One day, Dawn Aubrey, associate director of housing for dining services at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, overheard members of her core team bragging about the hours they had logged that weekend. They were clearly mimicking her behavior—hardly a weekend went by that Aubrey wasn’t tethered to her phone or volunteering.
“I need to make sure I’m a better example,” she recalls thinking. While she enjoys that hectic life, Aubrey didn’t want her team under the same pressure. So she sought balance through a few key strategies.