Promotion
Promotion represents an important milestone on the academic career path. At its most basic, it involves crafting a case that describes applicants’ performance against pre-defined metrics.
But this is rarely enough: Success also relies on a cohesive story that communicates applicants’ vision, the impact of their achievements, the collaborations they have formed, the strategic alignment of their work, and any career disruptions.
Mind Your Way offers a range of services for individuals and groups to help them craft successful promotion stories, both on the page and for the interview.
A focus on gender equity
For women, academic promotion can be complicated by persistent cultural and structural factors.
These might include a gendered concept of merit and research productivity, penalised career breaks and non-linear trajectories, under-recognition of “invisible” contributions, a lack of female role models, and unconscious bias in mentors, sponsors, and selection panels.
These and other factors have contributed to women being under-represented in leadership across many academic disciplines. While system-wide measures at the organisational and policy level are required to address systemic bias or fix an entrenched culture with deep historical roots, academic promotion support services can assist women to mitigate the impact of this system on their career ambitions and help them critically assess the barriers that prevent transitions into more senior roles
Services
1. Application Edit
The foundation of most academic promotions is a written application.
Too often, we see clients treat the application as a listing exercise, hoping that reviewers will be able to piece together a compelling story that supports a case for promotion. On other occasions, we witness clients chronically undersell their achievements and challenges, believing they are not “ready” for promotion.
Our Application Edit assists clients to unpack their achievements and craft a confident case for promotion based on a compelling narrative of research and/or education impacts (relative to opportunity), innovative thinking and practice, and dissemination and translation activities across academia and beyond. All this is underpinned by a carefully crafted vision which highlights the ambition and strategic alignment of the client’s work.
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The search for a good story begins with one of our editors conducting an initial assessment of the strengths and primary needs of the draft. For example, some applicants might be good writers but fall short on providing sufficient depth in justifying their case for promotion, while other applicants’ use of highly technical language can obstruct comprehension and narrative flow. This initial assessment helps the editor ascertain the best strategy and investment of time to enhance the draft. The editor will then identify what essential story components are either present, missing, or underdeveloped. If they have questions during this phase, they'll reach out to discuss these with the applicant before commencing the First Edit.
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The editor will carefully work across all quoted sections of the application, re-writing and re-structuring the text as they see fit to strengthen the impact, arguments and achievements of the applicant, as well as improving language and narrative to create a strong story throughout. If the editor has questions during this stage, they may reach out to schedule a call with the applicant if needed. All edits are tracked, and the editor will place explanatory comments and questions in the margins for the applicant to consider or respond to. A track-changed version of the draft based on the First Edit will then be emailed to the applicant.
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Once the applicant reviews our edits and sends the draft back to us with their responses, the editor will check what changes have been made (or not) and clarify any questions the applicant might have. The editor will then conduct a Second Edit of the relevant sections’ structure, pitch, flow of argument, reasoning, and expression. A thorough copy edit will also be completed to check for consistent spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style, providing comments in the margins where needed. A clean and track-changed version of the final draft will be emailed to the applicant. If questions arise from the Second Edit, the editor will be available to settle these via email within a few days following the delivery of the draft.
2. Interview Coaching
For promotion applicants who need to attend an interview, translating their written case into a confident verbal account is important. This includes preparing for questions that might delve into the merits of their application.
When we coach academics on verbal presentation skills, we take a close look at how they tell their story – is it engaging, compelling, and memorable? What about body language and voice projection: Can people hear them from the back of the room? Are applicants speaking so fast that no one can follow? To prepare applicants for challenging questions, we help them build proactive response strategies that will get them out of any corner with dignity and charm.
At the end of the day, a bit of “show business” can go a long way to helping academics achieve a positive promotion outcome. So let’s embrace it!
3. Promotion Workshops
Our two-part Promotion Workshop series draws on years of experience in crafting promotion applications with academics at all career levels, and in coaching applicants for their promotion interviews.
The workshops aim to build participants’ skills as persuasive writers, to improve the quality of their applications, and to help them present a compelling account of their achievements and impact.
Importantly, the workshops are tailored to the university’s or faculty’s specific promotion process, template, and guidelines to ensure the needs of sponsors and participants are met.
By the end of the workshops, participants will have refined content that they can use within their application. Better even: Many of the tools we teach are relevant for grants, awards, and prizes too!
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We provide participants with highly practical tools for thinking through the impact of their achievements, clearly defining their vision, confidently narrating career disruptions, and other factors relevant to their university’s and/or faculty’s promotion process. Such tools aim to build the strongest possible connection between an applicant’s text and members of the promotion panel. Participants will then use these tools to craft or rewrite sections of their own promotion application and send samples of their revised text to the workshop facilitator or organiser prior to the next workshop.
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Typically taking place at least a month after the first workshop, we develop written resources, group work exercises, and tailored slides using some of the samples provided by participants. We discuss how the tools have been applied, what challenges participants encountered during the process, and what opportunities for improvement remain.