mckinney
You know (or have heard about) people whose tenure battles are won or lost on the basis of popularity.
You’ve known professors with mediocre teaching evaluations, borderline numbers of publications, and earnest, if lackluster, service records, who squeaked by with tenure because they were “good guys” (and they’re usually guys, right?). You’ve also known, or heard about, faculty members who seemed like sure bets to achieve tenure and who were blackballed because of departmental politics or obnoxious personalities.
Likeability is important, of course, from your first day in graduate school until your promotion to full professor. Did professors want to chair your dissertation and serve on your committee? (Or did they hide when they saw you in the halls?) Did they write the glowingly inflated letters of recommendation that are de rigueur nowadays? (Or did they procrastinate and then damn with faint praise.) Did they place that quick phone call to a friend on the hiring committee? (Or did they forget to mention that the chair of the hiring committee is someone they’ve known since grad school.)
If you got the job, you probably had your doctoral program faculty rooting for you. The attitude of an eager, appreciative and promising acolyte probably comes naturally. Now, however, as a faculty member, your stance needs to change. Your role is no longer that of a promising student but of a talented junior colleague. Many people who are likeable students don’t quite know how to make the shift gears and act like respected peers.
I’m a clinical psychologist and professional coach who helps junior faculty members get tenure. And I’ve seen many instances when collegiality was the boost or bane of an academic’s career quest.
Here are two true stories (using pseudonyms) about what happened when Pandora’s box popped open:
Jean, an assistant professor with two large grants and an impressive publishing record, decided to go up for tenure a year early. She was viewed as a talented asset to the department and her colleagues liked her ability to diffuse tense moments in committee meetings with well-timed jokes. Her chair agreed with her ambitions and sent out requests for outside letters. A few weeks before the committee was set to vote, he took Jean aside and suggested that she wait another year before seeking tenure. One of her outside reviewers was lukewarm, at best. The chair felt that she’d still get a favorable vote from the tenure review committee; they all respected her work and wanted her to succeed. But he was worried that she might get rejected at the university level. He suggested that she wait a year before going up. Jean took her chair’s advice and the following year he selected her outside references strategically. She sailed through the tenure process. Jean had her department on her side -- she’d gotten an “A” grade for collegiality -- and this probably saved her tenure quest.
Beth, another member of the same department, came up for tenure two years later. Like Jean, she had the requisite grants and publications for promotion. She was somewhat controversial as a teacher -- students had strong reactions to her opinionated style and either became devoted acolytes or disgruntled critics. Among her colleagues there were similar feelings of ambivalence. In general, peers respected her work. But many professors dreaded being on committees with her. Beth tended to hijack meetings with tangential arguments. No matter what the topic, she launched into polemics for her pet theories.She appeared oblivious to the eyes that would roll when she launched into her lectures on methodology. One of her colleagues complained to me that any meeting that included Beth was guaranteed to last an hour longer than necessary. This professor was on her tenure committee and voted against her. In keeping with her strident personality, Beth was furious rather than devastated when it became clear that she might not get tenure. She huffed and puffed about suing the university, but knew that she didn’t have a case once the chair opened her file pulled out some angry notes from students.
A few weeks ago, an assistant professor called me for a coaching consultation after his third year annual review. It had not gone well. Even before meeting with his department chair, he’d been worried because he hadn’t yet sent out his book proposal to publishers and his teaching evaluations were significantly below average in a couple of the courses he’d taught. But his chair’s main criticisms caught him completely off guard.
“People don’t feel like they know you,” she said. “You’re seen as being rather un-engaged and peripheral to the department.”
The gist of her advice was that he needed to become better known and liked by his colleagues, because he wasn’t viewed as a member of the team.
"What should I do?" my new client asked me. "I never thought that tenure might depend on having lots of lunch dates."
Here’s what I told him: Lunch dates are important. And succeeding politically is based on two factors: Common sense and self-control. Exercise both. Concrete manifestations of common sense and self-control require several tactics. Here are some things to try. Most of these tips are obvious -- but that doesn’t mean that the average junior professor practices them.
1. Mom was right: if you can say something nice don’t say it at all. Gossip may get you in trouble. Listen, but don’t contribute, to colleague-bashing.
2. People find whiners boring. You don’t need to be falsely cheery, but keep your complaints to a minimum. Nod sympathetically when people complain to you, but don’t play the "I’ve got it even harder than you" game.
3. Walk the walk. Pay conscious attention to the role you want to project: mature, eager, curious, and calm are good traits to start with. If you cultivate your sense of humor you’re more likely to be popular. Don’t worry that it feels like an act at first. Dress appropriately. Cut the cursing. You’re no longer a student so don’t hang out with them socially. It takes many of us a few semesters to become accustomed to being called "professor."
4. Be a good listener: the rules of collegiality are similar to the rules of dating. A conversation has gone well when the other person has done most of the talking. Don’t confide secrets and antipathies until you know which colleagues are completely trustworthy and discreet (this can take years). The general rule of thumb is to reveal no more than is revealed to you. Take this advice one step further, and strive to be your colleagues’ confidant (without getting caught in the middle of turf wars and popularity struggles). Over time, people will share sensitive information with you when you listen empathetically and keep secrets confidential. It's good to know sensitive information.
5. Get to know your colleagues by asking for advice. Most people love giving advice (take me, for example!) You’re not expected to know everything already. Ask your senior colleagues for suggestions about successfully navigating academia. If they’ve taught the same class as you have, will they share their syllabi? If they’re known for being great teachers, will they share ideas for classroom exercises that will increase student engagement? If they’re prolific writers, can they give you tips for finding the right book publisher for your manuscript?
6. Get to know your colleagues by getting to know their work. This is an important and under-utilized strategy. Getting good feedback in academe happens much less frequently than it should, and everyone craves credit for their efforts. Read your colleagues’ work and let them know that you understand and appreciate their contributions. They will respond gratefully if you provide thoughtful responses and sincere praise. Be specific with your compliments. For example, say "I really liked your new article in journal X. Your ideas about Y made me think about my own work on Z."
7. Sometimes, make your concrete, focused compliments in front of a third party (such as right before a faculty meeting begins). There’s no need to fawn -- you’re letting your colleagues know the ways in which their work has an impact on your thinking. People will sniff out an apple-polishing fake, so make sure that any praise is genuine. Congratulate peers for winning awards, getting grants, and other successes. Gracious self-confidence is appealing.
8. Seek out mentors. Everyone longs for expert guidance and it is clear that the careers of academics with devoted mentors proceed more smoothly. Finding a mentor is more likely to happen if you’re reaching out via your practice of collegiality. Don’t count on an uber-mentor: it is more likely that guidance will come from many sources in a variety of forms. One member of your department will explain the history of the political divisions within the department (the theorists vs. the methodologists; the empirical vs. the qualitative researchers, etc.). Another may be willing to read your manuscripts (jump at this opportunity).
9. Look for things you like and respect about your colleagues – even if you have to dig deep to find something appealing. People like people who like them. Even the strident curmudgeon with detestable politics may be a dog-lover or know a great lasagna recipe. Good luck on this one.
10. Do invite people out to lunch (unless you’re just starting your first year – in which case wait a month or two and see who takes the initiative to invite you out on the "first date"). Over lunch, in addition to friendly schmoozing, get information and advice based on their expertise. Most people like talking about topics they know well. What plans does the new dean have? What’s the history of the growth and development of your department? Where is the field headed?
11. Leave your door open. Friendly availability is highly valued in most departments. Avoid campus when you’ve got to write and reserve tasks that require less focus for your office. Check your e-mail in the department and escape with your laptop for an hour of rough drafting. It’s a good sign when people stick their heads in to chat, so stop looking at your watch.
12. Don’t talk too much at meetings. Everyone respects those wise souls whose group comments are thoughtful, occasional and succinct. If there are 10 people at the meeting, make sure that you speak less than 10 percent of the time. Ask good questions. Don’t pontificate. Most rational humans hate meetings so don’t make them longer than necessary.
13. Make friends. If you’re lucky, you’ll develop one or two true friends in the department, folks with whom you can share your frustrations and anxieties. However, it is important to seek out friends who are outside the "family" -- especially if it is dysfunctional. It takes time and effort to make friends outside of the university but it is essential to your mental health. Make it a priority to join the yoga class, running group, pottery course or other activities you feel like you don’t have time to pursue.
14. Don’t get angry: get tenure. If your department is a deep and venom-filled snake pit, suck it up or get out. One of my clients, with a coveted Ivy position, is coping with a batch of particularly arrogant and narcissistic colleagues. She uses me as her outlet for complaints and co-strategist for political battles. Having a ventilation system helps her stay focused on her work. We spend some of our time fantasizing about the stinging retorts she’ll give once she has tenure. We spend time planning her fifth year job hunt. She’s started a diary to collect her most outrageous stories of her the professors’ perfidy. A truly horrid department is a good reason to look for another job, sooner rather than later, no matter how prestigious your program or the university.
15. The most important rule can be difficult to follow: don’t make enemies with important people. In the mystery novel The Titian Committee, author Iain Pears describes his character Professor Roberts in the following way: "He was a man who had learned early in life that you cannot arrange matters so that everybody loves you simultaneously. That being the case, the best you can do is to ensure that those who dislike you can do you no harm."
16. Finally, realize that no one can follow all these rules -- we all show bad judgment, make social gaffes and occasionally lose our self-control. Moving on after mistakes, rather than obsessing endlessly, is one of the hallmarks of a successful academic.
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Comments on Collegiality -- the Tenure Track's Pandora's Box
This was a really insightful article, the question is whether or not we can do it. As Academics we are encouraged to have opinions, and then to be able to support and defend them. This makes it hard to keep those opinions back, and even harder when you aren't 'preaching to the choir.'
Somewhere deep in the core of my being it irks me to think that we have to play nice, become politicians, brown nose, and basically 'play the game' just to be recognized for our accomplishments that are not directly tied to our extra-curricular behavior. Unfortunately, idyllic work environments are non-existent, and are even less likely in a place of opinion like Academia.
Anyway, thank you again for the insight, Hopefully this will help keep me coloring within the lines as tenure is my eventual goal.
This is SO VERY important! But I bet we'll get VERY LITTLE if any commentary! I'm one of those persons who needs the advice given by this counselor. My attempts to be a good AAUP member prompt me to disregard rules such as the one about talking less than 10 per cent of the time at a meeting of ten persons. If nine of the persons just sit by quietly when their rights are being violated.....But are their rights REALLY being violated ? am I just the victim of my own distorted view of the world? And the part about gossiping---how else are we to keep up with what seems like a constant increase in the heavy-handed suppression and opression of US--the faculty? Again, it seems like that when I read Academe.
"And they're usually guys, right?" What's the basis for this remark?
Check out The Little Professor blog for a fine commentary on this essay.
The offhand "and they're usually guys" comment flummoxed me as well. In fact, I think the opposite is true. And although I have just survived a successful tenure bid myself--with, like the pseudonymous Jean, the help of colleagues who went the extra mile because they did like me--I nonetheless want to qualify the advice offered here.
First, though, I do think that if service is part of our contracts, being a "team player" _is_ important. Committees are collaborative ventures and better group dynamics result in better decisions. This does not mean that one has to acquiesce to exploitation, rights removal or just plain bad judgments. However, "being collegial" and "disagreeing" are not opposites. One can politely and respectfully make one's case, no? And react with grace when outvoted--even if you really are the only one who sees things clearly and are absolutely irrefutably Right and working with idiots to boot.
HOWEVER--I do think the gender dynamics are important here. In my experience it is women who are _overly_ collegial, often at the risk of other aspects of their careers. I still see women (and am guilty of this myself) not being able to say no to extra committee assignments, a new course to design, a new curricular initiative, taking on extra students or to any other of the administrative tasks that allow departments to run smoothly. And in the end, this form of "super-collegiality" will not result in tenure at most institutions. This obviously is not just a female thing--in fact I have seen guys in this traps as well--but internalized social expectations as well as external pressures do construct these roles. So while I clearly understand the importance of NICE to the T&P process, too much can be dangerous as well.
Gee! And here I thought that receiving tenure was based on quality of publications and teaching. Now psychotherapist Mary McKinney has shattered my idealism. In her 16 ways of enhancing your tenure possibilities, I don't see a mention of either of those. Nary a one. But I suspect she's right: Someone who succeeds with her 16 ways and has mediocre publishing and teaching credentials, is on the road to tenure. Actually, just giving any serious attention to all of them isn't going to leave you with much time to tend to teaching and publishing.
Really, giving attention to these 16 items might greatly IMPROVE my teaching.
How exciting. "The Rules" for academics. I guess the basic guidelines for socialized behavior bear repeating (?), but it does make me ask myself: if I have to spend five years timing myself to make sure I'm not talking more than 10% of a meeting, do I *really* want the job? Here's an idea: do your work, act civilized, try to get along with people wherever possible and don't think about your job as a "first date."
The core issue raised here is whether the tenure system allows a candidate to maintain honesty and integrity while still keeping on track for tenure. If not, then the system is in trouble, since certain 'freedoms are suspended for 5-6 years. We know the system can be unfair and vindictive - think of J.Westheimer's well publicized case at NYU. Some of the behavior that junior academics want to engage in, but which might well get them into hot water, include the following: fighting for adjunct rights; questioning university policy on labor, environment, purchasing, unionization, links to the military-industrial complex, or financial matters; querying gross inequalities in teaching allocations or remuneration; asserting the right to take up research fellowships or invitations that may have $ implications for the Dept.; organizing campaigns - particularly around budget or personnel cuts imposed by the administration; and whistleblowing on corruption or other injustices. These should really have no bearing on the tenure case if the candidate's scholarship and teaching are fine, he/she has moderate to good social skills, and is clearly capable of thinking of others before him/herself (as my examples would suggest). I think we all have a right to think and act critically, whether tenured or not. Being well behaved and pleasant is always a good idea, but suggest that 'getting' tenure is more important that speaking out - which is where the line of argument in the article could be leading - worries me greatly. My best advice is to do what you think is right, AS WELL AS working hard. Tenure is now virtually unique to North America. On other continents, you do your job for a few years and then receive a permanent contract. (Getting hired in the first place is the difficult part). The latter system is more ethical, more advantageous to junior scholars since there are more posts amd more mobility, more tolerant of difference, and less open to abuse. Much rather that system, thankyou, than the 'eye of the needle' of tenure, the maintenance of which is directly related to the denial of secure employment to thousands of underemployed or exploited adjuncts. PS I'm happily employed overseas - I left a great tenure track job at a Research 1 Uni when ethical dilemmas started causing sleepless nights!
This is a very interesting and useful piece because it reminds us that however noble the profession may be, academics must still operate in a workplace, and this requires playing nice with others.
The notion that a commitment social justice and activism requires that we be the problem children of the department will, in the long run, work to decrease the number of people interested in such issues who obtain tenure. Junior academics need to realize that they are exactly that, junior, and this requires that they behave as they would in other professions.
Dress in a way that shows respect for the job and the students. Spend time in your campus office with the door open. Avoid foul language. Try not to eat alone all of the time. Do not act like a mutineer in department meetings.
These are the elements of civility and professionalism appropriate to any office environment, and it strikes me as completely absurd to treat such sound advice as incompatible with academic life.
Consider this ..
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050626/COLUMNISTS02/506260414/1035
in light of this ..
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/06/23/statement
People: if it waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, you've probably got a duck.
Deny political bias until the USA is out of Bushes and Clintons to run for political office -- and the case for "The Emperor Has No Clothes," with accompanying budget cuts, is still made.
As someone who is leaving one job for another partially over issues of "collegiality," I think this article both highlights the importance of the various factors outside of the big three (research, teaching, service) in assuring successful promotion and tenure, as well as serving as a depressing reminder of just how small academics can be. It is interesting that the article does not address, except somewhat slyly through its reference to "guys," the embodied politics of collegiality, which after all refers to our colleagues. Who are they? What do they look like? Are they one of us? I agree that collegiality and conviviality make academic life slightly less miserable, but often collegiality stands in for pod-person politics, where senior colleagues assuage their fears and insecurities by hiring and promoting junior colleagues who do not threaten them intellectually and socially. What this means, in practical terms, is a certain stasis, a morbidity that some have argued threatens the entire profession. On the micro level, it means that we do not push ourselves (as a profession) to make a space for amicable disagreement, or even simple difference (between say approach x and y). The complementary racial and gender politics of such thinking should be apparent. Everyone talks about "diversity" but in my experience most institutions want diversity with a very familiar face.
What It Takes To Get Tenure
"Gee! And here I thought that receiving tenure was based on quality of publications and teaching."
If there is a more entrenched, ossified bureaucracy than publicly-funded academia, I'd like to hear the nominees.
For instance, my West Point neighbor left the Army in 1992 as a captain. He says he felt the professional Army was too "politically correct," leaving battlefield performance as secondary to human relations and happenstance (e.g., finding the right 'groups' to belong to).
In my sixth year at a small New England college, a senior colleague told me in private that it was wrong for me to teach anything that he didn't already know. I knew immediately that I was doomed. This blatant hostility left me speechless. I have been a full professor at another institution for many years now. My colleagues and I have made it our top priority to get our junior faculty tenured and promoted. But I still feel that here, as at that other nameless school, too many decisions are based on small-mindedness.
Forgot rule 17: Never challenge the opinion, no matter how vapid, of senior faculty on anything. The vast majority of academics in the humanities and social sciences conflate their opinions and their intelligence. Questioning their prononcements will cause them to question your intellectual ability.
So, play nice, agree with everything they say, no matter how silly, and you too will be assimilated!
"Forgot rule 17: Never challenge the opinion, no matter how vapid, of senior faculty on anything."
Absolutely correct. Lost $60,000+ of gub-mint and private (moi) funds, doing that, in the most polite way, British butlers would be proud. Senior faculty response: screaming, whining, and yelling that would make ENRON seem like an anarchic Utopia. Really, really hopeless -- would be easier, catching a greased pig, and probably more enlightening.
I think there is frequent confusion between the politics of one person's confidence and knowledge or ideas and the fragility another person's ego. People should take responsibility for their own insecurities and open themselves up to hear opposing opinions or assertions without being threatened by them. Regardless of whether the person is junior or senior. I wish workplace dynamics were just about civility, common courtesy and teamwork, but they aren't. The dynamics are a little more disingenuous than that and the issue isn't always whether the person who happens to be speaking is not offending anyone, it is whether the insecure people listening can manage their own feelings of threat. It disgusts me when the popularity contests and cliques of school show up in a place of business.