How to work with an overly positive advisor?

Question

I'm in my second year of my PhD and my advisor is very, very positive. She never gives me negative feedback, even when I objectively have made a mistake.

For instance, two months ago, I noticed that I had made a mistake in my code that invalidated about 6 months of work. She wasn't even mad, saying things like "everyone makes mistakes" and "we can fix this." I was able to redo the analysis and still find interesting results, so it did more or less work out. But this is just one example of how positive she is.

Last year she encouraged me to apply to an university internal poster session and strongly suggested that it was highly probable that I would win one of the prizes offered. I did not win, nor do I feel like I was that close to winning. I was a first year student competing against fourth and fifth years.

Additionally, she is always happy with whatever I present to her. I'll admit, some weeks I do not produce much work, sometimes I'm slow to give her abstracts to review for conferences, etc, but she is always happy with whatever I give her.

She praises me excessively for every little thing, no matter how good or bad. She says "excellent work, great job, you're making fantastic progress." I get the same exact level of praise on the weeks I do a lot of work and weeks I do little work.

I'm used to working with PIs were much more blunt. Not necessarily negative, but told me how I was doing. If I didn't do much work, they would say "that's all you've done?" However, if I actually did a good job, I would get a "good job" or something.

It's very hard for me to manage my expectations with my advisor. I don't know if I am actually doing a good job or not. I don't know what my approximate actual chances are for awards and acceptances to conferences.

I'm afraid to ask her to be more blunt, because I'm afraid she would completely switch and criticize me too much.

How can I manage my expectations and work better with my perpetually positive professor?

Answer 1

I sympathize with this because I had an overly positive advisor for approximately 3.5 years, until I was getting ready to go on the job market and then suddenly he had tons of problems with my work. Others have told you to go elsewhere for criticism. This is probably a good idea, but you should also be able to have a good, balanced discussion with your main advisor who knows your work best.

Two things might be helpful:

1) Ask her what criticisms a reviewer might have of your approach to X

2) Ask her what needs to be done to improve Y

The first may help because she may be able to get in a different mindset about criticism if she is asked to think about the paper like a reviewer (a reviewer's "job" is to be critical, but she may feel that an advisor's "job" is to be encouraging). The second may help because it invites her to frame problems in an encouraging, positive way (which seems to be her comfort zone).

Answer 2

It seems to me that the problem isn't her being positive, it is that you:

get the same exact level of praise on the weeks I do a lot of work and weeks I do little work.

If she calls your work 'great' on good weeks and 'pretty good' on bad weeks, you can work with that. However if she says 'good job' in both instances, there is no way differentiate between good weeks and bad weeks.
One way to deal with that is to explicitly ask her to compare your work with previous work. "How does this paper compare with my previous papers in your eyes"? "How does my work this week compare to my work in previous weeks"? "Would you say these results are a more significant contribution to the field than my earlier results X, Y and Z"? Emphasize that you want to know when you did better then other times to help you learn and what to emphasize in publications/posters. Hopefully she will respond along the lines of: X, Y and Z are all great results, but Z really stands out. Still very positive, but differentiating between the good and the great.
Another option would be when considering major results/things you want to publish is to ask other senior academics for their opinion. In this case, remember to keep your supervisor in the loop. A way to approach it could be: "I am really proud of this part of my work and you agree that it is great. Do you mind if I show it to person X and discuss it with her/him"?

Answer 3

(1) Learn to let all the effusing she does wash over you like water off a duck's back.

Look elsewhere for ego stroking. Hers is clearly not working for you. But ego stroking is not the main thing one needs from an advisor.

(2) Train her to give you substantive guidance. Email can be helpful for this.

If she is incapable of giving you substantive guidance, look for a different advisor.

Answer 4

I wish I had your problem. My advisor was contradictory at best and purposefully confusing at worst. The problem is that you may very well have an excellent grasp of the topic area and are doing an amazing job. Some people can not accept praise and only respond to negativity.
Also what happens a lot is that many PhD scholars become discouraged and give up because their advisors are not supportive. I think she wants to not be that kind of advisor. If you know that there are errors in your work that needs to be fixed maybe she wants you to fix it without being told to fix it. Could that be a tactic?

Also, there are those PhD candidates who are afraid of success. Are you one of those people? At the end of the day, when you complain about her to her superiors and colleagues all you can say is that she was too supportive, too encouragine, she liked your project too much. For her that is a win-win because you are the kind of person who just likes to complain and she can prove her point.