Stress, guilt, and leadership

This morning I attended a Women’s Leadership Summit at ASU, hosted by the Faculty Women’s Association. There we about 50, maybe more, faculty, graduate students and staff from ASU there. There were two panel discussions: an “early” and “late” career panel and then group conversations in between.

The conference gave me a lot to think about, partly because I’m interested in becoming the best leader I can be, both within and outside of academia. I heard some frank insights that I don’t often get from mentors (although I do have a great advisor) about the trade-offs of work, leadership, and life. A lot of the messages resonated with my experiences in the environmental movement, as well as now in academia.

One of my “big picture” challenges is how to have a better perspective and embrace more visionary leadership, rather than my very managerial style. We talked about how we often associate charismatic leadership with male traits, and managerial leadership with more female traits, such as nurturing and collaboration. The truth is, all leaders need to embrace what we view as female leadership traits. But we, as women, also need to step out of our comfort zone, and as one of the panelists put it, to be comfortable with ambiguity and change, and to grow from the times that we feel uncomfortable. In the end, most people agreed that leadership and management are not clear-cut distinctions; vision needs to be balanced with accountability.

The points that I took more the heart right now were about the daily challenge of balancing life and work. First, the facilitator at our table, an organizational psychologist, told us about a book called Eat the Frog. It’s about doing your most unpleasant tasks first, because the easy tasks will always be easy. This hit home because lately I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed that I’ve been putting off higher priority tasks (like applying for AZ residency, or revising my prospectus) because I just don’t have the mental energy to deal with them.

What went along with this point is that no matter how much we schedule our time, there will always be crises at work or at home. We should recognize that these are part of our job, and that times of crisis and non-routine are actually where you can become a leader. Another panelist made a very passionate point that there is no such thing as “balance.” Instead there is just a constant struggle to get rid of the guilt (when we’re at home/with family, guilt about not working; when we’re working, guilt about not being home). Yep, hit home again, although generally I don’t struggle with this as much. I just struggle with thinking that I should be working all the time, and then getting burned out, and then not actually working enough. It’s a vicious cycle.

If you’re still reading this, I have been struggling a lot to keep everything together this semester. I finally applied for my last fellowship (for now), but I’m helping organize a conference and I took on a slightly more important role in a graduate student group. Plus teaching, taking a full course load, and having a boyfriend—although we balance our time together well and he is very supportive of me.

Today was as challenging as ever, even though I didn’t have class. I’ve been incredibly stressed out by small frustrations (i.e. problems with my homework, which after emailing my professor, even he told me not to stress out) as well as things I need to handle in a less stressful way (waiting for fellowships, waiting on emails so that I can send more emails). I have gained a lot of skills for dealing with stress and anxiety in my undergraduate experience, but this is a different monster. This is constant, creeping guilt and stress that doesn’t go away after you send a few emails, talk it over, and have a beer. I’m really hoping that once I get a few projects done, things will get a bit better. But I also realize that this is how academia operates, and I need to be able to deal with this if I want to be successful. Step one, eat the frog (I actually ordered the book).

[I figured a photo of Liz Lemon would be appropriate here. Twice this week I've heard someone quote Jack's line from last week on Kenneth's job prospects: "He's a white male with hair, Lemon. The sky's the limit."]