In recent years, universities have invested heavily in metrics: publication targets, grant income goals, and research impact strategies. These are the institutional currencies of success — legible, reportable, and aligned with global rankings. But beneath the spreadsheets, something quieter is happening.
Many of your most talented researchers are struggling. Not because they lack skill or ambition, but because they are exhausted by a system that demands constant output while offering little support for how to sustain that output meaningfully. How to deliver quality. No-one is investing in their craft.
This is where coaching and training comes in. And why more universities are realising that coaching isn’t remedial — it’s strategic.
As an academic coach, I work with early-career, mid-career and senior researchers across disciplines. What I see time and again is that the core problems slowing research down are not about the individual’s capacity. They are a systemic lack of workload management compounded by writing habits shaped by overwork and perfectionism exacerbated by pseudo-productivity work environments.
Universities are full of brilliant people. But brilliance alone isn’t enough. To thrive, researchers need:
Structures to support deep thinking and training in writing craft that can thrive in the real - not imagined - environment of HE
Permission to work smarter, not just harder and abandon pseudo-productivity
Tools to move through stuckness and self-doubt
These are not “soft skills.” They are the engines of high-quality research.
Without them, researchers burn out. Or opt out. Or quietly disappear from your REF portfolio while teaching more, producing less, and doubting whether academia still has room for them. When institutions bring me in, the goal is not just productivity. It’s retention. It’s repair. It’s building the kind of academic culture where people can flourish — and where flourishing leads to outcomes that metrics alone can’t deliver.
If you want your metrics delivered, this is exactly the kind of intervention you need.
Here’s what changes when researchers are coached:
They build resilient, repeatable writing habits
They reconnect with the joy and meaning of their research, delivering high quality outputs
They produce more — but with less distress, and burnout, less HR issues, less teaching gaps
They model healthier practices to peers and mentees
And most importantly, they stay.
Hiring a coach isn’t a luxury. It’s one of the few interventions that addresses the actual conditions under which research is produced. Because while targets measure outputs, coaching strengthens the infrastructure of how those outputs are made — and by whom.
If you’re a Dean, Head of Department, Director of Research, or Staff Development lead, consider this: what would be possible if your researchers felt not just pressure to deliver, but real support to grow?
Let’s not just count the work. Let’s support the people doing it.