Changing Academic Life

Dr. Stuart Reeves is an Associate Professor in the Mixed Reality Lab in the School of Computer Science and Horizon Research Institute both at Nottingham University in the UK. This conversation is in two parts. In Part 1 here, he reflects on the conflict in defining one’s own research brand vs the importance of the collective and collegiality in academia, and the structural issues that contribute to this. He raises the question of ‘what are universities for’ and highlights the complexities of university management and the structures around this. In Part 2 we will go on to discuss his response to these challenges by becoming actively involved in governance at his university.

‘The idea of creating one's own research brands…collegiality creates a bit of friction with that. And it's a big kind of mess of things which we're all caught up in …there's a big struggle between defining yourself as part of a group, but also defining yourself as an individual’

‘I struggle with that kind of Big [research] Vision element’

‘Describing what universities are for socially, culturally, and their value beyond … just producing valuable economic units, economic actors, ie graduate students’

‘This is a crisis that's been emerging…it's been visible for years ever since the fees are introduced, you could argue, if you extrapolate,…it was going to happen, at some point, it became more and more significant’

2:25 My preamble to Part 1

3:01 Stuart introduces himself

5:17 His reasoning coming back to Nottingham where he did his PhD

6:41 The conflict in defining own research brand vs the importance of the collective and collegiality

9:46 The structures that help reinforce those tensions e.g., how funding is allocated, how universities value certain aspects

11:45 Different research styles that don’t work so well with massive grants – a skill to be able to talk about individual pieces of research as part of some grand vision

15:05 About rankings and how governments engage with universities – they can’t articulate what universities are for – and managerialist ways

18:55 Balancing this with accountability against the public purse and critiques ways of valuing degrees

 21:42 What Stuart would argue universities are for – value on different dimensions and impact of degrees on society

24:50 The pressure on student numbers, and capped student fees – ‘this is a crisis that has been visible for years’ – the funding pressures for universities and the disparity between institutions and how much they rely on fees

31:32 The day to day impact of all this depends on where you are and internal balancing of finances; also impacts in casualization of workforce; and the management decisions of universities

35:32 The backgrounds of university management and management tracks for academics that can lead them to be detached from academic staff

38:39 My final comments.

39:58 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation here.

Related Links

Stuart Reeves web page & Stuart’s Medium page

Steve Benford & MRL

Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute

UKRI Digital Economy Programme

EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Welcome to Part 2 of my discussion with Dr Darragh McCashin. In Part 1 Darragh discussed his PhD in Digital mental health and his path to being an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at Dublin City University during COVID. In part 2, we start off replaying what he was saying about the mental health challenges faced by PhD and early career researchers in particular and then we get into a focus on the imposter, something that we can probably all relate to. Based on his work and that of his colleagues in the EU ReMO COST Action, ReMo standing for Researcher Mental Health Observatory, Darragh talks about what is imposterism, how it is experienced, the importance of raising awareness and the power of sharing our imposter experiences. He also talks about the importance of taking both top down and bottom up approaches for dealing with imposterism, and shares practical strategies for doing this.

“You see the value in putting oneself out there”

“It's incredibly powerful when somebody beside you a different career stage …spews the same type of impostor stuff”

“It's multi level… it has to be top down meets bottom up”

“You're externalising it. And you're living with rather than…living under the feelings of impostor”

“At an institutional level, there needs to be an acknowledgement matched with resources”

Overview (times approximate):

0:30 Preamble

01:40 How he got into this work in the first place – by putting himself out there

07:29 The themes that come up in discussions about mental health, how mental health issues practically play out and the patterns he sees

12:28 The importance of taking both a top down and bottom-up approach

15:50 How he defines imposter

19:13 Moving to talk about the levels and practical tips for taking action; Being aware of the imposter cycle - ‘It’s always the next thing’ and imposter awareness

21:44 Changing toxic lab environments by connecting, and sharing to disrupt the imposter cycle by increasing awareness

27:50 Externalizing the imposter as a common experience, finding ways to disrupt the patterns – the importance of language framing – living with rather than under the imposter

34:15 More about what can be done to support each other at the group level

37:03 The systemic issues and working at the system/institutional level where there needs to be acknowledgement matched by resources, and the challenges of a duty of care

42:59 Final thoughts wrapping up – signposting ReMO COST Action and their manifesto re multi-level change

44:35 My reflections at the end

47:29 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation here.

Related Links

People/Projects/Webinars:

Darragh’s ReMO Webinar on ‘Understanding the Psychology of Impostor Syndrome in Academia and Beyond’ YouTube link

ReMO COST Action

ReMO Researcher Mental Health and Wellbeing Manifesto

Gábor Kismihók, Brian Cahill, Stéphanie Gauttier, Janet Metcalfe, Stefan T. Mol, Darragh McCashin, Jana Lasser, Murat Güneş, Mathias Schroijen, Martin Grund, Katia Levecque, Susan Guthrie, Katarzyna Wac, Jesper Dahlgaard, Mohamad Nadim Adi, & Christina Kling. (2021). Researcher Mental Health and Well-being Manifesto.

Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5788557

ReMO on twitter

Hugh Kearns https://www.ithinkwell.com.au/hugh-kearns

Papers:

Katia Levecque et al, 2017 Work organization and mental health problems in PhD students. Research Policy, 46:4, 868-879.

Interview with Katia   https://www.science.org/content/article/four-years-after-landmark-study-phd-student-mental-health-what-has-changed

Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey, 2021, Stop telling women they have imposter syndrome, HBR

Kirstin Mulholland, David Nichol & Aidan Gillespie, 2022, ‘It feels like you’re going back to the beginning…’: addressing imposter feelings in early career academics through the creation of communities of practice, J. Of Further and Higher Education, online July 2022.

Dr Darragh McCashin started as an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at Dublin City University during COVID. In Part 1 of this conversation, he reflects on his experiences doing an interdisciplinary PhD in digital mental health, on the importance of interdisciplinary thinking, and on starting a lecturer position at a new university during COVID times. Darragh is also part of the Core Group for the EU COST Network on Researcher Mental Health Observatory, called ReMO. In sharing what he loves and what he finds challenging in his lecturing role, we start to touch on the theme of the imposter, a theme that we focus on in Part 2, coming soon.

“It's so hard methodologically logistically to manifest that interdisciplinarity.”

“Taking up that [lecturer] position early September 2020. So .. I'm excited for that. But like anything, it was all on Zoom. So it almost didn't feel real.”

“[Likes] the flexibility in being able to say, okay, I can set my research agenda”

“It's always the next thing … the cycle of imposterism, you'll achieve that thing that you thought you'd never achieve. … And then almost like lightning, it's the next thing that the anxious gaze shifts towards.”

“It's incredibly powerful when somebody beside you in a different career stage or in a different discipline, spews the same type of imposter stuff, … You're like, okay, so it's not it's not just me”

00:30 Preamble

02:07 Darragh introduces himself

08:07 How he manifests interdisciplinary thinking

09:35 His men in rural Ireland study for a Movember project

14:43 Experiences of taking on his first lecturer position in the middle of a pandemic

20:13 What he loves about his job

22:38 What he is afraid of – the imposter.

25:39 The recognition from audiences when he talks about the pressures of academia and the imposter

30:01 My reflections at the end

32:46 End

In more detail: PART 1

00:30 Preamble

02:07 Darragh introduces his background in sociology and psychology, getting to a PhD in digital mental health and now being an Ass Prof in Dublin City University

08:07 How he manifests interdisciplinary thinking but having to be located within a discipline and the shift to transversal skills (soft skills)

09:35 His men in rural Ireland study for a Movember project bringing together qualitative thinking/methods and psychology constructs

14:43 Experiences of taking on his first lecturer position in the middle of a pandemic, the zoom haze and the challenges getting to know processes, culture and colleagues

20:13 What he loves about his job - the flexibility and learning that he can facilitate and is good at it

22:38 What he is afraid of – the imposter.

25:39 The recognition from audiences when he talks about the pressures of academia and the imposter, and on hearing the research that says 1 in 3 PhD students experience mental health issues

30:01 My reflections at the end

32:46 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation here.

Darragh on twitter, on LinkedIn

Marie Curie TEAM Innovation Training Network & David Coyle & TEAM twitter account

Movember Men’s mental health initiative

Age Action Ireland Report (funded by Movember): EU COST Action ReMO

ReMO on twitter https://twitter.com/ReMO_COST

Related CAL podcasts:

• RW6 Exploring your own superpowers
• RW9 Progress and praise

Dr. Julie Kientz is a professor and Chair of the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington in the US. In part 1 of our conversation, Julie reflected on how she made her own way from a small town geeky outcast, to get through college, and then on to a PhD and a faculty position and parenthood.

We continue here in Part 2 with Julie talking about some early roles that demonstrated leadership skills, her tenure process and finding a more focused path post-tenure. She also talks about how she came to take on the Department Chair role and then almost immediately having to lead her department through the COVID crisis and then the murder of George Floyd and ongoing racial justice issues. She role models leadership from a place of humility and care, working to her strengths, amplifying impact and being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

“Having the authority to really do those things felt really great, it was also scary right, but it was great to recognise that when you are in a position of leadership and you see something or people come to you with concerns, you can do something about it.”

“It was important to be open, communicative and timely too.”

“I don’t always know what to say but it is better to say something than to struggle with the exact right thing to say.”

“Those little things can have an impact on people. But they are hard.”

“Being comfortable with being uncomfortable, pushing outside your comfort zones”

“Don’t take yourself too seriously, take feedback”

Overview (times approximate):

02:35 How she became chair through her reputation for being an organized person, trying new things, developing new processes

03:57 A digression into her tenure experience

05:42 Finding her more focused path post tenure during sabbatical – topic & people & making impact through people

11:00 Getting back to the department chair story, being approached by the Dean as an interim chair

12:58 Attending a post-tenure mentoring program and deciding a PhD program chair was her ideal role which she does and implements lots of changes, with lots of positive feedback

15:04 Taking on interim chair role Fall 2019, creating associate chair roles for support, then being the sole applicant when they did the permanent chair search in Feb 2020

18:04 Navigating the department through COVID and racial justice issues, working out how to respond, getting and giving support, not always getting it right

25:51 Forming a peer support network, re-framing the role of department chair towards mentoring faculty

29:05 Managing the shift in relationship from peer to leader, and clarity about different roles/hats

31:45 Relationship with power

35:52 Her legacy/impact wishes

37:02 Encouragement to try out leadership and amplify impact

38:41 What’s hard about the job, and handling the hard decisions

41:01 Julie’s final thoughts

42:07 My final reflections on the conversation with Julie

44:56 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation here.

Related Links

Julie Kientz - Bio & Part 1 of our conversation

Anind Dey, Amy Ko

Post-tenure Pathfinders Programme

Dr. Julie Kientz is a professor and Chair of the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington in the US. In part 1 of our conversation, Julie shares her fascinating journey from first wanting to be a vet to then getting into a small town college to do computer science and then eventually doing a PhD at Georgia Tech and later getting a tenure track position. Her telling of the story is rich with reflective insights and nuggets of wisdom, whether it is about the about the value of good mentors, advice to PhD students, doing a job search as part of an academic couple, how to survive that first year as a faculty member, making decisions and managing boundaries, and parenting alongside work. In Part 2 we will focus on her path into leadership and being a department chair.

They were such good mentors. And life changing.

The first year is all about survival. So many things you have to learn in that first year [as Assistant Professor].

I learned I can’t do it all so I developed this [decision] framework: will I have fun doing it, will I learn something from it, … am I uniquely qualified to do it?

There are a lot of parallels between mentoring and parenting

Overview (times approximate):

02:22 Julie introduces herself and how she got into computing

05:00 Discovering research and the life changing impact of good mentors

09:25 Getting into Grad School and doing her PhD

11:57 Challenges/experiences doing a PhD and learnings as advice to other students

16:47 Finding her post-PhD path

18:40 Doing a job search together with partner

25:08 Surviving the first year

29:45 Making decisions about service, learning about setting boundaries

34:14 Managing parenting and being more focused and strategic with work

41:25 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation here.

Julie Kientz - Bio

Anind Dey - https://ischool.uw.edu/people/faculty/profile/anind

Jen Mankoff - https://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/jmankoff

Previous podcast conversation with Jen Mankoff - http://www.changingacademiclife.com/blog/2019/4/23/jen-mankoff

Gregory Abowd - https://coe.northeastern.edu/people/abowd-gregory/

Gillian Hayes - https://www.gillianhayes.com

Acknowledgements:

Auphonic for post-processing, Otter.ai for help with transcription.

Oscar Trimboli is an author, host of the Apple award-winning podcast Deep Listening and a sought-after keynote speaker. Along with the Deep Listening Ambassador Community, he is on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace. Oscar has experienced first-hand the transformational impact leaders can have when they listen beyond words. He believes that when leadership teams focus their attention and listening, they will build organizations that create powerful legacies for the people they serve. Oscar is a marketing and technology industry veteran working for Microsoft, PeopleSoft, Polycom, and Vodafone. He consults with organizations including American Express, AstraZeneca, Cisco, Google, HSBC, IAG, Montblanc, PwC, Salesforce, Sanofi, SAP, and Siemens.

In the previous podcast, Part 1 of this conversation, Oscar motivated why deep listening is important. In this Part 2, we get practical and he unpacks his 5 levels of listening with some actionable strategies for how we can be better listeners. We also touch on listening in group contexts and cultural issues around listening. And he briefly introduces the four listening villains that can get in the way of good listening.

Not enough of us communicate how we communicate.

At the beginning of the meeting, simply ask what would make this a great meeting for you?

It’s not your job as the listener to always make sense of what they say, it’s your job to help them make sense of what they think.

It’s the simplest thing that make us better listeners and you’ll never be perfect.

Overview (times approximate):

02:50 The five levels of listening: 1. listening to yourself, 2. to the content, 3. for the context, 4. for unsaid, 5. for meaning

04:08 Level 1: being present to the moment by managing distractions, being well hydrated, taking three deep breaths – simple rituals, difficult to practice.

12:40 Level 2: what you see, hear, sense – emotion as a signal about what matters; listening to body language including on zoom

17:50 Level 3: the backstory, their backstory; asking the backstory to help them, e.g., asking ‘how long have you thought about this for?’

21:30 Level 4: listening for the unsaid, the first thing people say is top of mind so exploring the unsaid with phrases like ‘tell me more’, ‘what else’, and silence. 28:25 Level 4 plays out in one-on-one as well as groups. The importance of listening to all present, listening for difference, and for perspectives not in the room.

35:32 Level 5: not imposing your own assumptions re meaning

40:20 The four villains of listening – the dramatic, interrupting, lost/distracted, shrewd villains.

43:28 One thing to try now – listen for what’s not said. Just be comfortable in knowing it’s the simplest things that make us better listeners.

45:34 Cultural differences and listening

48:02 Wrap up

50:45 End

You can download a full transcript of the conversation here.

Related Links

Oscar Trimboli: oscartrimboli.com

Listening Quiz: https://www.oscartrimboli.com/listeningquiz/

90 Day Deep Listening Challenge: https://www.oscartrimboli.com/thanks-for-registering-for-the-90-day-deep-listening-challenge/

Books/People:

Oscar Trimboli, Deep Listening: Impact beyond words (2017)

Oscar Trimboli, How to listen: Discover the hidden key to better communication (coming out Oct 2022)

Marc Brackett, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

Mark Brackett,: Permission to Feel, 2020, Celadon Books

Kieran Flanagan, Dan Gregory, Selfish, scared and stupid: Stop fighting human nature and increase your performance, engagement and influence. 2014. Wiley.

Oscar Trimboli is an author, host of the Apple award-winning podcast Deep Listening and a sought-after keynote speaker. Along with the Deep Listening Ambassador Community, he is on a quest to create 100 million deep listeners in the workplace. Oscar has experienced first-hand the transformational impact leaders can have when they listen beyond words. He believes that when leadership teams focus their attention and listening, they will build organisations that create powerful legacies for the people they serve – today and more importantly, for future generations. Oscar is a marketing and technology industry veteran working for Microsoft, PeopleSoft, Polycom, and Vodafone. He consults with organisations around the world, including Cisco, Google, SAP, and Siemens in the tech industry.

In Part 1 of this conversation, we discuss his quest to quest to create deep listeners, the costs of not listening, the 125-400-900 rule, how to be listeners rather than just do listening, and how to ask great questions. In Part 2 (coming next) he will unpack his 5 levels of listening with some actionable strategies.

“What you said [was] really useful, but how you were being with us, your curiosity, your pausing, the way you are listening to the room. I learned more from your [listening] example.”

“Great listeners really influence the speaker”

“How can I bring my presence here?”

“It's the consciousness and awareness of you as a listener… in this moment for this situation, for this context to move forward, the outcome we're trying to achieve…”

Overview (times approximate):

03:50 The difference between a mission and a quest and mission to get a 100 million deep listeners

12:57 The cost of not listening

22:35 Speaking about listening and the 125-400-900 rule, the numbers that matter: 125 words/min speaking speed, 400 words/min listening speed, 900 words/min thinking speed

26:38 How to listen to ask great questions that advance the knowledge in the room e.g., at conferences

31:54 End

You can download a full transcript of the conversation here.

Related Links

Oscar Trimboli: oscartrimboli.com

Listening Quiz, and the 90 Day Deep Listening Challenge

Oscar’s books:

Deep Listening: Impact beyond words (2017)

How to listen: Discover the hidden key to better communication (coming out Oct 2022)

 Journal paper on speeding up listening:

Murphy et al., Watching a lecture twice at double speed can benefit learning, Appl Cognit Psychol 2022;36:69-82. [short BPS article based on the paper, and the full published paper]

A short preamble to kick start a new season for 2022 of Changing Academic Life podcasts. [6:56 mins]

Links:

Austen Rainer, Queens Uni Belfast

Online Academic Leadership Development Course (Starting end Sept 2022)

Residential Leadership Development Course (last held June 2022)

Informatics Europe

Transcript:

 (00:04) Welcome to changing academic life I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick. And this is a podcast series where academics and others share their stories, provide ideas and provoke discussions about what we can do individually and collectively to change academic life for the better. 

(00:30) So welcome to this brand new series of the changing academic life podcast. I know it has been a long, long time coming. I think the last podcast I released was in June, 2021, and that was when I was still COVID stranded in Australia. It took some getting out of Australia. We were initially denied permission to leave despite our bags being on the plane and us thinking that we had all the correct permissions, but we eventually got back to Vienna in August, 2021. And I don't know about you, but it's been an ongoing process of readjusting and renegotiating what life and work looks like in these ongoing times. The term VUCA has been around for a number of years to describe a world where there's a lot of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and, and it feels like we're in a world, that's a VUCA world on steroids still. 

(01:37) And I know that for our own group, our own research group, we're still renegotiating how to gather again and how to be a group and how we reconfigure the sort of working from home and working from the office. And, also how we renegotiate connecting with community and conference travel or not travel and so on. So there's been lots going on and I feel like we are just, I'm just surfacing a little bit now, and that's not to say there weren't still some really interesting things going on around the changing academic life theme with my co-facilitator Austen Rainer, we were able to run two versions of the online academic leadership development course last autumn semester. And, this summer semester that were well received and we plan on running the next autumn online version that runs for seven sessions over a couple of months, starting in September towards the end of September. 

(02:46) So if you're interested in that, I'll put a link on the webpage. We were also finally able to run a residential leadership course in June this year that was targeted to more senior leaders. And again, that was a very humbling experience and very rich and rewarding for us as facilitators as well. And we are planning to run another version of the residential course next June, again You might wanna keep your eyes open for that. And just to say that we're running these leadership courses for informatics Europe. So you can also find the links to them on the Informatics Europe webpage. And in the course of the year, there are also various talks and workshops on, you know, to audiences ranging from lecturers to early career researchers, to PhD students on things like bringing a coaching mindset to supervision or how to say yes, no strategically. 

(03:46) I also developed and ran a brand new course for the PhD school in our faculty. And this was in response to seeing the stresses that PhD students were on, especially around pandemic, um, impacts. And I called the course from 'surviving to thriving, crafting your good professional life'. Um, and again, that was well received and such a, again, such a humbling experience to be part of that journey for people. And we'll be running it again. I'll be running it again, this coming semester and looking at ways that I might be able to package that and offer it more generally because I really see a need there. 

(04:33) And so now for 2022 and the new podcast series, I'm really looking forward to bringing whole lots of new conversations with people to share with you. And, I already have a bunch of people who've agreed to have a chat with me and have a couple recorded already that I'll be releasing over the next little while and really looking forward to just hearing people's stories and seeing what we can learn from each other and being part of continuing an open conversation about how we can do academia differently and better and in more collegial and sustainable ways while still producing great research. 

(05:21) And I think for me, one of the big messages that comes through again and again and again in the conversations is the fact that we can take many small choices that can have some really big impacts for ourselves and for the people that we work with. And I know that the agenda of culture change more generally in academia is a longer term project, but it starts with our small steps. So looking forward to being part of the ongoing conversation and discussion around how we can change academic life for the better and really glad to have you along as part of the journey. So keep your eye open for the next podcast, which will be the first conversation that I release in this new season, starting September, 2022. So look forward to talking to you again very soon, take care. 

(06:20) You can find the summary notes and related links for this podcast on www.changingacademiclife.com. You can also subscribe to changing academic life on iTunes or on Stitcher, and you can follow changeacadlife on Twitter. And if something connected with you, please consider sharing this podcast with your colleagues so that we can widen the conversation about how we can do academia differently.

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Photo by Artturi Jalli on Unsplash

This short related-work podcast replays part of a previous podcast conversation with Katherine Isbister about working 8-5, reflecting on productivity and praising yourself. I set this up against some discussions in a meeting this week about the struggles seeing progress, our negativity bias, and recent research on stress in academia. Following the replay, I also relate Katherine’s approach to research around self-compassion and savoring.

Full transcript below.

Related work links

Katherine Isbister – previous podcast: On finding your fit, being productive 8-5 an praising yourself

Negativity bias 

Müller-Pinzler, L., Czekalla, N., Mayer, A.V. et al. Negativity-bias in forming beliefs about own abilities. Sci Rep 9, 14416 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50821-w

Uni stress

Dougall, I., Weick, M., & Vasiljevic, M. (2021, June 22). Inside UK Universities: Staff mental health and wellbeing during the coronavirus pandemic. Retrieved from psyarxiv.com/23axu

Lee, M. et al. (2021) Our uni teachers were already among the world’s most stressed. COVID and student feedback have just made things worse. The Conversation.

Green Carmichael, S. (2015) The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies. Harvard Business Review.

Savoring

Kennelly, Stacey. (2012) 10 steps to Savoring the Good Things in Life. Greater Good Magazine, Greater Good Science Centre at the University of California, Berkeley

Bryant, F. B., & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. 

Self compassion

Kristin Neff https://self-compassion.org/the-three-elements-of-self-compassion-2/

Chris Germer https://chrisgermer.com/about/

 Transcript

Geri (00:05):

Welcome to changing academic life I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick. And this is a bite-size related work podcast where we pick up on a single idea from literature and experience that may provide some insights or tips that will help us change academic life for the better

 (00:27):

In managing your own academic working life, how do you go about recognizing and rewarding yourself or judging the, how productive you are in your work and seeing progress? The focus of this short podcast is mainly to replay a snippet from a conversation that I had, a podcast conversation I had quite a while ago with Katherine Isbister who talks really well about the way in which she's managing her work life so that she can work eight to five, Monday to Friday, and in particular, reflecting on her own productivity and praising herself. And I chose this snippet to replay on the basis of two particular encounters this week.

 (01:17):

One was a meeting where one of the people in the meeting was talking about really struggling with some writing they were doing there. They were struggling to find the story across a number of studies that they had done to pull and how to pull it together. And in that struggle, they were also struggling to see any reward or great progress as they talked about it. They also felt that others were judging them as not being very good because they were having this struggle and those others being people who might've given them some constructive feedback on the writing is important. And so they thought they weren't very good, but I, you know, I can assure you that this is not the case. In fact, this person is really amazing as a researcher, but nonetheless, what we can see here, some of the sort of feelings of being an impostor not progressing. And we also recognize a negativity bias, which psychology literature talk will talk to us about being an, a natural tendency that we have that does have some protective properties and, and has an evolutionary basis. I want to draw particular attention to a 2019 Nature paper by Mueller-Pinzler et al called 'Negativity bias in forming beliefs about own abilities'. And they talk about negativity bias specific for learning. Can you know about our own compared to others performances and that being modulating by prior beliefs about ourself, and that there's a stronger negativity bias in people with who are lower in self-esteem and that social anxiety affect self related negativity bias when individuals are exposed to a judging audience and in academia, we definitely have a judging audience don't we in reviewers and supervisors and so on, or so it might feel.

 (03:16):

And so this triggered a conversation in the meeting with, with the others who were present about what were people's strategies for trying to, what did progress mean and how did they recognize progress and how did they handle the ups and downs of writing? And there was one other person in the meeting in particular who really impressed me in how they talked about having also struggled with these issues, but realizing that they needed to do something different and, and taking on a very deliberate strategy of trying to spend time focusing on what they had done, what they had achieved, and also just how lucky they were or how lucky they felt that they were able to do research on a topic that they were really passionate about. And to have this time to struggle with writing, even though it was a struggle and they were having, you know, having to do multiple iterations to develop the research story across their data as well.

 (04:18):

And the second encounter this week was just coming across a couple of particular research studies. One was of UK university staff that was reported in, that I saw in Times Higher Education, but reflecting a preprint article by Dougall et al from 2021 about mental health and wellbeing and people having high levels of anxiety one and a half times the national average, especially during this pandemic there was an, also a Conversations article about Australian and New Zealand academics that also similarly reported them being very stressed. And I also happened to come across Harvard Business Review article that talked about 'The research is clear: long hours backfire for people and for companies'. So it's not particularly about academia, but it does show clear research about long working long hours being counterproductive. And, and we're not as creative and we're not our outputs aren't as good. And also just the whole health and wellbeing impacts. And we know that we see similar articles reported on academic context. And I think a lot of what the, you know, that person reported in the meeting and, you know, it was leading to stress and that stress was related to performance pressures and the general stress of academe.

(05:45):

So I thought it was really timely to revisit this podcast chat with Katherine. And I want to replay from about 34 minutes, 55 seconds into the original conversation with her. And I would encourage you to listen to the rest as well, if you haven't already, as, as there's really great stuff there that she shares. And I think Katherine's chat connects to both these themes. She very deliberately manages productive, working life, very productive working life. And she does it between the hours of eight to five and Monday to Friday because of what she said is as important to her. And that's time with family and friends outside of work as well. She also talks about some of the strategies that she's put in place towards this about taking time to stop and recognize what she has achieved, like reflecting on your own productivity and surprising yourself. So have a listen here.

podcast extract from Katherine Isbister>

Katherine (06:46):

Well, I mean, one thing is I, I don't work weekends and I try not to work late nights. I mean, I said pretty strict boundaries on family time and also in the summer.

Geri (07:01):

So practically, what does that mean setting strict boundaries?

Katherine (07:05):

Well it means that I, I learned once was born, I learned to work within sort of like eight to five weekdays boundary. I mean, the downside of that as I don't do a lot of water cooler chat, so I think it can affect your networking within your institution, but I was sort of willing to make that trade off to get the work done during the hours and the be there in the evenings and weekends. Yeah. So I think that's really helped. And then I think my husband's German, so we've always gone to Germany for part of the summer. So my daughter's always been traversing contexts and seeing that as a part of life. Now, now that we're settled in Santa Cruz, she's nine now I, I would not leave, you know, until she is done with high school. Right.

Geri: So it's a new phase in your life.

Katherine: Exactly. Yes.

Geri: Because deal with politics if ...

Katherine (08:00):

I will, I will, I can, I can do it now. I can be Zen about it. Yeah, no, I mean, I think kids, when they're younger, there is a lot of shuffling people do, but I think at a certain point it's pretty important. So I wouldn't do that to her now.

Geri (08:14):

So it sounds like the being very disciplined about working eight to five, if I, if I can just reinterpret that is about being very disciplined about how you spend every minute of that day. Because you, you said about not having so much time for the water cooler chats, which yes. Points to the fact that we might be, some of us might be at work for 12 hours or something, but you know, how much of that time is actually productive or what do we define as productive as and important and how do we prioritize water-cooler versus whatever other activity we need to do.

Katherine (08:45):

Well, and I think too, I wouldn't be surprised if there's more drift now that I'm at Santa Cruz. Because as I was saying about NYU, I didn't have colleagues where I'd have these cross-fertilization conversations. But at Santa Cruz that's much more likely. So I think when it's causing that to happen, it's really great to have water cooler conversations. Whereas the kind that aren't so productive or the sort of chewing on politics, or, I mean also, you know, if you form friendships at work, that's great. That's not a problem. Right. I think for me though, I just realized I have all of this family and extended friend and family network that I need to preserve. So the way I do it is I figure out when is my best hours for writing and then in the morning. And usually the very best time is right after a vacation or a weekend like that first slot is when I can think of almost anything really creative. So I know that, and I blocked that time, then everything else comes in the other time. Right. And I know the Friday afternoons are crap and they're not good for much, you know? So you just get realistic about,

Geri (09:57):

And do you do things like plan the night before what you're going to do the next day so that you are productive and disciplined? Or do you just know?

Katherine (10:04):

Oh yeah, I have I have like I set up the whole week. I have a little journal and I set up the whole week of what I'm going to do all week. And then I have every Friday I do a weekend review. So I look at what actually I did get done and I didn't, and then I kind of troubleshoot based on that because otherwise weeks can go by and I have no sense of, and then lately I've, I've been like kind of categorizing those things. Cause when I was associate professor at NYU, I got way too caught up in service duties. Cause I thought I had to solve all these things. And so lately I tag things as research intensive things and that has to be the majority of what I do every week. And if I start to drift off of that, then I just back off.

Geri (10:49):

So you have a strong sense of what the balance of the components of your work is. And I really liked this sort of Friday review back on the week and troubleshooting.

Katherine (10:59):

Yeah. And then I make sure to, I actually like write my own assessment every, because I sound so compulsive, but, and I was like, make a point of praising myself if I did a good job because the other thing, cause I used to always beat myself up. I'd be like, yeah, sure. He did those five things. What are the other three things? And then you don't want to work anymore.

Geri (11:18):

That's so important to do it is because one of the challenges in academia, we can always be doing more things.

Katherine (11:27):

Yeah. Yeah. And nobody sits you down and says, okay, that was enough Geraldine. You did good. Go home and take a break. And so I think I do that to myself. I say, yep, you did a good job this week. You get to take the weekend off. And it's, it's really nice. It feels like liberating. Yeah.

Geri (11:42):

So it sounds like a nice closure to the week as well. That really enables you to step into the weekend. Yes. Leaving that behind.

Katherine (11:48):

And that's why at that same time I try to plan the next week so that I I've queued it all up. I know it's coming because the other thing I think it does is it drops the things into my subconscious on that Friday afternoon. That need to be percolating for Monday. So then I'm ready.

Geri (12:06):

But not in the subconscious in the way of, I can't forget to do that because it's written down in the list. It's that sort of positive percolating rather than the stressing.

Katherine (12:15):

Yes. Yeah. That's the goal. Anyway.

Geri (12:17):

That sounds really amazing. There was something that we had that you had said yesterday when we were just talking informally about, you know, when you were working eight to five, sometimes feeling guilty about telling people that, can you just say a little bit around that?

Katherine (12:36):

Sure. Yeah. Like I, I think, I don't know how it is in Europe and in the U S there's this culture around oh, I worked more than you worked. I worked even more exactly. I was like, oh, I'm working 60 hour weeks. And, and I, I actually did tell someone one time, I remember one time saying, oh, I'm only working this amount. And they got kind of upset with me and I realized, okay, revealing that you actually have work-life balance. It will, it makes people angry if they don't and they're working overworking themselves, it kind of makes them question the narrative. And it also sort of makes people feel bad sometimes because they think, well, why am I overworking? And that person's not right. So instead of it becoming a discussion about a better model for working, I think it can sometimes become this like implicit critique of someone else's practice. And also the other side of it, when I was more junior was I was scared that people would think I wasn't to be taken seriously being a woman. And then once I had a child, it's like, oh no, she's gone out to pasture. She's not going to do anything.

Geri (13:44):

But you've clearly been able to negotiate a way of working. That's very productive, very effective where you sought after you're in a great position now. And you're a great role model for showing that it can work.

Katherine (13:56):

Yeah. Yes. I, I think everyone should have work life balance. I just, I think most of the research on when you're really like on your death bed and they ask people, you know, they don't say, I wish I had been on one more service committee for a conference. I wish I'd worked one more Sunday.

Geri (14:15):

Well, it's always challenging to keep that perspective in mind in the minutia of the day-to-day challenge.

Katherine (14:21):

And I think that's a good reason to reflect on your productivity and praise yourself. Because I think one thing about academia is you don't get instant, positive feedback from someone else, like in a design job. When I used to work in design, you had a manager who would review your work and say, yes, wow. You know, you did good. And they had a good overview of how productive you were compared to others, but we just don't have that in academe. So you kind of...

Geri (14:49):

We can start it. We can start being more conscious of praising people and saying to people, if that's good enough or that's enough. Yes. You could do more. But what at what cost, what exactly.

Katherine (15:01):

Exactly. No I really like, I like this podcast because I think also people exposing and talking about these like pressures and tensions as they move through the practice of their work is another way to, to notice and to say, oh, okay. It's not just me. It's other people have these issues. Yes. Yeah.

Geri (15:21):

Isn't that great. And in terms of this being related work podcast, I just want to make some links to what Katherine has said and what research says as well. So in the last part of that conversation, Katherine talks about that. You know, we're not the only ones who experienced this. And this reminds me of the research on self-compassion, especially by leading psychology researchers in self-compassion Christian, Kristin Neff from University of Texas and Chris Germer from Harvard medical school and the center for mindfulness and compassion at the Cambridge health Alliance. And they talk about self-compassion as having three particular components. One is taking an attitude of self-acceptance rather than self judgment. And that means accepting reality. And just accepting that, you know, we do suffer or fail or feel inadequate and not, not I either not ignoring that. We feel like that nor, nor beating ourselves up with self criticism for not succeeding.

 (16:29):

And I think that's really important. So we, we just embrace the reality of yeah. Sometimes things aren't working out or sometimes things are hard and it's a struggle. The second element of this approach to self-compassion is recognizing that we share a common humanity rather than it just being something that just happens to me. And in this case, we can talk about recognizing that this is part of the shared academic experience. Writing is hard. We all struggle

This short related-work podcast follows up on the last conversation with Michael Bungay-Stanier, to present the seven coach-like questions from his book ‘The Coaching Habit’ for helping us to stay curious longer, jump to advice a little more slowly. I also reflect on my experiences trying to apply this in my academic life where I see it as one of our most powerful tools to help empower and develop good people.

Previous podcast conversation: Michael Bungay-Stanier on the power of curiosity and taming your advice monster

Michael’s link: https://boxofcrayons.com and https://www.mbs.works

Book: The Coaching Habit

TRANSCRIPT

(00:27):

I'd like to follow up here on my conversation with Michael Bungay Stanier, where he talked about the power of staying curious a little bit longer and being slower to jump into advice so that we make sure that when we are giving advice, we're giving advice to the right problem. And I think that as academics or people working in industry, working with people in our supervisory or our management roles, this can be one of the most powerful tools that we have at our disposal for developing the potential in others. And that's what we're all about in the people side of academia. I think in our teaching and in our supervision, and I don't know about you, but I was never trained to take on these sorts of more human aspects of a role we're taught how to do research, how to write papers.

(01:23):

And if we're lucky, we may have had a good role model or a good mentor, or some people may have more natural skills in this regard. But I know for me that when I moved into my first academic position where I was managing people and projects and PhD students, I just felt totally overwhelmed. I felt like I needed to have all the answers, even though I was totally out of my depth and to cover up for that. I know, and, and to sort of put forward the persona that I did know what I was doing. I know that I play out many of Michael's advice monsters - the tell-it, the save-it the control-it. I don't know how I came across this, but in 2007, I happened to see an advertisement for a training course for personal coaches, for development coaches. And I really liked that the language that they used and the emphasis on development, and it just felt like that could be something useful to do.

(02:23):

So I went and did this. It was over a number of months at weekends and online sessions in between sessions and the impact bringing that coaching like mindset back to my job was absolutely transformative. I no longer felt like I had to have all the answers. And there was literally a weight taken off my shoulders and allowed me to be much more authentic and genuine in saying when I didn't have the answers, but I could ask, I was better at asking questions and helping people find their own solutions and collaboratively exploring the solution space. And it was so much more powerful, I think for me and for them.

(03:10):

And I liked the way this sort of bringing a coaching mindset to our supervision and management really empowers the people that we're working with in a way that helps them think through their own issues and mobilize their own abilities and resources and expertise complemented by ours when it's useful and the way that it can result in so much more increased autonomy and, and development for them. And there's a lot of sense. This connects to a lot of the self-determination theory work about the importance of, or autonomy and competence and relatedness. So it really addresses some of those as basic human needs. And it's also a lot of neuro-biological research that talks about the power of having your own insights, your own 'ah hah' moments in coming to solutions rather than being told what to do.

(04:05):

So I wanted to follow up here on what Michael talked about at the last conversation where he said in his book, ‘The coaching habit say less, ask more and change the way you lead forever’. He talks about seven key questions, and even I trained as a coach and I subsequently 10, 12 years or more later did, 10 years later did a masters in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology. I knew the power of questions that I actually had collected pages of examples of different sorts of questions to ask. But there's something about the way he's captured the essence of really important core questions that I like in his book. That's, it just makes it really accessible and approachable. So let's walk through the seven questions.

(04:59):

The first, this one that he talks about is a Kickstarter question. It's saying, what's on your mind. What are we talking about today? And I really liked this because it puts the agenda, puts the emphasis on the person that you're talking with to own the agenda and to drive the conversation from their own needs space. The second question is, and what else? And it could become the third and fourth and fifth question repeated. And what else? Because often he talks about the fact that what people say first, isn't the real thing and that asking and what else, and what else, tell me more about that helps you get down into what's really going on there rather than the superficial off the top of the head response. This is actually a question I teach students when I'm teaching them qualitative research methods and doing interviews that, and what else is their most powerful question to ask in that context as well? Because we know doing qualitative research that often you don't get those deeper insights until you've helped people delve more and more into an issue.

(06:15):

So the third question that he suggests is then what he calls a focus question. So we've explored the, and what else and what else. And you can imagine lots of things on the table. And then you're asking, what's the real challenge for you here now note, and he made this is that he talks about this as being a really important question as well, that you're not just asking, what's the challenge. Because that's putting, putting the focus on the challenge, but you're asking, what's the challenge for you here. So it's about, well, you, as the person who's got to solve the problem, what's the challenge for you. And then it's the, what's the real challenge is that out of all the possible things we've talked about, and there are various sorts of challenges, see, what's the challenge. That's the most critical one. That's going to make the biggest difference to address that you're having the most trouble toward to work out. And I invite you to play with different emphases in, in how that question can be, have provoked different thinking. So you can say what's the real challenge for you here.

(07:33):

Or you could say what's the real challenge for you here. Or you could say what's the real challenge for you, not for what you think everyone else would say, but for you. And what's the real challenge for you here, like in this situation. So that's a really powerful question to play with in lots of ways. And then once I've talked about that, then thinking about the next question, question number four is, is a foundation question, pulling people back to the heart of the matter, to what really matters in it by saying to them, and what do you want? So it's a forward-looking question about looking at what outcome we might be driving to. He then has what he calls a lazy question, which is how can I help? And I would add, you could also say, who else can help you here? And what other support could be useful for you here? And question six then becomes the strategic one because in all of this discussion, you could have explored different options or ideas or something that could be done. But if you're going that strategic question, number six is if you're going to say to this, what else are you saying no to? You know, you might remember from his last time he talked about there always prize, there's a prize and a price. So what do you need to say no to, in order to say yes to this. And then he closes the conversation with the learning question, which is what was most useful for you.

(09:22):

So there are the seven questions that Michael poses in his book. Now you don't clearly, it's not a formula. You don't have to go through each of them in exactly that order. They're sort of like tools in your toolbox and they'll play different roles in different conversations. And sometimes it's just enough to say, what's the real challenge for you here? Or how can I help? Or just saying, and what else? Getting people to think more deeply notice that there's no 'why' and there are no 'shoulds' and we can still offer some thoughts. So when we're exploring and what else, and that may be about now, and what are the options that you've been thinking of in solving this, we can still offer some thoughts and insights. And we could say something like, can I offer some of my own thoughts to add to your thinking or to put on the table? And that thing of asking permission to make a suggestion and being clear when you sort of shifting into a little bit of advice mode and you could even flag it more clearly, would you be interested in knowing my strong advice, but I put it on the table and see what you think about it is helping you also, I find it helps me and it might help you be a little bit more reflective about what mode I'm being in at this time, and still trying to leave the ultimate control for the decision with the person.

(10:52):

So the other thing about these questions is you of course find your own language. You don't have to have exactly the language that's, that's in the questions. As I said, they're just, they're just tools in a toolkit. And you can see how the thing about jumping into advice too quickly and not being curious in exploring, helping people explore the issue through asking good questions can lead to wrong advice and bad advice.

(11:23):

If we just take an example, imagine a student coming to you and talking about having that they're having real trouble getting into writing this paper that they want to write. Again, I don't know about you, but I will often project onto them. What would be my own situation if I was having trouble, if I was procrastinating for writing, and I could assume it's a time management skill, because that's my issue. It's a time management skill, or I could assume it's just a writing skill. I don't know how to structure a and so I could jump in with immediate advice. I will, you know, what have you got a timetable set up and have you structured your points and allocate a time things to it? And they often just look note when you're talking to people, how they're looking, you know, because they could be looking at you going, yeah, well, I'm sure I can do that, but you, you haven't really hit the nail on the head. So if you just ask them, what's going on with this, what's the real challenge for you around trying to get into the writing. You may eventually find out that it's actually a confidence issue, that they just feel like a bit of imposter trying to write it up and then it gives you the right problem that you're trying to address. And then you can actually explore that issue with them.

(12:47):

I also see jumping into advice too quickly happen a lot in doctoral colloquia and early career researcher forums, where the academic faculty panel are there literally with the expert label on. And feeling like you have to play that out and justify being there as the expert. And I've been in, in DCs and early career symposium where someone has presented or talked about an issue and the faculty have immediately jumped in and say saying, well, why don't you do this? Or you should do this or do this. And I can see the person is it, it's not connecting with the person it's, it's not really addressing what they're, what they're talking about. And just intervening and saying, can I just ask a clarifying question? Can you tell me what's really going on here? What's the real issue behind this? Or what's the real challenge here can totally shift the conversation. And it helps people feel a little bit heard and also helps them just reflect on their own situation. And as Michael said, last time, we can then get into advice mode, if that makes sense, but we're giving advice to the right problem.

(14:05):

I do want to make it clear though that I am far from being perfect at this or applying it all the time, as I'm sure if you ask the people that I work with. And I, I'm trying to be more aware of the situations where I'm more likely to slip into advice too quickly. And often I know that that's when I'm feeling a little bit busy or under stress myself, and it just seems like an immediately convenient way of, of getting the problem solved, but it's actually not that such a good idea in the long run. And it doesn't actually take that much longer just to even ask a simple question about what what's the problem that we're really dealing here. But it's an ongoing learning journey and lots of opportunities for practice in our roles as academics. And I also want to recognize that there are some times when we do need to take more of a 'command and control' stance rather than staying curious and slower to advice role. And that's part of learning. When is it appropriate to wear what hats?

(15:16):

So it's just such a powerful tool. It's a totally transformative tool shifting from needing to know everything, to needing, to ask good questions, to staying curious. And I hope that just sharing some of these questions as Michael elaborated them in the book might offer you some tools for different ways of thinking about engaging in the conversations that you have with the people that you're trying to grow and develop and, and elaborate.

(15:48): Outro

16:27 END

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