Rena’s Blog
Talmudic Wisdom for Post-Election Dejection
To say that the past year has been a difficult time in higher education in the U.S. is an understatement. There were protests that ignited intense disagreements over how universities should respond to situations in Israel and Palestine; congressional hearings that brought down university presidents; a Supreme Court ruling...
Foundations of a Successful Academic Career Starts in January, 2025
Join us for this dynamic ten-week group for faculty members as we address how to survive and thrive in academia. “I am a happier, healthier, higher-impact, and more productive academic, thanks to Rena’s coaching and book.” – Dolly Chugh, Associate Professor, NYU Stern School of Business The winter session will start in...
Savoring the Positive this Season
For the past seven years, anytime I’ve received an especially nice note from a client, I’ve added it to my “wins” folder. I first learned this practice from Professor Jane Dutton, who wrote that on days when her spirit could use a lift, she reviews her file of positive messages. As someone with a named professorship and...
Maintaining Work in Difficult Times
Just as I was preparing for the Academy of Management conference in Boston in early August, my mother-in-law started to decline. She passed away while I was at the conference, followed in close succession by her husband of 66 years. At the same time, my spouse, Pam, learned that her best friend, who is like a member of...
Navigating Late-Pandemic Exhaustion
Early in the pandemic, I adjusted workshop titles and content to address the challenges of the moment. “Networking” became “Networking in a Pandemic,” “Maintaining Your Research and Writing Mojo” became “Maintaining Your Research and Writing Mojo Even in Times of Disruption.” While still addressing “the new normal” of...
Shifting the Burden of Unfair Service Loads
My clients from historically marginalized groups frequently express frustration at carrying heavier service and advising loads than their white and/or male counterparts. Research validates that there is an inequitable distribution of tasks that don’t “count” for promotion. For too long, the majority of strategies I had to...
Foundations of a Successful Academic Career Starts Sept. 19, 2022
Join us for this dynamic ten-week group for faculty members as we address how to survive and thrive in academia. “I am a happier, healthier, higher-impact, and more productive academic, thanks to Rena’s coaching and book.” – Dolly Chugh, Associate Professor, NYU Stern School of Business The fall session will start on...
Associate Deans Roundtable Starts in September
Associate Deans Roundtable Updated 8/7/24 Those “leading from the middle” must have a special knack for diplomacy, and in contrast to the hierarchical models found in most non-academic settings, the associate dean’s task of guiding a group of independent-minded faculty members to a common goal is frequently compared to...
Foundations of a Successful Academic Career Starts January, 2022
Join us for this dynamic ten-week group for faculty members as we address how to survive and thrive in academia in this time of crisis and beyond. “I am a happier, healthier, higher-impact, and more productive academic, thanks to Rena’s coaching and book.” – Dolly Chugh, Associate Professor, NYU Stern School of Business...
Inspiration from the Natural World
In their psalms of gratitude, the biblical poets describe a natural world that includes sheltering canopies. Biking in Northern Michigan on my summer vacation, the trees offered canopies of leaves that shaded and protected us from the hot summer sun. The psalmists’ concept of a sheltering canopy can extend from the...
How to Support Professors Who Are Parents
Even as we hear good news about a vaccine on the horizon, Covid-19 cases are surging across North America and Europe. Although no one is spared from pandemic-related stress, many of the parents with whom I work are at their wits' end as they struggle to keep up with homeschool and childcare at the same time as juggling...
Reflections on Anti-Racism
Ijeoma Oluo, author of the NYT bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, tells us, “The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself.” Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility...
New Offerings for Deans and Associate Deans – Starting in Late September
I am pleased to announce two new offerings, the Deans Roundtable and the Associate Deans Roundtable. Please help to spread the word by sharing this announcement on social media or with colleagues who could benefit. Registration is now open with a discount for registration by September 8. Deans Roundtable A university...
Thoughts on COVID-19
My friend Blanca, who teaches in Asia, told me that her school has moved to an all-online format for the rest of the month and that the lack of her usual structure is disorienting. Universities are cancelling study abroad programs, assessing the risk of students returning from spring break in locations across the globe,...
Professors Coaching Group Starts Early April – Registration is Now Open!
This dynamic ten-week virtual coaching group for professors is based on my book The Coach’s Guide for Women Professors: Who Want a Successful Career and a Well-Balanced Life. "I am a happier, healthier, higher-impact, and more productive academic, thanks to Rena's coaching and book.” - Dolly Chugh, Associate Professor,...
Leadership Sans Sacrifice
At an Academy of Management session titled “Nevertheless, She Persisted,” I participated in a breakout conversation about the paradox that while it is important to have women in departmental and college leadership roles, those positions often take women away from their research. For some, an administrative track is a...
Finding Holiday Balance
On December 25, 2017, I was sitting at my parents' dining room table with a huge stack of holiday cards. My dad was in charge of stamps and sealing envelopes. Despite her Alzheimer’s diagnosis, my mom was handling the return address labels, every so often commenting with delight, “look, there’s your name!” Granted my...
A Coach Approach to Develop Your People
If your academic role includes overseeing students, postdocs, colleagues, or staff, chances are that you were thrown into the supervisory role without much training. Would you like your people to accomplish more and lean on you less? Coaching techniques offer a solution. In an earlier blog post, Advice is Nice, But First...
Metaphors for a Nourishing Work Life + Great Books for Holiday Gifts
Finding time for writing and bringing a more positive mindset to the process are central topics in my work with clients. Two recent books offer new perspectives that I found refreshing. Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write by Helen Sword is a beautifully written book that shares insights...
Advice is Nice, But First Listen
Last winter I created a new workshop to teach faculty members how to incorporate coaching tools into their mentoring relationships. As a coach, listening was the first skill I needed to master. Even with a question as simple as “How was your vacation?” the quality of our listening changes what we hear. Here’s an example...
Presenting with Power
Often academics are so focused on what they have to say, that they forget to think about how they say it. When professors practice introductions in my workshop on speaking with authority, it becomes clear that small tweaks go a long way in how a person comes across. Making the following easy changes will pack a lot more...
Cracking the Journal Writing Code
Some academics write very intuitively. Through the process of reading journal articles, working with strong mentors, and co-authoring with senior colleagues, they seem to absorb the process through their pores. Once they’ve collected their data, they just sit down and write the paper. Lucky for them. If that’s not you,...
Foundations of a Successful Academic Career Starts Jan. 10, 2017
This dynamic ten-week virtual coaching group for professors is based on my book The Coach’s Guide for Women Professors: Who Want a Successful Career and a Well-Balanced Life. There are just a few spaces left in the session starting January 10, but I am taking names of people who cannot make the Tuesday morning time...
Incivility Part II: Confronting Bad Behavior
Last April I wrote about ways to make oneself more impervious to incivility in the workplace, but there are times when incivility needs to be directly confronted. How we go about doing that depends on the situation. When a pre-tenure faculty member is subject to incivility from a senior colleague, she may not want to take...
How Academics Can Make the Most of What’s Left of Summer
Each summer begins the same way, with the beguiling promise of long open days for scholarship interspersed with extra time to spend out-of-doors with family and friends. But by the end of July, the lazy days of summer are racing past, and if you’re like most academics, you haven’t gotten nearly as much done as you hoped....
How Academics Get Back to Writing After a Vacation
You’ve just gotten back from your vacation and there are piles of laundry to do, hundreds of emails to process, and your garden is overgrown, so your writing goes to the back burner. When you finally do show up again, it feels like pushing a boulder up a hill. Sound familiar? In the summer I can count on a number of...
Manage Your Energy for Greater Productivity – And a Daily Dose of Joy
What do you do when you find your energy lagging at work? If you’re like most of us, you reach for a snack or a cup of coffee, check your email or social media, take a few minutes to shop for something you need online, or get up and chat with a colleague about yesterday’s game. It turns out that NONE of those strategies...
Managing Incivility in the Workplace
Managing Incivility in the Workplace This Friday I spoke to two different people whose peace of mind, focus, and productivity were seriously impaired following incidents of incivility by a departmental colleague. In both of these cases, someone in authority acted in a way that was demeaning, dismissive, or both. The...
Five Tips for Slaying the Email Dragon
Since the vast majority of our correspondence and many of our work tasks arrive in the form of email, it cannot be ignored. And yet academics often fall into the habit of constant checking throughout the day, pulling their attention away from their most important research and writing goals. One professor says of email,...
The Tomato Cure
Almost every week several clients tell me what a hard time they have getting started on writing, how overwhelmed they feel when they face their writing time, or how easily distracted they are when trying to write. Often, I prescribe The Pomodoro Technique®. This simple strategy was developed by Francesco Cirillo who found...
Goal Setting
I’m not big on New Year’s Resolutions – if you want to start exercising or develop better writing habits, you can start today, right now, rather than waiting until tomorrow, Monday, or next January 1. But I am a big fan of planning. At this time of year, many of my clients set goals for what they want to accomplish by the...
Should You Work or Relax Over the Holidays?
When professors have conference deadlines or other due dates that fall in early January, they often want me to help them with how to strike the right balance of work, friends, family time, and relaxation over the holidays. Too often people bring work along on a vacation, don’t touch it, but then feel guilty the entire...
Seize Small Time Blocks
I often hear from academics who are frustrated because they think they need large blocks of time to move writing projects forward, and during busy teaching semesters large blocks of time are few and far between. People are often surprised to find to find that they CAN move their research forward in very short sessions....
Writing While Teaching
To Write More - Pay Yourself First We use the same word, “spend,” when referring to both money and time. If we pay bills and then go shopping, and only put whatever is left over into a savings account, the savings will accumulate very slowly. Likewise, if a professor prepares for class, grades, writes reviews, and takes...
Teach Smarter
Many of my academic clients feel pulled between giving their all in the classroom and preserving time for their own research. Some professors feel they are falling down on their responsibility to their students if they do not fill every minute of the class period with lecture. In fact, (pdf) supports the idea that...
Easy Time Management Tips
A simple strategy to free-up time is to better leverage the help of your assistants. Here are three examples: A STEM field professor who was stressed about how to keep her research moving during a busy teaching semester was thrilled to realize that she could create more free time simply by swapping scheduled office hours...
Mindsets That Motivate Writers
In No Sweat, How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring you a Lifetime of Fitness, my friend Michelle Segar explains that the intellectual knowledge that exercise will provide future benefits such as weight loss or better health does squat for actually getting us out of bed and into the yoga studio, gym, or onto a...
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