Midcareer Mentor – Cultivating Emotional Intelligence
Week 4
“In an environment where every person is a subject matter expert, emotional intelligence enables us as individuals and institutions to advance critical initiatives, to adapt to institutional and career changes, and to create a teaching and working environment that brings out the best in ourselves and in others.”
- Jennifer Askey, Ph.D., PCC
Effectively interacting with other people requires emotional intelligence. Whether navigating difficult classroom conversations with students, running a lab with peers and research assistants, mentoring a colleague, persuading an administrator to increase your resources, or initiating change through a committee, you must:
- Notice your emotions, preferences, inner resources, and biases (i.e., self-awareness);
- Regulate your internal state and impulses (i.e., self-management);
- Maintain relationships and develop awareness of other’s feelings, needs, and concerns (i.e., social awareness); and
- Work towards desirable results with others (i.e., relationship management).
These four interrelated skills (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management) build the foundation of emotional intelligence. Let’s begin with self-awareness.
Cultivate the Habit of Self-Awareness
In our workshop, Increasing Emotional Intelligence by Identifying Your Triggers, Cindy Babington describes a practice for cultivating the habit of self-awareness. The goal of this exercise is to first recognize and acknowledge that there's something going on, then to identify the accompanying emotions you are experiencing. For this exercise, you can ask yourself these things aloud or write them down – but getting them out of your head will make them more real.
Step 1: Recognition
Schedule 15 minutes at the end of the workday, before you go to bed, or first thing in the morning to reflect on what happened during your day. Ask yourself: what are the things I'm still thinking about from that day?
Step 2: Identify
Then, ask yourself:
- Why am I feeling this way?
- How would I describe this feeling?
- What could have caused this feeling?
If you are struggling to describe your feeling beyond mad, happy, sad (the “minimalist trio” as Dr. Jennifer Askey calls them), then try searching for a “feelings wheel” online to help you expand your feelings vocabulary.
As academics, many of us spend a lot of time intellectualizing, so this exercise may feel uncomfortable at first. Stick with it. Through repetition and practice, you will get better at identifying emotional behavior in yourself, which will help you start to identify them in others, thus increasing your social awareness and ability to manage relationships.
Free Download
For your personal reference, download the 4 Pillars of Emotional Intelligence from our course The Key Components of Emotional Intelligence for Academic Teams.
Explore On Your Own Time
To learn more about how emotional intelligence can be applied to your role as a mid-career faculty member, see our resource, The Key Components of Emotional Intelligence for Academic Teams. Short on time? Try out the mini version of this course. When you sign up, you’ll receive daily bite-sized learning to your inbox for 5 days.
Get Individualized Support
Cultivating your self-awareness takes time and commitment. Our faculty coaches can help you further develop your emotional intelligence to achieve your career goals. Sign up for Faculty and Leadership Coaching to get professional development that meets you where you are.
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Reaching the mid-career point is a triumph for any faculty member. But the mid-career stage also offers a host of new challenges, such as increased leadership and service responsibilities, just as institutional support begins to fade. How can faculty maintain their momentum when their time and attention is so constrained?
The Mid-Career Mentor is a member-exclusive publication that delivers microlearning opportunities and insights directly to your inbox weekly. Delve into the topics that matter at your own pace.
Members – Sign Up Now for Our Fall Launch
Sign up for the Mid-Career Mentor and receive once a week microlearning geared around a topic important to those at the mid-career stage.
How It Works
Starting this September, subscribers will receive an email once a week with that week’s lesson. Each month will have its own theme, so that each lesson builds upon the next. Miss a lesson? Not a problem! Return here at the end of the month to find them in our archive.
Topics We’ll Explore
Peek at the topics the Mid-Career Mentor will cover:
- Setting Boundaries
- Establishing Well-Being & Realizing Impact
- Managing Imposter Syndrome
- Building Resilience
- Communicating Across Situations & Audiences
- Navigating Conflict
- Crafting a Meaningful Career
- Building and Maintaining Your Network
Mid-Career Mentor – Building & Maintaining a Network
Successful mid-career faculty need a network of colleagues and peers from within and outside their institutions to provide feedback and support. Earlier in their careers, you are often assigned a formal mentor to help provide the support necessary for you to navigate career advancement or the tenure process. But mid-career faculty often lose access to formal mentoring opportunities and must be intentional about building and sustaining their own networks.
As mid-career faculty, you may no longer need a traditional mentor. But if you are well-connected and maintain a diverse network of support, you are better able to navigate career advancement. The consultative model of mentoring allows for just that – you can ask for short-term mentorship within a specific area in order to learn a new skill or navigate a challenge without placing a heavy service burden on another faculty member. Consultative mentoring can help you sustain a network overall, and it serves as an important resource for faculty from historically marginalized communities who may need to seek support outside their institutions.
Follow along this month for tips on how to build and maintain your network in your mid-career, including creating opportunities for mentorship and diversifying your network appropriately to capture connections within different aspects of the faculty role.
Consultative Mentorship: Making the Ask
Asking someone to be your mentor can feel like a big commitment, and you may be hesitant to place this burden on someone else. The consultative model of mentorship allows for more specificity and flexibility in your mentoring relationships. It can help you develop a network that is diverse and extends in all directions – you can connect with faculty and academic leaders at all levels and across fields and institutions. But when you’ve identified someone you’d like to serve as a mentor for you for a specific issue, how do you make the ask?
How to Make the Ask
Start by reminding yourself that you are only asking for a small amount of this person’s time and effort. Next, create a script for the ask. Within the script, you should:
- Identify yourself.
- Share the specific skill or experience you believe the consultative mentor has.
- Express appreciation for their knowledge in that area.
- Invite them for a brief conversation.
Here is a sample script to get you started:
“Hi, I’m Sarah, and I’m a faculty member at Academic Impressions University. I’m reaching out to you because you’re someone I respect in terms of your skill at student engagement in your courses. I’ve also heard from others that this is something you’re really good at, and I’m trying to get better at this, too. I’m wondering if you would be willing to meet with me to talk about it, maybe over coffee one day next week?”
Explore On Your Own Time | Included in Your Membership
To dive deeper into what the consultative model of mentorship is and how you can use it, check out The Consultative Approach to Mentoring: Building a Network of Support. In this course, you’ll learn how to create a mentoring network that is supportive and adaptive to your needs.
To focus broadly on setting up mentoring relationships, check out Make the Most of Mentoring: Best Practices and Core Principles for Mentors and Mentees. This video course will help you navigate the process of selecting and working with mentors, as well as any challenges that may arise.
Get Individualized Support
Our coaches can help you develop your professional network through one-on-one sessions. Sign up for Faculty and Leadership Coaching to get professional development that meets you where you are.
Thanks for Checking Out the Mid-Career Mentor Preview!
Check back throughout the summer as we continue to preview the Mid-Career Mentor ahead of its September launch.
Did you miss last week's edition?
Check them out below.
Midcareer Mentor – Imposter Syndrome in the Academy
Signs of Imposter Syndrome & How to Respond
The competitiveness, individualism, and emphasis on expertise in higher education creates an environment ripe for imposter syndrome, where people across roles and responsibilities feel as if they are not “enough” or ever “doing enough.” For example, in the race to publish your research, you experience numerous rejections. While rejection is part of the experience of publishing one’s work, you internalize this rejection as indicative that something is wrong with you. But it’s not you. The academy reinforces imposter syndrome through policies and practices, which often manifest as specific behaviors and mindsets in ourselves, students, and colleagues.
Imposter syndrome can look like feeling like a fraud, fear of failure, doubting your qualifications and skills, downplaying barriers to your success, and setting impossible standards. Imposter syndrome may manifest as procrastination or overpreparation, or when you experience success and dismiss it as a fluke or luck.
How to Respond to Imposter Syndrome
- Recall a past success and the praise you received. Write down the praise as you remember it and the reasons you discounted it. Now give yourself back that praise and celebrate how far you have come.
- Try to talk to yourself in the same way you would a colleague, student, mentee, and/or advisee. If they dismissed praise from you, what would you say to them?
- Recognize that you are not alone. You are part of a larger system with deep roots in interlocking systems of oppression. Working to change these systems benefits you individually and collectively. More on this in our next newsletter in the imposter syndrome series.
Upcoming Events | Included in Your Membership
Throughout 2023, AI will be hosting a discussion series, Recognizing & Resisting Imposter Syndrome. During these 1-hour discussions, our academic and faculty coach, Jennifer Askey, will guide you through recent research on imposter syndrome and a focused reflection to help you see through your own imposter syndrome. Register Now!
Explore On Your Own Time | Included in Your Membership
“Acknowledging that someone has imposter syndrome is not a solution to the foundational issues that often undergird the true feelings of why someone feels inadequate.”
In our member-exclusive course, Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education: Examining the Self, the System, and the Opportunities for Change, Drs. Delma Ramos and Raquel Wright-Mair look at imposter syndrome at the systemic and individual level and how we can change the narrative.
Get Individualized Support
Our coaches report that imposter syndrome is the most common topic they address with their clients. Sign up for Faculty and Leadership Coaching to get professional development that meets you where you are.
See you next week!
Check back next week as we continue to preview the Mid-Career Mentor! In the next preview, we will discuss mentoring.
Did you miss last week's edition?
Read it below.
Mid-Career Mentor – Navigating Conflict as a Faculty Member
Faculty manage conflict with students, colleagues, peers at other institutions, chairs, and administrators, and learning to work productively with others through that conflict can be difficult. Building skills in addressing conflict can help you move toward a more productive work environment, where you can focus more on your key work, and less on the politics of academia.
Too often, situations that require confrontation, conflict, or a difficult conversation fester until they have become major issues for the faculty members involved, hindering faculty’s ability to collaborate and thrive within their department. The first barrier to developing skills in navigating conflict is preparing to have a difficult conversation. Faculty can feel overwhelmed at the thought of confronting someone about an interpersonal issue and avoid the conversation as long as possible. But having a fully productive work environment, where everyone can focus on their research, teaching, and service, requires being able to confront those with whom you are in conflict in a healthy manner.
Addressing Conflict: Preparing for Difficult Conversations
Preparing to address conflict can be one of the most daunting parts. We often build up a narrative in our heads about how the conflict will go, focusing on the worst-case scenario. But heading into potentially difficult conversations with a plan can help you navigate them successfully.
The first step to empowering yourself to productively work through conflict is preparing to have a difficult conversation.
How to Prepare for Difficult Conversations
- Don’t engage in mindreading. We all make assumptions about what others are thinking, but having a successful dialogue in a difficult situation requires you to remind yourself that you may not know a person’s motivations.
- Practice what you’re going to say. One of the most common reasons for avoiding conflict is worry that we will be too extreme or not appropriate. Practicing with yourself or role playing with another person who isn’t involved can help you refine your points.
- Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Are there power imbalances or preconceived notions about gender, race, tenure status, etc. at play? How would you feel if you were on the receiving end of your message? Reflect on these factors before going into the conversation.
Watch a short video here on Preparing for Difficult Conversations (10:39).
Check back next week as we continue to preview the Mid-Career Mentor! In the next preview, we will discuss imposter syndrome.
Upcoming Events | Included in Your Membership
Join us on May 31 for a re-airing of a training and Q&A session with Dr. Jeanne Hey on Conflict Management: A Practical Workshop for Leaders. During this session, you’ll learn strategies to effectively manage conflict within your department.
Explore On Your Own Time | Included in Your Membership
To dive deeper into how to prepare for difficult conversations, check out this course on Managing Difficult Colleagues. In this training, you will learn how to identify different types of difficult colleagues and how best to respond to each of them.
To focus broadly on how to create an environment where conflict and difficult conversations happen more naturally, join us on August 3 for Using Feedback to Build a Growth-Minded Work Environment. In this live training, you will learn how to normalize clear and consistent feedback within your department to ensure that toxic behavior doesn’t thrive.
Get Individualized Support
Our coaches can help you brainstorm how to address conflict one-on-one. Sign up for Faculty and Leadership Coaching to get professional development that meets you where you are.