For many of us, deep identification with work means receiving rejection letters, unsuccessful job applications, or unsuccessful promotion can cut deeply and create setbacks, which are at times challenging to cope with. However, in highly competitive professions of academics and university management, these knock-backs are inevitable and an ever-present part of professional life.
The goal of this event is to have a more open dialogue about rejection and failure in a course of one’s career, and share how successful individuals have overcome and embraced them for building resilience. We will be discussing the CV of failures or shadow CV (which refers to keeping a visible record of rejected applications or failures) as our CVs only tell part of our stories. We’d also discuss how individuals and organizations can approach rejections, failures, and setbacks to build resilience and maintain mental health in our professions
Panel Speakers
Scientia Professor Veena Sahajwalla is an internationally recognised materials scientist, engineer, and inventor revolutionising recycling science. She is renowned for pioneering the high-temperature transformation of waste in the production of a new generation of ‘green materials'. Veena also heads the ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for green manufacturing, a leading national centre that aims to ensure new recycling science is translated into real-world environmental and economic benefits. In this talk, Veena will be discussing her Shadow CV, as well as her personal approach to dealing with setbacks and rejections as an academic, inventor, leader, and mentor.
Professor Gavin Schwarz is the Director of Health@Business Research Network at the School of Management in the UNSW Business School. Gavin’s research and work interests include organisational change, with a particular interest in better understanding how organisations fail when changing, and developing applied strategies for dealing with failure to change. In this panel, Gavin will discuss how organizations can approach and embrace failure at an institutional level to build successful environments and pathways to resilience
Dr Justine Gatt is Senior Research Scientist and Group Leader at the School of Psychology and Neuroscience Research Australia. She leads a research program that focuses on understanding the neuroscience of mental wellbeing and resilience to stress and adversity, and ways wellbeing and resilience can be promoted via various intervention platforms. For this talk, Justine will speak briefly on the concepts of resilience and wellbeing and will discuss the genetic vs environmental contribution towards wellbeing and its underlying neuroscience. Finally, she will touch on ways resilience can be promoted when dealing with life set-backs or disappointment using the COMPAS-W Framework as a guide.