Sustaining motivation in change processes: Reframe your mindsets & actions

Seven steps that may help you to sustain your motivation in any change process by reframing both your mindsets and your actions

Anne-Wil Harzing - (updated Wed 1 Jan 2025 19:17)

Change is a process

Many of our roles in academia can be interpreted as a change process. Perhaps this is clearest in our leadership roles. We may be tasked to change a teaching program, improve our research culture, or turn around a struggling department, school, or university. Or we might have more specialized change roles, such as setting up or improving an entrepreneurship hub or apprentice program.

Or maybe we are the Faculty’s Lead for Diversity & Inclusion. This is the example I have used to illustrate the seven steps in this white paper, drawing heavily on a presentation I gave to a group of university Diversity & Inclusion advisers in the Netherlands.

However, even our teaching and research roles can be seen as a change process. In our teaching role, we engage in enhancing our students’ skillset and their capacity for independent thought. In our research role we aim to change current thinking in our field. In our careers more generally, we aim to change from early career academics to experienced researchers.

In all these change processes, however, we need to sustain our motivation to keep going. This is especially true when things do not work out the way we hope, or the change process is taking much longer than expected. Inspired by my recent article with Sylwia Ciuk and Martyna Śliwa on Managing (linguistic) diversity in MNCs that frames achieving organizational inclusion as a process involving both a conceptual shift (thinking differently) and a practical shift (acting differently), I came up with seven steps that may help you to sustain your motivation in change processes.

The first three steps involve changing our mindset, whilst the next four steps involve acting differently. If you are interested in a particular step, you can skip directly to it through the following links.

Reframing our mindsets in three steps

A first line of defense in sustaining our motivation during change processes is to reframe our mindset. To do so, I suggest three sources of inspiration that may allow you to think differently. They are all based on recent academic research, respectively in the areas of equality, diversity & inclusion, talent management, and positive organizational scholarship.

Step 1: Embrace fluidity in dealing with people

The first step draws on recent developments in equality, diversity & inclusion (EDI) scholarship, and suggests that our natural human tendency to categorize people in boxes might be counterproductive for any successful change process. This is because it reinforces the two negative aspects of diversity – separation and disparity – rather than emphasizing the positive aspect of diversity: variety.

These different operationalizations of diversity are drawn from Harrison and Klein’s seminal work (2007), who explain that diversity can mean one thing but three things:

  • separation: differences in position among people, reflecting disagreement or opposition
  • disparity: differences among people in social assets or resources such as pay or status
  • variety: differences among people in terms of information, knowledge, or experience

Harrison & Klein contend that when diversity is thought about as separation, it leads to reduced cohesiveness, more interpersonal conflict, distrust, and decreased team performance. Disparity-type of diversity is associated with more within-team competition, resentful deviance, reduced member input, and withdrawal. In contrast, viewing diversity in terms of variety results in greater creativity, higher decision quality, and increased team flexibility.

In our paper Managing (linguistic) diversity in MNCs, we propose changing the way we think about diversity and differences: from viewing them primarily in negative terms (separation and disparity) to embracing their positives (variety). Connected to this is the necessity to move away from thinking about categories of difference in binary terms, towards a conceptualisation embracing fluidity.

In the EDI literature, fluidity has become best-known in demographic characteristics such as gender and race/culture, both of which are of course highly relevant in academia too. However, in the above paper, we argued that it also applies to linguistic diversity, where the traditional practice has been to create a binary distinction between native and non-native (English) speakers. Other important diversity characteristics are (dis)ability and neurodiversity.

For each of these characteristics, I argue it is more productive to see individuals as being on a spectrum/continuum on all of these. Moreover, where they consider themselves to be on the spectrum might be context dependent. Hence, acknowledging this is more likely to lead to productive relationships and successful change processes, making it easier to sustain our motivation.

Fluidity in university roles

Going beyond demographic characteristics, less emphasis on binary distinctions in terms job roles and categories in academia would also reduce frustration and demotivation in our daily interactions. Too often, I see academics talk about researchers versus teachers, academics versus professional staff, and managers versus employees, as if these are part of completely different species.

But surely every academic engages some form of teaching, even if it is teaching PhD students or guiding ECRs? Surely every academic is engaged in scholarship, whether it is scholarship of discovery (research), integration (synthesis), practice (application), or teaching (pedagogy). The level of emphasis on teaching versus research is a matter of degree, not a categorical difference.

Creating a strong separation between academics and professional staff is equally counterproductive. Many academics are engaged in professional service roles (for instance staff development, running apprenticeship programs) and many professional staff members are engaged in some level of teaching and research too. Many professional staff members working in research or Research Higher Degrees administration have PhDs too. Moreover, careers in universities oftentimes encompass periods in both academic and professional service roles, especially for women.

Finally, the binary distinction between “evil management” and “innocent and powerless employees” that many non-managerial academics seem to subscribe to is a full-proof recipe for frustration and demotivation. Academia is quite unique in that most incumbents in university management positions are academics themselves and return to being a “normal” academic after their managerial role. My firm belief is that everyone should take a stint in university management to appreciate how difficult it is to be a university manager.

Step 2: Leverage your strengths

My second tip to sustain your motivation is to focus on your strengths and leverage them, rather than to focus too much on addressing your weaknesses. This draws on the literature on talent management and personal development. Talent management has been studied from a variety of theoretical perspectives. One of these – positive psychology – is very compatible with the general principle in personal development that we grow more in our strengths than in our weaknesses. As personal growth is an important source of motivation for most professionals focusing on your strengths can be key to sustaining your motivation.

It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity. Peter Drucker

Obviously, any job has elements that do not play to our strengths. However, we can often mitigate these weaknesses through a range of measures. First through job crafting, a proactive strategy to change certain elements of your job to make it better aligned with your personal strengths. In academia, we have more options to do this than in most other professions. Most of us have some level of discretion at which roles we get more involved in, as well as the way we execute these roles.

However, some job tasks just need to be done, even if they don’t play to our strengths. So, for those, try to find a complementary work partner. At first glance, this may not seem as easy in academia as in other professions as much of our work is conducted individually. However, there are many academic roles that are team-based or that could be designed to become so. Team-teaching for instance allows well-matched colleagues to draw on each other’s strengths, as do research collaborations. Many leadership roles such as Department Heads could be effectively performed as a team with complementary skills.

Another way to mitigate your weaknesses is to leverage tools or technology. Hopeless at time management? Set up (or ask someone to help you set up) an alert system to manage your diary. Easily overwhelmed with email traffic? Invest time in setting up email filters and/or activate focus-mode on your email/social media notifications. Not a natural at face-to-face networking? Dread walking into a room full of people you don’t know? Consider preparing for networking events using social media. This can help you establishing low-level connections before the event, making it easier to engage during the face-to-face event.

Finally, if you need some concrete knowledge or miss specific skills essential to your job, do ensure you get the training you need. But do not expect that training will fundamentally change your strengths and weaknesses.

Step 3: Focus on the positive

Academics are professional critics. That’s perfectly normal. We need to be critical to ensure that our academic research is conducted with the highest level of integrity. We also need to be critical as reviewers to ensure the research that does get published is sound. However, many of us also carry over this critical attitude over to our daily working lives. Especially for older academics who have been “around the block” a few times, this may lead to increasing cynicism, defeatism and loss of hope. I am not oblivious to the many dysfunctionalities in modern-day academia. You cannot work in academia for 35+ years without being exposed to its “dark side”, including questionable research practices, academic misconduct, bullying, discrimination and harassment.

However, this attitude can easily lead to a fixation on the negative and may even lead to self-fulfilling prophesies. By sharing only our negative experiences, we are led to believe that – for instance – engaging in self-interested and unethical behavior to increase productivity is the norm rather than the exception. We may well start thinking that we are “mugs” for not following this example and “relax” our own ethical principles, thus causing or at least reinforcing the very behavior we are trying to address. Finally, we may well be “digging our own grave”. Our focus on the negatives in academia might lead the public to think that academics climb the career ladder through egotistic behavior, bullying and cheating, largely at the taxpayers’ expenses. In turn, this will lead to a lack of confidence in academia among the lay public, stymieing our ability to make a difference in addressing society’s biggest problems.

Moreover, our predominantly negative attitudes do not make us happier or more productive either. I found this article about energy management at work very helpful as it links physical and mental well-being. It reports on a study of ways to recover energy at work (measured as vitality and lack of fatigue), rather than recovery during non-work times. Frequently used strategies such as checking email, drinking coffee or surfing the web do not appear to lead to recovery. Instead, strategies related to learning, meaning at work, and positive relationships with colleagues create energy.

What I found particularly interesting is that venting about a problem to a colleague is a strategy that has a strong negative impact on energy at work. This certainly rings true to me. Although it can be good to "let it all out" occasionally, regular venting sessions only leave one more pessimistic and fatalistic. I found this email response by a colleague particularly illuminative. That is #Positive Academia for you.

I've noticed that, when I'm annoyed at everyone and everything, doing something nice for someone else is a good re-set. I don't apply this at work very much, but I shall start.

If you are interested in a more positive approach to shaping the future of academia, consider following our Positive Academia LinkedIn group. Drawing on Positive Psychology and Positive Organizational Scholarship, we provide a positive way forward and argue that #EveryLittleActionCounts. I explore this in more detail in Step 4: Small steps matter! Two sources of inspiration.

Changing your perspective

The same result can often be interpreted both negatively and positively. The above slide focuses on gender and national diversity on a specific metric in research evaluation: the 2% most highly cited academics. In one of my White papers I conducted an analysis of this for Business & Management (see Highly cited academics in Business & Management over the years) listing the top-25 academics in this field.

The overall sample (top left in the image) clearly shows a lack of diversity. It includes only five female academics, most of whom are in the lower regions of the top 25. The same is true for non-North American academics. Only five non-North American are included in the top 25 and they are largely clustered at the very bottom.

However, splitting up the sample by “academic generation” and comparing the oldest generation – starting their career between 1954 and 1979 – and youngest generation – starting their career in the 21st century – clearly shows how much has changed over the years. The most recent generation shows that nearly two thirds of the academics in the top 25 are non-North American. There are also five women in the top 10, including three in the top 5. The increasing diversity over time is also reflected in the graph in the bottom right-hand corner.

Hence, the glass half-empty approach would have been to say, “look at the lack of diversity in the world’s most cited scholars in our field”. But the glass half-full approach pointing out the change over time is – in this case at least – a far more productive approach to take and one far more likely to sustain your motivation and argue that #EveryLittleActionCounts (see also Step 4: Small steps matter! Two sources of inspiration).

Reframing our actions in four steps

After discussing three suggestions for reframing our mindsets, I have four specific suggestions to reframe our actions. In contrast to the suggestions for reframing our mindset, which were grounded in academic research, my suggestions for reframing our actions result from my practical experience in leading change efforts in organizations. The image above summarizes them briefly, but let’s look at each of them in a bit more detail.

Step 4: Small steps matter! Two sources of inspiration

In our change-making efforts we are often disappointed at how slow progress can be. Even worse, we sometimes experience setbacks where progress seems to be reversed. This means it can sometimes be hard to keep going. In this section we offer two sources of inspiration that both suggest that small steps matter. This is by no means a new perspective. There is even a Scottish proverb on this: “many mickles make a muckle”. Although often interpreted in financial terms, it also applies to personal development and change. Small changes or improvements can culminate in significant progress over time.

In academia we typically celebrate only big achievements. We often hero-worship those at the peak of our profession in terms of the traditional performance metrics such as publications in top journals. At the same time, we seem to be fixated on debating small problems in infinite detail, as is reflected in Sayre’s law: “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.” By way of corollary, it adds: “That is why academic politics are so bitter.”

My wonderful CYGNA Lead Team colleague – Ciara O’Higgins – suggests reversing this and and focus on small successes in our jobs that every one of us can contribute to on a daily basis.

  • Did you deal well with a difficult question in class, maybe admitting that you found it difficult to answer and showing a bit of vulnerability in a safe way? That is amazing! Not everyone can do that. You have made the classroom as safe space for students too. [See also Sîan Stephens: Talk about Teaching with Pride]
  • Did you and your research collaborator manage to set up a meeting with a key stakeholder in your field, allowing you to ensure that your new research project resonates outside the ivory tower. Go for a celebratory coffee together now!
  • In chairing a meeting did you manage to respectfully shut up the department bully and let the shy, introverted, person make their valuable contribution. Well, done! You have just made the first step towards a safer departmental culture.

By focusing on and celebrating small steps, we may be able to address the big problems in our profession collectively. How do we educate our students to be independent critical thinkers? How do we ensure a focus on research quality and stakeholder engagement rather than fetishizing productivity? How do we create an academic culture that is inclusive to all?

Another source of inspiration that recommends focusing on the small steps is our Positive Academia campaign #EveryLittleActionCounts. Christa Sathish started this campaign in January 2024 on our Positive Academia LinkedIn group, which at that time had less than 1,000 followers. We currently have over 3,300 followers and the campaign now features more than 35 actions. They are launched every Monday to start the week positively and give our followers some food for thought and action.

Step 5: Get others involved

As change makers we often forget that #EveryLittleActionCounts also means that creating change ambassadors can help us achieve our goals. The slide below illustrates this step with an example for Equality Diversity and Inclusion in academia. However, the general principle applies to any change process.

First, as we have argued in our article on Managing (linguistic) diversity in MNCs, also discussed in Step 1: Embrace fluidity, any change process needs to rely on reciprocity. Change requires mutual adjustment. It shouldn’t be up to minority group members to adapt to the norms and values of majority groups. In the context of linguistic diversity, it shouldn’t just be up to non-native speakers to adjust to native speakers.

When changing academic cultures, it shouldn’t be up to junior academics to “fit in” with the norms and values of an older generation of academics. More diverse and inclusive academic cultures need to be co-created, reinforcing the best from every generation, not just the current academic establishment.

In this process allyship can be extremely powerful. It requires those in majority groups or positions of power to speak up rather than leaving this to those in more vulnerable positions. This has an added advantage: the voices of those in privileged positions typically have a more significant impact. For instance, when men activity support gender equality, it has a greater impact than when women do so, as they are typically seen to be more “objective”.

The images below are from the Man who has it all Twitter (now X) account, an account that highlights ridiculous gender stereotypes by flipping the gender. This switch of perspective – combined with humour – can be a very powerful way to convince people to not just think but also act differently. Every person that can be convinced can be a change ambassador.

In any change process senior management can make a big difference by modelling the expected behaviour. However, senior role modelling doesn’t mean that every action needs to originate from the top. Many change processes in universities rely on senior academics spending years in committees – sometimes with token ECR representation – to come to a consensus about an action plan, by which time the environment might have changed completely.

Why not experiment and try small local initiatives instead, fully accepting that some might fail. These experiments should be run by academics at different career stages rather than only managers and full professors. It is all about creating widespread commitment. Central planning rarely does this; it leads to passivity and reinforcing boundaries between management and employees [see also Step 1: Embrace fluidity].

Step 6: Create synergy across activities

Any change process is time-consuming. However, we can leverage the time we spend on managing change by identifying and creating synergies across activities. In my presentation to Diversity & Inclusion officers in the Netherlands (see above), I pointed out the considerable synergy between the philosophies underlying D&I and those underlying the Recognition & Rewards program in the Netherlands.

However, synergy can apply to any change process. For instance, I leveraged my presentation helping D&I officers to manage change in their organizations by writing it up this - more generic - white paper on change processes, and applying it to our new Positive Academia change initiative.

More generally, we can leverage small local initiatives aimed at changing academic cultures by sharing them outside our institutions, inspiring others to follow our example. For instance, my colleague Sîan Stephens wrote up two blogposts based on her experience with bottom-up teaching initiatives at Middlesex University.

Christa Sathish, my co-conspirator in Positive Academia, created a website for her funded project at Westminster University: Reflective Blogging for Impact: A Pathway to Employability, Equity, and Societal Impact in Higher Education. During her PhD in media studies, she also blogged about her research. This allowed her vision to reach beyond her own university.

Tatiana Andreeva, one of our CYGNA organizing team, leveraged teaching research students to do literature reviews by running a session on publishing literature reviews for the CYGNA Women in Academia network, and writing up a series of very popular blogposts for my blog.

In the dark ages of the 20th century, I leveraged my efforts as ECR representative on the university's research committee where I managed to change our journal ranking by collating rankings from different sources. I did so by making the resulting list available to academics worldwide on my newly launched personal website. This led to the Journal Quality List that – 25 years later – is now in its 71st edition and is still downloaded some 40,000 times a year. [See also: Why did you create the JQL and the PoP software?].

I also created a role as coordinator for international students at a time when international student support was still in its infancy. This meant I could combine my research in cross-cultural management with practical sessions on cross-cultural communication skills, and advocacy for international students. I also ended up organising trips in Yorkshire, and even international dinners at our home, complete with a dedicated website.

These examples all relate to synergy with external engagement. However, synergy can also be reached between teaching and research. Do you want to create positive change in your classroom by improving engagement? Why not turn this into an experimental study and publish the results in an Education journal?

Synergy can also be achieved between leadership and research. Are you a Research Dean wanting to change the way academic research is evaluated? Why not publish the result of your investigations, as I did when proposing different metrics and data sources (see: To rank or not to rank).

I hope these examples have inspired you to think about your own academic roles and change initiatives in a more synergistic way. Remember, never do something for a reason, always do it for multiple reasons.

Step 7: Take care of yourself! Peer support is crucial

Finally, being involved in change efforts can be draining. Progress is often slow. There will certainly be days that you feel like giving up. I have sustained many academic volunteering initiatives over the years that were all aimed at changing academia for the better:

However, for each of these initiatives there have been times where I just wanted to walk away from it, leaving all the hard work and frustration behind and just taking it easy (see also: Please be polite and considerate and Thank You: The most underused words in academia?).

Usually, I indeed took it easy for a while, focusing on the many other things I enjoy doing such as walking in London and reading history. You will all have your own favourite self-care options. But what is most important is to acknowledge that our change endeavours can be hard at times, and that sometimes we do need time to recover and reflect.

What may also help you is to build peer support networks. Two of the six initiatives above – CYGNA and Positive Academia – are conducted in collaboration with others. This means that whenever you feel like you have had enough, others can take over the lead for a bit or just listen to your frustrations.

Although support networks can be cross-institutional or even international, local support is crucial too. Hence, in my role at Middlesex, I set up a range of peer support networks for my mentees, Departmental Research Leads, Heads of Departments, and New Professors (see also Section 3 of my narrative CV). Local peer support networks are an excellent way to foster resilience.

These groups should not be too big; they will lose the personal touch if they are. So at CYGNA – which is now approaching 450 members – we are setting CYGs (CYGNA special interests groups) for academics interested in Teaching & Scholarship Research, and for various career stages. We are also running weekly CYGNA Writes sessions. Attendance for these initiatives typically varies from 10 to 20 participants, providing more space for interaction than our - much bigger - plenary meetings.

Conclusion

I hope the seven steps above have given you some tips to reframe your mindsets and actions and help you sustain your motivation in any change processes you are involved in. Although all seven steps are important, I do think that reframing our mindsets to focus on the positive and remembering that every little action counts (two core tenets of Positive Academia) are crucial in sustaining our day-to-day motivation.

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Copyright © 2025 Anne-Wil Harzing. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Wed 1 Jan 2025 19:17

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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