The Balanced Academic Workshop with Will Medd (registration open)

Date/Time
Date(s) - 26/07/2021 All Day

Audience:

  • Find clarity of vision and how to bring it alive each day
  • Develop the confidence to prioritise and work with clear boundaries
  • Create balance within work and between work and the rest of life
  • Identify personal strategies to experience the fulfilment of everyday balance
  • Learn from the collective wisdom of the group

The question ‘how to get the balance right?’ seems to be a persistent quandary in academic life – exacerbated during these COVID times. It can be tricky to know how to get the balance right within the job – for example between the demands and possibilities for research, teaching, PhD supervision, writing, funding applications, maximizing impact, contributing to outreach, fulfilling administrative duties etc.  Academics often describe their work as overwhelming, feel stressed, struggle in prioritising between short-term and long-term goals, and can feel a loss of sense of direction. They also describe the challenges of balancing the unlimited nature of the work with the rest of life too.

Recognising that people are often at their best when they have their priorities in balance this workshop offers an opportunity to identify concrete strategies to create a better balance in your academic work alongside the rest of life.  The workshop is an invitation to rekindle passion, motivation and a sense of perspective to enable you to reprioritise at the strategic and everyday level.

This one-day, experiential and interactive coaching-based workshop will create an opportunity to re-engage with your own sense of personal balance, and be challenged with how to bring that into your everyday life.

Who is it for?

The Balanced Academic is for academics at any stage of their career, who could benefit from exploring how to realign a sense of balance in their work and the rest of life: for example they may feel out of balance, overwhelmed and over-stressed, or lacking confidence in some way.  The workshops have been attended by academics at all stage of career and from all disciplines – from physicists to creative writers, sociologists to mathematicians, health researchers to economists.

What’s involved?

The day is designed to build on your experience and to learn from the collective wisdom of the group. The focus will be on explore what is in and out of balance for you, and what a balanced approach to academic life will mean for you.  The day will involve:

  • Setting up: introducing a coaching approach and the relationship between performance, potential and interferences; sharing current experience of balance in academic; identifying what we want from the day and agreeing how we’ll work together.
  • Experiential exploration: exploring what it feels like when we are in ‘balance’ and when we feel ‘out of balance’; exploring ‘balance’ wheels of work and the rest of life to identify where changes are needed; identifying personal values and vision, how in balance they feel; learning what knocks you off balance and how to come back to your centre; identifying personal strategies to sustain everyday balance.
  • Throughout the day we’ll be moving between whole group exercises and discussion, small group exercises and personal reflection time (the balance will depend on the group and what we collectively agree). When appropriate, there will also be individual interventions from the coach.

Beyond the day

Through their own reflection, participants will identify insights throughout the day that they will want to take forward into their work and the rest of life. Participants who want to go further can sign up for 1-1 coaching or explore other options with Will to participate in group coaching sessions.