Careers services occupy an interesting intermediatory position in higher education. Everyone agrees they matter, yet robust evidence that they affect graduates’ earnings is surprisingly thin. Research on placements and internships is stronger. Delis and Jones (2023) estimate a 4% salary premium for UK sandwich placements, and Margaryan and colleagues (2022) estimate about 6% for mandatory internships in Germany. Placements embed students in workplaces and may offer a distinct comparative advantage to students who apply for them. The core business of a careers service (eg guidance, counselling, and vacancy matching) is to act as an intermediary between HE and the labour market. Whether intermediation on its own paid off was largely a matter of correlational evidence, generally limited to a small number of institutions, or even a single institution. That was the main conclusion of the systematic review of employability programmes that colleagues and I published in Studies in Higher Education in 2024 (Scandurra et al, 2024). This review reports many positive associations, but few designs could separate career service selection from its effect.
Catalonia is the right place to ask such a question. The graduate survey run by AQU Catalunya, the regional quality assurance agency, asks graduates how they found their first job, in a labour market where search frictions are unusually costly. In fact, temporary contracts are common (at least until the last labour market reform), and more than 35% of recent Spanish graduates work below their qualification level, compared with 21.5% in the EU. We use data from six waves (2008–2023) and a sample of 5,919 graduates under 30 who moved directly from a first degree into work. Around 7% found their first job through the university careers service. In raw terms, they earned about 20% more than everyone else, but they were also more often male, from engineering and from graduate families, so the aggregate earnings premium tells us little.
To obtain a causal estimate, we instrument for service uptake using peer exposure, defined as the share of graduates from the same university, field, and cohort who found their first job through career services. Graduates learn from each other what works, and social learning shifts uptake strongly while showing no relationship with ability, family background, or work experience.
The headline result is an earnings premium of around 8.5%, measured within four years after graduation. The heterogeneity is more substantial. The premium is close to 16% for women and statistically indistinguishable from zero for men. It is around 17% for graduates entering the market with no experience, fading after a year or two of employment for men while women retain about 14%.
Our reading is that careers services work as matching intermediaries rather than as sites of skill formation. They reduce search costs and information asymmetries at the moment of labour-market entry, and they matter most to graduates who lack networks, sector knowledge, and employer contacts. That is why the effect exceeds placement estimates and why it concentrates among women, the inexperienced, and fields with loosely institutionalised recruitment.
Three implications seem appropriate for an interested reader. First, the value of careers services is concentrated in the first transition, which argues for front-loading support around graduation. Second, the graduates with the highest returns are not those who use the service most. Left to self-selection, an effective service can reinforce existing advantage. Targeted, it becomes one of the few institutional levers with evidence of narrowing the early-career gender gap, a point that resonates with UK work on unequal returns to work experience (Luchinskaya and Tzanakou, 2025). Third, measurement: this study was made possible by a single survey question, asked consistently for 15 years, about how graduates found their first job. Graduate surveys that record the entry route would allow large-scale evaluation of career services.
However, several limits of the study should be taken into account. We used repeated cross-sections, so we cannot follow the same graduates over time. Estimates are confined to Catalonia, which has a tight graduate labour market. We identify the effect for graduates whose choices respond to their peers, arguably the very group outreach is meant to reach. Linked employer–graduate records would allow a direct test of the matching mechanism, and that is where we hope to go next.
Rosario Scandurra is Ramón y Cajal Senior Researcher at UPF Barcelona School of Management, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, working on school-to-work transitions, graduate employability, and the territorial divide. The article is open access athttps://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-10-2025-0875.
The 2026 report published with HEPI by Dr Charlotte Fawcett entitled More than academia: Expanding career support for doctoral researchers sheds light on a timely challenge faced by swathes of PhD graduates. Notably, that much of their studies and professional development is shaped on the premise that an academic profession will be the destination for most. Fawcett weighs in on this issue, illustrating that PhD candidates are increasingly applying themselves to professions both across and beyond academia in today’s fierce employment landscape, and goes on to explain that preparation for this reality is made more difficult by the varied availability of resources to PhD candidates, mainly through their supervisors. While the report calls for better collaboration between stakeholders and more opportunities for work experience, we expand Fawcett’s work by offering insight into professional learning and career development experienced by Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) during the doctoral journey.
Fawcett’s report gives the sector something it has lacked for some time: a clear, current picture of how doctoral researchers experience career support, set against a labour market that no longer resembles the one for which doctoral study was originally built. Its central contribution is not simply diagnostic. By tracking change since 2019, and by pairing survey data with the voices of students and careers professionals, Fawcett provides institutions with meaningful evidence to work from, and a set of recommendations for action. It is essential reading for anyone with a stake in doctoral education, and it sets a benchmark for the kind of practical, student-centred research this space needs.
Our recent study highlights the significance of the GTA role as a site for doctoral employment, within which wide-ranging skills are fostered pertaining to teaching, research and service. Using a model that explores how GTA career trajectories were shaped by expectations and realities of the role, and aspirations beyond graduation (Feng, 2024), qualitative data from eight GTAs from different disciplinary contexts were explored. The intention of our study was to make explicit the connection between GTA professional development and career development, through consideration for how GTAs understand teaching, research and service roles and their implications for identity.
In the GTA role, doctoral candidates are encouraged to ‘try on’ identities, and to undertake dedicated skills training designed to ensure high-quality teaching and assessment practice. Their capabilities can include interpersonal, leadership, and organisational skills. Our findings indicated that the GTA role remains oriented toward academic careers, despite the various professional pathways taken by today’s doctoral candidates, a point also raised by Fawcett. Building on this understanding, we consider possible internal institutional and experiential opportunities designed to elevate the competence and confidence of doctoral candidates applying for work beyond academic teaching roles. Like Fawcett, we argued that support in recognising and articulating the transferability of knowledge and skills acquired through employment as GTAs is needed and instead suggest that learnt skillsets should be understood as competencies that can be applied across many careers and contexts.
From our study, we sensed that the expected linear academic career trajectory was falling away as graduate numbers rise and post-doctoral positions become fewer. While, as Fawcett reports, an increasing number of career-focused resources are becoming part of supervisory toolkits, we believe the responsibility extends to other members of the institution (including disciplinary experts, careers teams, and education developers) whose tailored care may have implications for preparedness.
Our data add another perspective to Fawcett’s work regarding a shared understanding of the benefits of GTA-related competencies. Where Fawcett finds that only 27% of PhD students believe their supervisor has useful advice for non-academic careers, a related opportunity for helping supervisors and GTAs to better articulate GTA competencies was found in our data. We asked GTAs to plot their expected, actual, and hoped-for relationships with teaching, research (doctoral studies), and service, and the participants’ responses scattered without forming any discernible cluster. This variation has been attributed to the challenge of communicating tasks, responsibilities, and learnt skills, which may be a disciplinary concern. Helping PhD students to identify and articulate their current work within Feng’s (2024) framework could, in turn, support supervisors and other significant colleagues to help with locating prospective career paths and understand the transferability of competencies developed as GTAs and doctoral researchers. While the GTA lived reality appears varied, individual-level insight now can prepare for career clarity later, pointing to a single intervention with dual benefit rather than two separate problems to solve.
We also noted a shift in GTAs’ present-tense identities and their imagined post-graduation selves. Participants who located themselves around teaching and service when reflecting on their reality consistently repositioned themselves towards research when projecting beyond their PhD studies. This shows that participants experienced their current role and future career as distinct rather than continuous. This resonates with Fawcett’s finding that, while 82% of students feel prepared for a research career, only 40% feel similarly prepared for non-research careers, and suggests that building this preparedness is partly about how GTAs are supported to narrate their experiences, not only about the information or resources on offer. This speaks to our earlier diagnosis about how aspects of a role are articulated, and how this is translated for work within and beyond academia. One participant’s insistence that they do not ‘identify as teaching staff’, despite teaching being a substantial commitment, points to an opportunity: helping GTAs to recognise the significance of teaching and service to the development of academic identity, rather than as detours from it, complementing the signposting Fawcett recommends.
Our third contribution sits slightly outside Fawcett’s frame but strengthens the recommendations: the emotional and relational labour GTAs absorb, for example, patience, diplomacy, and responsiveness to ‘unexpected situational cases’, is central to how participants experienced the role, even where it goes unnamed in formal role descriptions and training. This matters for career-readiness in a very practical sense. If pastoral and interpersonal skills are what GTAs are actually developing, naming them explicitly, alongside ‘research’ or ‘teaching experience’, would help doctoral candidates translate what they already do into what they can put on a CV. This lends weight to our suggestion of a competencies glossary, and points to a further opportunity that Fawcett’s supervisor-focused recommendations open up: module conveners, disciplinary leads, and GTA programme teams each hold partial knowledge of what a given candidate has developed, and bringing this knowledge together, alongside continued investment in careers advice, could be a valuable and immediately actionable step for institutions.
Fawcett’s timely report creates an important point of departure for conversations about career readiness and stakeholder provision. It highlights the myriad resources available to doctoral candidates across the academy, whilst gently drawing attention to areas in need of development. Bringing this together with our study of GTAs offers a more holistic view of careers following doctoral study. Together, the studies describe support structures and the opportunity for work experience, thus initiating a conversation about translation and transition. Instead of asking what additional support is needed, we should emphasise supporting doctoral candidates to articulate the capabilities they are developing.
Dr Kristy Campbell is a Lecturer in Education (GTA Development Programme Lead) at King’s Academy, King’s College London, supporting staff with continued professional development through workshops and professional accreditation. She is also Unit Lead for the PGCHE and MA Creative Education courses at Norwich University of the Arts.Kristy completed her PhD at UCL Institute of Education, specialising in Higher Education. Her interests include adult teaching and learning, transition, and identity. Kristy is also Co-Editor-in-Chief of Postgraduate Pedagogies, a developmental journal dedicated to showcasing the experiences of GTAs.
Dr Kaiyun Feng is a Lecturer in Education at King’s College London, specialising in higher education policy, institutional management, academic identities and professionalisation, and impact and evaluation. Previously a Researcher at the University of Cambridge, she analysed access and participation and evaluated widening participation projects. She earned her PhD from UCL Institute of Education, investigating institutional strategies for undergraduate teaching in world-class universities across China, the UK, and Canada. She leads master’s and undergraduate seminars on social policy, higher education management, and research engagement. Her evidence-based teaching is informed by her research into the teaching-research nexus and academic career development.
When I began my career as a photography technician in higher education 25 years ago, the distinction between academic and technical work was clear and helpful. Academics were thought of as the ‘master practitioners’ who taught creative and professional practice, while technicians prepared facilities, maintained equipment, and helped students to use specialist resources safely. However, as my career progressed, I observed the boundaries between academic and technical roles and responsibilities becoming increasingly indistinct and porous.
Technical duties at my institution evolved informally to include writing and delivering progressively developmental lesson plans aligned to module outcomes, devising innovative and differentiated ways of teaching advanced disciplinary skills, collaborating with students to define and solve complex problems without precedent, contributing to feedback and assessment, and helping students develop both the skills and mindsets to succeed in their studies and to flourish in their lives and careers beyond university.
The scale and impact of pre-planned technician-led teaching was evident in the timetable and in the quality of work presented for assessment, but remained much less visible during periods of self-directed study, when students sought personalised advice and guidance at the point of need, sometimes seeking assistance to realise an idea, or having reached the limits of their knowledge, or wanting to understand why something in their work had failed or resulted in an unanticipated outcome. Anecdotally, and through formal feedback channels, students consistently reported these unstructured exchanges with technicians as being among the most valuable and impactful pedagogies they experienced, both in terms of the quality of their outputs and in their confidence and abilities to enter their chosen careers.
The workforce, it seemed, was changing. Academic roles were becoming increasingly focused on theory, research, and curriculum development, while technicians took on more responsibility for teaching practical skills. In this new model, technicians increasingly found themselves positioned as the new ‘master practitioners’ holding specialist knowledge and occupying the pedagogic spaces their lecturer colleagues had previously held.
My new book, Technical Teaching in Higher Education: Insights from the Creative Arts, examines and attempts to make sense of this shift, exploring the rich and textured pedagogies involved, and considering how institutions might use that understanding to improve teaching and learning.
Making sense of the technical turn
In my research, I describe the growing educational responsibilities of technicians as a ‘technical turn’. Within creative arts HE, I attribute this evolution to a combination of political, economic, social, and technological factors shaping the sector, accentuated by the incorporation and mergers of art schools and former polytechnics into universities.
But neither the technical nor the academic turns, nor the role convergences they have enabled, are new or restricted to the creative arts. In 1997, the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education identified how the formerly clear distinctions between academic and non-academic roles were becoming increasingly blurred across the sector.
More recently, the UKRI-funded TALENT Commission on which I served provided evidence of the extent of technical involvement in teaching. Its national survey found that 95% of creative arts respondents were involved in teaching activities, compared with 75% of respondents from other disciplines. Subsequent studies have illuminated the scale and breadth of technician teaching across UK universities. These findings show that technical teaching extends across the sector, although how technicians understand and approach this work remains comparatively under-examined.
Five conceptions of technical teaching
My doctoral research addressed a related question: how do visual arts technicians understand and approach their teaching? Using phenomenography, I explored variation in participants’ conceptions of their pedagogies. I interviewed technicians across the UK in different kinds of institutions, spanning art, craft, design, and media disciplines. I examined what participants believed they taught, how they taught it, and why. I identified five approaches: Demonstrator, Instructor, Consultant, Collaborator, and Transformer. Each describes a different way of understanding and approaching teaching, and participants drew on several of these approaches depending on the learner and the context.
Demonstrators see their role as introducing learners to safe and competent practice. Their teaching makes equipment, materials, software, and specialist environments accessible through clear explanations and repeatable processes. They use didactic methods, while prioritising the clear understanding of foundations and conventions from which students can begin to work independently.
Instructors help students acquire, develop and apply skills in unique and personalised ways. Their emphasis moves towards adapting techniques to different purposes and developing the practical judgement needed to use them. Learning how to operate a camera, for example, becomes less about controls and functions, and more about understanding how its use can serve a photographic intention.
Consultants see themselves as subject authorities, whose role is to respond to a learner’s particular problem or ambition. A student may arrive with an unsuccessful process, a technical problem, or an idea they cannot realise. Teaching involves diagnostic assessment, questioning, and advice that help the learner evaluate possible solutions, evaluate risks and benefits, and make informed decisions.
Collaborators work alongside students, sharing in their processes of exploration and discovery. Knowledge develops through dialogue, experimentation, iteration, and encounters with materials or processes. These interactions and exchanges can take both student and technician beyond their existing understanding, supporting unknown and uncertain outcomes.
Transformers focus on changes in how learners understand their practice and themselves as practitioners. Their aim is to challenge and expand what students believe they can do, how they approach their work, and to broaden their ambitions and move beyond perceived limits. Transformative pedagogies were also found to influence curricula, more effectively integrate with academia, and inform institutional approaches to practical learning.
These five qualitatively distinct conceptions span a spectrum from teacher-centred content delivery to student-centred, transformative learning. They describe ways of understanding technical teaching, and an individual may adopt different pedagogies at different times. The range was broadly comparable with that identified in research on academics’ conceptions of teaching.
Putting the framework to use
The taxonomy’s practical value lies in making these different educational approaches and purposes more explicit. For individual technicians and their managers, it can provide language to reflect on practice, discuss teaching with peers, and identify development needs. It can also help educational developers connect teaching qualifications, mentoring, and professional recognition, such as Advance HE Fellowships, using authentic technical teaching and learning scenarios and case studies.
For curriculum teams, the framework can help identify where technical learning can be deployed most effectively within a programme and aligned with learning outcomes and assessment criteria. An equipment induction may prepare students to enter a workshop, but subsequent projects may depend on consultation, experimentation, and feedback.
Quality assurance and enhancement follow the same logic. Peer observation, student feedback, and shared reflection could help teams understand how technical pedagogies contribute to learning and where they need improvement.
The framework offers an evidence-based starting point for these conversations at a sector level; for institutions, it can help improve the integration of academic theory and technical practice within a constructively aligned curriculum, strengthen collaboration and understanding across role boundaries and break down longstanding silos in support of student education, experiences, and outcomes.
Dr Tim Savage is a consultant, author, and trainer specialising in technical learning, technicians, and institutional change in higher education. He previously served as Director of Technical Learning at the University for the Creative Arts and is a Principal Fellow of Advance HE, recognised for sustained strategic leadership in technical learning and teaching. His latest book, based on his doctoral research, is Technical Teaching in Higher Education: Insights from the Creative Arts (Routledge, 2026)
Cleaning, catering and security staff fulfil an important function in maintaining and enhancing the social and material environment of higher education (HE). Yet this group has attracted limited considerations from researchers and policy-makers alike. Two notable exceptions, both in the US context, are Peter Magolda’s (2016) ethnography of cleaners on two university campuses, The Lives of Campus Custodians, and Verónica Caridad Rabelo and Ramaswami Mahalingam’s (2019) article, reporting on a mixed-method study of cleaners conducted in a single institution. Both pieces are concerned with cleaners’ perspectives, and both also comment on the invisibility of cleaners, which, they contend, goes at times hand in hand with their misrecognition.
A 2022 SRHE research award enabled us to conduct what is, to our knowledge, the first UK-wide study of HE-based ‘ancillary staff’ (a term we use to refer to cleaning, security and catering staff while acknowledging that this category is broader). Working in the evening on campus, I (Marie-Pierre) observed how cleaners would enter the building after most academics and professionals had gone home and worked diligently. I was struck by the contrast between the significance of their work and its relative absence from research and policy discourses. This absence is possibly even more surprising once one considers that ‘elementary occupations’ (under which catering, security and cleaning staff fall) represent 12% of the UK HE non-academic workforce (Wolf and Jenkins, 2020) – a percentage which does not take into account those on outsourced contracts who often experience high levels of precarity.
Against this background, our study sought to explore the experiences of ancillary staff working in UK universities and their contribution to the higher education sector. Of particular interest to the research team were the potential injustices faced by this group, Underpinned by a theoretical framework drawing on Nancy Fraser’s (1997) and Kathleen Lynch’s (2010) multi-level theories of social justice, we explored the economic (distributive), cultural (recognitional), political (representational) and affective in/justices experienced by this group.
The fieldwork for this project involved a search of the literature on ancillary staff in HE and other sectors and some observations of the working environment of ancillary staff. It also involved an online survey of UK HE institutions followed by Freedom of Information (FoI) requests. The original survey generated 24 replies in total, while 110 institutions responded to the FoI request. Finally, we conducted 20 interviews with ancillary staff, recruited through a diversity of routes and with a diversity of backgrounds and roles.
A first set of findings from the project relates to how organisational, administrative and scholarly processes work in ways which render this group invisible. On campus, they are rarely seen or heard, although this also varies based on the nature of their role. Cleaners appear particularly prone to invisibility. Many start their shift once academic and professional staff have left the premises. When ancillary staff have a dedicated workspace, it is often hidden from view. They are also often absent from staff directories, university websites and policy documents. Likewise, their exact numbers are often unknown, including, as we found out, to some universities. This invisibility is further compounded by the fact that, among ancillary staff, many are employed by private corporations. Finally, as noted above, this group is strikingly absent from the research literature, with very few exceptions.
Another set of findings relates to how ancillary staff experience the economic, cultural, political and affective in/justices theorised by Fraser and Lynch. In terms of economic or distributive justice, it is well known that cleaning, catering and security roles tend to attract low salaries compared with other categories of staff in the sector. Our study also highlights, inter alia, a lack of opportunities for career development. Interviewees employed in-house and those in catering and security roles were found to be more likely to be satisfied with their pay and working conditions. It was not unusual for outsourced staff in particular to go to work despite being ill due to being eligible for statutory sick pay only.
In terms of what Fraser refers to as cultural justice, some participants felt valued, while others shared feelings of misrecognition. Such feelings were found to be linked to economic justice. Porters, for example, reflected on how they enjoyed similar working conditions (eg paid leave) to other members of staff and were self-aware of the significance of their work in enabling their college or university to operate. They felt valued in ways many cleaning and outsourced staff did not. In comparison, one of the outsourced security staff we talked to explained how he felt like ‘a number’ to the contractor in charge of his placement, arguing that those employed in-house are ‘looked after’ better. While some participants felt respected by other staff and students, some, often cleaners, felt that some staff and students showed contempt for them. One commented on how ‘they [staff] sort of turn their noses up at people like us’ and on how they ‘look at you as if you’re a bit of muck on their shoe’.
In relation to political justice, the study generated two main findings. First, membership of unions and other professional organisations was rare. Many participants lacked awareness of unions (‘I’ve never heard of a union for the cleaning industry’, stated one). Others held negative views of unions. One participant explained how ‘I would never be a member of a union’, due to having seen them ‘use and abuse’ their power, while also stating, somewhat paradoxically, that they are ‘absolutely useless’. Second, also linked to political justice, the ancillary staff we talked to appeared to have limited input in decision-making at institutional level. Instead, they felt they had to comply with oft changing policies. One shared how they were told: ‘You don’t make decisions, you only follow process’.
Last, the research points to several injustices related to care relationships and what Lynch calls affective equality. In particular, the research shows that ancillary work can be, but is not always, compatible with caring responsibilities. For some, the ability to combine paid and care work had been a key factor in choosing their current job. One of the cleaning supervisors we spoke to, for example, explained how his early start enabled him to be back home in time to take his children to school. For some, their position had been made attractive by predictable working times (for example, one staff in a catering role would work from 7.30 to 3.30pm and then spend time with family). While security staff were overall more satisfied with other aspects of their work, this was different when it came to being able to combine paid work with caring responsibilities, with comments that ‘Security is not good hours, it’s too long’ or that ‘nights are hard’, and some describing their work-life balance as ‘pretty much non-existent’. In some cases, low salary meant that staff did not have any alternative but to work extra hours, which in turn led to limited work-life balance (‘it’s work-sleep-work-sleep basically’). The highest levels of work-life balance were found among those in catering role employed by the students’ union (so outsourced but with very different contractual conditions compared with staff outsourced via a private firm, with the former benefiting from a work timetable built around their teaching timetable). Also related to affective justice, interviews all highly valued collegiality among staff. This was often mentioned spontaneously by interviewees, in contrast with the research we have conducted on other categories of staff in the HE sector, including as part of a previous SRHE award (Moreau and Robertson, 2017, 2019).
Based on the findings from this project, the research report makes a number of recommendations for institutions, national stakeholders and researchers. We hope that findings from this pilot project will raise awareness of this group, of the injustices they face and of their contribution to the sector.
References (additional to those hyperlinked)
Fraser, N (1997) ‘After the family wage: A post-industrial thought experiment’ in Fraser, N (ed) Justice interruptus: critical reflections on the ‘post-socialist’ conditions New York: Routledge
Magolda, P (2016) The lives of campus’ custodians: Insights into corporatization and civic disengagement in the academy Sterling, VA: Stylus
Lucie Wheeler is a Research Assistant in education. They are both based in the School of Education, Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, at Anglia Ruskin University, UK.
Pause for a moment and jot down how many tasks and projects are currently at the front of your mind? You might already be thinking, “hold on, am I asked to pause, to stop thinking, stop doing, even for a moment? Does he not know how much I’ve got to do!” I would encourage you to give it a go.
Here are mine: write this blog, check work emails, check personal emails, re-read my Career Development Staff Appraisal Form for meeting later today, check train is going to be on time for said meeting, check if Waverley station has moved bike storage area since lock-down, check today’s to-do list I made yesterday, send the two qualitative interviews which have been transcribed to the printers…” OK, I will stop there – quite a long list which only took about 30 seconds to come up with. It also does not include other University work or general life stuff such as parenting, being in a relationship, owning pets, shopping and so on. The distinction between the private and professional life of academics is becoming increasingly blurred – and the pressure of work is becoming increasingly intense.
Then think back to when you embarked on your academic career, most likely full of excitement and joy at being able to pursue your intellectual passion for a subject, enthuse students, write papers, and successfully present at conferences.
What happened between the early excitement and present overload? How did our academic lives become so busy we barely have time for a coffee break, never mind time to think clearly and analytically? And crucially, what might we do about it?
While the answers to the changing nature of demands will be multi-factorial and include the marketisation of higher education and the pressure of research and teaching metrics, I argue in this blog that coaching offers a route-map to creating a more balanced and enjoyable professional life. It is an invitation to self-reflect, to recognise strengths, to develop insights, and to allow obstacles to be identified and overcome. This makes it a tremendously powerful staff development intervention.
Coaching can take several forms. For example, academic leaders and managers might use training to develop a coaching mindset. Here they would be using skills such as active listening and reflective inquiry to deepen the quality of their communication with colleagues. Alternatively, academic and professional staff might take dedicated one to one sessions with a trained and qualified coach.
Here, I begin to tell the story of how we are using coach training and coaching sessions to develop a coaching culture amongst academic staff within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the Open University. The project is still in its early stages but is showing great promise.
The initial idea was sparked by some coach training I engaged with as part of my professional development. I had a lightbulb moment when I realised that the constant curiosity, invitation to self-reflect and absence of judgement which underpin coaching conversations fit wonderfully well with the academic labour process. Many of us are drawn to work as university academics because we value agency, autonomy, and self-direction. As we know only too well, the current intensification of academic work militates against these, produces feelings of frustration and can be overwhelming. Coaching, with its focus on open questions and reflective inquiry, signposts new ways forward. Open questions and reflective inquiry may even lead to insights where we remember the joy and love of our work.
The project involves an external coach organisation providing introductory coaching skills training to academic leaders and managers. The positive early feedback led to expanding this offer of training coaching skills and to set up an internal coaching service where one to one coaching supports colleagues through career transitions.
We are presently working on an evaluation project using grounded theory methodology to analyse the impact of the coach skills training. The data is presently being collected and analysed and our aim is to offer a paper on this evaluation to Studies in Higher Education later in the year. Here, I offer my own reflections on what appears to be working – as well as some thoughts on what I might have done better.
In terms of what’s worked I am both refreshed and relieved to find that informal feedback and my own observations indicate that coaching adds value to the academic working life. One of these is the invitation to leaders and managers to self-reflect. To “listen more and talk less”.
As part of my own self-reflection, I began to pay attention to how I behave in meetings. Not how I thought I behaved, but what I do. I thought I consistently listened intently to others before making my own contribution. In fact, I was half listening to comments while internally formulating my own ‘excellent, articulate and very powerful’ contribution! I barely waited for others to stop speaking before I started. Acceptance of this embarrassing revelation led to a change in my listening. I began to concentrate on what others were saying. Not just to the words, but also the emotion behind the words. I began to pause before replying or I invited someone else to come in first. These are particularly challenging changes to make when one is chairing meetings or in a leadership and management position. Interestingly, once I let go of feeling responsibility for being the one with ‘the answer’ I felt more calm – and better ideas emerged.
In group or one to one meetings, taking the time to really listen generates new insights and opens the door to new possibilities. For leaders this can also be rather humbling as one realises others have equally (or more) valid ideas and solutions. This type of facilitative as opposed to directive leadership is particularly suited to academia, where the apprenticeship for the job involves independent thinking and the development of critical questioning.
This shift to leadership habits which draw on coaching, for example moving from ‘telling’ to ‘listening’, has the potential to motivate and energise colleagues. This takes time but offers substantial returns. Telling and directing is quicker in the short term – perhaps you are familiar with colleagues hesitating before making decisions, looking to first run it past a head of department, research lead or some other authority figure? While this style of management and leadership works to some extent (courses still get taught and research still gets done), it can create a dependent relationship. Leading through coaching invites colleagues to take more responsibility for their own – and consequently the university’s – development and growth.
What might I have done better? What immediately comes to mind is that I could have been much more patient. As I became convinced of coaching’s effectiveness, I set high expectations of uptake and the pace of change. The take up of coach training by leaders and managers did pick up, but over months and years as opposed to weeks. The habit of self-reflection I am (still) learning to practise has been of great assistance. The realisation that I must meet colleagues where they are now, not where I am.
Please consider how adopting a coaching mindset may be of service in improving the leadership and management in your own institution. You might reflect and think it is all working fine, but if you realise there is room for improvement then coaching may very well be of service. In the meantime, stay curious!
SRHE member George Callaghan is Professor of Personal Finance and Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science at the Open University. He is also a qualified coach with the International Coaching Federation and the Institute of Leadership and Management. If you would like to discuss any points in this blog, please email George.callaghan@open.ac.uk
