How Lifestyle Transformation Is An Achievable Goal For Academics

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The use of leadership coaches has become an acknowledged and widespread practice in corporations, non-profit organizations, even governments, and the reasons vary.

When individuals work with leadership or life coaches, they start to experience higher levels of effectiveness at work and at home, with improvements in both their task and relationship orientation. At the same time, organizations discover that they are more productive when they hire life coaches because they experience a higher return on investment.  

As a parallel, employing coaches in academic life or the use of any kind of systematic organizational development is basically uncharted inside the university world.  With the higher demand for notable change that universities are now facing, in economical and technological areas, there are good reasons to believe that things are about to change.  

While universities and colleges accept the fact that changes are enveloping them, individual staff, such as professors, and administrators should consider turning to a personal coach. Why? Because doing so can boost their advance both in their careers and their lives.

Coaching - It’s Not What You Think

Those who are unfamiliar with coaching tend to believe that coaching is a form of consulting, mentoring, or just advice-giving. At its core, coaching is a form of one-on-one analysis and examination in which the client is guided by the coaches. This process consists of closely listening and asking pertinent questions in ways that help the client identify and overcome obstacles and then come up with courses of action and implement them.  

A life coach focuses on supporting only the client’s agenda, starting wherever they are at that point. The right coach enters the engagement without stereotypes or some ideal sense of the right goals for their clients. In this way, the client is able to safely explore their authentic path, style, and career in a safe manner, finding a supportive environment in life coaching.

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Five Occasions Coaching Can Be Helpful In Your Academic Career

When compared to other kinds of organizational development interventions, such as training and team building, coaching is especially better suited for the highly competitive and individualistic nature of academia. The privacy of the coaching collaboration enables a safe haven for sharing hopes and concerns, successes and breakdowns, as well as possibilities and aspirations, without any judgment.

Let’s have a look at five situations in an academic career when hiring a coach might be beneficial to a scholar:

• You’re thinking about becoming an academic 

Obtaining your Ph.D. or some other terminal graduate degree is a considerable commitment, and academic life is not suitable for everyone. Hiring a life coach at the beginning of the academic journey can both save you from a probably costly and emotionally consuming decision and start with clear, precise, and realistic expectations, intentions, and aspirations.

• You’ve taken your first academic job 

Congratulations are in order if you’re a fresh assistant professor and you’re eager to begin on your teaching and research, but you may have already found out that the long road to tenure is paved with difficult decisions. And even though your dean, department head, and esteemed colleagues will provide you with much advice,  how can you maximize your possibilities of succeeding and still remain authentic to your original aspirations and intentions?  

Hiring a life coach at this stage in your career gives you a prudent method of analyzing your challenges and opportunities with a person who has only your interest at heart. 

• You’ve been promoted or received tenure (or denied promotion or tenure)  

The career path of a professor has three major phases, and each promotion can be a considerable life alteration.  The switch from assistant to associate professor is usually followed by tenure, and the point in career when you get tenure can be confusing.  

You start wondering if you should continue on the same trajectory or whether it's time to think about an administrative role. These are just a few of the questions that demand answers when receiving tenure, and a life coach plays a decisive role in finding those pertinent to your circumstances, helping to find your own answers.  

Denial of tenure is a difficult time, and many universities provide little or no support whatsoever.  But a life coach can guide you to be able to look at the event from a proper perspective and identify the path aligned with where you are now.  Denial of promotion to full professor position is another tough case, and the right coach can be especially helpful in analyzing perspective and figuring out the next steps.

• You’ve taken a new administrative post

Shifting from teaching to an administrative position can be quite demanding in your system, and even going up in the ranks from head of department to  dean position can be challenging as each new post is filled with different tasks from the one vacated.  

Administrative entries and promotions are convenient times to find a life coach to guide you through the challenges of a new posting and to prepare you for consecutive advancement by enhancing the skills and evolving in ways that are according to the new post and the next.

• You’re preparing to leave the university  

Maybe you’ve decided it’s about time to go to the next level, perhaps start a company, become a consultant, take a job in the private sector, or retire.  These progressions are excellent to ask good questions and follow a coach’s guidance to help you draw out the best in what comes next.

These five occasions are great ones to consider finding and using the expertise of a life coach.  The next part lays out a number of open-ended questions to guide you in the quest for your coach.

Finding Your Coach

So perhaps you find yourself in an academic transition when a coach might be useful to you. How do you find the right coach that would be aligned with your needs? 

The following questions will guide you through what to take into consideration when hiring a coach:

• What kind of training and qualifications does this person offer to their coaching?

• In what way does this person have academic experience and understand academic culture?

• How can this potential coach be curious about you, your obstacles, your opportunities and in what way do they appear to have a method or an answer?

• How comfortable do you feel with the potential coach, and how hard is it to share private information with him or her?

• Do you feel that this coach asks questions that engages your reflection and are both compelling and interesting to answer?

• Do you feel that the coach seems to listen to you and understand you through that listening?

While each academic has unique circumstances that lead them to hire a life coach, these are the most common occasions. 

If you find yourself in any of these situations and you are interested in boosting your academic career, don’t hesitate to contact me to discover the next step in reaching your personal and professional goals.

Or, get to know me better (and take the first steps towards achieving your goals) by learning how to stop procrastinating through self-coaching. Use the form below to get access to my tips for reclaiming your time!