Video link:
https://youtu.be/OFydYxWSZfk
Transcript:
MOC Talk Episode #2
A conversation with Professor Sally Maitlis, a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Leadership at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, on embracing multidimensional identities, finding and sustaining meaning and passion, and making space for light in both career and life.
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YIXIN TIAN
Thank you, Professor Maitlis, for joining our interview today. So my first question for you will be kind of related to your research stream. I was wondering, what have you learned through your research on meaningful work and sensemaking about how people find and create meaning in their work? And especially, what does MEANING in an academic career look like to you? And how has your perspective on it evolved over time?
PROFESSOR SALLY MAITLIS
Okay, interesting questions. I feel I've learned a lot through my research and through my own life, of course, about meaningful work and sensemaking—creating meaning. I would say, just talking very broadly, I’ve learned that people can find meaning in places and forms that they did not expect to. And also that we are incredibly agentic at creating meaning in very challenging circumstances. I’m thinking of a study that I did with a whole set of wonderful colleagues about ragpickers in India. We think of that kind of work as extreme dirty work. It's easy to assume that the work can only be functional—helping people survive. But what we found was that these individuals and many others doing difficult or mundane work crafted that work and made powerful meanings that allowed them to do more than just live.
I’ve also spent time looking at individuals whose understanding of their work and their understanding of themselves were disrupted by unexpected events. I’ve seen how resourceful people can be in creating new meanings or reconnecting to old meanings that they feel they have completely lost. I’ve seen that in different contexts, such as musicians and dancers who had injuries preventing them from continuing to do what they thought was their life’s work. These people moved from being deeply distressed and despairing to making sense of what had happened, who they were, and who they could become, often experiencing posttraumatic growth. So that’s one context; there are also totally different contexts where I’ve seen similar processes: in senior leaders who struggle in secret with debilitating mental health issues, and in work with Kira Shabram on animal shelter workers who burned out doing what they believed was their most meaningful work. Yet, they found new ways to contribute and to be the people they aspired to be.
So those are some thoughts from my academic scholarship. As for meaning in an academic career—I think there are many sources, but we talk about and valorize some more than others. Also, some activities feel meaningful at first, but may become less so over time or when certain things happen. Academic jobs are often divided into research, teaching, and service components. It’s possible to find meaning in each, but it depends on you, where you are, what’s going on in your life and where others around you are telling you what you should be finding meaning. When you start out, most junior academics are not encouraged to find meaning in their service, but I’ve known junior scholars who found certain committee work or particular service activities more meaningful that other parts of their work or at least found it easier to feel they were making of a contribution there and were more appreciated for it. But they felt guilty because they weren’t supposed to be enjoying it knew that it wouldn’t get them tenure.
In research-intensive schools, you may even feel guilty if you find the most meaning in teaching. These schools may not want you to get too involved in teaching; they want you to do it well but don’t want it to be too central to your identity. So that can be hard if the research process feels slow or discouraging, but teaching energizes you and you feel valued and students like you- it’s very easy to be pulled in different directions. Even within research, there are different parts—for me, data collection is usually incredibly enjoyable, very moving, and a very meaningful part of research, but it can be easy to lose a sense of meaning in the endless task of writing and rewriting a paper for publication. While academic papers are obviously important as a way of developing our thinking and creating a record of what we’ve done, some of the most meaningful experiences I’ve had with research have come when I share findings with people for whom the work really speaks personally, so when I talk about senior leaders’ mental health challenges with senior people that I’m teaching, or when I talk about identity challenges of losing meaningful work with individuals who recognize the experience I’m describing from their own lives and their own losses – this is when research really comes alive and most meaningful for me.
YIXIN TIAN
Yes, and speaking of data collection, especially your qualitative work—you've interviewed many people across industries and professions. I have a related question, which is that alongside your work as an OB scholar, you’ve also dedicated yourself to the theory and practice of counseling psychology. I know your journey began with an evening class in psychodynamic theory during grad school. So I was very curious what sparked your interest? Was there a particular moment that drew you to that field?
PROFESSOR SALLY MAITLIS
I don’t know if there was exactly a moment. I’ve had a long interest in understanding people—since I was a teenager, this is what I liked to sit around and think about. And so I studied psychology as an undergrad, and actually I was a bit disappointed because I thought we’d all be sitting there discussing Freud, but we never did that, only to debunk him. I sort of felt I should know more about psychodynamic theory. When you tell people you do psychology, they say, “Don’t psychoanalyze me,” and I felt I couldn’t anyway because I didn’t really understand the theory. So when I returned to academia after working in consulting, I found this evening class and thought, “Let me check it out.” What I didn’t expect was that the tutor would use psychodynamic ideas to help us reflect on our own experiences and histories. It was this amazing blend of theory and applying it to our lives. That class really got me thinking differently, and I feel it was the beginning of one of the several times in my life that I have returned to psychology and to exploring people’s struggles.
YIXIN TIAN
That’s such a passion-driven journey—from a teenage interest, and then you sought theories and studies to guide the journey. Since counseling psychology is a different identity with separate demands, I wonder: in the earlier stages of your career, when your academic life and counseling psychology world were more separate and private, your other identity offered a refuge on dark days in your academic life— giving you space to explore different ways of being and thinking. Later, the crossing and integration of these two worlds nourished both you and your research. I see a beautiful sense of balance in how you’ve brought them together. Many of us, especially early-career scholars, feel caught in the pressures of the job market clock, the tenure clock, and the expectation to “wait until later” for life beyond work. How have you learned to balance these different identities? And what advice might you give to those navigating these pressures?
PROFESSOR SALLY MAITLIS
I don’t want to idealize my life, especially the early pre-tenure years. I pursued counseling psychology because it was life-giving during a tough time. I kept it secret, worried it could jeopardize my career. I wasn’t some liberated person doing whatever I wanted without concern for all the consequences. In a piece published in Journal of Management Inquiry, I talked about the fear that I wouldn’t be seen as taking my academic job seriously or as committed if people knew that I was also engaging in something that, from the outside, appeared irrelevant to my work. But I pursued it because, despite taking time and attention, it really fed me. I loved those classes. I called them “my treat” during weeks that felt heavy and draining. That was my story.
As for advice to other people—when writing my JMI piece, one the reviewers and the editor kept asking me to offer advice to young scholars. I was very resistant, partly because I think we should listen more and advise less in general, but also because what worked for me may not suit someone else. For me, having this “serious hobby” in parallel with trying to get tenure helped. It was just a few hours each week, but it lifted me up and gave me energy. For others, it could be a distraction. Maybe it would be better for them to wait until after.
But I do worry about always waiting for the “right time” to do things. That time may never come—or may not feel right when it does. It’s dangerous to always promise yourself something way down the line. It’s a very difficult set of decisions – it’s not a one-off decision that you make. It’s just important to keep resourcing yourself. If that means getting your head down for six years, great, good luck. But remember: tenure isn’t the end. Soon you’re thinking about the next thing. It’s endless. So give yourself something along the way. And maybe for some people— I’ve never met one yet—but I’m sure for some people, the process of working to get tenure is joyful. In which case, great! Carry on.
YIXIN TIAN
Yes, there are a lot of things waiting for us to deal with, to handle. We always find ourselves lost in the trade-off between waiting for everything till later and living in the moment or dancing in the moment. Also, as you mentioned before, in academic life, we’re often guilty of balancing work and life—or research and teaching. It’s really a tough journey, and a marathon- I’ve always heard people describing the academic journey as that.
PROFESSOR SALLY MAITLIS
Yes, an ultra-marathon.
YIXIN TIAN
You’ve spent much of your work as a researcher trying to understand individuals’ struggles with adversity and, as a therapist, you have helped clients navigate pain and distress toward the light. As we also discussed before, it’s one thing to find meaning and another to sustain meaning. Finding and sustaining meaning can also be a profound challenge for scholars at all career stages. For those feeling disillusioned or disconnected from their academic work, what practices or mindsets have you found most helpful in sustaining meaning? And what suggestions might you offer them?
PROFESSOR SALLY MAITLIS
I completely agree, this can be very challenging. There are wonderful things about academia—but also difficult ones. If you’re feeling disillusioned or disconnected, I would first say that it can be really valuable to spend a bit of time, either on your own or with somebody else, understanding what exactly you’re feeling. Is it disillusionment? Is it disconnection? Or are you feeling you are not any good at this? Or that other people are doing better and going faster than you? Are you feeling you’re doing too much or doing too much of the wrong thing? Once you get a better grip on what you are feeling, it helps you figure out how you got there. You can then ask yourself what happened recently: did you get a paper rejected, poor teaching evaluations, are you having frustrations with a coauthor? Or maybe it’s more existential: what’s the point of this work? Each of these issues invites a different a different set of ways forward and probably it would take a whole podcast series to explore them!
People have different experiences for different reasons, but a few general reflections: if you’re feeling this way, you are not alone. You’re not weird or bad. I’ve felt all of them. And that’s also true of many of the people I know or at least that I know well enough that they have shared that with me. I’m not saying that makes it alright, but it does make it normal, which is a helpful starting point.
First, think about how you’re spending your time. Are there small changes you could make—immediately or gradually—to give yourself a break from what’s draining you? Can you step back from something—that paper, those students, that committee—to put a bit of a pause in to help you temporarily feel a bit better?
And then, check in: are you spending enough time with people you care about and who care about you? Academia can be a very lonely profession: even when we collaborate, we spend a lot of time working on our own, and teaching, we often prep on our own. But there’s so much research on the power of human connection. When we’re feeling low or bad, we tend not to reach out to people, but do it anyway. Even a ten-minute call with someone who can resource you and be there with you.
Then, reflect: When was the last time you really enjoyed work? What were you doing? With whom? What made it enjoyable? Can you recreate any part of that experience to remind yourself what’s meaningful in this work?
Also, ask what can you get rid of. Often we feel, “I must do this, I must do it today”, or “I must do it this week”, but do double-check— is that really true? What can you not do? What can you do less? What can be delayed, skipped, or declined? I’ve found that when things in my calendar get canceled, I often feel incredibly joyful. That’s a sign that I’m either doing way too much or I should never have agreed to do that thing. And then I try to remember that the next time. Definitely get rid of things that allow meaning to come back in.
Then consider what you could add in that might help turn the disconnection to connection or disillusionment to meaningfulness. That thing might not be a current career priority, but it may revitalize you. For me, that was pursuing counseling psychology. Other people might say “Why are you doing that?” But it did bring back some life for me. It can also be within your work, so sometimes it might be writing a practitioner article, or giving a talk to a different kind of group can help remind you what the point of the research is, or building back in a social component that may have that may have got lost.
Someone once said to me many years ago: “Go towards the light—whatever it is.” On darker days, I still think of that. What looks light or less dark? Do some of that for a bit and that can be pretty important.
I would also say, if you’ve felt low about academic life for a long time—it might be time to stop and pivot and try something else. A lot of my research is about people who for various reasons have to stop doing what they were doing and think it’s going to be the worst thing in the world. But it isn’t necessarily. And often it’s the beginning of a whole new path and new growth. I know quite a few people who were pretty unhappy academics and have become very happy doing something else. So this is not a failure but a major success if you take that decision.
YIXIN TIAN
Yes, it’s like a life course to find the true meaning and happiness. Whenever we are in our dark days, we can either seek external help or reflect on our joyful moments. These are great self-compassionate interventions and really take care of ourselves.
PROFESSOR SALLY MAITLIS
Yes, I agree.
YIXIN TIAN
I read your recent publication in a special issue of Journal of Management Inquiry, which was drawn from the speech you made at the 2023 AOM Meeting on receipt of the MOC Division's Distinguished Scholar Award. I enjoyed reading that piece. In that paper, you have suggested that other scholars might benefit from writing their own “revisionist history”. What might be helpful starting points for others wanting to reflect on their career paths?
PROFESSOR SALLY MAITLIS
Thank you—that piece was helpful for me to write. Both the AOM talk and the paper helped me make sense of my own life and career. I really recommend doing it.
One starting point is to reconsider the usual narrative you’ve constructed about your career. We all have these stock stories—why we do what we do, how we made our choices. Take that story and ask: how else could I narrate these same events? The basic puzzle pieces are the same, but how you connect them can vary a lot. There are many ways we can explain ourselves and every narrative is fundamentally partial—it can only ever be part of the story. So I could say I became an academic because my dad was one. Or I could say I did my PhD because I loved research and wanted to do more of that. Or I can say some combination of these things, which is a more inclusive narrative of my career choice.
You can think back about other reasons behind your decisions. What other frames might help explain your choices? Some people say, “I always wanted to be a professor,” but I could also say, “I got disillusioned with consulting and returned to school so I could questions, rather than provide answers to clients.” Both can be true—they’re just different angles on it.
Another exercise is to ask, “What would have been different if...?” What if I hadn’t got tenure? If I hadn’t moved countries? Writing a revisionist history means playing with your narrative—opening it up so you can understand more ways of understanding the past. That creates more possibilities for the future, and that’s why it’s so valuable.
YIXIN TIAN
These are great and very feasible suggestions. I’ll definitely try writing my own revisionist history. My last question would be: Throughout your career, you’ve woven together insights from organizational behavior and counseling psychology, truly embodying multidisciplinary scholarship. MOC has long been a home for bridging disciplines to better understand organizations and organizing. Looking back, how has being part of MOC shaped your thinking, collaborations, or sense of community across disciplines?
PROFESSOR SALLY MAITLIS
MOC has been a fantastic home for me ever since I joined it until now. Intellectually, it’s the Academy division that fits my interests best. Community-wise, it’s where my people are. My closest friends in the profession are in MOC. Several collaborators are in MOC and I’ve enjoyed participating in many MOC initiatives, like Cognition in the Rough, Diamonds in the Rough, MOC Connecting, I was a rep-at-large. But as well as those formal roles, I’m also a member of micro-communities—like the May Meaning Meeting and Positive Relationships at Work community—that are full of MOC people. Those relationships, conversations, and collaborations have definitely allowed me to develop different parts of myself and undoubtedly shaped who I am as an academic and as a person.
YIXIN TIAN
That’s wonderful. Thank you again for sharing so many helpful and insightful suggestions with us. I personally gained so much from this conversation with you, and I believe many of our audience will too. When I face doubts or distress in the future, I’ll definitely remember this conversation—it’ll help me find light. Thank you.
PROFESSOR SALLY MAITLIS
Thank you.