the agile academic

Leslie Wang on Burnout, Coaching, and Fulfillment

June 14, 2021 Rebecca Pope-Ruark Season 2 Episode 3
the agile academic
Leslie Wang on Burnout, Coaching, and Fulfillment
Show Notes Transcript

On this episode of *the agile academic* podcast, professor and life coach Dr. Leslie Wang and I talk about burning out, starting a coaching journey, and finding what fills you up.

Rebecca Pope-Ruark: Hello listeners. Welcome to the agile academic, a podcast for women in and around higher education. This season, I talked with my special guests from all over academia, about a wide range of topics from teaching and research to coaching and mental health, to vitality and burnout and everything in between. I'm your host, Dr. Rebecca Pope Ruark. This season is brought to you by my summer monthly sprint weeks. Learn the basics of scrum project management to organize your work. Spend a week focused on a project with the encouragement and support of a group of other faculty, and take time to reflect on your accomplishments and next steps. Learn more at RebeccaPoperuark.com/sprintweeks.

All right, well, welcome to the show, Leslie, how are you doing today?

Leslie Wong: I am doing great. The sun is shining in Boston. I can't complain beautiful.

RPR: It's a beautiful day here in Atlanta this morning as well. So thank you for joining me and I'm happy to jump right into our conversation. So do you just want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your journey?

LW: Sure. My name's Leslie Wang. I'm an associate professor of sociology at the university of Massachusetts Boston, and also a certified professional life coach for women academics, just in terms of my academic journey. I received my PhD in sociology from university of California, Berkeley in 2010, and then I kind of started one of those move all over the place, kind of adventures to secure the tenure track position. And so I moved to Vancouver British Columbia for two years, and I did a post-doc there at the university of British Columbia. And then I got my first tenure track job at grand valley state university in grand rapids, Michigan. So I moved to Michigan and then two months into that job, I actually got my current position at UMass Boston. And so I did almost my entire year at grand valley state knowing I was leaving. And then I started my position at UMass Boston in 2013. Um, got tenured in 2019 and also got certified as a life coach the same year.

RPR: What was it that attracted you to coaching? Cause I know it was, it was compelling for me because I felt really connected to faculty development specifically and working with women and you're in that space as well. So what was it that attracted you to coaching?

LW: You know, by the time I was going up for tenure, I was feeling very burnt out, probably somewhat jaded by academia. And I was trying to figure out like, you know, is this still the path for me? And so I thought, and I was always attracted to life coaching. It was always something I wanted to do eventually. And I kept putting it on the back burner in my mind was like, you know, once I get tenure, then I can explore all these things that I want to do. And then by the time I was going up for tenure, it was pretty clear that I would get it. And so I didn't invest a whole lot more time than that. And I was just ready to be trained and to start thinking about my path after tenure.

RPR: Right. And I've, I started coaching training last year. I did my coaching training kind of throughout the pandemic. So that was an interesting time to kind of do that. I'm also in an ICF international coaching Federation program and that's where your certification is from as well. Right. What, what attracted you to that program or the ICF in general?

LW: Well, so the program, unfortunately closed its doors during COVID. It was called coaching for transformation. I did not investigate different coaching programs. Basically. I had a very good friend from high school, um, who is also a community organizer in Los Angeles who had done this program a few years earlier and was like, you have to do this one. The coach trainers are people of color. They are social justice oriented about addressing racism and various kinds of social inequalities. Like this would really be up your alley. And so I, I did one of those like weekend training sessions that often these places offer. And I did that like in August before, you know, the year I went up for tenure, just thinking like, I'm going to do this weekend. And then later I'm going to do the nine month program. And then I had such a transformative experience, like something about it resonated with me on this like extremely deep level that I'm not sure I felt before.

And by the end of the first day I had signed up for the nine month program, which involved actually flying from Boston to LA every six weeks for nine months. So the entire academic year where I was, you know, teaching an overload and doing all kinds of stuff, I also did the coach training program, but it was like giving me energy and it was giving me clarity and giving me life. And I felt so much more on purpose than I think I had in a really long time or maybe ever in, in, in academia. And so that was basically why I decided to go with that program. It happens to be ICF certified, but you know, and I did think about like, do I need to be certified or not? And I know that's like for a lot of coaches, that's a big question. Like, should I invest all of this money into all of this training?

I feel like as an academic, like I've always, we have PhDs. Like we clearly respect degrees and like certifications and training. And like, I like the idea of having a certification for myself, but I also think potential clients that could also be like a real marker of like, okay, you've done the training, you have met certain standards, um, in the industry it's such an unregulated field. And so this is like the one thing you can kind of show like, okay, did meet all of requirements. I did pass this difficult exam. I did all of the training and you know, you can trust me. So it gives you that at least a feeling of legitimacy. I

RPR: Totally agree with that. I definitely had that thought too, do I get certified as necessary? And not because I want to do coaching that is both kind of writing specific, which is my PhD and background as well as more of the general kind of coaching. And I don't necessarily need a certificate to be a writing coach because I have the degrees there. Right. And there is that, that kind of the legitimacy there. So, and I feel like I learned so much more like academics. We like to take classes, right. We enjoy looking for a, an achievement or something like that. So the certificate is something that, that feels good to, to work towards.

LW: It totally does. I mean, it had been a long time since I was in actual legitimate classes, learning new skills, right. Where there's like this really steep learning curve, a lot of imposter syndrome that I hadn't experienced as an academic for some time, I felt like I was growing like a limb and it was uncomfortable at a lot of times because growth is often uncomfortable and I was changing my perspective on things. Um, and I was being challenged to like stretch beyond my current circumstances. And so, but all of that together, I mean, I came out the other side, like a much happier person.

RPR: That's really a powerful way of looking at any kind of, I think educational development program for faculty specifically it's the professional development is so important in, in thinking about how we show up for our jobs in different ways, how we show up for our colleagues, how we show up for our students. So I'm curious, I know how it kind of works for me, but I'm curious how, what you've learned as a coach translates into your work at your unit university.

LW: It's interesting because I had only one semester where I was certified as a coach that I taught and then I've been off ever since. So as I was telling you, I've been on parental leave and sabbatical for all of COVID. Um, and so I don't have that like really close relationship with my university right now, but I would say, you know, in thinking about going back in the fall, like, I really want to be constantly grounding myself in my core values, you know, which involve connection and compassion, um, service to others, you know, authenticity. So all of these things, I think really, you know, you bring them with you wherever you go. And I would bring those into my classes in the way that I teach. Um, what I choose to reveal to my students, I think is probably like a lot more honest than I was willing to be in the past in terms of like my past failures or the challenges that I faced or, you know, my personal life journey.

I would be far more open to bringing those into, especially I think in graduate classes, right. Because they, they want to see what you've done. Like they kind of want to see like how the sausage is made. And I feel like so often that was hidden from me as a graduate student because actually I'm not sure why. I think maybe just people were, so faculty were so busy that they, they didn't have the energy to show you like behind the scenes was sort of a style, but I think it's also like admitting more of your humanity to do so that like, you know, maybe I'm not happy all the time in this job, even though it's seen as like the dream to attain and giving yourself permission to like, feel all of the feelings that you have so that you don't carry resentment or have dread or all of the things that I used to feel in my job before, which were really like my, my own. It was basically because I was not very aligned with my own vision of who I wanted to be, how I wanted to show up what my values were. And so I think it's just like, who are you? Who are you being in that moment? And whether that's in your job or just out in the world, like, I want that to be the same person. And I think I'm much clearer about that now than it used to be.

RPR: That's sort of really hard things to think about and talk about, I think for a lot of folks, because thinking about values and authenticity is not necessarily work that we always do kind of consciously, it's very easy to get so wrapped up in the academic hamster wheel of the way that things work in higher ed. And we don't question that a lot. We know that burnout is really epidemic even before, even before COVID and you and I have both had burnout experiences. So how did burnout kind of impact the way you approach?

LW: Yeah, I feel like burnout is just in looking back at my whole journey. I was probably burnt out in grad school, but didn't recognize it as that. And then once I got to my post-op, I think that's where things really kind of culminated for me health wise. So I finished my dissertation. I basically had three months to like write most of my dissertation. I taught a summer class to have like a final bit of funding before I graduated. And then I moved to Vancouver, um, where I was put in front of a class of 150 as a lecture. And I had never lectured before. And so I felt so much pressure. So in like a huge international move, not knowing anybody, you know, in this new country that I was in, um, shifting from being a grad student to something different, all of these identity shifts, I think culminated in me just getting sick.

And so I was feeling, um, extremely lethargic brain foggy. I was waking up with like really swollen like eyes. I was really stuffed up. I couldn't figure out like, is there something in my environment, like what's going on? I went to see a holistic doctor, um, because Canadian insurance, um, is really good and actually covers holistic medicine. And he was like, tell me about your life in the past year. And I was just explaining like all of these huge changes. Um, and he was basically like, I wouldn't be surprised if you are now actually allergic to the foods that you're eating and that that's, um, come on because of stress. So I recommend that you do this whole panel food panel and, and take a look. And I was like, whoa, something internal, not external. Like that was like mind blowing to me, turned out.

I had actually developed all of these intolerances to wheat to eggs. Um, garlic, like literally all of the things I was eating. He was like, you need to stop eating them for seven years because that's the amount of time it takes your body to heal itself. And I was like, this is not, this is crazy. This is my professional path. That's done this. Or this is how I've been reacting to my professional path. And it's caused all of these like health issues for me. And I did, I cut all of the things out for seven years and, um, I felt a lot better. So that was kind of like the health part of it. But I didn't really wrap my mind around like the emotional wellbeing part of it. Um, and kind of coming to grips with like accepting my circumstances, I think until I went into life coach training, like I still was grasping for all of these achievements and the next thing and the next thing.

And, and, and, you know, as you know, it's so easy for high achievers to be like, when I get that and I'll be happy and I can relax. So it became like when I get the tenure track position and then I got one, it was like, well, I don't know. Let me get the one that I, that like, I feel more suited for. Got that. I wasn't still wasn't that satisfied. Okay. No, it's going to be after I published my book with a good press, I did that really anticlimactic. And it was like, well, is it going to be tenure? Like when does this stop? That's when I really had to kind of question my mindset, my approach to things, and like putting things off constantly for a future happiness that I wasn't allowing myself to have in the present moment. I didn't feel worthy of it.

I didn't feel like I had earned it. And I was also worried about if I can't allow myself to have these things now, I might not be able to do that ever. So I need to start working on that. And that's like, basically in my current position is when I started a meditation practice and I started, you know, more of like a yoga practice and getting much more in touch with like the things that actually inspire me and move me and motivate me. And they may not be achievements the way that I had been thinking about them before. So I think that was like, my way out of burnout was again, it's the values. And I think what I found is like, with nearly all of my coaching clients, when we talk about values, they go into it thinking I know my values. And then when we really delve in there, like I'm surprised at what came up as my core values. And then if you make your decisions from there, it's so much easier to feel better about the decisions that you're making in the actions that you're taking. So I feel like burnout was the way for me to actually start to reconcile what was not going right for me internally and in my mind and in my emotions and also in my body. Um, and then working on myself holistically, like as a whole person, not just as a worker, as an academic, like, that's, that was my way out into, to feeling just better all around

RPR: What you're saying, resonates so much with what my experience was as well. The body keeps score and my body was trying to tell me things that I wasn't really listening to. And it was interesting because a lot of what happened to me was kind of emergence quickly, but it always happened very early in the summer. So it was, you know, early June, something like that when I had just gotten through a year, just gotten through this semester and had started to relax. And then the body was trying to release my body was trying to release what had happened. And you don't really necessarily recognize that when you're in it, it's just annoying, right. To say, okay, buddy, you need to get back together. Cause brain needs to work and you need to support the brain. Cause the brain is how I make my living and I need to kind of function that way. Um, I don't have time to deal with you, right. I have all this other, I have all this other stuff that I need to be doing. And you're kind of in my way right now, which is so backwards in so many different ways completely.

LW: I mean, I feel like if we took the time to, to listen to our bodies every single day, you would make really different decisions. And it's true. I mean, we're so detached from our bodies, like in Western culture. And so getting back into the body, it's just so such a big part of coaching, right? It's like, where's the showing up in your body? Like what are the messages that your body, that body part that's tense and tight right now? What is it trying to tell you? It seems so simple and yet we don't listen. It's so easy just to gloss over it and just the actually get used to discomfort pain, you know, it's like the, the frog and the boiling water. It's like over time, you just have acclimated to this point where like, you know, maybe you start getting full blown migraines. Like your, your body will start really giving you signals to slow down to the point where like you might be debilitated. And that's what I, I see a lot in academia and higher ed. Um, and it also is avoidable with, you know, the right listening, if you do the right kinds of listening and take that time. And it also means, I think saying no to a lot of things that seem like good opportunities, or maybe you would do out of feelings of obligation, but putting yourself first and your health first. Like if you made decisions that way, like you're much, it's just leads to a much more sustainable path.

RPR: I think in this, in this case as well, self-compassion plays into that really taking seriously what your body is saying and what your emotions are saying to you. What your, what your mind, maybe your back mind that you're trying to avoid is, is telling you that this is not the way.

LW: Yeah, this is not the way, but it's also, you're running up against these societal messages that you are supposed to push through. Do you want this thing, then you need to like fight harder. Um, and I think my, um, lesson from all of my own striving and fighting and feeling like I had to claw my way up was like, it was just a much harder path than if I had been like, you know, I really want these things. I really feel inspired to move towards these things. And like, what's the easiest path I could take. I never asked that question. And again, I don't think it felt like fair for me to ask that at that time, you know, like where is there the most ease in this? Did it feel like something I was allowed to ask? And so I didn't, I took the hardest way. 

RPR: I'm also a time. Well, the easy, the easiest way is not necessarily modeled for us in any fit, you know, in any visible way we're taught this constant expectation escalation, it's going back to what you were saying about, if I just get here, I can relax if I just get here and that never happens. And I think, you know, and for some folks you hit mid-career and you're like, why am I doing this? And then for some folks you hit full professor and you're like, what's left?

LW: Right. And for a lot of people, I think they hit retirement and they're like, who am I? And I think that is a scary, was a very scary thing for me to think about. I didn't want to spend an entire career striving for happiness that I thought would come after the next thing. Um, I wanted to find it with what I was doing now, and that's actually a really hard thing to shift into.

RPR: And it does go back to that element of, of humanity, recognizing your own humanity as a person, not as an academic fully like removing some of that identity connection and really, really listening to yourself in different ways.

LW: Totally, totally. And, and, you know, that's something that I actually experienced like halfway through my life coach training was I almost went through like a mental shift that became kind of this emotional breakdown where I started to separate my identity out from being an academic. And I'm still an academic, but I no longer see that as like a primary thing that I am. I see myself as myself and I'm also an academic, not I'm an academic and this means all of these things about me and the things that I value and what was surprising to me as I went through that. And it wasn't something I was asking for. It's just something that happened is that it felt like a breakup. I felt like I was literally kind of divorcing my former self and the things that I cared about and the things that I had worked so hard for, um, in order to embrace like who I actually am, but it actually has made it easier. I think for me to be in higher ed in academia and feel less attached to all the things that are going on in that space. Um, because I feel some amount of objectivity and freedom. It is just offered me much more freedom than I felt like I had before

RPR: My experience. It's again, it's very similar to that. I was flipping through my Facebook memories today, just kind of seeing where I was a few years ago. And there was one from probably about 10 years ago that said something along the lines of grade three more papers and RPR can turn off for the summer and Becca can return. It was like there was this armor that I wore during the academic year that I could let go as almost as if I could be myself again for the summer and not be this set of armor that I wore in academia because things come at you so fast and you're always reacting. There's a lot of tension, there's a lot of competition and that wasn't a place where I was thriving anymore. When I started to really admit my burnout and, you know, going back to the, kind of the frog in the water, it was very slow burn. And then it was all at once. Then it kind of erupted and you were just like, okay, now what do I do? Because I did start divorcing my identity from academia. And that was the place where I thought I was supposed to be. So that's extremely stressful and scary for was for me me.

LW: I think it is for anyone, you know, regardless of if you're choosing to leave on your own or if you feel like you don't have any option, but to leave, I think it's like, you know, there's the sunk cost fallacy, of course, like, you know, I've worked so hard for this. There's also, I think, worry about like, what else can I do beyond what I've been doing? Um, I'm not trained to do anything else. I haven't been encouraged to think outside of sort of the narrow area of research and teaching that I've been involved in. Yeah. I think there it's, it's like losing a sense of belonging as well, but I would have to say like being on the other side of all of that struggle and identity, I think there's just something so much bigger for people if they embrace like their whole selves and all of the different things that they want, not just like the narrow way it's been defined that success has been defined in academia. It is so narrow it's. So it's also extremely seems really linear. And it seems like, oh, if I don't hit that next step, I'm also not a success. You know? So like, if I don't get tenure, if I don't get the next grant or whatever, it's like, I'm stalling out. Instead of like, maybe progress can be circular. Maybe we move in all kinds of directions. And that's something that should be encouraged. Right. And not just like straight up, like not very many people thrive in that kind of Structure. 

RPR: Right. And you see other people ahead of you doing it and you start to think, okay, well, if I'm not moving as fast, something is wrong with me.

LW: Oh my goodness. A hundred percent. I mean, my clients, like that's what I see. It's like the, the negative voices they have, their inner critics are often saying like, you should be doing this faster. Look at that person. They've already published three books and you're still working on your first one. And like, not recognizing like how much power that's taking from them, how much energy it's actually sucking from them and how much they start to tread even doing work that they were otherwise excited to do before all those thoughts in the comparison game, um, started up. And so, you know, breaking that cycle and like really kind of recognizing what's going on in the moment and being like, you know, I don't have to listen to that voice or I can, that voice is trying to be helpful, but I actually know what I'm doing. Um, I, I have the skills, right. And like being able to like coach yourself, reassure yourself. It's just not something that people talk about very much.

RPR: I want to jump back to values and connecting with that again, when we, when I was going through my burnout and doing some group work and some different therapy types of therapy, those values activities would always come up, right. Here's a list of a 200 potential values pick the ones that resonate most with you. And I was, I always really resisted that early in my burnout because I didn't like what I saw when I attached to the specific words in those lists, because it was always very achievement, driven expertise, respect those types of things, which seemed after awhile, very shallow of the person that I wanted to be in the identity that I wanted to have. So what are some ways that you recommend people start thinking about how they can identify their values?

LW: Yeah. So I agree with you. I think it's tough to like, just get a list and you start circling and then you like cross them out. And which ones appear the end of your core values? I don't think it necessarily works that way. You also need someone to help you process. I think it's very difficult to do by yourself, but with all of my clients, I do an exercise called the peak experience, which you may have heard of before. And basically it's walking people through like a guided visualization of the best time they ever had in their life. And you get them to like re live that scene with all five senses. What was going on? Um, what were they doing? Who was there? What was the temperature? Like? What was it about that moment that made it so enjoyable? And then once they've really kind of like immersed themselves in it, they talk about the experience.

And from there, I actually jot down all the values that I hear coming up as themes in that story. And so it'll often be things like adventure fun. It can be things like achievement, but it's more like often resilience overcoming obstacles. So sometimes people will, you know, because what's really nice about it is because it goes into a visual, it goes into a different part of the brain. You actually don't know what's going to pop up. And sometimes there's more than one scene that will pop up. And I'll just ask people to go towards the one that feels like more resonant to them in that moment. Um, and so sometimes it is like as much as, um, it's like a graduation ceremony, right. And having their family there being so proud of them, or it could be like being on vacation on safari, you know, on their honeymoon.

And then you really just, you tease out like, what are the things that make this so important to you and how is, how can these things really be applied to your current circumstances? So that's a good way to kind of ground people in some of their values. And then, and then you bring in other ones from like, you know, your, your larger conversations about their goals. But I think it's so important for people to make sure that their goals are really aligned with their values because often they actually don't align. And so you might have a client who is like, my values are like love and compassion and you know, all this connectedness, but their goal is like, could be something like really strategic or really professional. And you have to do some work to make sure that those align. And so I think that it's definitely possible to make them work together, but I think it takes some more, you know, reflecting on like, okay, how do I bring love and compassion values into like the writing that I want to do. So it's not just like, I want to do writing so that I can get a job it's like, I want to do writing because it actually fulfills me as a person, as a whole person and will be a much more enjoyable thing for me to do and to put into the world than just let me do this. So I can get to point B

RPR: One of the things that, so I'm currently writing a book on burnout, and that would seem illogical to some folks having kind of lived through this really emotional kind of traumatic experience, and then wanting to write about that. But it's been, I think it's been the way that I've processed a lot of that and, and thought about my values. And it allowed me to hear so many different people's stories just to know that you're not alone in that space is so powerful and so empowering, and to be able to share those stories with others, that I do hope that they will feel empowered because they'll feel like they're not alone anymore. I don't need this book. I don't need a book because I'm not on the tenure track anymore. It's not a part of my job that I do now. So I am writing this book for the first time for me and for other people. Like, I really feel like it's an important topic that people need to be talking about. So that book is, is a catharsis for me, as well as something that I feel like I can put out, that's good into the world and into academia that can hopefully, hopefully touch some folks.

LW: I love it. And I feel like, you know what? I always tell people who are writing a book or work on their dissertation. They're stuck. So I'm like, you know, everyone loves a good story. Like what is the story that you're trying to tell? And it's also so much more powerful. Oftentimes when the author is the one being like, this is my story. And like through me offering candidly like details about my life that you wouldn't otherwise know, and audience can really learn something. They can really like be persuaded of something, identify with you, but also with others through, through your story. And so I think that that's the way forward is for people to be more honest and transparent, really about the struggles that they've had rather than kind of like holding them in silence or like overcoming things, but like never telling people that you, you did all this work.

Like it's amazing, you know, um, it always kind of surprised. It's not surprising to me at all, but you know, it's like you, you get testimonials right from your clients about your coaching. And very, very few people are willing to put their name. That's not surprising to me, but it's also, I think kind of tragic. And it says something about, I think that the, the ethos in academia that you're supposed to just struggle your way through and it's supposed to be hard and getting help is maybe a sign of weakness. So I think all of that, I would love for that to change. I mean, I really do think coaching is a way forward. And to helping people recognize that, like they're not alone, they don't have to suffer by themselves. And also that there's nothing wrong with them. It's not like a deficit model of like, let's fix these things about you. And then you'll be like the most productive person. It's more like, no, you have all the inside of you. And maybe the way forward has nothing to do with your work, but it can help add to your professional satisfaction.

RPR: Coaching is so powerful, but you and I both do group coaching as well. And I think that adds another layer of compassion. You have folks who are going through the same thing, I've run a beyond burnout group for women faculty in the past. And that was such a transformative experience for me as a coach, just to watch those women support each other and self-coach and be coached and feel like they were really not alone, um, to be able to offer compassion to each other, but also to talk about their experiences in the sense of this happened to me. And I'm struggling with it. And thank you for being here to kind of bear witness to that and support me as I walked through it.

LW: I feel like group coaching is just magic. I feel like there is when you bring together like a group of like-minded people and they don't have to be at the same level to really be able to fully empathize with what others are going through. And so in the group coaching program that I ran with Mary Churchill recently, and we hope to run it again very soon, the very first session was felt transformative. And I felt like we didn't do anything. It was like, it was just by showing up and people taking the time to listen to one another struggles. I think, especially during COVID, it's been so much harder and so much more isolating. And these women were looking for a place to just be seen and heard. And it was so important for us to have breakout sessions where they could just debrief and just really go in depth about the stuff that we were we're coaching them on.

Right. Rather than like everyone share in a large group, it really, they really benefited from like being in groups of three or four and just being able to like delve into like, you know, what's going on for them. And they would come back from these small groups, which we weren't in totally like their faces look different, right? They look like they had alleviate, been alleviated of like a huge burden. They felt they exhibited all of this hope that they didn't start with. And that was from the group that was a real privilege, I think. And an honor to be able to create a space where people could feel that, and hopefully it reverberates through, through their lives outside the group.

RPR: Hope is such a powerful way of thinking about kind of the, the goal of coaching to bring folks, to, to hope and to have a process potentially for kind of achieving what it is that they want to achieve that might not look like what they had originally come into the coaching experience. Thank you.

LW: Absolutely. I think one of our, one of our group members said, you know, I started, I started, I signed up for this coaching group to get my writing going again, but I realized that I actually need to work on my personal life and those became my goals. And so just even recognizing like, you know, we cannot separate out these things. You're, you're not like you and your personal life and you at work like doing that makes things so much harder. I think there's a lot of suffering involved in that always enforcing that division. And so I think when we're we're coaching the whole person, then a lot of people were like, I realized one of my goals is to have a hobby, to have some fun. It's actually like invest in myself in ways that have nothing to do with work, which, you know, a lot of people feel like they should do. But I think being in a group and having some accountability actually made them be like, oh, and when I come back to the group, next time, I want to have made some progress towards those things. You know, I want to invest in myself more, even in signing up for the group. Right. That's an investment in yourself. And so I found it really inspiring and a totally different experience from one-on-one coaching, which I also really enjoy. It's just really different.

RPR: Yeah. It really is very different because it's almost like you have many coaches in the group experience working together, putting each other as well. And you, you were just there to hold that space support, that support, that kind of realizations in that kind of powerful way.

LW: Yeah. Yeah. Well also making sure that like things move forward, right. So it's not just a space to decompress the experience, but it's also like add how do we take the next step? What's the next step? And what do you need to work on,

RPR: Right. That it is about moving forward. Yes. You excavate a little bit, but you're thinking about how we're going to, how you're going to move forward and, and what that life looks like on the other side.

LW: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. That's why like our last session is like envisioning the future. Let's really get specific about the life that you want to be leading in the near future. And then you can take steps towards that.

RPR: Switch gears just a little bit as we're beginning to kind of come to the end of our time. So you really are a multihyphenate, you're a professor and a coach. You're an author, you're a mom. So one of the things I like to talk about is balance and thinking of that, not as some sort of 50, 50 kind of split, but what that looks like for you might change daily depending on kind of what your priorities are. How do you try to try to balance those different roles in your life?

Speaker 3 (38:19):

Yeah. I mean, balance is such a loaded term that I'm almost like wondering if there's like a better word for it, but, but I still use it. And I think for me balance is just making sure that like every day I'm reflecting on my values and intentional in my goals and the goal might just be like, take care of my son today without losing it. You know, as I mentioned before, like I I've been away from my campus, this all of COVID, but what it meant is that I took care of my son full-time and had almost no time to work on anything else because childcare was just not an option until two weeks ago. So what I did was I worked during his naps in the first three and a half or so months of his life, I actually had to finish my second book, which was an academic book.

So I had to write the conclusion and do all the edits and do all the stuff that comes with book publication. Luckily, my son slept enough, um, during the day that like, I would just have a cup of coffee and try to hammer it out. And that's how I did that. And I've done other academic work, you know, I've put in a couple of grant proposals and done some guest lecturing and things like that. And then the rest of my like very little time I've put towards coaching. And so I put my coaching practice on hold until I think it was like last fall. So it had been like six or seven months into COVID where I wasn't doing any coaching. I didn't feel like I had the bandwidth. And then someone was referred to me by a previous client. And she was like, are you taking clients?

And I was like, you know, why not? Why don't I just take on one right now? And that's also, when I started talking to Mary about running a group program, we started fleshing out like, you know, what would this look like if we were to do it in the spring? And so it was really kind of like this formulation time where I spent a lot of time thinking and doing a little bit of reading and trying to plan things out. Then we moved and that took up a lot of time. And then probably the past two months as like the vaccines have rolled out, I was getting more and more confident that I could start coaching more people. I started putting myself out there more. I got a number of new clients. I'm also contracted through a company called well academic, which is geared towards proving the wellbeing of women of color academics.

So I get some coaching clients through there. We're also doing planning to do a group coaching program together. And so it was like, I was just piecing things together in like 45 minutes that I had during the day. And then like an hour after my son went to sleep. And that basically until he was like almost 15 months old, that's what I did. And then for the past two weeks he's been in daycare and it's like, I am completely bowled over with gratitude for having some time and some space to do actually start working on it. Things that were kind of being planted as little seedlings in my mind when I didn't have the time. And so now I'm starting to really launch myself into my coaching practice while I have the time before I go back to teaching in the fall. Do you think that every day is looked really different?

For me? I think it's been a real, the biggest challenge for me has to, has been embracing my current circumstances and not feeling any kind of resentment about not having the time to do other things besides take care of my son. And that has been a lot of emotional and spiritual work that I've done to get to that place of what privilege is this, to have this time with him rather than like, oh, there's 10 million things I want to be doing, you know, but instead I'm like making, you know, sweet potato puree again and cleaning the floor. So, you know, it's, I think balances for me, not about where I'm putting my time. It's about making sure I feel good about that, what I am doing in the moment. And sometimes it takes a little work to get there. So that's, that's my balance practice.

RPR: And I agree, you mentioned that the earlier in that question that you're thinking about, maybe we need a better word than balance, and I wonder if maybe alignment might be that word, aligning values, aligning purpose, aligning connection, and having those again, align with values as well.

LW: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's a very coachy word and I'm wondering, is there an even simpler term, but no, I think alignment really is the thing, you know, cause some people's balance means doing a trillion things and not sleeping that much, but they're feeling really good about what they're doing. Right.

RPR: Well, as we start to wrap it up, I like to ask one last question. And if you were going to give one piece of advice to women in higher education in and around higher education, what would you want them to know?

LW: I feel like it's really important for women in higher ed to be able to separate their productivity at work from their self-worth as human beings. And so I think it's really easy to fall into a trap of feeling like we continually need to prove ourselves through external achievements. And I worry that going down that path means that no amount of success is ever really enough when it's always external to you. And so I really encourage women to like give themselves permission to put their own happiness, whatever that means. And happiness sometimes can be like overused. So maybe just their level of satisfaction, their life ahead of everything else. And it's not selfish to do so to rest, to enjoy their lives more outside of work and to invest in, in parts of themselves that have nothing to do with the work that they do. And so I feel like what's often kind of like a, a really big bonus is that by doing all of this stuff for yourself, you're often more quote, unquote productive at work because you're happier with yourself, your life and what you're doing in a general way, but that's not why I feel like people, why I encourage women to embrace like their whole selves more.

It's more that we are so much bigger than then our tasks. I think as a coach, sometimes we give people permission that they're not able to give themselves to step into being a person that is more well-rounded than they currently are, because that's just not again, not modeled for us very well in higher ed. And so sometimes you have to be the model for everyone else. And I think that there's like scaffolding, um, positive affects from that, right? It's almost like a domino effect. Like if you can find your way to alignments and you know, feeling really good about most of the things that you're doing every day, other people see that and they're like, gimme some of that. I want to learn how to do that. Like, what are the things that you're reading? What are you doing? And I think it also means allowing others to see that just putting your nose to the grind all the time is not working

RPR: And valuable advice to end our discussion on. So thank you so much for being with me today. Leslie, it's been a pleasure.

LW: Yes. Thank you. This was really fun, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Thanks for listening to this episode of the agile academic podcast for women in higher ed. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did to make sure you don't miss an episode. Follow the show on apple, Google, or Spotify podcasting apps and bookmark the show. You'll find each episode, a transcript and show notes theagileacademic.buzzsprout.com. Take care and stay well.