The surprising key to research success: Authenticity

Ah, the research enterprise. It can be a tricky place to navigate, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of doing things the way your mentors or colleagues do things. But let’s be real, that doesn’t always work. If you’re walking in someone else’s shadow — often without even knowing it — it can lead to a whole host of issues. Not enjoying core work like grant writing which is an essential part of the job, procrastination and difficulty getting started, low overall job satisfaction, feeling like academic freedom is a myth, and working too hard with too little progress to show for it are all common symptoms.

I recently visited New York and met with some fascinating clients who have found their own way to success. One of them has multiple R01 grants, recently secured an endowed chair position, and has huge momentum in his field. His secret? Authenticity. Yep, he did things his way, instead of trying to please others. He learned this as a gay male growing up in a region that is not very kind to LGBT+ people. He learned that through authenticity, focus, and purpose, he can accomplish what he puts his mind to, which led him to many victories in his life.

A lot of faculty members operate in “survival mode,” where the next grant is essential to staying afloat. It’s so exciting to see someone who has moved beyond that, and into a mode of focusing on seeing what he and his team are capable of. He also loves to inspire others to live more authentic, productive, and fulfilling careers and lives as well – all while being open about who he is.

Although this client has conquered many steps to achieve his research vision, there is still plenty to accomplish. For one, Leadership is a complicated skill that requires delicate honing to keep a team motivated and on track as a lab expands — especially if the leader wants to maintain sanity and not just be working as a manager all the time. He is working on these aspects as part of our SCI•Foundry Leadership Elite Program, focusing on further developing leadership to see how far he can go and how many lives he can positively impact. On the personal side, I had great fun going out to lunch overlooking Central Park with him. That was a first for me

I also met with a client who is at an earlier career stage. He’s at a solid institution doing impactful work but has had some challenges with grant writing. By digging into this, we discovered he’s been doing a lot of “walking in the shadow of his mentor.” He has been doing things the way his mentor did them because he thought it was the way he “had to” do it.

For example, his mentor did grant writing as a solo endeavor. He would often just show up with a written proposal, and he wouldn’t involve the team at all. This represented a larger trend in that lab, of people mostly “flying solo” and doing little collaboration. His mentor also gave the impression that it was all about the authority you project and the possibilities you have as an individual, not as a team.

My client really enjoys collaboration, but the example he was following from his mentor was the opposite of that. So proposal writing became a miserable affair for him.

When we reframed the process as more collaborative, everything changed. The idea of making it a team effort made a big difference.

We also discussed that he can approach the proposal as a collaboration with the reviewer, rather than an “authority dump” onto the reviewer. With these shifts, suddenly the skies seemed to open up, and for the first time, the idea of writing a grant proposal didn’t seem so daunting.

There is no right or wrong way to tackle endeavors such as grant writing. Yet, this same statement makes you wonder if doing it in a different way than your mentor is also a plausible possibility.

Helping people do exactly that is at the core of what we do in the SCI•Foundry Leadership Elite. We work with growth-oriented researchers like these two to identify what “really lights the fires of motivation and enthusiasm,” helping them align efforts to do more of that and less of things that are the opposite.

In my experience, stepping out of the shadow eventually becomes a necessity, rather than an option, for anyone who wants to truly thrive and enjoy a research career. Everyone needs to find their own style and rhythm when leading a research lab.

It may sound crazy to you that you can actually make more progress, and be more productive by being more authentic about who you are.

It sounded crazy to me, which is why I often pursued my research — especially in the early days — in the shadow of my own mentors. To the extent I broke free of that, I made more progress and had more fun, by finding my own way. My challenge was that I didn’t have any help with the journey away from the mentor’s shadow and into my own light.

The challenge with all of this is to teach yourself to stop doing things automatically the way you learned “growing up,” and to start doing them more authentically.

 Stepping out of the shadow, and doing things in new ways, brings fear of judgment and failure. Fun stuff, right? Just remember an old quote from a very famous movie: Fear is a path to the dark side.

But don’t worry, there’s no trade-off between being authentic and being productive. Yes, it seems like everyone in the research enterprise thinks that there is, but let me tell you a secret: the people who learn to do things more authentically, are generally far more productive than their peers.

So, if you’re feeling like you’re walking in someone else’s shadow, take a step back and think about what you truly want out of your research career. What do you enjoy doing? What are you capable of? Once you find your authentic way of doing things, success will follow. Or, at least, a better chance of success in this somewhat chaotic, difficult system we call the research enterprise.

We are here to help make your journey easier. Sign up for your free clarity call, and we will help you find ways to step out of the shadow of mentors and colleagues, so you can discover a more productive and fulfilling way of doing things that is authentic to you. Being yourself will free you from shackles you never knew you had in the first place.