Abstract

By Edwin Kanters UU University Utrecht and Merel-Marlijn Sondervan UMCU University Medical Center Utrecht

Research administration isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Not rarely the research administrator ends up in situations where soft skills are essential to make it through the day alive, these skills should be a large proportion of our toolkit. For some they come naturally but they can also be learned. Sometimes you'll find yourself in a situation where you will have to gear up and put on your super power warrior suit to solve an issue. How to know when to transform and what will actually help you? During our session we will address how to recognise what is happening and identify what is needed to proceed from there. Developing your soft skills requires practice but also experience. In the session you meet different archetypes:

The micro managing researcher
The teflon researcher
The clueless researcher
The buddy researcher
The old school researcher
The ''God'' researcher

In this workshop we will use our acting skills to show you 3 hairy situations.

After every short play we will go into depth and present the theory and soft skills to manage those situations. The following topics will be addressed: conflict handling, posture/attitude, perfectionism/service level and role/responsibility and played with enlarged archetypes.

At the end of the session you will have a better understanding of how to influence behaviour by adapting your communication style to the situation.