Collaboration, leadership and influence

Welcome to the introduction to leadership resource. My name is Robin Henderson, I’m a management consultant who works exclusively with higher education, supporting University academics and professional service staff develop and think about their leadership. And this short video is going to introduce you to what to expect from the resource and to enable you to work through it as effectively as you can.

What the resources here to do is to support you develop an understanding of what we mean by leadership, and to explore what leadership is and also what it’s not. And in that, we’ll be exploring the difference between leadership and management, and talk about some of the behaviours that you would expect to see effective leaders demonstrating.

So we’re going to be exploring that within the resource, we’re also going to explore and give you the opportunity to reflect on your own attributes as a leader. And I think this is really important in terms of how you support yourself, develop as a leader within the community that you’re operating within, and to enable you to become more effective. And then the final thing is to identify spaces where within your postdoctoral research work, or other work that you’re undertaking that you can identify spaces and opportunities for consciously developing your leadership skills.

And we’ll also be thinking about how you can evidence those skills. In terms of what the resource contains it, first of all, contains a number of short videos like this, exploring key leadership concepts. Some of these videos are based upon the workshop that we ran with the Prosper programme, and builds on inputs from their participants on those workshops. Others will explore specific leadership models and concepts.

Alongside the videos, there’s a series of reflective documents to complete and I really encourage you to complete these documents as at the heart of good leadership is the ability to be reflective and understand your own attributes, styles and behaviours, and to identify where you perhaps need to modify or update or change something to become an even more effective leader. And the other thing that resource contains is a series of resources, additional websites, videos and the like for you to explore concepts that we discussed on the programme in more detail.

So I hope you enjoy working through the resource. And if you have any questions, please do get in touch with myself and my email is at the start of this video.

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Welcome to this video which is part of the prosper introduction to leadership resource. What we’re going to do in this video is discuss three key elements.

The first one is to have a conversation around about what do we mean by leadership. Leadership is a word that is often used in management leadership in organisations. But what do we really mean by that word leadership, and in particular, what might distinguish the word leadership from the word management. We’re also going to spend some time looking at the attributes of leaders.

And finally, we’re going to talk about one leadership model, the Kouzes and Posner leadership practices model, which highlights the attributes of effective leaders. And that will help us explore and reflect on our own practices as leaders, and also identify areas where we could improve our leadership.

Within the workshop, which we ran alongside the development of this resource, we had a group discussion around about what do we mean by leadership. And it was interesting to see what some of the discussion groups came back with. There was a general theme of guiding others to achieve was part of leadership, helping a group achieve a common goal, steering a team of people, and inspiring others all were the definitions that the participants on the workshop came up with. If we were to look at a formal definition of leadership. Leadership could be regarded as an act of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal.

So I think the first thing to recognise is that leadership is about motivating, it’s not about telling people, it’s not about your position, leadership is about this process of motivating others to head in a specific direction. And I think the other thing here is the sense of leadership towards a common goal, that you’re trying to achieve something. And by working towards that common goal, and inspiring those people and motivating those people to head towards that, that is when you are leading them. It is important to differentiate between what we mean by leadership and management. And an awful lot of has been written on this. And we will put some resources in the pack to differentiate these two for you to read in more detail.

But from my perspective, the key difference between leadership and management is that leadership is different from management in that you lead by consent, not due to position. So for example, you might be a postdoctoral researcher working in a laboratory, and you might lead elements of that laboratories process.

And it’s not because you’re a postdoctoral researcher, it is not because you’re in the more senior person, but you lead it by that process of motivating others towards that common goal. So recognise that leadership is about this idea of consent from the other people. So to lead people, they need to agree that you will lead them and that also, that is not about position. So no matter where you are in an organisational hierarchy, you can be demonstrating leadership.

Often people misconstrue the idea of leadership as being about a formal position, whereas actually leadership is about a behaviour set. Management is about when you use a formal position to achieve a specific goal.

Another way of thinking about differentiating between management and leadership is this amazing quote from Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, who said that “Management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things”. So for example, in an organisation, you might manage a process, for example, an expenses process or PDR, performance development review process, and you may manage that process and do the process correctly.

But if the process doesn’t work inherently itself, then management isn’t going to fix that. Leadership is when you go you know what that process isn’t working, we need to do something different. At an organisational level management is about making sure the activity to the organisation run smoothly. Leadership is taking the organisation in the direction to do the things that are really important to the organisation. Another quote that is useful is from Grace Murray Hopper, who was a Admiral in the US Navy who was heavily involved in computer science. And what she said was that “you manage things you lead people”.

So a thing might be a process or might be a resource, but the people are the things that you lead, you need to lead people and recognise that leadership is about the people that you lead, not about the rest of the organisation processes and systems.

So before we move forward in this video, if you haven’t already done so, we’d ask you to go into the reflection around about what are the attributes of effective leaders which you’ll find in the resource. Please do that before continuing on in this video where we’ll be discussing what came out of the workshop in terms of those attributes of effective leaders. And also then thinking about that in the context of a leadership model.

Within the workshop, we asked people for what is an effective leader, and doing exactly the same exercise that is in the reflective activity that you’ve just completed.

And the areas that came up in the workshop were things like people who supportively challenge you. So not just somebody who says yes, who just contributes to your work, but somebody who supportively challenges you to be better in your work, that they’re approachable, that you can access them, and that they are good listeners, and that you can actually feel like you can connect with them, that they’re enthusiastic, passionate and positive. And that doesn’t mean that they need to be outwardly extrovert, it means that they are positive and passionate about what they do in a way that is authentic and meaningful for them.

They will usually be a skilled communicator, a lot of leadership is about communicating ideas, vision, passion, engagement, and motivating people. So most leaders are effective and skilled communicators, I think it’s important to recognise the value of listening in there, that most effective leaders are excellent listeners, as well as talking, as well as communicating by talking and writing.

But listening is a key communication skill for those leaders. They often act as an advocate, they promote and create opportunities for people. I know certainly when I was a postdoctoral researcher, one of the people who I worked with was amazing, as a leader in terms of creating opportunities for me to develop, and that I saw as a real value of his leadership.

There tend to be relatively inspirational, and we come back to that word passionate. Again, inspiration can happen in many ways. So what we mean by inspirational is that they motivate people to want to do something. They know individuals, and what skills and talents and what those individual skills and talents are. So that recognition that individuals have skills talents, and that they can utilise and access and enable those people to use those as effectively as possible is really helpful.

Many leaders are patient, that they’re willing to take time to explore and get to the right solution, that they’re open so that they communicate not just about the facts of the situation that they might communicate about how they feel, they share information to enable people to understand more broadly, what’s going on, that they create trust, you trust them, and they trust you, and that they have that ability to build that trust.

And within that the sense of building trust, something that I think a lot of leaders do really effectively is to create a safety net, to allow you to explore, if you think about this in research leadership, a really good way to think about this and research leadership is a great PI will create space for the postdocs and the PhD students in the research group to go away explore issues, and to know that they have that permission and space to explore those new challenging areas.

Knowing that there’s a safety net there if things don’t work out for them. Within the workshop, with identifying these leadership attributes, we started to create our own leadership model. It is worth pointing out that if you go into a bookshop, or you go into Amazon, or look on Wikipedia, there are very many leadership models, authentic leadership, quiet leadership, value based leadership, and so on. What we will do is we’ve put some resources in the lntroduction to leadership resource, which you can explore some of these different leadership models. What we’re going to do in this video, though, is look at one particular leadership model.

And that leadership model is the Kouzes and Posner leadership practices. And the reason we’ve picked this model is that it’s well researched, it is based upon evidence. And also, researchers have looked at that about how applicable it is to higher education. And a number of authors have felt that this one is a good example of leadership practices, which translates well to higher education context.

The model is called the five leadership practices because there are five behaviours and practices that the authors believe every leader should demonstrate. The first one of these practices is about modelling. Modelling what we expect of others, we need to model the values that we would like the organisation or the people we’re leaving to demonstrate. And we have to set the example by which we want people to behave.

You will all have heard of the phrase lead by example and this is exactly what this is about. If you expect somebody to do it, then you need to model that behaviour. So leadership is about modelling the behaviours that you expect people to see. You can see this in organisations where perhaps the organisation has espouses one value, for example, it’s about equality and diversity, or creating a safe working culture where however, the leadership might be undermined by people within the senior leadership of those organisations, not necessarily modelling those behaviours effectively.

The second practice is the practice of inspiring others. And in order to inspire others, you first of all need to envisage the future. What do you want the organisation or the team or the group you’re leading to be thinking and being in the future. And so there is an essence in leadership, but this forward looking visioning process, you then need to inspire others to be involved in that future, and enlist them into your future into that future vision. So it’s really about how do I inspire people, both by the visionI presennt, and also how I get them involved in that vision.

A useful practice in here is to recognise that the vision is not just the leaders vision, but it can be a co created community vision of where the organisation or group is going, rather than it being about an individual’s vision of the organisation. The next practice is around about challenge. So leadership is not about the status quo remaining as it is, it is not around about just managing processes to make the organisation or team work as it is, it is about challenging the behaviours and practices in the organisation to enhance those organisational practices.

A really simple example of this would be Imagine if you’re in a research group, and there’s some process that doesn’t work very well. The challenge process would be to go, that system process is not very good, I need to improve that that would be you be demonstrating that challenge. Implicit in challenging existing behaviours and the status quo is an element of opportunities seeking, experimenting and taking risks. So it’s really important to recognise that risk taking, being experimental and how you approach things is an integral part of leadership.

The next practice is around about how you enable others. And enabling others is often around about fostering collaboration. How do you support individuals work with each other in order for the team to be more effective? So how do we foster that collaboration? What behaviours and practices do we have, which enables that to happen?

The second thing in the enabling is to enable others to be better at what they do, often through coaching, training, supporting development, but how do we strengthen others in order for them to be able to more effectively contribute to the vision that we’re trying to achieve. And then the final area is around about how we encourage each other. And how, as a leader, we encourage people.

At the heart of this is the process of recognising contributions. Leadership is not about you, as a leader taking the kudos and his esteem for having delivered something. Leadership is about enabling a group of people to achieve and the group collects esteem and kudos. And so you explicitly as a practice, need to recognise individual contributions, and to celebrate values with victories for everybody in the group.

And I think that’s a really interesting concept on this is in research is that when I was an academic, I wasn’t very exited,about getting a poster presentation accepted into a conference. But for a new PhD student, they might have been amazingly excited about that poster presentation being accepted into a conference.

So it’s about recognising values and victories for the individuals at the level at which they experience them in the organisation, not just highlighting these high level huge research grants, for example, victories, but recognising that as a leader of a team you need to be celebrating all those successes through the organisation. So that’s the leadership practices model by Kouzes and Posner. And what we’re going to do in the next phase of the resource is that you have an opportunity to reflect on the practices and behaviours that are recognised by Kouzes, and Posner.

But if we go back up through the slides, and explore the attributes of effective leadership from the workshop, what we will ask you to do is to complete the reflective document which is the next part of the resource, to explore where do you think you’re a strong leader and where are the areas where you feel you could develop your leadership more effectively?

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There are many, many models of leadership. And one of the things that is useful to think about is finding leadership models, which mean something to you and can be applied in real situations to help you think through your leadership. One of the most useful models I have found is that by Daniel Goleman, and you’ll find the link to the article about the leadership styles that he wrote in the Harvard Business Review in the resources. But what this video is going to do is just talk through some of those different leadership styles.

The first of the leadership styles that Goleman talks about is the visionary leadership style. This leadership style can be thought of as setting the overall goals, the outcomes that you’re looking to achieve, and then letting the people in the team, the people responsible for the delivery, work out how to achieve that end goal.

If you thought about that, within a research context, a really good example of that is where a PA may set the overall target for the research and the overall high level questions that they would expect the postdoctoral researcher to explore, but not necessarily provide the detail of how to get there and leave the how to get there to the researcher themselves. It’s a great style of leadership, especially when you have competent team members available to take the research forward.

The next style of leadership, and again, one, which I think is a really useful leadership style in many, many situations, especially in research, however, is the coaching style. And in the coaching style, the leaders role is to enable the person or people that they’re leading, become more effective through effectively coaching them. Now, that could mean coaching within the very formal structure of asking questions and supporting them work through to find solutions. But it could also mean by supporting them learning new skills, teaching them, training them supporting that learning process. So the coaching style of leadership is all about enabling you, the people you lead, or the team that you’re leading, become more effective in their ability to move forward.

The next style of leadership is the affiliative style of leadership. And what this is about is about leading in a way, which creates harmony. And there will be times in any leaders journey, where they need to think about how they create harmony within a team and focus on the people rather than on the outcomes or a piece of the leadership task.

A really good example of that has been that often the leaders who have been respected and valued through the pandemic have been those who have really care and attention to supporting the team, and creating ways to find individual support and team support in the way that they’ve led, perhaps focusing more on the relationships that people have had, and how they have supported rather than neccessarily the outcomes that they achieved. Obviously, this style, perhaps has negative impacts, where if you’re overly affiliative, too much of the time, then you can end up in a situation where there’s not enough focus on goals and outcomes.

The next style of leadership is what’s called a democratic style of leadership. And in this democratic style of leadership, what you’re looking to do is put decisions to those who will be affected by those decisions. Now, in many ways, this is a really useful leadership style, especially where the team is very qualified, and maybe knows more about the situation than you do as the leader. So asking others to suggest ideas and for the group to make a decision collectively on the outcome is a really useful methodology.

However, there is an issue here that sometimes when you use democratic decision making, it leads to poor quality decisions, because perhaps the group is not aligned to the overall goal of what the organisation is trying to achieve. So that democratic decision making takes in a different direction to the organisation. You often see this in universities, where if a decision is put to a staff meeting, perhaps of a department or school, then they can make a decision, which is maybe counter to the overall direction of travel of the institution itself.

The next style of leadership that Goleman talks about is that of pacesetting. And in the pacesetting leadership it is really about how the leader sets an example and often it is a very hard working motivated, high paced, leadership style. And that can be really, really helpful when deadlines are tight where there’s energy and commitment required to move a project forward.

However, there is a risk with pacesetting that it can focus too much on achieving goals in the short term and can lead to burnout and challenge for the people that are led. The final leadership style is one that Goleman referred to as directive and in the directive style is where you’re being very direct, as it suggests in telling people, not just what the overall goal is, as you were doing the visionary style, but also how to get there.

And it’s a style that I don’t believe is appropriate most of the time when you’re working with people like you will be working within universities. But there is time when being directive is helpful. For example, in a situation where there is no opportunity to deviate from a specific way ahead. So for example, roundabout health and safety, being directive in that situation is perfectly reasonable. Being directive also works well in crisis, and often works a lot better than, say, democratic or coaching methods in a crisis situation.

The key thing here is that if you’re going to be an effective leader, you need to develop skills and abilities in each of these styles, and be able to choose the appropriate style for the appropriate situation.

So what you’ll find in the materials is a reflective document to help you think about situations which you face in your day to day activities as a postdoctoral researcher, in order for you to go: actually, this is where visionary would be useful. This is where a coaching approach would be useful. And just to reflect on whether or not you’re using the approaches in the way that is best suited for the leadership situations that you encounter in your research activities.

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Welcome back to the introduction to leadership resource. In this video, we’re going to be talking about how you can develop your leadership skills within your postdoctoral work.

I think it’s important given what we talked about earlier in the resource, around about recognising that position doesn’t necessarily enable or facilitate leadership to think about where within your postdoctoral research work and beyond your university work, where you can start to develop leadership skills. And just as a quick example, I’ve pulled out some examples of situations where I’m very aware that postdoctoral researchers have taken on leadership roles.

So for example, if you’re in a research group, and you’re working on a collaboration, that collaboration gives you the opportunity to take leadership, it might be leadership about a sub project, or maybe leadership about the broader project. But that collaborative project gives you the opportunity to take a leadership role. Perhaps as your career develops, you’ll start developing your own collaborations. And again, that gives you an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and develop your skills.

Other areas where you can be developing leadership, within your day to day research work, for example, would be supporting other researchers. Are you helping PhD students or master students with their research, leading their research directions and supporting them in that way. Perhaps you are working in a laboratory where there’s an opportunity to change a process or a system and you can take leadership for that. Perhaps you’re working on a research project where you’re developing a website, and that gives you an opportunity for taking leadership of that task as well. So look at the citizenship tasks as an opportunity to take leadership.

Similarly, things like organising seminar series, or organising writing groups give you an opportunity to develop and also evidence your leadership. Beyond your core work, there are a number of areas where you can start to think about how you can demonstrate leadership. Whenever you’re involved in any activity, which is engaging externally, whether or not that science communication research outreach, or that is working with industry or policy partners. All of those situations give you an opportunity to demonstrate leadership skills, and to build your portfolio of leadership.

Another area where you can really demonstrate leadership is through taking on roles within committees and being really active in that process. A good example from my early career was that I was involved in the Institute of Materials, which is my professional body, younger members committee, and that involves getting involved in a number of projects, including organising conferences and events, and also taking a leadership role in shaping their regulations for chartered engineering status.

So it was something that was really rich and meaningful on my CV, which was a clear leadership responsibility that I had taken on during my PhD and postdoctoral work. So be involved, get active. I would recommend, however, that you don’t try and take on too many roles, you’re better to have one or two roles, which you actively do, rather than having many roles, which you can’t really demonstrate where you’ve taken that leadership role. The other area to think about is around about activities you do outside of your postdoctoral research.

For example, I’ve been involved in a cycling club in the past, where that involved degree of leadership, taking people on bike rides, being involved in committees and shaping that cycling club. So anything that you do outside of work has the opportunity as well to demonstrate leadership, if you choose to take on board that responsibility. The key thing here is to recognise that you can find opportunities for leadership everywhere you look. And it’s about taking some of those opportunities.

And coming back to that concept we’ve been talking about in the module, thinking about how you reflect and learn from those experiences to develop your leadership. And also think about how you evidence at leadership, which we’ll be talking about in the next resource where we will be examining how you use the STAR model to evidence your leadership.

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WHi, everyone, and welcome to Collaboration in Action: Building Partnerships Within and Beyond Academia.  I’m Alys Kay, and I’ll be your guide for the next few hours. 

Let’s start with a question. If your goal is to build a research career that’s impactful, sustainable, and alive with possibility, then collaborative practice might be your most underused tool in your toolkit. But not collaboration as a buzzword. I mean collaboration as a strategic capability and as a human practice, something that you can get better at, invest in, and build into your career story.  But there is a trade-off. It takes time. The results are often indirect or delayed, um, and you don’t always see the benefits straight away.  But within academia, one increasingly orientated towards interdisciplinary challenges, civic engagement, and impact narratives. collaboration has become a career multiplier. It’s how you can increase your visibility, how you can open unexpected doors, and how you can position yourself for opportunities that have not been advertised.

So today is all about experimenting.  It’s not about pitching, it’s not about proving, it’s just about exploring what becomes possible when you say yes to connection. In today’s session, we’ll be exploring how you can map your existing network and identify gaps.  We’ll be exploring tools that will help you to find potential collaborators. And you will practice framing your work in ways that invite connection, not just credentials.

What does collaboration mean to you in one word?  The words you’re adding here say a lot about your own personal experience of collaboration. For some of us, collaboration has been energizing, creative, a chance to learn from others.  But sometimes collaboration can also be frustrating, it can be all meetings, and it can be difficult to kind of make things move along. Um, so today, it’s not just gonna be about sort of abstract values, it’s gonna be about how to actually build collaboration across departments, sectors, and disciplines in ways that are sustainable, strategic, and true to your work. 

Let’s start with the big picture. The research world is changing, and what funders are looking for now isn’t just about curiosity and brilliant ideas, it’s also about relevance, collaboration, and real-world impact.  As post-docs, um, you can sometimes be in a sweet spot. You know, you have deep expertise, but you’re also flexible, potentially mobile, and open to shaping what comes next in your career. Um, but it’s really important to be aware of the big-picture shifts that are happening around you. Um, and it’s not about chasing trends or trying to make your research chase trends, but it’s about staying visible, viable, and impactful in a system that is evolving at a really rapid rate. 

So what is causing this shift? Well, at a regional level, there’s much more focus on place-based funding, and that means aligning research with the needs of local communities and economies. Nationally, the UK government is investing in big missions and industrial strategy to drive growth. Um, so this is kind of sectors like clean energy, creative industries, and advanced manufacturing. Internationally, of course, things are even more volatile. So, um, the example of Horizon Europe, which, that money was affected by Brexit, is now, um, back in… open again, um, and back in the UK system, which is great.  But of course, trade barriers and political uncertainty, um, are affecting lots of things. I’m sure you’re all aware of the Trump effect and the effect that that’s had on, um, USA research funding.

Um, so… but still, international collaboration is, um, still a critical factor to think about. The UK government is putting serious investment behind specific sectors, and they are calling these growth engines of the economy. These include clean energy, digital and tech, life sciences, and creative industries.  They’re also backing big social missions like making the NHS more efficient, reducing crime, and improving social mobility. So if your research can connect to one of these themes, um, you’re not just more fundable, but you’re more visible. Um, this doesn’t mean twisting work to make it fit. It means getting curious about how your ideas intersect with what’s needed in the world.

UKRI is now running something called the Research and Development Mission Programme.  It’s a new model that puts challenge-led research front and centre. They’re appointing challenge directors who shape calls around urgent, complex problems, and it’s less about open themes and more about targeted portfolios. 

Before we shift into collaborative activities, I want to share a useful bit of knowledge with you, and that is to introduce the university’s partnership team.  And they are people who can make your collaboration ideas real. Um, so you might be sat there with a great idea, but no, uh, idea how to kind of get it started or where to take it. Or you might think… You could wish that someone could tell you if that idea’s fundable or who else might be interested, and that’s exactly where the partnership team comes in. So really, the partnership team are strategic matchmakers for external partnered collaboration. And here’s what they actually do.  They can help you to find the right people, whether that’s a civic partner, an SME, or a policy lead. They can guide your bids, so aligning your work with live and emerging funding priorities. Um, they can translate, so they can help you express your research in ways external partners understand. They can review and advise on timing, readiness, strategy, and cases for support. So these are the people who can help turn your interests into action, and they don’t just support the big, shiny projects. They support everyone. The earlier you reach out, the more you can do.

At the Sandpit event that I mentioned earlier, one of the key messages that Vicky, who is the head of the partnership team at Liverpool, said was, “Make sure that your My Liverpool profile is up to date.” So this is the internal platform that helps the partnership team to find you and match you with opportunities. So make sure that you add keywords, a clear summary of your work, and if possible, a line about the kind of collaboration that you’re open to. 

So I want to share a true story with you, um, and it’s one that I often think about when, um, I think about networking or making a leap in our careers.  Um, it’s actually someone who is an alumni of Prosper.  This is not her real name, but let’s call her Rina.  Rina had been in a long- been a long-term post-doc. She was brilliant, she was collaborative, she was thoughtful, she was highly skilled, but she was starting to feel really stuck and she wasn’t sure what else she could do. And more importantly, she wasn’t sure what else she was allowed to do.  Um, she started the Prosper program, and slowly she began to look at her skills differently, not just as academic, but as more transferrable, more portable.  And she realized she had the ability to bridge research and policy to translate ideas in ways that could shape real-world outcomes.  And so she’s thinking about this transferrable skill set and thinking about her kind of signature strengths in it.  On one day, she saw a job, a leadership role at a policy research institute. And her first reaction? “That’s not for me. I’m not a policy specialist.” But, um, the twist here is that she actually knew the director of that institute.  It was someone she’d worked with before, um, and respected deeply, and she already knew them.  And still her first instinct wasn’t to reach out.  Um, and why was that? It’s because she didn’t see herself as the kind of person who could take up that kind of space, even though the connection was already there.

But this time, um, because she’d been reflecting deeply about this stuff, something shifted and she said, “Because I’ve done Prosper, I’d been thinking intentionally about what else I could do, who else I could be, and I just thought, ‘What if I let myself try this?’”  So she reached out, she had the conversation, and the director said, “I didn’t know you were interested in these areas.” She applied, she got the job, and now she’s co-leading that institute and she’s building her own team.  And the point of that story is to illustrate how that opportunity didn’t come from cold outreach. It came from reframing an existing connection as available, and it came from giving herself permission, because often a real block isn’t actually network. Um, it can be internal rules that we’ve picked up somewhere along the way that say, you know, “People like me don’t do things like that.” So maybe the question isn’t about, “Who do I know?” But it’s about, “Where am I waiting for permission to see myself and my connections differently?”  Most of the time when people say that they can’t collaborate, they are not facing an external barrier.  They’re facing an internal sorry, stories like, “I’m not senior enough. I don’t know enough people.” They might say no. But what I’ve seen over and over again in coaching is that those no-but stories sound like fact, but actually they just are frames, and frames can be challenged. Um, so let’s, so what I want you to do is, um, let’s get all our no-buts out. I want you to get, list all your no-buts, all the reasons why you cannot collaborate. 

And as I said, so the second part of this exercise is all about the frame. Frames can always be challenged. So this time, I want you to, um, give yourself permission and reframe. I want all of your yes-buts.  “I can, I can collaborate because…” 

One of my own top tips from my own career experience is about learning how to speak about your goals.  Um, so speaking about your goals out loud is a game changer, um, and there’s quite a lot of research in career development that backs this up. They actually have cognitive benefits, so naming what you want to do activates your brain’s kind of goal planning system, and it turns this kind of fuzziness into focus, um, it has a social benefit as well. So your network, they can’t help you if it doesn’t know what you’re exploring.  The more you share, the more others mirror it back in the form of opportunities. And it doesn’t have to be, like a really clear goal. You can share really early.  You can just say, “I am exploring this, I am becoming interested in that.” Um, it has an accountability benefit.  So saying something aloud increases your commitment.  You’ve now kind of got like a mini audience, and that can be powerful as a motivator. Um, it also has the benefit of rehearsal. So each time you talk about your next step with someone else, you refine it and you learn what resonates.  You build confidence. So, you know, if you’re wondering like, “Is it too soon to talk about, um, a potential collaboration?” It’s not. It’s never too soon.  You can start with something like, “I’m exploring roles that combine data and social impact. I’m really interested in  X, especially in how it links to my work in Y.” Um,  expressing this kind of interest is really important for building  resonance, um, and signaling to others who have  similar interests, um, that this is the  area that you are interested in and it, and this is what you  want. 

Um, a simple bit of pre-work before you go into a networking space or before you go into some kind of collaborative conversation activities like this, is to make two simple lists.  Spend a bit of time making the first list, which is about what I bring, and this is really about trying to recognize the unique value that you have. So this could be around your skillsets, around the tools or methods that you use. It could be around, um, the communities that you work with or are connected to through your research. Um, and it can be helpful to clarify this, um, as a, as a pre-emptive step.

But then the second list is to make a list of what you need. So this is what are you seeking from  collaboration, and sometimes I know that it’s hard to be  specific ’cause obviously we don’t know what we don’t know,  but you can also think about this as a way of thinking about what  gaps are there in my knowledge that I would like to learn about?  What am I interested in? So it doesn’t have to be very specific, it can just be, um, a starting point. Um, and this pre-step is really useful because it can speed up the process of discovering what you have in common with other people and whether there is collaborative potential available. 

LinkedIn isn’t just a social network; it’s actually a really useful search engine for people and fields. And my top tip here is to use Boolean search. So, um, to add in an “and” or an “or” or a “not” within quotation marks. This helps you to make really specific search results that help you to explore career paths, organizations, and specific roles or skills, and it lets you identify specific niches, find people who meet those niches, um, and explore how roles are framed across institutions. Um, let’s be honest, uh, reaching out on LinkedIn has a real kind of factor, and maybe there’s a sense of, you know, what if I’m bothering them? What if it feels transactional?  What if I don’t know what to say? Um, so a way, so a way to reframe that is to think of it as curiosity and not self-promotion. So when you reach out, be specific. “I saw your work on X and I was really interested in Y.”  So I’m gonna share with you a real LinkedIn message that I constructed for a study that I was doing last summer where I was recruiting participants, like expert stakeholders, to be interviewed.  Um, and so I got about, I was reaching out to people on LinkedIn and messaging them, and I would say I got about a 40% success rate, which is pretty amazing rate given that I was asking for a   minute of their time for an interview. 

And the first thing about this is really to start with the why. So be specific. Um, why are you contacting them and why are you contacting them at this time?  So for a researcher, you know, you might say, “I saw your work on X and I was really interested in Y.” You might reference one of their publications or one of their conference presentations, um, and say specifically what you found interesting about it. The next tip is really to name their expertise, because people like being asked about things that they feel knowledgeable about.  Um, and hopefully as well you can approach it with genuine curiosity. 

The next tip is about safety. Make it safe and simple, and easy to learn more or easy to have a next step.  Um, so in this example you can see that I’ve put a link to a webpage which gives background on the project, that instantly kind of gives you that credibility that actually this is connected to something bigger and I’m not a spammer.  So you can, if you can put anything in like that, like you, your My Staff Research profile or anything that just establishes a quick credibility check, that can be really helpful, I think for, if you’re reaching out to someone as a potential collaborator, you want to keep it  low pressure and just say, “If you have minutes for a chat or can recommend someone else, I’d really appreciate it.”

So just to summarise um, these principles that can be used in any outreach situation. Um, lead with shared purpose, so think about the why. Why are you talking to them?  What is it that they have done that you can comment on that you’re interested in? Name their expertise. Um, make it safe and specific. Um, offer an easy next step, so make sure you through what the easy next step is before you approach them. And also, just be human. So, people get really in their heads about networking, particularly if they are talking to someone with a different background from themselves. But actually, um, the chattier, the more normal, the more, um, easy the connection will be. 

The next tool I’m going to show you is the UKRI Gateway to Research, which is a publicly accessible online portal that provides detailed information about research projects, funding, and outcomes funded by UKRI. So it’s all the other research councils as well.  This is a really useful way to find out about how collaboration happens in your field, um, because it allows you  to find out who is connected to who across industry, government, and beyond.  You can, um, search for any kind of keyword that you want. You can search for specific universities or companies. Um, you can search for researchers.  You can search for funding councils.  Um, this gives you a real-time map of the collaborative ecosystem, so who is leading? Who is co-investigating? When… Which institutions are repeat partners?  Just to show you, I was trying this out.  Uh, when I was preparing the workshop content, I was trying this out to see how it would work, and I just thought of something. I thought, “What is a topic that I’m interested in?” So, I put in social justice and I searched that, and then I really started to look. So what you get is a list of projects, a big, big list of projects.

But on the right-hand side there’s very interesting and helpful, useful filters, which you can really drill down into to find very specific things. So you’ve got the region that you’re in. Um, you’ve got all of these project categories, which I think is the most interesting and valuable part for kind of finding out specific things. Um, and as we were thinking. As I was looking at this and thinking about how it might be useful for researchers, I was thinking about types of projects that I know about, um, and I thought, “Okay, knowledge transfer partnership.”  I know that that’s a successful collaborative model that you…  That works across the industry and academia usually with multiple partners, so I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting.  I’ll explore that one just to see.” So go back up to the top and say Apply Filter, and then we get this list of projects. And what was immediately interesting to me and kind of jumped out was this project here. So Manchester Metropolitan University and Positive Steps Oldham have, um, had a KTP together, and what’s interesting, particularly interesting to me is that I have collaborated with the organisation Positive Steps before. Um, so I had a co-collaborative project as a socially engaged artist with them about five years ago. Um, so in terms of reaching out to people in my area and my network, that makes it so much easier for me if I want to reach out to that organisation again.

Something else really valuable about this in terms of building your collaborative knowledge and collaborative intelligence is that organisations that have had KTPs with universities are obviously collaboration ready.  So they’re obviously used to working with academics.  They’re used to working with other practitioners from other sectors. Um, so they’re gonna be that much more approachable as well. To understand in practice who are the people in the ecosystem who are actually collaborating at the moment because they’re much more likely to be open to subsequent collaborations or collaborations with new partners.  So how would I suggest that you use this?  Well, you can use it to identify active researchers in your own field, um, around your own particular, um, publications or topics. You can use it to find, um, people who are within your field but interdisciplinary as well, and you can map collaborations between universities, industry, and those sectors.  You can discover funded projects and therefore emerging research themes. You can find potential partners for grants or cross-sector work. You can track funding trends, spot repeat collaborations, and explore impact pathways as well because you can see how other people have framed their research outcomes.  So this is a really great tool that turns funding data into networking insights.  It’s like a LinkedIn specifically for the research ecosystem. 

So just to summarise, ChatGTP is useful for brainstorming roles that you don’t know about or sectors or outreach drafts. Um, so just to summarize, ChatGTP can be really useful for drafting outreach. Though, of course, you have to read it and edit it yourself to make sure that it’s not fabricated anything, and to make sure that it has a human kind of tweak.  Um, as a caveat, you should never put any kind of research into any of the AI tools, and it can help you to brainstorm things you don’t know about yet, so things like adjacent roles, sectors, or other industries that you don’t know about. 

Um, LinkedIn can be really useful to map fields and find collaborators by theme or sector. 

Um, and then there’s Research Rabbit, which is not something that we’ve looked at, but this is a newer tool, um, that actually is about exploring research clusters and co-authorship, and it helps you to visualize connections across disciplines and track evolving themes. 

So, the last thing we’re gonna do in this workshop is for you to think about your own network at the moment, um, your own research ecosystem, your collaborative ecosystem. So, not just the people that you work with already, but those who enable, amplify, or align with your research direction. So this isn’t a contact list, it’s a map of relational assets and potential.  So I call this the five R stakeholder circles, um, and I invite you to use them to populate your own research ecosystem.

So, in circle one, we have research collaborators.  So, who are your current or recent academic collaborators, inside or outside your institution? Who shares your research goals, methods, or fields of inquiry? 

The second one is research enablers. So, who supports you, encourages you, helps you to see your value? Are there coaches, mentors, peers, line managers, even informal champions who support you and help you to stay in motion? 

In the third circle, we have resource connectors. So, these are people who help you access opportunities, funding, or infrastructure. This could be partnership officers, impact officers, research managers, knowledge exchange, business engagement staff. 

And number four is reputational amplifiers. So, these are people who share, cite, or spotlight your work, who might be included in panels, networks, working groups, newsletters, media. 

And then finally, we have resonant outsiders. So, who shares your values, your challenge areas, or mission, even if they aren’t in academia?  So this could be community partners, NHS workers, bits of the government, creatives, policy leads, lived experience advocates.

So, when you’ve made your research ecosystem, you can look at your map and think about where is your map strongest and where is the biggest gap? Who holds influence but doesn’t have visibility in your work?  Who could you re-engage or reach out to?  Where is there potential trust waiting to be activated, kind of stored up in your network? 

Let’s close by honouring the fact that you have already done something today that matters. You’ve slowed down, you’ve reflected, you’ve named what’s important to you, and you’ve made time for your own development. Um, now let’s take it one step further.  So please take a minute to write down for yourself one action, one person, or one intention you will carry forward from today.

Hello, everyone. So I wanted to give you this session that I delivered a week ago, I think it was. And so I’ve condensed it and allowed you some exercises, activities to do on your own time. Um, and hopefully this will give you a flavour of that session, but again, condensed down. Now, these are a lot of the notes that I’ve taken, um, that were on the slides, and there will be references at the end of this document. But I just wanted to give you a flavour of the kinds of things that I wanted you to engage with as a topic and, um, and do some introspection on yourself to understand how will I take this information forward and understand it in my own life and in my own career. So hopefully I can give you some flavour for the kinds of things that you could be thinking about.

Who is this for? Well, this is for postdocs mainly who are interested in finding their own way towards, um, negotiating and influencing within their network. Why is negotiation and influence important? Because that’s how your career will progress. That’s how you get opportunities. Um, part of something I’ve just been talking about today with somebody, part of what academia does is, um, uh, a lot of it is who you know, and it’s very hierarchical. And I will say that a lot of the opportunities that come up is about, uh, your pedigree, perhaps, right? Um, who you’re working with. A lot of my postdoc opportunities came through my PhD supervisor, Dr. Paul Frick, who you know, is, is world renowned, and, um, has had a hand in the diagnostic statistical manual of the American Psychiatric Association. And yes, it’s, he’s a powerhouse, good guy, powerhouse. Um, and one thing that I noticed by working with him is how many doors he could open, right?

So negotiation, and negotiation and influence are how you can take control of your own career trajectory. Um, obviously networking is important and who you know, is still important, but you want to be able to feel a sense of control in your own way, in your, and you want to find a way to do that. This is not a quick fix, this is not a tips and tricks you can talk to my clients. Um, they will tell you Luna does not give tips and tricks. She goes deep, okay? So, um, we had two days to do this in the actual session, but hopefully I can give you a flavour. And a lot of it you have to do within, you know, journaling and things like this and talking to peers, um, and finding a way to, you know, kind of find your own voice within this. So I think that’s really important.

So we’ll get straight in. So, um, lemme just get up the other document. So I wanna just talk about representation academia. This is probably all stuff you maybe know, so I’m not gonna go too, too detailed into it. There are, um, you know, websites and references that you can look all all this up yourself. Um, but I will say representation, it’s not great in academia for people of colour. It’s not great for women, it’s not great for black women in intersectionalities. It’s not great for trans women. I work a lot in South America doing like bystander intervention for gender-based violence. And we work a lot with, um, uh, trans non-profit organizations in Columbia. And it’s not great. You know, we’ve been in institutions of higher education there, and LGB LGBTQ+, um, folks are scarce, um, sparse. Um, so this is just some data that I gathered, like around women. Obviously these, um, statistics are even worse for, like I said, intersectionalities. So that’s just to give you a little bit about the background, some things that you can read yourself.

But what I wanna highlight or bring your attention to is that a lot of university diversity and inclusion initiatives incorrectly focus on changing the marginalized group and giving them advice and doing these workshops. Um, not to call out university of Liverpool. This is a, a common problem, actually, it’s a common problem in a lot of corporations as well, right? Rather than addressing the structural issues, which is the point of, you know, um, the point at which a lot of these things originate, right? So we should be going to the source.

And we know even so, there’s a, an article at the end, um, in the references that representation can’t solve all problems nor telling, you know, marginalized groups to like, just negotiate. Because the research shows women negotiate the research, excuse me, the research shows that, you know, black people negotiate. It’s the pushback that they get. Um, in response to that. And, you know, um, it was at the Sandberg, um, from Facebook, you know, she has this book called Lean In. I didn’t read it. But again, people are are criticizing that and saying, lean in isn’t going to solve any problems. Probably true. I will give you evidence-based research on things that work, and I will allow you to tailor them in a way that feels safe to you and feels authentic.

So, yes, all of this is true. This, it’s definitely a climate, a dysfunctional leadership, a systemic problem, but we cannot be mired into thinking that we have no power because there’s you or me, I feel like this gets pronoun weird. Think of me as you and we, right? So your wider social circle, um, and then world, um, probably could have these as concentric circles, blah, blah, whatever. I just wanted to put in, um, have you think about the three different social contexts that you exist in.

So yes, the world is unfair. The world has created systems of capitalism and colonialism that has led to our current situation. However, depending on who you’re surrounded by, as I said, when I was with, you know, working with Professor Paul Frick, I had, you know, somebody who would go to bat for me, um, in more ways than one, because even, even when I did my Viva, it didn’t go great. Um, and not because of anything I did wrong, but I don’t know whether it was discrimination or what, um, I’m Latin American, growing up in the US is difficult. Um, and so the we around me meant that I was able to have some opportunities.

Um, previous to that, I had another PhD supervisor who I had to, I had to quit that, that program early. Um, yeah, I’m not, I, I don’t know what to say about that one. It was a very, very poorly managed, um, PhD program. And, uh, and that that person did not shield me at all. It was very exploitative.

So depending on where you situate in the world in the, in your social circle, in your smaller circle social circle, you have that power, that influence, right? You have, you who is able to, um, create, uh, impressions of yourself, reputation, your own reputation, right? And all of those things are gonna be important. So some of these, yes, you don’t have control over some of these. You do have control over. You have control over your social circle, who you network with right now. We’ll talk about that in a bit. Okay?

So, um, what I wanted to start with is, you know, what are the parts of the me and the we and the world that you feel are able to leveraged for yourself, um, right now? Like, which parts are most challenging? How confident do you feel in this? Um, it’s something to think about on whether there’s something you need to change, right? Like, which of these am I really, um, which of these are, are needing to be prioritized for where I’m going next? Um, I told you a little bit about my background. Um, recently I have, uh, surrounded myself by let’s fund more women. And this was because of Innovate uk, not funding the women that they had promised that they would be funding.

So in terms of, they had an innovation, Women in innovation program, they said they were gonna fund projects and they funded. We got together and did a bunch of research on what were the biggest barriers for, you know, um, black women, for other women of colour, for disabled women, for women with neurodiverse, you know, um, you know, issues for women from Scotland, like, you know, different places that aren’t London focused. And we presented that research; they turned it around and funded all. And now our report is being used by parliament.

So what am I saying? Based on who I’m surrounded by now, I feel I’m able to influence and negotiate a lot more than I could in academia. Some of the people I gave, uh, the, the, you know, the, the mantle to, um, were women of colour who really wanted to kind of shake up the system in academia, especially in relation to maternity, um, and parental leave and how fair it was or unfair, as you can imagine. And so I, you know, ensured that one of the kinds of mini conferences that we had within the university, that she was able to speak to that, and it created a firestorm with within the emails of all the senior leadership of which I was a part of. Um, and I, they didn’t know that I planned to do that.

But again, who do you have in your social circle? So that’s just to kind of get you thinking about that. So what’s your confidence in navigating the system? What parts of yourself or your social world are, you know, making it more or less difficult? Now, one thing that really radical, I don’t know if it’s one thing, but one, one of the things that radicalized me while I was in academia in , um, this was right when I had moved to Liverpool and I was ready to apply for promotion, but I had just been up through a promotion system at Durham University. When I went from lecture to senior lecturer, I had a lot of pushback from my female boss, um, ongoing for promotion, oh, you’re not ready. Oh, don’t be upset if you don’t get it, Luna, oh, da da da dah, right? I start, and, you know, oh, I’m not sure because you don’t have all the grants. You know, you haven’t brought in like a hundred thousand pounds in grants and things like that. So I’m not sure Luna, if you’re gonna be, you know, senior lecturer material. And I was like, I’ve got  publications. You know, so there were, I was making, um, probably not the best way to kind of negotiate, okay?

But one thing that I read after that was the idea of excellence. The idea that my grant income, um, was not excellent in relation to everybody else. And I started to hear this word excellence with regard to not only, right, the research excellence framework, you know, that came in. ’cause it used to be called the research something exercise. It was the RAE before that, it was right when I got to England. And then it turned into the ref, and we started to hear a lot more about excellence. And then excellence started to be used as not only a reward and like a carrot, but a stick. So excellence has come into redundancy plans, restructuring within departments, okay?

So this article in, um, it’s on, it’s in nature, um, but it’s in one of the, uh, you know, kind of like magazines, um, off of nature. I can’t, it’s in the references. You’ll find it, it’s by more AL . And it’s called Excellence R us. Like Toys R Us Excellence is primarily a rhetorical signalling device used to claim value across heterogeneous institutions or heterogeneous researchers or heterogeneous disciplines, rather than a signal or a measure of intrinsic worth, right? It is a signalling device. It is a linguistic signifier without any agreed upon referent, whose value lies in an ability to capture cross-disciplinary value judgements and demonstrate the political desirability of public investment in research and research institution. When we follow the money, we then understand where, you know, university restructuring happens, who’s, um, privileged and who is not. So these are rhetorical questions for you. Do researchers recognize excellence when they see it? Or innovation as in the Women in Innovation fund? We’re seeing biases across this. What’s excellence? What is innovation? What should we fund, right? And we see certain disciplines privilege, but we also have other things in terms of privilege.

So I want you to understand your own privilege. Um, and there are, you know, privileges that, you know, obviously help you. There are privileges that other people have that you don’t have. There are privileges that are hidden or known about, and there are those that are quite visible to other people, right? So get your hat, you know, we all have different, we all wear many hats. And here’s the privilege will, and I want you to, um, I’m not gonna read these all out, but I want you to engage with this and understand where are your academic, um, spaces of privilege to understand, not to, you know, kind of, um, not to, uh, hinder you and to make you feel like, well, I can’t do things because I don’t have the privilege, but understand the areas of like, more strength that you can, again, leverage, understand this is a good place, but also I would say leverage in a service way as well, you know, servicing other people by allowing them access to that privilege, right? At one point I had a permanent job. I was senior lecturer, associate, um, professor, deputy director of research. There were things that I could get done for people, and I had just bought a house. So let’s say that, you know, and my skin is, is is light coloured. So there were a lot of privileges that intersected where I could then bring other people who didn’t have those privileges into the fore. So, um, so think about service, not only how can I do this, but also how can I open doors for other people? If you’re that stuff, you know, that way inclined.

So how many privileges or non privileges do you have, recognize and have self-compassion over the areas that maybe you’re not able to make as many movements on because of that privilege. It’s about building that self-compassion, but also understanding that there are areas where you have power to create change, and which of these can facilitate or have facilitated your movement in higher education? Okay? Just making sure everything’s cool.

And so I want you to understand your biggest negotiation and influence challenges and the, again, areas where you might be able to boost them up. Where, how does influence and power happen and what do they mean, right? So one of the biggest things that I think, um, was a big revelation to me was this idea of status versus power. So status is your prestige, your respect, your, you know, esteem in the face of other people. Um, and so it’s not really something that, um, you confer upon yourself. You can’t say, I am now high status.

Um, whereas probably power, you could take it away from somebody, right? Because it’s critical resources. And we’ve seen, you know, power just taken, right? Um, but status is the prestige and respect that you earn from other people. It’s an indication of your self-worth. Um, and it could be conferred to yourself or a group. Um, and I think down here I have like where I did, or maybe I deleted it, you know, things like, um, when you look at, you know, the, the kind of status that like different regions within Liverpool have, for example, right? And also the kind of like self-esteem that you have of it. So you have pride in being from that group, right? Um, yeah, that’s just an aside.

You can have power without status. Yeah. Think about political leaders that we don’t respect. Um, I won’t mention any names ’cause it’ll date this video. Um, but you can also have status without power. Um, and actually there’s a lot of people who are heard because they’re seen as being genuine, um, you know, genuinely interested in social change, not because of their power that they hold and wield over other people, right? If you think about political activists, influencers, you know, those people have a lot of status. They don’t have a lot of power. For example, during, you know, , um, black Lives Matter, you know, that was a huge, if you, uh, you know, I, I at, you know, at least had a lot of respect and put in high esteem people who were working on the front lines of anti-racism.

Um, and one thing that we know is that power corrupt. Yeah. So people with high power, and this is in the references and low status, are found to be less likely to be making fair judgements and even concerned with justice, um, and social justice. And obviously there are things that affect our status, like our position, you know, anything that affects your position relative to other people, right? Your wealth, your class, your race, your gender, immigration status, age, whether you’re able bodied. Yeah, a couple of people said like whether you’re in STEM or not. Like that makes sense.

But I will say we can accrue credits in our influence bank, right? Through respect based on our contributions, right? A lot of people have a lot of respect for me ’cause of the contributions that I’ve made, right? One of them is with the let’s fund more women and what we’ve done with the Women in Innovation Fund. Um, and I think I, I, I asked you guys during the, um, uh, um, the, the survey prior to the, the, uh, workshop, you know, had you heard about like research on tone of voice, eye contact, using first person language, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, those things do have some effect. We know that people’s tone of voice can, you know, confer certain confidence and status, um, eye contact people who, you know, make more eye contact, um, have more, more power. Um, as like if you are made eye contact with you probably have more status, um, because you’re somebody important, everybody’s looking at you. Um, and also people who have high status will look at other high status individuals more often.

Um, another thing is that, um, and actually this is probably, um, counter to what you might think women use more first person language, like me, my i, myself, blah, blah, blah. Women use that more often. And if you read, um, I think it’s called the Power of Pronouns, um, it’s, uh, by Jamie Pet Pennebaker, um, at University of Austin, Texas. Um, yeah, I think it’s a secret life of pronouns, that’s what it’s called, talks about the, um, that it’s a self-reflective, so you’re kind of reflecting on something, so you’re more likely to use it, um, if you are more self-reflective person. So yeah, it makes sense why on average women use it more. So it does not confer saying, I, I i is not a power move or a status move, um, using, so people with higher status use more you, because they’re usually telling somebody what to do, right? And you’ll notice in emails, right, where people will say was just thinking about our meeting, can you bring this, this da da, da to the next meeting, right? It’s, they say was just, you was just thinking, you know what I mean? Rather than I was just thinking. So you’ll see people leave off eye, um, and then use a lot of you.

However, one thing that we mentioned in the workshop is it’s kind of contrived to be like, I’m gonna look at people, or one thing that, you know, high status people do is break eye contact first. So, you know, you just gonna stare at this person. I’m not gonna break eye, can’t eye contact, no. ’cause I’m a high status person. You just look like a weirdo, right? So, um, and the the language thing and the tone of voice, it’s, um, I mean, obviously there’s a way of showing up where you look more confident.

Um, but there’s something to be said for authenticity. And a lot of times when you just put these things on without the other things being put on, it’s like, you know, putting on a costume and you’re not gonna be able to withhold like to, um, uphold it over and over again, right? So yes, there are research things where these things happen in relation to status, but again, the direction of effect, we don’t really know, right? We don’t, there’s not like, we’ll tell people to make more eye contact, therefore we’ll check their status in five years. It’s usually correlational. So a lot of those things could be, um, you know, a a co-occurring thing with something else, something else, or it could be an outcome based on who they are.

So how do we let our authenticity shine? Um, how do we negotiate these things? And if you did the, um, the, uh, there’s different ways to find out, like who you are, what you tend to, like, how do you tend to work with people? So I think that’s a really good, um, place to start for yourself. Um, if I can just go to another screen here, for example, there’s these Belbin team roles, and you can take a test on the Belbin team roles. Um, uh, let me just, uh, scroll up so you can see that. Um, so this is from the bite-sized learning, and, um, you know, you can find out if you’re more of a coordinator or a shaper or a team worker or you know, a plant in that you like to dream up new solutions.

So knowing yourself really well is really important because it allows you to see where could I shine in, in, you know, uh, in the way that I show up, right? How am I best placed to show up? So let me go back to the other screen. Yeah. Um, so then we can understand how we influence, right? Are we leading from the back, for example, are we leading from the front? Are we the people who, um, you know, input ideas and maybe are more creative with the way that we do that? Do we connect people together? I’m gonna say more about that in a second. You know, are we the connector between people? Because all of that is going to have a, an impact. Um, so I wanna go to creating the, the world or the we around you, right? So, um, and I’ve given you some case studies already.

Um, I did. So this is for golly, um, definitely check out this book. It’s really good, um, called Likable Badass. It’s got all the research in it. I’ve like dogeared much of it. So, um, yeah. And you know, another thing about the, the tone of voice and the posture and the, you know, all this kind of stuff is that for go’s research on how women are penalized for the same behaviours that are usually rewarded in men, will, you know, kind of when you hear all you need to do is lean in. All you need to do is negotiate, negotiate hard, don’t take no for an answer that might not work for, you know, some a a a woman of colour, you know, who might be seen as aggressive or, you know, assertiveness is taken as aggressiveness, you know? So again, it’s about being mindful about the way that you wanna show up.

So in doing that, a big thing is networking. And our community, I’ve already shown you a big part of the way that we have influence is building our community. So I want you to think about who your allies are. Who are your sponsors? Sponsors are those who will actively put your name forward, you know, so those who are speaking your name in rooms that you are not in. Um, and I want you to have an idea about like, are these internal to your university or department or are they external? Um, and are they early career or later career? And one thing that I said within the, um, the PowerPoint when I had delivered it was, have a think about different qualities that these person, these people have.

So who are your potential mentors, right? So, um, it could be somebody in your field. So, um, as I was saying, who are your potential mentors? If you have, have a think about these six things. Think about, do you have already somebody in your field, somebody who is in your same circumstances, who can kind of understand where you’ve been, where you’re going. Someone who is a cheerleader, as I said, maybe a sponsor, however you like to think of them. Someone who will critique you. Someone who is a leader in the field you aspire to enter into or grow into, and someone who can introduce you to other people. So have a think about those people and where, um, yeah, what, how those are in line. Um, and then put them into this, this document, right? And make your own chart and see is there a gap in who is going to stand up for me?

Also, understand your values, right? What are your values and your goals? Um, and here are some things to kind of guide you through that, because you need to be able to understand your goals in order to understand what you are negotiating for, what you are influencing in terms of like, am I asserting my boundaries? What am I, um, looking to accomplish? And the other thing that we talked about in the workshop briefly was the Johari window. What parts of yourself, you know, and your goals and your values and your, uh, privileges or anything about yourself, are you willing to, ’cause you know, we were just talking about like creating your network where people might know your circumstances, you know, try to find somebody who, you know, has had your same kind of, you know, background or things like that. Well, you’d have to be pretty open about what your background is, or that person would have to be open about what their background is to be able to find a mentor that matches you.

Um, the Johari Window is really about, um, how people show up at work. You know, gone are the day, well, maybe not gone. Um, we’re starting to question the days in which we, you know, work, our work colleagues, our family, you know, and you know, we’re here, we have bean back chairs, and we’re all a big family, when also they didn’t wanna pay people, you know, for, for the work. So there are reasons to keep parts of yourself secret at work. Um, and then there’s reasons to maybe share those things at work. So this kind of like shows you if there’s qualities that you have that are known to you and also known to others, then you’re kind of like an open book. This is how I wrote it anyway. You know this about yourself and others know too, and it can be visible characteristics or things that you decide to share with others and divulge and be vulnerable. And then there are things that are unknown to you and known to other people. These are kind of what I call the shadow parts of yourself. Things people might know but you’re not aware of. But this could be revealed through feedback, you know, all those kinds of things. And then you have things that are unknown to others, um, and known to you. Again, those are things that either you’re feeling unsafe to share, um, and then unknown to you and unknown to others.

So that’s just basically like the cave of wonders, right? So through therapy, a lot of people find out things about themselves. So again, this is just about being cognizant, aware, intentional in how you create your networks and what you choose to reveal at work, which I think is really important for the boundary setting, as I showed in this chart, of really understanding what you want to, you know, what you wanna get for yourself, where your priorities are right now. And these could change. You could be like, actually, my priorities have shifted more this way, or they shift more that way, right? When you have a family, they shift, you know, and, and in every part of your life.

So how do we, um, understand status and power in relation to our own, um, ability to create change for ourselves? Um, so do you become more assertive or dominant? Well, a lot of times when you’re assertive or you’re dominant, the other person, because these are relational qualities, the other person could choose to become dominant or aggressive back, right? Or assertive back, or they could choose to be passive back.

So research shows that for marginalized groups, when they have higher power, they become less likable. And part of that is because they are seen as dominant and assertive without the status, right? So when you have power, but people think that you have undeserved power, you, because your status isn’t high, then people are going, oh, you got power by being dominant and assertive, and you’re probably not a likable person. ’cause it’s quite aggressive to do that, you know, especially as a person who’s been marginalized, minoritized, whatever.

The other thing is that for marginalized groups, a lot of times when you, when you say, you know what, you should be more assertive, they become more dominant. So it’s, it’s just like this big circle because a lot of times when I think about, or I used to think about being assertive, I did think about being quite like hard and like, okay, unemotional, I’m assertive. I’m asking for what I want. And you become more cold. And not because you’re trying to necessarily cog, you know, uh, consciously you’re really thinking, I’m gonna get what I want, right? And a lot of times we don’t think about the other parts of that.

However, what I want you to think about is that when you, um, let’s go to this one first, when you’re thinking about assertiveness, there are yes qualities of dominance, qualities of competence being organized, industrious, firm, self-confident, ambitious, persistent, stable, deliberative, unselfconscious, right? And these are all the submissive qualities. And you can see if somebody who, you know, is, is very, like any of these qualities on the right hand side, it does seem kind of like likable. Like, oh yeah, you know, like, think about, um, you know, Disney characters that are really like self effacing or self-doubting or weak, you know, like they’re quite like just gentle creatures, you know? But it’s not going to get you into the assertive high status positions.

But what happens when you’re the more dominant, um, or assertive person, is that people perceive you as being impolite, um, ruthless, right? Oh, that woman is ruthless for trying to get to the top of that company. However, if you combine these two right here, you have a good sweet spot, right? Being warm and assertive, kind and respectful. So part of that could be being, and again, this is how I said, you can tailor it to who you are. Being appreciative, being cooperative, being competent, being organized and stable, being deliberative, being self-confident, okay?

So you don’t have to choose dominant unless that’s your thing. If you’re dominant and you’re like, okay, but I I’m, I’m having trouble with status even though I’m showing a lot of dominance in my life, well, maybe you need to just be dominant and really cooperative or dominant and really appreciative and start thanking people and going, you know, we delivered this, this thing, we were able to, you know, um, have success with this project. It led to the founding of this, you know, robust method with a, you know, pioneering attitude. And I’m so thankful that my teamwork, um, you know, contributed so much because without them, I could not have, you know, created this, this, um, this impact, this achievement. Okay? Just even adding that, um, that thinking changes the whole situation.

So being competent and caring, which are again, two, two forms of that assertive, right, competent and then caring, um, are non-negotiable. You know, that taking those two, uh, those two columns and combining them, that’s non-negotiable. But how you get there, which of those little like descriptors that’s highly negotiable for you? Okay? So how you choose to do that? So which of those resonate with you? Which of those combos work for you?

And we can start to see them in action through storytelling. So through our self-promotion, right? Marginalized groups often under communicate their achievements, assuming others will just notice, um, or they call, they’re being called braggy or uppity, I don’t know. I don’t know the current lingo. You can tell I’m old. Um, so what if we frame accomplishments as shared wins, right? Our team’s breakthrough, blah, blah, blah, or institutional value. This research advances our department’s mission because blah, blah, blah. Or we do a humble brag, you know, kind of thank you pair, pair your achievement with credit to others, as I just said a little while ago. Um, and there is, you know, I will couch that in terms of, you know, again, in excellence or us having to sensationalize and embellish our impact claims seem to have become a normalized and, and necessary if regretful aspect of academic culture.

So again, this performance of excellence is commonly justified as being necessary for survival. But what I would say is that you don’t need to embellish, you don’t need to emphasize, you don’t need to overstate in your, because if you, if you reject this way of like, like a almost commodifying our, you know, achievements and branding each part of ourselves, there are authentic ways to do this. I think the other thing that people, another criticism, if this is like criticism number one, right?

Um, is criticism number two, um, is um, uh, criticism number two is our likability labour, um, which does find fall on, um, minoritized groups. Um, and so there’s that as well, um, have to be kind, right? It’s like you there, those you have to like sugar-coat everything. You have to give more context for things because people might take it wrong. You know? Yes. That that is a thing and that is a like an annoying part of, you know, what I just showed you here, okay? I have to, I have to keep doing these things if I do these things because for women, that’s not appropriate for, you know, people of colour that’s not appropriate to be dominant. ’cause it might be seen as aggressive. So we have to be like super courteous and like, oh, you know, and that is true. Um, I, I won’t, yeah, there’s no sugar-coating that, but at the same time, we have control over how we show up. Okay? Um, so I don’t know, I, I would love a, a more conversation about that. And one thing I will say is later on in this, in this, um, in this thing, I will show you other things that you can do as well.

Um, okay, so, and then building in other promotions so that other people speak your praise, you know, sing your praises. Um, and that’s really effective. I’ve done that before, having other people, you know, give, uh, you know, talk about my work in a newsletter or things like that. Um, or bring it up at a staff meeting, you know, so that you are not the one always like saying, oh, I’ve done this thing. Other people are doing that.

Um, and controlling the narrative, you know, um, I, a lot of people like this in the workshop, the out of office status tool. Um, so you use your auto replies to highlight your achievements, right? Um, and pre-emptive storytelling and like requests that are shown as mutually benefit, right? As long as, you know. And one thing that I asked people to do in the session was to download the vision  for the University of Liverpool so that you can see what the goals are and the vision and the mission is for, for your institution and match the way that you speak to understanding that mission so that you can say, this aligns, you know, uh, with our goal too, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which is over here. Um, and how to str yeah, how to structure ask to align with institutional go goals again. Um, and so instead of, for example, saying one thing, you can present it as a, you know, department’s excellent research rankings, um, you know, benefit. So what is the benefit for them? Um, and I, you know, I, I asked, dunno if I asked people to do this, but I think a good activity for you is to maybe draft a personal elevator pitch. Usually have done them for your projects, right? Or for a poster. What are you gonna tell people about your poster in two minutes or at a conference? What are you gonna tell people in two minutes on the elevator, right?

But this is really about understanding how to create the competence. Like how do I speak about my competence? But then also, you know, the care or kindness or whatever it is that you bring at the same time. So, you know, my publication and dah dah, dah demonstrates this. I’m passionate about mentoring others in this field because blah, blah, blah. And that again raises your status. So this is all about raising your status. Um, and all of this that I just skipped was about, you know, um, yeah, criticisms around, you know, doing this when, you know there are structural reasons for these things. But I will leave that to you.

Um, and I guess it’s really good thinking about the cultural aspects, and this is about the university culture or your institutional culture that make it harder for you to implement these things. And what are the possible ways that you can negotiate for your own success? Also, I would think about, um, you know, creating networks of, uh, academics and other people, um, outside of the university, you know, so non-academics, how, how, how does creating like a, you know, a, a network where you have options, um, and how can that help you?

Um, and then also in terms of negotiating, you know, what are the things that you can do again, using the, the, the context that we already know about. Communal framing, pre-emptive gratitude, um, third party validation. Like this is research, this is data that I’ve already gathered, naming the elephant in the room, um, invoking the shared values that you have and using we language.

And I will say also naming the elephant. I’ve seen a lot of people, um, use this for example, talking about, uh, when you’re going for an interview and they ask you about your, you know, qualifications or your experience in doing X, y, z and you know, you have strength in one category and that your reputation might be in another category. I’ll just, um, name the person who was talking about this. ’cause it was a public talk. It was Ms. England was talking about her. Um, I think she’s got a degree in, in in aerospace engineering. Um, and she was going for a job in aerospace engineering, but of course she walks in, she’s a model, she’s been Ms. England, so she knows that reputation is coming in. So she named the elephant in the room. She said, I know, you know, coming in here, you see me as Ms. England. The reality of Ms. England is I have to talk to dignitaries, you know, prime ministers, presidents of countries, um, at the same time that I go into the room and speak to young people about, you know, pursuing STEM education. And, and she, she listed all the people that she has to speak to, um, and the way that she has to speak. And it was a job in, in, in sales for like, I don’t know if it was for, for parts for, you know, airplanes or something like this, but it was a sales position. She was like, the important thing is I know how to speak to a lot of different people and understand the language and modify the way I speak and articulate the value that I bring, or in your case the product. And, um, you know, do it in a way that speaks to, you know, the, the different levels of the people I’m speaking to. And it was, so, yeah, I’m, I’m sure I’m doing a bad job of saying what she said, but it’s so interesting to use the elephant in the room because they weren’t gonna ask her, well, you’re like Ms. England, why should she have this job? They asked her, you know, what qualifications do you have for this job? But she wanted to name it so that she could pre-empt their thinking about her reputation and actually turn it on its head and be like, this is the biggest strength for you and your company. Which I think was really cool. She is a white woman, okay, but she’s ginger, so I’m not saying that’s equivalent to anything. Um, it’s just funny ’cause I know some people make jokes about that.

So, um, I also wanted to talk about, one thing that I brought in, into the, into the room was about the intervention stuff that I’ve been doing and being a good bystander and a good witness is about, uh, being active, being an active bystander active witness. When you see, you know, somebody’s idea being taken and credited to a male colleague or something like this, what can you do? As I said, even making eye contact with people who are low, like lower status, we’ll confer more status on them. Now, that’s not the best way to do it, but I wanted to give you like idea, but there are direct just, you know, kind of distracting or like, yeah, this, this five ways of being a good bystander.

I tried to make them relevant to not being a bystander in a like harassment situation on the street. So this is the way that I did it, right? So being direct, um, you know, let’s make sure she’s credited, right? I noticed, I noticed that she’d, you know, proposed that earlier may be another way. Is going back to Sarah’s point about the method. So you’re already like kind of putting that in there. Um, Maybe pulling aside a senior ally afterward and just saying like, oh, I realize that Sarah was kind of, you know, passed up on that last meeting and what she contributed. Could you, you know, do something about that. Help me, um, follow up with an email building on today’s discussion. Sarah’s contribution about blah blah, blah, aligns with whatever.

And then documenting anything. Because a lot of times we just go, oh, just forget about that. And then at the end of the day, you know, we have resentment and we’re like, where’d that come from? And it’s because we were burying every single time that there was something that we noticed.

Um, and along with that, you know, we have to build communities of care for each other. Um, yeah, resilience isn’t just about bouncing back. It’s about having these constants that are going to be, you know, your trusted allies. You know, anything that you can hold on in times of hold onto in times of chaos. Um, and so I want you as the final thing to identify your constants, um, and brainstorm on how to strengthen them, you know, who are your communities of care outside of academia. And that’s pretty much it. And then I’ve got the references for you. So I hope that was useful. I think there’s a lot that I had to skip over, but I didn’t wanna go over time. So yes, I hope these things allow you to think through different ways and methods that you could start to incorporate, um, you know, kind of the competence, assertiveness, and care into your daily life. So thank you so much.