Kitabı oku: «Time Management and Self-Organisation in Academia», sayfa 2

II.Specific Challenges—Individual Factors

What it’s about:

The specific challenges in academia arise not only from institutional frameworks, but above all from individual factors. These must also be considered so that individual methods of self-organisation can bring about sustainable improvements. This includes self-knowledge of individual behavioural preferences, an awareness of one’s own values, and clarity about how these values determine role models, as well as consideration of the whole continuum of life while integrating all major life goals.

1.Knowing myself: Individual behaviour style

What it’s about:

Just as the specific challenges faced by academics due to their field of study, job, and position are varied so are their life situations, goals, and values; their personal traits, behavioural styles, and ways of working also differ along with their individual strengths and weaknesses. This must be considered so that you, as a unique person, can select and implement those methods that sustainably improve your self-organisation. Personal behavioural preferences significantly influence time management.

Individuality and structuring time

Every human being is unique, is an individual in the emphatic sense. This concerns all levels: the biological (cf. fingerprint or genetic make-up), the cognitive (intelligence profile¹), the ethical in the sense of the ethos expressed in values and goals, the historical, cultural, and social life situation with its influences, but also the behavioural style. Of course, all of this is interrelated and more or less mutually dependent. These factors influence the personal structuring of time, for example the daily performance curve, the energy budget, the way of thinking, the priorities placed on values, traditions, and social status, and, above all, the character.

Some jump out of bed early in the morning full of energy, others are not fully ready for action until late in the morning but are still awake late in the evening. Some can easily concentrate on one thing for two hours, while others switch between different activities more often. For some, large charts and detailed plans help with time management, while others are terrified by them and prefer to stick reminder notes with small pictures or symbols on their computers and desktops or on their doors. Some always have an open ear for their fellow human beings because they want to be there for them, while others introduce limited office hours and otherwise close the office door and turn off the phone. One analyses and decides quickly, the other regards that as slapdash and insists on a thorough discussion of all relevant points of view.

Many time-management training courses and advice books take little account of individuality and find it difficult to do so, since it is objectively difficult to do justice to all possible styles and offer individually accurate help in a short seminar or a book with unknown readers. By necessity, they limit themselves to general rules and standard tips and leave their selection and adaptation entirely up to the reader or the training participant. However, the more a profession is shaped by the personality of the person practicing it, the more open it is to design, the more important it is to take individuality into account.

How can we get a little closer to this goal? One possibility is to use typification, i.e. a level between individuality in the strict sense and the general that should apply to everyone. On this basis, a person can be offered help for individual assessment and then work more precisely on adapting time

management tools and strategies to individual behaviour.

Not only the profession itself but, as far as possible, the self-organisation must fit the individual personality, i.e. not only the ‘what’ but also the ‘how’. Where this does not match in the long run, achieving high performance becomes very exhausting. Conversely, success beckons those who organise their personal environment and routines to use their personal strengths and not be slowed down too much by their weaknesses. It is even better to move from individual self-knowledge to self-development and thus use one’s full potential to respond better to the diverse demands of specific situations. It is therefore about a two-way adjustment of environment and behaviour, which we perform intuitively all the time, but which can be consciously improved in order to avoid the losses due to friction, which can go as far as blockages. Those who have achieved a high capacity for such adjustments become aware of it through faster and more effective work, higher satisfaction and well-being and, in normal cases, more success. Such people are often said to be ‘completely themselves’ in what they do—whether it is the quiet and solitary work at the desk or the inspiring lecture, effective leadership, or valuable collegial collaboration in the research team.

Why does one lecturer like to give oral exams and enjoy the opportunity to get to know the students personally to some extent, and does not mind running over time in the process, while another prefers to develop and use multiple-choice tests because they enable standardised and rapid assessment?²

Why does an institute director immediately seize an opportunity to apply for a large third-party funded research project and take the necessary steps even in the face of resistance, while a colleague thinks about it for a long time and ends up with more concerns and counter-arguments than concepts? Why does one professor seem to be grateful for personal conversations and then quickly and with inspiration returns to work, while another

feels jolted out of concentration and disturbed by every visitor?

These examples show how a person’s behavioural style influences the many daily decisions related to time. They do not suggest that there is only one ‘right’ behaviour in diverse situations, but that it is important to know one’s natural behavioural preferences, to identify causes of ineffectiveness, and to secure the conditions under which you can work well with respect to others. Also, appropriate planning depends on it.

•How important is it for me to reserve large blocks of time for drafting a lecture or writing a paper, in which I eliminate interruptions as much as possible?

•How important is it for me to receive inspiration through discussions, such as at conferences?

•How much quiet seclusion do I need? How often should I discuss my projects with others?

All these questions allow for an interesting psychological debate. This is not the place and time for such a debate—our aim is to provide you with a heuristic instrument to help you systematically better understand and control your personal behaviour, the effectiveness and dysfunctionalities of which you know to some extent from experience. In doing so, we rely on a scientifically validated personality model that has been excellently elaborated in practice and proven a million times over.

A model for the description and development of behaviour

John G. Geier³ developed a model based on the theoretical work of William Moulten Marsten that describes an essential factor guiding human behaviour, known colloquially and inaccurately as character or personality. Of course, cognitive beliefs and values also play an important role in decisions, and personal experiences since birth shape individual behavioural dispositions. However, Geier’s model captures readily observable behavioural tendencies, and this has four implications.

First, the model describes behaviour at the interface of a person and a context, which can also be perceived by others—nothing hidden deep ‘inside’ or in the past. Second, it is about spontaneous tendencies, which of course are not automatically implemented, because normally a person can decide on a different reaction. Stressful situations increase, however, the probability of reacting according to spontaneous behavioural preferences. Third, these tendencies or behavioural dispositions characterising the individual are changeable within certain limits. They have developed in a person’s constant interaction with the environment, starting with relating to parents up to fitting into a specific academic setting. These behavioural tendencies can and must be adapted to new situations and other people. Fourth, through these mostly intuitive adaptations to various demands from a context, we have all developed a repertoire of behavioural styles particularly appropriate for different situations and people: The head of the institute will act somewhat differently as a boss than as a parent of a small child. Or, the faculty member will show different behavioural tendencies in a committee meeting than when a student begins to cry desperately in an oral examination.

It follows that in your self-assessment you should think of a typical situation for which you want to better understand your behavioural preferences.

•Would a fellow sports fan describe my typical behaviour differently than a listener to my lecture?

•In which common professional situations do I feel confident, do I feel that I can easily fulfil the requirements? In which situations, do I feel insecure and suspect that different behaviour would be better at this moment?

Two factors directly determine a person’s behaviour disposition: seeing a setting as hostile or friendly and perceiving oneself as strong or weak. These perceptions affect how decisively or cautiously a person reacts to a situation.

The first dimension involves perceiving the world as ranging from two extremes: challenging and exhausting at one end and supportive and pleasurable at the other. This reflects the fundamental dual nature of motivation coming from pain and pleasure. Of course, a tendency towards one view can be changed with self-reflection: Even those who generally tend to perceive their environment as positive for themselves may become aware, for example, that a reviewer in the postdoctoral qualification colloquium is not sympathetic, and will therefore act more cautiously. But the point here is to recognise the spontaneous shaping of the world perception and, with the second dimension, the spontaneous tendency to react a particular way, i.e. the involuntary disposition to be either strong and determined or defensive and reticent.

To become more familiar with the two dimensions that determine behaviour, draw two scales: On the first, between the poles of ‘stressful’ and ‘pleasant’, note how the world initially and mostly affects you; on the second scale, between the extremes of ‘determined’ and ‘reserved’, indicate how you most frequently react to the world.

To the extent that spontaneous behaviour is shaped by perceiving a setting as somewhere between favourable and unfavourable and by a self-perception as between stronger and weaker, then these factors can be combined so that the four possible combinations result as main behavioural tendencies. These dispositions are designated by the four letters D, I, S, and C. They stand for four adjectives which approximately characterise a particular tendency, but in common usage are often associated with evaluations that can make them more difficult to understand. That is why it is important to stay away from connotations of these words and to understand how each main behavioural tendency arises from the previously explained two dimensions of self-perception and of how one sees the world.

D: If the environment is experienced as demanding and strenuous and the reaction is determined or strong, we speak of the ‘dominant’ behavioural style. Efforts are made to assert oneself, to achieve results even against resistance, to tackle things quickly and energetically.

People with a high D-factor are self-confident, willing to take risks, decisive and consistent.

•How much does this description apply to my behaviour?

•How many points from 1–5 would I give myself?

I: As with D, the reaction is determined, however, the environment is perceived as benevolent and conducive and thus there is the ‘influencing’ or ‘initiative’ main tendency. It wants to move things forward and win together with others by convincing people of an endeavour and motivating them to cooperate. Since the environment does not seem to be that strenuous, one can win playfully.

People with a high I-factor are therefore open, optimistic, communicative, versatile, and therefore entertaining.

•How much does this description apply to my behaviour?

•How many points from 1–5 would I give myself?

S: Where a similar positive perception of the world prevails, but the reaction is still reserved, we speak of the ‘steady’ behaviour type: These people gladly want to participate, although not in the front line, but rather in a supporting role. They are satisfied to be in the background and make their acknowledged contribution to the whole.

This person is considered helpful, empathetic, calm, and patient.

•How much does this description apply to my behaviour?

•How many points from 1–5 would I give myself?

C: A reservation about reacting in a challenging environment leads to the ‘conscientious’ tendency. Compared to D, this more defensive variant of dealing with strenuous or even risky situations describes those who want to do things right and ‘play it safe’. They work carefully and according to precise plans.

People with a high C factor are quality-conscious, disciplined, analytical, and fact-oriented.

•How much does this description apply to my behaviour?

•How many points from 1−5 would I give myself?

A memorable image providing an overview of intersections of the two dimensions.

•In which of the four quadrants does my spontaneous behavioural preference lie in a typical professional situation?

•How would I be assessed by a person who knows me well and appreciates me?

It is now very important to see that every human being contains all four behavioural dispositions—but in a unique ‘mixture’. Furthermore, all general evaluations of the four main tendencies are to be avoided: None is inherently better or worse than the others, all four are important—in some situations more one disposition, in others more the other. In any human system, such as a team or a family, all four tendencies are needed: Without the D factor, decisions are made too slowly and are not enforced in the face of difficulties; without I, the motivating and unifying force and the flexibility to open up to new ideas are missing; without S, joint projects falter when it comes to patient and routine implementation, and the group can fall apart; without C, the necessary critical element, the careful checking and weighing, is missing.

You have probably already intuitively assessed yourself while thinking through the explanation of the behaviour model. To assess this more precisely, we highly recommend that you create a persolog® personality profile with the help of a certified trainer.⁴ In doing so, you can assign yourself not only to one of the four main types, but also to a combined style (twenty in total) and work through up to seven levels of interpretation. This allows deeper and more extensive conclusions for your personal beliefs as they affect your self-development in terms of success strategies, stress potential, and cooperation.

Behavioural style and structuring time

People’s behavioural styles strongly affect how they deal with deadlines and time pressure, the extent to which they impose discipline on themselves and others, their punctuality, reliability, and follow-through on goals. In order to understand more clearly how the four main behavioural tendencies influence time management, you can see each style’s essential characteristics in the following table.⁵

Underline with a pencil those statements that apply to you and cross out what does not fit. You yourself decide what is important for you, especially if you also have a secondary tendency that may partly contradict the primary type of behaviour (D and S or C and I). Don’t forget that you are assessing yourself for a specific, typical situation.

Write down your personal conclusions, what you now understand better and what you would like to pay special attention to in the future. Choose what suits your behavioural type from the wide range of methods and ideas in this book.

The inner team

Imagining an inner team is a coaching tool to give voice to multiple points of view, especially in decision-making situations. Instead of always jumping back and forth in one’s thoughts between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, ‘pro’ and ‘contra’, this tool brings them into an orderly conversation. It is helpful to give these voices names and perhaps imagine a figure and a face for each of them.

This tool connects well with the behavioural profiles: Imagine your four tendencies sitting around a conference table discussing the issue at hand. What does your D tendency say? How strong or weak is it? What do the other tendencies say, how do they argue, and how capable are they of making their voices heard?

Do you feel that in this situation it would be important to strengthen one of the tendencies? Or that a tendency usually speaks up loudly, whereas right now it would not be so important?

Who decides in the end? Well, you yourself! After all, you are not one of your tendencies or their mixture, but you have the freedom to decide. Probably your inner D will help you to do so.

An example: You have been asked to give a lecture at a congress in a foreign country next year. You have not yet dealt directly with the desired topic; it would be an interesting expansion of your special research area that interests you. However, you are afraid that you will need too much time to prepare without knowing exactly what you will have to do next year in terms of lectures, administration, and other tasks. But you must accept or refuse now.

Take a white sheet of paper and write the date in one corner. In the middle, draw a circle with a coloured pencil to symbolise the conference table. Write the topic of your presentation in large letters on the circle. Around it, in different colours, sketch four figures with heads in the shape of the letters D, I, S and C, perhaps the larger the greater these tendencies are for you.

Assign to each tendency the different thoughts that come to you about the question and write them down in the form of speech bubbles for the respective figures, for example:

D: ‘We should say yes, but we can also cancel at short notice.’

C: ‘That’s not fair. Then we might never be invited again.’

I: ‘But the topic is very interesting!’

S: ‘And it’s relatively easy to develop because of our dissertation.’

... etc.

During this discussion of your inner team, you can often already feel which tendency suits more or less your personality as well as the situation. At the same time, you realise that you carry all four possibilities (in varying degrees) within you and can consciously strengthen or weaken them to some extent.

If you can’t think of anything else, put the sheet aside and then reflect again a little later to make your decision.

Cooperation, criticism, conflict

Once you understand the basic principle of this behavioural model, you will immediately be able to better understand fellow human beings and deal with them more appropriately. You may also come to recognise that people with different behavioural tendencies can complement you well if you are both aware of this complementarity.

Without this awareness, misunderstandings, friction, and conflicts will arise when working with people with whom you have a lot to do but who probably have opposing tendencies. Especially in challenging situations, people annoy each other because of their different problem-solving strategies. Criticism is made (openly or in an unproductive way towards third parties) without adequately considering the inherently positive differences between behavioural tendencies. This wastes energy and time. You can avoid this if you ask yourself the following questions beforehand:

•Who in my work environment shows an apparently opposite behavioural style?

•How is this person to be assessed in the previous overview of the four behavioural styles?

•Which needs, strengths, and weaknesses of this person do I recognise in the descriptions?

•How do I need to approach him/her to make them feel valued?

•How could I communicate my needs better so that I can work well myself and use my strengths?

In Subchapter VI.1 ‘Research’, you will find further advice on how to use this personality model to work effectively in teams or research groups.

2.My goals, roles, and values: Basis for my orientation

What it’s about:

Values guide how people routinely think, make decisions and act. They provide orientation, shape identity and become functional in the form of goals. Personal values arise at a very early age from the social environment, usually at home and school. One’s own experiences and life circumstances later shape these values as they develop further from continuous choices and evaluations. How you see the world and people, how you organise your time, which job in which organisation you choose, how you make decisions, how you pursue your interests, how you exercise your profession, the way you deal with colleagues, how you fit into a team or lead it, depends very much on your own values.

You need an idea of what is really important to you in order to be at peace with yourself, the choices you have made, and your overall life. If you succeed in living your values at work, it will bring you joy, satisfaction, and success. The same applies to your private life.

Our society is changing rapidly, and accordingly much can be heard of a general change in values, with a general tendency from duty-bound values to self-development values and from material to post-material values. This makes it all the more important to draw up a list of values that give you personal orientation. If your own values and those of the organisation diverge, this leads to an inner tension that makes it difficult to work in a goal-oriented way. That is why companies implement ‘value management’ programmes.

With the help of this chapter, you can become more aware of which values are indispensable for you and which others, perhaps dependent on your actual life role or existing external (economic) constraints, cannot always or less intensively be lived. In this way, you will become more flexible and at the same time stronger in your actions.

Motives—Random or Self-Realisation?

Values motivate people. What are the motives that guide those working in academia, make them endure and persevere through periods of frustration, and often even drive them into self-exploitation? What values, for example, make you invest more time than absolutely necessary in project X, stand up for colleague Y, take on a position in a non-prestigious committee, or put the goals of others before your own?

People who choose an academic career do not lack intrinsic motivation. The scholarly life is not a job, but a vocation: ‘It’s my profession, it’s my life, it’s my love.’⁶ As reality shows again and again, academia is not a ‘nine to five’ job. Work and free time flow into each other. The actual research work very often takes place in the evenings or on weekends.

If you want to get ahead, you must publish. In practice, however, everyday academic life is often dominated by administrative tasks or time-consuming functions in committees, boards, and study or exchange programmes. The lower you are in the hierarchy, the less chance you have of getting out of it. So, in the long run, being active in academia requires a very high degree of self-motivation and tolerance of frustration.

Entry into academia is often determined by chance. It happens, for example, in the context of a tutorial or a project collaboration and later often results in a ‘muddling along’ from project to project. ‘Once you jump on the bandwagon of university scholars, everything else “results” by itself’, as it is often expressed. ‘It just happened. The career path was there. I just had to follow it. It really ... went relatively by itself through that push at the beginning ... and that’s how it went on. More or less like on autopilot, I must say.’⁷

But the ‘career on autopilot’ has pretty much stopped since the Austrian University Organisation Act of 2002 and comparable reforms in other countries. The question of employment is increasingly becoming a lottery game. On the one hand, the ‘third-party funded’ life is not really desirable in the long run for most people, with increasing age or growing family obligations. On the other hand, after a doctorate you have already invested a good part of your life in academia. Since the switch to the private sector or self-employment is often difficult for over-forty-year-olds, career motives and goals must be reflected on again and again and decisions must be made.