Dr Sarah Brooks is a senior lecturer in Organisational Behaviour in the Management School at The University of Sheffield. Sarah combines coaching in her work, in different ways. She is teaching undergraduate students to gain thinking tools for career development planning, and she integrates coaching into her research portfolio, for example, with a project using coaching as a route to voice, for individuals who have experienced sexual harassment. Sarah has also built a private coaching practice called Powerful Dreaming.

Sarah’s entry into academic work came after several years working in the corporate sector as a management consultant. She was disillusioned working in this environment and started a part-time course in Psychology at the Open University. This course opened her awareness that developing people was central to her interests. She pursued this with a Master’s in Psychology. It was during this early period of uncertainty about the kind of career to pursue next that she experienced a coaching conversation. This early conversation helped her navigate her career decisions.

Even though she returned to consultancy work after her Master’s, she trained in coaching skills whilst still a consultant and later continued with a formal coaching qualification and accreditation. Her combined interest in coaching and developing people led her to undertake a PhD on voice and silences in upward communication in the workplace.

Sarah has chosen to align her academic role with her growing interest in coaching. Instead of splitting these two parts of her life and professional identity, she has found a way of bringing coaching as a core anchor that underpins everything she does.

She describes that it felt bold and daring to have coaching as a visible anchor in her academic focus. She started to talk to other people about this integration of coaching and academic research. Hearing others share that her integration was thought-provoking helped her build confidence that this integration made sense. Interestingly, her research thread over the years has been about finding voice. This integration of her coaching into her academic work has been about finding her own authentic voice and research niche, as an academic.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• How coaching conversations at critical career junctures can help ease decisions and transition
• How to bring together different parts of yourself to build your research niche and your authentic voice as an academic
• How coaching skills can be woven into so many levels in academic lives

More on Sarah:

https://sheffield.ac.uk/management/people/academic-staff/wp/sarah-brooks

Prof. Jenny Clark is a Materials Physics research leader in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at The University of Sheffield. Jenny has sailed the fellowship boat to build her research career while putting her family as one of her priorities. She is an example to showcase that whilst no one can ever “do it all”, researchers with parenting responsibilities can progress in science and protect their family time.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• What are the boundaries between work and other parts of your life that you want to reassess and work on?
• What could be more in control/ feeling more balanced look like for you?
• What are you prepared to push away/ say no to/ accept not to be involved in to reclaim a sense of control?

Read the full blogpost:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/jenny-clark

Dr Phil Elks is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Medicine and Population Health at The University of Sheffield. His research career has been dedicated to using Zebrafish as a model to study human diseases. Being part of a vibrant community using this animal model has shaped his career.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• How spotting small funding opportunities is part of shifting towards research independence
• What informal opportunities may you consider to construct your leadership development
• What could be your best recruitment strategy for building your team

Read the full blog post here:
tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/phil-elks