How does holding a professional role split between two organizations affect work? The experience involves both benefits, such as cross-applying knowledge and fostering dynamism, and challenges, including scheduling conflicts and time management. A look at the difficulties of context-switching between different team cultures and the efficiencies gained when a single action can serve the objectives of both roles. The function of these positions in connecting different entities, like a university and a community partner, is also considered.
Full transcript
For most people, a job means one set of goals, one team, one organization.
But what happens when a professional role is intentionally split between two different places, like a university and a community partner?
It creates a situation where you're constantly moving between different cultures and workflows. James Shelley describes the experience as always acting as a translator between teams.
There are immediate, practical difficulties. Lilian Toma discusses the challenges of managing a calendar when you're supposed to be in two places at once, and the pressure of trying to maintain a perfect 50/50 split of your time.
You can't give 100 percent of yourself to either side. But on the other hand, a single action can sometimes serve the objectives of both organizations simultaneously.
Knowledge from one role can solve a problem in the other. It raises the question of whether the energy spent keeping these duties separate is more effort than it's worth. Today, we're looking at what it takes to succeed in this kind of position. This is FHS TestPod, and this is "Navigating Dual Roles in Research and Academia."
How about you? Yeah, I would agree with I would agree with that, and I think sometimes I think sometimes the things that you're doing and one of the roles can actually help you with the other one. Uh there's been times like that with working at Western where there's like a process or something that I learned about here that I can apply at McCormick, which is great. Um so it kind of breaks you out of the the box of that one specific role and what has been done before and you're kind of thinking outside of that and bringing in other ideas and processes, which is helpful. I would say the thing I'd enjoy the most is getting to work with more people and learning about the goals of the different like organizations that I'm working for and and learning from the people in in those places. I really enjoy that and I I also like having a like a dynamic workspace where I'm not in the same place all the time. I think that keeps things engaging. So that's that's really great too. Yeah. Which makes total sense because they're different people. Uh but when you're working on two teams at the same time I you're kind of uh you're always translating a little bit between them because I mean different teams do things in different ways and how decisions get made on different teams get made in different ways and how processes work are different. And so yeah, you're never you're never stuck assuming that the way things are about the way a team works is the way all teams work. Um, I I find that a lot of times um It makes scheduling out my my week a little bit difficult if there's a meeting that's scheduled on a day that I'm supposed to be at the other place and like just like swapping everything around and then also trying to make sure that I'm like hitting the 50/50 can be tough like every week like 50% Western 50% McCormick that can be difficult because there's different things going on all the time at the different places and one of them might be more. I do find too that another challenge is it you can't give like 100% of yourself to either roll completely because you are splitting your time and you have to be mindful of how much time you're giving to to either way to either side, but I find that like blocking times in my calendar and and things like that are are helpful for that. Yeah, and I find the things that I'm often able to move the best on or the fastest on are the things that like they might be divided on paper, but in like the actuality of the real world they're serving both efforts and and like in the real world and split roles like ours, I think it's sometimes hard to say like this is all about this role and all about that role because in both of our roles like if if each one of our roles were either side of the Venn diagram, like they do have significant overlap in the middle, right? And at that moving something forward for one is inherently or not inherently directly or indirectly moving something forward for the other one too. Yeah. Um, if it's going to continue as a 50-50, if it'll change, like I've heard different things, but I think that it is a great way to maintain a connection between Western and a community organization like being that that buffer. Yeah. Um, there's very little in either role that if done well would not support the other unit. So, yeah, it's I feel like I could just kind of waste more energy trying to keep them separated than just doing the the things, you know?
The picture James Shelley and Lilian Toma paint shows that a split role is about more than just balancing a schedule.
They suggest that the most effective approach is not to build a wall between the two jobs, but to actively find the areas where the work overlaps.
Where an action taken for one organization directly benefits the other. In that view, the person in the role becomes a living link between the two institutions.
A conduit for ideas and processes to move between a university and its partners.
That's it for today on FHS TestPod.