Negotiating expectations
Discover the implicit expectations that might come with the explicit.
Your success has many factors, but one of the most important is the set of expectations that help to define your success. You must, first, know the explicit expectations, and you should ask your supervisor and others in the department about the implicit expectations so that they can be defined and acted upon. Some of these may be negotiated for mutual benefits such as the avoidance of supervisory conflicts.
Not all expectations are negotiable. Supervisors tend to expect you to be committed to the educational process, have integrity, work hard, make progress, and be a good citizen of the department (Barnes, 2010). Many of your degree requirements, for example, are typically set by departments and will not be modified for individual students. Some requirements, however, such as coursework or language requirements, can differ from student to student based on prior learning and experience.
Furthermore, the "unwritten rules" of graduate and postdoctoral education, including "politics, myths, history, and ethos" (Klomparens et al., 2008) can sometimes be discussed and negotiated because they are not official. You may rely on this conclusion of recent research: implicit expectations should be discouraged in graduate education, and explicit expectations should be favoured, because the latter help to reduce attrition, time to completion, and supervisory conflicts. You may thereby ask your supervisor and department to define unwritten rules, and you might have a role in this.
In some cases, you and your supervisor might negotiate factors such as the deadlines for submitting chapters of your thesis, your responsibilities in the lab, and your communications activities.
According to McGill’s Guidelines and regulations for academic units on graduate student advising and supervision, students should expect their supervisors to
- uphold and transmit the highest professional standards of research and scholarship
- provide guidance in all phases of the student’s research
- meet with their students regularly
- provide prompt feedback when work is submitted including drafts of the thesis, and
- clarify expectations regarding collaborative work, authorship, publication and conference presentations.
And supervisors should expect their students to
- inform themselves of program requirements and deadlines
- work within these deadlines
- communicate regularly with the supervisor and committee, and
- submit progress reports to the supervisor and committee.
Students may find more information about their rights and responsibilities in relation to their supervisors in the Handbook on student rights and responsibilities.
When supervisees cannot negotiate, what can they do?
Although the long-term strategy of a BATNA ("best alternative to a negotiated agreement") has limitations, supervisees can speculate about a logical sequence of events, actions, and results based on the interests of the people involved in setting expectations. By determining what is in their own best interest, supervisees can try to avoid triggering responses that might have negative outcomes.
Although expectations should be clearly defined for both supervisor and supervisee, an alternative approach to avoiding conflict is known as a BATNA: the "best alternative to a negotiated agreement." Klomparens et al. (2008) recommend this idea warily, because it "depend[s] completely on the ability of the student [or postdoc] to accurately 'read' his or her environment, understand the range of choices available, and make choices that minimized conflict or failure" (41); thus, it is not useful when unpredictable personalities are involved or when supervisees are isolated from their departments and therefore not equipped to interpret it reliably.
When a BATNA strategy is appropriate, it can develop from the following questions:
- What is in my best interest?
- What is under my control?
- How might I be affected by the potential actions of others, e.g., my supervisor?
- How are others likely to act given their histories?
- What may I do to avoid negative outcomes? (Klomparens et al., 2008)
Negotiation in graduate education vs. law or management
In graduate education, negotiation is less a competition and more a discussion. The goal is not to apply power but to reveal what people need from their graduate programs, what they expect, and what options exist for avoiding conflicts. Differing expectations remain one of the main reasons for supervisory conflicts at McGill and elsewhere.
In McGill's 2012-2013 Supervisory Surveys, differing expectations were the second most popular explanation from supervisors of conflicts among supervisors and supervisees. Supervisees tended to blame supervisors for ambiguity in expectations. (See this episode of PhD Comics for a funny illustration.) Regardless of who is to blame, the conflict can be avoided partly through communication. One type of communication is negotiation.
Klomparens et al. (2008) observe that "negotiation" is often "equated with 'persuasion among equals,' or collective bargaining -- and faculty may want no part in that" (15). In the fields of law or management, negotiation is sometimes a competition to win a right or advantage. In contrast, Klomparens and her colleagues suggest that negotiation in graduate education should be "encouraged as a form of mentoring; that is, a process that permits productive, principled discussion between faculty and their students, even when students are the subordinates in the power relationship" (16); it is "open discussion" (67) that can reveal and determine the interests, expectations, and options involved in supervisory and student-department relationships.
The text of this page was based on:
- 2012-2013 Supervisory Surveys. Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies: McGill University.
- Barnes, B. (2010). The nature of exemplary doctoral advisors' expectations and the way they may influence doctoral persistence. Journal of College Student Retention, 11(3), 323-343.
- Klomparens, K. et al. (2008). Setting expectations and resolving conflicts in graduate education. Washington: Council of Graduate Schools.
Teaching and Learning Services (TLS)
SKILLSETS, McGill’s initiative aiming to enhance the experience of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, offers workshops addressing supervisory relationships. By learning how to create an alliance between supervisor and supervisee, both parties can look forward to a more mutually beneficial experience. See also the TLS website for more offering for supervisors and graduate students.