At the turn of each year, the PostDoc Office reflects on elements of a liveable, joyful academia. This year, from Dec 22 onwards, a series of postings on our LinkedIn account will draw attention to appreciative practices in our everyday academic work lives. Below is a summary for those not on social media!
#1: Why should you keep colleagues updated about your work? Where is the line between bragging and providing useful information?
Appreciation in academia can mean:
- Contributing to colleagues’ visibility
- Expressing what you value about their work results or the way they work
- And also: Informing people of your own developments and achievements so they can build on them.
From our friends at Research Culture and Researcher Development at the University of Glasgow comes the quote “'the work is not done until you tell everyone”.
Kay Guccione and Rhoda Stefanatos take the view that we have a responsibility to communicate with others what we do and how we do it. Research, and also researcher development, is a collaborative effort, and open practices of sharing approaches and results benefit the mission of academia.
How do you practice keeping others abreast of your work?
# 2: How do you re-wire your brain to focus on the positive? Can you do that as a team?
One way is to use a short method in team meetings. In a leadership training with Wolfgang Eder, we were made aware of the “what-is-good-and-new-circle”.
Here is how it works:
- The goal is to focus on successes and nourishing experiences and spread “good vibes” at the beginning of team meetings.
- Everyone is asked to share one good and new experience, achievement, or event that occurred since the last team meeting.
- Team members get the prompt and a bit of time to think of something. During the sharing part, there’s no discussion, just attentive listening by the colleagues.
- It takes about 0,5 minute per person, so it is a quick way to spread some positivity.
It can be very uplifting to witness the cheer of others for the good things that happened to you, or that you made happen. And it’s very beneficial to start a meeting with a variety of positive experiences.
Have you tried similar methods? Let us know!
#3 How aware are you about your own strengths and about what you can achieve?
What are the positive things your colleagues say about you? How do you manage not to lose track of positive work experiences in the rush of everyday work and deliverables?
We suggest: Keep a secret happiness notebook that you update regularly.
In it goes, for example:
- Verbatim quotes of people who gave you positive feedback
- Small and big milestones you achieved
- Good interactions you had with people
- Everything else that makes work life enjoyable for you
You can set times in the year where you go through it, and take it out when you need to cheer yourself up. The end of the year would be a natural time to study it, and it can boost your confidence before important meetings. As a side effect, this notebook will also be useful when you prepare a job application.
Appreciating your milestones is key to a happy worklife, especially in a discipline and a sector that is competitive and comes with things that are statistically likely to go wrong every now and again - from experiments to funding applications.
What do you keep in your drawer that makes you be in touch with your work joys and raises your confidence?
#4 Do the people in your lab share in your pride about accomplishments? Where and how does this happen?
Let's look at celebrating new publications. In a LinkedIn post by Jill Walker Rettberg we saw an example from our friend Laura Saetveit Miles’ department:
“the Department of Foreign Languages here at the University of Bergen (UiB) ask people to print out their new publications and hang them up for everyone else to see. The article wall is by the photocopier, so it's a place where people have a bit of time to browse while waiting for their copies.”
Other good places for these article walls are:
- In front of the toilet
- In front of the seminar and meeting rooms
Jill Walker Rettberg also describes a version of this her own department practices:
“we send emails to our head of department, when we have a new publication or gave a talk or whatever, and he compiles them and sends them out in a weekly newsletter each Friday”
Read more in the post and in the comments. What do you do in your offices, labs and departments?
#5 How can you intentionally create appreciation in a team gathering? What do you ask to steer the focus towards valuing colleagues?
Let's look at "appreciative prompts", to be used at team retreats or longer gatherings. Appreciative prompts can give participants
“the ability to see something new in a situation, to recognize positive qualities or potentials, and to connect with someone or something from a grateful place in ourselves.”
(The quote and the ideas below are inspired by this toolbox: www.eleducation.org/curriculum/protocols/appreciation-circle/)
How could it be done?
- A facilitator gathers team members in a circle and reads out different prompts.
- Each participant gets the opportunity to speak.
- Someone can volunteer to start, and the round goes for as long as people come up with things they want to say.
- For each round, participants listen with full attention as each person shares.
Prompts can be:
- When I had a challenge in the last month, where in the team did I find support, and how exactly was the person who supported me helpful?
- In my recent achievement, who had a special part, and how?
- What did I enjoy most about work in this team this month?
- What do I appreciate about the persons I work with (starting with the person to my left or right)?
You might also take some notes on sticky paper and attach it to a wall, to create a display of appreciation.
Have you tried something like this, and what impact did it have?
#6 How generous are you with praise if you like a research paper? Do you let people know if their work has made an impact on your research or teaching?
Let's look at “Thank You Emails”, and an article from 2020 by Philipp Schulz, who describes what he does in his teaching in a blog post for FU Berlin:
“Together with my students, for each session in our seminars, we write an email to the authors we read that day, to share our appreciation for their work.”
He is committing himself to give more positive feedback to the authors he reads, because:
“We all get so used to receiving and articulating critique (mostly constructive, but often also harsh, unreasonable and imbalanced) about our work and papers, whether at conferences, during peer-review or from supervisors and/or peers. But in my experience so far, we too seldom just articulate positive, affirmative, encouraging and generous feedback about something we truly enjoyed reading, and from which we benefited intellectually, politically or even personally.”
Read more: Practicing Academic Kindness in the Classroom – Toolbox-Blog
Have you received such an email? How did it make you feel?
#7: Do you have team rituals? Is there something you do every time something good happens for the lab?
Chemistry PI Johann Hlina recently described in an expert talk for the PostDoc Office how repetition of certain practices can be very impactful for setting a culture in a team - more so than making written or spoken statements about your “team values”. What the team does together regularly shapes the reality of the work environment.
In a leadership role, you have the opportunity to model appreciative practices and create certain behaviours through these kinds of team rituals.
Rituals that we know:
- Keeping a spreadsheet of rejected funding applications and buying a pot plant for the office whenever it hits 10/100
- Taking the group out to lunch every time someone hits a major professional milestone
- Ringing a bell or sending out an email blast to acknowledge certain successes
- A regular set lunch time and date that gives opportunity to share private-life joys and challenges
- Department or lab celebrations that occur at certain times a year and are open to lab friends and visitors
The key thing for the team is that they can count on the ritual to happen - and to do it equally to honor everyone.
What is it you do as a leader, or what do your leaders do, that works well?
Text: Johanna Stadlbauer, PostDoc Office/Research Careers Campus, last edited: November 20, 2025