What is coaching? Burnout coaching?

I know what it’s like to feel so burned out it’s hard to do your job or even get out of bed in the morning. Or maybe you are starting to feel “a little crispy” in your academic job and want to prevent full-on burnout. Burnout can rob you of the joy you get from working with students or doing important research or serving the community.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve worked with thousands of faculty through workshops, coaching, and discussions to help them develop strategies to avoid or mitigate their burnout. If you want to feel more in control of your work and time, better understand how to handle the stress of higher ed, or just need someplace to process and think through your career options, coaching is for you.

Coaching is the process of working through opportunities and challenges with a “thinking partner,” the coach, whose role is to ask good questions that allow you to think through your situation, goals, and strategies for moving forward. I am an expert in a process, but you are the expert in your life, hopes, and needs. I would help you tap into yourself to better live your values, meet your goals, and overcome obstacles in your path.

Coaching is not therapy, though they might overlap occasionally. As a coach, I focus on the now and the future, assuming you have everything you need to succeed. I can work with you on moving through a burnout experience, helping you develop strategies for work addressing burnout that align with your values, your work, and your goals.

Is burnout coaching right for you?

Coaching is a process of self-discovery and self-work that leads you closer to your best self. Coaching is right for you if you want to work closely with someone to explore your values, goals, needs, and challenges and you are comfortable developing those answers yourself – a good coach will never tell you what to do but help you figure out what you think your next best move is.

If you are experiencing burnout – or trying to avoid it – and considering coaching with me, a coach who has a personal experience and a research background in this area, consider these questions:

• Are you experiencing the symptoms of burnout: exhaustion, depersonalization or cynicism toward the job, and (perceived) reduced professional effectiveness? Or are you worried because you see these things creep into the light?
• Are these symptoms interfering with your ability to do your job or enjoy your life?
• Are you ready to make some changes in your thinking and situation to deal with the burnout?

If you answered yes to any of these, let’s talk!.

What is RPR’s approach?

I practice values-based coaching infused with Appreciative Inquiry and have been developing materials and a system for working with higher education faculty and leaders experiencing burnout for the last six years. My research with women faculty and leaders in higher education experiencing burnout deeply informs my approach to my coaching. For many higher ed professionals, burnout can feel like a shameful secret, but surfacing and understanding those emotions helps us work through them productively to address the core issues around burnout.

A typical coaching session starts with agenda-setting where we work together to determine the topic and goal for our 60-minute session. During the coaching, I will ask powerful questions and use various coaching activities and tools to help you explore the topic to better understand your thinking, feelings, and behaviors. At the end of the session, we’ll check in to make sure we met our session goal, identify any action items you will pursue between sessions, and decide on an accountability plan.

A burnout coaching session is similar, including more direct focus on issues and coaching tools relevant to the burnout experience. I bring specific tools to the session, but we always follow the path most valuable for you so you can achieve your goals. I also draw on my experience in leadership development, writing productivity, project management, and career development to support clients. Here’s what the process might look like.

Is RPR credentialed?

Yes. I trained with higher ed administrator and coach training leader Dr. Katie Linder and earned her Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential from the International Coaching Federation in 2022. Including additional training with the College of Executive Coaching, I have 165 hours of training education and 240+ hours of coaching practice. I do in-house coaching for the faculty of Georgia Tech in my role as director of the Office of Faculty Professional Development.

Additionally, I am well-qualified to work with higher education professionals. I earned my Ph.D. in rhetoric and professional communication from Iowa State University in 2007. I served on the faculty as a tenured-track and then tenured professor at Elon University for 12 years. Prior to my current role as the director of faculty professional development at Gerogia Tech, I served in Center for Teaching and Learning as a faculty teaching and learning specialist. During this time, I did extensive interviews with women faculty on their burnout experience which resulted in my book, Unraveling Faculty Burnout: Pathways to Reckoning and Renewal (Johns Hopkins, 2022). I am frequently called upon by the Chronicle and Inside Higher Education as well as ACE to talk about burnout in higher education. This summer I conducted over 50 interviews with higher education leaders at all levels to better understand their burnout experiences and impact on institutional mission, which I am working to turn into a book for leaders, also with Johns Hopkins. I bring all of this knowledge to bear in my work with coaching clients to support their development and well-being.

Burnout coaching packages

I offer six- and ten-session burnout coaching packages for higher education professionals. Each session is 60 minutes. In the first session, we explore where you are in your burnout experience and the role your values may play in your career development and burnout recovery. In sessions that follow, we follow your needs and specific areas of concern, while also bringing in research-based tools exploring purpose, compassion, trust, connection, and balance.

I recommend a six-session package if you are in the early stages of burnout or actively working to stay out of burnout. A ten-session package works well if you are feeling significant impacts of burnout to your work and life and want more dedicated time to work on changing behaviors and making career-related changes.

The cost for a six-session package is $1500. The cost for a ten-session package is $2500. I am happy to partner with your institution if you would like to use available professional development funds. Packages can be purchased in full or in monthly installments.

Sessions will be scheduled every 2-3 weeks to allow time to implement learning and tasks. Sessions are available 8-9am, 12-1pm, and 5-7pm ET during the week and 9am-2pm on weekends.