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The Art and Science of professional relationships
Co-facilitators: Yan Li, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, The Graduate School; Maria Wisdom, Assistant Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement
Professional relationships are as important as ideas in graduate education, contributing to student learning, research development, personal wellbeing, and career success. This workshop series offers students a reflective, collegial space and evidence-based tools for building productive relationships with mentors, graduate faculty, research collaborators, and peers. The series fulfills Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training and also integrates frameworks from the relationship-based helping professions of therapy and professional coaching.
Participants will:
- Gain an appreciation for professional relationship-building as an essential learned practice;
- Understand the attributes of healthy professional relationships, including reciprocity, mutual positive regard, and trust;
- Develop effective practices to support relationship-building, including self-reflection, initiating connection, and active listening;
- Acquire a range of tested frameworks and tools to support-relationship building;
- Emerge feeling more confident and competent about building professional relationships
Each session in this series has been approved for two hours of RCR credit and is intended for graduate students.
Time: 12:00 p.m. - 2 p.m. (all on Tuesdays), with lunch included.
What is a healthy “relationship with self” and why is it a critical foundation for building relationships with others? We will discuss practices and tools to enhance self-awareness, including personal values clarification, aligning values and strengths with professional goals, and articulating relevant needs and growth areas.
What does it mean to “connect” with someone in a professional context? We will discuss the critical elements of effective developmental relationships, including mutual trust and the ability to navigate power dynamics. We will also consider both internal and external barriers to developing robust relational networks and strategies for mitigating those.
We will focus more narrowly on high-stakes, formal developmental relationships such as PhD Advisor-grad student, PI-junior researcher, and supervisor-staff. We will discuss strategies for “managing up,” communicating proactively, clarifying norms and expectations (including the exchange of feedback), and measurable learning outcomes.
What options do we have when professional relationships threaten to inhibit our growth rather than promote it? We will discuss options and strategies for salvaging less effective relationships, and for repairing ones that feel broken. Participants will learn frameworks for difficult conversations, conflict management, boundary setting, and repairing relationships while maintaining professionalism and psychological safety.