Few professionals in higher education work with coaches, yet these professional guides offer feedback, neutrality, and discretion that your academic colleagues can’t or don’t provide.
Career advancement in higher education is unlike any other career path or job progression in the business world. You may have concerns about navigating the corners and sharp edges of academia at any point in your academic careers.
Career Advancement in Higher Education
Some academics make career advancement in higher education make it look easy. They’re fully prepared to handle every situation. Of course, successful academic careers include the use of many skills. You didn’t learn these skills as a student.
In the early years of an academic career, you have many questions. You learn:
- The academic community values honesty, yet not all colleagues in academia have your best interests at heart. You seek out mentors and bond with colleagues you trust. Because mentors and colleagues have personal and professional demands of their own, the process of supporting your professional development can get complicated.
Later, you understand:
- As a successful academic professional at any point in your career, you’ll build bridges with academic networking. If the bridges are soundly constructed, you cross to achieve positive promotion reviews and tenure.
Navigating academia is sometimes challenging and often rewarding. An academic career coach is most useful in helping you gain the insights and skills needed to advance your career. Don’t give in to regrets about missed opportunities. Career advancement in the academic community requires you to make solid, navigable plans. Without them, the saying goes, you plan to fail.
An academic coach can help you plan every step of the way.
Navigating Academia with Your Success Plan
Build your publications and CV along with a success plan. Your academic career coach is there to focus on your unique gifts and aspirations as you make the best use of academic networking to nurture both professional and personal connections.
Navigating academia is essential to achieving a work-life balance. Understanding your work culture supports an essential belief that you fit in and that you’re valued as a member of your department and institution. Smoothing the razor-sharp sharp edges requires awareness. An experienced academic success coach is an integral partner in your career advancement in education.
Let’s consider how an academic coach can help you succeed.
Navigating Academia with Your Academic Coach
Kelly is the chair of the Comparative Literature Department at an eastern university. She’s managed thorny interdepartmental issues over the past year but fears she’s not doing well in realizing her near-term vision of the department.
Previously, she suggested a new flat distribution of duties amongst department members. In this new model, the senior colleague would teach intro courses like others. A senior member of the department would also share more duties in the next academic year.
Instead of agreeing to discuss Kelly’s proposal, the senior colleague is angry. Because discretion is required, Kelly believes it’s unwise to prematurely discuss the situation with others in the department. She’s naturally concerned about gossip in this tense moment.
She doesn’t want to consult her friends and family. While her husband supports Kelly’s new policy proposal, his perspective is biased. Her best friend is also biased.
Neither her husband nor her best friend has the time to drill into what’s happening in Kelly’s department. More importantly, neither understands the department’s makeup, politics, and challenges. Neither knows how to help her to create a strategy or advise her about how to move forward.
Academic Careers Benefit from Experienced Academic Coaching
What is Kelly’s next step?
She needs an academic coach. A situation like this one is different from a corporate power struggle. As executive coaches in the business world, academic coaches offer solutions and career-building strategies to their clients. In a crisis like Kelly’s, an academic coach has insight, feedback, neutrality, and discretion necessary.
As your academic coach, Dr. Loren M. Hill will address the challenges you’re facing in s one-on-one meeting. Together, you will build a short-term bridge to reach your long-term goals. Navigating the corners and sharp edges of academia is possible. To get started, call Dr. Loren M.Hill at (323) 207-8656 or email her at DrLorenHill@TheAcclivity.com.