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Your Doctorate Is Not the End of Your Education | Issue 327
Summary: Your doctorate trained your mind. What if developing your ability to listen, ask, and build trust could transform your impact?
Est. Reading Time: Four minutes that could transform your future.
Your Doctorate Is Not the End of Your Education
It's the beginning of a different kind of mastery.
By Gayle Scroggs, PhD, PCC
By the time you complete your doctorate, you've accomplished something extraordinary. You have learned to think critically, analyze complex problems, evaluate evidence, and communicate your ideas with clarity and precision. You have trained your mind.
Those abilities are invaluable.
They open doors, solve problems, and advance knowledge.
The Education We Didn't Receive
Yet over the years, I've come to realize that many of life's greatest opportunities depend on a different set of abilities that few programs intentionally teach.
Let’s call them human capacities:
How do we build trust?
How do we ask questions that help another person discover their own best thinking?
How do we navigate difficult conversations with curiosity rather than defensiveness?
How do we recognize strengths that others may not yet see in themselves?
How do we help people grow without trying to fix them?
Imagine pairing your scholarly mind with those human capacities.
Imagine bringing the same discipline to developing your relationships that you brought to developing your intellect.
What Becomes Possible
That combination can transform the way you teach, lead, mentor, collaborate, manage, parent, partner, and serve your community.
It can deepen your relationships, expand your influence, and increase your capacity to make a meaningful difference.
Imagine mentoring a struggling undergraduate who leaves your office believing, for the first time, that they really do belong in graduate school.
Imagine asking a question in a research meeting that transforms disagreement into genuine collaboration or ignites a stalled project.
Imagine helping a colleague think through a difficult decision without telling them what to do.
Imagine recognizing a child's emerging strengths before they can see them for themselves.
Imagine being the partner who listens so deeply that the other person feels truly understood.
Imagine serving on a nonprofit committee that moves from frustration to shared purpose because someone knows how to build trust.
In positive psychology, research has shown that these actions foster flourishing. Coaching builds on that evidence by helping people intentionally develop these capacities, just as they develop their intellectual abilities.
What Surprised Me
For many years, I believed that earning a doctorate represented the pinnacle of my education. I no longer see it that way.
My doctorate trained me to understand ideas.
My work as a positive psychology coach has challenged me to understand people.
Both have been essential to the person I have become.
Whether you become a professor, consultant, executive, entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, healthcare professional, manager, coach, or simply someone others turn to for guidance, these human capacities will shape your effectiveness every day. Wherever people are learning, leading, collaborating, creating, or navigating change, the ability to bring out the best in others becomes one of your greatest strengths.
Yes, your scholarly mind is a remarkable achievement.
Now imagine pairing that remarkable scholarly mind with the human capacities that help people flourish. Your doctorate is not the end of your education. It's the beginning of a different kind of mastery.
So this week, ask yourself two questions.
What might become possible if I intentionally developed my human capacities with the same commitment I bring to developing my scholarly mind?
What human capacity would most enrich my life over the next year? Listening? Asking better questions? Navigating conflict? Recognizing strengths? Building trust?
Choose one, and begin paying attention to it. As with critical thinking, these capacities grow through intention and practice.
Your knowledge opens doors. These human capacities shape the impact you have once you walk through them.
P.S. CURIOUS ABOUT WHERE TO BEGIN?
If you're curious about developing the human capacities that help people flourish, MentorCoach's newest coach training program offers an excellent next step.
Designed for thoughtful professionals, the ACC/Level 1 program helps participants develop the human capacities that enrich how they think, lead, and relate to others: listening deeply, asking powerful questions, recognizing strengths, building trust, and helping people flourish.
I’ve had the privilege of teaching at MentorCoach for nearly 20 years, and I’m delighted to share this new learning opportunity with our readers.
Learn more about the new ACC/Level 1 program here.
MORE WAYS TO GROW: RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Fisher, Jefferson. The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More. A practical guide to one of the most valuable human capacities: having conversations that build understanding instead of conflict. Fisher offers immediately useful strategies for listening, responding thoughtfully, and navigating difficult discussions with confidence and respect. Especially valuable for anyone whose work depends on collaboration, teaching, mentoring, or leadership.
Moon, Haesun. Coaching A to Z: The Extraordinary Use of Ordinary Words. Moon demonstrates how the questions we ask can change the quality of another person's thinking. Drawing on solution-focused coaching, she shows how ordinary conversations can become opportunities for learning, growth, and discovery. An excellent introduction to the mindset and conversational skills that help people flourish.
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YOUR OWN COACH
If you are considering whether to get your own coach to help you reach your academic goals, fill out this brief application for a free consultation with a dissertation coach.
GAYLE SCROGGS, Ph.D., P.C.C., Editor, ABDSG
Get Coach Gayle's new free e-book, Nine Strategies That Get My Dissertation Clients Across the PhD Finish Line. An accomplished coach and former professor, Gayle earned her social psychology doctorate from the University of New Hampshire. Now she leverages her unique integration of positive psychology and coaching to partner with clients to cultivate strengths, habits, and confidence to overcome procrastination, impostor syndrome, self-doubts, and other blocks so they achieve their big goals. A popular coach trainer, she also contributed two chapters to Women's Paths to Happiness. For coaching and presentations on flourishing at work, school, or life, contact her at gayle@essencecoaching.com. Enjoy more free resources at essencecoaching.com.
BEN DEAN, Publisher, ABDSG
Ben holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. He began writing the ABDSG in 1997. Over the years, the ABDSG has published hundreds of articles and provided thousands of hours of pro bono coaching and teleworkshops to ABDs all over the world. Ben is also the founder of MentorCoach (www.MentorCoach.com), a virtual university focused on training accomplished professionals to become part-time or full-time coaches. You may wish to subscribe to the Coaching Toward Happiness eNewsletter! It's on applying the science of Positive Psychology to your work and life (131,000 readers). Ben lives in suburban Maryland with his wife, Janice, their two children, and Dusty, their Norwegian dwarf bunny.
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