How is collegiality practiced in academia?

Do your colleagues make it easy for you to thrive at work? If you're as excited about colleagiality as the PostDoc Office team, you will enjoy the below reflections to mark the transition from 2024 into 2025. They are examples of the power of good relationships in academia - and include suggestions for those who aren't yet happily collaborating.

Overview:

1. How collegiality is practiced in the PostDoc Office and Doctoral Academy
2. Writing Groups: How to create a supportive interdisciplinary group
3. How to be more confident in your academic career with the help of peers
4. Methods to professionalize peer networking
5. Why researchers engage in peer mentoring
6. How community building can fail and what to do about it
7. The Concept of Sponsorship in Academia
8. How research groups can distribute leadership 

1) What does collegiality look like our everyday life in the Doctoral Academy & PostDoc Office Team?

Our two sub-units are focussed on the career development of doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers respectively. This area has grown from one staff member over a decade ago to six (and counting) today, and we are still evolving, as we keep innovating and developing new services. 

These are the core principles that are shared among the team members:

• Sharing responsibility - in our case, a form of "distributed leadership". We're known to be good at "leading ourselves" as a team, and of us will take one small piece of a big task (from hiring and onboarding new staff, project concepts and implementation, to creating strategic documents and event management).
• There's always a team effort to achieve a positive outcome - we take on tasks according to inclinations and abilities, and there is no competitive spirit in terms of work areas, everyone's contribution is made visible.
• We have a shared understanding on priorities: focus on impactful activities, don't shut ourselves off from new projects, and create change were we see it's needed. We will do this within our resources, and advocate for more if more are needed.
• We support each others' desires to go for lunch walks/exercise, go home on time, have massages, and take regular holidays, while also communicating about coverage, and helping out with each of the inboxes and telephones.
• We try to take time out as a team to reflect (with a coach), and take time to chat to each other (sometimes more, sometimes less).
• The team has arrived at these working principles "by accident", as each new team members got added to the mix over more than a decade. But it's not only luck, it's also due to good communication, and a working system that doesn't need changed. 

How did your team evolve? And how do you adjust collaboration practices so everyone can thrive?

2) Writing Groups: How to create a supportive interdisciplinary group

How can random strangers help you with reaching your research goals? In this segment, we focus on the example of a writing group that has no fixed members, is interdisciplinary, and still a supportive space. 

What is it and how does it work (at Uni Graz)?

• Prequisite is a room and a dedicated time per week, and a mailing list which sends reminders weekly.
• Those who want show up on time and get drinks and coffee.
• Then they dedicate 15 minutes to introducing what they are working on and on sharing their writing goals for the day.
• There are two slots of 45 minutes in which people write silently, and in between a 15 minute break.
• There is time to reflect together, set the next goals for the time outside the group, and mingle at the end.

What are the benefits?

• A weekly dedicated time and space to write helps you keep accountable.
• Voicing and tracking your goals in front of an audience of peers helps to make progress.
• In interdisciplinary groups with no fixed members it can sometimes be easier to be open about setbacks and challenges.
• Similiarly, you gain access to a wide array of coping mechanisms (e.g. with writing blocks) from researchers in different fields.
• You make new connections and see directly what people across the university are working on.
• In times of telework and in fields in which team work isn't common, you have the chance to get out of your office and into a social space.

At the PostDoc Office of University of Graz, we offer support (coffee, mailing list, office space) for the writing group. It's organised by researchers themselves. More info: postdoc.uni-graz.at/en/offers-for-postdocs/writing-group-and-writing-retreat/

What experiences do you have with support from "kind strangers"?

3) How can peers support improving trust in yourself and in your academic career?

Do you feel you have to prove yourself as an academic? Until one reaches tenure, progessing in academia means being constantly assessed - in funding panels, in submitting articles, by hiring panels, or for boards in your own field. It's nice to have respite from this every now and then. 

You can (and probably have done!) create spaces among peers where you are accepted as the expert scholar you are, and valued for everything you bring to the table.

A popular example are supportive groups for female scholars. Another is our Uni Graz PostDoc peer mentoring programme, which is interdisciplinary and mixed-gender. Here's what we have heard from participants in past cohorts:

It is a safe environment where you can freely talk about different topics. I learned many new methods, and started to cherish and acknowledge my academic career even more.

In a sense, I have spent most of my time with fellow anthropologists, ethnologists, historians… and here, there were a geographer, a chemist, an economist, psychologists…. And they all have similar interests as I have.

We’re all from different research areas but we have very similar challenges. For example: Should I leave academia or should I stay? Which kinds of projects should I apply for? Should we leave the country, should we apply to this or that position? Family and academia, or problems with research leaders, research groups and so on. I really enjoyed that people are open, we can talk about everything, it seems like, and people take their time to listen.

We have heard from peer mentoring group members that it's a space where you "can heal from competition". We recommend cultivating such environments for yourself to maintain your confidence as a scholar.

Spaces in which you receive:

• unconditional positive regard (a term heard from Darcey Gillie)
• acknowledgement of your expertise
• interest in and compassion for your challenges
• support and inspiration for solutions that won't stress you out

Have you such environments already?

4. How can you "professionalize" peer support?

Rather than spur-of-the-moment meet-ups, you might decide you want a more structured approach to collegial consultations. Let us show you an approach for professionals who think they can learn from each other in order to improve their practice.

Kollegiale Fallberatung / Co-Development / Collegial Consultation / Action Learning Sets

(These names point to different "creators", but the structure is similar.)

• A meeting follows a strict schedule with rules ensuring respect, kindness, freedom of speech, no judgement, acceptance of each others' backgrounds.
• Regular 1h30 (virtual) gatherings. Each time, one person benefits from the others' attention to a particular issue they bring.
• There are roles, among these: a case owner who raises the practical problem (“case”), a facilitator who moderates the process and ensures that times and roles are adhered to, and counsellors who develop ideas, thoughts and questions to help the case owner.
• First, the "case owner" details the issues from which they want to take a step back in order to be more effective, then, very factual questions are asked in order to clearly understand the problem, and the person states again their wish from the group, then the "consultants" start to propose solutions (without interference from the asker), then ,an action plan can be developed by the person, considering proposals of the group, or rejecting them.
• This method can improve active listening, empathy, encourages participants to welcome and reflect before accepting or rejecting ideas, develops relationships among participants, gives an impulse to participants so they can move forward. 

Read more here:

• in German: wikis.fu-berlin.de/display/dsetoolbox/Kollegiale+Fallberatung
• in French: https://pedagogie.uquebec.ca/le-tableau/le-codeveloppement-un-outil-de-formation-professionnelle
• in English:  INTRAC Guide to Action Learning Sets 260511

At the University of Graz, researchers can get training in team consultation methods from Yasmin Dolak-Struss, for example through the Peer Mentoring Programme or the Network for Supervisors.

5. Why do researchers engage in peer mentoring?

What motivates postdoctoral researchers to engage in peer networking? What are their experiences with collaboration? Rahel More, current participant of the PostDoc Peer Mentoring Programme, provided us with an interview that gives an insight into her motivation and wider-reaching collaborative practices.

Where is your research located and situated?

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Educational Science at the University of Graz, where I am the PI of the research project Child welfare services, disabled children and their families (APART GSK 12065) funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In addition, I am a FWF Esprit fellow as PI of a feminist research project on ableism at the University of Vienna. My main research areas are therefore feminist Dis/ability Studies, Social Pedagogy and Social Work, Inclusion, and Child Welfare and Protection Services.

What role does collaboration play in your work?

One of the things I stand for as a researcher in the fields of Disability Studies and Social Pedagogy is collaboration with relevant agents both within and beyond academia, such as social movements, policy makers and professionals. I engage in different forms of collaborative, e.g. participatory, research and I also bring my research expertise into activist and policy contexts, for instance as a member of the Carinthian Monitoring Committee for the implementation of the UN CRPD. Within academia I am for instance active in the team of Disability Studies Austria (http://dista.uniability.org) and have initiated networking around Motherhood & Science (http://mutterschaftundwissenschaft.univie.ac.at), which has led to several local groups across Austria.

Why are peer networks important for postdocs, and for you especially? 

As the PI of two research projects my workload mostly consists of research, which is great as I am very flexible and self-determined in my work. At the same time, this sometimes can feel a bit lonely which is why peer networks are, in my opinion, important for every stage of an academic career. As postdocs we are more independent than PhDs but often don’t have our own established teams yet and for this reason networks can be a space to give and receive support in navigating all kinds of (often structural) challenges in academia. That being said, all networks also bring their own challenges and one of them, in my experience, is creating commitment while appreciating that everyone has multiple roles and responsibilities that shape the way we all have different resources that we can bring – and sometimes cannot bring – to a networking community.

What's one experience that stood out from the Peer Mentoring Programme so far?

What stood out to me in the peer mentoring programme was its adaptability according to our needs as a (small) group of postdocs. For instance, we realised about halfway through the programme, that what we needed was more input by experts regarding things such as mental health, leadership and negotiation in academia. Regardless of the challenges we have had as a small group, from my point of view we have connected in a mutually supportive way.

Thank you so much, Rahel More, for agreeing to this interview - and congratulations to all members of the current team on their dedication to collaboration! This cohort will be recognized at the PostDoc Office Annual Event on April 16, 2025 by the Vice-Rector for Research. The new call can be found here.

(Interview: 18.11.2024, Questions: Johanna Stadlbauer)

6. How can community building in academia fail?

Why it might not work to build stable and supportive peer networks, and what to do about it: Have you tried your hand at organizing fellow early-career researchers around a shared interest or goal? Have you succeeded?

Here are some factors that can make it challenging.

• competitive environments teach us to be careful about being too transparent in a professional context
• organizing can be hard when people drop out of contact due to health issues or contract changes
• strong networkers and idea generators might quit their participation (new job, work overload)
• different life experiences and personalities might result in mismatched expectations
• friendships form and split off from the group
• people somehow don't get the information about meetings because there is so much stuff going on
• group settings might not be “welcoming” and inclusive enough and only attract certain backgrounds

Despite this, many researchers make communities work (such as Netzwerk Mutterschaft und Wissenschaft, MCAA Austria Chapter, Marie Curie Alumni Association, Piscopia Initiative, Graz Open Science Initiative, the Graz Supervisor Network...).

So what to do if you want to succeed with facilitating a community?

• Build on existing structures rather than creating a new one.
• Get advice from seasoned networkers.
• Keep it simple (time-saving ways of finding dates, meeting places, sharing notes, etc).
• Find professional services staff who can offer you assistence as part of their jobs.
• Aim for clarity and a joint understanding about goals, process, and roles.
• Find a way to save your joint values for the cooperation and make it accessible for newcomers.

What else works for you?

A useful new book on this subject (suggested by Stefania Silvestri): Building Communities in Academia, edited by Aarnikoivu/Tam Le: Building Communities in Academia | Emerald Insight

7: The Concept of Sponsorship in Academia

Have you had someone wield influence on your behalf? Have you advocated for colleagues to be incuded? What has this to do with diversity and equity? 

Let us explore the idea of intentionally and actively leveraging relationships to aid someone's career progression: the concept of sponsorship. 

Christine Parsons and Patricia O Connor use the example of early career-researchers:

„Examples of sponsorship in academia can range from introducing a junior researcher to well-established colleagues, inviting them to a grant-application meeting, including them on a prestigious conference panel or mentioning them in a faculty meeting. Sponsorship often comprises small but career-making actions: One example is inviting a PhD student to a coffee meeting with a visiting professor. These small actions can accumulate, helping to accelerate the careers of some researchers, even when formal mentorship is equally available to all.“ 

(Nature Career Column, Jan 19, 2023)

You might have done it yourself, when you occupied a position of influence, and 

• brought a colleague into a circle
• spoke well about them when it mattered
• used your capital to bring about a high-visibility opportunity
• advocated for improving someone’s environment/salary/resources. 

Sponsorship can be used to increase diversity in academia:

• Sponsorship helps levelling the playing field when scholars already have confidence, knowledge, skills, and mentors, but face systemic barriers to progress.
• Formal sponsorship programmes are employed by institutions to accelerate career progression for minoritised staff.
• It’s practiced conciously by those who want more diversity in leadership at their institution and want to see so-far underrepresented groups realize their full potential towards research excellence. 

Useful references: 

• Nature Column: You’ve heard of mentorship in science, but what about sponsorship?
• White Rose Equity in Leadership Programme

8: Which leadership practices do effective research groups use? 

Let's look at forms of distributing responsibilities and sharing leadership among team members. One example is called open leadership. 

Open projects, used in data science, are designed to ensure that all team members "understand the project so well that it can run without leaders because all the members are empowered to take on leadership tasks“ (quote: The Turing Way, book.the-turing-way.org/collaboration/leadership)

Characteristics of approaches like this are: 

• members of the group are attuned to one another and work together towards an overarching goal
• a common will to "solve the problem" is there
• structures and processes are made transparent and collaboratively adapted, e.g. in a team manual
• awareness of unique skills, ideas and experiences that each individual brings in is ensured
• everyone works on keeping clarity about responsibilities for tasks
• the way of working together and making decisions is continually reflected upon and adapted
• decisions are not made on the basis of individual authority, but based on suggestions that have broad approval in the group

Among the benefits are:

• Effective use of resources (ex., it avoids the "I have nothing to do while my colleague is overworked" scenario)
• Everyone has leadership learning opportunities
• Stress reduction because responsibility rests on everyone's shoulders
• Innovation due to regular exchange of ideas
• Diversity of perspectives can lead to quicker problem solving

What are your experiences of this way of distributing leadership among colleagues? 

Useful references:

• Team manuals or lab handbooks are tools used in this approach; examples: www.win.ox.ac.uk/about/training/lab-handbooks and book.the-turing-way.org/collaboration/team-manual
• Read more on distributed & shared leadership approachs in a blog article by Ingo Kallenbach and Carolin Merz: "Verteilte Führung", blog.reflect-beratung.de/verteilte-f%C3%BChrung-chancen-und-risiken-1

(Written in October and November 2024 by Johanna Stadlbauer, contact: postdoc@uni-graz.at)