75- Dr Sarah Brooks- Integrating coaching in academic work

Dr Sarah Brooks is a senior lecturer in Organisational Behaviour in the Management School at The University of Sheffield. Sarah combines coaching in her work, in different ways.  She is teaching undergraduate students to gain thinking tools for career development planning, and she integrates coaching into her research portfolio, for example, with a project using coaching as a route to voice, for individuals who have experienced sexual harassment. Sarah has also built a private coaching practice called Powerful Dreaming.

Sarah’s entry into academic work came after several years working in the corporate sector as a management consultant. She was disillusioned working in this environment and started a part-time course in Psychology at the Open University. This course opened her awareness that developing people was central to her interests. She pursued this with a Master’s in Psychology. It was during this early period of uncertainty about the kind of career to pursue next that she experienced a coaching conversation. This early conversation helped her navigate her career decisions.

Even though she returned to consultancy work after her Master’s, she trained in coaching skills whilst still a consultant and later continued with a formal coaching qualification and accreditation. Her combined interest in coaching and developing people led her to undertake a PhD on voice and silences in upward communication in the workplace.

Sarah has chosen to align her academic role with her growing interest in coaching. Instead of splitting these two parts of her life and professional identity, she has found a way of bringing coaching as a core anchor that underpins everything she does.

She describes that it felt bold and daring to have coaching as a visible anchor in her academic focus. She started to talk to other people about this integration of coaching and academic research. Hearing others share that her integration was thought-provoking helped her build confidence that this integration made sense. Interestingly, her research thread over the years has been about finding voice. This integration of her coaching into her academic work has been about finding her own authentic voice and research niche, as an academic.

 Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking: 

• How coaching conversations at critical career junctures can help ease decisions and transition
• How to bring together different parts of yourself to build your research niche and your authentic voice as an academic
• How coaching skills can be woven into so many levels in academic lives

 More on Sarah: 

https://sheffield.ac.uk/management/people/academic-staff/wp/sarah-brooks

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Research Lives and Culture, the podcast that offers conversations about the research environment. I interview someone who works or has previously worked in research. We discuss about the approach they have taken to navigate their career, the critical decisions they have made, the joys they have had in their work, and the challenges that they have faced. I ask questions about what a supportive research environment really looks like and about the actions that we can take to help the research culture empower people to thrive. My name is Dr. Sandrine Soup. I am a coach, facilitator, and trainer for the research environment and your host on this podcast. I am committed to ease the path to research careers by sharing stories of researchers' lives.

Sandrine 0:56

Good morning, good afternoon, good evenings wherever you are. Dear listeners, you are on the podcast research lives and culture, and today I have somebody with me who is very special to me, and it's Sarah Brooks. Sarah is a lecturer at the University of Sheffield in the management school. So Sarah, welcome on the show.

Sarah 1:21

Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Sandrine 1:25

No, my pleasure. So I was trying Sarah to remember the first time we met. So we met a few years ago at the Sheffield Coaching Exchange, but we had met before at the university, but I must admit, I could not remember in which context, and I wonder whether you remembered yourself.

Sarah 1:43

Yeah, it was on the Springboard program that

Sandrine 1:45

yes, of course. Oh my gosh. It's ancient. For the listeners, so Springboard for Women was a program I used to run at the University of Sheffield. It was like a four months program with one workshop. Per months for women in research. And since then I've been running a different workshop called Daring Today, but, which is also a program for women in research. So it's been, so we met a long time ago then. Do you remember which year you did it?

Sarah 2:10

Yeah, because it was before I finished my PhD, so it must have been about 2004 15.

Sandrine 2:17

okay. Okay.

Sarah 2:18

actually I'd forgotten about that. So that's quite amazing, isn't it? So we've been working together quite a long time actually then.

Sandrine 2:25

That's pretty incredible. We've been meeting on a regular basis with Sarah through, through coaching. And a lot of the interviews that I do on the podcast are about getting people to talk about their career, the, how they've navigated the research system. But because Sarah is also a coach and and we've had a coaching partnership for a number of years, I think that our conversation is going to focus on coaching in the context of your own practice as a coach, and also in term of the way that it's been an important part of your journey as an academic. But maybe let's take a step back in, in sharing with listener, who you are as an academic. So can you tell us a little bit about your career so far?

Sarah 3:12

Yes, I can. How I would describe my role as an academic then now is that I do teaching and I do research, and the teaching that I do is about career development. So it's in the career development space, helping people decide what careers are right for them. And my research is in a field of voice and silence, which is how people speak out in the workplace about things they're not happy about. I have, prior to this year, I was also academic lead for employability. So part of my responsibility was making sure that students are ready for work as much as possible across all of our programs. I think what, when I was thinking about the question that you'd asked me in advance to prepare what I found interesting was why I ended up in academia because it seems to be, it seems to feel like an important bit of a backstory because I didn't just, I didn't just wake up one day and then I became a teacher and a researcher. I, so I felt like the things that I do may be just required a bit of background.

Sandrine 4:25

absolutely. And I think particularly because they are, there, there are still a lot of academics who have gone straight from working, being a master student, doing a PhD, a postdoc, and been, work transitioning to lectureship. But you haven't had that, and obviously I know that, but would you want to share here with listener that journey.

Sarah 4:44

Yeah. Okay. I finished university with a French and Spanish degree and I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I think back in those days, a long time ago, we didn't get career support. There wasn't so much emphasis on employability or helping you work out, what to do afterwards. And I've written about this, how I had a lack of confidence. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I didn't feel qualified for anything in particular, so I ended up taking a temping job, working as a receptionist. And I ended up at IT support and I really quite liked that. And I then ended up working at IBM. As an IT help desk analyst. And then I became a project manager and then I became interested in management consultancy. So I went and did a master's in management consultancy. 'cause I realized, I think I quite like this thing, but I dunno how to describe it and I don't really know what it's about. And then as is often the way with education that you realize that more than you thought you did. And as you become more comfortable speaking about it, I got a job as a management consultant way before I actually finished the master's. And management consultancy was all about business practice and that was what I really enjoyed doing. I think what happened to me was that I became very disillusioned with designing projects, which simply focused on a return on financial investment. And I realized that I was really interested in people development and helping people achieve things. Growing confidence or actually really helping them do things that they didn't think they were ever capable of. And I really liked being by their side. They did that. And so that disillusionment really was what got me thinking. There must be something else for me because I can't see myself doing the management consultancy forever at that time. Somebody had suggested to me that psychology might be of interest and I didn't really know anything about psychology. And I think when I chose my undergraduate degree like psychology wasn't hugely popular like it is now. And so I remember doing an op Open University Foundation course, it's just 12 months and within about. Three weeks of doing that course, I thought, oh, this is it. This is the thing. It's helping me understand myself. It's helping me, me understand why I don't want to do what I want to do. It's helping me understand why other people do what they want to do. So I made the decision After I'd finished that course, which I did part-time, I made the decision to leave my consultancy role and do a full-time Master's in psychology. And I guess everybody thought I was crazy giving up a really well paid job

Sandrine 7:41

Yeah, exactly.

Sarah 7:42

back. Yeah. To go back to do. Yeah. And so it, but I knew, I just knew that this was what I wanted to do. So for me, I didn't feel any concern or worry about it. It was just I knew what I wanted to do. And the other thing I also realized is that I need intellectual stimulation. And so consultancy is a very practical type of thing. And I did change implementation as opposed to strategy. So I was working with clients at their organization, helping them implement change, and I absolutely loved that. But what I was really missing was the intellectual stimulation. And so I did my master's, went back to work as a consultant, and I just found that. I just, I need more intellectual stimulation than the role is offering me. And so that was how I ended up doing a PhD. The idea that I arrived at the idea through coaching, because there was a lady that I was working with as a coach and I remember the little room I was sat in at a client site. It had no windows. It was just a little room where I'd gone to have my coaching call. And I remember that moment where. I remember saying, I want to do a PhD and that, and I was like, oh no. Yeah, that's the realization that is actually what I want to do, and now I've said it, it feels really good, and there was no going back. From that moment, I realized that was the thing that was going to allow me to bring everything that I liked doing into one place.

Sandrine 9:16

So the coaching can I ask you, Sarah, so the coaching that you had at that time, was it something that was provided through your organizations? No.

Sarah 9:25

No. So I was paying for that myself, which is why I was in this little room where no one could see 'cause I felt slightly guilty about doing it. When I was probably supposed to be working. And interestingly, isn't it now I would see coaching if any of the people that worked with me wanted coaching, I would absolutely think that's a brilliant thing for them to do in work time because I recognize that it's also helping me. But I don't think there was that kind of attitude then. So I was secretly having the little conversation.

Sandrine 9:54

So initially, so your first encounter in coaching was through that coaching interaction, but a lot of people have, not necessarily even, they may have heard of coaching, but they often see it as something that, the executive in the company are doing. So how was it the master in psychology that you had done? That had elicited in a way, an awareness of coaching. What was the, the, this idea of, oh, coaching may help.

Sarah 10:22

In 2004, I trained as a coach in 2004. In my consultancy role,

Sandrine 10:30

Okay. Okay. So very early on. Okay.

Sarah 10:32

I was trained to do coaching and we had some big organizational coaching programs that I was a coach. I was part of those with a client. And that was where I first heard about coaching, and that was a performance development type of coaching. So helping people improve their performance as a line manager. According to what the organization wanted them to be doing. I loved that. I loved talking to people and spending time with people. It was wonderful. And then those projects finished and we didn't win anymore of those. So I suppose it took a bit of a backseat. And then when I decided to do my psychology masters, I felt like I had to do coaching. So I trained myself. I went and trained, and I paid for myself to be trained as a coach. And that was more life coaching. So I felt that, that kind of gave me more confidence. To have conversations. And a lot of that, a lot of coach training, as is you have to think about yourself. So you're not just always coaching other people, you are also coaching yourself and thinking about the answers to the questions yourself. So I did that and so I think after that I was in that space where you meet a lot of coaches. And it just makes sense, doesn't it to talk to other people and have coaching for yourself. And I knew that disillusionment with the consultancy, I knew it had to work its way through. So I chose a coach to work with me to help me work through that challenge.

Sandrine 12:03

So you then went on to do a PhD and again, when you start, people start PhDs in lots of different ways and but you had already, a certain amount of expense under your belt. So what was your own approach on deciding, a project, a supervisor? How did you go about it?

Sarah 12:22

So when I. So when I came into academia, I I ended up not coaching because I was doing my PhD. I still think back in those days, 2012, coaching wasn't hugely prevalent. So I came to do my PhD and coaching, took a backseat because I needed to focus on the research. All of these things were new to me.

Sandrine 12:47

But how did you choose, how did you choose your your topic in term of the PhD itself? In a way because you could have chosen something that's related to the coaching or what was your approach to choosing your PhD at that time? I.

Sarah 13:02

So the, I chose to do voice and silence because the consultancy work that I had been trained to do was looking at upward communication in the workplace. So it's, that was a natural thing for me to want to focus on.

Sandrine 13:17

So having done the PhD then what was the journey like to stay in academia? Because you could have said, okay, I've seen academia, I'm going back to the corporate world, but you decided to stick it to academia.

Sarah 13:30

So I decided to stay in academia, but that was a late decision. I think it's worth saying, isn't it? So I want a fellowship whi, which looked at bringing business practitioners into academia. And so there was an expectation that I would stay in academia, but I would say that. For three years. I really wasn't thinking like that. I was actually thinking, I don't really like it. This is too slow pace of life. I want to and I was always thinking about practical output. So thinking about theoretical contributions was always. Not very natural to me, and it was always the last thing and it had to be dragged out of me. So I wasn't thinking of staying in academia. But then I was really lucky that at the end of my fellowship I got a lectureship position and everybody was delighted because I think most people most people had thought that, oh, she's left a highly paid job again to go and do more study. She's not really earning much money and actually. This is not gonna work out very well. So I think people were so delighted for me when I got this academic position, more so than I was for myself that I thought, oh, okay, maybe I better give it a go. And that was that was 10 years ago. And yeah, I haven't looked back really since then.

Sandrine 14:49

So how have you then, how did coaching play a role in the way that because obviously you've built you built your coaching practice through the work that you do at the university, but the coaching as a place in different ways in the work that you do.

Sarah 15:07

I did my PhD and then coaching took a backseat. And then when I finished my PhD, I decided that it was important to me and I joined a local coaching group and they were talking about ICF accreditation, and I ended up feeling yeah, actually I want to do ICF accreditation. It was a notion that I had and it reminds me of people who often think, yeah, I want to do a PhD, and then you don't really know what it entails and you've given it no thought. It just sounds good to say it. So I was like, yeah, I want my ICF accreditation, and I hadn't given it any thought. And then when I actually looked at the application process and everything that was required, I realized, oh my gosh, I am nowhere near. Ready for this. And so I ended up then retraining, so going on more, so not retraining, but I went on another training program which was specifically designed to give me everything that I needed in order to put my I-C-F-A-C-C accreditation in so it it came back into my life for that reason. And then once it was in there. I made a commitment. I realized how much better my life was, and actually I made a commitment that it is always gonna take a priority in my life At that point.

Sandrine 16:27

So can you tell us a little bit about the your trajectory as an academic and in some ways the way that coaching has contributed or is contributing in navigating the system? So for the listener who may not know I also work as a coach and in supporting academics and so in a way, I have my own views of, understanding that contribution. But it, it's good to hear for from you in terms of the role it displays.

Sarah 16:58

I, okay, so let's think then, so I got my A-C-F-I-C-F-A-C-C, and then I decided that at that point I was committed to coaching and I had no opportunity to do coaching as part of my academic job. So still, I would say even in 2019, coaching wasn't really an everyday conversation. And so I found myself thinking, oh, I've got myself in a difficult position 'cause I've got a full-time job that actually I quite like and I want to do coaching. And I'm I'm torn, but then happened was lockdown arrived and. I needed lots of, I needed something to focus on over lockdown. So I decided that now is the time to think more about coaching. So I did so much coach development. I joined every professional body I went to every webinar, I did everything. And it, it gave me some hope for the future. 'cause it was a scary time, wasn't it? And I just wanted something positive to focus on. So I threw myself into coaching. I learned everything there was to learn. I. Set up my own business or my own coaching practice. It's not really a business, it's a coaching practice. And like everybody, I think I came up with a name. The name was really important to me. So I called it powerful dreaming because I really believe in the power of strong vision. And so a lot of my coaching work is about helping people really start to bring their vision to life. And color it in and make it animated and, to really make it very clear for them. So I started doing that and then of course as we emerged out of lockdown, I no longer had all this time and space to do lots of coaching. And again, I felt really sad. So I thought, oh, do I have to leave my academic role to be a coach? And, that's a difficult transition. It doesn't make much money necessarily. And that wasn't what I wanted. So anyway, what I ended up doing and this is going to sound really simple, and it wasn't simple at all, is. Over a two or three year period, I worked out how to bring coaching into my teaching and into my research, and I now have a portfolio where coaching underpins everything that I do. So all of my teaching about career development is not really teaching, it's coaching. And I have developed a research project, which is using coaching and how to, how coaching can help people find their voice. So I think I've, the way that I've, to answer your question, the way that I've approached that is to bring coaching into all the things that I care about and underpin everything that I do. So I'm doing it all the time. And I think maybe the last point I want to make is that the, when I started working on my coaching practice, I wanted it to be about helping people find their authentic voice. 'cause voice is a theme that's run through all of my life in consultancy, academia. And personal, maybe it's always difficult to find your own voice. I've struggled with that and I wanted to be able to help people find their authentic voice. And so it's a bit like I've been an experiment in practice is I have tried to align all of my lives. Because for me, authenticity means that I'm the same person with all the people that I know, whether I'm in work, whether I'm running, whether I meet them in the street, whatever. I'm the same to all people. And so the authentic thing for me was to bring coaching into academia and into my academic role so that I could do it all of the time.

Sandrine 20:45

So in a way, what's really interesting is that, when we think about coaching in the academic space is that research on coaching is still very limited. And the literature on coaching, it's building, but it's limited. But what you're doing is that you are not researching coaching, you're using, you're integrating coaching in, into the approach almost as a methodology. How is this perceived? And we've had we've had many conversation together about developing your research niche and, that process of integrating coaching we, we seen all the strengths of your activity, but how has this been perceived? Because you work in a, in a management school and it's not necessarily something that is, accepted easily. So how has it been in creating this research niche for yourself that really is underpinned by coaching in the way that it, what people are prepared to hear, in your department?

Sarah 21:46

I think when I here's how I'd answer that question. When when I was a consultant, we used to talk about big, hairy, audacious goals. So these are the really big things that you don't even dream might happen, but you're gonna go for them anyway because it, it's a really great thing to strive for. And I thought that integrating coaching into my teaching and research was the boldest, most daring thing that I'd ever done. And to say it took me a long time, it did because I thought that it wouldn't be supported. I thought it wouldn't be welcome. I thought I'd actually be told I wasn't allowed to do it. It is a different thing. I'm one of the only people, I'm not the only person, but I'm one of the only people that's talking about coaching and how to help it, help people find their voice using coaching. It, it did feel. Maybe this won't work, and maybe I'll start talking about it and maybe people will laugh at me. And I do remember a few years ago coming up with this idea and actually thinking, I think I'm just gonna tell somebody. And I totally expected them to say, oh, that's ridiculous. Don't be silly. And they said, oh, that's good. How? How would you do it? I found myself just saying it, and I realized I'd actually thought quite a lot about it and I, and it was making sense, and when you hear yourself say things and you think, actually I sound like I know what I'm talking about. And I think that gave me huge confidence. And then I remember putting in a conference application to do a presentation about coaching as a route to voice, and it got accepted. And then that was quite strange. And then I did it and people had said, oh actually that was really thought provoking. And and then you think, oh, people seem to like my idea. And I think I was always really worried that somebody would either come along and say, oh, I'm doing it way better than you, and actually there's no space for you anymore, or for me to reach a dead end. And then people say, oh no. There's just no way that's ever gonna work. And that's actually not, that's actually not what's happened. I seem to be I seem to be talking about it and finding ways to talk about it that convinced people that actually there is a really there is a really deserving application of coaching in the voice literature, which is really nice for me.

Sandrine 24:20

And I love this idea of, the bold goals and, doing something that could, in a way, could feel really crazy and nutritious and, but something that really drives you. And that's okay. That's what I want. It may sound crazy, but that's what I want, for you bringing coaching into your, your academic work, and they say, okay let's give it a go and see how it lands.

Sarah 24:45

there's a number of occasions in my life where it, I've been so sure about the direction that I've been going in. And even though other people have said, are you sure? No, you're silly. And I go no, I definitely know. And that was one of them. And even though you are not really sure, you know that to not do it would not be the right thing to do.

Sandrine 25:09

So I like to shift our conversations through, the, obviously. You've, you experience coaching, in your life in early on, in your career through, doing some training and experiencing it yourself, when you worked in, in consultancy. But the use of coaching in academia remains, still very mar marginal and academic, circles are used to this idea of mentoring. And when I worked at Schiffy, so one of my colleague was doing a lot of training for new supervisors and really sharing coaching skills really with PhD supervisors. How do you think that coaching itself has helped you navigate your career and, reaching your research niche, taking space. How is your own experie of being coached? Has been shaped by that in a context where, you know you are su as academic, you're supportive in different ways, through conversation with colleagues, through maybe mentoring conversation that, that you have with senior academics and through co coaching conversation. So there is like an intermingling of different kind of conversation. How is coaching really different in that context, in the way that it may help an academic, I mean in this case yourself, n navigate the space?

Sarah 26:32

Yeah, so I can only talk about myself, can't I? So I can't say how it would be helpful for other people. So what has helped me is it's helped me work out what my unique offering is to the world and. that many people, especially when they're starting out and just thinking about doing a PhD or they're at the beginning of their career as an academic and they look at all the literature and they look at the field they're working in and it can feel like everything has already been said already by everybody. And there's, you read the literature and sometimes you feel quite crest ball and that somebody else has had a similar idea. And yet as academics, we all need to be unique and we're all having our own contributions and we need to become more and more confident with those. And so for me, coaching has really helped me work out how am I different? How is what I'm doing different? How is the conversation that I'm having different? And it's given me the confidence to know that is what I stand for. That is how I want to change the world, and that is what I want to be known for. It is just given me the space really. The unconditional positive regard that comes with coaching. Just, you don't get that. You don't get that. When you're speaking to other people who've got a vested interest in what you are doing or they don't understand how to listen or they don't understand how to deal with the emotions that come up for them when you are talking about something and just being able to talk and hear myself say things to somebody who is able to accept it and support it, and then also share their insights. About the things that I'm saying, it's really valuable and everyday conversations do not allow you to do that. And I think one of the things that I'm becoming more and more aware of is the skills that coaches have that. And when I think about the amount of self-development that I've had to do to listen to people talk about things without it, them becoming about me or about me projecting what I think or what I feel onto the conversation, that takes an awful lot of work. so I think the value of coaches is that they have learned how to hold a space. And allow you just to be you in that space. And that is so valuable. And for anybody who hasn't experienced it, I would encourage everybody to try it because it's not a space that any of us inhabit in daily life, and yet it's just so powerful in allowing us to become who we are.

Sandrine 29:35

How do you think? So in some ways when at the moment there's been, over the last few years there's been lots of conversation in, in universities and push by the research councils about research culture. So that's one of the buzz word of the last few years and. Saying that, the many universities are having redundancies. People are asked to do more and there is often quite a, people feel really drained from some of the negativity that can be around university with redundancies and so on. What's the, what could be the role of coaching in, in, in really contributing to, to, to challenging research culture or to doing something that creates a research culture where people are more, a better looked after, in some ways in this very challenging environment.

Sarah 30:26

I think if we think about how. Our voices are really important in allowing us to speak out for what we want and what we need. And the coaching work that I do, which is helping people articulate and to feel empowered to act and voice is a form of action, but it doesn't necessarily need to be voice. It can be about creating spaces. It can be about moving. It could be about making statements, the sense of power that we have from knowing that we have agency, that we have control, that we have autonomy, is really invaluable. And so coaching conversations allow us to understand that about ourselves. And then of course, because there's now group coaching is becoming more popular. It also allows us to get to know other people in ways that we wouldn't normally. And if we're talking about organizational culture, which is often the product of multiple different people who've contributed to something in a way. Culture needs, conversations about culture need to include everybody. And so coaching is a way that people can say what they want to without judgment, without fear of what's gonna happen without, needing to necessarily take ownership to do anything. 'cause coaching is a space where you can say things you don't. No one is ever going to ask you what you said or hold you to account or make you do anything. It's a space to allow you to get clear with what you are thinking and how you are feeling about things. So from a research point of view, it's so important that people are motivated and I think that getting that sense of autonomy and being able to articulate what we want is really important.

Sandrine 32:20

So what, maybe it's a quite a hard question to ask, but obviously, as a trained coach, as a, as a supervisor you are, you're trained as a coach, so you have and as you said yourself, you've done a lot of personal development. In your role as a supervisor, you have a lot of, a lot of the subtlety of how you are present to others is something that not all of your academic colleagues have have taken the time to do. How do you think that how do you see coaching really shape who you are as a super, as a research supervisor?

Sarah 32:55

So I ask a lot of questions. I think that's the main thing. So rather than me feeling like I've got the answers, if a student talks to me about a problem, I would help them understand the problem more clearly. I wouldn't say, oh, here's the answer, or Here's what I would do. And I think that's the difference, is I ask an awful lot of questions to help understand what the other person is thinking. That's the difference. I notice when I work with other. Research supervisors. And when I think about my own personal philosophy, I do believe that everybody knows the answers already to all of the questions that they've got in their mind, but we're not necessarily able to articulate them and they're not necessarily very clear. And so if anybody comes to me with a problem, I would normally say, okay, so what do you want to do about it? And actually what's really fascinating is. I teach first year undergraduates I don't teach them. I help them work out what career they want and I offer them all a one-to-one conversation if they want one. And so often students come and sit in my room and they say, I don't know what I want to do. And I say immediately what? What kind of things are you thinking you might want to do? That's it. Of course they do know, and that is all I ever say to them. What do you think you might want to do? Of course they do know mostly, but so that's how I would describe it, is just it's about questions to help them work out what they already think they know.

Sandrine 34:34

And how so again, co coaching skills in some ways play a role in, the way we are present in a, on committee meeting. When this, running committees where decisions need to be made, the way you hold the space. There are obviously facilitation skills as well that come into it. When you're thinking about, your coaching skills, the way that it's helping you navigate, the power dynamic in the research environment, how do you think, and I don't know whether it's actually helping in one way or another at the moment, but how do you think that this deep understanding of that you have through coaching about the listening, paying attention and so on, do you have an example where it's really made a difference in the, in the strategic work or some committees where you've been, where you feel, okay, my, the way I am positioned as a coach made a difference in that context. Sorry, it's a hard question.

Sarah 35:34

No, I can think of an example. In my experience in the work, in the workplace, we can be sat in a meeting and. People. People all want to say what they want to say, and normally my role would be to make sure that everybody who wants to say something gets an opportunity to say it. So it's a bit, it I do get an opportunity to contribute if that's my role in that meeting but what I would try to do is encourage everybody else to say what they want so I can hear that. And then it's about facilitating and trying to present. Here's what I've heard. So here's what somebody said. Here's what somebody said. Here's some common themes. Here's something that we haven't talked about, or here's a question that's now in my mind. And so that's how I would do that. But one of the things that I frequently ask myself saying is, what are we trying to achieve here? And I think always having the end in mind is a really good place to be able to help people anchor their thoughts. Actually what? What is it that we need to do and what is it that I want to say that's going to help us achieve that goal?

Sandrine 36:57

How do you feel that ultimately, your own experience of being coach has shaped the directions that you've taken? You've talked about, the, that conversation when you voiced that you wanted to do a PhD, but more recently, yeah.

Sarah 37:16

The obvious example then is the work that you and I have done together around, which was about helping me work out what my research looked like, and we've, I think we've been having those conversations for nearly three years, And so that has been quite a long time that I've been saying to you, I just don't know. I just don't know. And we came up with the metaphor, didn't we, of a butterfly And how the research that I did would be like the butterfly wings, and it would advertise and it would show people what I stood for and what I was about. And I do remember one. Particular moment, actually. So we'd been speaking and I was starting to get a sense of what it looked like. And then I do remember one of our conversations where I said, oh no, I've gone back into a chrysalis because I've realized I'm not ready. I'm not ready to come out and tell people what I'm doing. It's not a fully formed idea. I don't know whether it's along the right lines. And so I actually remember going back in, back into the chrysalis and thinking, I just need to do some more. Thinking before I'm confident enough to be able to to be able to show people what I'm about. And then I think the last conversation we had was about me saying the colors are starting to become really vivid. And actually people are starting to help me paint them because they're also contributing now to the ideas that I'm having and helping me shape what that future direction looks like. I dunno how to say it more clearly, really, is that the coaching for me has been invaluable. Because it's just really helped me gain clarity, and I'm not sure I am typical. I'm a very reflective person, and what I've realized is that reflective people have a lot of thoughts, and it may be more, maybe more than people who aren't necessarily very reflective. And so there's an awful lot happening in our head. And the process of working out what we're thinking and what's useful, what's not useful in any given moment, and then what do we want to take forward and what do we need to pay less attention to? That's that is something that I think coaching has helped me with a lot because I feel that my head is less of a busy place and if it starts to get busy, I now have the skills and the tools to say what is actually going on and what do I do with that? And that can be beneficial for everybody.

Sandrine 39:55

Yeah. What's your hope in term of the way coaching becomes more embedded in a, in, in, in an academic practice, in a. In universities because again, to be brutally honest, up until now, it, it was really used for, head of department, vice chancellor, a senior manager, and the, there is a little bit of use of coaching, but it's still very limited. What's interesting is that, for example, the UK Rise should the Future Leader Fellowship as embedded coaching as part of an offer. All of the FLF have actually access to coaching and they, it's paid by the, by the founder. So they don't have to think that they're wasting some of their money on coaching. They're given the experience and for some of them it may lead them to have coaching later on. But not everybody, gets an FLF, but in a way, because of your own experience and as a coach what would you want to see in the way that coaching is? He's really a normal practice and it doesn't feel like something that's exclusive in some ways. Huh?

Sarah 41:01

So it would be really good if everybody could have access to coaching, but I want to. I want to make a note here of that conversation about coachability. I don't necessarily like the word, but there is a conversation at the moment about coachability, people who, who understand and recognize the value of coaching and embrace what it has to offer, and that is not everybody. Whilst I would like coaching to be wildly available, because if it was, I would definitely be using it all of the time. What I'm mindful of is making sweeping statements on behalf of everybody when I know that it's worked for me. But there are definitely people who wouldn't feel it was right for them, and I would hate them for there to end up being a form of, I don't want to call it stigma. I think stigma is too strong a word, but what we don't want is the opposite, where coaching is available and people who don't take it up then become seen as.

Sandrine 42:02

No I could not do. Yeah, of

Sarah 42:03

So I think it I really want to, make clear. There are right times for coaching. There are right topics. We have to be ready to do the work in order to make sure that the coaching has effects. 'cause there is absolutely nothing worse than being in a coaching conversation with somebody and not feeling like you want to change the situation or that you have the energy or the means to do anything about the situation that you are in. And so it should be wildly available, widely available. I believe that we've got some questions to work through about who pays for it at the moment. It's expensive. There are pro bono coaching. I do pro bono coaching many coaches. That's a useful way of doing that. And I certainly think the way that you and I have worked together is we have worked together in that way. Because we're both able to help each other. That's a model if you've got a number of trained coaches who are working in the same place. Otherwise, I do think it becomes a question as to who pays for it. What I would say though is that there is no question. If anybody, if anybody's listening to this and they're thinking they're the one with the budget strings and they're thinking how should I invest my money? There is absolutely no money wasted in investing. In coaching. The return on investment is huge. It's actually invaluable and it's immeasurable, but it doesn't. Create a linear route forward with pound signs attached to it. And I think the work that we have to do as a coaching community is help people recognize that we will grow in ways that are not noticeable to other people. They're not tangible necessarily. They're not a nice shape that looks any particular thing. The results don't always manifest for a long time. So it can't be something that's rushed, it can't be measured, it can't be tracked, it can't be have financial returns on

Sandrine 44:15

Yeah.

Sarah 44:16

It has to be recognized that there, this is an investment and it's never ever wasted. But it's a bit like when you put a leaf in the river, you don't know where that leaf is gonna end up, but it doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing it.

Sandrine 44:31

Yeah. And it's interesting 'cause in some way I think that what the work that the UKRI is doing by giving fellows an experience of coaching is making this investment and saying, okay, where does it take you? And they, they're not stuck in doing lots of coaching. They may just have one session, but having had that experience may for some of them. Change the perception that they have. So I think that's very we were talking about bold goals. I think that actually from the uk from the founder, it's actually a bold investment and a bold goal of changing the way they see their role in, in contributing to research culture.

Sarah 45:09

I think also it's worth mentioning about whether people know they've been coached or whether they don't know and whether that makes a difference. So I use a coaching style with most people that I talk to. I don't say, oh, I'm going to coach you now. I just, I would do what I normally do, and I don't label it as coaching. And yet sometimes people do come and we would have a coaching conversation that would have a contracted outcome. So I think there's also something about how do we do it? Do we have to label it as coaching? Or actually could we start having coaching type conversations? Which allow people to become more familiar with the style

Sandrine 45:55

Yeah.

Sarah 45:56

of being asked questions, helping to clarify, thinking, taking responsibility without necessarily labeling as coaching. 'cause I know that label, for some people, it still has a slightly remedial.

Sandrine 46:10

It's interesting in the context of. Professional development of PhD supervisors and PIs who are managing postdocs because the role that you have as a research supervisor is to empower somebody to become, independent as a researcher. And I think that actually a lot of the coaching that I do working with academics often is getting them to. Think differently about the way they're supervising their student and postdoc. So actually really embedding some level of coaching training in p in supervisor development, I think is can play a massive role in in, in, I think in challenging the research culture and. Enabling better interaction between PhD supervisors and student or postdocs. Sarah I'm conscious of time and I just wanted to ask you a final question about what's what's exciting and on the horizon for you in what's coming up for your own work?

Sarah 47:12

I've won some funding to test my idea of coaching as a root to voice. So I've got a publication about it and I've won some money to run a project to test that about sexual harassment. So I very specifically want to help people who've been sexually harassed. Gain power and control in situations that will feel very invalidating for them, and by this process of helping them work out what they want to do about it. And it doesn't need to be voice. It can be a number of different things. But just helping people work out what their voice expression looks like, which could be actions or behavior, and it could actually be nothing at all, but the fact that they've had an opportunity to work through those thoughts and decide what to do. Helps them feel more empowered. And that's, I want some money to test that and explore that and start putting that out into the world. We are creating coaching toolkits. We are thinking about the ethical boundaries about coaching insensitive context. So there's lots and lots of very exciting things there. And then with my teaching, which isn't teaching my career development work, let's call it that. I've got more involvement now in career development with my teaching type of work. And so I'm really looking forward in helping to build more coaching tools into helping people work out what they want to do in the future. 'cause I genuinely believe that's so valuable that work in helping people find their authentic voice.

Sandrine 48:59

And that's obviously, I suppose in the context where university students are paying a lot of money, doing degrees and Yeah, not necessarily knowing what what they want. And also in the context of, generation of students who, for. Who see the workplace very different from previous generation. That, that sort of internal work of reflecting of actually what do I want, how do I want to contribute? Doing that early on in, in their degree seems really really invaluable. So it's I'm sure it's really fascinating work.

Sarah 49:29

Yeah. Thank you. I'm enjoying it.

Sandrine 49:32

Anything else that I haven't asked or that you feel you would want to say about navigating your career or coaching? Any final thoughts on your side?

Sarah 49:42

I think all I would say is that it was really difficult for me to integrate coaching into my research and teaching. It was a scary moment in only the way that our thoughts can be scary. Because the reality was it wasn't scary at all and everybody really welcomed my ideas. But the thought of doing that was really scary. And I, when I look back I just can't imagine what my life would've been like if I hadn't followed that particular area. Of research. And so I suppose what I want to say is whatever you are using coaching for, whatever people are thinking of using coaching for, it will help guide them in the direction that's right for them and whatever that looks like, we don't always know what that looks like, but the thoughts and the conversations are never ever wasted, even if it takes us in a direction that we weren't necessarily expecting.

Sandrine 50:39

Yeah, I completely agree with that, obviously. Thank you so much, Sarah. It was really a pleasure to to have you here.

Sarah 50:47

Yeah. Thank you.

50:59

I hope you've enjoyed the discussion I had with my guest. I'm very grateful that you've been listening to us. I hope that you will join me in the future podcast. I wish you a very good day, and if you want to contribute to the podcast, I'm very interested to hear from you, as I'm always happy to, to invite some new interviewee on this podcast. So if you've got an interesting story about life in research and about the research environment, get in touch with me at sandrine@tceldevelopment.com.