The Academic Trinity

This chapter highlights emotional labor from the perspective of a leader with the intersectionalities of being African American, female, and serving in a leadership role at a predominantly white university. Also shared are lessons learned from managing emotion in the workplace including being true to one's self, understanding your purpose, adopting a “put me in coach” attitude, learning to talk to people, finding an affinity group, minding your manners and words on social media, and being inclusive. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the role of inclusion in mitigating emotional labor in the workplace.

Emotional Labor of Instruction Librarians

This chapter consolidates aspects of emotional labor that apply to the work of academic faculty and staff. Perspectives will focus on the instructional work librarians do, in the classroom and through research support, and be applied to teaching faculty and support staff in higher education. The collaborative nature of the work, along with the environment and structural components that both enhance and challenge that work, are examined. The chapter describes risk factors that are common and unique to librarianship, such as academic culture, administrative demands, communication, and student support, applying these concepts more broadly in higher education. Pulling from the research on emotional labor, industrial psychology, and the authors' experience in libraries, strategies are presented that can be used or adapted by individuals and departments. Finally, the chapter discusses tensions inherent in the work of those who choose to perform emotional labor: the love of supporting students and faculty through academic and personal challenges versus the exhaustion that sometimes results.

Difficult Conversations

Conflict is challenging, and factors such as cultural lens, emotions, power dynamics, and social capital influence how, why, and if you will respond. In an environment where getting along is expected, people can feel internal or external pressure to acquiesce so as not to rock the boat. Avoiding conflict and difficult conversations to get along can manifest into stress, anxiety, and other emotions that can make being productive and happy in the workplace difficult. There may be no way to make conflict feel good, but there are things that can be done to make conflict less painful. This chapter will analyze why conflict and difficult conversations can be challenging, offer advice on how to make the conversation more bearable and productive, as well as when it is ok to avoid it all together.

Kids in the Library

While children's services are traditionally associated with public libraries, the increase in students with dependent children means that academic libraries are increasingly being called to provide family-friendly spaces. Using the University of Maryland Libraries as a case study, the authors detail the process of developing, implementing, and overseeing family-friendly services, including a family study room and activity kits for children. They argue there is value in welcoming families into the academy and projects, such as a family study room, worthy not only for the contributions they make to the community but also for the opportunity to enact joy in our daily practice as academic librarians.

Race, Imposter Thoughts, and Healing

This chapter is concerned with acknowledging the mental health issues that Black men face in higher education. Research is presented and blended with lived experiences of being a full-time employee and doctoral student on a primarily white campus. This chapter focuses on the emotional trauma of Black men, imposter phenomenon traits, and offers strategies for healing from critical race theorist. Strategies to keep higher education institutions accountable for the hiring and retaining of Black men are also discussed.

Feminist Co-Mentoring as Advocacy

This chapter serves as a case study describing three science, technology, engineering, and mathematics librarians' processes, reflections, and growth through co-mentorship. The authors discuss the processes and limitations of traditional, hierarchical mentorship structures in academic libraries and outline their work moving beyond this model to create and maintain a feminist co-mentorship community. The peer mentorship model is intentionally non-hierarchical and works as a complementary support system alongside formal mentorship relationships. They outline the benefits of this model, which include the provision of support around the emotional labor inherent in working in higher education, balancing professional and personal growth, and navigating the academic landscape. This chapter lays the foundational work the authors undertook to develop their co-mentorship group and community of care and addresses the practical benefits of this work in each of their lives.

The Role of the Supervisor in Creating and Maintaining an Emotionally Healthy Workplace

Supervisors, be they employed in higher education or in other industries, operate in capacities that allow them to shape organizational cultures within their departments, divisions, colleges, or broader units. Within the higher educational model, this means that supervisors are uniquely placed to counteract negative elements within the culture of academia, which historically has tended to prioritize individual competitive output, with alternative models that may offer improvements to the emotional health and well-being of higher education employees. This chapter seeks to describe the impact of stress on the health of workers, the employment stressors that are unique to higher education, and the processes by which supervisors in higher education can use their positional power to counteract said stressors and improve academic organizational cultures. The chapter includes practical suggestions for supervisors to enhance wellness and decrease emotional harm in scenarios common to the higher education workplace as identified via social media crowdsourcing.

Building a Framework to Achieve Work-Life Balance

Based on their trials and errors as a co-working couple over a two-year period, the authors developed and refined a series of actionable steps for others to adopt when attempting to balance their home life with their work life. They note what sparse academic literature is available for co-working couples, identify issues and problems, and offer various recommendations on developing balance through reflection, self-care, and effective communication. They conclude that the process of developing a personal framework for work-life balance is just as much a personal endeavor as it is a team endeavor and will require constant work and revisions in order to be truly effective in the long run.

Creating Space for Care

This chapter describes how a community of practice explored arts-based research and expression to examine issues of inequity in education. Through visual journaling, the authors found growth within their scholarly practices and care towards their emotional selves at work. Using a hybrid of self-study methodology, arts-based research, and narrative inquiry, the authors examine the outcomes of their work, illuminating how visual journaling may be used to grow one's scholarly teaching. Ultimately, the authors found their process was generative, reflective, and one that serves to generate conversations about emotional workspaces in higher education. Further, this chapter provides practical guidance for readers seeking to develop communities of self-care through visual journaling in higher education.

Ludic Approaches to Teaching and Learning

Ludic approaches to the everyday tasks faced in higher education have become a receptacle for individuality, creativity, and the acknowledgement of the value of individual thought processes. Thoughts, meanings, and emotions are not just an embedded part of or neatly contained within people; rather they exist as connectors within and between human individualities as part of wider collective aims, values, and experience. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an insight into how ludic approaches to learning and teaching have the capacity to facilitate the emotional self at work in the context of higher education. An insight into the use of the Lego Serious Play method is used in illustrating how gamification can impact upon processes of critical introspection and reflexivity.