This fall, Renee Bourdeaux draws on her expertise in psychological research and her experience as a college professor to offer tips on building strong relationships with academic colleagues. In addition to applying her academic knowledge, each week Renee will also offer a prayer and a practical exercise to help build community in academic settings. Read Post 1 here, and Post 2 here.Â
This Collegial Connections series has so far covered Hallway Connections and Meeting Connections. Now, with any luck (and, of course, with some guidance from God), the intentionality we used to engage our colleagues in the hallways and during meetings hopefully led us to developing some stronger friendships with our colleagues. Now, I’d like to share some of the research on how to maintain those friendships.
Relational Maintenance Theory (Canary & Stafford, 1992; Stafford, 2011; Stafford & Canary, 1991; Stafford, Dainton, & Haas, 2000) explains that there are seven maintenance behaviors (positivity, understanding, assurances, network, sharing tasks/activities, relationship talks, and self-disclosure) that are used to sustain various types of relationships. For friendships, though, start by focusing on these two maintenance behaviors: sharing tasks/activities and self-disclosure. [Read more…] about Collegial Connections, Week Three: Maintaining Connections