Dr Rebecca Khanna, Assistant Dean, Academic Development writes this week’s Faculty Leadership Message talking about the importance of taking a pause and reflection.
Last week I returned to work from our annual holiday – a much needed recharge. This time away helped my mental ‘pause button’ to be pressed, stopping the usual fast, ‘on-a-mission’, multi-task thinking that goes on for us all throughout most of the year.
In my role as Assistant Dean, Academic Development, with a focus on ‘Shaping Futures’ advancing the learning partnership between students, staff and their experience, sometimes I am left feeling like a ‘jack of all trades’ and master of none. Yet despite being stretched across different aspects of the student journey, the abiding impression I get in working with colleagues is on doing things well. We practice our craft(s) in an exacting environment one that is in consistent flux; these conditions often promote a focus on ‘the thing’ itself and what we could do better, rather than having pride in what has gone well. This situation reminds me of Richard Sennett’s ‘The Craftsmen’ who writes about practicing a [professional] craft and how pursuing a craft often leaves us with competing expectations of what good looks like to the extent of objectifying it and loosing sight of purpose.
At this stage within the University year, we need to create moments for a slight pause, to put the year in perspective, reflect and reconnect the purpose of what has been progressed with the process of going about it. Alongside the personal graft, it’s a good time to be grateful for the professional generosity of colleagues who have shared resources, their ideas, limited time helping us ‘not to loose the plot’ and reconnect with the purpose of what we are about in creating knowledge, shaping futures, leading locally and globally as one team, department and university.
If you are in need of a conversation to rekindle collective motivation around purpose, perhaps to recalibrate the desire to get things absolutely right with standards that are embedded in academic and professional practice, do let me know. All the best for some ‘recharging’ moments during the coming weeks.
