Collaboration and the PhD experience (Part 2): Connecting to your why and job crafting

This blog post is going to be a part of a mini series focusing on collaboration and the PhD experience drawing on excerpts from a book that I wrote with my dear colleague, Janet Salmons, last year called Reframing and Rethinking Collaboration in Higher Education and Beyond. My intention is to set up a mini series of excerpts from the book where I link into wellbeing and self-care where a bit of theory is shared and an activity is made available for you. Some elements of the posts will be direct excerpts and samples from the book and other parts I’ll curate for you. You can connect with part 1 here.

Connecting to Your Why - Purpose, Career Aspirations, Impact, and Satisfaction

Connecting to your why is an important first step to working out how to achieve the goals that excite you. Your why is connected to your self-care, how you care for yourself and indeed how you care for others with your contribution(s), and it is a large part of creating a life you enjoy living (versus merely surviving!). As doctoral students connecting to your why is often associated to your work - your PhD, how you came to undertake a PhD, and what impact you would like to have. But your why is not only about your work. It is as much about your meaning, your passions, and what drives you holistically.

In connecting to your why you will often find that the nature of what you are doing, your passion for the work you do and what contribution you want to make are all significant elements of your why. It is the bigger picture of why you are doing what you are doing. We can also find that there are some activities, collaborations or experiences that take us away from this why or blur it (this can be a time when tensions can emerge for us) as much as inspire it (when we feel highly motivated and engaged).

Self-care and Job Crafting

Let’s connect self-care and your why with the concept of job crafting. This is where we can reshape our job (in this case carrying out the PhD and what it is connected to (your work in higher education or in industry or where you are heading) in such a way that what we do becomes more closely aligned with your why - motivations, as well as your individual strengths, skills and preferences. Job crafting is a process that allows you to reshape and rethink about the nature of the job itself, including the demands experienced on the PhD as well as a personal sense of efficacy for meeting those demands (Slemp, Kern & Vella-Brodrick, 2015). Wellbeing in the workplace correlates with employee punctuality and time efficiency, less absenteeism, higher retention (Spector 2007), increased productivity, profit (Harter et al 2002b) in work-related outcomes over an extended period of time. Workplace wellbeing is linked the desirable outcomes such as job retention and enhanced performance (Harter et al. 2002a; Warr 1999).

It helps us if we can reshape and craft what it is, we do, and more importantly how we approach it. And collaboration is a part of this. Job crafting is connected significantly to working to our strengths and seeing opportunity to perhaps at times rethink how we approach a task or aspect of the job. This requires an alignment between your knowledge, strengths, skills, needs and preferences and the demands and requirements of the job (Edwards, 1991; Slemp, 2017). When alignment is in place you can become fully engaged and satisfied because you are sufficiently challenged without feeling overwhelmed (Warr & Inceoglu, 2012).

How could you craft your PhD experience to connect to your why? How could you craft your supervisory relationship to support your why?

As doctoral students, and indeed with all our work, we are increasingly seeking to derive meaning, happiness and social connections from our work, as well as opportunities for professional learning and personal growth (Avolio & Sosik 1999). There has been research of recent that highlights the shift towards employees taking a more active role in shaping their tasks, their environment, and their overall experiences in the workplace (Slemp, 2017). For you as doctoral students this is empowering. It enables you to think about your why and what you would like to achieve. For working in collaboration with your supervisor(s), this enables a way think about, or craft how you can approach your studies, research, and future plans.

We can connect with our why by thinking about workplace wellbeing and taking a proactive approach both from hedonic (affect, satisfaction, etc.) and eudaimonic (meaning, engagement, etc.) experiences (Page & Vella-Brodrick, 2009). Having a greater understanding of the factors that influence your wellbeing (and including your self-care routines) can help you to have greater control over your work/PhD experiences to increase wellbeing, satisfaction and experiences associated to working in higher education.

References

Avolio, B. J., & Sosik, J. J. (1999). A life-span framework for assessing the impact of work on white-collar workers. In S. L. Willis & J. D. Reid (Eds.), Life in the middle: psychological and social development in middle age (pp. 251–274). San Diego: Academic Press.

Edwards, J. R. (1991). Person-job fit: a conceptual integration, literature review and methodological critique. International Review of Industrial/Organizational Psychology, 6, 283–351.

Harter, J. K., Schmidt, F. L., & Keyes, C. L. (2002). Well-being in the workplace and its relationship to business outcomes: A review of the Gallup studies. In C. L. Keyes & J. Haidt (Eds.), Flourishing: the positive person and the good life (pp. 205–224). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Page, K. M., & Vella-Brodrick, D. A. (2009). The what, why and how of employee well-being: a new model. Social Indicators Research, 90, 441–458.

Slemp, G. R. (2017). Job Crafting. In L. G. Oades, M. F. Steger, A. Delle Fave, & J. Passmore. (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Positivity and Strengths-Based Approaches at Work (pp. 342-365.). West Sussex, UK.: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Slemp, G. R., Kern, M. L., & Vella-Brodrick, D. (2015). What is well-being the role of job crafting and coming support. Psychology of Well-Being, 5(7) 1 – 17.

Spector, P. (1997). Job satisfaction: application, assessment, causes and consequences. California: Sage.

Warr, P., & Inceoglu, I. (2012). Job engagement, job satisfaction, and contrasting associations with person-job fit. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 17, 129–138.

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