Being an academic is so complex, confusing, empowering, inspiring, challenging, and frustrating, that at times we do not know if we want to celebrate or cry. The context we work in is incredibly multifaceted (see, for example, Boyd et al., 2011; Coulthard & Keller, 2016; Gillespie et al., 2001; Guthrie et al., 2017; Lemon & Garvis, 2014; Lemon & McDonough, 2018; Torp et al., 2016). As JoŃlle Fanghanel (2001) reminds us:
Complexity and diversity stem as much from the structural condition in which academics work (institutions, policy frameworks, academic conventions) as they do from the specific ways in which they respond as individuals to those conditions (their ageic positioning towards those, and their own belief about education and the academic endeavour).
(p. 2)
We work in hybrid environments that demand a lot from us. We are required to be experts in a field that requires years and years of dedication and constant engagement, while working across varied areas that require different skill sets, many of which we have never been trained in. We educate the future, inspire thinking, encourage innovation while working with students, at the same time managing several other projects that are just as demanding as one another that require significant deep thinking. Oh, and donāt forget to add in high administrative and leadership loads that bring their own demands as much as moments of joy. As we negotiate who and how we are in higher education, we also do this within a system that is forever cutting back resources, and in itself trying to figure out who they are in an ever-changing world that requires more from the institutions that support knowledge production and the future of our workforces. Covid exacerbated this for us. A system that was broken but was being held together with gaffer tape broke. Some great opportunities came from the pivot to different ways of working; however, any cracks that existed opened up, and there have now been large parts removed. That tape could not be repaired, fixed, or replaced anymore. Those layers of tape on top of tape just could not hold. And, as a consequence, the impact is palpable. As I write this chapter in March 2021, we are in the midst of a sector that is in dire need of rebuilding, addressing those blind spots that have been ignored for some time.
What is clear is that as academics we are working in a forever changing climate that is, at the best of times, elusive. How we engage with our job is located within many complex tensions underpinned by our why (meaning and purpose for being an academic), our values, belief systems, lived experiences, and how we see ourselves. This later has us also being honest about where we place taking care of ourselves ā our mind, body, and spirit. It is imperative that we consider our self-care and wellbeing in this context.
Valuing the place of relationships
What is key even more so is that relationships and how we listen to one another are paramount. If we think about wellbeing, we know that we are required to address a number of areas that support us to be the best we can be. Relationships are an important aspect of this. The relationship between āIā, āweā, and āusā is imperative. Inherent in our work is working with others ā students, colleagues, policy-makers, and various key stakeholders internally and externally. We work within teams, across teams, leading teams, and we work with ourselves.
There have been considerable shifts in understanding how people can create and maintain their wellbeing with the introduction of positive psychology (Seligman, 2011). Specifically, in focusing more on sustaining wellbeing, rather than fixing mental health (Oades et al., 2017; McQuaid & Kern, 2017). As we think about wellbeing, varying environments are required for consideration, including the workplace. The workplace, in this case for us it is higher education, is an environment that many of us spend significant time in, find meaning, and form identities (Ashmore et al., 2004; Dutton et al., 2010; Pratt et al., 2006). It is a place that inspires and but can also be inconducive to wellbeing (McQuaid & Kern, 2017).
In the workplace, relationships influence identity (Gecas, 1982; Gergen, 1994); this includes seeking social support and work-based friendships (Dutton & Ragins, 2007; Berman et al., 2002). Although research is not in agreeance of how a positive work identity is maintained (Dutton et al., 2010), there are many influences including how individuals construct a positive work-related identity as they develop in a career, and how one is motivated or maintains a positive focus when feeling isolated or overcomes physical, moral, or social taints to create a positive sense of self at work (Dutton et al., 2010; Kreiner et al., 2006). In higher education, relationships are fundamental to the role itself but also for individual meaning-making and are substantial influences in the act of wellbeing and self-care.
Culture has been identified as one of the most powerful and stable forces in operation within an organisation (Howard, 1998; Schein, 1990). Each organisation is unique and is significantly influenced by survival (internal and external influences) (Howard, 1998). Currently, within the sector there are opposing conceptions of the academy and its workers (Cannizzo, 2018), for example fast versus slow productivity (Berg & Seeber, 2016; Pels, 2003). There is a strong rhetoric that academic workers are under more pressure than in the past, and as a result this pressurisation is leading to widespread negative consequences, often labelled as toxic (Cannizzo, 2018, p. 1). Mountz et al. (2015) contend that increasing work demands on academics result in a āpsychic and physical toll that is neither reasonable nor sustainableā (p. 1237), with this illuminating the need for a disruption āin todayās frenetic and constantly changing higher education environmentā where āfaculty and professional staff are in need of balance in their livesā (Beer et al., 2015, p. 161). There is a shift towards a ānewā academic who is simultaneously autonomous and a team player or who is as Pitt and Mewburn (2016) describe, an āāacademic super-heroā, capable of being everything to everyoneā (p. 99). With these continual shifts, studies have found that the erosion of relationships, and especially collegiality and feeling of belonging in academic environments, sees a rise in behaviour that is underpinned by bullying linked to growing workload pressures, role ambiguity, competitiveness, and threats to professional status (Clark et al., 2013; McKay et al., 2008; Zabrodska et al., 2011). What is even more significant is that bullying increases in academia during times of uncertainty and increasing change (Weinberg et al., 2010). While we acknowledge these tensions, ones I have unpacked in detail in previous writing (Lemon, 2018), what I am heartened with is the emergent conversations about a compassionate university (Boyd & Grant, 2019; Waddington, 2021) or a positive university (Oades et al., 2011), both at individual and systemic levels.
As much as supportive cultures are crucial to wellbeing, and job satisfaction, relationships with others are crucial in reducing stress or tension at the time of an event. Additionally, relationships are key in supporting the managing, moderation, and mitigation of stress impacts (Viswesvaran et al., 1999). Drawing on Hammer and colleaguesā work (2007) on workālife balance, we can resonate with the importance of four critical areas: (a) emotional support (learning about colleagues needs and listening to problems); (b) instrumental support (helping colleagues avoid conflict between work and personal life); (c) role modelling (demonstrating effective routines, rituals, and behaviours personally); and (d) creative management (generating novel strategies to reduce conflict between personal life and professional life while finding a balance for wellbeing and job performance). It is these ideas that the authors in this book draw upon, unpack, resist, explore, and critique. In doing so, a vulnerability and honesty is revealed. As Brene Brown (2013) noted, āhonest conversations about vulnerability and shame are disruptiveā (p. 188). Accordingly, fear, blaming, name-calling, criticism, and gossip became behaviours to be examined and a culture that once limited, blocked, silenced, and shut down imagination can be disrupted. It is a collective we disrupt, with a vulnerability and open-mindedness, the place of relationships in higher education and what they can bring to the āIā, āweā, and āusā as we value self-care and wellbeing.
Fundamental to life are relationships (Berscheid & Reis, 1998; Seligman, 2011). In this volume as a part of a book series called āWellbeing and self-care in higher education: Embracing care, stories, strategies, and being proactiveā, we focus on relationships as a part of embodying self-care and wellbeing. It is highlighted that while those who work in higher education navigate careers and their working life in the current climate of change, globalisation, internationalisation, pressurised demand to do more with less, reduced funding, and higher measured expectations, the āusā is a critical part of self-care. Self-care is not solely about the āselfā caring for the āselfā, it is also a part of caring for āweā and āusā, and indeed we require others to help us with acts of self-care. What happens when āweā turn the āIā to āusā? How can others support us and how can we support others? Across three themes this volume contributes to this shift and explores the place of relationships as fundamental to the roles undertaken in higher education and how relationships are substantial influences in the act of wellbeing and self-care. Each chapter explores fundamental elements of both work and personal life and the intersection with wellbeing.
The intertwined relationship between āI, āWeā, and āusā
Jane. E. Dalton and Catherine Hoyser open this section of this volume with an incredibly powerful chapter that locates the relationship between āIā, āweā, and āusā and places artistic expression as an embodiment that allows for the individual and collective exploration of academic identity. They assert that ābesides being good self-care, the combination of contemplative practice and creative expression enables teaching from the authentic selfā (in this book). It is the act of staying strongly connected to each other, and to their interior lives that enables a grounded practice that subsequently allows for an authenticity that is not only essential, but is paramount for teaching and learning. As an artist and poet they guide us through practices that āstrengthen self-awareness, identity, and integrity by providing purpose and meaning in both personal and professional livesā (in this book).
Self-care as an intentional action is a serious and necessary proactive action. And in this chapter Rosalie D. Clarke invites us to consider how we can be activists for ourselves and each other, offering us the āāequationā: Scholar-Activism + Self-Care = A Compassionate Higher Educationā (in this book). Through a weaving metaphor, she invites us to seek a scholarāactivist practice where āwe must engage in a practice of radical compassion for ourselves, and for othersā (in this book). Through this powerful metaphor Clarke lays out a foundation for practices that locate a self-awareness that is both hard and empowering.
Positive relationships provide a ripple effect of emotional contagion that can enhance our wellbeing and self-care. In the context of higher education, this is a powerful argument that Kristina Turner presents in her chapter as she unpacks for us how internationality with social support to our colleagues provides a flow-on effect for our own wellbeing and the wellbeing of our colleagues. The place of positive emotions such as kindness, empathy, compassion, appreciation, and altruism are explored through the lens of being an early career researcher entering the academy after a sustained career as a teacher. Paramount in this chapter is the place of how contagion as a prosocial behaviour has an influence on connectedness.
Susanne Garvis, Heidi Harju-Luukkainen, Anne Keary, Donna Pendergast, and Tina Elisabeth Yngvesson collaborate on Chapter 5 as international colleagues locating the place of self-care as an act to support a sense of belonging as women working within higher education. This chapter explores how āmeaning in relation to mentoring, friendships and family supportā (in this book) can facilitate relationships that provide a connection that moves beyond negotiating daily academic roles and responsibilities to finding space to pause, to be present and to slow down. Garvis, Harju-Luukkainen, Keary, Pendergast, and Yngvesson demonstrate for us the āimportance of women supporting each other within the academic institutionā (in this book) through a critical framework of belonging. Revealed and interrogated is the place of spatiality, intersectionality, m...
