Manage Your Supervisor Relationship
Secret tools to help them help you thrive
Issues with supervisors are a key concern for many postgraduate research students. Every supervisory relationship has its share of highs and lows. There is so much to handle on both sides: expectations to negotiate, trust to develop, goals to set, progress to evaluate, deadlines to meet, and all sorts of unexpected contingencies to deal with. How do you manage those complexities as a student? When the going gets tough, what tools and techniques do you have at your fingertips, to maintain a positive and resourceful connection with your supervisors that allows you to thrive? This module is designed for students wishing to transform conflict, tension, or miscommunication in their supervisory relationships, toward (re-)establishment of a trusting and supportive foundation that will carry them through to their graduation day. Through interactive role plays based on students’ real-life examples, participants develop new strategies: to understand their supervisors’ needs (and to help them understand their own); to decode supervisors’ communication styles, and to use this knowledge to their own advantage; and to maintain trust and rapport through the peaks and troughs of candidature, while proactively overcoming challenges, and tackling problems by their root.
