In the realm of professional advancement, a growing number of mid-career professionals are embarking on a transformative journey—the pursuit of postgraduate study. But what drives these individuals, in their 30s, 40s, or older, to invest their time, finances, and energy into furthering their education? Let’s delve into the motivations behind this life changing decision, drawing insights from their unique experiences and perspectives.

Career Advancement: The Driving Force Behind Mid-Career Postgraduate Study

For many mid-career professionals, the decision to pursue postgraduate study is deeply rooted in aspirations around career advancement. Having already established themselves in their respective fields, they see further education as a strategic investment in their future. Advanced degrees can significantly impact career trajectory, opening doors to new opportunities for progression within their current roles or facilitating transitions into more senior positions.

Broadening Horizons: Deepening Expertise in Postgraduate Pursuits

However, the motivations extend beyond just career aspirations. Mid-career professionals often seek postgraduate qualifications to deepen their expertise and broaden their skill sets. With industries evolving at an unprecedented pace, staying relevant and competitive requires continuous learning and adaptation. Postgraduate study offers a platform for professionals to acquire specialised knowledge and cutting-edge skills, equipping them with the tools needed to navigate today’s complex business landscape.

Moreover, a profound desire for personal and professional development drives mid-career professionals towards postgraduate study. Sometimes the frustrations and complexity of the contemporary workplace lead them to seek new perspectives and theoretical frameworks to expand their horizons, challenge their assumptions, and push the boundaries of their knowledge. Postgraduate programs provide opportunities for intellectual growth and self-discovery, fostering a deeper understanding of their chosen field and enhancing their critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

Passion and Purpose: Intrinsic Motivations in Mid-Career Postgraduate Aspirations

Intrinsic motivation also plays a significant role in shaping decisions to pursue postgraduate study. Many mid-career professionals are driven by a thirst for knowledge and a passion for lifelong learning. They are drawn to topics or disciplines that align with their interests and aspirations. This alignment fuels commitment to academic excellence and the personal fulfillment that comes with taking up a learner role, allowing yourself to be open and grasp what starts as unfamiliar and challenging, becoming known, and the stimulus for new ideas and ways of working.

The decision to embark on postgraduate study also reflects a desire for personal reinvention and exploration. Some individuals are driven by a passion for a particular subject or field, seeking to satisfy their intellectual curiosity and explore new ideas. Mid-career professionals use this opportunity to reevaluate their career paths, explore new avenues, and pursue interests that may have been overshadowed by other priorities along the way. Postgraduate programs offer the flexibility to tailor the learning experience to their individual goals and aspirations, empowering professionals to chart their own course and shape their futures.

Enhancing Understanding Through Diverse Perspectives

The social aspect of further education extends beyond the classroom, offering mid-career professionals valuable networking opportunities and community-building experiences that can significantly impact their career trajectories. Engaging with peers, professors, and industry professionals in a postgraduate setting fosters connections and relationships that can lead to new opportunities, collaborations, and career advancements. Additionally, the diverse perspectives and experiences within the educational community provide a rich learning environment that enhances their understanding of their field and equips them with valuable insights and resources for navigating later career decisions. 

Postgraduate study provides a platform for mid-career professionals to make meaningful contributions to their respective fields. Armed with advanced degrees, specialised knowledge and the confidence these bring, they are better equipped to address complex challenges, drive innovation, and lead change within their organisations. Their enhanced expertise and leadership capabilities position them as valuable assets in a competitive job market.  

NIODA: Fostering Self-Discovery and Transformation in Postgraduate Study

At NIODA we hear different combinations of these factors from our students and those making enquiries about our courses.  It’s a privilege to be offering study options that can meet their needs for career advancement, personal and professional development, intrinsic motivation, and a desire for personal reinvention. We also know postgraduate study represents not only a pathway to advancement but also a journey of self-discovery, growth, and transformation that positions graduates to make significant contributions to their fields and shape the future of their industries. Learn more about NIODA’s postgraduate offering here. 

Helen McKelvie

May 2024

An unconventional organisation, NIODA has operated across online and onsite modalities its whole life. Initially, the learning opportunities were always onsite as the experience of working together in a room is where the study of organisation dynamics began. By contrast, ‘running’ the organisation, forging a new direction for the study of organisation dynamics in Australia, leading a not-for-profit education institute, devising and managing a master’s degree, and establishing a workplace training and consulting practice, began with the founders and staff working virtually. Working from home wasn’t as accepted, or as easily achieved for a small start-up, in the ‘naughties’ as it is today, but NIODA found a way to make it work.

‘The work’, for NIODA staff revolves around developing high-quality experiences that support participants across academic and workplace activities, to develop practical skills and knowledge. Our work is differentiated by its attention to the experience participants have and the resultant insights gained. Going online as a mode of choice was out of mind for NIODA before COVID pushed much of our working lives into the digital universe. The unspoken assumption may have been something like, as a student, academic, coach, group or organisational participant, interacting online will not provide us with the depth or quality of experience we expect when it comes to working with organisation dynamics.

When COVID rapidly took hold, we went from ‘this is not what we do’, to the realisation and acceptance that, not only was it possible to do this work online but that this possibility represents a significant opportunity for the organisation. NIODA leveraged existing staff skills and capabilities and successfully went live interactive online. As COVID restrictions have wound back and organisations have begun inviting, demanding in some cases, staff return to the office, NIODA has plunged whole-heartedly into the hybrid space. We now teach a portion of our academic classes in a hybrid fashion, we offer workplace training experiences as hybrid events. We routinely work with consulting clients who have dispersed workforces and therefore request to work online or in a hybrid format.

The societal scale switch to working online was driven by a global health crisis. Informed and empowered by the forced switch to working online, many organisations and individuals now choose to work in a hybrid fashion part in the office, part online. Studies of hybrid working often survey various industries and report the risks and benefits of the practice and comment on the likelihood that the hybrid workplace is here to stay.

From our experiences running hybrid events, we have a few observations that are starting points for further consideration:

The energetic paradox of online participation

Not having to commute, maintaining more integration with day-to-day lives, and overall being less taxed, are reasons those who have flexible arrangements often choose to work from home. These were the reasons for two students who lived locally but opted to be live interactive online for a week-long NIODA hybrid experiential learning event. By the end of the week, the students were identifying just how exhausting it was to be online and asserting it was more taxing than being onsite. Energetically, we also noted an end-of-event ‘high’ was evident for many of the onsite participants, much less so, for those online. These observations lead us to wonder about how the stresses of both onsite and online work are being monitored and managed in organisations – what are the longer-term impacts of these stresses for engagement and productivity?

Being online may be deauthorising

In our hybrid events, we often have an online tech support staff member who intervenes as needed to suggest adjustments that will improve the experience of those online. For example: could those in the room wave and identify yourself before speaking because it’s hard to make out who is who? Exercising this authority is welcomed and expected. When there is no designated tech support role we notice that online participants can struggle to speak up about fixable issues that might be bothering them and are more likely to ‘suffer in silence’ even when specifically invited to identify issues. At the same hybrid event noted above, an academic staff member who was online for the first day said he felt disempowered and disconnected from his role as one of the holders of the space, “I felt like a portrait on a wall…sometimes I would be looked at directly and spoken to, otherwise I felt very passive”. … as if being together in the room was the ‘real’ experience and being online was ‘not real’. Paying attention to how authorised participants feel becomes important for anyone facilitating hybrid events or managing hybrid work, lest unhelpful power or other dysfunctional dynamics develop. From the perspective of feeling and being authorised to take up leadership, is this more difficult from an online position when hybrid working?

Fluid authority relations around work location

In the hybrid experiential learning event, self-authorisation around moving between onsite and online became a feature of the experience. As staff, we noted that on the second morning, a number of students did not arrive onsite for the first check-in session of the day, but they appeared onscreen. We had not articulated ‘rules’ around attendance, after the initial onsite/online choice had been made, but noted the students clearly felt they could make this decision for themselves. Such self-authorisation could have felt like undermining the authority of the staff group. Still, we felt it was in line with the expectations that the student groups would undertake the assigned task in a self-directed manner. We had no compelling reason to require onsite attendance for the purposes of the task, as the spaces and technology available were not impacted, so we decided to make no comment. Monitoring the effect of the waxing and waning of onsite attendance became important for our sense of being able to adequately manage the boundaries of the system created for the purposes of the event. The continual attendance of staff onsite and adherence to the set time boundaries for each of the sessions in the timetable felt especially important. This experience seems to have a strong resonance with the ‘real-life’ workplace boundary management and maintenance of containing work environments – we wondered about how workers feel when there is no management presence onsite or availability is uncertain. Another implication of self-authorised fluctuating attendance is where the use of space and other resources are impacted. Downsizing of office space and hot-desking is a feature of the modern office environment, with the longer-term impacts on team dynamics and productivity yet to be fully understood.

In many ways, these observations could seem mundane and yet, as Paul Kelly sings, ‘from little things big things grow’. Small frustrations may soon grow into larger, and more problematic, issues. NIODA’s 2023 Group Relations Conference identifies that this move to hybrid working arrangements has, for many of us, occurred so quickly that we have not taken the time to consider the nuanced impacts, both positive and negative. The conference is offering participants an opportunity to work with the experience of hybrid working and its impacts on ourselves and our roles, on leadership, authority and on our work relations. Created as a temporary learning organisation, the conference will operate onsite and live interactive online and offer members and staff the space to explore the hybrid experience in-depth and to learn from experience about ourselves, groups and organisational dynamics.

Helen McKelvie & Thomas Mitchell

November 2023

Hybrid working – the devil is in the detail

What’s more important for leaders, goal setting, or the inner compass to stay the course?

Introducing Inner Development Goals

As a leader in an organisation, you might experience the act of setting goals as what’s important to direct your steps and those of the teams you lead. The idea that goals fill us with inspiration and propel us to great achievements is an assumption sitting behind an ever-increasing number of frameworks available to guide this activity in management literature. “Make sure your goals are ‘SMART’ (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound)” is a widely adopted recommendation. More recently setting ‘Big hairy audacious goals’ (BHAG) is a favoured approach for motivating and aligning teams towards a common vision. But perhaps goals, whether they are smart or big and hairy, are not what keep us on track?

The shadow side of goal-setting

Researchers at Harvard Business School have contributed to a much less popular discourse on the shadow side of goal setting. They argue that the beneficial effects of goal setting have been overstated and that systematic harm caused by goal setting has been largely ignored. Their research identified specific side effects associated with goal setting, including a narrow focus that neglects non-goal areas, a rise in unethical behaviour, distorted risk preferences, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation. The authors suggest that leaders and managers need to consider the complex interplay between goal setting and organizational contexts, as well as the need for safeguards and monitoring.

When we are unable to meet them, instead of being inspirational, goals can feel defeating

In my own working life, I’ve both participated in and led planning processes focussed on goal setting. Working in organisations I’ve also found taking action towards specific goals can sometimes be difficult. When the action steps to meet set goals are not part of BAU it can be hard to devote the required time; and when circumstances change and new competing priorities emerge what seemed like clear goals become murky and a sense of overwhelm sets in. When we are unable to meet them, instead of being inspirational, goals can feel defeating, like a measure of what we have failed to achieve. This seems to be true in organisational settings and in bigger contexts such as collective efforts to combat global issues.

Slow progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015 the United Nations goal setting was aiming high, introducing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a holistic blueprint for achieving global sustainability by 2030. The set of 17 interconnected goals aims to address social, economic, and environmental challenges by promoting actions such as poverty eradication, hunger alleviation, gender equality, climate action, sustainable cities, and partnerships for sustainable development, among others. I remember feeling inspired when the SDGs were announced. The vision created by the SDGs in 2015 seemed to provide a path forward. However, the actual progress toward attaining the vision has been dishearteningly slow.

New hope with Inner Development Goals

Recently when a colleague in Europe mentioned the Inner Development Goals (IDGs), I went looking and had reason to feel a renewed hope. The IDG’s aim to address the main obstacle to achieving the SDGs: a collective deficiency in coping with the escalating complexity of our environment and the associated challenges. Seems like that familiar overwhelm leading to inaction. The Inner Development Goal initiative offers a framework of essential skills for sustainable development; it encompasses five dimensions and 23 skills and qualities crucial for leaders addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and for individuals worldwide. They are based on research demonstrating that the inner capacities required for addressing these complexities can be cultivated. The IDG framework is gaining traction in Europe including via three MindShift – Growth that Matters conferences that have been conducted with 3000+ active participants.

Inner growth is at the heart of the Inner Development Goal framework; the first of the five dimensions is ‘Being – Relationship to self’, with the related skills:

Inner Compass
Having a deeply felt sense of responsibility and commitment to values and purposes relating to the good of the whole.

Integrity and Authenticity
A commitment and ability to act with sincerity, honesty and integrity.

Openness and Learning Mindset
Having a basic mindset of curiosity and a willingness to be vulnerable and embrace change and grow.

Self-awareness
Ability to be in reflective contact with own thoughts, feelings and desires; having a realistic self-image and ability to regulate oneself.

Presence
Ability to be in the here and now, without judgement and in a state of open-ended presence.

It makes sense to build the inner capacity of leaders to be able to sit with uncertainty, to think through overwhelm and to keep working towards and adapting goals as change happens. To my mind, this is part of “considering the complex interplay between goal setting and organizational contexts” as the Harvard research (above) recommends.

Leadership development for an inner compass

The Inner Development Goal approach resonates strongly with the leadership development work we do at NIODA. We hold that as a leader, knowing yourself and getting in touch with the conscious and unconscious drivers of your own behaviour underpins the capacity for managing yourself in your leadership role, and being able to lead others from a place of authenticity. One approach we use with our students and clients is to hold a space for inquiry into each person’s unique personal leadership history allowing connections to be made between past experience and present role challenges. This is just one powerful tool for growth and development of the inner compass needed to navigate the complexities of contemporary organisations, and as with the IDG’s, bigger world problems.

At NIODA we are interested to learn more about the Inner Development Goals and the non-profit foundation that is working with leadership development experts, scientists, practitioners, and organisations globally to explore, gather, and disseminate evidence-based skills and qualities that enhance the ability to lead purposeful, sustainable, and fulfilling lives. This is important work keeping the Sustainable Development Goals alive and hopefully more attainable.

NIODA’s related contribution is to continue to offer a post-graduate leadership and management course that goes deeper than a motivational goal-setting approach. The courses take a psychodynamic view of human behaviour. Students develop insights into individual and group behaviour and how to apply these to create meaningful change in the workplace – finding ways to deal with the overwhelm and consider the context for goal setting and much more. Learn more

We also offer a series of leadership development workshops, starting with one for emerging leaders to develop that inner compass by ‘Embracing your personal history for impactful leadership’. Learn more

Helen McKelvie

August 2023

Thinking systemically and understanding organisation dynamics
can be leadership and management superpowers.

NIODA students certainly think so, with a 100% satisfaction rate for the Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) course. They know first-hand that being an organisational leader or managing a team can be enormously satisfying but equally can be frustrating and confusing. Why do smart, sensible people behave irrationally? Why does competition seem to outweigh collaboration? Why is it so hard to shift a toxic work culture? If, as neuroscientists are telling us, 95% of our brain activity is unconscious (Young 2018), then perhaps it’s little wonder these are the sorts of confounding questions preoccupying leaders and managers. How well equipped are most of us to make sense of the paradoxes and irrationality that are regular features of work life? How able are we to just ‘get on with the job’ when we are not aware of so much of what is occurring?

How well-equipped are most of us to make sense of the paradoxes
and irrationality that are regular features of work life?

Business degrees typically cover disciplines such as finance, marketing, operations, strategy and leadership and are designed to equip graduates to take on managerial and leadership roles. Taking a rational, cognitive approach to analysis, problem-solving, and decision-making is valued alongside developing effective teamwork and communication skills. However, this approach on its own is not enough when people and workplace dilemmas don’t respond to logical formulas, when emotions are running high and the capacity for coming up with sound and strategic business solutions is overwhelmed.

Applying an organisation dynamics lens

This is when taking a systems perspective and applying an organisation dynamics lens will help. Having an approach to discerning what might be really going on can feel like having secret superpowers for finding a way through the maze of workplace complexities.

The discipline of ‘systems psychodynamics’ is at the core of the National Institute of Organisation Dynamics Australia (NIODA)’s post-graduate degrees in Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics). Founded in 2010 for the purpose of providing high-quality education in systems psychodynamic approaches, NIODA builds on and continues the world-class programs first delivered at Swinburne University and then at RMIT University.

Study designed for work-experienced professionals

NIODA’s Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) is designed for experienced professionals who wish to develop their leadership and managerial capacities. In this world-renowned work-integrated program you learn to:
– analyse, understand and manage ‘below the surface’ group and organisational dynamics in organisations
– identify blockers to change due to structure, culture and technology
– work with the emotional labour of leading complex systems in fast-changing environments.

This part-time course supports the development of individual capacities to shape and take up work roles that are meaningful, values-based, and which serve the ultimate purpose of the organisation. It provides industry-relevant, post-graduate education grounded in rigorous conceptual development and work experience and provides opportunities for engagement with real-world learning in a social and global context.

Reflecting on study at NIODA with graduate, Laurette Chang-Leng

It is so rewarding to hear about how this is being applied by a NIODA graduate who has taken up the option of a continuing professional development subscription with NIODA. I find it such a privilege to think with Laurette about her work and carry on exploring how the concepts and skills learned in the NIODA course can be applied in the workplace.

“I’m more comfortable with the complexity, I embrace ‘not knowing’ and observe what is emergent.”

– NIODA MLM(OD) Graduate, Laurette Chang-Leng

We recently reflected on how Laurette now takes up her role managing large and complex transformation projects as compared to when she came to NIODA. “In some ways, not much has changed, except for one major thing: my attitude and the perspective I bring… large, big-budget projects still have the feeling of being impossible, but now I’m more comfortable with the complexity, I embrace ‘not knowing’ and observe what is emergent. I sit back and think when others are focused on charging ahead, even when the train is heading for derailment! I have the confidence to call it out, and I am listened to – especially because I know the value of a good metaphor!” (an early subject in the course puts a spotlight on the ways in which metaphors are used in management practice and how working with them opens up understanding and new possibilities.)

Laurette and I also talked about the benefit of knowing about her own, what we call, ‘valences’ (predispositions) or what she is bringing into work encounters and what gets triggered for her. “I’m much more in tune with what’s mine and what’s not” – what belongs to the organisational system and others within it. This echoes something I wrote a couple of years ago: The course supports you to locate and integrate learning about yourself, who you are, where you have come from and all the ‘selves’ you are bringing with you to work.

I see the fruits of this self-knowledge all the time in our supervision sessions. Laurette has a courage and a curiosity for reflecting on roles, and what is being avoided or defended against. It is so exciting to witness how she is building the capacity to take up bigger roles, for fostering healthier dynamics, and creating a more effective and resilient team and organisation.

Postgraduate study with 100% student satisfaction

Laurette is just one of the many students who have valued learning with NIODA. We are proud of the 100% overall student satisfaction rating we have gained in the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT). QILT is a suite of government-endorsed surveys for higher education that NIODA has participated in since 2021. Currently, all 41 Australian universities and around 90 non-university higher education providers take part in the surveys. Over the two years of our participation, our students reported higher levels of satisfaction than the QILT national averages on key indicators including: learner engagement (NIODA received 97% compared with the national average of 42%), teaching quality (97% compared with 78%) and student support (97% compared with 74%). As institutes of higher education go, NIODA is small, but punching above its weight with these teaching and learning outcomes.

Helen McKelvie

June 2023

If you’re interested in knowing more about studying system psychodynamics and developing leadership and management superpowers, enrolments are open for our mid-year intake. We also have preview sessions coming up soon.

Young, E. (2018). Lifting the Lid on the Unconscious, New Scientist, Viewed 20 June 2023, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23931880-400-lifting-the-lid-on-the-unconscious.

How to lead and manage in the hybrid workplace

I keep hearing how it’s a tough gig being a people manager right now. Sustained challenges from the COVID pandemic have left many leaders smashed and exhausted. It can feel like all four of the VUCA elements (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) have become ubiquitous and are impacting everyday decision-making, not just long-term planning. For those who were full-time in the office with their teams, there are now the added ongoing complexities of managing a hybrid workplace as the new normal. Continuing the flexibility around working from home means dispersed teams; building and maintaining trust and connection has become harder. Finding the balance is not easy.

Staff well-being has been a high priority during and post-pandemic, and will always be important. But as business demands increase, leaders are under the pump to deliver and may be suffering ‘compassion fatigue’. Managers are faced with the difficulty of adjusting the implicit messaging for their staff from “we’ll look after you” and “we can be just as productive at home” to “we can’t make everything right, we just need you to do your job” and “flexibility is good but you have to come into the office at least some of the time”. Having the confidence to lead in the hybrid workplace is tricky when critical staff networks have been disrupted, and lines of authority blurred by remote working. With everyone recalibrating, including top-level executives, people managers are left to figure out how to make these new arrangements not only workable but optimal to meet organisational expectations.

Leeds University research has uncovered a huge training need: 74% of office workers surveyed would like to receive training for hybrid working, yet only 8.5% had received any specific training for hybrid meetings (a key employee concern of hybrid working). Hybrid working is a distinct way of working, and investment in support and training is crucial to help employees and managers to thrive in the new workplace.

The research identified that when employees had a choice over where to work within a workspace they reported a whole range of positives, demonstrating the value of designing with more discretion for workers to decide how, when and where to get tasks done. The challenge for managers is to reconsider their role, particularly in relation to authority and responsibility, around employees’ expectations for greater self-management. Managers can also learn to pay attention to supporting social networks in the hybrid workplace, and to developing a sense of belonging and identity in their staff, especially for new starters. Learning to consider the team as a network or system helps managers recognise the location in the network of new and diverse employees. (Davis, M.C., Collis, H., Hughes, H.P.N., Wu, C., Gritt, E., Fang, L., Iqbal, A. & Rees, S.J. (2022) Where is your office today? New insights on employee behaviour and social networks. Leeds, UK: University of Leeds)

Helen McKelvie

May 2023

Is trauma causing your toxic work environment?

ps If you’re a people manager who would like some support in your role in the hybrid workplace NIODA is offering a new workshop series ‘Optimising the New Normal’. The workshops aim to enhance capacity to manage the work boundaries relating to staff well-being and safety in the hybrid workplace; and to provide the sense of containment from leadership that has been compromised or lost in the move to working across onsite and online spaces.