EXECUTIVE & LEADERSHIP COACH
EXECUTIVE & LEADERSHIP COACH
Academic careers promise pride, prestige, and accomplishment. And yet...
Faculty wellness and a healthy approach to career development often are not prioritized within departments facing pressure to excel in the nation's top schools and universities.
Navigating a highly-productive and balanced journey through the world of academia is complex.
Private executive and leadership coaching with Dr. Dawn Comeau provides the necessary support to faculty, department heads, and academic teams, in the quest to become truly exceptional.
Dawn works with faculty of all ranks and tracks but specializes in supporting junior faculty during the most important steps of their careers.
Even with strong mentoring, faculty need space to pull all aspects of their life together without judgement or backlash. Coaching provides an empowered approach to identifying impediments, overcoming setbacks, and concretizing an academic life that is rewarding, sustainable, and even joyful.
Faculty are often appointed into new leadership roles without much advance notice or leadership training. This new visibility and responsibility can feel paralyzing. Nonetheless, it is expected that faculty show competency and rapid success with meeting major milestones. Dawn helps faculty develop their own leadership style, build self-confidence in their leadership approach, and implement innovative strategic plans while minimizing daily disruptions and distractions. This is one of the most important times to work with an executive coach--- it ensures early success and builds trust in your role as a leader.
Academia can be a challenging environment for women and historically marginalized individuals. Although gains have been made in some institutions, women, faculty of color, and members of minority groups can be left wondering how to navigate bias, discrimination, and institutional culture that is still inequitable. As a coach, Dawn can help identify and distill challenges with support, compassion, and understanding. Drawing from her personal and professional work experiences with diversity, equity, and inclusion, Dawn can offer strategies for advancing through these complex climates with an eye towards justice.
“I don’t belong here.” We all think this at some point in our careers. Feelings of fraudulence despite success, fears that “shortcomings” will be discovered, doubts in our abilities, and overwhelming anxieties that we don’t have what it takes to succeed despite high accolades and early success. Dawn can help address the root causes of imposter syndrome, minimize the feelings of self-doubt, isolation, and loneliness, and provide strategies to calm the negative voices that interfere with healthy success.
At some point in our careers, we all burnout, and feel some or all these things: Emotional and physical exhaustion, excessive stress and anxiety, difficulties concentrating, grumpiness and irritability, withdrawing and distancing from others, and an overall lower work performance. Are you asking, “Will this ever feel better?” If yes, this is an important time for a coach. An executive coach, like Dawn, can help faculty find new strategies to rest, re-energize, and once again feel the joy of working.
Research shows that faculty with strong mentorship are more likely to succeed. Having a good mentor allows faculty to visualize the next levels of success and model best practices such as how build research portfolios, improve pedagogy, lead teams, and manage interpersonal dynamics. However, strong mentoring isn’t always readily available or equitably accessible. An executive coach can fill that void and offer balanced guidance. An executive coach can help you build a strong support team that surpasses just one mentor and builds a broad spectrum of support and encouragement.
“Is this it?”
“Is there something better?” After years of training, research, and teaching, it is common to have feelings of disappointment and disillusionment about an academic career, especially when fellow colleagues seem stretched and imbalanced. With coaching, the right skills, the right mindset, and a certain level of consciousness, it is possible to pave a thriving career, to feel energized and excited about work, and fulfill a greater life’s purpose.
FAMILIAR CHALLENGES IN ACADEMIC CAREERS
Starting a career with promotion in mind is critical. But determining the right steps towards advancement, sifting through confusing (and often conflicting) advice from chairs, colleagues and peers, and understanding promotion policies can be daunting and overwhelming. With the help of a private coach like Dawn, faculty can work with intention and confidence towards preparing for their 3rd year review, tenure packet, and promotion materials. Coaching helps with receiving and integrating feedback, conveying the “story” of career achievement in alignment with promotion criteria and building a strong identity as researcher and teacher. Furthermore, a coach ensures attainment of career goals after major milestones such as a third-year review, promotion to associate professor, and newly awarded research projects and leadership roles.
A career in academia comes with the ongoing pressure to publish. Hitting benchmarks, getting manuscripts accepted in top-tier peer-reviewed journals, navigating co-authorship and research teams, managing writing time, staying motivated, overcoming writer’s block…it all comes with the territory. Coaching helps faculty identify the main obstacles and pressures, negotiate conversations with editors, prioritize the most important writing goals, and provide necessary perspective throughout the writing process so that faculty achieve a strong publication record and disseminate cutting-edge research.
Even the most gifted teachers need new ideas for classroom innovation and student support. Teaching classes is more than assembling lesson plans, writing lectures, and grading papers. It also requires managing a demanding teaching load, applying inclusive pedagogy and equitable teaching practices, mentoring students, undergoing teaching evaluations, and managing difficult students and classroom dynamics. As a coach, Dawn can help to synthesize teaching evaluations, develop new learning activities, prepare syllabi and lectures, and strengthen relationships with students, teaching assistants, and mentees. Most importantly, Dawn can help with time-saving strategies so that teaching remains manageable and does not interfere with research goals (or your weekend plans).
The essential task of hunting for, assembling, and writing grant proposals can be overwhelming and exhausting. The biggest challenges can be finding ways to remain creative, building collaborations, being innovative, and staying motivated. It isn’t easy to know which grants to apply for, what to write, or when to submit. A specialized coach like Dawn, who understands the grant landscape, can help faculty strategize on proposal writing and grant submissions and provide tools for staying engaged in the face of criticism and rejection.
When placed into a new role, given a new set of responsibilities, or working with people across departments, faculty can encounter surprising dysfunction. Faculty often face issues with team dynamics, unpredictable faculty or staff, unequal distribution of service work, others taking credit for your work, and more. With the right tools from an executive and leadership coach, faculty can learn to manage some of the challenges that arise and minimize time spent on issues that detract from important goals and projects.
Managing a balanced life while also nourishing a highly successful career can feel impossible. Whether it’s demands from family (children, partners, aging parents), a desire to work remotely, a need for more physical activity and mindfulness, or finding time for community work and social activism, it’s important to integrate wellness into life as a faculty member. A coach can help improve time management, provide strategies for saying no, and help set and keep priorities that honor personal health and professional goals.
Starting a career with promotion in mind is critical. But determining the right steps towards advancement, sifting through confusing (and often conflicting) advice from chairs, colleagues, and peers, and understanding promotion policies can be daunting and overwhelming. With the help of a private coach like Dawn, faculty can work with intention and confidence towards preparing for their third-year review, tenure packet, and promotion materials. Coaching helps with receiving and integrating feedback, conveying the “story” of career achievement in alignment with promotion criteria, and building a strong identity as researcher and teacher. Furthermore, a coach ensures attainment of career goals after major milestones such as promotion to associate professor, newly awarded research projects and leadership roles.
A career in academia comes with the ongoing pressure to publish. Hitting benchmarks, getting manuscripts accepted in top-tier peer-reviewed journals, navigating co-authorship and research teams, managing writing time, staying motivated, overcoming writer’s block…it all comes with the territory. Coaching helps faculty identify the main obstacles and pressures, negotiate conversations with editors, prioritize the most important writing goals, and provide necessary perspective throughout the writing process so that faculty achieve a strong publication record and disseminate cutting-edge research.
Even the most gifted teachers need new ideas for classroom innovation and student support. Teaching classes is more than assembling lesson plans, writing lectures, and grading papers. It also requires managing a demanding teaching load, applying inclusive pedagogy and equitable teaching practices, mentoring students, undergoing teaching evaluations, and managing difficult students and classroom dynamics. As a coach, Dawn can help to synthesize teaching evaluations, develop new learning activities, prepare syllabi and lectures, and strengthen relationships with students, teaching assistants, and mentees. Most importantly, Dawn can help with time-saving strategies so that teaching remains manageable and does not interfere with research goals (or your weekend plans).
The essential task of hunting for, assembling and writing grant proposals can be overwhelming and exhausting. It isn’t easy to know which grants to apply for, what to write, or when to submit. The biggest challenges can be finding ways to remain creative, building collaborations, being innovative in the writing, and staying motivated. Coaches who understand the grant landscape can help faculty navigate it, can provide tools for turning rejection into success, and offer techniques to stay engaged in the face of criticism and rejection.
When placed into a new role, given a new set of responsibilities, or working with people across departments, faculty can encounter surprising dysfunction. Faculty often face issues with team dynamics, unpredictable faculty or staff, unequal distribution of service work, others taking credit for your work, and more. With the right tools from an executive and leadership coach, faculty can learn to manage some of the challenges that arise and minimize time spent on issues that detract from important goals and projects.
Managing a balanced life while also nourishing a highly successful career can feel impossible. Whether it’s demands from family (children, partners, aging parents), a desire to work remotely, a need for more physical activity and mindfulness, or finding time for community work and social activism, it’s important to integrate wellness into life as a faculty member. A coach can help improve time management, provide strategies for saying no, and help set and keep priorities that honor personal health and professional goals.
Faculty are often appointed into new leadership roles without much advance notice or leadership training. This new visibility and responsibility can feel paralyzing. Nonetheless, it is expected that faculty show competency and rapid success with meeting major milestones. Dawn helps faculty develop their own leadership style, build self-confidence in their leadership approach, and implement innovative strategic plans while minimizing daily disruptions and distractions. This is one of the most important times to work with an executive coach--- it ensures early success and builds trust in your role as a leader.
Academia can be a challenging environment for women and historically marginalized individuals. Although gains have been made in some institutions, women, faculty of color, and members of minority groups can be left wondering how to navigate bias, discrimination, and institutional culture that is still inequitable. As a coach, Dawn can help identify and distill challenges with support, compassion, and understanding. Drawing from her personal and professional work experiences with diversity, equity, and inclusion, Dawn can offer strategies for advancing through these complex climates with an eye towards justice.
“I don’t belong here.” We all think this at some point in our careers. Feelings of fraudulence despite success, fears that “shortcomings” will be discovered, doubts in our abilities, and overwhelming anxieties that we don’t have what it takes to succeed despite high accolades and early success. Dawn can help address the root causes of imposter syndrome, minimize the feelings of self-doubt, isolation, and loneliness, and provide strategies to calm the negative voices that interfere with healthy success.
At some point in our careers, we all burnout, and feel some or all these things: Emotional and physical exhaustion, excessive stress and anxiety, difficulties concentrating, grumpiness and irritability, withdrawing and distancing from others, and an overall lower work performance. Are you asking, “Will this ever feel better?” If yes, this is an important time for a coach. An executive coach, like Dawn, can help faculty find new strategies to rest, re-energize, and once again feel the joy of working.
Research shows that faculty with strong mentorship are more likely to succeed. Having a good mentor allows faculty to visualize the next levels of success and model best practices such as how build research portfolios, improve pedagogy, lead teams, and manage interpersonal dynamics. However, strong mentoring isn’t always readily available or equitably accessible. An executive coach can fill that void and offer balanced guidance. An executive coach can help you build a strong support team that surpasses just one mentor and builds a broad spectrum of support and encouragement.
“Is this it?”
“Is there something better?” After years of training, research, and teaching, it is common to have feelings of disappointment and disillusionment about an academic career, especially when fellow colleagues seem stretched and imbalanced. With coaching, the right skills, the right mindset, and a certain level of consciousness, it is possible to pave a thriving career, to feel energized and excited about work, and fulfill a greater life’s purpose.