see the big picture and to see what that end goal should look like and to see the
path to get there. She is in meetings all day long; so she has to ask the questions What do you think
about this? Have you thought about that? because she has worked for a micro-manager and it is the
worst leadership style. What is not natural for her is focusing on people: she makes sure that the
assistant that is working with her has an affinity for remembering people’s birthdays, who just had a
child, pay attention to “this”, you should really spend a few minutes talking to XYZ person.
She has quiet time in the morning. When she gets to work, she hits the ground running. She makes sure
that she has her water, her notepads, her phones, etc.
She actually loves routines, and it’s what keeps her sane. There is so much research that needs to be
done in higher education to stay on top: there is a lot of attending conferences, working with mentors.
She has many mentors that pour into her, and she spends time learning what they are doing, a lot of
benchmarking against other institutions that are receiving great results. So being what we want our
student to be, which is life-long learners. She is constantly learning new information and how to apply it
to where she is and what she is doing. On the DISC Profile she is a High C and D. She is very detail-
oriented: she likes things precise and a certain way. She believes this is part of what allows her to see
the path to the big picture. Being able to see the big picture allows her to delegate and play off other
people’s strengths by asking questions. Together they achieve the end goal better than she would if she
was trying to achieve it by herself.
Her greatest challenge while sitting the leadership chair, is staying in balance. There are several types of
balance and the first is work/home life balance--making sure that she isn’t neglecting her marriage,
family, friends, personal time, things that she is trying to do with her church. Maintaining that balance is
something she is always focusing on. There is also balance within her position: identifying what are the
glass balls and which are the rubber balls. So, there is way too much for anyone to do in 24 hours; so it is
important to identify the priorities. What are the glass balls that must get done, and if they don’t, they
will in essence shatter and have long-term negative consequences. On the other hand, the rubber ball,
you can drop it and it will bounce back and catch it down the road.
If you aren’t actually failing at some point, then you aren’t in the game. She had a boss that was a
strategic risk taker. It taught her that when you are in the leadership position, it’s OK to try new things,
and do things differently. Her favorite failure is when she implemented a new computer system at
another institution and it failed miserably. It actually ended up being one of the best experiences for her
leadership because when you have something that impacts so many people that isn’t working, it defines
you as a leader. You are either going to bond with the team to make it work or you are going to crumble
and fall apart. We came together to get the job done and turned it around. It was painful but looking
back it was a positive experience.
She is a huge fan of all the Patrick Lencioni books. The book that boils it down is the 4 Obsessions of an
Extraordinary Executive. Also, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. If you aren’t over-communicating, then you
aren’t communicating at all. People actually need to hear something 7 times before they actually hear it.
So, if you aren’t sick of communicating, then you are communicating. Make sure that you have your
processes in line.
Grow where you are planted. Since being in the community for 9 months, she has been trying to learn
the community. So, before she even moved here, she called her predecessor and asked him who she
should meet with. An hour later she was done writing and had a long list of wonderful people to meet
with. How can the college be meeting the needs of the community? She is still trying to find what is
going to work for her to meet her personal needs.
