Changing Academic Life

Celebrating 10 Years & Season Reflections on Meaning, Identity, Care, and Leadership

This is a special episode because it’s not only marks the end of the current season, it also celebrates 10 years of the Changing Academic Life podcast, The first podcast episode went out on 3 July 2016 and it has now reached 156 episodes by late June 2026. In this episode I start off reflecting on the podcast as a service contribution towards trying to create a better academia and the reminder that small actions can have big impacts. A big thank you to my guests and listeners, and for your feedback as exemplified in a supportive email I just received from Eleanor, among others. And I ask listeners to share the podcast and consider informal discussion groups. I then go on to reflect across the 11 season episodes, highlighting themes of meaning and joyful effort, evolving identity, navigating academic “games,” bureaucracy and corporatization, better leadership grounded in trust, deep listening, and care and wellbeing. My last invitation is for you to make one small intentional change towards your better academic life and creating better cultures.

00:00 Welcome to the Podcast

00:32 Ten Year Milestone

02:21 Why Keep Going

03:58 Listener Messages Matter

05:59 Share the Podcast

06:38 Season Episodes Recap

12:30 Meaning and Joy

14:37 Identity and Agency

17:01 Bureaucracy and Leadership

19:47 Listening and Care

24:48 Intentional Next Steps

26:36 Closing Thanks

Previous CAL100 episode from Feb 2024: Celebrating 100!

Deep listening is a foundational yet undervalued skill across all our supervision, leadership, and collaboration relationships. My motivation for this episode came from some recent workshops experiences, conversations with colleagues, and posts from others that have all highlighted the importance of listening in different ways. This is a multi-voice episode, weaving together insights from past conversations with Christian van Nieuwerburgh, Oscar Trimboli, and Michael Bungay Stanier. Together we explore how we can cultivate better listening.

Good listening starts with how we show up—our wellbeing, intention, and undivided attention—and practical preparation such as reducing notifications, hydrating, and breathing. Good listening then is a way of being, staying curious longer with open “what” questions, checking what support is wanted, and resisting “advice monsters” that push premature solutions. We also discuss the relational, developmental and productivity costs of poor listening, and I close with Oscar’s five levels of listening and Michael’s exhortation to stay curious a little longer. The invitation to you is to consider how you might practice deeper curiosity and presence for better listening where you are.

00:29 Why the Focus on Listening

05:36 Listening Starts with Listening to Ourselves

13:27 When the Content isn't the Real Content - Curiosity and Questions

18:05 Christian on Optimal Matching

20:58 Michael on our Advice Monsters

26:39 Michael on the Problem with Rushing to Advice

29:59 How We Ask a Question Matters

33:44 Relationship Costs of Poor Listening

42:52 Oscar's Five Levels of Listening

44:23 Wrapping Up

The Full Podcast Episodes:

Michael Bungay Stanier on the power of curiosity and taming your advice monster

RW8 Asking good questions, empowering good people

Oscar Trimboli (Part 1) on being better listeners (CAL61)

Oscar Trimboli (Part 2) on how to listen deeply (CAL62)

Christian van Nieuwerburgh on Bringing Back the Joy (CAL142, S8E7)

Related Links:

Uni of Glasgow Outstanding Catalyst Mentors – Padlet with testimonials (Kay Guccione)

Narelle Lemon, Deep Listening: Are You Being Helped, Hugged or Heard? Jun 9 2026

The Thriving PI Summit – free online event June 29-Jul 2 2026 – organized by Ana Pineda. Free registration.

Mike Levin is a Professor of Biology at Tufts University in the US and leads the Levin Lab and pursues research across cancer, birth defects, regenerative medicine, AI, synthetic morphology, and philosophy, unified by a central aim: understanding how minds become embodied and scale across biological and synthetic systems. Mike explains his early inspirations and his practice of looking for what is “not in the textbook,” challenging dominant paradigms and treating scientific frameworks as metaphors that both reveal and hide phenomena. He describes navigating academia by separating creative exploration from pragmatic communication, strategically and slowly rolling out disruptive ideas as data accumulate, and connecting new ideas to what others value. He discusses building and managing an interdisciplinary lab, sustaining high publication output through intensive work, persisting through rejection, and advising students to envision long-term outcomes and not give up. This conversation will inspire you to also ask new questions.

00:29 Episode Introduction

04:24 Introducing Mike, the Levin Lab and the Embodied Minds Research Agenda

06:30 Early Curiosity Origins - TVs and Bugs

09:45 Fresh Eyes Method

11:48 Hidden Capacties of Algorithms

13:21 Beyond Disciplines

15:07 Navigating Academia Your Way

17:08 Curating Radical Ideas

20:21 Two Minds Strategy and Being Realistic

24:45 Understanding Communities, Building Your Own Community

26:09 Slow Curated Rollout Dial

29:32 Imposter Syndrome Reality

29:58 Data Over Opinions

32:11 Interdisciplinary Metaphors

34:44 Rethinking Scientific Categories

36:23 Hiring For Discomfort, Building a MultiDisciplinary Team

39:14 From Crazy To Obvious

41:07 Seeding Lab Communication

43:51 Partnering With Model Systems

45:06 Sharing Science

45:51 Productivity And Sacrifice

47:22 Stress And Best Job

49:19 Speaking to Young Researchers

50:55 Never Give Up

Related links:

The Levin Lab website and Starter pack: Introductory materials to the lab's academic work

Tufts Allen Discovery Center

Mike's personal Blog: Forms of life, forms of mind and Google Scholar page

Podcast Exploring the origin and nature of minds in the physical universe and YouTube channel

TED conversation about "The electrical blueprints that orchestrate life"

Advice he gives to his students

Dr Raffael Himmelsbach and I discuss his unorthodox path from a political science PhD at the University of Lausanne into science policy and research-adjacent leadership roles across multiple countries, including work with the Center for Digital Life Norway and co-directing a Vienna Ludwig Boltzmann Research Group on wound healing. He describes moving away from a publication-driven track toward designing programs, coordinating networks, and working with people, and reflects on the discomfort and courage required in ambiguous roles where goals and success criteria can be unclear. Drawing on large-scale, multi-institution collaborations, he discusses stakeholder management, the risks of equating success with spending and visible activity, and the importance of creating safety and “attractiveness” for collaboration. He shares practical tools such as participatory lab manuals, structured check-ins, and “parking lot” rituals, and reflects on leadership beyond positional authority, the tension between expert and leader identities, and the value of coaching and self-leadership as he now transitions to leadership coaching and organisation development consulting.

00:29 Introducing Raffael

03:38 From Political Science to Science Policy and Responsibility

10:03 Finding his Happy Place in a Research Adjacent Role

17:53 Becoming more Professional, Accepting Being Uncomfortable

22:03 Coordinating Multidisciplinary Multisite Projects

28:14 Key Learning About Courage

32:10 Knowing your Stakeholders, Defining Success Beyond Activity

35:18 Bootstrapping Collaboration Through Safety and Attractiveness

41:23 Lab Manual As Social Contract

44:14 Participation and Shared Responsibility

46:28 Leadership Without Command Control

50:50 Rituals That Make People Seen

53:39 Leader Identity vs Expert Identity

59:01 Drawing on Experience to Help Others

01:01:27 Third Space Roles and Future Academia

Related Links:

Raffael Himmesbach Consulting and LinkedIn profile

Raffael's report on The Centre for Digital Life Norway at Nine Years: Insights from the Legacy Workshop

Ludwig Boltzmann Research Group Senescence and Healing of Wounds

Raffael Himmelsbach, We need to talk about leadership transitions in science, LinkedIn blog post Jan 2026.

Richard Van Noorden, Some hard numbers on science’s leadership problems, Nature 557, 294-296 (2018) doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05143-8

Connecting to Christian van Nieuwerburgh’s idea of “joyful effort” and discussions at the University of Graz Research Culture Campus Fest about supportive, inclusive research cultures and prioritizing meaningful work over productivity, this episode revisits an episode from January 2025 on research identity, meaningful work, and funding. I explore the tensions between our autonomy to pursue intrinsically motivating, value-driven research and systemic constraints such as funding calls, promotion criteria, shifting national priorities, and restrictive deliverables that can conflict with participatory principles. Using examples from Katta Spiel on focusing on what you want to do not what is strategic, Mark Reed’s impact principle about purpose, and Stuart Reeves on low-cost research styles, I talk about our choices to play or not play the funding “game,” including reframing proposals, and the risks of taking on less-meaningful projects. I close with reflective questions (summarized in nine steps by Rachel Ratz-Lubashevsky) to identify what “lights you up” and guide decisions.

00:34 Motivating the Relevance of Revisiting this Episode

04:56 Rachel's Summary of the 9 Simple Steps to What Lights You Up

08:28 Introduction and Reflection on Academic Freedom

09:56 Replay from Katta Spiel Part 1

10:40 Mark Reed's principle for engagement and impact

13:23 The Tension Between Personal Values, Identity and Systemic Expectations

15:07 The Reality of Funding Proposals and Strategic Game

16:40 The Impact of Funding Conditions on Research

18:27 The Dilemma of Playing the Funding Game

21:07 Choices for How to Play the Game

27:52 Choosing Not to Play the Game

29:42 Reframing Research Identity and Conclusion

Related Links:

Uni Graz Research Culture Campus Fest report and LinkedIn post about it

Rachel Ratz-Lubashevsky’s LinkedIn post summarising the 9 steps

CAL Podcast episodes I mention:

Christian van Nieuwerburgh, Johanna Stadlbauer, Katta Spiel part 1, Mark Reed and Stuart Reeves part 1

Christian van Nieuwerburgh is Professor of Coaching and Positive Psychology at the Centre for Positive Health Sciences at the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland University of Medicine and Health Sciences, and a practitioner providing coach training and consultancy for the education sector, among other roles. His ‘coach on a motorcycle’ identity is about aligning all parts of his work and life as a “pracademic”.

Universities, he argues, should be joyful, safe, inclusive places where students and staff flourish despite constraints like performance metrics and burnout. He talks about wellbeing as foundational for us to be able to do good work, about how a coaching approach is ideal for setting up learning environments that build autonomy, self-efficacy, and connection, and about the importance of intention. Intention, he says, is central to how we show up because “intention directs attention,” helping others feel seen, valued, and heard. Throughout, he provides lots of practical suggestions for how to check in with our own intentions and choices. We discuss supervision and learning conversations, shifting stances from directive to facilitative and dialogical, optimal matching of support, asking what help is needed, cultivating presence, and using small reflective choices (purpose, calendar/energy audits, recharging activities) to bring joy back to academic work.

00:29 Episode Introduction

03:33 Christian's Student Dream to Academic Reality

05:51 Embracing the Pracademic Coach on a Motorcycle

07:25 Bringing Joy Back to Universities

12:40 Joyful Effort Meaning and Energy

19:29 Wellbeing Beyond the Business Case

23:58 Intention Directs Attention

29:54 Coaching Supervision and a Caring Professor

34:16 Undivided Attention Matters

36:00 Supervisor as Coach

38:34 Beyond the Expert Hat

41:04 Dialogical Career Conversations

48:32 Matching Support to Needs

50:54 From Surviving to Adding Value

53:36 Practicing Presence Daily

57:23 Joyful Effort Closing

58:17 Outro

Related Links:

About Christian:

The ‘Coach on a Motorcycle’. You can also find him via his RCSI web page, Google Scholar page, and on LinkedIn and Instagram.

People Christian mentions:

Prof. Cathia Jenainati, Uni of Gloucestershire

Prof. George Khairallah, American University of Beirut

Dr Paige Williams, Uni of Melbourne

Christian's books and articles:

See https://coachonamotorcycle.com/books/ for all his books

van Nieuwerburgh, Christian and Biswas-Diener, Robert, Radical Listening: The Art of True Connection, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2025.

van Nieuwerburgh, Christian, Radical listening: two big ideas and six core skills that could help you connect more deeply with others, The Conversation, June 2025

https://theconversation.com/radical-listening-two-big-ideas-and-six-core-skills-that-could-help-you-connect-more-deeply-with-others-256289

van Nieuwerburgh, Christian and Williams, Paige (Eds), From Surviving to Thriving: A student’s guide to feeling and doing well at university, Sage Publications, 2022.

van Nieuwerburgh, Christian, An Introduction to Coaching Skills: A Practical Guide, Sage Publications, 2013 (2025 4th Ed).

Lynden J, Gallaghan G, van Nieuwerburgh CJ (2024), "Bringing joy back into higher education: the potential contribution of coaching". International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, Vol. 13 No. 3 pp. 378–393. (PDF available here)

Other articles:

Buckingham, Markus and Goodall, Ashley, Work-Life Balance is a Myth. Do This Instead. Time Magazine, June 6 2019.

Designing Your Intentional Sabbatical: Purpose, boundaries and career sustainability.

This is Part 2 of my conversation with Bethany Wilinski, an associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State University. Building from Part 1, where Bethany described her own sabbatical experience, here the the focus is on how to more intentionally design your sabbatical (also relevant for any leave) by starting with purpose, priorities, and desired feelings rather than a to-do list. Bethany outlines practical boundary management strategies to protect your time amid ongoing responsibilities while on sabbatical. These include clarifying expectations in advance, shifting cognitive load to students, and batching meetings into limited windows. She makes a great case for how we can use sabbaticals as a chance to test systems and carry changes forward: balancing structure versus unscheduled time, normalizing rest and reading as productive, and using sabbatical (and other types of leave) to reset habits around health, work rhythms, and scarcity-driven opportunity-taking. Bethany also also reflects more generally on academia’s lack of positive reinforcement, her sabbatical-planning coaching business, and the need for sustainable career choices and incremental culture change.

0:29 Introduction

03:55 Starting With Purpose and Priorities Before Tasks

07:34 Mapping Obligations And Boundaries, Setting Boundaries

12:31 Reducing Cognitive Load, Taking Control of Scheduling

14:51 Structure Rest And Reading

18:25 Mid Career Reset And Scarcity

22:01 Career Choices In Uncertain Times

24:12 Lessons From Parental Leave

26:22 The To Do List Never Ends

29:35 Validation And Sustainable Culture

35:58 Starting A Coaching Business

39:21 Changing Academia From Within

41:18 Outro

Related Links:

Bethany’s Michigan State Uni webpage

Bethany Wilinski Sabbatical Coaching

Bethany on LinkedIn

Bethany Wilinski is an associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State University and a sabbatical coach. In Part 1 of our conversation, she describes her own sabbatical experience. She talks about how earning tenure in 2022 after the pandemic, young children, and family losses left her burned out and questioning her work’s impact. Initially she planned an “expected” research sabbatical in Tanzania and applied for a competitive yearlong Fulbright, but soon felt unease about starting a major new project and disrupting family life. After seeing a colleague’s Florence sabbatical report, she reframed sabbatical as restoration and family reconnection, chose Bordeaux France for one semester, and returned reenergized and eager to reengage without resuming frenetic pace. She discusses shifting identity beyond career, setting boundaries, pausing before saying yes, focusing on finishing work, and unlearning academia’s hidden curriculum of constant striving.

00:29 Introduction

04:09 Burnout After Tenure and Initial Sabbatical Plans

09:14 Navigating Doubts After Submitting and Expectations

14:03 Post Tenure Pressure

18:18 Slowing Down For Family

24:19 A Different Sabbatical Vision

30:14 Restoration Mindset Shift and Choosing Bordeaux France

33:16 Returning Reenergized

35:59 Identity Beyond Academia

37:52 Boundaries and Saying No

41:26 Essentialism and Finishing

43:19 Hidden Curriculum Unlearning

48:37 Support Systems and Guardrails

52:09 Designing Your Sabbatical

52:33 Outro

Related Links:

Bethany’s Michigan State Uni webpage

Bethany Wilinski Sabbatical Coaching

Bethany on LinkedIn

[Book] Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Crown Currency 2014.

What if a corporatisation approach could actually make academic life better? Looking across the episodes so far this year I see three themes: shifting from “I” to “we” by treating research as a team sport; developing a new kind of leadership focused on enabling others through self-awareness, humility, authenticity, kindness, and clear roles; and adopting new ways of working that reduce bureaucratic hierarchies. These point to new ways of working. Drawing on Masud Husain’s 2025 editorial on corporatization and “bullshit jobs”, and Jayne Price’s discussion of holacracy and Corporate Rebels, I remind us, as if we need reminding, of how our current arbitrary and onerous bureaucratic processes take us away from our core work. I then explore what we could learn from holocratic approaches that move from bureaucracy and control to trust and self organised teams, as captured in Corporate Rebels’ eight trends (purpose over metrics, networks of teams, supportive leadership, adaptation, freedom with accountable trust, distributed decisions, transparency, and talents/mastery). I invite us to experiment with being academic rebels exploring new ways of working with new forms of leadership. There might actually be forms of corporatisation that could be useful for our sector.

00:29 Reflecting on Conversations so Far in 2026

02:08 Theme 1: Mindset shift from I to We

02:55 Theme 2: Critical Role of Leadership

05:09 Theme 3: Needing New Ways of Working

07:19 The Rise of Corporatisation and 'Bullshit Jobs' in the Academic Sector

10:17 Learning from New Approaches in the Corporate Sector?

13:31 Exploring the Arbitrariness and Impact of Bureaucracy and Heirarchies

14:13 Example: Different Approaches to Bureaucracy around Teaching

16:39 Example: Different Approaches to Booking Holidays

17:48 Example: Booking Work Related Travel

20:05 Example: Bureaucracy and Control of Funding Bodies

22:39 Example: Bureaucracy, Micromanagement in Professional Organizations

25:15 Better Ways from Holocracy and Coporate Rebels?

29:33 Requires New Forms of Leadership

34:09 Eight Trends in This New Coporate Way

39:16 What Can You Imagine for Your Situation?

Related Links:

Sarah McLusky on diverse careers, purposeful events and effective communication (CAL135, S8E1)

Jayne Price on making work work better (CAL137, S8E2)

Jen Heemstra on Accidental Leadership (CAL 138, S8E3)

Strengths as Superpowers - Replay (CAL123, S6 E17)

Masud Husain, On the responsibilities of intellectuals and the rise of bullshit jobs in universities, Brain, Volume 148, Issue 3, March 2025, Pages 687–688.

Brian Robertson, Holocracy

Corporate Rebels

Diederick Janse & Marco Bogers, Getting Started With Holacracy: Upgrading Your Team's Productivity, 2020, AbeBooks

Prof. Jen Heemstra from Washington University in St. Louis in the US shares her journey from a research-focused bimolecular engineer to accidental leader and now author of the insightful book 'Lab Work to Leadership.' Jen speaks about the challenges faced by academics moving into leadership, recognisning that we are often untrained and unprepared for these roles. She shares insights from her book focusing on self-leadership, leading others, and coaching future leaders. Jen talks about the importance of building trust, creating a positive lab culture, giving and seeking feedback, and the significance of modeling behavior for emerging leaders. Jen also reflects on her personal experiences, including her struggles to get tenure and maintaining a work-life balance.

00:29 Introduction and Welcome

03:09 The Birth of 'Lab Work to Leadership'

05:43 Navigating Academic Challenges

08:29 The Worst Day: Tenure Rejection

12:14 People Showing Up and Getting Tenure

15:49 Embracing Leadership in Academia That We Are Not Trained For

21:26 Building a Collaborative Lab Culture

30:35 The Importance of Self-Leadership and Self-Awareness

33:27 The Role of Coaches and Mentors

35:02 The Importance of Feedback

37:01 Challenges in Giving and Receiving Feedback

38:46 Understanding Individual Needs in a Lab Environment

43:59 Building Trust and Psychological Safety

49:37 Coaching Future Leaders

56:50 Balancing Professional and Personal Life

58:11 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

58:56 Outro

Related Links:

About Jen:

Heemstra Lab at Washington Univ in St. Louis

Jen’s webpage and LinkedIn Profile

Book:

Jen Heemstra, Labwork to leadership: a concise guide to thriving in the science job you weren’t trained for, 2025, Harvard University Press

People:

Troy Champ

Resources:

Edwin Catmull and Amy Wallace, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, 2014, Penguin.

Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, 2010, Harper Collins.

Birkman Personality Inventory