Coaching for Professors and Academic Leaders
Coaching Clients | Coaching Details
Professors
Professors face a unique set of challenges. With competing demands on your time, it can be difficult to give research and writing the attention they need. While colleagues may be smart and interesting, they are also all-too-human people with whom you must work out any number of issues. Parents are often raising young children at the same time they are under pressure to be maximally productive to achieve tenure and promotion. If you are female and/or a person of color or a member of another historically underrepresented group, then you may also be dealing with the conscious or unconscious biases of your students, colleagues, and administrators.
If you feel too busy, overwhelmed, unproductive, or undervalued, that is not just the way it is or the way it has to be.
In coaching, we support professors to make transformative changes and become more productive, gain control over their time, plan short and long term goals, and re-connect with their passion for their work, while also living full and healthy personal lives.
Academic Leaders
Academic Administrators have 
even greater demands on their time and much less control of their schedules. They are charged with leading from the middle, balancing the concerns of the faculty, students, staff, donors, and alumni with the expectations of institutional leaders, and weighing the needs of their department or college against the needs of the institution as a whole. In order to succeed, leaders must manage their time, delegate, motivate their team members, negotiate effectively, speak persuasively, and make decisions that are not always popular.
In coaching, we provide academic leaders with a confidential space to talk through the challenges they face. We support academic administrators to maintain their own research while managing a busy leadership role, effectively supervise staff and work with colleagues, manage relationships with higher level administrators, build buy-in for their initiatives, delegate and outsource work both at the office and at home, and much more. We work with chairs, deans, associate deans, deputy provosts, and divisional directors.
The best way to get a sense of how coaching will help you to achieve your goals is to experience a coaching session. We invite you to set up a free consultation to discuss what you are up against and how coaching can help.
Productive Writing
- Move more quickly from first draft to publication
- Have a sense of control over your time
- Handle co-author relationships with greater ease
- Write even during busy teaching semesters
- Make the most of sabbatical and summer writing opportunities
- Set work aside at the end of the day
There are so many great opportunities, I need to prioritize and say “no” to even some good projects, and NO MORE BOOK CHAPTERS!
– Pre-tenure faculty member
A colleague said, “you know you can’t write during the semester.” I don’t say that anymore… I understand that I can assert more control over my time.
– Associate Professor, Wayne State University
Tenure, Promotion, & the Academic Job Market
- Understand both the formal and informal requirements for promotion in your department and institution
- Effectively navigate departmental and institutional politics
- Know when to say “yes” and when to say “no” to invitations and requests
- Become nationally and internationally known as an expert in your area
- Build and maintain robust professional networks
- Get your grants and proposals funded
- Negotiate effectively for salary, preferred scheduling, and other resources you need to be successful
I took your advice and asked for everything I wanted, and the Dean said yes!
– Faculty member at a prominent East Coast university
Leadership
- Strengthen your professional presence and voice
- Establish buy-in for your ideas and initiatives
- Build a team of dedicated workers
- Delegate effectively
- Successfully navigate difficult work relationships
- Build alliances across departments and organizations
- Have time to recharge and enjoy family and friends
Cutting budgets is still hard, but now I explain that I can’t change the facts, but I can help to think through how to do this in the way that causes the least harm to the department, so let’s focus on that.
– Dean of a major research university
I carried out the strategy we planned for the committee that had been so acrimonious, and the meeting went smoothly!
– Recently appointed Associate Dean
Work/Life Balance
- Experience less conflict between family and career
- Leave work stresses at the office
- Schedule in time for fitness and outside interests
- Outsource and delegate to free up more of your time
I followed through with scheduling the sitter to come an hour before the kids get home, so that she can do errands and chores that I can’t fit in. It is such a relief to have that extra help at home.
– Full professor & mother of three
It is working better now that I switched when I write and when I go to the gym. I still get my workout in, but I am also making progress on my publications.
– Associate Professor
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