FARview #9 with Prof. Wim Gijselaers

Our guest for the ninth episode of FARview is professor Wim Gijselaers. He is professor of educational research at the School of Business and Economics at Maastricht University. His research focuses on educational innovation in higher education, social determinants of team cognition and team performance, and judgment and decision making in management and accounting.

In this podcast, Gijselaers answers the questions that could not be answered after his presentation during the FAR Conference, due to time constraints. Although this interview was planned to be an extension of the Q&A-session, it evolved into a broader podcast. So, this podcast went beyond answering the remaining conference questions.

Key take-aways:

•‘If young people in the hierarchy feel disconnected with the group, they tend to withhold important pieces of information. This doesn’t happen on purpose, it just happens. They might not even know they are withholding important information.
•As a partner of an audit firm, I would put substantial effort in the analysis of the client at the beginning of the audit, then sit together with the team and communicate the risks and tell the team what I think is important. Then, one or two weeks later already, I would plan another meeting. I would show my interest in them, from a factual perspective. •In previous interview-studies, juniors told us that they felt really lucky with a partner if he knew their name, if he made time to talk, didn’t look at his phone screen all the time but at them, and interpreted feedback as being genuine.
•Sometimes the partner faces a lot of budget pressure and has less or no time for appropriate attention for the team. Then it is also important to have invested in the beginning and made clear that there might be moments that the partner might seem a bit rude, due to the stressful calendar.
•The only way research findings will work in practice is if the practitioners get a sense of understanding what is driving the scientists, and the other way around. My experience shows that if you keep investing and start to appreciate each other’s strengths, then new research practices can develop which you might have never seen before, and which can become very powerful.’

You can listen to the podcast on our YouTube channel or on Soundcloud.

We also have a written report of the podcast available, which can be found here.

If you would like to read / see more of the FAR Conference, please go here where you can find the videos and summary.