Developing a Talent for Science

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Developing a Talent for Science Want to make the most of your talent for science? This practical guide for students, postdocs, and professors offers a unique stepwise approach to help you develop your expertise and become a more productive scientist. Covering topics from giving presentations and writing effectively to prioritizing your workload, it provides guidance to enhance your skills and combine them with those of others to your mutual benefit. Learn how to maintain your passion for science, inspire others to develop their abilities and motivate yourself to plan effectively, focus on your goals, and even optimize funding opportunities. With numerous valuable tips, real-life stories, novel questionnaires, and exercises for self-reflection, this must-read guide provides everything you need to take responsibility for your own personal and professional development. Ritsert C. Jansen is Professor of Bioinformatics and Head of the Bioinformatics Centre at the University of Groningen. He has a successful career in the sciences and extensive experience as a trainer on career and personal development courses.

Developing

a Talent for Science Ritsert C. Jansen University of Groningen

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521193122 #

R.C. Jansen 2011

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2011 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging–in–Publication Data Jansen, Ritsert C. Developing a talent for science / Ritsert C. Jansen. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-521-19312-2 (Hardback) — ISBN 978-0-521-14961-7 (Pbk.) 1. Scientists—Vocational guidance. 2. Mentoring in science. I. Title. Q147.J36 2010 502.3—dc22 2010027378 ISBN 978-0-521-19312-2 Hardback ISBN 978-0-521-14961-7 Paperback Additional resources for this publication at www.cambridge.org/9780521193122 Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents Introduction 1

1 Develop your talent 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9

8

Introduction Web Passion Prioritize Persevere Speak Write Fund Habits

2 Use other people’s talent 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9

Introduction Web Read Listen Ask Share Collaborate Move (on) Habits

48

vi contents

3 Develop other people’s talent 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9

Introduction Web Inspire Educate Unite Support Reward Keep in touch Habits

4 Make it happen 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9

120

Introduction Web Dream Count Believe Act Care Succeed Habits

5 Use your webs

152

5.1 Introduction 5.2 Complete

Further reading 165 Acknowledgments 170 Index 172

86

Introduction Who is this book for? This book has been written for people serious about science: students, postdocs, professors, trainers, and support and other staff. So what’s in it for you? I’ll outline this briefly in the next three paragraphs. You could read only the paragraph relevant to your involvement in science but why not read the other paragraphs as well. n

You’re a student. As a Bachelor, Master’s, or PhD student you take classes in science subjects. You are (for now) at the bottom of your career ladder, but it’s good to know what’s going on higher up the ladder, so that you can better understand, appreciate, and communicate with your teachers and supervisors in that special type of organization called a university. It may also help you in deciphering whether a career in science in a university or in a company would be attractive if it’s not your vocation. Some of you will already be involved in research projects and indeed feel you want to become a

2 introduction scientist at a university. Many of you will look for jobs outside the university and perform tasks in which you will nonetheless benefit greatly from having developed your talent for science as much as possible. So if you are a student, starting off on the road to becoming a scientist or something else, you will likely benefit both personally as well as professionally from reading this book. n

You’re a postdoc or professor. As your talent for science grows, you climb up the career ladder and may become a postdoc or even an assistant, associate, or full professor at a university. Alternatively, you may become a junior or senior scientist at a research institute or in industry. You start recruiting people with a talent for science, even top science, to join you in your research. How can you recognize and develop their talents, how can you retain these talented people? I trust that this book triggers your thoughts just that extra bit, that you will find it useful to fuel discussions with students and colleagues, and that you will pay more attention to developing your own talent and that of your students and colleagues.

n

You’re someone else serious about developing talent. Typically this category includes all researchers and heads of research groups in industry, but also nonscientists in universities, industry, or government. As a responsible manager, administrator, policy maker, or trainer, you can make all kinds of plans, but top students and scientists may have strong criticisms of your plans. Do you actually know what your scientists do every day? Do you offer them the right facilities and possibilities? Is success celebrated so that everyone knows what the real goals are? Is the support and training you offer adequate? If you read this book, you will better understand the essentials of science and use your staff’s powers to create the right conditions for making top quality science happen.

3 how is this book structured?

How is this book structured? Some of you are born with a head for mathematics, while other people are more gifted in biology, physics, chemistry, economic, or behavioral sciences, or some other science subject. It is encoded in your genes, so to speak. It’s in your nature. Is it that static? No, in reality it is much more dynamic. Even the most gifted child has to pass primary school, secondary school, and high school, before he or she has the knowledge and skills to crack an outstanding problem in science. So nurture counts as well, and this is what I mean by “developing a talent for science”. This book offers you lots of practical advice on how to do so. Chapters 1 to 4 describe the four successive steps in developing a talent for science. Chapter 5 encourages and empowers you to apply these four steps immediately in your daily life, and as a direct result you will become a much more effective student, postdoc, or professor. n

Step 1: Develop your talent. You help your talent to flourish by doing the right things right. You do the right things if you combine a basic talent with a strong passion. You do things right if you have acquired and improved the essential skills such as prioritizing, giving presentations, and writing. So the emphasis in this chapter is on you.

n

Step 2: Use other people’s talent. You can make more of your own talent by combining it with the talents of other people. This may seem obvious: of course, other people can help you do better. Nevertheless many (young) scientists are convinced that they, and only they, can do their particular job well and they therefore don’t look for help. So the emphasis in this chapter is on setting up useful directed connections from other people to you; for example, how to listen to them effectively, ask them relevant questions, or collaborate with them to your benefit.

4 introduction n

Step 3: Develop other people’s talent. You can make the most of your talent if you inspire not only yourself but also other people to make the most of their talents. This may seem like a strange and inefficient road: why invest in other people and not directly in yourself? Try seeing it this way: your team members and students learn from you how they can do the right things right, and you will have the best performing team to create more and better output (e.g. a nice PowerPoint presentation, and the beginning of a scientific paper at the end of a student project done in your lab). So this chapter is about how you can set up useful directed connections from you to other people; for example, how to inspire, educate, or unite them to their benefit.

n

Step 4: Make it happen. To quote Goethe: “A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.” You will be triggered to act and continue to act to make the most of your talent. Chapters 4 and 5 give you many practical guidelines on how to implement the ideas from the first three chapters in your daily life as a scientist, so that your dreams may come true. But there is no “free lunch”; you will really need to become active. The figure below visualizes the structure of the book. The “messages” in this book are illustrated by 24 stories, 29 exercises, and 4 self-reflection forms:

n

Stories can speak louder than anything else. The “messages” in these chapters are therefore illustrated by anecdotes from students, postdocs, professors, and other people serious about science; all these stories are presented in the first person. Some stories are mine, but most are from other people who shared their stories with me. This introduces some bias for biology and mathematics, but readers from completely different fields such as behavioral sciences have assured me that the messages appeal to them as much as they do to readers from

5 how is this book structured?

FIGURE INTRO.1 Structure of the book. Chapter 1 describes how you can develop your own talent (left arrow pointing to yourself), Chapter 2 describes how you can use other people’s talents (arrow pointing from the outside world to you), and Chapter 3 describes how you can help develop other people’s talents to their benefit and yours (arrow pointing from you to the outside world). Chapters 4 and 5 encourage and empower you to make all of this happen (the arrows together forming powerful circles).

my field. Life can produce wonderful and incredible stories: some details may have been changed to protect privacy, but all the stories are true. They can be yours in the future. If you would like to share your own favorite stories, please email them to me via [email protected], or visit the website www.talent4science.eu. n

Exercises can boost your talent more than anything else. The “messages” in these chapters have therefore been translated into various “try this” exercises. Most of these exercises you can do on your own, but some may benefit from interaction with your fellow students or colleagues during an ad-hoc group (organized by yourself) for example, or a tutor group meeting, or research group retreat, or academic skills training course. You can read and do the exercises as you come to them, but you can also read on (without breaking the flow in

6 introduction the chapters) and come back to the exercises later. But doing them at some point is essential, since they will guide you through a process that ends with your concrete aims and action plans for the short, middle, and long term. Doing these exercises is the way to water, nourish, and weed your ideas. But growing takes time. You can do these exercises at your own speed and maybe even repeat them from time to time. n

Self-reflection holds out prospects for a really interesting career. There are four web figures to help you visualize your strengths and weaknesses. The scores on these figures are calculated from a questionnaire that you fill in at the beginning of each of Chapters 1 to 4. You can then set your ambitions for preferred scores in, say, one year from now, and doing the exercises in the final Chapter 5 on “Use your webs” will help you define the appropriate actions to help you get there. To finish the introduction: this book aims to give you many ideas rather than to be comprehensive. It will plant seeds in your mind, although the watering, nourishing, weeding, and final harvesting are up to you. Good luck with your career, whether you decide to stay in science or not.

1

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious” Albert Einstein,

Nobel Prize winner, Physics, 1921

Develop your talent

10 develop your talent

1.1

Introduction Maybe you’re following a scientific course at a university as a Bachelor, Master’s, or PhD student. Or you’re already working as a postdoc or professor at a university, or in industry, or in the service sector. At each stage of your career other people are appealing to your unique knowledge and talent for science. This book cannot tell you how talented you are in math, biology, physics, chemistry, behavioral sciences, or any other subject. So what can it do? It emphasizes the essentials you need to add to your talent. It’s all about doing the right things right. You do the right things if you combine a basic talent with a strong passion for the chosen subject. You do things right if you have acquired and improved the essential skills such as prioritizing, giving presentations, and writing. So the emphasis in this chapter is on you. The factors I see as being most essential are: n

Passion. Is science your ultimate job vocation or do you want to use your science training in other ways? Does scientific thinking energize you? Do you say YES to science?

n

Prioritize. Can you do more than one or two things at the same time at a top level? Do you know what to do if you run out of time? Do you know when to say NO?

n

Persevere. Do you have the resolve to persevere? Once you have solved one problem, you’ll immediately bump into the

11 introduction next one. How do you deal with cumbersome problems, setbacks, and stress? n

Speak. Do you know how to report your work? What makes a presentation a great one? What would you say if you unexpectedly met your professor or dean in the elevator?

n

Write. In science you have to report your findings. What makes for successful writing? Do the slogan “sense and simplicity” (used by the multinational company Philips) and the saying “less is more” ring a bell?

n

Fund. Do you want to shape your own future in science, industry, or elsewhere? How can you increase your chances of getting your plans funded now or in the future?

12 develop your talent

1.2

Web passion prioritize

fund

persevere

write speak

FIGURE 1.1 Web for plotting your personal scores

So how good are you in using your talent? It’s time for some self-reflection. This figure shows a spider’s web. The more you score on the outer ring, the better you are (or think you are). Why not draw your own? You can download the web from www.talent4science.eu.

13 web There are several ways to determine your scores: n

Intuitively. Your unconscious self may well be able to provide a good evaluation. Use a color to clearly indicate your scores on the web.

n

Questionnaire. You can use the following questions (see next pages) to help in scoring yourself. Write down your scores quickly (don’t think too hard) using a 0–5 scale and sum the scores per category (between 0 and 30). Then use a different color to indicate these scores on the web: 0 in the center, 5 on the first ring, up to 30 on the outer ring. You can ignore irrelevant questions or modify the questions so that they are more relevant to your situation.

You’ll use your web scores in the final chapter “Use your webs”. Then you’ll be invited to set priorities and make concrete plans for improving your scores.

14 develop your talent

Develop your talent scale: almost never ¼ 0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 ¼ almost always

Passion I like solving challenging problems I am intrigued by research outside my own field I am happy to work over the weekend or night I like working on new unproven ideas I am prepared to run the extra mile I watch science programs on television Sum



Sum



Sum



Prioritize I know my long-term aims I do higher priority tasks first I take decisions based on my own vision I delegate tasks to other people I finish tasks well and in time I skip useless meetings

Persevere I can focus for a time on a single problem I can look at problems from new angles I alternate hard exploration with relaxation I recognize factors that frustrate progress I have fun at work I cope well with stress and setbacks

15 web

Speak I polish my presentations to perfection I create pictures telling a thousand words I stay well within allotted time for presentations I can tell my story to non-experts in simple words I have a sales pitch of two minutes ready on my work I am proactive and offer to give presentations Sum



Write I write drafts quickly not bothering about details I have a good feel for logical order in texts I can cut any text to half its number of words I put my drafts aside to have a fresh look later I make my documents a joy to read I ask outsiders to comment on my texts Sum



Fund I am looking for “sales options” I aim for the big fish not the minnows I actively work on building a stronger CV I make important information stand out well I tailor my application to the needs of the funding agency I apply for traveling stipends to attend conferences Sum



16 develop your talent

1.3

Passion Studying science can be fun; but working in science can be even more rewarding. You can really push the frontiers of knowledge or use that knowledge to contribute to a better world. You have a lot of freedom to be curious, to do what you want to do. You’re paid to play. Does that sound attractive? Do you say YES to science? Is a career in science your vocation? Then you feel what inspiration, passion, motivation, and inner drive can do for you – in addition to your talent. If you study or work whole-heartedly, then it’s not a problem to work (sometimes) for hours and hours. Study or work becomes your hobby, it energizes you. Most of the time you go to study or work in the morning with pleasure and sometimes you may even regret that it is the weekend. Now what if this is not the case, if you’re not 100% enthusiastic about your course or your work? Maybe you’re not on the right track and science is indeed not going to be your vocation in the longer term. But it could also be that you just need to add “something” to your talent for science. For example, you may be overwhelmed by tasks and living may have become surviving. Maybe you have real passion for the subject, but you are doing things the wrong way. The next sections discuss the essential skills for doing things right, and the exercises in these sections may help study or work become fun again. You might also be completely sure of yourself: you know you’re

17 passion passionate about the subject area, while you also know you don’t want to go for the traditional science career, for example because detailed bench work or the high competition is not for you. No problem; there are many ways you can direct your talent elsewhere and the ideas in this book for developing talent are just as applicable to you as they are to people who go for a traditional science career. The questionnaires and exercises in this book can help those of you who are not so sure about their destination to reflect on themselves. Here are some examples of how you can implement a YES to science into a career in a university, institute, public service, or commercial company: n

Start as a PhD student, and then sequentially become a postdoc for 2–4 years, an assistant professor for 5–6 years, an associate professor for another 5–6 years, and finally a tenured full professor. As a PhD student you may cosupervise research MSc students, as a postdoc a PhD student, and as assistant professor you will most likely be the principal investigator (PI) on projects for which you were awarded the funding. Your research group will grow in size if you move up to associate and full professor positions. This is the traditional science career. See Figure 1.2 below.

n

Start as a PhD student and perhaps do one or two postdoc terms before you move to a position in an institute’s or company’s research group, where you may become head of a research team after a couple of years, and later move on to other senior positions in development, marketing, sales, or board of directors. Generating profits in the short term of course matters a lot more in companies than in universities. How can you convince a company that hiring you is an excellent investment? See Figure 1.3 below.

n

Start as a PhD student and experience what it is to be a postdoc, but if being a principal investigator is not what

18 develop your talent you’re looking for, then consider some other particularly scientific positions, such as program manager for a funding agency, or editor of a scientific journal, still working close to science. n

Start as a PhD student and use your experience from that period in other ways, e.g. start up your own company, become a scientific publisher, government policy maker or advisor, or school teacher.

Nobel Prize Prof

Postdoc

PhD

MSc

FIGURE 1.2 The traditional science career

19 passion

Director Senior consultant Entrepreneur Postdoc Teacher

PhD Junior consultant

MSc

FIGURE 1.3 Alternative careers

It may be very helpful to have a mentor, a person you consider to be a good role model for you. However, at the end of the day, don’t forget to be (or find) your real self (there are already enough other people), follow your own heart and destiny. Einstein was “passionately curious”; how about you? Plan your career with your heart, not with your head.

20 develop your talent

A POSTDOC’S ANECDOTE

Walking with two Nobel Prize winners In my office I have a large poster hanging on the wall above the meeting table. It shows a pleasant picture of a lake and some buildings, all part of the “genome campus” in Cambridge, UK. The poster was produced to celebrate the official opening of the campus in 2000 – and I attended that ceremony. Sitting under this poster I tend to tell this story to my visitors. Imagine four people walking around the edge of that lake: me, a colleague, and at a distance of ten meters from us, two Nobel Prize winners: James Watson, who won a Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA, and Frederick Sanger, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on the structure of proteins and, 22 years later, a second Nobel Prize for developing the Sanger Sequencing Method, which was the major DNA decoding technique used in the International Human Genome Project. Just imagine the scene. I can still feel how exciting it was to walk there, so close to two people who had made such wonderful discoveries. The admiration does its work, stimulating me and my visitors to feel that being a scientist is a lot more than just having a “job”.

21 passion

/

TRY THIS!

Yesterday when I was young1

Which “things” inspired you when you were younger, say between 14 and 17 years old? Did you have ambitions and ideas on how to build up a meaningful life, perhaps on how to contribute to a better world? How about the period between 7 and 14 years old: do you still remember moments of ultimate joy? Take a piece of paper and write down everything that comes to your mind or, alternatively, visualize this in a quick drawing. For example, as a teenager did you dream about studying and protecting wildlife in the sea? Do you still remember occasions when you had achieved something and jumped around and shouted from the rooftops with excitement? Describe or sketch this. Do you remember the time you had an exciting backstage visit to a zoo or you talked to someone from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)? Your quick drawing will show sea life and shorebirds and more. How much of this happiness is still present in your life today or in your current career track? If you like, use a second piece of paper and describe or draw what’s really important in your life today, showing what you have chosen to do nowadays. Perhaps today you see yourself studying marine biology or doing research on Antarctica. But maybe today’s drawing shows you doing molecular analyses on in vitro samples in some high-tech lab. And now compare the images of the younger “you” with those of today’s “you”, and see what this tells you about your passion and the choices you’ve made so far in your life.

1

Title of a famous song by Charles Aznavour and Herbert Kretzmer.

22 develop your talent

1.4

Prioritize If you know where you want to go with your talent, that’s great. However, whether you arrive at your destination will depend to a large extent on your ability to say NO. Doing experiments, writing manuscripts, getting them published, we all agree these tasks are important. So they deserve your YES. Some even deserve your immediate YES; for example, checking preprints of your upcoming paper usually has to be done within 48 hours (see figure below). In practice, your YES may be in danger because you may have many other relatively unimportant duties, some of which may even look urgent, for example the deadline for your contribution to the annual report. How can you avoid your YES in capitals for the important tasks becoming a yes in way-too-small a font size in practice? The point is that most people cannot do more than one or two big tasks at the same time. A good general strategy is to first put the bigger stones (first say YES to the important things) into the basket, then pour the sand (the smaller, less important things) into it, and not the other way around, because if the basket is half full of sand this prevents you from putting in the bigger stones. . .and you can be sure that learning about and solving scientific problems belongs to the category of big stones. Also remember that tasks often take you much longer than predicted, so keep this in mind when you plan your work.

23 prioritize

Not important

Important

Not urgent

Urgent

Do experiment

Revise manuscript

Draft manuscript

Write reply to reviewers

Submit manuscript

Submit revision

Meet without agenda

Write new text for annual report (instead of reusing texts from manuscripts)

Make a fuss about things you cannot influence

FIGURE 1.4 Spend your time on important tasks. Some of them may be urgent; most of them are not. Be clever in handling unimportant tasks, no matter whether they seem urgent or not

A YES to someone else can be a NO to yourself. We all have our examples, such as when you have spent the whole afternoon on some meeting organized by the boss, whereas you wanted to continue writing your manuscript. Sometimes there isn’t even a boss or another person to “blame”. We all have our caveats; for example, you browse the internet for so long or talk on MSN or Skype or other internet chat sites with so many people. But how sad if you then fail to do your work, if this turns out to be not a YES but a NO to yourself. How often do you say YES to something that deserves a NO? If you do say YES, then there are usually different ways of how to implement your YES. Some implementations are more costly (in time, effort, or money) than others, so be creative and search for the cheaper ones. For example, prepare your contribution for the annual progress report by copying (and slightly editing) the abstracts of your conference posters or published papers. Another example: carefully consider how many meetings you attend – is that meeting really so essential (as a whole or in part)? Are you really so essential to that meeting? Can other people show up at your workplace to save

24 develop your talent you traveling time (and to test whether the others are serious enough to want to invest in the traveling time)? Would it suffice to have a telephone conference (use a phone with a loudspeaker)? These options should be your “defaults”. Going to meetings as occupational therapy or to make you feel important should never become a habit. Don’t let other people fill your schedule. You want to be successful. But just suppose you become successful – it can actually become quite a nuisance, and there may be a time in your career that you notice that you’re beginning to suffer from too much success. Here, by success, I mean that other people are beginning to show serious interest in what you are doing. For a few this happens pretty early on in their career (for example, during an MSc or PhD period, if you have given a nice presentation about your thesis work); for others it might not come until later (sometime during a postdoctoral period). If you’re successful, you’ll start to get honorable offers for an internship or job, a request for a presentation or collaboration, or an invitation to become a course assistant or (student) committee member. Great, this allows you to select and pursue the most exciting and promising options. But, after the exploratory phase, you must cut the least promising options off and say NO, unless you want to lose your passion and stop solving new scientific problems. Living should not become a struggle to survive. Don’t wait to see what happens to you. Be creative, prioritize, and decide for yourself. You’re the architect of your own career in science. You can blame no one else if you’re running out of time, if living becomes surviving. Learn to say NO.

25 prioritize

A PHD STUDENT’S ANECDOTE

Help, I’m successful I was able to turn my Master’s thesis into a small information technology company but, after a while, my curiosity and wish to learn new things made me change from exploring business opportunities to starting a PhD project: I said NO to business. But then people started to show interest in my half-finished software products developed as part of my research. I wondered what to do. Since I was still in doubt about a future career direction, my supervisor and I decided to allow for further exploration of the business options through an extension of my PhD contract, with an extra year being funded by income from the business. By the end of my four-year PhD period, I had several nice publications, several grants awarded for various new projects, and a growing network in science. But I was at a T-junction with options in computing science on the one side and in information technology business on the other. Above all, the one-year extension period allowed me to figure out where to put the career ladder: against the science wall (my YES) rather than on the business wall (a NO), but without denying the possibility of commercial spin-offs from my work, just leaving that for other people to do.

/

TRY THIS!

No can do

How often do you say YES to something that deserves a NO? Choose an appropriate day to monitor this, such as yesterday (if you still remember your activities well enough), today

26 develop your talent (including the moment when you are reading this sentence), or tomorrow (when you may have a busy schedule). Make a list of all the activities you have done – all of them received a YES from you. Now look again and carefully score these activities on a priority scale from a “should-really-have-been-a-NO” to the “highest-possible-YES”. Also note the order in which you performed these activities and how much time they took. Did you do the most important things first or at the moments you were feeling most bright and active? Did they take more time than anticipated? And then think about those things you didn’t do: did you postpone activities that should really have been a YES? What can you conclude about how you set priorities?

27 persevere

1.5

Persevere Problems, problems, problems. Some people tell you to speak about challenges instead. This change of words refers to a change in attitude, in mental state. It may help you to accept failure better and celebrate success more (see figure below).

Passion, will, do, persevere

Success

Failure

Frustration Accept

Accumulate

Complain, whine, cynicism, apathy

FIGURE 1.5 Accept failure and celebrate success

If you’re passionate then you won’t become tired quickly and you’ll have mental strength and perseverance, even if things don’t go your way immediately. Keep at it. As a student, you’ll see you spend most time on the difficult sections in your course books. As a researcher, the easiest problems have all

28 develop your talent been solved, so it’s only logical that your problem should be so huge and look so unsolvable. If your current task is really difficult, then close your door for an hour or two of undisturbed perseverance and of gnashing your teeth, to help you get through the first difficult period when you can’t see any solution or way forward. From your own experience, you’ll know that days with seemingly little progress are always followed by “eureka!” moments. The more you have suffered, the higher the feeling of euphoria once you have tackled your problem. Some suffering and frustration is not always a bad thing, as long as you haven’t lost your self-respect because of all the struggling and suffering. Focus on the result, remember your earlier successes, keep focused, don’t lose your head. And do alternate hours of exploration with release – you often get creative breakthroughs in your more relaxed moments, when taking a shower, on the way home, or going for a jog. It’s essential, again and again, to make space for your creativity. Talk to others as well as your mentor if necessary – a different way of looking at a problem can often help, even if that person is not an expert in the subject.

A PHD STUDENT’S ANECDOTE

Elephants I had discovered an alternative interpretation for a claim made in a paper published in a high-impact journal. My boss and I sent a note to the journal but it stayed under review for more than 15 months and got rejected in the end, even after three rounds of revision – a rather macabre and frustrating record. We finally published the note in another journal and even won an award at a conference for

29 persevere

it – this was much appreciated recognition after all our earlier suffering. In science, as in most professions, you will sometimes need an elephant’s thick skin . . . and lots of perseverance.

/

TRY THIS!

Big tasks

I have arrived at writing this page . . . but there are still so many pages to go, so much work to be done, so much uncertainty about whether it will ever be finished, printed, bought, read, and appreciated. In your work, you too will have similar “big” tasks, like doing your Master’s or PhD research and writing a thesis (“Will my thesis ever see the light of day?”), or developing your own research line and applying for a grant (“Competition is so strong”). Consider two such tasks you have been involved in, perhaps one that went pretty well and one that didn’t proceed as hoped for. How much perseverance was needed? Which issues were holding back progress and how did you go about solving them? Think of external factors (e.g. a failed experiment causing a major delay) as well as internal factors (e.g. your ability to cope with disaster). Is there a lesson here for you? For example, that it may help to gather other information or to ask somebody for help or to put the problem aside for some time? Perhaps now invite one or more of your fellow students or colleagues to come and brainstorm on what actions would help solve the current problem.

30 develop your talent

1.6

Speak Can you make a sales pitch about your research in just five minutes? Impossible? That’s a real pity if you find yourself sharing the elevator with your supervisor, boss, or dean. Be prepared for such unique chances. It will be difficult and time consuming to find simple words (and convincing mental images) that people can grab and remember easily, but it will definitely pay off in the longer term. You’ll have the core of an excellent presentation, poster, or paper about your work, and you’ll be ready for a job interview or to meet the editor of a scientific journal, maybe even Nature or Science, at a conference. Preparing an excellent presentation can take a lot of time (perhaps inversely proportional to the time you are allowed to talk), but I can guarantee that you will benefit from investing the time. Use as few words as possible on your slides (keywords only) and try to tell your story using simple pictures (which people can “see” in their mind much more quickly and generally remember a lot better). When discussing draft manuscripts, I tend to ask students and colleagues to just tell me what the real problem is they’re studying and what their most exciting results are. Usually their spoken version is a much better sales pitch than their written version. Try to explain your work to your friends, partner, parents, or distant colleagues. Or just talk to yourself

31 speak in the mirror. It may take quite a time before you have your story polished nicely, but investing the time and effort will pay off. Use the spoken version of your story for your slide show. How can you design a good one? The first slide shown in the figure below may look like the standard template for your university, with a big logo at the top of the slide. But why? Are you marketing your university or your own story? The top of

Example of a terribly bad slide People in the back of a meeting room can see the top of a slide – often they can't see the bottom, so don't put the institute's logo in the top! This slide contains far too much text. Nobody will be able to read it. And if they do start reading, they won't be able to listen anymore. Please drop that silly background.

Proper slide design

Slide title in the top Logo at the bottom No funny background Short texts

FIGURE 1.6 Bad and good slide designs

32 develop your talent your slide is the only part that people in the back of the meeting room are likely to be able to read, and it shouldn’t be wasted on unimportant information. Putting important information at the bottom of your slide can be dangerous: often the audience can’t see the bottom and they may be distracted and not able to listen to you anymore. The first slide also contains too many words. Remember, in a presentation you have an audience, not a readership. Think about why you might like the format of the second slide better.

A POSTDOC’S ANECDOTE

Selling onions Many important people, like the Queen, the Minister of Agriculture, the town mayor, and various captains of industry, came to the opening of the new buildings at our plant breeding institute in Wageningen, the Netherlands. As part of the entertainment, the VIPs were taken on a tour around the buildings and saw research demonstrations at ten different places. I was elected to present my work on modern molecular plant breeding, in the short period of only three minutes. What I still remember is how difficult and time consuming the preparation had been – selling my research with as few words and visual supports as possible. What can you say in only three minutes? I decided to use onions to support my story and I went to the greengrocer to buy different varieties of onions. I put colored stickers on them to indicate the outcomes of molecular assays for disease resistance, yield, and other traits. After explaining my research strategy to the VIPs, I then quickly selected the best onion variety – hoping it was the best – by

33 speak

looking for the ideal assay outcomes. I practiced and improved the whole presentation many times, and then the real demonstration turned out to be almost a real sales pitch. Not only did I sell my science quite well, I almost sold the selected onion: the demonstration was so realistic that the director of a plant breeding company wanted to buy the selected onion as a new, high-potential variety. . .

/

TRY THIS!

KISS

Now have a good look at your own slide shows and enjoy the enormous pleasure you experience when you manage to simplify your story. In this exercise try to compress your presentation into just five minutes. Be very critical and evaluate every picture and word in the slides and think about whether a simplified version can still convey the same information. Keep it short and simple (KISS). Do a try-out of your KISS version on your colleagues and friends. This try-out should have at least two phases: first, your presentation; second, a slide-by-slide discussion with your audience to figure out what they liked and disliked. Then go and revise your slides and present them to a different audience again, followed by another review round. At the end, you will have a convincing story and you’ll be ready for a conference or chance meeting with your director or dean.

34 develop your talent

1.7

Write So you’ve prepared a five-minute story to make a sales pitch for your research work. Now write it down, as if you’re telling the story to someone, add the details and then critically prune the draft. Just start writing, write quickly (don’t bother about the spelling), really write as if you’re telling the story out loud to somebody. As I said in the last section: I frequently ask people to tell me face-to-face what they intended to write down on paper and I am always surprised how much better that spoken version is than the written version. Obviously the pruning is very important. Don’t be surprised if you can rewrite the whole story in half the number of words. And do expect to spend some time on this process. There are many good books and internet sites that outline how to write an excellent text, whether it’s a report, paper, review, or abstract (see the “Further reading” section at the end). These will teach you about “less is more” and how the title and abstract are extremely important because they first attract the attention of potential readers to your paper – or put them off. The abstract should be inspiring, a joy to read, self-contained, and balanced in terms of general versus expert information. The books referred to above will also show you how a transparent structure for your paper (perhaps structured like a good internet site) can help your readers to see immediately what you’re offering. They can then quickly decide where to start reading.

35 write Books and internet sites can also show you how to use simple, “down-to-earth” language for the basic facts (avoid long, pompous sentences). Carefully weigh every word and every sentence and if in doubt, delete it. Such guides also stress that figures, boxes, or tables can illustrate the most important messages in an easily accessible form (which the reader will remember well). However, they also point out that it is not enough to do a good job of describing the experiment and results; in order to get your paper published you need to “sell” your findings and explain why the reader should care. If you apply for an internship or a job, you write a letter and add a re´sume´ (curriculum vitae). The rules for writing a manuscript also apply to your re´sume´. Here is a fragment from the front page of a re´sume´. How does it look? Does the important information stand out well? TABLE 1.1 Fragment of a re´sume´

Curriculum Vitae -Title: Dr -First name: John -Initials: J. -Prefix: -Surname: Smith -Male/female: Male -Address for correspondence: Department of Something, University of Somewhere P.O. Box 1001 5500 AB Town The Netherlands -Preference for correspondence in English: no -Telephone: þ31.50.2223334/23300 -Fax: þ31.50.22233330 -E-mail: [email protected]

36 develop your talent

-Website (optional): http://www.us.nl/university/faculty/researchgroup/ something/research/neurodegenerativediseases/ animalmodels/index

And here is a version with exactly the same information in a different layout, and with a useful website address (no one will check out the long address in the original text). TABLE 1.2 Fragment of a re´sume´ (revised)

Curriculum Vitae Title: First name: Initials: Surname: Male/female: Correspondence to:

Correspondence in: Telephone: Fax: E-mail: Website:

Dr John J. Smith Male Department of Something University of Somewhere P.O. Box 1001 5500 AB Town The Netherlands Dutch or English þ31.50.2223334 þ31.50.2223333 [email protected] www.us.nl/~john

One final remark about good writing: it requires time for contemplation. You will benefit greatly from being able to put your draft aside for a couple of days and then taking a fresh look at it later. So never send a text to a supervisor or to a scientific journal just because you get frustrated with it.

37 write

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

It’s not simple to achieve simplicity I was once invited by a journal editor to review a manuscript and write a News and Views item on it. I accepted the invitation, but found it hard to understand the structure of the paper. At first I thought that was due to my lack of knowledge. But, after some hard thinking and extensive discussions with a colleague – not all journal reviewers will be as patient – I discovered the logic in the experiments and was able to summarize the whole experimental set-up in a single figure. As a result – suddenly – the paper was much easier to understand. This was the ultimate proof that a figure can represent a thousand words! Although it may be really hard work to reduce a complex issue into something simple and transparent, it’s worth giving it a serious try.

/

TRY THIS!

Taste a text

Here is the original (draft) version of a proposal abstract (some details are changed to protect privacy). The chances are that you are not an expert in this field of research and that may even be an advantage: you can see more clearly where and why these texts fail, or where and how they raise excitement. Spend 2–3 minutes on reading it while carefully listening to all your thoughts and feelings. Look at the layout from a distance – is it visually easy to read? Look at the title – is it a good summary

38 develop your talent of the whole proposal? Does it catch your attention and why? Read the proposal text. Do you see the words of the title repeatedly appearing throughout the text? Read the abstract. Can you see the vision and bigger picture? Does it appeal to you as a non-expert? Is the significance of the research explained well or do you have a “so what” feeling? Perhaps read it once more, but now aloud. Carefully “taste” it word by word, sentence by sentence. How does it taste? Does it invite you to “eat” more? What can be done to make it taste better? TABLE 1.3 Original title and abstract

Genetic intervention in the dynamics of amyloid formation in fly models of age-related neurodegenerative diseases Amyloid inclusions are a pathological hallmark of several incurable, age-related neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s disease. These inclusions are formed from misfolded disease proteins that aggregate via toxic intermediates and likely represent a cellular protection mechanism. How these inclusions are formed during cellular aging and how this process is influenced by hereditary factors is poorly understood. Here I will use small animal (Drosophila melanogaster) models for amyloid diseases to uncover genes and processes involved in age-dependent amyloid inclusion formation. In genome-wide genetic screens we have identified genes that, when depleted or mutated, alter the number of inclusions or aggregates. We have characterized one of these genes, modifier of aggregation 1 (ABC-1), a homolog of previously uncharacterized XYZ1 and XYZ2 in humans. We have found that ABC-1 regulates life-span and drives misfolded proteins into aggregates by regulating the transition from a misfolded monomer to an amyloid seeding structure. The amyloid promoting activity of ABC-1 is unprecedented. I hypothesize that ABC-1 represents an

39 write

unexplored pathway that drives misfolded proteins towards amyloid inclusions. With an XXX fellowship, I would like explore this pathway by developing Drosophila melanogaster strains in order to identify and characterize other genes involved. Uncovering this protein quality control pathway will add to our understanding of these life-disrupting diseases and open up new avenues for treating the initiating events in aging-associated neurodegenerative diseases.

I suggest you do the same exercise with one of your own products, such as an abstract to a report or manuscript you have written recently. Ask another student or colleague to join you. Now exchange the abstracts and carefully read each other’s abstract. After approximately 30 minutes, discuss your impressions and suggestions for improvement. I bet you’ll now have new ideas for how to polish your own abstract and get it to shine brilliantly.

40 develop your talent

1.8

Fund During your Bachelor, Master’s, PhD, and postdoc periods you will usually work on projects proposed and initiated by other people. If you are getting on well in such a project, you will soon notice that you go beyond the original plan: you develop better, smarter ideas, fueled by your growing understanding. This might allow you to taste for the first time that you can, should, and perhaps even want to give direction to your own work. Maybe there is nothing more attractive than being able to do what you have proposed and arranged yourself as early as possible in your career. This is possible: there are many options for a talented student or researcher to get a personal grant. If you want to start a career in science, then apply for such grants as early as possible. But remember, no one wants to pay for mediocrity. Of course, good grant application skills will also pay off in other circumstances, such as in a commercial company if you need to convince your director about your future plans, as an entrepreneur to convince your prospective clients about your offer, or as a job hunter to convince your hoped-for future employer that you are the ideal candidate. So what we discuss in this section in the context of science grants can have a much wider application. Some countries may have a national organization for scientific research or private foundations offering various kinds of grants. They may offer funds for traveling to visit other

41 fund institutes or to attend conferences, and they may have training grants for talented students. For example, the American Heart Foundation, like many other foundations, offers help for students at various levels. The EU offers “Starting Investigator Grants” for newly qualified PhDs and for postdocs with several years of experience, and “Advanced Investigator Grants” for those who are getting close to full professor level. The National Institutes of Health in the USA offer young investigators an “R01 Grant” to fund “investigator initiated” projects. Such grants not only provide a considerable sum of money and additional freedom to perform your research in your own way, but they also carry national and international recognition – some are even considered prestigious awards. That status may help you in the future. When writing a proposal for funding your internship, training, or project, pay a lot of attention to the title, the abstract, and your curriculum vitae. Remember that the abstract is often the first part read by a committee member or reviewer and it sets the first impression – just as with a research paper. In most cases only one or two of your judges will be experts in your line of research, but other non-experts will also be asked to grade and rank your proposal. Your abstract of a project proposal should argue that you are going to tackle the big problem not the secondary issues, that you have evidence from a pilot study to demonstrate you can jump the hurdles, and it should be sufficiently concrete about the tasks you propose to perform. Above all, ensure you really address what the funding agency wants: remember, it’s not about “what’s in it for me” but “what’s in it for them”. This requires an empathy of the conscious and unconscious needs of the other party and you need to be able to put your message into their language. Taken together, your application must convince the review board to invest in your project (rather than other projects).

42 develop your talent If you apply for a personal grant, the only thing that should be in the spotlight is you. It’s really about presenting yourself professionally. Demonstrate your best skills and greatest successes shamelessly – but ensure they are based on the hard facts. For young scientists this may involve your rather nice MSc thesis, your concrete contribution to the science of your supervisor, possibly the first paper you coauthored on, or a poster shown at a national or international conference. For the more experienced researchers, this may involve the number of times your papers have been cited, the project you have carried out successfully, your visits to other groups run by important scientists of other universities at home or abroad, any prizes or grants you have been awarded, any type of attention that your work has been given in newspapers or scientific journals (e.g. editorials or news and views articles in important journals that mention your name). It is all about you and your talent for science. So make sure you build up a curriculum vitae you are proud of. Don’t forget to demonstrate your personal leadership skills too. What matters is not only the scientific content of your proposal but also whether you are a person with character, a solid worker, and a good leader, the talent of the future. The review board is looking for whether the return on investment in you would be bigger than the return from someone else. Your proposals for funding will often be evaluated by reviewers – usually your colleagues in science – who will express an anonymous opinion about your plan. Reviewing proposals is a terrible job. A referee usually has to evaluate a whole bunch of proposals in a short time and perhaps initially has only five minutes per proposal. If your proposal looks or reads less well than other proposals, the referee may lose interest – it’s just too tiring to decipher what you’re trying to say, too boring, or not innovational enough compared with the competition. So do make the life of your referee(s) as easy as possible (see also the previous section “Write” and the exercise below).

43 fund

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

Publish your project proposal! Some project proposals require a large section on the background to the research and this allowed me to apply a trick: I asked a journal editor for help. I carefully drafted a section on the background to my proposed project, made an executive summary, and then submitted these to the editor of a journal in the Nature group. The editor was interested and reviewers and editors helped me to improve on my text. It was published as a “perspective” or “opinion” paper, quite realistic given the fact that it was supposed to be part of a proposal rather than finished work. I used this final text as a basis for the background section in my grant application. Did this trick work? Absolutely – the proposal was highly rated!

/

TRY THIS!

Polishing an abstract

The exercise in the previous section asked you to read an abstract and note its shortcomings. This exercise asks you to evaluate my proposals for making that abstract better at selling the research. A very simple revision would be to play with an alternative layout. How do you like fully justified text or white space between sections? Does this look better? Is it easier to browse the text to get a feel for the content from diagonal reading before a complete read-through?

44 develop your talent TABLE 1.4 Changing only the layout

Genetic intervention in the dynamics of amyloid formation in fly models of age-related neurodegenerative diseases Amyloid inclusions are a pathological hallmark of several incurable, age-related neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s disease. These inclusions are formed from misfolded disease proteins that aggregate via toxic intermediates and likely represent a cellular protection mechanism. How these inclusions are formed during cellular aging and how this process is influenced by hereditary factors is poorly understood. Here I will use small animal (Drosophila melanogaster) models for amyloid diseases to uncover genes and processes involved in age-dependent amyloid inclusion formation. In genome-wide genetic screens we have identified genes that, when depleted or mutated, alter the number of inclusions or aggregates. We have characterized one of these genes, modifier of aggregation 1 (ABC-1), a homolog of previously uncharacterized XYZ1 and XYZ2 in humans. We have found that ABC-1 regulates life-span and drives misfolded proteins into aggregates by regulating the transition from a misfolded monomer to an amyloid seeding structure. The amyloid promoting activity of ABC-1 is unprecedented. I hypothesize that ABC-1 represents an unexplored pathway that drives misfolded proteins towards amyloid inclusions. With an XXX fellowship, I would like to explore this pathway by developing Drosophila melanogaster in order to identify and characterize other genes involved. Uncovering this protein quality control pathway will add to our understanding of these life-disrupting diseases and open up new avenues for treating the initiating events in aging-associated neurodegenerative diseases.

45 fund Here is my extensively edited version of the title and abstract. Do you see the differences? Which version do you like more and why? Do you see ways to improve this text further? TABLE 1.5 Alternative title and abstract for personal grant application

Age-related neurodegenerative diseases: how the fly Drosophila melanogaster will open up novel strategies for genetic intervention in humans Parkinson, Alzheimer, and Huntington are quickly becoming major diseases in the Western World and frustrate humankind’s strong desire for healthy aging. We urgently need prevention and intervention strategies, but we must first understand how the underlying molecular mechanisms work. The pathological hallmarks of these age-related neurodegenerative diseases are misfolding of proteins and so-called amyloid inclusions. The mechanisms underlying misfolding and inclusions are still largely unknown, but can be studied using the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) model. In my pioneering work published in journals X and Y, I was able to find key genes which alter the number of inclusions or aggregates. In particular, this work pointed towards the ABC-1 gene regulating the transition from a misfolded monomer to an amyloid seeding structure. I have shown that the amyloid promoting activity of ABC-1 is unprecedented. This project aims to fully elucidate the molecular mechanism and the pathway in which ABC-1 operates. To this end, the project will focus on the following tasks . . . , . . . and . . .. In conclusion, this fundamental research project in the fruit fly will lead to a breakthrough in our understanding and open up important new avenues for treating the initiating events in aging-associated neurodegenerative diseases.

46 develop your talent I roughly followed a layout that states “the big problem” in the first paragraph, “the state of the art” in the second, the “hypothesis and pilot study” in the third, the “aims and tasks” in the fourth, and why it’s “worth funding” in the final paragraph. Actually, the original abstract lacks information on the aims and tasks, so I can only point to this shortcoming by typing “. . .” when it comes to specific aims and tasks. The text is evenly distributed over the paragraphs, which is more pleasing to the eye.

47 habits

1.9

Habits This section rounds off the chapter on developing your talent. Below is a list of good habits of highly effective students and scientists, based on what we’ve learned in the previous sections:

□ Having strong personal drive □ Looking for challenges □ Being engaged and enthusiastic □ Setting priorities well □ Acting on own desires □ Working hard when needed □ Not giving up □ Setting yourself high standards □ Focusing on success □ Finishing tasks □ Coping well with stress □ Speaking briefly and to the point □ Writing briefly and to the point □ Seeing, creating, and taking chances □ Having a polished sales pitch Select your two strongest and two weakest habits from the above list (tick ☑). Do you have any “empirical evidence” to support your choice, e.g. concrete stories showing your habits in action?

2

“The hardest problems of pure and applied science can only be solved by the open collaboration of the world-wide scientific community.” Kenneth G. Wilson, Nobel Prize winner, Physics, 1982

Use other people’s talent

50 use other people’s talent

2.1

Introduction One plus one makes two, doesn’t it? Wrong! One plus one can make a lot more than two and that is what synergy is all about. Combine your talent for science with that of other people. As a Bachelor, Master’s, or PhD student you will primarily be examined on the basis of what you have done (in an excellent way, e.g. your exam) or contributed (something novel and creative). Your results always build on top of what other talented people have contributed at an earlier stage. How can you make the most of other people’s findings? As a postdoc or a professor you may be supervising students working on Bachelor, Master’s, and PhD thesis projects, and you may also be collaborating with colleagues on a national or international scale. How can you make the most of your interactions with other people? The factors I see as being most essential are: n

Read. Scientists write a lot. You may easily suffer from data overload. So what should you read, and how?

n

Listen. Scientists present their work at all kinds of meetings. Good listeners learn fast. You will experience ultimate moments of “eureka!” when a solution for your problem appears, or moments of “how curious” if a new view manifests itself. Can you learn to listen better?

51 introduction n

Ask. Show real interest in what other people present and demonstrate your interest by asking questions. Do you know how to ask questions effectively? Everyone is afraid of asking a silly question, but you will at least learn from the answer.

n

Share. How would you benefit the most in the long term: by “open source” sharing of all the profits resulting from your talent, or by keeping it all “closed up” for your own work as much as possible? Think of how Google or Wikipedia got started.

n

Collaborate. Two can and do know more than one. How do you successfully collaborate in mono- or multidisciplinary teams? What problems should you expect and how can you cope with them?

n

Move (on). You would like to study or work at a place where your talent can flourish best. How do you select that environment? How do you ensure that you can keep “moving on” in your career even if you don’t move to another place?

52 use other people’s talent

2.2

Web read listen

move on

ask

collaborate share

FIGURE 2.1 Web for plotting your personal scores

So how good are you in using other people’s talent? Use your intuition and the questions listed below to obtain your scores for the spider web above. Write down your scores quickly (don’t think too hard) using a 0–5 scale, calculate the total score per category, and plot them on the web. Then draw your own conclusions.

53 web

Use other people’s talent scale: almost never ¼ 0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 ¼ almost always

Read I use electronic alerts to signal relevant new papers I quickly evaluate a text by diagonal reading I quickly recognize bad scientific reasoning I read papers/journals outside my own field I know the impact factors of journals in my field I learn by reviewing other people’s texts Sum 

Listen I listen to how things are said I listen to what is said and to what is not said I check whether I have listened well I can recognize subtle body language I really listen to other people’s feedback I listen actively to myself Sum 

Ask I ask for feedback on my work I ask for feedback on my behavior I continue to ask for important open issues to be clarified I ask my audience questions during my presentations I ask other people how I can improve I ask people about their well being Sum 

54 use other people’s talent

Share I refuse to share opinions on absent persons I share benefits with younger scientists I avoid holding a grudge when I feel I have been taken advantage of I select collaborators based on their sense of “sharing” I give uninvited, positive feedback I combine negative feedback with positive Sum



Collaborate I value collaboration with nonscientific staff I perform well in teams I let go of bad feelings about failing collaborations I’m eager to learn from other people I prepare for meetings well in advance I summarize meetings well at the end Sum



Move (on) I am eager to improve on my weaknesses I have a good sense of where the field is going I like change I carefully select future supervisors/employers I take responsibility for my career development I talk to future colleagues before making a move Sum



55 read

2.3

Read If you go to the library of an old university you will see bookshelves full of scientific journals, some with impressive volumes dating back to the early 1900s. You’re looking at the collective productivity of many people with a talent for science. You can build on this knowledge base and you will undoubtedly benefit enormously from other people’s talent – you’ll stand on the shoulders of giants. But you only have time to read a tiny fraction of all these papers. So what do you read? Where do you find it? And how do you read it? The “where to find it” is getting easier and easier. You can use modern media to select relevant papers or books in ISI Web of Knowledge, Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, or PubMed. Or you can look at Faculty of 1000 Biology, Faculty of 1000 Medicine, or similar websites that list the hottest papers in a certain field. You can register to get electronic alerts of interesting new papers. Hopefully in the near future even newer informatics tools (e.g. the “semantic web”) will be able to help you. Keep an eye on these new developments. The “what to read” is actually getting more and more difficult: hundreds of thousands of science papers are published annually. You can feed the above search engines with keywords that can include scientific words, names of authors, and names of journals, and you can restrict searches to a certain period in time. So carefully select a combination of keywords

56 use other people’s talent to pinpoint papers of real interest to you. If you only get a limited set of papers, you may perhaps consider yourself a pioneer in a new field. But otherwise, you may still find yourself overwhelmed by the number of potentially relevant articles. Then try to add additional keywords: for example, search for a review article first. The authors of such reviews have read a large body of literature for you and hence you only have to read their paper (see also the anecdote in this section). Some of the cited papers may look so exciting to you that you decide to look them up as well (and to check them out before going too far on the basis of the review). It might also be a good idea to search again, but now for the newest papers written by the authors of that exciting paper. Some journals help their readers by actively scouting for such new papers. They then publish small news reports on them as a service to their readers. It may pay off to read review journals such as Nature Reviews, the Trends series, or Physical Review Letters regularly. Of course, it can also help a lot if you ask other people for their favorite papers and books. Then, finally, how do you read the selected papers? Just “linearly” reading complete texts will take you too much time. You can better read the title, the abstract, and the headers in the text sequentially or diagonally, and then look at the figures and tables. That shouldn’t take too long. At each step you can decide to continue or stop. Blame the authors if the paper is difficult to read. Print only those articles that survive your first quick scan and then use color highlighters to mark important sentences or sections or to improve transparency (e.g. highlight words like “first”, “second”, “third”). Write your notes, queries, and comments in the margins. And store the really interesting papers in a paper archive and in an electronic archive using the literature database system available in your group. You could also ask your colleagues for their speed-reading tricks.

57 read Reading should also have one important side effect: it will help you improve your writing skills. Look up articles in Nature and Science which are highly edited for readability. Nature’s website even offers advice on how to write a top abstract for your paper: read it. See the “Further reading” with website links at the end of this volume. A quick way to learn what really matters in good writing is to read a manuscript written by other people in a serious manner and write a review report on it. It will be an informative exercise, since you can then see what irritates you in the manuscript (referees will review your manuscript and be just as merciless with you) or what impresses you (imitate good examples). Make sure your review belongs to the bottom right panel in the figure below and learn to analyze other people’s review reports of your work (e.g. some long and critical reviews may actually be ill substantiated).

Long

Short

Uncritical

Critical

Inexperienced reviewer

Mostly bold, negative statements without any proof Signs of too little attention paid to the text, e.g. bad sentences

Unsubstantiated positive remarks Field where people tend to scratch each other's back

Positive and negative remarks Constructive, balanced and well substantiated by facts and additional references

FIGURE 2.2 Critical reading and reviewing: a classification of good and bad reports

58 use other people’s talent

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

I like swimming I am an exceptional guy, most scientists don’t want to be like me. Why? I read between 20 and 50 papers per day. I am extremely good at this and exploit this skill to write many review papers. One such review paper can easily save you and other people from reading 100 papers. I collect, print on paper, and electronically archive large numbers of articles. From time to time I dig into my electronic archive system to search for still unread beauties and once I found such a beauty. I was excited and looked forward to reading the paper, so I excavated the paper version from my archive. To my shock the paper version turned out to be full of highlights and written notes in the margins: I had already read this paper but nothing, not a single phrase or picture, really nothing, had been stored in my “flesh and blood” memory. What a disappointment: what you read one day is leaking away the next day. But then I realized I didn’t mind. Integrating all I had ever read to reach the ultimate conclusion or discovery would be a great endpoint, and perhaps this may eventually happen. But, more probably, reading so many papers is like swimming upstream in a river without ever reaching the endpoint. Who cares? I like swimming, and it’s fun to have double the reading pleasure from one paper. And with my review paper in your hand, you can surf the ocean of papers I’ve already read!

59 read

/

TRY THIS!

Practice critical reading

Is there a principal investigator (PI) in your group or institute who is currently working on a manuscript? I bet there is. Ask him or her for a draft manuscript or select a published paper. Read it critically and form a well-thought-out opinion about the work. Act as peer reviewer and write your short report and decide which modifications are essential before you can recommend publication of this manuscript. Try to discuss the paper and your report with the PI and your supervisor in a spirit of learning how to read critically. You may also organize a journal club session with several students and postdocs on this draft manuscript. Challenge them to write review reports and prepare for a debate. You can serve as editor-in-chief, summarize the reports, and decide which modifications are essential before you and your referee panel can finally accept the paper. You or your supervisor can invite the PI to a “Master class” session of one or two hours to discuss the paper.

60 use other people’s talent

2.4

Listen Listening is essential. You should listen to colleagues who present their work, to people who ask the speaker questions (or ask you if you give a presentation), to collaborators and clients and, last but not least, to yourself during your presentations, or when you take a shower. You can listen primarily in an “inquiring” and “logic” mode to acquire new knowledge, to understand someone else’s way of reasoning (what and how), or to start up discussions. It is important to realize you often interpret what you hear using your current, limited knowledge and your restricting belief of how things are or should be. Here is an interesting quote: I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. Robert McCloskey, US State Department spokesman

You may therefore want to practice listening with an “open mind”. But how do you do this? First of all, show real interest in what you hear; that is, don’t let words come in one ear and go out the other. Secondly, be aware of the interpreter inside you. Your world map can be like a two-dimensional pancake; the other person’s may be more like a three-dimensional ball. Your internal interpreter should be prepared to prolong the normal

61 listen split-second between the incoming signal and Pavlovian outgoing judgment, so that you can change your perception or at least postpone your judgment and start asking questions (see next section). Luckily, we humans have the option to build in this extra processing step, and scientists should certainly practice this important skill. That can make listening an exciting activity, potentially raising unexpected results (e.g. synergy). But changing your perception is far from easy as the following quotes prove. They came from a person who has done the “Taste a text” exercise in the section on “Write” in the last chapter: “Very useful to see how other people reacted to my feedback on their abstract (e.g. they couldn’t abandon their jargon, even though I had asked them to do so).” “Surprisingly I reacted in the same way to other people’s feedback on my abstract (e.g. I was also quite obstinate in not replacing jargon by simpler words).” “Thanks to this reciprocal exercise I realized how important it is to really listen to other people’s feedback.” There are even more listening skills to practice. You can just listen to the words someone else says, but usually there is a lot of additional information to be gained: by listening to his or her intonation, to the information between sentences, or to what’s not said (although this is much easier for a native speaker than for someone listening to a second language). If you listen carefully you will hear whether another person presents his or her message with force and persuasiveness – or with an undertone of doubt. You must also “listen” carefully to criticisms, suggestions, and appraisals written by (peer) reviewers of your work. Take them very seriously. Blame yourself (and not the person asking the question) if someone asks a “silly” question after your talk, or if the reviewer of your report or manuscript has misunderstood your message. Don’t get entangled in an argument or

62 use other people’s talent self-justification; just use the information to significantly improve what you say or write. The words listed in the table below are an interesting source of information. Let’s take “I must” as an example. How often do you hear yourself or somebody else saying “I must go to this meeting” or “I must write this formal report”. You may want to reformulate “I must” to “I want” and check whether you (or someone else) really wants to go for a certain goal or what other action(s) would be appropriate if it remains at “I must”. Alternatively, “just accept things as they are” and “do what needs to be done”, or “understand that you really do not want to do something and need to say NO” (see the earlier section on “Prioritize”). Here are two other examples of weakening language: “I am going to try and meet the deadline” or “I hope you can help me”. This doesn’t sound too convincing; it sounds more like you are already counting on failure. On the TABLE 2.1 Reformulating weakening language

Weakening language

Positive reformulation

I must I see a problem I’m going to try I hope Yes, but. . . I doubt it It will fail I can’t. . . I find it difficult I would like. . . Maybe Basically It makes me/you make me. . .

I want I see a challenge I will do it (yes/no) I trust Yes, and. . . I’ll figure it out No learning without failures What can help me? I find it exciting I want. . . Delete! Delete! This is my reaction/my choice

63 listen one hand, this may be realistic, but on the other hand, weak language can make you lose while stronger language can make you win: a matter of focusing on the right things. You may also read someone else’s work and you may be asked to comment on it. Then listen carefully to yourself. Any feeling or first impression, in particular of happiness or frustration while reading a particular paragraph or studying figures, can be translated into useful suggestions for improvement. If you think “this part is too long”, then say so. Also say if you think “this lacks structure” or “this is pompous”. Other people’s work can also teach you how to improve or best sell your own story. Feel free to copy their layout or style of writing and avoid the things you find frustrating. You may also be asked to attend an interview as the final step in a selection procedure for a job or for funding. You’re enthusiastic about your work or proposal – that’s great, but take a moment to recognize this caveat: before you know it you may be talking at the committee members rather than with them. Monologues of 5 or 10 minutes and lengthy answers to questions make no sense at this stage. Keep it short and simple (KISS) and – above all – listen carefully to the other people’s questions and their body language while you answer. Stay in contact with yourself and your audience.

A POSTDOC’S ANECDOTE

Eureka! I went to a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, with my boss. Of course, we visited Edinburgh’s impressive castle but the conference itself also turned out to be memorable. There were many interesting talks to listen to, but one was

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very special: while I listened to this talk I suddenly noticed that a trick shown on one slide could also be of enormous value for solving my own, rather different, problem. Back home this trick appeared to work fantastically, a major breakthrough in my research had been established. But now for the striking part of the story: who was this speaker at the conference? It was my own boss! Despite the fact that I was sitting next door to him on a daily basis, the conference was crucial for our communication. We had overlooked this opportunity for synergy for months, just because we weren’t talking and listening well enough.

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Leveraging listening

I invite you to practice active listening the next time you go to a meeting. Listen carefully and summarize your findings at three levels: first at a descriptive level (just reporting the facts you’ve heard), second at the empathic level (reporting on the speaker’s strengths, weaknesses, or expressed feelings), and third at the reflective level (giving your subjective opinion about the style of talking, reasoning, or the feelings that you as a listener may have). You could also organize a meeting specifically for this exercise. Invite two (or more) people for a session on active listening. One person talks for a couple of minutes about work, their personal life, or any other topic you and the other people want to hear more about. Then one of the listeners, appointed in advance, will recap the whole story, first at a descriptive level, second at the empathic level, and third at the reflective level. In the final step the speaker and the others should comment on what the listener has heard or has missed – level by level. This exercise can be continued with everyone swapping positions.

65 ask

2.5

Ask Scientists work at the frontiers of knowledge. There is a lot you want to get to understand and there are many questions you can ask. But a fool can ask more questions than a wise man or woman can ever answer. So what types of question will help you make real progress? Let’s look at two types of question: “closed” and “open”. You can ask “closed” questions to steer the direction of the discussion, or to guide the answer. For example, if you are the expert and know more about the topic than the other person, or if somebody tries to escape by giving a vague reply to your concerns. You then need to ask questions of the type “Is it more A or B, or is it something else” to get clarification (this is where you know more of A and B than the other person, and you can best put these options into words). You can ask “open” questions to give the other person freedom (and time) to answer and tell you whatever he or she wants to share with you. This type of question is often more suitable for (open-minded) exploration, broadening, or deepening of a problem. For example, ask questions of the type “Can you tell me more about. . .?” or “What do you think of. . .?”. This can lead to creative, new opportunities and can help you go far beyond what you could have achieved by asking closed questions.

66 use other people’s talent So you have asked your question and received an answer. Is this the end of the discussion or would you like to go for more debate? An answer is often the beginning of an entire story, contains many generalizations or unclarified issues. So if the answer starts with “In general. . .” or “Often. . .” then you should continue to ask with new open or closed questions; for example, “When does it happen?”, “When doesn’t it?”, and “How often does it happen. . .?”. Help the other person to formulate a more measurable, specific, and concrete answer. See the table below for more words that may trigger further questions. Continuing to ask is certainly appropriate if the assumptions and interpretation made by the other person remain unclear; in the worst case, the other person may be omitting important aspects to make things look better than they are. TABLE 2.2 Ideas for asking simple questions

Words with limited information Better, faster, more efficient, novel. . . It, they, sometimes, often. . . Everybody, never, all. . . Must, should, fits (or mustn’t, shouldn’t, doesn’t fit). . .

Continue to ask Compared with who or what? What evidence supports this? What/who/when. . . precisely? Everybody? Never? All? How do you know? What would happen if. . .?

Many young scientists find it difficult to ask questions in public. Don’t worry if you cannot come up with a clever question; just start practicing simple questions. And there are always many ways to do this. As soon as you notice that you don’t understand the other person: ask for clarification.

67 ask As soon as you hear words with limited information content (see the table above): ask for more detailed information. For example, somebody says that his method is better than another method. Then ask “How much better?” or “How did you quantify this?”. As soon as you hear weakening language (see the table in the previous section on “Listen”): ask why the person is using such language. For example, somebody says that his method basically is doing this or that. Then ask “Are you oversimplifying?” or “Are there any pitfalls which would require us to use more complex approaches?”. You can improve your skill in asking questions by actively practicing at your own department’s or group’s work meetings (see the exercise “Now you are asking” below). Ask questions, even ignorant questions or simple questions that may appear “stupid” or “silly”; it is the quickest way to becoming wiser and make progress. If you don’t understand what the other person is talking about, blame him or her, not yourself. Simple questions are not a sign of stupidity but of real interest, if you ask for clarification. You help yourself as well as the other person (and maybe several others in the audience too). Frequently check whether you correctly understood the answers to your questions, whether you have listened well enough. You can do this by starting with something like “If I understood you correctly, you’re saying/implying. . .”. But what’s also important is to ask other people to review your work critically. Be vulnerable, invite comments, and thank the people who share them with you. Never prepare presentations or a manuscript on your own: use other people’s talents. Invite relative outsiders to read and comment (even your mother or father may serve for this purpose); they can certainly point out your blind spots. Scientists are often quite good at raising questions, in finding potential holes in the reasoning. But some are just too good. It is important to realize that research is almost never complete, and that’s why there is a discussion section in a paper. Some

68 use other people’s talent scientists keep asking too many questions (of others or themselves), which can stop them from writing up their work and can really prohibit their progress. This is the flipside of being strong in asking questions.

A POSTDOC’S ANECDOTE

Food for research I had met several interesting people at my first Gordon Research conference in the USA as a postdoc. This included the chair of the conference, who actually worked at a research and development department in a multinational (you have undoubtedly bought and eaten their products!). The next year I planned to go to another meeting not too far away from the company and so I decided to drop him an email and simply asked if I could come and visit them. The answer was unexpectedly positive and culminated in a one-day, superintensive, two-way exchange of information: I was given a schedule of many short meetings from breakfast (pancakes) to dinner (pizza) with lots of different researchers from the company; and all of them impressed me with their high ambition, drive, expertise, and serious involvement in cutting-edge science. I don’t think I have ever experienced another day as intensive as that one. We even set up a collaboration in which they offered me funding for the joint work (and more breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, as well as social events like baseball games). I learned how interesting it can be to work for a company. So I was glad I had dared to ask that little question “Would you be interested in my making a short visit?”.

69 ask

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Now you are asking!

Let’s practice asking questions. The next time that you will be listening to other people’s presentations, perhaps first in the rather safe environment of your group’s meetings, you will prepare and ask questions. Announce this to your team members, so that this social commitment can do the hardest work for you: not asking questions is no longer an option. But there is more to learn: the next time you give a presentation to your team members, start asking them questions. During your presentation, seek interaction with your audience: ask them whether they understand, agree, appreciate, or have suggestions for improvement. Experience that this can lead to a much more dynamic presentation – more fun for you as well as for your audience.

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2.6

Share The potential for synergy between you and another person is an excellent reason to share. One plus one is more than two. So what can you share and with whom? Once you have gained some expertise in your field, you will start sharing it with other people: with students and collaborators during progress meetings, and with colleagues – some of whom may even be your competitors – at conferences. This may boost the interpersonal interaction, at least if you and the other person each commit themselves to basic rules for giving and receiving feedback (see the figure below). One of the most important rules is this: always give balanced feedback – positive as well as negative. We’re often more inclined to come up with only the negative view. See also the comments on balanced reviews in the earlier section on “Read”. In addition to expertise, there are many other things you may want to share: methods, materials, students or employees, a network of people, funding or revenues, (first) authorship of papers, invitations for presentations, ideas and opportunities, opinions on each other’s behavior, or managerial information. You may want to share such things with your students, your local or international colleagues, your boss, or interested companies. Sharing with people who are lower on the career

71 share

Giving feedback Ask whether feedback is wanted Positive as well as negative Start with positive

Receiving feedback Ask for clarifications Ask for positive and negative Do not argue

Be constructive

Do not reply with feedback

Ask for reaction

Thank for the feedback

FIGURE 2.3 Rules for sharing opinions on work and behavior

ladder than you are can greatly help them to develop their own careers: let them be first author of a paper or give a talk at a conference, even if many of the ideas originate from you. It is my firm experience that such sharing often pays off in the long run: you build up a network of collaborative people who will bring you plenty of new opportunities out of which you can select the best. Science is a heavily knowledge-based arena and people will often get back to you as the well-known expert. I am sure you will profit from an open attitude towards sharing one way or another. If you share openly with new people you may occasionally find you have been taken advantage of – how should you act then? In most cases, just be brave, walk away, and don’t recriminate, but use this important information to drop this person from your list of trusted colleagues and potential collaborators. It happens, and you do have to learn to deal with such situations; let them go rather than develop into a life-long problem within a small professional group, and learn from the experience.

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A PHD STUDENT’S ANECDOTE

Sharing unpublished results with competitors Two competing, multidisciplinary teams – one in the EU (my team), the other in the USA – working on related topics shared progress information; each wrote a paper about their mouse experiment; and they then decided to submit the two papers back-to-back to a high-impact journal. When the papers were published, it turned out that there was even a third paper accepted from another group about a similar experiment with rats, and the editors had put the common theme on the journal’s front cover, had written a one-page Editorial, and in addition had asked a well-known scientist to write a short commentary focusing on the three papers. Now these articles proved to be some of the hottest published that year – which was not even anticipated by the journal editors. These authors went on to share information and collaborated as an informal international consortium in systems genetics, which led to several more high-impact papers being published (with me as coauthor!).

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Thanksgiving

I invite you to practice “giving without expecting to receive” with other people. There are always plenty of options. Haven’t got a single idea? Then let me suggest this: send me an email ([email protected]) with your best idea on how to

73 share improve this book for the sake of future readers. You shouldn’t expect anything in return, but it may still pay off: I’ll reserve 200 words for you or for one of the other readers in the next edition of this book; I am sure you have something interesting to offer!

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2.7

Collaborate The potential for synergy makes you want to collaborate with others. You can easily imagine win-win situations from multidisciplinary collaboration. You have strong knowledge in your discipline but less in other disciplines. For example, a mathematician cannot know everything about biological traits and processes in living organisms and, vice versa, the biologist will not be a star player in manipulating formulae, models, or statistical probabilities. Together, as a team, they can design, analyze, and interpret meaningful experiments. The added value of such collaboration is evident. Nowadays there is much highly relevant research taking place on the borders of multiple disciplines; for example, medicine, sociology, psychology, biochemistry, and informatics are studying certain diseases with epidemiological questionnaires and modern biomolecular technologies. Many high-impact papers in Nature and Science have long lists of coauthors from a range of disciplines. You may have a harder job to imagine the win-win situation from intradisciplinary collaboration. Your win: your colleagues can teach you things so that you become an even better expert in your field; they can help you sharpen your ideas or tease your creativity; together you can do the same job in half the time. Intradisciplinary collaboration requires a well-developed sense of “sharing” to avoid a situation where

75 collaborate people compete instead of collaborate. This competition, often driven by fear that the other may benefit more than you, can destroy the potential of monodisciplinary teams. But try and let go of your supersize ego and look at it this way: your colleague’s success is also your success. How do you set about establishing a collaboration? On the smaller scale, say when you as a student are looking for a partner to do a joint presentation or project, you just look for somebody with good skills and a matching personality. On the larger scale, say when you need partners for a multidisciplinary project, you recruit talented people by telling them about your idea and proposal, and seeing whether they react enthusiastically and contribute to the proposal with concrete (textual) comments. If you want to team up with very important people (why not?) then polish up your sales pitch first. If they believe there is something valuable in it for them, they may very well join your team. For large national or international initiatives, political reasons may require you to select your partners from different universities, countries, and companies. Once you have established a collaboration, you will have all the associated meetings to organize and will need to monitor progress. To make the most out of a meeting, particularly a meeting with a larger number of participants, you should prepare well in advance. This can save a lot of time and the frustration of being in a time-consuming meeting in which things are sometimes discussed that either don’t matter to you or which could have been handled in much less time. Below is a format that may help you make going to meetings more effective. Also make a summary at the end of the meeting. Even after attending a meeting with your supervisor, send him or her an email describing what you think the action items are. Often people are more responsive when they know written records exist; even taking notes regularly during the meetings in a meeting book helps.

76 use other people’s talent TABLE 2.3 Form for organizing meetings

Major aims and items of the meeting here Aim 1. Discuss project progress Aim 2. Create report for funding agency Aim 3. Prepare for new project Item 1 Type Time Prepared by Participants Documents Result

Description Brainstorm <20 minutes, 2:00–2:20 p.m. Dr. A A, B, X, Y (not Z) doc1.doc, doc2.doc Plan with actions and timing

Item 2 Type Time Prepared by Participants Documents Result

Description Progress evaluation <40 minutes, 2:20–3:00 p.m. Dr. B A, B, Y, Z (X absent) Pdf1.pdf, Ppt1.ppt Draft report

TABLE 2.4 Form for summarizing meetings

Actions (indicate by whom, when, and what) Dr. A Me

Before end of Sept. By Oct. 14th

Compile list of coworkers Send data file to X

Collaborators also send each other emails, a great way of passing ideas in an asynchronous fashion. But note that active scientists (particularly group leaders) can get a hundred emails (or more) per day. So as a rule of thumb, keep your emails short, up to eight sentences, with no more than one real argument, or otherwise structure your email in short paragraphs with clear headers and separated by blank lines.

77 collaborate Use “¼>” in your email to draw the reader’s attention to action points. Alternatively, consider meeting up or picking up the phone. Also meet or use the phone if you want to avoid “publishing” your idea or if you want to get personal. Remember: people may forward your email or reply to others with a “cc” even by accident. There is another type of collaboration that I should mention and that you should always be aware of. Scientists are hired to do research but this work includes many organizational matters that can be done well, if not better, by other people: nonscientists (e.g. secretaries, financial managers, press officers, English correctors, editors). It should go without saying that you consider them as collaborators and treat them accordingly. You will gain a lot if you can delegate nonscientific tasks to motivated and talented people.

A POSTDOC’S ANECDOTE

The meat of a collaboration Why would the meat industry meet with the plant industry? Of course, cows and pigs eat grass and maize, but for the rest, the two worlds are very different: meat quality, litter size, milk proteins, and more, versus grain weight, sowing time, sugar content, and other traits. And the people working in these fields sometimes also “look” quite different. But, at the end of the day, both animal livestock and crops are encoded in the blueprint of life, the DNA, and so the different fields may use similar technologies and strategies to get to understand the role of the DNA. I got to collaborate with people from a livestock company, learned interesting things that could indeed be implemented with some changes in plant breeding. The

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livestock people also invited me to one of their symposia, which obviously included a symposium dinner – at a steakhouse. This is where you would expect livestock researchers to go for dinner, isn’t it? Great pity that the plant researcher (me) happened to be a vegetarian who preferred eating his own experimental units. So what’s the point of this anecdote? Crossing the borders between rather different fields with rather different people can really pay off well scientifically speaking: this collaboration led to synergy in several ideas and in joint papers.

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Meeting one’s goals

There is hardly a week without meetings at work: a meeting with fellow Master’s students, with a Bachelor student you are supervising, with your supervising postdoc, with your team. Select a meeting in the upcoming week and decide how you are going to implement the above insights. Determine what the exact aims are and, if there are no good reasons for organizing the meeting now, suggest canceling it. Define the agenda items, the documents required, and the people who have to show up for each item, and consider inviting people only for the time frame allocated for their item, and freeing them from having to attend the whole meeting. This can be done by calling in people at the right moment, or by having everyone in, but with laptops on, so that they can do other things whenever they are “free”. Prepare solutions for when particular items appear to take more time than allocated; most likely more off-the-record preparation is needed by a subgroup before such a topic can be placed on the agenda for the next meeting. Make sure that all the documents and instructions on what to do with them are sent well ahead of time.

79 move (on)

2.8

Move (on) You may need or want to move several times during your career, so that you are exposed to new people or new projects and can learn a lot from them. Your first move as a student may be to an internship at another university or a work placement at a research institute. You should ask your supervisor about the best place to go and apply for a grant. Good grades and enthusiastic reference letters written by your supervisors or former teachers will be of help. Your next moves could be to take up a PhD, postdoc, or tenured position at another university. How do you select that job? Look up what your potential new supervisor has achieved in the past, as well as more recently. Check Google Scholar and other resources (see section on “Read” above). Always try to talk to his or her current or past colleagues. And, of course, results obtained in the past hold no guarantee for the future, but they are certainly the best available predictor for that future. Your potential new boss will look at you the same way: do you have an honors degree, well-cited publications, were you awarded any prizes or funding? It is therefore important to translate your talent for science as quickly as possible into visible results – start doing so even during your Bachelor and Master’s periods if possible. It may be that you have worked

80 use other people’s talent on a project (as a student or later in your career) at the right moment in the right group and that you have benefited a lot from the talented top people in that group. You may have become a coauthor on publications with impact. However, your potential employer may find it difficult to identify the brilliant things you contributed to these important papers. You have to be able to demonstrate quite unambiguously what your contribution was and fortunately some journals now require individual authors to briefly describe their contributions to the paper. Of course, being in the right group at the right moment is also kind of an art – it actually counts in your favor if you identified such a group and they selected you. It will definitely increase your chances of getting yourself an attractive job. Employers often look for applicants with broad national and/ or international experience, for example with one or two years at another university (and a stay in the USA or UK could also substantially improve your English speaking and writing skills if you are a non-native speaker of English). Broad national and international experience will be taken by your future boss as a strong indication of your positive rather than negative qualifications; for example, that you are actively looking around to see what happens elsewhere rather than being introverted. Or that you are open to synergistic collaborations, rather than closing the door of your office to work alone on some topic. Nowadays universities are very wary of scientists who work from the “cradle to the grave” in the same group, on the same topic, justifying each other’s existence by crossreferencing each other’s papers (sometimes in a society- or group-owned journal where authors and reviewers scratch each other’s backs), whereas the real research field has moved on and the challenges lie elsewhere. So, convince your hoped-for future employer that you do have the right mix of intellectual and social skills and experience – with maximized return of investment in you.

81 move (on) However, moving (particularly moving abroad) can have a dramatic impact on your life. In many cases it may be difficult or even undesirable, for example, if you have a working partner, older children, or strong family bonds, or if you have health restrictions. However, if you do not want to move, this should never prevent you from moving on mentally: learning new things, watering and nourishing new competences, building an even more convincing, well-rounded, and solid track record. The point is not so much whether you have moved location but whether you have moved on in your career (and continued to produce influential scientific papers over time). Writing a book like the one you are reading, for example, is a way for me to move on, and refuel myself. Don’t despair if you don’t move on to a professorship. There may be many other interesting job opportunities for academically trained people like you (see earlier section on “Passion” in Chapter 1). Some readers may indeed consider a professorship to be the most exciting job on Earth, while others may strongly disagree. So, would you like to be the queen bee giving birth to new generations of worker bees for society? Or would you perhaps prefer to be a worker bee and able to fly from flower to flower to taste their sweet nectar?

A POSTDOC’S ANECDOTE

The wise wish It was time to move on, and I knew how much I wanted to move on. For several years I had been affiliated to the Department of Informatics and over time I had developed various interesting collaborations with biologists. They

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designed the experiments, while I developed approaches to make sense of their data. In order to do this work, I gradually moved in the direction of biology and even started to define my own biological research questions and strategies for unraveling the puzzle of life. Imagine, an informatician moving into the lab. Unfortunately, although not unexpectedly, my dean was not so eager to let me move in this direction. He saw teaching classes in informatics as my main duty. “And besides,” he said, “it would be a good idea to wear a tie”. These little things were clear signs of an unavoidable split coming up; I had to implement a real move to another institute to move on in my career. I had an interview at a leading biology institute, asked them whether they would be willing to offer me lab facilities and to my surprise their answer was “Yes.” When I confessed that I had never run a biological lab myself, the director simply replied “Hire lab people to help you run the lab.” His support and trust made me decide to move workplace and move on. Did it work out well? Extremely well, both science- and career-wise!

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The mentor move

A major aim of this book is to invite you to consider moving on, where and when appropriate. It offers tools, such as the “spider web”, in the previous, this, and the next chapters. Moving on often is not at all an obvious, easy, inexpensive road. Why not think about people you know or think you want to get to know, and who could be of great help to you. Look for other scientists in the group you consider moving to. Make an appointment with one or more people, and see whether you can arrange a

83 move (on) number of mutually interesting mentor–student sessions by internet (e.g. using Skype) or face to face (e.g. with a travel stipend). Perhaps also look for people in your current workplace, fellow PhD students, or postdocs, your heroes or your anticharacters, people who may have harsh opinions about you, but who may excel in the skills that you are lacking. One or more sessions may be enough to find new ways of moving on.

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2.9

Habits This section rounds off the chapter on using other people’s talent. Below is a list of good habits of highly effective students and scientists, based on what we’ve learned in the previous sections:

□ Reading widely □ Reading quickly □ Listening rationally □ Listening to emotions □ Seeing nonverbal information □ Asking questions whenever necessary □ Being vulnerable □ Asking for feedback □ Being sensitive to feedback □ Selecting the right partners □ Appreciating differences □ Being constructive □ Searching for synergy □ Being effective in meetings □ Sharing information openly and on time

85 habits Select your two strongest and two weakest habits from the above list (tick ☑). Do you have any “empirical evidence” to support your choice, e.g. concrete stories showing your habits in action?

3

“If you treat an individual as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.” Johann W. von Goethe, German scientist, writer and a lot more, 1749–1832

Develop other people’s talent

88 develop other people’s talent

3.1

Introduction Are you a student? Then stay on board and read on: this chapter is highly relevant for you too. Why? Do you have to be a supervisor, professor, institute director, or dean, before you can start inspiring and changing other people? No, wake up! Inspiration can go in all directions, top down and bottom up. You can inspire a fellow Bachelor, Master’s, or PhD student, or your team mates. You can bring change to them, to your supervising professor, perhaps even to your university. This chapter is also relevant to you if you are not a student but an employee. Developing the other people around you, that’s what this chapter is about. What’s good for them is good for you. Of course, changing someone else without his or her commitment is a hopeless, impossible mission. The “other” person should first become aware of the possibility or need to change, then want to change, be able to change, and act to change. You can support him or her by creating the right conditions, the breeding ground, and the treatment which will help them develop their own talent. This will help you to attract new and talented people around you, to let them flourish, and to keep them working with or for you. Which will increase the results from your talent, and this is the best

89 introduction way to get the most from your talent. The list below gives several keys to success: n

Inspire. Do professors, directors, deans, and the university president inspire students and researchers to make the most of themselves and their work? What makes them inspirational? What makes you inspirational?

n

Educate. Can Master’s and PhD students act as full members of research groups – is this possible? Is this the road to develop talented people for science?

n

Unite. Does your organization promote collaboration between students and scientists, and between scientists and nonscientists? Are you ready to take some responsibility?

n

Support. What are the two or three most important ways your organization supports talented students and employees, support that enables them to make the most of their talents?

n

Reward. You get what you deserve. Does your organization reward talent or does it actually reward something else?

n

Keep in touch. Universities are educational institutes and courses and research projects exist for a finite period: most students and postdocs have to move on after a few years. Do you keep in touch with your former fellow students, colleagues, and professors to create a useful social and professional network for yourself?

90 develop other people’s talent

3.2

Web inspire educate

keep in touch

unite

reward support

FIGURE 3.1 Web for plotting your personal scores

So how good are you in developing other people’s talent? As before, you may want to use the questionnaire to get scores for the spider web above. Write down your scores quickly (don’t think too hard) using a 0–5 scale, calculate the total score per category, and plot them on the web. Then draw your own conclusions.

91 web

Develop other people’s talent scale: almost never ¼ 0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 ¼ almost always

Inspire I recognize other people’s dreams I raise reasonable but high ambitions I create a safe and collaborative environment I talk about “you” and “we” rather than “I” or “it” I ask for feedback on my leadership I have a vision of where I want to go Sum 

Educate I challenge team members to make use of me I am still doing hands-on research work I feel honored to be someone’s mentor I know when to teach I know when to control I know when to supervise Sum 

Unite I see all the people in the team frequently I help translate conflicts into needs and wishes I thank people for complaints and protests I can say “sorry” promptly for my mistakes I have a clear vision where the team should go I let the team celebrate success Sum



92 develop other people’s talent

Support I support other people in realizing their dreams I encourage professional development I encourage personal development I offer flexible working hours I arrange support from my boss/bosses I offer support to my boss/bosses Sum



Reward I give compliments to the people who deserve it I mention names of talented staff to other people I reward in a proactively and timely manner I reward scientific and support staff I earn what I get I get what I earn Sum



Keep in touch I am a lifetime mentor to former group members I stimulate (talented) people to move on I invite former group members back to give talks I share people networks I know what people in my network can offer me I know what I can offer to people in my network Sum



93 inspire

3.3

Inspire Inspiration energizes. Who inspired you initially to take the science subject you are in now? A chemistry teacher at high school who enthusiastically showed how reacting molecules can change color in a test tube? A geography professor who talked passionately at an introductory lecture on volcanic and other geophysical powers? A social sciences researcher who surprised you at a Bachelor’s course with an intriguing theory on why sex ratios differ across the world? What made them inspirational? Probably their drive, enthusiasm, or their skill in telling stories and engaging you; this enabled them to “touch you”. Universities see waves of students from the same high school choosing a particular subject, all being motivated by an inspiring teacher. So you’ve chosen your science subject most likely because someone else inspired you. Can you pass this on? Are you inspirational? Your communication style can make the real difference (see the figure below). You can invoke a strong desire to excel in science by emphasizing “you” and “we” instead of “I” and “it”. This is probably the most effective way that you can help other people in your group to develop: n

Use “we”. This binds you and the other person, creates a joint vision of where you (“we”) want to go as collaborators.

94 develop other people’s talent n

Use “you”. This shows you pay attention to the other person, that his or her ideas and career is important to you. Recognize the latent talent in the other person (“you”), raise high but reasonable ambitions and expectations, show that you have every confidence the other person will succeed.

I

Normative

Limits

How you have to do it

It

Rational

Content

What you need to do

We

Inspiring

Vision

Where we want to go

You

Relational

Freedom

Your career matters

FIGURE 3.2 Four possible styles of communication with group members: only the bottom two establish a strong “psychological contract” between you and the other person

Well, would you like to inspire other people? Here are the don’ts: n

Avoid “I”. OK, OK, you may be the expert, but by expressing your opinions too strongly, you don’t allow other people to pleasantly surprise you with novel approaches.

n

Avoid “it”. What if you only talk about what the other person has to do and only continue to instruct them on how to do the work (“it”)? In the long run, this will put off the people who want to determine their own course and career.

Isn’t there more than the style of communication involved? Yes, above all, you should be a good role model. What does this mean? Here are some examples. Create a safe environment where people can ask simple questions and make mistakes. Never talk or email in a negative tone about absent people. Be prepared to help at any time with all that you can offer. Be a mentor and coach at both a rational and an emotional level. Then you do not have to force other people to work in your way. Instead you energize them and they will

95 inspire follow of their own free will, and most likely come up with even better ways of doing things. The anecdote below nicely illustrates how a dean inspired a new employee to run the extra mile. Wouldn’t it be great if this communication style were common practice?

A POSTDOC’S ANECDOTE

Running the extra mile It was time to move, so I applied for a junior research leader position at another university and made it to the interview with the dean. This happened to be a meeting that inspired me for years. While there were clear rules for the evaluation of junior research leaders, such as the number of publications per year, the dean appeared to be flexible and realistic. For example, he told me he would be more than happy if I were to show up on the five-year evaluation with three or four papers that really mattered. He also told me that making errors was not a problem. As an example, he predicted that I would – like many colleagues – occasionally appoint the “wrong” person: a PhD student or postdoc who would not develop as hoped for and whom I would have to dismiss despite intensive support. He was supportive: I had to give two presentations as part of the application procedure and he called me at home to inform me about these and tell me who would be in the audience. Later, when I was appointed, he continued to inspire me in little ways, such as asking whether I would benefit from particular organizational changes, which he would then be happy to conduct. All of this contributed to my willingness to “run the extra mile” for my new organization.

96 develop other people’s talent

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From fire to inspire

What can you offer other people? Which actions can you take to share your internal fire, enthusiasm, motivation, and passion with other people? No ideas? How about one or more of the following options? Can you help another person speed up his or her practical (lab) work that’s going to run into the weekend? Can you email a hot paper you discovered today to your colleagues? Can you be there for other people at difficult moments? Can you praise a student for a nice result, report, or presentation? Can you connect two people from different branches in your network? Now be creative, think outside your normal boundaries and restrictions, just list the good, better, and best ideas. It may also help to think of the offers you would be pleased to receive from other people: consider making these offers yourself now to other people. Select those ideas you really want to offer to other people – and then do it. If you do this exercise with other people, then please get back to each other a week later and report all the offers made.

97 educate

3.4

Educate So you promised to be a mentor, coach, and teacher to other people, particularly students. Show them this book and discuss it with them to help them climb their own career ladders. Expose them to today’s science, teach them what you’re studying right now, invite them to join in, show them how you do your research, let them catch on, and light the fire in them. They can develop their talent for science by coresearching your themes. Students early in their careers are full of energy and enthusiasm, they can explore new roads in your research, perhaps follow up some side roads, and come up with very good ideas. However, only education on a small scale can allow for this co-researching between Bachelor and Master’s students on the one hand, and PhD students, postdocs, and experienced professors on the other. This type of training fits in well with ongoing research and does not cost a lot of extra energy, whereas it can have a high yield for all the parties involved. The talented Bachelor and Master’s students can already work as a coauthor on one or two scientific publications, a perfect prelude to a PhD project. However, I strongly feel that no professor can supervise more than four to six PhD students effectively in top-level science at the same time – at least not in my research field. The top research groups often have no more than about ten people per principal investigator.

98 develop other people’s talent An important goal of the Master’s curriculum is to train students in research skills. Students typically learn this on the job, by doing work-practice projects of several weeks or months at Bachelor or Master’s level, and of up to four years as a PhD student. The student often works on a real project with real aims, deliverables, and deadlines. The professor, as the principal investigator (PI) for the project the students are working on, can delegate tasks and responsibilities to the students, but retains final responsibility. Unfortunately it may be very difficult to predict a priori whether a student will be able to meet the expectations and develop to the level of a critical and independent researcher. It may help to recognize three different levels in their training: teaching, controlling, and supervising (see the figure below). If a student fails to get from phase 1 (teaching) to phase 2 (controlling), or from phase 2 to phase 3 (supervising) despite adequate training and coaching, then the plans should be adapted (which could even imply a “nogo” for the project or for the student). The PI may also fail: by moving too slowly to the control or supervision phase (not recognizing that the student is ready for it), or by bypassing one of the phases too quickly (not recognizing that the student needs more teaching or control). See also the anecdote below. I tell my students that they are the boss – not me. I tell them that they have to tell me what to do. I tell them their career is important (to prepare them as well as possible for climbing their career ladder), much more important than mine (after all, I’ve already made some basic choices and climbed a few rungs of the ladder). This paradigm shift from “I’m your boss” to “You’re my boss” is a clear invitation to your staff to make full use of all your talents. They have to learn that they are fully responsible for their own career development and show they accept it.

99 educate How to DELEGATE work to students TEACH Sit on the same side of the table Show how to do it Work together on details Student has basic expertise CONTROL Sit on opposite side of the table Student does the work; help if needed Discuss details Student can do it SUPERVISE Give autonomy, responsibility, authority Self-controlling by student Celebrate progress and results

FIGURE 3.3 Three phases in delegating work

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

Out of control Trust, responsibility, freedom. I believe these three words are crucial for the successful education of students and postdocs. I think you should express your confidence in them, give them responsibility and the freedom to do the work or project in their own way. Yet too much supervision, too little freedom to operate, and too much dictating what needs to be done and how to do it seems to be the

100 develop other people’s talent

rule for many PIs (principal investigators), including myself. So let’s remember our students are high potentials! Here’s a story to illustrate that. One day three of my PhD students showed up because they had to prepare a poster for a large conference in Stockholm, Sweden. By way of an exception, I told them “You know, I don’t have to check your posters, I’d be happy if you can make them yourselves.” Why this exception to my normal rule? Well, because I had just taken a course on academic leadership and learned that my leadership style could be “improved”. So the three PhD students designed their posters and went off to the conference, where over 300 posters were on display. A prize was to be awarded for the best poster. On returning from the conference, all three students walked into my office with big smiles on their faces: not only had all their posters been nominated for consideration, one had even won the prize! They really enjoyed their success, but maybe I enjoyed it even more: I am still proud of their result – achieved without my help, and also proud of my own little change in my leadership style.

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Bring change

Professors may often be absent, busy, and tired. They are humans, not only do they need help from their students and postdocs, they’ll probably welcome it. So, if you’re a student or postdoc, now see how you can help your professor. If you’re a professor, then think about how you can help your institute director, dean of the faculty, or university president. Tell them how they can improve – it’s your duty by now.

101 educate Be proactive, generate your list of constructive new ideas for change, study the rules for giving feedback (see section on “Share” in Chapter 2), and then be brave and deliver your ideas with the most positive intentions. Are there too few moments when you as a student or postdoc get informal feedback on progress? Suggest how this can be improved. Do you feel you would benefit from additional training in scientific debate, writing, or giving presentations? Propose organizing a journal club or something similar. Do you believe the group or institute could benefit from having more social events, cakes, and celebrations? Introduce a new tradition. Now look at your own situation, study the need for improvement, and be creative in finding solutions, then offer them to the other person.

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3.5

Unite Students, postdocs, professors, support staff: all of you meet and collaborate with each other in teams. Such teams can be formed in an ad-hoc manner and exist for only a short period, or they can be more formal and exist for a long period. Are you ready to take some responsibility and help your team perform well? How can you do this? Let’s discuss a team’s life span, phase by phase. For example, a young postdoc has been awarded his or her first grant and recruited one or two Master’s or PhD students to build up the team. When the team is formed, you’ll first get to know each other. The work plan needs to be put into action and shows the team where to go. People are in a good mood. This is the “forming” phase shown in the figure below. As the team moves on, it may show signs of puberty. People disagree on how to continue, because plans appear too vague. They become discouraged or disappointed because progress is too slow. They get angry with each other, because personalities do not seem to get along, agendas turn out to be different, potential sharing (papers, revenues) leads to conflicts. The team is in the “storming” phase shown in the figure. What should you do now? Such a “storming” phase may scare them (and you). However, you can help people look at this stage in a different

103 unite

Start, get to know each other, take the time, first successes First problems. Who decides on direction? Goals? Shares? Ambitions? Antipathies? What do we really want? All noses in the same direction

1

Forming

2

Storming

3

Norming

4

Performing

Working well, success, team

5

Mourning

Central person(s) leaving

FIGURE 3.4 The five phases during the life of a team (this model of team phases was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965)

way: people get angry with each other because they take their tasks very seriously (you’re not going to fight for something that isn’t important to you). The different opinions or views may still yield a source of synergy (if we always think along the same lines, it would even become boring!). Help search out that synergy (“not my way, not your way, but a third way”). Help translate the conflict into needs, into what people really want (e.g. a top publication, more funding) because at this level you can often understand (and appreciate) each other quite well. Help define a better way to collaborate (via additional principles, rules, processes, or procedures, e.g. remember the meeting forms in the section on “Collaborate” in Chapter 2). This will help get people facing in the same direction. It’s what is called the “norming” phase in the figure above. In some cases you may conclude that there can be no real win-win situation this time, and then need to help people separate and go their own way without bitterness or discontent. Each party should understand that the other is interested in collaboration and

104 develop other people’s talent then they will find each other quickly enough if new opportunities for a win-win situation appear. Where people are generous and open-hearted, welcome other’s success, and share information in an open, honest way, the potential and synergy can grow. And do remember to always thank people for their complaints and protests, since they provide you with critical information, which requires that you, and possibly the other person too, take action. If you consistently disseminate this culture, it will spread out amongst your colleagues (and perhaps through your entire organization). Your team is mature and will work well, which is called the “performing” phase in the figure. And then, some day, the young principal investigator (PI) in the example above will be offered a nice job somewhere else, as an assistant or even associate professorship. This is to be expected; his or her team has been performing well, the team’s scientific papers have attracted attention, new collaborations have been started. Some PIs transfer their projects to the new workplace, others will leave them behind. In either scenario, the team may suffer and feel unhappy about the unwanted changes: the “mourning” phase in the figure. The team has had its best phase. But a new person with new ambitions may take over the lead and the team may go through a new cycle of such phases.

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

Pairing and despairing My lab was working on a new zebrafish model for a human disease. Our new model worked astonishingly well; the established “old” model could not even touch ours. I believed that our experimental results clearly supported

105 unite

this strong conclusion. To our surprise and disappointment, the reviewers were extremely critical of our work and this became a real obstacle to publishing our results. By pure coincidence, I discovered the names of the negative reviewers, who, not unexpectedly, were the people from the old, established model. When our work finally got published, I felt I had two options: fight with these guys till I got old, or try to establish some collaboration. I decided to go for the second route, to ignore the knowledge that they had written the negative reviews, to contact them and explain my contribution. I visited them for a presentation (we were on speaking terms) and even invited them to write a joint grant proposal (they accepted). Guess how the proposal was evaluated? The combination of the “old” and the “new” was highly praised: “great complementary combination of expertise in the team”! The grant was awarded and the team performance was fantastic.

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Teaming up

You’ll undoubtedly be participating in one or more teams at the moment: for example, a team of fellow students jointly taking classes for a couple of years and perhaps from time to time working on a joint project or presentation, or a team of colleagues forming a research group that is part of an institute, faculty, and university. Now have a closer look at your team. In which phase is your team now? In which phase are you as a member of the team? How about the other people in the team? Is the whole team in the same phase? Did you see the team move through its different phases over time: forming, storming,

106 develop other people’s talent norming, and performing? Describe what happened during each of these phases. Now look at the current situation. What if you believe there is “storming” in your team? Can you analyze the conflict and translate it into underlying needs and wishes that people will agree on? Write down your analysis. Do you think you or the team could benefit from a little more “norming” and, if so, in what way would it be constructive? Think through a good plan.

107 support

3.6

Support You don’t have to become a professor, director, or dean before you can start supporting other people. For example, you can simply share your enthusiasm and light the fire in a fellow student (see the exercise in the section on “Inspire” above), or help your professor to improve course material (see the exercise in the section on “Educate” above), or propose concrete actions that will get your team working better (see the exercise in the section on “Unite” above). As far as I see it, support to PhD students and postdocs also implies some simple but important points. I want them to be clearly identified as (shared) first authors on papers, to be exposed to doing review work (originally sent to me), to take over talks which I was invited to give, to write their own emails to external experts to ask for feedback on our work, to think about funding for their future research, to submit their work for awards. I promise them full support once they have a new position. Is this unselfish? I don’t think so: if I share with them, I’m convinced it will pay off sooner or later. Support should not be considered unimportant. As a student or scientist you will have to face many different challenges. You often study difficult problems that can only be solved with lots of perseverance (see section on “Persevere” in Chapter 1). You are often in a hurry and may win (e.g. get a paper published in a high-impact journal or be awarded a grant)

108 develop other people’s talent or lose (e.g. your paper is rejected because you’re scooped by competitors or your grant application is refused because other people have more innovative ideas or better marketing; see sections on “Write” and “Fund” in Chapter 1). Science is not the same as top sport but there are certainly some parallels. Sports men and women can have a hard time, both physically and mentally; only complete devotion, hard training, and intensive support will help them win races. The same holds true for students and scientists. Too little support may lead to apathy or burn-out (lower and upper left-hand panels in the figure below). Full support without challenges may hold people in their comfort zone for too long a period (lower right-hand panel). At first sight, the top science and comfort zones seem to be mutually exclusive. However, moving back and forth from (top) science to comfort zone is probably the most sustainable and productive (indicated by the arrows in the right part of the figure; see also the section on “Care” in Chapter 4). Take the time to enjoy your success, then perhaps take a sabbatical to move on and refuel, and go for the next breakthrough. Many challenges

Burn-out "I am looking for the exit"

Top science "I go for the breakthrough"

Little support

Full support "I'll sit it out" Apathy

"I live on former success" Comfort zone

Few challenges

FIGURE 3.5 Scientists need support

109 support So students and scientists really need your full support. Below I will discuss the different types of support your university should be offering you. While top sports men and women are often intensively supervised by their coaches (who may be former champions themselves), scientists seem to lack such experienced coaches for academic excellence. Nature and other leading science journals have argued that access to a highly experienced mentor made a real difference to many people’s science careers (e.g. see “Further reading”). I feel they should offer mentoring programs for all levels, from students, postdocs, assistants, up to associate and full professors. In addition, they should offer training programs in professional skills. It seems obvious that universities should not distract you by asking you to do all kinds of nonscientific tasks that can be done equally well, if not better, by colleagues who are talented in education, office management, financial affairs, human resource management, or technology transfer. This support should be organized in such a way that all these people will commit themselves to the scientific projects and that they will hold the same ambitions for the projects. And they too should be offered the highest possible level of training and mentoring. Universities challenge their scientists to develop and teach new classes, to acquire funding and hire promising new people for research. Now what if you are successful? Should the “lucky” scientists who are “too entrepreneurial” just work harder and harder? They will in fact be at risk; that is, at some point the quality of life, teaching, and science will fall (see also the section on “Care” in Chapter 4). Actually, without support, the successful scientists will have to reduce their options (see section on “Prioritize” in Chapter 1). This could even go as far as having to return grant money to funding agencies. This would be highly undesirable, so the university

110 develop other people’s talent should support successful investigators by appointing extra staff in expanding fields: for example, tenured or tenure-track researchers to take responsibility for part of a research program, and possibly a research program manager (e.g. a senior postdoc) to be responsible for coordinating processes in a large research group. Universities should offer their students and scientists modern technology and facilities, offer courses on using such technology, and stimulate them to use it: for example to develop skills in tele- or video-conferencing (as a result, the whole world will be open to them and geographical isolation will no longer be an issue). Perhaps even invest in “second life” virtual reality, so that people can easily meet and socialize at virtual conferences (and virtual coffee corners) via the internet. At a different, but no less important level, full support also implies helping those who would like to start a family or who already have commitments to children. The consequences for the younger staff should be easy to consider (part-time work, flexible hours, or posing fewer demands for a few years). The same story holds true for people with health restrictions.

A PHD STUDENT’S ANECDOTE

Diapers I was wondering how I manage combining being a mother of three kids with my work as a PhD student. I’m not absolutely sure, actually, that I am doing it in the best way. I think it’s important to focus and not constantly mix work and family. It’s not good to think about science when changing a diaper or about the kids during scientific meetings. Not that I’m always successful in that, but

111 support

I do try. Being a mother, you can have all sorts of hobbies, work on a career, and sometimes even go out socially. The only thing that a mother isn’t allowed to be is – tired. So when driving back home from work, I try to relax so that I can be full of energy when I arrive home. My own mother and my husband support me in all sorts of ways, e.g. my mom came over for many months to pick up the kids from school and take them to out-of-school activities. My husband stays home with the kids while I’m at conferences and we were even able to work out how I could get away for a four-week visit to one of my collaborators. And the flexible working hours that my boss permits also help a lot. I can always come in to work later if I need to be at school in the morning, or I can work a day at home. All this support allows me in combining looking after my kids with writing my PhD thesis. I feel like I am a good mother, I still spend a lot of time doing all kinds of things with my kids, and my efforts are being repaid as they get older!

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Newspaper stories

So is your entire organization focusing on high-quality science? If the answer is yes, then the right culture and support should be present. Read your university newspaper or annual report and check out its website; these are the mirrors of what is really going on in the organization. Then you’ll know whether the management has succeeded in creating a supportive environment for top science.Take several of the latest issues reported in your university paper or annual report, or items from their website. Read the headlines, the front cover stories. How many

112 develop other people’s talent of them are about top science, about top education, about items that help fuel you to be successful and happy at work? The editors of the newspaper/website may claim they are independent of the university board, and that this is why they publish more than just the positive news. This is, of course, very helpful: it allows you to form a fair and unbiased opinion about your university. So, what is your opinion about the culture of your organization after having read several recent issues/items; for instance, what concrete support measures are being offered to help staff achieve top science?

113 reward

3.7

Reward Any organization gets what it deserves. Do you really want high-quality science? Then reward all the aspects that are so important to making room for talented people in your group. Young scientists will appreciate having their successes acknowledged with a cake to celebrate (e.g. for a paper being accepted), being granted a first authorship, a visit to a conference to present a poster, being asked to review a paper, their names being mentioned to other people, an invitation to speak at a conference being passed on to them, and, of course, your intensive support (see previous section). Senior scientists will appreciate above all having their freedom, but extra funds or salary can also be encouraging. Prizes, although sometimes looked down on by scientists, can catalyze a career. So reward your staff both psychologically (recognition, credit, prizes), and practically by offering extra opportunities (training, mentoring, a welcome bonus), by offering more responsibility (freedom, authority, influence, decision-making status), and financially (extra grants, income, tenured position). The list of potential rewards is endless: providing a student access to an honorary Master’s course or an inspiring mentor, awarding a postdoc a permanent position (tenure), supporting a staff member’s salary increase or a share of revenues, holding a dinner for an excellent group, financial benefits for university faculties that collaborate; all of these

114 develop other people’s talent are clear examples of rewards at different organizational levels. Top scientists can be offered a personal chair or an appointment as a member of the national academy of science. But those who want to determine their own course will need, above all, the freedom to perform the research they are passionate about. You will be rewarded by a positive spiral of better science in your group, better standing, and more funds. For example, more and better project proposals can easily generate an additional cash flow of $100,000 (which would otherwise have gone to another group). And don’t forget about rewarding your support staff: a motivated office manager or proactive technology transfer scout can add a value that easily exceeds their salary.

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

Flying the extra mile! I am impressed and happy. Why? I just returned from lecturing at a one-week graduate course at a place 21 traveling hours away from home (and my workplace). Okay, so what? Well, I was accompanied by one of my MSc students and he continues to amaze me. Yes, really. After a long flight through several time zones, we returned early in the morning. Guess what, he didn’t go home, but instead went jetlagged to work! To say “good morning” to the team and report about his successful journey. Successful? Yes, indeed, because I had meetings with other lecturers about writing joint papers and project proposals, and although this was his first step onto the international scene, his contributions to the backstage discussions had been amazing. While it may be unusual to take an MSc

115 reward

student to a course for graduate students, his early work had already justified this special reward. His drive “to run the extra mile” we should now read as “to fly the extra mile”.

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Talent gets value when used

Which of the types of reward listed above would increase your motivation and productivity? Make an honest ranking. Which is the most important one? Which is the least important? How productive have you been so far and how should that be reflected in your “earnings”? Do you “earn what you get” and “get what you earn”? Write your answers down so that you have to be specific. Which steps would you advise yourself to take in order to get the right value for your talent? When and how will you tell your bosses about your findings?

116 develop other people’s talent

3.8

Keep in touch Some Master’s students will move on to a PhD position, some PhD students will get a postdoc position, some postdocs may ultimately become a professor, and even professors may need new positions (or sabbaticals, or dual appointments at two universities) in order to renew their energy and remain productive in top science (and avoid apathy or a burn-out). However, the reality is that the majority of Master’s and PhD students and postdocs will have to look for jobs outside the university. To put it more bluntly, once their training is finished, the students have to be kicked out into the wider world. So take their career development seriously and do your utmost to help students and colleagues in preparing to apply for new positions. Help them build up their curriculum vitae, and expose them to the outside world by excursions, guest speakers, and internships, as well as by training them in personal or academic leadership and entrepreneurship. Having talented students or postdocs leave your group is painful. You have invested a lot in them and would like to benefit a lot more from your effort. It is a serious and real brain drain, a major loss of investment, but this is how the university system works. Nevertheless, satisfied alumni (ex-students or ex-employees) can create a network of new

117 keep in touch opportunities for win-win situations for your group (and for your university; see the anecdote in the section on “Dream” in the next chapter). So, don’t forget them after you’ve let them go. Seek ways to keep in touch.

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

Global warming Students, postdocs, and assistant professors come and go. Today, my group has staff from the EU, USA, China, India, Russia, Chile, Kenya, Australia, and many more countries. It’s a mix of different cultures, which allows us to celebrate New Year at several different times ☺. Yesterday’s group members have flown off to other places. Some of them have landed at groups we already collaborated with (indeed, some of my collaborators are actively offering jobs to my graduating students, while kindly reminding me that it is, of course, my duty to kick them out). Others have moved to new groups and opened up new opportunities for collaboration. The global dimension in science networks is really amazing: people at many places on Earth offer you a warm welcome. Global warming!

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Grant-parents

You have biological parents and grandparents and they may mean a lot to you and can do a lot for you. You also have “familial” relationships in science; for instance, you are a scientific child of your thesis supervisor, or a “grant-child” of an experienced PI who helped you as “grant-parent” when writing

118 develop other people’s talent your first grant proposal. Scientific family members can do a lot for you, such as writing you letters of recommendation when you apply for jobs, provided that you have built up and maintained a good relationship. How is your current relationship with your scientific parents and their scientific parents (e.g. the institute’s director, dean, president of the university)? How is your relationship with your academic nephews, nieces, cousins, and children (e.g. Bachelor students supervised by you)? Draw a pedigree or network and identify what all these people can offer you (what types of information, support, advice, ideas, knowledge, or contacts with other people). By the way, do these people know what you can and want to offer them?

119 habits

3.9

Habits This section rounds off the chapter on developing other people’s talent. Below is a list of good habits of highly effective students and scientists, based on what we’ve learned in the previous sections:

□ Recognizing other people’s needs □ Motivating other people to develop themselves □ Inspiring other people □ Being a role model □ Serving other people □ Uniting people □ Knowing how to handle disagreements □ Recognizing other people’s contributions □ Creating ambition □ Creating challenges □ Having a vision of where to go □ Helping them face the same direction □ Stimulating running the extra mile □ Talking about “we” and “you” □ Showing excellence in science Do you know people who appear to have mastered some if not many of the above habits? Use them as role models.

4

“A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.” Johann W. von Goethe German scientist, writer, and a lot more, 1749–1832

Make it happen

122 make it happen

4.1

Introduction A top talent has smart ideas on how to crack scientific problems. But top talents have more than that. Einstein (apparently) said something like: “I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious”, which proves that other talents than just your intellect (or IQ) matter, too, if not more. Another putative quote from Einstein supports this: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” In the three previous chapters, I have outlined the essentials for a career in research. Great, but how do you put theory into practice, in your day-to-day life? Here is the strategy: n

Dream. What do you want to achieve? Imagine, like Einstein did. Dream your greatest future. At this point, don’t limit yourself by “yes, but. . .”.

n

Count. Learn from the past. Count your blessings. What was positive, what was negative?

n

Believe. President Obama of the USA caught the American people’s imagination in 2008 with his slogan “Yes, we can.” Do you think you can? Which beliefs, thoughts, and emotions play a role? Are they helpful or limiting?

n

Act. Activate yourself. How can you make and execute plans?

123 introduction n

Care. Don’t forget to look after yourself. Body and mind go hand in hand. Make and execute a plan to keep yourself in good mental and physical condition.

n

Succeed. Which concrete actions are you really (yes really!) going to take now (right now!) to make the most of your talent?

124 make it happen

4.2

Web dream count

succeed

believe

care act

FIGURE 4.1 Web for plotting your personal scores

So how good are you in making it happen? As before, you may want to use the questionnaire to get scores on the spider web. Write down your scores quickly (don’t think too hard) using a 0–5 scale, calculate the total score per category, and plot them on the web. Then draw your own conclusions.

125 web

Make it happen scale: almost never ¼ 0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 ¼ almost always

Dream I talk about my wildest dreams with other people I can dream without using “yes, but” I see many opportunities My dreams shape my vision for my future My wild dreams come true I am a creative person Sum 

Count I keep a record of items for my CV as I go along I am very proud of what I have achieved People see the main points in my CV in 1 minute My supervisors will provide enthusiastic reference letters I continuously reassess what I am less good at I work proactively to strengthen my CV Sum 

Believe I have no limiting beliefs I have no negative thoughts about my study or organization I replace limiting beliefs by more helpful ones I use the split-second between a signal and my response I analyze the beliefs underlying my negative emotions People call me open-minded Sum 

126 make it happen

Act I am a proactive person I choose my team mates before I am chosen I am ready to learn from mistakes I focus on my goals, not on my barriers I am ready for change I am creative in overcoming hurdles Sum



Sum



Care I am in good mental condition I am in good physical shape I am nowhere close to a burn-out I take heed of physical alarm bells I have energy for the weekend I take enough time for relaxation

Succeed I plan with the end-goals in mind I have a concrete medium-term plan I monitor progress and modify the plan as needed I know where my time goes I meet my deadlines in good time I start my day with a “things-to-do-today” plan Sum



127 dream

4.3

Dream Where do you want to go in your career? You are actually creating your career twice: first in your imagination, second in reality. The answer to the question of where you want to go therefore depends heavily on the first step: that is, on your ability to dream. What would you like to do when you wake up tomorrow morning or in a month, a year, or five years from now? Dreaming is creating a vision of what you really want to do, to achieve. You will feel the energy inside you when you’re fully in touch with your dreams. This is the YES of being passionate about something. At first your wildest dreams, no matter how large or small, may seem totally impossible because they are so wild. But trust me, some of them will survive if you keep focusing on them and will no longer look impossible but just unlikely to become true. But with more focus, some will eventually move on from imagination to inevitable reality. So hang on to your dreams and accept that you won’t make them all happen. You may remember yourself as the little boy catching tadpoles in the pond, or as the little girl browsing old books in your Granddad’s attic (see exercise in section on “Passion” in Chapter 1). Here you can see the germs of your dreams. Have they manifested themselves as a red line during your education and career or have incidental considerations led you to branch off? As a teenager or grown-up, your

128 make it happen intellectual curiosity, idealism, human engagement, and moral commitment have come into play. To imagine that your work can have a positive impact on science and society lights the fire in you and in other people (some of these people will decide about your funding). Enhancing our understanding of the origin of life or the universe, increasing our chances of healthy aging, developing more sustainable ways of living on our planet; these and many other scientific, societal, economical, ecological, or spiritual benefits count. Take your dreams seriously: list your dreams as genuine objectives, short term or long term. Please drop any embarrassment in talking about your dreams: it may help you to tell other people about your dreams. By doing so, you commit yourself seriously to your own dreams. And you open up opportunities for other people to support you, sometimes in unexpected ways. Why not systematically evaluate all the steps in the chapters on “Developing your talent”, “Using other people’s talent”, and “Developing other people’s talent”? For each step you can define smaller and bigger wish lists; for example, your dreams may involve small steps (e.g. attending a top biomedical conference) or really big ones (e.g. going for a prestigious personal grant so that you can really do the research you would love to do). The next chapter on “Use your webs” will help you define these steps.

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

Dreams come true In order to let your dreams come true, you’ll probably need funding. But grant writing is tedious work. So, why not

129 dream

add another dream, about a “sugar daddy” just offering you financial support? Too crazy to be true? Here’s a rather nice, real-life example: “I was walking along the beach in California and, just by accident, met someone walking along the same beach. We started to chat and I told the unknown person about my work. This guy turned out to be very interested and . . . rich – and not much later donated $100,000 to my research!” As this extreme anecdote proves, some dreams are crazy but can occasionally come true. You think this can only happen in the USA? Then read the next example from Europe: “I was wondering how to find next year’s funding for my technician. At that moment, my dean invited me to give a talk about my work to the board of the university alumni fund. Immediately after the meeting the board had dinner together and during the evening they decided to give me €250,000 for my research. This was an exceptionally large amount according to the fund’s coordinator, who said they usually provide funding in the order of a few thousand euros!” So crazy dreams can come true. Of course, you can give luck a helping hand: in the above cases both these researchers had excellent “sales pitches” ready.

/

TRY THIS!

Your farewell party

Imagine, tomorrow is your farewell party, you’re finally going to retire, you’re at the end of your career in science. Now take a piece of paper and write your farewell speech. Discuss your

130 make it happen entire career in periods of five years, and make it into a report you’re proud of. Against which wall did you put your career ladder? In what way did you contribute to science and society? Did you publish, how much, which journals? Who were your employers? Did you go abroad? Now forget about reality (at least for the moment), tap your creativity (which is your richest resource for change) and dream wildly (shape your imaginary future).

131 count

4.4

Count Count your blessings – always. Build up a track record. Frequently add relevant information (“facts”) to your curriculum vitae (CV) master file or portfolio. This document will be increasingly important for your career development. Don’t be modest, it is all about you. It includes your education, courses taken and grades obtained, a concise description of your recent expertise and research, your professional positions/jobs, your (invited) presentations and published papers (with number of citations and impact factor of the journal), the grants you’ve been awarded, and any other highlights you can think of. It is much easier to gather this kind of CV information (or portfolio) as you go along than to try putting it together when you need to apply for a job or funding at short notice. The layout of your CV should be perfect: anyone should be able to extract the most relevant information within a minute, or two at most. You use a CV to sell yourself and it therefore lists the positive facts, but you may also work on a document listing some of your less positive facts. Re-evaluate the four web figures, see how you scored yourself and how other people scored you at certain moments. Record “facts” relating to your weaker points. Remember that making mistakes is a crucial element in learning. Recognizing your weaknesses is the first and most important step to improving your skills. More precisely: recognizing

132 make it happen your current weaknesses is the first and most important step to improving your skills. It can help you a lot to add just this single word (“current”) and feel the potential for growth: yes, you do have a weakness now, but if you take appropriate action, in the future it will no longer be a weakness.

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

Out of control I had a conversation with a colleague recently who told me how “sad” she was about where she had ended up in her job and how “lucky” she thought I was. She had taken over most of the organizational and administrative duties of the department along with a busy teaching load and progressively realized that she no longer had time for research. It was only later that the repercussions of her decisions had begun to materialize. Although I agree that it is essential to be a “good citizen” at work and have a fair balance of teaching, research, and administrative duties, I also think you need to protect yourself and remember your goals. That’s what I did. Your career doesn’t come down to luck only. You need clear determination and planning. Having counted her blessings, my colleague can now start to take control.

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TRY THIS!

Re´sume´ resumed

Time to put your re´sume´ on the table. Now be critical. Have a good look at the layout of the examples in the section on “Read” in Chapter 2. What can you say about your layout? Count your

133 count unique selling points, all the things you’re proud of. Most likely other people will appreciate these things as well. Do they stand out well or should you change something, such as put the font in bold to highlight the important points? Is one minute enough to grasp the essential information? Is your re´sume´ complete or are some relevant facts that “point in your favor” still missing? Did you include the names of former supervisors who you know would write enthusiastic reference letters for you? Have you kept them updated about your career track and successes?

134 make it happen

4.5

Believe Do you take full responsibility for developing your own talent? Do you believe you have a talent for science and that you can master all the things discussed in this book? Which of your beliefs are helpful and which are limiting? Don’t be overly hard on yourself, but do be critical; your belief “I have no particular talent for writing” may not be true – you may just need additional training and lots of practice. Or your belief “I must attend this meeting” is just not true; the world will continue turning even if you don’t show up. Avoid saying YES and NO based on limiting patterns and beliefs. Hear your own weakening language. And remember that beliefs, also yours, can be irrational and limiting (see table below).

TABLE 4.1 Some examples of limiting beliefs

To believe or not to believe n

n

n

You should never trust your bosses (“they’re playing tricks on me”). Most changes in the organization structure are bad (“they will probably try to let me go”). Collaboration will benefit the other party more than you (“they will take advantage of me”).

135 believe Here’s an example. You’re extremely busy with your research project. You believe that you’re the only one who can do the work right. Therefore you think you have to work even harder and hope for the best. You feel pressed, unhappy, and trapped, but nevertheless you decide to show up at the laboratory even on Sundays (do you recognize the four levels in the figure below?). Now consider replacing the limiting belief by a more helpful one that you are indeed now the only one who could do the work right, but that you could train a Master’s student within a week or two. Quite soon this could save you a lot of stress. Beliefs

Thoughts

Emotions

Behavior

FIGURE 4.2 Your beliefs affect your behavior

Many students and scientists have negative beliefs, thoughts, and emotions about the organization they work for. However, it was your decision to join your organization. The belief that everything in an organization should be as you want it to be is limiting and makes you think your managers are incompetent and do stupid things, and this makes you feel angry and complain. Instead, why not be grateful, loyal, constructive, and proactive, by sticking your neck out and present your good ideas to the right person? Expand your influence by becoming a top student, teacher, or researcher, a role model for your own environment (however large or small it is). If you really think that you no longer fit into the (changing) organization, then take responsibility without complaining,

136 make it happen speaking ill, or grousing. Conclude that the win-win between you and your organization is over and that a divorce without spite or other bad feelings is the best option. Search for another place to study or work (and perhaps ask your organization for support in this transition).

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

Believe you’re the one Some of the best advice I ever received was from someone who told me to believe I was “the one”. I had told him that I was going to a conference where an editor of Science would be present. He replied “Go and talk to her, tell her about your research.” Until then, I hadn’t even considered such a daunting possibility. I couldn’t be the one they were interested in! I just couldn’t believe it. But there I was during the coffee break; I walked up to her and had a very fruitful conversation. I also recently applied for a major grant that everyone believed would be “impossible to get”. We got it, so apparently things are not impossible – if you believe, that is.

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TRY THIS!

Blind spots

You have filled in your four web forms, intuitively and/or using the questionnaires, and while you have probably tried really hard to be objective, some level of subjectivism cannot be avoided. This exercise invites you to look in the mirror. What you see in the mirror should not be your vision of reality, but

137 believe that of one of your colleagues: ask other people, such as your supervisor, how they see you. Let them fill in the web figure intuitively or let them answer the questionnaire for you. Compare the differences between their scores and yours; this is a quick way to reveal your blind spots. You will use the outcome of this exercise in the final chapter.

138 make it happen

4.6

Act It is nice to dream and generate plans. However, it is an art to execute your plans. As Goethe said: “A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.” It is time to move on from theory to practice, time to develop your SMARTI action plan: specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic, time-dependent, and – last but not least – inspiring (see the table below). It is time to activate yourself. Go beyond your current beliefs. Start to live your real dreams. Be particularly creative in finding solutions for the hurdles that you will undoubtedly find on your road to success. That’s what the final section “Succeed” in this chapter and Chapter 5 on “Use your webs” are all about. TABLE 4.2 The SMARTI acronym

Your SMARTI action plan S M A R T I

Specific Measurable Acceptable Realistic Time-dependent Inspiring

139 act If you aren’t ready to take action to change and instead hope that things will change for the better by themselves, then read the statements in the table below.

TABLE 4.3 Reasons to become active

To be active or not n

n

n

n

Continuing to do the same and expecting different results is self-deceiving. Reactive people are being shaped by circumstances; proactive people shape their lives. If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got. If you focus on your goals, your barriers will fall away. If you focus on your barriers, your goals will fall away.

A PROFESSOR’S ANECDOTE

The empty sheet I was called to Brussels to the office of an EU agency for final negotiations on a project that they were about to fund. During the negotiations, the officer, who had been quite a successful scientist himself, really tried to push me to tears to find out where my limits lay, how serious I was, and how suitable I was to manage a consortium of ten parties. But by doing so, he actually helped me a lot in finishing the final project documents that would be signed by each consortium member. His basic message was that I had to write a lot SMARTIer. He pointed out that project deliverables such as

140 make it happen

“report” need to be accompanied by SMARTI criteria: without any such criteria my project partners could simply hand in an empty file, call it a report, and I as coordinator would have no option but to approve it. I still feel indebted to him for his tough but valuable lessons.

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TRY THIS!

What I deliver

What will you deliver in the upcoming day, week, month, or year? Make a concrete list. This is the return on investment in you. Imagine you would have to pay your own salary, which might be on the order of tens of thousands of dollars per year: how many deliverables would you like to be defined and how concrete would you like them to be described? Be as SMARTI as needed. Don’t forget about the “I” in SMARTI; act as if your funding is still dependent on your sales pitch.

141 care

4.7

Care One extra, but highly relevant, aspect not mentioned yet is your mental and physical condition. If you are in good mental and physical shape, you will be a lot more creative and you will have a lot more staying power to achieve results. So how is your mental and physical condition? How much time do you invest each day in what is in fact your basic “production unit”? “A healthy mind in a healthy body” was a UK slogan in schools in the 1950s – which is why sport has always had a prominent place in British education systems. Science, and particularly top science, can be mentally and physically demanding. Your university should support you well. But you should take care of yourself too. Avoid getting into a burn-out situation. There is nothing wrong with working 60 hours a week for a while, but don’t overexploit your body and mind. If you get headaches, have sleepless nights or other symptoms, you may try to ignore the alarm bells, or switch them off by taking an aspirin or drinking more coffee. That may work for a while, but not in the longer term. To be successful at work you probably need to show personal leadership (e.g. self-discipline), not just in issues directly related to work, but also in other aspects that directly or indirectly affect work. Some people benefit from daily meditation, others from reading (science) fiction, hiking in the wild, or socializing in the bar. Bodies will stay in shape if

142 make it happen you bike, swim, play sport, eat well, and allow yourself to get enough sleep. Remember you’ll be working for 40–45 years of your life, so you need to be fit and well to stay the course. It’s easy to write that you should avoid running into a burn-out. The reality is that some students and scientists find it hard to take a real rest from prolonged mental and physical exertion. If you feel you’re worried and symptoms don’t ease off in two weeks, then seek help: talk with a supervisor or mentor, or visit your doctor. Continuous symptoms can be a sign of the onset of depression, and most people lose valuable time by putting off seeking help, time in which they don’t function very well. So, once again, consider your beliefs, count your positive and negative blessings, think of your dreams, and perhaps add “I will look after myself” in order to get into (or stay in) good mental and physical shape.

AN OCCUPATIONAL PHYSICIAN’S ANECDOTE

Risky science Who says that scientists are dull guys doing nothing but working seven days a week, sitting in their ivory towers, labs, and offices? Of course, that’s not true. There is ample evidence of sporty scientists: they run, swim, climb rocks, ski, sail. And they also read fiction, go to the theater, and relax in many other ways. Yet, the stereotype of scientists working seven days a week may not be completely false: scientists are indeed at risk. Many tasks at work compete for their time and soon they may think they can’t spare any time for other activities. Here is one example: “An associate professor had become an almost complete workaholic, setting aside his hobbies and sporting habits.

143 care

He did not feel well, had a lot of mental and physical complaints, but could not find the time to resume his former hobbies and sports. He wasn’t a dull man, his life had been full of playing music and baseball. But step by step he gave it away under the pressure of his work; he had become a slave to science.” And here is another – positive – example: “A full professor travels a lot to teach at courses and to lecture at conferences. But he is always well prepared: he has running shoes and clothes with him. In the morning or during a lunch break you can see him running on the beach at one conference, up and down the hills at another, or downtown at a course. The physical exercise keeps him healthy, the sightseeing keeps him happy. No wonder that quite often other participants or speakers join him for the jog.”

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TRY THIS!

There is more to life than work

So what have you been doing lately to keep your “production unit” in good physical and mental shape? What scores would you give yourself on scales for happiness, staying power, mental endurance, physical fitness? Do you need to make any changes in your lifestyle? If yes, then once more dream, count, believe, act, and. . .succeed (this is the topic of the next section).

144 make it happen

4.8

Succeed Students, postdocs, professors alike, all of us have dreams, some are long term, others medium or short term derived from the longer-term ones. As a PhD student you will dream about writing a decent thesis, perhaps you imagine your chapters being published in your favorite journals – and with everything finished in three to four years. As a postdoc you may dream about your own research line and a major grant to achieve independence – maybe in the next two years. As a professor you may dream about setting up exciting new international consortia. Now turn your long-term dreams into your very important aims. For example you may have endpoints like “Writing papers A to E” for the next four years. Think about any dependencies, for instance that the work for paper A should be finished before B can start (A!B); or C!D; B and D!E. Each of these aims may come with a number of more-or-less concrete tasks (what you’re going to do), deliverables (what you will have as output on the way), and milestones (when you will deliver), and you should write these down as well. A rough long-term plan might look like the table below. Once you have your long-term “items” ready, you can start at the beginning again with the medium-term “items”. Set your priorities and choose a few tasks to start with. Plan in short cycles of, say, about eight weeks. Every eight weeks you can

145 succeed TABLE 4.4 Long-term planning form

Your SMARTI* long-term plan Aim

Half-year period up to month: 6

1

Paper A

2

Paper B

3

Paper C

4

Paper D

5

Paper E

12

18

24

30

36

42

48

* SMARTI: specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic, time-dependent, inspiring.

look back at the previous planning, and evaluate what went well and what needs adjusting. Use the upper part of the mediumterm planning form below to write down your successes and bottlenecks. Then use the lower part of the form to describe your tasks for the next eight weeks, what you expect to deliver (“anticipated results”) and when (“done in week x”). If there are unexpected bottlenecks, think about how you can overcome them, be creative (e.g. ask your statistician or analyst for help). For those of you who feel they have no idea where time goes, it can be a good idea to even plan hours per task per week in advance, record hours spent on each task per day, and then over a period of several days or weeks analyze these numbers: the comparison of these real numbers may urge you to change your habits. For instance, the example below shows a toooptimistic planning as well as a loss of hours spent on other things rather than the five major tasks. Finally, you may benefit from a “things to do today” list for the short-term day-to-day planning (see table below). Take

146 make it happen TABLE 4.5 Medium-term planning form

Your SMARTI medium-term plan Weeks

1–8

Evaluation of previous period Successes Developed a brilliant new lab protocol! Used the protocol on 20 samples Drafted a set-up for a protocol paper Bottlenecks Need advice on statistical programming Running out of time to prepare for next conference Planning of next period New tasks

Anticipated results

Done (week)

Run 30 more samples

All data collected

3

Consult statistician

Software module

3

Data analysis & interpretation

Biological actors known

5

Manuscript complete

Send to peers for review

8

Prepare for conference

Presentation ready, ~40 slides

8

some time in the morning, check how well you succeeded the day before, and plan the activities of the current day: clearly indicate priorities.

147 succeed TABLE 4.6 Monitoring form

Task

1

2

3

4

5

Hours estimated

56

48

56

98

70

Hours per task divided over the eight weeks (planned/real) 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

24

24

8

–

–

–

–

–

16

10

24

20

10

16

16

16

–

–

–

–

–

16

14

–

11

20

–

–

16

20

20

–

–

–

–

–

20

20

10

20

20

20

–

10

–

14

30

30

–

–

10

20

20

20

–

10

–

–

–

–

–

–

8

TABLE 4.7 Short-term planning form

Your “THINGS TO DO TODAY” short-term plan Date Activity

Priority

Write methods section

1

Create better figure 1

1

Read Nature Reviews

2

Make appointment with X

3

148 make it happen

A TRAINER’S ANECDOTE

Big spender When I was teaching professional skills in a higher education college, the students found one of the most useful little tasks they were given was to record what activities/projects/“clients” they actually spent their time on. They were rather skeptical at first, and recording their activities per week showed that they couldn’t remember the details for that long. So this convinced them to keep a short record of each day (in a paper diary, personal digital assistant (PDA), or Excel sheet). It amazed most of the students how long some tasks actually took, but they eventually became far more realistic when planning a new project. Keeping records, even for a short period, can provide insight into many aspects of what you do, whether it’s how you spend your work time, or your lab or household budget. See exercise in section “Prioritize” in Chapter 1.

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TRY THIS!

Plan to plan

Do you have a whiteboard behind your desk or can you stick a piece of paper to the wall? Draw a timeline spanning, say, the period of two years before you’ll have to finish your Master’s or PhD thesis. Draw a triangle at each position on the timeline when you want to finish something important, such as a paper, and indicate with a bar how much time it takes to get there. Other important things to add might be a short internship at another lab or taking a four-week holiday. Keep it on the whiteboard/paper. This will remind you and your supervisor of

149 succeed the current project load, and may lead them to help you reorganize the priorities. There may be times when your boss will come in, see the whiteboard full of tasks, and then go back to his or her office without suggesting more (new) work for you to do.

150 make it happen

4.9

Habits This section rounds off the chapter on “Make it happen”. Below is a list of good habits of highly effective students and scientists, based on what we’ve learned in the previous sections:

□ Talking about dreams □ Having a vision of where to go □ Knowing own strengths and weaknesses □ Recognizing limiting beliefs □ Being creative in overcoming hurdles □ Believing he/she is “the one” □ Being proactive □ Acting and continuing to act □ Daring to do new things □ Learning from mistakes □ Looking after himself/herself well □ Taking own development seriously □ Having concrete plans □ Monitoring progress □ Celebrating success

151 habits Select your two strongest and two weakest habits from the above list (tick ☑). Do you have any “empirical evidence” to support your choice, e.g. concrete stories showing your habits in action?

5

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” Mahatma Gandhi, Leader of the Indian National Congress, Indian author and philosopher, 1869–1948

Use your webs

154 use your webs

5.1

Introduction For the sake of clarity, let me check that you haven’t misunderstood me. In many places this book has emphasized the “extrascientific” skills and the importance of “playing the game” in the business of science, where how many scientific papers you have written, the impact factors of the journals, and your academy memberships do count. There is nothing wrong with this, unless it becomes your one-dimensional view of what science is all about. Doing your work with the dominating purpose of having papers in high-impact journals such as Nature and Science, perhaps more papers than your colleague next door, is empty and has no intrinsic value. It would be trivializing science. So what really counts? Your idealism, your curiosity, your intellectual endeavor. To potentially push forward the frontiers of knowledge or to use this knowledge to the benefit of humankind. Yes, do keep doing this. So now this book can really draw to a close? Actually, no, the most critical part is still to come. You used the four web figures to visualize your strengths and weaknesses. Now it is time to set your ambitions for preferred scores in, say, one year from now, and to define the appropriate actions to get there: dream, count, believe, act, and then succeed. Five “try this” exercises, one for each step, form the core of this last chapter. There is no “free lunch”; these need to be done, and that is what the last section is about.

155 complete

5.2

Complete Intuitive scores

Questionnaire

passion

passion prioritize

prioritize

fund

fund

persevere

persevere write

write speak

speak

Supervisor's scores

Target scores one year from now

passion

passion prioritize

fund

prioritize

fund persevere

persevere write

write speak

FIGURE 5.1 Put your webs on the table

speak

156 use your webs It’s time to analyze your web scores and complete the work. So please put them on the table in front of you now. Examine the differences between the various scoring methods (see figure above), for example a difference between your scores and those given by your supervisor: this is a quick way to find your blind spots. Set your ambitions for preferred scores in, say, one year from now (and compare them at that time to your current scores to see whether you have succeeded). The skill you might want to improve now might not necessarily be the one you scored lowest on. Instead, it might be the one that will now have the greatest impact on your career. So, in which areas do you want to improve your skills now? Make a priority list of, say, five. Below you will find five more “try this” exercises, one for each step in the trajectory from dream to succeed. If you need some inspiration, at the end of this chapter I have included a table with examples of dreams, facts, negative and positive beliefs, and possible actions. You can download an empty form from www.talent4science.eu to be used in the exercises below. So, with these exercises this book really ends. But this is really just the beginning for you. I wish you good luck in science and life!

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TRY THIS!

I have a dream1

Now forget about reality (at least for the moment), tap your creativity (which is your richest resource for change), and dream wildly (shape your imaginary future). As I wrote before: at first your wildest dreams, no matter how large or small, may seem totally impossible because they are so wild. But trust me, some of them survive if you keep focusing on them and will no longer look impossible – but unlikely to become true. But with more focus some will eventually move on from imagination to inevitable reality. The next few exercises will help you get there. 1

Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC. (I was born just a week before this speech was delivered!)

157 complete

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TRY THIS!

My dreams count

If you have filled in your dreams, you can now move on and count facts. Objective facts related to your dreams, suggesting that your dream is realistic (in the best case) or far from realistic (in the worst scenario, at least as it appears at the moment). Facts are observations, not interpretations. How you can look at these facts in different ways, that’s the topic of the next exercise.

/

TRY THIS!

I better believe it!

All dreams can be coupled to a negative belief (“I won’t be able to achieve my dream”) as well as to a positive one (“sure, I can search for help and resources”). The purpose of this exercise is to make you aware of any belief – whether helpful or limiting – with the obvious and strong intention that you will nourish the helpful beliefs and drop (or occasionally just accept) the limiting ones. Record whatever beliefs come to your mind when you ask yourself how much passion you have, how good you are in prioritizing, when you have perseverance or lack it, and so on. If a belief is positive, keep at it; if it is negative, consider replacing it by something more positive.

/

TRY THIS!

I’m smart!

We have so many dreams. And we so often leave it at that. It is just too big an effort to go beyond imagination. But why not give it a try? It requires creative thinking to change negative beliefs about hurdles-you-can’t-take into positive ones that you can do it and how you can do it: SMARTI actions to overcome the hurdles. Who or what can help you? Now continue filling in the last part of the form and describe those actions.

158 use your webs

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TRY THIS!

Getting my act together

Limiting beliefs should not (always) stop you from moving on from your dream or vision to a concrete reality. Instead, the above exercises can help you tackle many of the anticipated hurdles. And remember: the higher the hurdles you tackle, the more unique you and your organization will be. Now, define your important aims and fill in the appropriate planning form (long-term, medium-term, or short-term, see section on “Succeed” in the previous chapter). Monitor your progress repeatedly over time and adjust your planning whenever needed. If new hurdles appear on the road, then pay special attention to finding new creative solutions. Examples of dreams, facts, limiting (–), and helpful (þ) beliefs, and actions to overcome the hurdles:

Develop your talent Passion Dream

Start a groundbreaking PhD project

Fact

I have clever results from a Master’s project

Belief

There is no such PhD project offered



Belief

I can arrange this!

þ

Action

Search for a top supervisor and write a proposal

Prioritize Dream

To be an efficient and productive researcher

Fact

I am struggling with too many tasks

Belief

It will only get worse



Belief

I can learn to do important things first

þ

Action

Block 4 hours per day for important tasks

159 complete

Persevere Dream

Become famous by cracking a certain problem

Fact

I have spent weeks running nowhere madly

Belief

I’d better quit



Belief

More computer power could do it!

þ

Action

Get access to a supercomputer center

Speak Dream

To know what to say to my director

Fact

I don’t have a polished 3-minute story

Belief

I’m a bad speaker anyway



Belief

Preparing a presentation will help

þ

Action

Practice, polish, practice, polish, . . .

Write Dream

Write a paper for a high-impact journal

Fact

Editor shows up at a conference I will attend

Belief

Chances are so small



Belief

I can try to network with the editor

þ

Action

Ask editor to comment on my proposal for a paper

Fund Dream

To get my own fantastic project idea funded

Fact

I lack experience in writing grants

Belief

I will probably fail whatever I propose



Belief

I only need one successful example

þ

Action

Use a funded application as a template

160 use your webs

Use other people’s talent Read Dream

To keep up with hottest literature

Fact

I’m often late learning about hot stuff

Belief

There is simply too much being published



Belief

Modern technologies should help

þ

Action

Register for electronic new paper alerts

Listen Dream

To hear what is not said

Fact

I seem to have a bad antenna for this

Belief

I’m just a scientist, sorry



Belief

Scientists can analyze information!

þ

Action

Read book about communication

Ask Dream

To be an effective scientist/author of papers

Fact

I ask more questions than I can answer

Belief

I will never be able to finish my papers



Belief

Can’t stop science, work is never finished!

þ

Action

Summarize questions in the discussion section of paper

Share Dream

People won’t have hidden agendas

Fact

Critical information is often not shared

Belief

This is typical human behavior



Belief

At least I won’t have a hidden agenda

þ

Action

Share information in timely and honest way

161 complete

Collaborate Dream

Work with talented/ambitious people

Fact

Support staff don’t share our excitement

Belief

They’re just not like the scientists



Belief

We can make them real team members

þ

Action

Invite all support staff to a Christmas dinner

Move (on) Dream

To keep growing personally/professionally

Fact

I can’t move because of my family

Belief

I’m stuck on a dead-end road



Belief

It’s time for revitalization

þ

Action

Take a sabbatical or make short visits

Develop other people’s talent Inspire Dream

To become an inspiring group leader

Fact

I have little experience so far

Belief

I’ll probably run into trouble



Belief

But I do have a great vision

þ

Action

Go to a course on academic leadership

Educate Dream

My institute has a good funding level

Fact

Our success rate in applications is too low

Belief

Other people should do something



Belief

I can help to increase the success rate!

þ

Action

Become people’s “grant parent”

162 use your webs

Unite Dream

Have two specific parties collaborate well

Fact

Financial matters frustrate their collaboration

Belief

The other party could benefit more



Belief

So? – we both gain something

þ

Action

Help disseminate a different culture

Support Dream

Equal opportunities in science

Fact

There are too few women professors

Belief

Men are more intelligent than women



Belief

Women do less well in a male world

þ

Action

Set up a special program to support women

Reward Dream

My university ranks high on world lists

Fact

I have no overview of our excellence

Belief

We’re the top but people don’t see it



Belief

We can increase awareness

þ

Action

Celebrate excellence “publicly”

Keep in touch Dream

Mutually beneficial contacts with alumni

Fact

The majority of alumni work elsewhere

Belief

They’re gone and no longer have a bond



Belief

They value their educational cradle!

þ

Action

Maintain strong alumni program

163 complete

Make it happen Dream Dream

Take my dreams seriously

Fact

I ignore the inner wish for change

Belief

Dreaming is for softies



Belief

I am worth taking myself seriously

þ

Action

Talk with other people about my dreams

Count Dream

Get a particular personal grant

Fact

I still have about a year before submission

Belief

My CV may be not strong enough



Belief

My CV is currently not strong enough

þ

Action

Make action plan for the coming year

Believe Dream

To free myself from limiting beliefs

Fact

I always look for the downside first

Belief

I’m a pessimist



Belief

This book gives me hope for change

þ

Action

Take a personal development course

Act Dream

To become a principal investigator

Fact

People find my ideas and plans too vague

Belief

I’ll never be a good PI



Belief

Just need more training on the job

þ

Action

Practice defining SMARTI deliverables

164 use your webs

Care Dream

Keep things in better balance

Fact

Too much sitting, eating, working, stress

Belief

I can’t jump off a moving train



Belief

I can learn to say YES and NO

þ

Action

Start taking a yoga class this week!

Succeed Dream

To manage my time better

Fact

I often forget to do first things first

Belief

I’m a scatterbrain



Belief

I will get organized!

þ

Action

Buy and use a day-planner/prioritizer

165

Further reading Here are just a few links to websites that you may find interesting. Check my website for more links: www.talent4science.eu; and send your favorites to [email protected].

Top science repositories www.nobelprize.org The official website with all the information about Nobel Prize winners. Who will be the next Nobel Prize winners? Unfortunately, you can only win Nobel Prizes in a few scientific disciplines. www.f1000biology.com and www.f1000medicine.com Two sites, one devoted to the biological and one to the medical arena, showing how these fields are organized and reporting what they consider to be the hottest scientific publications. scholar.google.com Google’s search engine for scientific publications. Includes citations and links to related papers. info.scopus.com Large abstract and citation database of research literature, patents, and selected web sources. www.researcherid.com A global, multidisciplinary scholarly research community. Use profile websites to build up your

166 further reading network, make sure to keep them up to date or linked into your main personal webpage. isiknowledge.com A site to find what someone in science has published and how many times that work has been cited (and by whom); also gives impact factors for scientific journals, and a lot more. Probably accessible through your university account or library website. www.creamofscience.org Example of how a national research organization ranks their top scientists (in this case the Netherlands). It would be nice to aim for a mention on such a list.

Top science journals www.nature.com A website that leads to the expanding number of Nature journals with high impact. You would be proud to see your name in any of them. But don’t assume this is the one and only holy grail. www.nature.com/reviews Nature Reviews journals are an important source of reviews, opinions, and perspectives. Very useful if you want to get up to date on a topic. www.trends.com Like the Nature Reviews journals, an important source to get started or updated. www.sciencemag.org Like Nature, an important general journal.

Popular science journals www.newscientist.com and www.the-scientist.com Easy-to-read introductory articles on all kinds of science. Recommended reading for a wide and general interest.

167 further reading

Some international funding agencies www.hfsp.org www.nih.org www.nsf.org erc.europa.eu cordis.europa.eu

Planning tools Read more about planning tools, e.g. Gantt charts (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart) and Pert charts (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERT).

Academic skills www.cambridge.org/features/for_scientists Books on academic skills from Cambridge University Press, e.g. How to Write and Illustrate a Scientific Paper by Bjo¨rn Gustavii. www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/Letter_bold_para.doc Shows how to write a top abstract for your paper. www.nature.com/naturejobs/magazine/index.html For jobs of course! And for how to make the most of your job. sciencecareers.sciencemag.org Another very useful site for jobs and information about careers in science. “Nature’s guide for mentors” by Adrian Lee, Carina Dennis, and Philip Campbell, Nature, 2007: 447, 791–797. Public Library of Science (PLoS) offers a collection of papers entitled “Ten simple rules for . . .”; see collections.plos.org/ ploscompbiol/tensimplerules.php

168 further reading www.hhmi.org/labmanagement gives a practical guide to scientific management for postdocs and new faculty, “Making the right moves” by Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Burroughs Wellcome Fund. www.nationalpostdoc.org National Post-doctoral Association, with references to mentoring publications and web resources. www.sense-online.nl SENSE, Society of English NativeSpeaking Editors, can provide a list of freelance editors, some of whom can tackle scientific texts. There are also links via some journal websites to editing services (see journal’s “Guideline to authors”).

Personal development www.thework.com provides four simple questions to investigate your opinions about other people. As a result of your answers, you may want to change some beliefs that you now realize may be limiting. Several books (e.g. Question Your Thinking, Change The World, by Katie, Hay & House, Inc.). www.franklincovey.com provides books on the seven habits of highly effective people (e.g. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic, by Covey, Simon & Schuster Inc.). There’s now a book out on the eighth habit. www.bus.umich.edu/FacultyResearch/Books provides links to some interesting academic books on management (e.g. Becoming a Master Manager: A Competency Framework, by Quinn et al., Wiley & Sons Inc.).

169 further reading

Autobiographies of Nobel Prize winners Read an autobiography of the really top scientists in your favorite discipline. Your Watson and Crick (winners of Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962 for their breakthrough discovery of the structure of DNA).

170

Acknowledgments It’s important not to write on your own, but to invite relative outsiders to read and comment on your work (even your mother or father may serve for this purpose); they can certainly point out your blind spots. And do expect to spend some time on this process. I have offered earlier versions of this book to many people over the past couple of years. It often felt like sticking my neck out and not knowing whether they would chop my head off. Looking back, I can conclude that the sharing of my document with other people always led to very warm and constructive interactions. Special thanks to: Danny Arends (MSc student, EU) Rianne Jansen (MSc student, EU) Yang Li (PhD student, China) Sasha Zhernakova (PhD student, Russia) Pjotr Prins (PhD student, EU) Martijn Dijkstra (postdoc, EU) Morris Swertz (postdoc, EU) Ellen Nollen (assistant professor, EU) Ody Sibon (associate professor, EU) Melinda Mills (associate professor, Canada) Rainer Breitling (full professor, EU) Alan Attie (full professor, USA)

171 acknowledgments Bill Beavis (full professor, USA) Gary Churchill (full professor, USA) Theunis Piersma (full professor, EU) Dirkje Postma (full professor, EU) Lubbert Dijkhuizen (institute director, EU) Henk Kiers (faculty dean, EU) Douwe Wiersma (faculty dean, EU) Sibrand Poppema (university president, EU) Margot Edens (university trainer, EU) Eva Jordans (director Schouten-Nelissen, training company, EU) Hans Leewens (cofounder Van Ede & Partners, career development consultants, EU) Brigitte Hertz (freelance trainer, EU) Ben Verheijden (freelance trainer, EU) Jan-Pieter Weening (freelance trainer, EU) Jackie Senior (science editor, edited this book, EU) Katrina Halliday (commissioning editor, CUP, EU) Klazien Offens (university office manager, EU) Imogen Hurley (research programs manager, USA) Charles Buys (on the governing board of NWO, EU) Peter Flach (general practitioner, EU) Gon Bleeker (general practitioner, EU) Dirk Visser (graphical designer, EU) Eimert van’t Veer (friend, EU) Gerard Jansen (author’s father, EU) Henny van Zanten (married to author, EU) and to the Netherlands Scientific Research Organization (NWO), my research group, institute, university, all the participants in my workshops, and many others, who have inspired me and make my work at the university so rewarding.

172

Index abstract learning from examples, 57, 167 of paper, 34 of proposal, 37, 41, 43 action plan, 138 reasons to become active, 139 sticking neck out, 135, 170 active generating ideas for change, 101 anger, 135 apathy, 108 audience preparing slides, 31, 33 staying in contact, 63, 69 who is in the audience, 95 being taken advantage of, 71 beliefs examples, 158 helpful, 134, 157 limiting, 60, 134 benefit of humankind, 154 bigger stones, putting them into the basket, 22 blame author, 56 speaker, 67 yourself, 23, 24, 61 blind spots, 67, 136, 156, 170 boss blaming your, 23

communicating with, 30, 64, 70, 115, 149 searching for a new, 79, 80 who is the boss, 98 career development, taking responsibility, 98, 116, 135 career ladder being at the bottom, 1, 71 climbing up, 2, 97, 98 where to put the ladder, 25, 130 career options, 1 away from science, 18 company, 2, 17, 25, 68 institute, 2, 17 public service, 18 university, 2, 17, 25 celebrate, 27, 113 challenges, facing many, 107 change lifestyle, 143 limiting beliefs, 157, 158 someone else, 88, 100 unwanted, 104 wanting to, 88 choices default, 24 you’ve made, 21 comfort zone, 108 communication styles, 93, 94 competition, 17, 42, 75

173 index complaints, 104, 135 conflict, 103, 106 creativity, 28, 74, 130, 156 culture, 104, 111, 112, 117 curriculum vitae (CV) see re´sume´ deliverables, 144 difficult period, 28 doing the right things right, 3, 4, 10, 16 dreams examples, 158 giving luck a helping hand, 129 listing as objectives, 128 long and short term, 144 remembering yours, 132 talking about yours, 128 editor asking a science editor for help, 43 asking English corrector for help see English editorial paper, 42, 72 invitation to review, 37 meeting a journal editor, 30, 136 Einstein, Albert, Nobel Prize winner, 8, 19, 122 elevator pitch see sales pitch emails, rules for writing, 76 English consulting corrector, 77, 168 non-native speaker, 61, 80 errors, making, 95, 131 eureka moments, 28, 63 extra mile, 95, 114 family bonds, 81, 110 feedback really listening to, 61 rules for giving and receiving, 70, 71 figure, telling a 1000 words, 37 focus, 28, 63, 111, 127, 139, 156 freedom flexible working hours, 111 offering more, 41, 113

to be curious, 16, 99, 113, 114 to discuss, 65 funding agency, 41, 109, 167 game of science, 154 Gandhi, Mahatma, philosopher and writer, 152 giants, standing on the shoulders of, 55 giving without expecting to receive, 72 Goethe, Johann von, scientist and writer, 86, 120, 138 grant advanced investigator, 41 R01, 41 returning money, 109 starting investigator, 41 training, 41 traveling, 40 health burn-out, 108, 116, 141, 142 depression, onset of, 142 headaches, 141 mental and physical, 141 restrictions, 81, 110 sleepless nights, 141 human resource management, 109 hurdles advantages of, 158 finding solutions, 138, 158 idealism, 128, 154 imagination, the power of, 122, 127, 156 impact factor (of journals), 131, 154, 166 international experience, 80 internship, 24, 35, 41, 79, 116, 148 interpreting what you hear, 60 interview for job or funding, 63 job getting an attractive, 79, 80 interview, 30, 63

174 index job (cont.) magazines, 167 journal club, 59, 101 knowledge, pushing the frontiers of, 16, 68, 154 language body, 63 down to earth, 35 empathy, 41 second, 61, 80 weakening, 62, 67, 134 layout learning from good examples, 63 of abstract, 37 of edited abstract, 44, 45 of re´sume´, 36, 131, 132 leadership style, 100 less is more, 34 literature efficient reading, 56 electronic alerts, 55 selecting relevant papers, 55, 165

reconstructing yours, 118 satisfied alumni, 116 the global dimension, 117 Nobel Prize winner, 8, 20, 48, 122, 169 Obama, Barack, President of the USA and Nobel Prize winner, 122 occupational physician, 142 opinion paper, 43 Pavlovian judgment, 61 personal grant, 42 personal leadership, 42, 141, 168 pilot study, 41, 46 plan learning to be realistic, 148 long term, 144, 145, 167 medium term, 144, 146 short term, 145, 147 things to do today, 145, 147 using whiteboard, 148 playing the game of science see game of science presentation designing your slides, 31 preparing an excellent, 30 simplify, 33 written version, 34 progress, issues holding back, 29 monitoring, 144, 167 putting off people, 94

manager, incompetent, 135 meetings is your presence essential, 23 practice active listening, 64 preparing for, 75, 78 with your supervisor, 75 mentor being a, 94, 97, 167 consulting a, 83, 109, 142 program, 109 milestones, 144 mirror looking in the mirror, 136 of your organization, 111 talking to the mirror, 31 monitoring your progress, 145, 158 moral commitment, 128

quality of life, 16, 24, 109, 143 questions asking too many, 68 closed, 65 continue to ask, 66 ignorant ones, 67 interacting with audience, 69 open, 65

nature versus nurture see talent networks, social and professional creating, 71

reference letters, 79, 118, 133 relaxation, need for, 28, 142

175 index renewing energy, 116, 141 research program manager, 110 re´sume´ as part of proposal, 42 bad and good examples, 35, 36 building up track record, 81, 131 critical inspection, 132 rules for writing, 35 review article, 56 board, 41, 42 by non-expert, 38, 41, 57 evaluating many proposals, 42 good and bad reports, 57, 70 journals, 56, 166 listen carefully, 61 role model, 19, 94, 135 running the extra mile see extra mile sabbatical, 108, 116 sales pitch, 30, 33, 34, 75, 129, 140 Sanger, Frederick, Nobel Prize winner, 20 saying NO, 10, 22, 62, 134 YES, 10, 16, 25, 134 self-reflection, 6, 12, 52, 90, 124 simplicity, achieving, 37 SMARTI acronym, 138 criteria for deliverables, 139 example actions, 158 staying power, 141 sticking neck out see action stress, 135 students coauthoring, 42, 72, 80, 97 delegating research tasks, 98, 99 mentoring see mentor suffering from success, 24, 25 not losing self-respect, 28 support staff delegating nonscientific tasks, 77 getting their commitment, 109 rewarding them, 114

synergy examples, 63, 64, 77, 78 one plus one is more than two, 50, 70 open-minded listening, 61 the third way, 103 talent nature versus nurture, 3 recognizing a latent, 94 teams analyze yours, 105 appointing the wrong person, 95 establishing successful, 75 fight or unite, 72, 105 mono- and multidisciplinary, 74 phases during life span of, 102 talented people leaving, 116 unavoidable split, 82, 136 tenured position, 79, 113 thanking for complaints and protests, 104 title of paper, 34 of proposal, 37, 41 top research groups, size of, 97 top science, 108, 111, 113, 116, 141 top sport, 108 track record see re´sume´ trivializing science, 154 video-conferencing, 110 vision, creating a, 93, 127 vocation, is science your, 1, 10, 16 vulnerable, being, 67 see also action Watson, James, Nobel Prize winner, 20 weaknesses, recognizing yours, 131 Wilson, Kenneth, Nobel Prize winner, 48 workaholic, 142 world, contributing to a better, 16, 21, 154