a little more conversation (to lead to action)
The start
I’ve done a lot of talking with students, and staff, in higher education. I’ve talked about transition (blog post incoming), and student support and a myriad of other things that sort of encompass a bit of the experience of attending and/or working at a university in the UK right now. One place I keep being pulled back to, whether or not it is meant to be a substantial part of my “primary role”, is the way that we approach academic advising at Manchester. My original job (a sort of post-doc/research associate post) ended up tangentially connected with advising, and I have been pulled back every few years over the last decade(!) of time at Manchester. Most recently, that has meant getting involved in looking at the lived experience of students and staff within this relationship and trying to work with them to create models that can help mitigate some of the pressure on that relationship (and also act as mechanisms to establish boundaries and identify trends).
In this case, I did a lot of listening to students and staff about what advising was like for them (some more info in this blog post here) and one of the topics that came up again and again was a sneaking suspicion that the conversations advisors and advisees were having were often not helpful (and sometimes actively harmful) at least partially because, well, they were “just” talking, as if they were sat next to each other at a cafe, or trying to gauge the interests of a new acquaintance. This makes sense, of course, if we don’t think about it specifically, why wouldn’t we approach conversations, something we have multiple times every day, as something we already know how to do? But what students and staff specifically noted was that the pressures on time and the sort-of-formal nature of the relationship sometimes meanth they struggled to have the right sort of conversation. One that was both productive and empathetic; one that gave the student the chance to really state what was going on and staff the chance to respond in the way that would help that student most (not, necessarily, by sharing their own experience!). This was particularly marked when the lived experience of staff and students diverged sharply. In one case, a student with lived experience as a young carer felt specifically that the tendency of their advisor to “pull in” that advisor’s experience (very much rooted in a more privileged and quite-a-few-years-earlier perspective) made it more difficult for them to trust that their advisor could give them credible and empathetic support. There is, after all, a significant difference in someone listening to you talk and actually hearing what you have to say; the second requires that the listener also actively try and inhabit the context and outlook of the person talking, at least somewhat.
The model
The model itself, then needed to do a few very specific things (or at least support the doing of them). Specifically it wanted to:
Ensure the speaker (in this case, the advisee) was viewed as the expert in their own lived experience and had their voice prioritised.
Work to establish a mutually agreed upon topic and a set of boundaries (for both advisor and advisees) on the advice and intervention(s) offered.
Create a series of “perforations”: actions that would allow the advisee to take away the support, advice and resources and continue to help themselves beyond the initial conversation.
This is a very, well, practically-focused model. Part of the context of its creation includes a need for direct and effective support for advisors (and, thus, their advisees), so the focus was initially on ways to give a clear roadmap that was also a flexible enough set of criteria to be broadly useful. There is no assumption that an advisor would tick off each section (or even that all sections would necessarily be addressed in order or all at once), but it asks for a slightly nuanced framing of the work advisors and advisees embark on together. It generally follows a pattern where the advisor/listener “confirms” that they have heard what is being said (by explicitly agreeing with the advisee/speaker what will be looked at), then “connections” to support and resource (clearly linked to the agreed topic) are offered, and the student is coached/supported in prioritising the “now” and “next” actions (to, most of the time, be done independent of the advisor). This is most emphatically not a flowchart for a crisis; those should be focused on with context-specific immediate action. However, it is meant to give structure to the conversation and stregthen the agency of the student/advisee.
A visual guide to the conversation model, links directly to the webpage with more detail on the 15% liberating solutions exercise
The steps
Each of the steps of this process are meant to support centring the voice and agency of the speaker (advisee) and clarifying distinct actions for after the conversation. It may feel a little bit formulaic! That is not the intention, but it can be helpful to have reminders of effective practice around establishing topics and boundaries, just to make sure everything is clear. Of course, everything feels awkward when new, so there is every reason to suspect it won’t feel formulaic or slightly wrong for very long. That said, the steps:
Establish topic: the speaker (advisee) and listener (advisor) need to work together to establish the topic to be discussed. This is a place for the listener to make a concerted effort to just, well, listen. If you are familiar with motivational interviewing (quick overview here, especially the OARS acronym in table 3), it might be helpful to think of it in similar terms. This is a time for the listener to empathetically collaborate with the speaker in establishing the topic to focus on, ensuring that it is clear what will be worked on. It may seem obvious, but often there is a certain element of uncertainty in conversation. The key here would be to establish something which, if written down, would be able to encompass the theme of the conversation (or at least one of them).
Discuss boundaries: Depending on the topic and its context, different levels of intervention might be welcome and appropriate. This part of the model asks, again, for clarity of topic and discussion to enable effective support and to ensure that the support or intervention that is offered is some that would be welcome. This is a chance to also set clear expectations about what CAN happen and the amount of support the advisor can deliver. It is also meant to allow the speaker/student to decide the level of involvement they are comfortable with. Do they prefer advice and then to be left alone? Do they want formal support? Something long term? Having this discussion on purpose and then reflecting on (and recording) the decisions around boundaries can help make clear the expectations both students and staff can have around the intervention, support and wider relationship.
Clarify context: Now that the topic, and limitations, have been established, one more quick check to make sure all of the pertinent information is available. This is a good moment to ask if there are any other people involved, if the issue is long-term or if there is a need for a quick solution because of outside pressures or time limits.
Connect: this is the time when we would be doing what felt “typical” for many advisor/advisee conversations, connecting students to support services, resources or other people that could help. Within this model, the connections are:
framed by the context, topic and limitations already established
focused, in the main, on connections, steps and actions that can be taken “now”. It might be helpful to frame this with the 15% solution model (a liberatory practice exercise, link here: Liberating Structures webpage), as that can help sift through what is most helpful to discuss.
touches on, lightly, what might be done “next”: in case it is appropriate to have a few next steps discussed alongside the “now”
Action via agency: at this point it is really, really important to allow the speaker/advisee to walk away with the tools, information and support they need to begin to address whatever was discussed. This doesn’t mean that help in the form of support to book an appointment or come up with a plan is inappropriate, but that the focus needs to stay on the speaker. The purpose of this model is to keep that aspect, the person speaking not the topic or the advisor, always at the heart of the discussion, and the wrap up needs to carry on with that purpose in mind. This is where the 15% solution can be most helpful, as discussing what is possible, with no additional resource or support, can help to clarify what is really in the gift of the speaker to address, and ensure they can take action themselves.
““What is your 15 percent? Where do you have discretion and freedom to act? What can you do without more resources or authority?””
And that’s it
This model has now been around for just over a year, so we (well, I) are working to get some feedback on who has put it in place and how it is gone. The general feedback to the introduction of the model has been hugely positive, especially around the idea that it is helpful to establish boundaries for discussions and to move away from “signposting” where a student/advisee may just be pointed in a direction, instead of actively engage in the plan themselves. Students involved in creating the model appreciated that it explicitly worked to address the power imbalance that could make them hestitate to reach out. If it looks helpful to you, please do feel free to give it a go! (And I would love to hear how you got on.)