What stresses supervisors, and what can we do about it?

This is a guest post by Dr Ali Padyab, Associate Professor of Cybersecurity, and Dr Martin Lundgren, Senior Lecturer in Cybersecurity, both at the University of Skövde, Sweden. This article draws on their recent research paper: Stress in doctoral supervision: A perspective on supervisors.

Stress, from a physical perspective, is something that challenges the body and triggers a reaction. Doctoral studies are full of stressors (the things that cause stress) for both the students and the supervisors. For students, stress comes from how long it takes to finish, conflicts with other commitments, and uncertainty. Lack of support from family, feeling alone, financial issues, coursework, dissertation work, lack of sleep, and free time are everyday stressors for students, especially those just starting. Even Master’s students can feel stressed due to things like not feeling confident, differences in teaching, and language barriers. All this stress can affect the students’ work and health.

But it’s not just the students who feel stressed. Supervisors, especially those with little prior supervision experience, can also feel stressed, affecting their mental health and how well they supervise. Indeed, sometimes, students don’t ask for help from their supervisors because they see them being stressed out and don’t want to bother them. There isn’t as much research on what causes supervisors to feel stressed out compared to students. Considering that stress can affect your health, your mood, your performance, and your relationships – as well as make you unhappy and unproductive – it is a key factor to recognize and prepare for when entering the role of a doctoral supervisor.

In some countries, like Sweden, supervisors have to undergo training, but in others, they might not. Training provides a good opportunity to ensure that supervisors know about the challenges they might face, like stress, through experience sharing or other methods. Even though doctoral education can differ in various parts of the world, we believe our study can help start a conversation about supervisor stress in Sweden and beyond.

In this blog post, we want to share some of the insights from our recent published study on what makes supervisors stressed when overseeing doctoral students. We interviewed five supervisors at Swedish universities with varying degrees of supervision experience and found that doctoral supervisors face eight main sources of stress. Three of these are similar to what doctoral researchers experience: managing time, balancing work and personal life, and dealing with the student’s project. But there are also new stressors, like the day of the student’s defense, administrative tasks, getting involved in the student’s personal problems, handling tasks outside the usual scope of one’s work, and managing relationships with co-supervisors. All these stressors are talked about in more detail below.

Doctoral supervisors face eight main sources of stress

1. Time allocation: Planning the supervision time was shown to be a stressor since unforeseen circumstances and issues beyond the control of the supervisors often made it difficult to predict how much time was going to be needed and when. For example, factors such as the following were brought up as causing stress: (1) Time used for administrative work; (2) Allocating time to different doctoral researchers equally, and (3) Time pressure from ensuring that the student published enough articles.
2. Balancing work and personal time: The boundary between personal and career time is narrow, and supervisors must often use their spare time to manage the workload, affecting their personal lives as well as their professional.
3. Doctoral researcher’s project: Supervisors experience stress due to the expectation of securing external funding for doctoral researchers, challenges in aligning projects with the doctoral researcher’s interests, concerns about supervisees becoming overly attached to projects, lack of authority over project funds, and added responsibility without corresponding authority, leading to a discrepancy between the roles of project leader and supervisor.
4. Doctoral defense: The doctoral defense in Sweden is a public event where researchers defend their thesis and face examination. This event also poses stressors for supervisors, including challenges in forming a grading committee that meets faculty requirements and anxiety over the committee’s decision, with potential repercussions for the supervisor’s reputation. At the same time, comparisons with foreign systems highlight differences in stress levels and procedures.
5. Organizational and administrative factors: The lack of institutional support is a significant stressor, with issues like inadequate funding and time allocation, administrative burdens, and resource constraints exacerbating stress levels. In contrast, improvements in resource allocation, such as access to professional proofreading services, were noted as mitigating factors.
6. Doctoral researcher: Doctoral researchers’ psychological issues, such as family bereavements or financial crises, could stress supervisors, who felt compelled to provide support due to inadequate social networks for students; additionally, supervisors experienced stress when required to engage in unfamiliar tasks like learning new platforms, with common stressors including difficulty in communicating with students, observing their distress, and instances where promising students leave the program for other opportunities, prompting feelings of frustration but eventual acceptance.
7. Out of scope activities: Tasks considered secondary to the supervisor’s main role, such as departmental duties and editing work, were identified as stressors for supervisors, as they felt these responsibilities detracted from their primary role and enjoyment in supervising doctoral researchers.
8. Co-supervisor: The final issue involved co-supervisors, with interviewees expressing concerns about their colleagues’ sole focus on publication numbers rather than supporting supervisees, the added stress of finding co-supervisors from different disciplines in multidisciplinary fields, and the potential for conflicts within supervisor teams to impact both supervisors and students.

So, how do you cope with stress?

Knowing about stressors is the first step towards finding strategies to cope with them. We believe that stress is an essential issue that needs to be recognized and addressed through a joint effort between policymakers at the ministry level, individual institutions, supervisors, and doctoral students. Below are some thoughts and tips on how such an issue could be addressed.

• First of all, more research is (always) needed. Stress among doctoral supervisors should be studied nationally for its prevalence with a focus on longitudinal impact to understand its causes, impact, and potential strategies for mitigation and support. A more refined analysis could explore factors such as institutional setting, demographics, field of study, and supervision style.
• We need to revisit some of the academic meriting requirements demanding the supervision of a ‘graduated doctoral researcher’ to climb up the academic ladder. Otherwise, there is a risk of introducing researchers with no previous supervisory experience or training and with limited skills in the research process to supervision responsibilities prematurely.
• Support from others around you, like your colleagues, your friends, or your family, goes a long way. Talk to them about what’s going on in your life. Vent your frustrations and emotions. Asking for their advice and feedback can make you feel less alone and more connected.
• Periodic discussions among supervisors from various institutions focusing on stress management techniques and experiences could foster a supportive network where strategies for effectively handling stress in the academic environment can be shared, learned, and implemented.
• Reflect on your role and your practice as a supervisor. Think about what you’re good at and what you need to improve. Learning from your successes and recognizing your limitations as a supervisor can help improve your confidence.
• When faced with a stressed-out supervisor, doctoral students should be encouraged to flag to appropriate persons at their institution.
• Set boundaries for yourself and your students as a supervisor. Establish clear and realistic goals and expectations in your role as a supervisor. Communicate them to your students and any co-supervisors you may supervise with. By respecting your limits and needs as a supervisor, you can better balance your work and private life – with the bonus of feeling more balanced and in control.

So, what do you think of this study? Do you relate to any of the findings or suggestions? Do you have any tips or stories about your supervision experiences? Let us know in the comments below.