[Leadership Series] Becoming a Manager is Inevitable

In this new podcast series on leadership in academia, I’m making the case that becoming a manager isn’t just likely — it’s inevitable. In fact, it’s a sign that your academic career is growing, your influence is expanding, and your work is making an impact.

In this first episode, I’m laying the groundwork for the series by diving into why academic leadership must include management—and why that’s a good thing. Whether you’ve just landed your tenure-track role or you’re directing a major research center, you’re already managing people, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

If you are a professor seeking to grow as a scholar, leader, and mentor, this series is for you. Tune in to shift your perspective on leadership in academia.

The Academic Career Path: Leadership Is Not Optional

I walk you through the reality of the academic trajectory. Leadership roles come with the territory. From mentoring graduate students to running grant-funded research teams, I show you how managing others becomes a core part of your scholarly life, even if you didn’t plan for it.

From Solo Scholar to Team Builder

We debunk the myth of the lone academic and explore how real research today is collaborative, interdisciplinary, and people-powered. You’re not just writing academic papers and publications. You’re building teams, managing projects, and creating systems that support long-term scholarly work.

Managing Others Starts with Managing Yourself

I explain why strong academic leadership begins with the self-management of your calendar, your writing, and your projects. Learn how the systems you create for yourself now are the exact skills you’ll need to manage others effectively. In our Navigate Program, we explore how these tools directly translate to effective people management.

“For many people, you did not get into academia because you wanted to manage people. In fact, maybe you got academia because you didn’t want to manage or because you thought this job doesn’t have any management in it. But I’m sorry, it does!”

“To be successful at management, you also need to learn how to manage yourself. You need to know how to be a project manager of projects that only you do. You need to know how to manage your time, even when it’s just you managing your individual calendar. One of the ways that I like to teach this is through writing and publishing.”

We’ve opened the waitlist for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and get on the waitlist here.

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION:

1. Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Get on the waitlist here!
2. Cathy’s book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that’s going to reshape your writing,and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!
3. If you would like to hear more from Cathy for free, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter, In the Pipeline, at scholarsvoice.org. It’s a newsletter that she personally writes that goes out once a week with writing and publication tips, strategies, inspiration, book reviews and more.

CONNECT WITH ME: 

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• YouTube