Tomorrow's Academic Careers
Helping Faculty Members Sharpen Their Focus
One of the most perplexing challenges for department
chairs is how to mentor faculty members who are excellent in many ways but do
not focus their energy or attention so as to achieve all that they are capable
of accomplishing. Unfocused faculty members may exhibit these characteristics:
* They?re always flustered, complaining about how much
there is to be done and then seemingly rushing off to do it, although they
rarely produce any substantive results from all of this frenzied activity.
While most faculty members may tolerate (or possibly even thrive in) all the
demands that academic life places on their time, the unfocused faculty member
too frequently seems overwhelmed even by minor challenges.
* They give you critical information, such as
self-evaluations, annual budget requests, and textbook orders only after the
deadline or, at best, at the moment they are due. If on more than one occasion
you find the same person?s report slipped under your door late in the evening
on the day you needed it or e-mailed to you only when you are printing your own
summary report to the dean, this is a faculty member who could desperate use
your mentoring skills.
* They receive evaluations on which students routinely
say that these professors? courses did not ?remain on track? or ?lacked
structure.? Unfocused faculty members frequently carry a lack of focus or
organization from their departmental behavior into their courses. When students
repeatedly comment about ?a general lack of organization? in someone?s courses,
you may find that this criticism corresponds rather well with the concerns you
are sensing in other areas of this faculty member?s performance.
Although it can be difficult to help habitually disorganized
people achieve greater focus in their work, it?s not an impossible task. The
advice each faculty member needs will vary, of course, according to individual
work habits and personal style, but there are some general guidelines that you
should use in either a formal performance review or an informal conversation.
In all cases, the faculty member may be more receptive to the advice if you
mention that you have personally found these suggestions helpful as a way of
better organizing your own time.
Set goals and deadlines in a timely manner.
Unfocused faculty members frequently feel compelled to
work on whoever problem has just caught their attention. You can provide useful
advice about how to set priorities according to the overall importance of a
task and the date at which it must be complete.
Devote a certain amount of time each day to vital,
ongoing work.
Guide the faculty member in setting aside a specific
amount of time, perhaps an hour a day, for consistent work on his or her most
important tasks. These tasks are likely to be the work that has the greatest
significance for the discipline or that faculty member?s professional
development. Encourage the faculty member to find a time that can be devoted to
work each day without interruption. The period set aside should not be during
regular office hours, and the faculty member should not even answer the phone
or read e-mail during that period unless it is likely to be an emergency.
Don?t overcommit or underestimate the amount of time that
commitments will require.
A frequent challenge of unfocused faculty members is
taking on too many obligations or assuming that they can complete a task in far
less time than it ends up requiring. Encourage the faculty member to say no to
low-priority tasks (such as service opportunities that occupy a great deal of
time with minimal benefit for either the discipline or the faculty member) and
to develop the habit of budgeting worst-case schedules rather than being overly
optimistic. Have the faculty member limit the number of meetings and
appointments to a realistic number on any given day. Always leave room in the
person?s schedule for emergencies and sudden changes that cannot be
anticipated. Never overfill a day.
Track your use of time.
Ask the faculty member to keep a time log that records
how his or her time is being spent each day, and then group these blocks of
time into various categories. Work together with the faculty member to explore
ways in which certain tasks can be done more efficiently or discarded entirely
in favor of more productive activities. If the faculty member?s appointments
and meetings tend to go overtime, ask him or her to consider why this occurs:
Does the person who is conducting the meeting focus on its primary purpose
immediately, or does it take some time to get to the main topic? Do people tend
to linger and talk long after the main purpose for the meeting has been
completed? If you observe that the faculty member frequently seems rushed when
trying to keep appointments, help this person analyze his or her use of time and
determine how long each appointment actually runs. Go over these results with
the faculty member, and together try to develop a more realistic estimate for
how long should be
blocked out for these appointments in the future.
Requiring unfocused faculty member to maintain elaborate
time logs can be counterproductive.
The time they spend filling out the log could be better
spent elsewhere. To avoid this problem, simplify the time log as much as
possible. Create a spreadsheet in which the rows break the workday into ten- or
fifteen-minute blocks. Label the columns according to major responsibilities,
such as e-mail, teaching, appointment, committee meeting, data collection, and
research writing. Then it becomes quick and easy for the faculty member to check
off what he or she is doing during each block of time.
Set time limits for certain tasks.
Unfocused faculty members tend to be perfectionists at
tasks that do not require perfection. Explain to the faculty member the
difference between a major report to an accrediting body that should be as
flawless as possible and ordinary e-mail messages that do not need to be
proofread until they are free of every typographical error. Explain to the
faculty member that not every e-mail message may be worth answering and that
the vast majority of these messages can be answered in a sentence or two at
most. Also, be sure to explain that it is perfectly acceptable to work on minor
tasks for a set amount of time and move on to something else when that time is
up.
Leverage your time.
Assist the faculty member in pursuing opportunities that
have multiple benefits. Are there scholarly projects that can also result in
curricular innovations for your department or involve students in research? Are
there creative service opportunities at your institution that could be
developed into conference presentations? This type of two-for-one assignment
can teach the faculty member to focus by clustering his or her time into a more
manageable group of projects.
Take advantage of to-do lists, but don?t become overly
dependent on them.
Establishing a clear list of items that need to be done
can be useful for setting priorities. All too often, however, people become
enslaved to their own to-do lists because the lists serve as unwelcome
reminders of all the things they will never get done. Three guidelines can help
make these lists truly productive:
1. Never record any item too large to be accomplished in
a single session. Any item that is too large to be finished in one day should
be broken down into multiple tasks that can be accomplished in one day each.
Checking off these items as they are completed will provide the faculty member
with a greater sense of accomplishment and will keep him or her from being overwhelmed
by the size of the tasks on the list.
2. An item that has remained on the to-do list for more
than a few weeks should be removed from it. Any item that gets carried over
from list to list for several weeks is unlikely to be completed. Encourage the
faculty member to refocus his or her priorities on tasks that can and will be
accomplished rather than being tyrannized by these items.
3. At the end of each day, spend no more than ten minutes
reorganizing the list for the next day?s priorities. A small amount of time
spent on setting priorities can become a useful exercise in focusing one?s
energy. Too much time spent on this task, however, becomes one more unnecessary
distraction.
?Fake it until you make it.?
Faculty members may be surprised how much more productive
they can be simply by changing their attitude and approach. The next time they
are tempted to complain about how much they still have to do, encourage them to
speak instead about whatever it is they have just completed. After doing this a
number of times, the faculty member will begin to feel that he or she is
getting a lot done. Before long, he or she will have many more formerly
overwhelming responsibilities well in hand.
In an initial conversation, it is frequently best to tell
the faculty member that you are offering these suggestions only in a spirit of
being helpful. If, in making these suggestions, you appear to be too
intimidating at first, your advice may come across as simply one more thing to
do rather than an approach that will ease the faculty member?s workload. Be
sure, too, to address one or two aspects of the faculty member?s performance
that seem meritorious. By acting in this way, you will be perceived as a true
mentor who is trying to make good work even better, rather than as a mere
supervisor who is offering criticism for its own sake.
Some mentoring challenges are best addressed in a single,
highly focused session, followed by reviews of progress that occur no more
frequently than once every term or even once a year. But mentoring unfocused
faculty members isn?t like that. The goal in these situations is to retrain an
entire mind-set and a large group of daily habits, and it will require frequent
intervention. You may have to touch base with the faculty member several times
a day initially in order to make sure that progress is being made. Even after
these initial efforts, it may be necessary to check in with the person at least
once a day for many months.
Some chairs resist this idea, thinking that it seems to
be nagging a colleague who is, after all, an adult and not part of the chair?s
official duties anyway. Nevertheless, for a department to succeed, as many
members of the department as possible should be productive in their teaching,
scholarship, and service. Mentoring or coaching an unfocused faculty member
certainly involves a large personal commitment of time and energy, and it may
well be met with resistance from the very person you?re trying to help. But in
the end, it is in the best interests of the faculty member, your department,
and your own career as an academic leader.
RESOURCES
Creshaw, D. (2008). The myth of multitasking: How doing
it all gets nothing done. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Crouch, C. (2007). Getting organized: improving focus,
organization and productivity. Memphis, TN: Dawson.
Morgenstern, J. (2004). Time management from the inside
out: The foolproof system for taking control of your schedule?and your life
(2nd ed.). New York: Holt.
Palladino, L. J. (2007). Find your focus zone: An
effective new plan to defeat distraction and overload. New York: Free Press.
Sterner, T. M. (2005). The practicing mind: Bringing
discipline and focus into your life. Wilmington, DE: Mountain Sage Publishing.
Wolff, J. M. (2010). Focus: Use the power of targeted
thinking to get more done. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Tomorrow's Professor: Helping Faculty Members Sharpen Their Focus
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