Changing Academic Life

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 meaning04:08 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 zoom17:50 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 meaning40:20 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 listening48:02 Wrap up50:45 EndYou can download a full transcript of the conversation here.Related LinksOscar Trimboli: oscartrimboli.comListening 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 IntelligenceMark Brackett,: Permission to Feel, 2020, Celadon BooksKieran 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 listeners12:57 The cost of not listening22:35 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 speed26:38 How to listen to ask great questions that advance the knowledge in the room e.g., at conferences31:54 EndYou can download a full transcript of the conversation here.Related LinksOscar Trimboli: oscartrimboli.com Listening Quiz, and the 90 Day Deep Listening ChallengeOscar’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 BelfastOnline Academic Leadership Development Course (Starting end Sept 2022)Residential Leadership Development Course (last held June 2022)Informatics EuropeTranscript: (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 linksKatherine Isbister – previous podcast: On finding your fit, being productive 8-5 an praising yourselfNegativity 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-wUni stressDougall, 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.SavoringKennelly, Stacey. (2012) 10 steps to Savoring the Good Things in Life. Greater Good Magazine, Greater Good Science Centre at the University of California, BerkeleyBryant, F. B., & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Self compassionKristin Neff https://self-compassion.org/the-three-elements-of-self-compassion-2/Chris Germer https://chrisgermer.com/about/  TranscriptGeri (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.<REPLAY of 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 <name> 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.<END REPLAY>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.Related links:Previous podcast conversation: Michael Bungay-Stanier on the power of curiosity and taming your advice monsterMichael’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): Outro16:27 ENDAcknowledgements:Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Michael Bungay Stanier (MBS for short) is an internationally renowned author, company founder and thought leader in coaching. Michael is the founder of Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that helps organizations move from advice-driven to curiosity-led. He's the author of 6 books, the best known of which is The Coaching Habit which has sold close to a million copies and has thousands of 5-star reviews. His latest book The Advice Trap, focuses on what it takes to tame your Advice Monster.  We start off the conversation reflecting on his career choices and discussing the differences between academia and industry. He then discusses what it means to be more coach-like in our work - staying curious a little longer, asking good questions, and being slower to jump to advice – as well as how to recognise our different advice monsters. We finish off with some questions posed by participants on a recent academic leadership development course. Notable quotes: [10:49] “[Two things] I hope. One is people find work that is meaningful for them, that lights them up and you enter that virtuous circle of doing work that amplifies and strengthens the best of who you are. […] And then the second thing I hope for is that you do work that gives more to the world than it takes.” [17:00] “I'd love people to stay curious just a little bit longer and rush to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly.” [20:13] [Even] if you've got some advice, which is stellar, which is the perfect advice, […] is this the right act for the moment? […] What's the consequence of me giving advice at this moment?  Sure. It might solve the problem, but does it increase capacity and confidence and competence and autonomy and self-sufficiency in those around me? Because often the bigger win is to build those capacities because they're longer term capacities. [30:27] “You don't have the answers because it's not your job to have all the answers.”[33:39] “The three advice monsters are tell it, save it and control it….But each advice monster has prizes and punishments. And the prizes tend to be short term and a bit kind of ego-driven punishments tend to have bigger implications.”[38:13] “If you can manage people in a way that liberates them and frees them and encourages them, then that's brilliant. And your advice monster is not going to be a path for that.”[39:54] “What is the game being played and how are you playing this game? And are you happy with the choices you're making? Because for many of us, those choices are automatic rather than mindful.”Overview (times approximate):[Full Transcript also available here for download.]00:28 Preamble 04:07 Bio: Michael gives his short bio and introduces his two books, The Coaching Habit and The Advice Trap07:26 Career choices: We discuss interesting career path choices, finding work that is meaningful and gives more to the world than it takes11:41 Academia: We explore the ways in which academia might be different and also similar to other organizational contexts, especially when it comes to being ‘experts’16:45 Curiosity: Michael talks about the power of curiosity, reflected in his manifesto for change, where people stay curious a bit longer and rush to action and advice giving a bit more slowly.18:05 Advice challenges: Michael discusses the three challenges with moving to advice giving too quickly and proposes instead we first explore what is the real challenge.23:26 Getting practical: Michael gives some practical conversational phrases and strategies for how we can play this out in different situations.32:22 Advice monsters: Michael describes the backstory to The Advice Trap book, and explains the three different advice monsters, tell-it, save-it, control-it, and their respective prizes and punishments.42:51 Misc questions: Michael responds to three questions from our recent Academic Leadership Development course: when is a coaching-like approach not appropriate; what if others around you don’t buy into this approach; when is it culturally appropriate; and can you apply this in giving advice eg to government bodies.51:32 Wrap: We wrap up the conversation. My post-script53:55 EndRelated Linkshttps://boxofcrayons.com Box of Crayons has taught coaching skills to hundreds of thousands of people around the worldhttps://www.mbs.works “Where people find clarity, courage & community to do work that's thrilling, important & daunting.”And you can find the link to the advice monster questionnaire at https://go.mbs.works/theadvicetrapBooks: The Coaching Habit - the best-selling book on coaching this centuryThe Advice Trap Be humble, stay curious & change the way you lead foreverDo More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters.

Dr. Tanita Casci is Head of Research Policy, and Dr. Elizabeth Adams is Workstream Lead – Research Culture, at the University of Glasgow. The trigger for this conversation was an LSE blog article they wrote about rewarding contributions to research culture. In this conversation they talk about their journey in trying to promote a supportive collegial research culture that is aligned around core institutional values that reflect what matters to the people in the research units. They discuss various initiatives that are part of this, such as promotion criteria that reward collegiality, formal recognition of everyone’s contributions to research, from PIs, researchers, students and to technicians, and better supporting early career researchers. They make a compelling case for the importance of culture for good research, and role model what universities can do to proactively enable this.“The university succeeds when the individual succeeds.““You can do better bigger things working together across disciplines and sectors.” “It is expected that you will be collegiate in your teaching and your research and your knowledge exchange and all the different things that you do and that you will support others and by doing so research will be better for everyone.““Culture is the vehicle to better research.”“Of all the things you could be doing, what is the very small number of things that you are going to align all your communications, activities and investment to?”Overview (times approximate): [Full Transcript also available here for download]2:00 Introductions: Tanita and Elizabeth introduce themselves4:20 Defining quality: formative reviews to understand what quality means to different disciplines and what is needed to help people succeed9:40 Recognising different types of contributions12:50 Aligned initiatives: Showcasing good practice, setting collegiality expectations, and supporting, rewarding and celebrating what they value 17:00 Early career support to develop positive research cultures18:25 Culture as the vehicle to better research20:40 Understanding the values to inform strategy24:05 Role of sector drivers25:10 Practical strategies, challenges, and navigating a good pace for change30:05 Reinterpreting good research practice for different disciplines 33:20 Roles of governance structures and local leadership, and giving PIs tools and support 39:20 Looking at it as a long-term learning game – nothing is born perfect41:20 Importance of communication & clarity re focus and definition45:30 What they are proudest of – support for fieldwork, and including collegiality in the promotions criteria, and putting outputs on a par with impact51:00 EndRelated LinksTanita Casci – Glasgow Uni profile,  LinkedIn profileElizabeth Adams – Glasgow Uni profile University of Glasgow Research Strategy 2020-25: Collaboration | Creativity | Careers and Research Culture initiativesSector initiatives:DORA “The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) recognizes the need to improve the ways in which researchers and the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated.”Nuffield Council on Bioethics 2015 ReportConcordat The Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers – Sept 2019Research Excellence Framework – “the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions.”Athena Swan Charter – “a framework which is used across the globe to support and transform gender equality within higher education (HE) and research”Articles:Adams, E. & Casci, T. (2020) Rewarding contributions to research culture is part of building a better university. LSE Blog. Casci, T & Adams, E. Research culture: Setting the right tone eLife 2020;9:e55543. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.55543 Casci, T & Adams, E. (2019) Reimagining research culture. F1000 Research blog

Jeremy Birnholtz is an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Communication Studies and the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Departments at Northwestern University in Chicago in the US. He also directs the Social Media Lab. The trigger for this conversation was the recent discussion with John Tang about reviewing and Jeremy continues this discussion, looking at issues around authoring and service asymmetries, the unsustainability of the current review and publication models based on what he calls the perpetual motion machine that pushes researchers to churn out more and more papers. He calls for a greater focus on quality of papers instead of numbers and to identify quality signifiers beyond just publications. We discuss his role as conference chair of the upcoming CSCW conference, which is traditionally about distributed online collaboration, and moving the conference online. Shifting topics, we also talk about his personal coming out and the pivot of his research to explore topics around gender and sexuality. Through all of these discussions, Jeremy’s curiosity and care comes through again and again. Much to ponder on here. “If you are playing the long game, eventually it [career] does work out.”“I’ve come to believe that you just need a smaller number of very very good papers to make your contribution and a name for yourself.”“On search committees, writing tenure letters, it is in our collective interest to not be obsessed with numbers and to focus on the contribution and on the quality of the work.” “As a junior person it is easy to get caught up in the perpetual motion machine mentally where you are constantly spinning out new papers.”“We’re smart observant people. If we look around and have these conversations we can come up with a way to fix this. This is a solvable problem but it takes stepping back, noticing and talking about it.” “There’s something I really enjoy about throwing myself in a situation where all of my assumptions are very likely to be wrong and trying to figure out where to go from there.”  Overview (times approximate):02:00 Jeremy’s background and career path to date07:50 Reflecting on reviewing and service challenges36:35 Shifting to queer research topics53:00 Values & superpowers59:09 EndIn a little more detail… or download the full transcript hereBackground:02:00 Jeremy gives an overview of his background and career to date.04:30 Jeremy discusses why he moved from Cornell to Northwestern, right before he was up for tenure, and early career choices and challenges.“If you are playing the long game, eventually it [career] does work out.”Reviewing & service: 07:50 We shift to the ongoing discussion around reviewing (building on the conversation with John Tang). 08:20 One issue is the arms race in CV length, the pressure to publish lots of papers, and the volunteer service required, which can put the emphasis on the writing that we must do and not the service that we can do.“In order to get the papers published, people need to review. But if that is getting de-prioritised it is getting harder to find people to review.”09:50 The cost structure of reviewing – once written the cost of submitting is very little and the cost of reviewing it is pushed onto the community. A sustainability issue. 11:10 We discuss the impact on quality and how large numbers of papers do not equate to quality, and what he finds more compelling when on a search committee.“I’ve come to believe that you just need a smaller number of very very good papers to make your contribution and a name for yourself.”13:20 We talk about where publication numbers do have impact, in the filtering process of initial applications. And he talks about looking for other quality signals. But you have to look for it. 15:00 Jeremy discusses the debates about highly selective conferences but not as much of a shift as he would like to see – a hard thing to let go of if you have been arguing for selective conferences all your career. And acceptance rates being arbitrary. 17:10 We note the impact on younger academics and career pressures and I Ask about alternative suggestions? Jeremy talks about not being obsessed with numbers, focusing on quality, and re-thinking deadlines and acceptance rates.“On search committees, writing tenure letters, it is in our collective interest to not be obsessed with numbers and to focus on the contribution and on the quality of the work.” “As a junior person it is easy to get caught up in the perpetual motion machine mentally where you are constantly spinning out new papers.”“If we focused on writing a smaller number of better papers, accept rates might go up.”The shift to multiple deadlines or being able to submit anytime means you can submit when the work is ready.21:00 Jeremy talks about it as a classic social dilemma problem and possibly experimenting with charging but then the equity issues this opens up, and also issues around review karma. And saying no to review requests. 26:55 Jeremy talks about stepping back from being an associate editor because of how hard it was to get reviewers and doing more reviewing again. The asymmetry of power to say no, and of information around reviewing and service - the lack of transparency into what other service people are doing when they do say no.29:50 Jeremy discusses how we can become blind to some processes and assumptions when we come into a field and need to stop and look around.“We’re smart observant people. If we look around and have these conversations we can come up with a way to fix this. This is a solvable problem but it takes stepping back, noticing and talking about it.” 31:00 Jeremy talks about planning the next CSCW conference and the experiments they are trying, and how to promote more social interaction.33:00 They have appointed a virtual attendance task force to think about how to address this e.g., through more structured activities, ways to have random encounters, but not trying to replicate face to face.34:30 We discuss CSCW as the area that has been researching distributed collaboration since the 80s and dealing with distributed and online now in the pandemic. And finding the ‘beyond being there’ moments. Queer research:36:35 Jeremy discusses his shift in research from more pragmatic interests (publishable and fundable) to sexuality and gender studies. Also coming out when he was 25. And starting on this new research area looking at CraigsList ads and then Grindr (leading to Charlie’s undergrad thesis) and the encouragement of Fred Turner to look at this as research. 42:45 Jeremy discusses some of the research studies he is doing in this space, including working with collaborators in India and learning so much.47:00 Jeremy responds to the question about whether there have been personal challenges in coming out and he says not really and the HCI community being very open and welcoming.49:30 Jeremy reflects on how the community could still change and do better. “There are some hard conversations ahead and hopefully they can be productive conversations.”“There’s something I really enjoy about throwing myself in a situation where all of my assumptions are very likely to be wrong and trying to figure out where to go from there.”  Values & superpowers53:00 Jeremy reflects on other values driving his work – addressing real problems in a way that can impact broader understanding, thinking about Pasteur’s Quadrant. And the superpowers he brings – a naïve curiosity and being willing to ask questions at every stage.57:20 Wrapping up. 59:09 EndRelated Links Acronyms:CHI Computer Human InteractionCSCW 2021 conference - Computer Supported Cooperative Work People: John Tang’s recent podcast episode on reviewingGillian R. Hayes: Inclusive and Engaged Research. CHI2019 SIGCHI Social Impact Award talkMary L. Gray  Microsoft Research, Harvard Uni Klein Center for Internet and Society Fred Turner, StanfordJed Brubaker, ColoradoPapers/Books: Jim Hollan and Scott Stornetta. 1992. Beyond being there. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '92). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 119–125. Katta Spiel, Os Keyes, Ashley Marie Walker, Michael A. DeVito, Jeremy Birnholtz, Emeline Brulé, Ann Light, Pınar Barlas, Jean Hardy, Alex Ahmed, Jennifer A. Rode, Jed R. Brubaker, and Gopinaath Kannabiran. 2019. Queer(ing) HCI: Moving Forward in Theory and Practice. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper SIG11, 1–4. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3311750Donald E. Stokes, 1997, Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation. Brookins Institution Press.

Neha Kumar is an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech, with a joint appointment between the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. Her research area is human-computer interaction for global development. In this conversation she discusses the circumstances and choices and people that contributed to her path from India to Germany to the US, where she studied at Stanford and UC Berkeley, with time working at Microsoft in between. She then talks about her current faculty position and setting up her own research lab. She also talks with great generosity and reflective insight about the penalties and privileges of always being an underrepresented voice in every room and respecting difference. She brings a similar capacity to take perspective and see the bigger picture in talking about her tenure process, her service roles and how she looks after herself in the middle of all this. Notable bites:I started to feel that this is a product that the top 1% of the world uses, and it's not really driving my passion and I don't know what to do about it. I call it my quarter-life crisis. I was 25. [14:48]Everything could be a blessing and a curse. It's just a question of molding it in that way. [31:56]We're so tied to this performance that we always feel this pressure to be right. That's something I've been thinking about—how we don't give ourselves room to be flawed, but we are... We are inherently flawed, except we want to make it look like we're not. [45:53]It's about what's liberating. I think it's tremendously liberating to feel like I can grow in this moment, as opposed to: "I'm just going to stay put and not move.” [47:54]I hope we can think a little more about each other and a little less about ourselves alone. And if there was one thing that I would hope for, it would be that--to really believe in the power of the collective, to believe in solidarity, to believe that we're stronger together, and that we cannot really do better by putting other people down. We have to rise up together. To me that's super important to remember in the minutest of things that we do. [01:03:18]Overview (times approximate):02:00 Preamble03:10 Neha’s path and career choices towards a PhD13:00 Finding her own way and the value of good friends and supervisors22:50 Getting a faculty position and running her own lab, TanDEm Lab36:10 The experiences of always being an underrepresented voice in every room and respecting difference48:25 The tenure application experience55:00 Service roles and self-care1:02:10 A call to the power of the collective, being stronger together01:05:54 EndTranscriptFull Transcript available hereRelated LinksTanDEm Lab, Georgia TechACM Future AcademyACM SIGCHIMichael Best – Faculty mentor at Georgia TechBook: Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, 2013, Crown.Photo credit: Susan Dray

Having talked about superpowers and strengths, in the last related work podcast, it’s a natural follow on to talk about job crafting and exploring where we the power and autonomy to shape the work we do. Drawing on work by Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton, I talk about three ways you can job craft – cognitive, task and relational – and draw on examples including from pervious podcasts to illustrate. We all have more scope to make work more meaningful than we might think and even small tweaks can make a big difference.Related work links:Job Crafting website – including an exercise you can buy and links to various published papers https://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/cpo-tools/job-crafting-exercise/Michelle McQuaid’s podcast conversation with Amy Wrzesniewski about job craftingFirst key paper: Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E.(2001) Crafting a job; Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179-201.Specific to academia: Wellman, N. and Spreitzer, G. (2011) Crafting scholarly life: Strategies for creating meaning in academic careers, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(6), 927-931.The love-loathe article: Buckingham, M and Goodall, A. Work-Life Balance is a myth. Do this Instead. Time Magazine, June 6 2019.The Changing Academic Life podcasts mentioned – see the notes on the webpage for dipping in if you don’t want to Ali Black podcast conversationCliff Lampe podcast conversation and Cliff’s article on why he loves academic serviceKatherine Isbister podcast conversationMike Twidale podcast conversationImage acknowledgement: Photo by Jo Szczepanska on UnsplashTranscript(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.(00:21):In the last related work podcast, we talked about super powers and strengths, super powers and strengths being those things that we're not just good at, but that we really love doing where we're at our best, and we can really make an impact. And we also talked about the literature saying that if we can work out and identify what our strengths are and then use and develop, the more we'll be happier, more engaged have all sorts of positive benefits from it. So what might be some practical strategies then for how we go about doing that? What I want to talk about today is a theory of job crafting that was developed by Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton in a paper in 2001 based on some qualitative studies that they'd done on people at work, and they identify three different types of ways that we can craft our work to connect to something that's more meaningful that makes more use of our strengths. That makes work more fun.(01:30):And so I'd like to just spend a little bit of time now, just reflecting on that. So to start off with that might be useful just to think for yourself about, you know, if you think about the, all the different sorts of aspects of your work from your great work that you really love, where you're using your strengths, where you're at your best to have to work, that you don't enjoy that that's just tedious, but you can't really get out of and just think about what some of those might be, because I'm going to suggest that the strategies that they propose can make the great work, even more fun and allow you to do even more of that. And to turn some of the, have to work, that's a bit of a chore and a bit tedious into something where it's still may not be your favorite thing to do, but you've found a way of connecting with it more to make it more interesting.(02:29):And why I think this notion of job crafting is really interesting is that it invites us to explore what are the things within our power, within our control that we can shape, even when we think we may not have a lot of scope. I think that we still do have, we still do have scope to make things better, to some extent, and especially as academics, this notion of academic freedom and autonomy, even though we know that it's probably a contested notion these days is we're still very lucky that we do have a lot of autonomy to some extent compared to many other people. So how do we make best use of that? So the three types of crafting that they talk about cognitive crafting task crafting and relational crafting. So let me just walk through each of those.(03:32):So cognitive crafting is about changing the way we think about or approach some job or work. So it's about changing your mindset in a way that might connect to something that you care about. So I can give you an example for myself where I think I'm marking, you know, especially if you have sort of long essays to mark in a big class can be something that, you know, where you just look at that pile of papers to be marked and go, Oh, do I have to do it? And I've been working on lately trying to flip that around and just say I'm really interested to learn from the students because often they will pick essay topics. If I give them an open essay topic where they write about things that I don't know a lot about. And I think I said last week, I'm quite eclectic in my interests and I love learning new things.(04:32):So I've, I've reshaped that to think about, Oh, this is a great opportunity just to learn about a topic that I don't know anything about and what I've also done is I often ask the students to write a reflective learning report. And I, of course, I think there's value for them in doing that, but it makes my marking more fun as well because one of the other things I really care about that drives me is helping people develop themselves. And I love reading the learning reports now because I can see the journey that the students have been on. So I've still got the job of marking, but it's no longer quite feeling as tedious as it was. It still takes time, but I I've found a way of finding meaning in that work. So in, in previous podcasts as well, you may remember Cliff Lampe and I always, this always struck me because he talked about loving, going to faculty meetings and that's changed for me how I think now about faculty meetings that they're, they're not something that's a big chunk of time out of my week or out, out of my calendar that doesn't add any value. But he challenged me to rethink my relationship to faculty meetings and that thinking about it as a chance to catch up with colleagues and to contribute to the future direction of this.(06:13):So what are the things that might be your 'have to do' work that isn't fun. That is a bit tedious. And is there a way that you can change the way you think about it, even, that it makes it a little bit different that changes the energy around it when you go to do that at work,(06:39):They also talk about task crafting, and this is where you may be able to find, so you still have to deliver on a task and there's still some output that's required, but there may be a way that you can change the mix of activities that you do in delivering on that task, or that you have possibility to change the scope of the task in some way, or that you can change the way you perform the task that may be connects to more of your strengths. So it's sort of exploring the boundaries of that task and how it can be made different. So if I pick up on my marking thing, the other thing that I've done with marking is I now also change the way I do that job as well, apart from adding in the reflective learning report to the task for the students, and to my task, I also mark the papers on the iPad with the pencil and go and sit somewhere nice. So I changed my location and the setting makes a big difference. It's sort of an inviting, warm setting, you know, that I choose and just even changing the setting has helped with that as a job that I didn't particularly like doing, and it would feel worse doing it, sitting at my desk.(08:08):I can also reflect back on something I did with the teaching challenge as, as being an instance of task shaping to fit, to connect more to my strengths. So I had a lecture that I'd been doing quite a number of years, and the slides were getting quite outdated in the design and the content may be needed updating as well, but I was really, really busy and I just didn't have time to put in all the effort that was needed to do that. But I did care about the students' learning experience as well. And just as a sort of an essential sort of solution, I started conducting this course not so much as lectures anymore, but as facilitated discussions workshopping with the class, obviously it was a small enough class for about 30, 40 students that it was possible to do this. And I realized that I had more fun and the students were more engaged and it felt like, and it seemed like it's certainly in their assessments that they learned a lot more as well.(09:22):And what it did was I connected I'm actually, I think one of my superpowers is in facilitating these sort of group workshopping type experiences. And I'd actually fallen back on one of my natural strengths as a solution for shaping the way I did that job of teaching to deal with the very practical challenge. But now it's the way I, I now choose to run my courses wherever I can, wherever the content suits that. And I, I think that's been really important because I now really look forward to teaching those classes. I'm not just standing up going blah, blah, blah, the whole time. I think the students do too.(10:05):And I'm also reflecting on a story that another colleague in another university was telling me about how they were given a database class to teach, and that's not their area at all for first years. And they weren't looking forward to it. They were inheriting someone else's material, and they ended up crafting how they taught this topic. So they still had to deliver to the curriculum, but they were, there are very creative person and their core research areas more in multimedia. And they ended up connecting to multimedia type databases and materials and metadata as example data that the students worked with in the database class. And I thought that was a really lovely example of someone, again, shaping a job that didn't seem like it was going to be so good or much fun, but connecting it to what they knew, what they were good at and having the freedom, you know, using the freedom that they had to shape sort of the examples that they used in the assignments to make it more fun for them and of course the students.(11:14):And I think in the podcasts conversations that I've had so far, the chat with Ali Black is also a lovely example of shaping the task. And I don't know if you listened to Ali's conversation it's really worth listening to, she talked about how she was pretty sort of feeling like a failure and pretty broken down by the whole managerial approach to academia and the challenge of trying to get promoted and, and, you know, ticking all the boxes and ended up as a reaction or as a totally pivoting her research that she did. And actually focusing on slow scholarship as, as a topic of research, and paradoxically has ended up producing lots of beans that get counted that do the tick boxes, but now it's not being done just as an external motivator, but it's come out of something that she loves doing and that she cares about, which I think also connects then to the third type of crafting that can be done, which is relational crafting.(12:32):So that's changing where we can, who we do things with, or the social context will support that we draw on in getting work done. And so the other part of Ali's story is that she created this wise woman's writing group, and, and she talks about how this wise women writing group became a real saving space for her and helped to find her own ways of working on what mattered to her. And in the end, she was able to create a promotion application that she said was like me. So I thought that was really useful and strategy because when she was struggling, the way she shaped her work was not just to pivot in the topic that she was working on, but reaching out to colleagues and, and being instrumental in forming this writing group in the first place so that she had that support. So I'd really strongly recommend listening to that conversation.(13:37):Katherine Isbister as well. She didn't talk, she talked about this after we actually finished recording, and I just mentioned it at the end. She also talks about how a really important thing that she has done that helps her deal with just her role more generally, is that she has a weekly Skype call with a friend colleague where they act as a peer mentor for each other and help hold each other accountable to commitments. And just check in. And again, like this is just building on social networks and relational aspects to shape the work so that you're not doing it so much alone.(14:20):And I think we could also interpret Mike Twidale's example from last week where there, there was some of the details that of scheduling a job that needed to be done as part of his curriculum role. He didn't like that at all. And he had just assumed that no one would like it. And then he found a colleague who lit up and loved doing that sort of work. And he ended up, she ended up taking that on and he could then do the more strategic things that he was better at. And that, I think that's a lovely example of crafting as well, is co-opting other people and being able to draw together all of your different strengths and working together on the task. I know that for the academic leadership development courses that we're running, doing it with Austin Rainer has just been such a pleasure and so much more rewarding and enriching than just doing it on my own. And I've learned so much more from doing that, even though it's been a little bit harder in some ways, in terms of needing more time, just to coordinate and plan together.(15:26):And we could also think about, you know, the move in a lot of academic circles to have shut up and write groups or reading groups. These are all nice examples of relational crafting and shaping aspects around our work to connect to other, and those notions of high quality connections can be really important. The literature also talks about in terms of relational crafting the value of understanding who benefits from your work. So it could be for us, as lecturers may be hearing back from students or connecting back with students to hear how they're going, or from what they've learned in your courses, or if you're doing a lot of participatory research with participants, you know, thinking more also about how they might benefit from the work.(16:25):So I think that, you know, even if the power that we have to shape our work to craft our work is only in terms of how we think about it. That's a huge power because how we think about it really can impact how we engage with the work and the energy that we bring to it.(16:47):And then if we also have the opportunity to, you know, to the autonomy, to shape the task itself in how we engage with it, or the boundaries of it, how can we shape this job to do more of this sort of thing and less of that, the other sort of things. I know that it goes going back to the task shaping. I know that if I have a research problem, I will choose to shape the research questions that connect to more, how and why research questions that connect to my love of more qualitative exploratory in depth research, rather than framing it up as a hypothesis that would require an empirical lab study. While I, I appreciate the value that such studies bring, they not working to my strengths, or they don't get me as excited. So we often have much more power than what we think.(17:41):And we can help others that we work with also explore what are the boundaries that they to shape their work, and whether that's people were mentoring or people that we're working with, or students, even in working with masters students or PhD students, when they're looking at their key topics, or they're looking at their methods, we can have conversations with them. That sort of say, what, what do you want to get out of this, this research work for your thesis for your future career? What skills do you want to develop? What knowledge areas do you want to develop, and what do you really love doing? And help them iterate around to shape a question or an approach that connects to where they want to go, and that makes use of where they are. And if we're working as a team in the way that Mike did with the woman that he was working with, you know, how do we exploit the exploit? That sounds like the wrong word in this context, doesn't it. But how do we enable the shaping of the work as a team so that everyone's able to do more of what they like?(18:48):And there was an interesting