CYGNA: Building understanding across career stages & academics vs managers

Reports on our 72nd CYGNA meeting where we learned a lot more about the different perspectives at different career stages and the interaction between rank-and-file academics and managers

Anne-Wil Harzing - Wed 18 Nov 2026 10:31 (updated Mon 19 Oct 2026 14:02)

[Write-up not yet finalized. Do not refer to this yet]

Our 72nd CYGNA meeting was organized by Anne-Wil Harzing with a panel of no less than eight brilliant and engaging CYGNA members working in six different countries - France, Ireland, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, and the UK. They shared a wealth of wisdom and experience.

The topic was clearly of great interest to our CYGNA members; I received many regretful "sorry, I am teaching" apologies. And even though we had move our meeting to a Tuesday instead of our regular Fridays we had 34 participants joining us from all over the world.

As always in our CYGNA meetings, the time flew by and we could easily have filled another hour. There were hundreds of thumbs ups, hearts, and smiles of recognition. You can find a full Event flyer here.

Why did we organize this meeting?

Have you ever been puzzled, annoyed, frustrated, or even hurt, by the way:

Your colleague at a different career stage behaves towards you?
Your Head of Department or Dean behaves towards you?

Have you ever caught yourself saying or thinking:

“That is such typical behaviour for a PhD student/junior/mid-career/senior academic”.
“She has really gone over to the dark side” when referring to your manager.

What is the key issue?

Academics at different career stages and in different roles introduce much-needed diversity into our academic environment, but their different rationales, challenges, and intentions also create scope for misunderstandings. The key problem is that although we can observe the actions of others, the attribution of their underlying rationales and intentions is often in our own minds. So, in this CYGNA meeting we tried to tap into the different underlying rationales, challenges, and intentions of those at different career stages and in different academic roles.

As short intro into diversity

Diversity enriches our societies, our institutions, and our personal relationships, but as we know from the classic Harrison & Klein AMR article, diversity within a group is composed of three distinct constructs that are in themselves often linked to demographic characteristics:

Variety: differences in information, knowledge, or experience.
Separation: differences in position or opinion that reflect disagreement or opposition.
Disparity: differences in concentration of valued resources, such as pay or status.

Generally, variety is seen as positive, but as a team or organization we cannot benefit from variety if it is accompanied by high levels of separation and disparity. Moreover, we can only start to appreciate variety if we:

Understand where the other person is coming from - the nuance of differences, i.e. going beyond the stereotypes for different career stages and academic roles.
Understand how to interact positively with our different counterparts.

In this CYGNA meeting we tried to address exactly these two conditions through two panels, in which four speakers shared their personal reflections.

What do we as CYGNA members have in common?

Before launching into the panels, I kicked off the meeting by asking for a show of hands to assess our commonalities and differences. As CYGNA members, we have a lot in common. We are all human, we are all female, we are all academics, we are all swans, and we all have a job of some sorts. But there are many more things that at least a subset of us had in common.

Most of us were working outside our country of birth or had done so in the past. If you are in this position and work in Australia or France, you may find the write-up of this CYGNA meeting of interest: Women academics in Australia and France.
Most of us were working in a language that is not our native language. If you are in that position, the write-up of this meeting may be of interest: Careers, mobility and belonging: foreign women academics in the UK.
Some of us - though not as many as I expected - were worried about losing our job. If you are, you may find this CYGNA meeting write-up of interest: How do I keep my job (in academia) in uncertain times?
Some of us - though not as many as I expected - would love to change employers if they could. We haven't yet organized a meeting on this, but who knows: this might happen in the future. In the meantime the write-up of this CYGNA meeting shows how varied careers can be: One size doesn't fit all - Diversity of academic career paths.
Most of us had received a paper rejection in the past year. If you are one of them, you may find this helpful: Oh no... not again: how to avoid a desk-reject in 7 steps.
On a positive note, most of us had also had a piece of writing accepted in the past year. Maybe we should learn to celebrate the positives more? You might enjoy this write-up by CYGNA sister Heejin Kim on the paper development process, including the celebration stage: From little seed to fully-grown tree: a paper development journey,

Where do we as CYGNA members differ?

So, as CYGNA members we have many things in common. But we also differ in many ways including: age, career stage, and "tenure" within CYGNA. Of course we are all invididuals and we are not "defined" by our demographic characteristics. A CYGNA meeting write-up that might help you understand personality differences is Understand your co-author(s) & yourself with MBTI [and yes we are aware of the limitations of this typology, but many swans might still find it helpful].

Age and with that "academic generation": we have CYGNA members in many different age categories: twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and even seventies. The largest category in the meeting - and most likely in the network itself - was in their forties. Different academic generations have different challenges, rationales, and intentions as do different age groups. You may find my own reflections on academic generations and age of interest: Empathy in academia: career stages, leadership roles, generations, and age.
Age is often – though by no means always – linked to the level of seniority in academic positions. Within CYGNA we have PhD students, post-docs, Lecturers or Assistant Professors, Senior Lecturers or Associate Professors, Full Professors, and members who are retired. The largest category in the meeting was the Lecturer/Assistant Professor level, but we had audience members from all categories. If you are at an early or mid-career stage, you may find these two CYGNA write-ups of interest: Climbing up the academic career ladder and Internal versus External promotion.
Some of you are very recent CYGNA members and others have been in the network for more than 10 years. The largest category in the meeting was those who joined 4-5 years ago, which is when the network saw its biggest growth spurt (see The COVID years). Above are some pictures of different stages of the network.

Panel 1: Career stage panel

In our first panel we focused on different career stages. Panelists were asked to answer the following question: what are three things that I would love academics at another career stage to understand or do in order to create positive interactions with me? Each of the four panelists had wonderful suggestions to share. Below we can only report the headlines, for the full experience attending our meetings is essential :-).

PhD stage: Maitane Amorrortu Blanco, Spain

1. Have empathy. The PhD is full of loneliness and uncertainty, and the learning curve continues at every stage. I’d invite us all to take five minutes, now and then, to remember our early-career selves. That person is still part of who we are.
2. Have a holistic view of who we are. PhD candidates arrive in academia for many reasons and from many life situations. We’re often seen as “young academics”, but some of us bring years of experience that can genuinely benefit universities, in teaching, in industry connections, and in research.
3. Offer mentoring. It doesn’t have to be a big commitment. Small gestures make a real difference: a conversation, a piece of advice, an offered hand. But for PhD students please realize: Sometimes it just takes us reaching out first. Many senior academics would love to give back.

Early career stage: Kim Coogan, UK

1. ECA’s/ECR’s can do big things. Please be curious about who I am, what my background and expertise might be. Maybe I can contribute far beyond what you would expect of a typical ECA/ECR?
2. This may be our first time carrying the full and diverse load that an academic career requires. We’re still learning to prioritise the different demands of academic life (research, teaching, service, knowledge exchange with industry) and be strategic with where our time, energy and focus goes. Please be patient with us.
3. We need and want mentorship and support. There’s so much to know and a small conversation can be so very helpful. We want to hear from you and learn from your experience.

Mid-career stage: Ruwaiha Razik, Sri Lanka

1. Do not hesitate to invest in yourself. I invest time by doing a monthly Google search to identify opportunities for PhD students and ECRs like research workshops / conferences / mentoring initiatives / research collaborations. But I also invest money by supplementing funded opportunities with my own savings.
2. Create your own opportunities. Rather than only complaining about your lack of opportunities, be proactive. This August, we have established a local forum for academics in the HR domain at universities in Sri Lanka. Within this forum, we are organizing a conference next year with international speakers.
3. Understand that participants from the Global South may need extra support with travel. Problems with VISA applications can be prevented by having standard (appropriate!) letters of invitations ready.

Late career stage: Mary Vigier, France

1. Let me remain useful. I enjoy taking on new challenges and being involved in things that interest me. Continue to ask us and offer us opportunities. Let us decide whether we want to accept.
2. Let learning go in both directions. Experience doesn’t mean knowing everything. Some of the most interesting relationships are those where we learn from each other across generations.
3. Keep me in the conversation. Ask what we think. Not because our views should carry more weight simply because we’re older or have been around longer, but because we all bring different perspectives to the table.

If you are looking for further guidance on how to navigate the - sometimes choppy - waters of research (and academia) across career stages, you may find this white paper helpful: The ABC of research across career stages.

Panel 2: Senior academic leadership panel

In our second panel we focused on different managerial roles. As Karin Moser indicated, calling them academic leadership roles might in fact be more appropriate. Remember that most of those in managerial roles are academics just like all of us, and they often go back to being a "regular academic" after a stint in leadership.

Our panelists were asked to answer the following question: what three things do you need to know as rank-and-file academic to work positively with your Head of Department, (Associate) Dean/President? Again each of the panelists had some wonderful suggestions to share of which we report the headlines below. For the full experience attending our meetings is essential :-).

Head of Department: Margaret Fletcher, UK

1. There may be a limit to what managers can do. Not everything is in a manager's power. So be respectful at all times, even if you think something is unfair. Moreover, people change roles frequently and move around – a current colleague may take up a senior role.
2. Think long term. Do you want a reputation of being someone who complains the whole time? Can you offer problem solving support? If something is an issue – what can you do about it?
3. If asked to do a certain role – think carefully about it. Those asking have usually put a lot of thought into this. So I suggest do it unless there is a very good reason not to. Actively look out for suitable leadership roles.

Associate Dean: Olga Ryazanova, Ireland

1. Senior leaders always lack time. With thousands of emails in the inbox and a calendar fully booked with meetings, their time is scarce. If you need to talk to them, don't request half an hour, let alone an hour; even 10-15 minutes is quite a lot in their diary. Consider walking with them from one meeting to another to grab a few minutes.
2. Money talks. In most countries government funding for universities has dwindled. So by necessity senior leaders are interested in solutions that bring money into the university. Many of those solutions are linked to teaching, not research. Even prestigious research grants do not typically cover the full cost of research. Consider offering your help improving student recruitment and student experience before you ask for extra resources to support your research.
3. Don't discard us as researchers. Despite #2, we are still researchers too. Even though you might not often see us at conferences or local seminars - we just don't have the time - we are still interested, and we try to remain active as much as we can. Consider asking your academic leader about their current research projects - they might really appreciate an opportunity to show their researcher identity."

Dean: Natalie Wilmot, UK

1. Read the room. In the context of current difficulties in Higher Education, if you are asking for something, do be mindful of whether what you are asking for feels remotely realistic. Particularly if your school is in a redundancy situation, this doesn’t mean don’t ask for things, but try to evaluate if they seem feasible in this context.
2. Promotions. Read the criteria and make sure that you are doing what matters to the institution / job role / career pathway. Tell your line manager you are applying, and ask for mentorship to make sure you are on the right track and expectations are aligned.
3. Don’t be afraid to shout about your successes. You might feel underappreciated; nearly everyone does. You might feel like senior management don’t recognise some of the great things that you are doing. Sometimes that is just because we don’t know about them so make sure you share the good news!

President: Karin Moser, Switzerland

[Note: this role may have different names in different countries, such as rector or Vice-Chancellor]

1. Get to the point. University presidents are extremely busy and appreciate you coming directly to the point. There is unfortunately little time to listen to or read long explanations. Just communicate respectfully - but directly - what is it that you need or want from them and why they are the right person to address the issue you bring to their attention. Be mindful that at president level, they might well delegate what you ask to another member of their senior leadership team.
2. No explicit commitment doesn’t mean no action. A university president role is very political. Despite more power, you don't have as much freedom to speak your mind as you might have had earlier in your career. Hence, no immediate response or explicit commitment might well be a smart, tactical choice, but doesn't mean that no action is taken in response to your request. A lot is done through skilful manoeuvring "behind the scenes".
3. Don't be shy and reach out. Despite little time, don't be shy and feel free to reach out to us. University president can be a very lonely job, and we very much appreciate engaged and active staff. Just be flexible, have your 2 min speech ready, and remember: just like everyone else, we also like to hear occasionally if we have done a good job, not only if there is a problem.

If you are looking for more guidance on whether to take on leadership positions yourself, you may find this white paper - resulting from a CYGNA meeting on the topic - helpful: Everything you need to know before taking on an academic leadership or service role.

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Anne-Wil Harzing is Emerita Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.

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