Sometimes people feel stuck in their career for a whole variety of reasons. Some of these reasons will be tangible and immediate things like visas or personal circumstances, and sometimes they might be down to systemic reasons, biases, barriers, and inequalities in how academic careers play out for particular groups. We aren’t looking at those in this particular video, but instead we’re focusing on where researchers might have internal challenges, things like self-confidence, and the kind of role that you might have as a PI in supporting them with these, and in setting up the right conditions in your research group to be able to support career confidence and resilience.

When people are feeling a bit stuck, they might not necessarily tell you that. In fact, it’s quite possible that they’ll try to overcompensate by looking or being really busy in other areas. Can you think of anyone who’s constantly working and delivering? When was the last time you actually saw them take a step back and think about the bigger picture of their longer-term career goals?

This busywork can sometimes cover up that inwardly they’re feeling a little bit directionless or unsure of what they need to do next. It’s natural to want to help people in this situation, and there’s lots of good ways to do this. It can be really tempting to immediately jump in with some great advice and try to be helpful. there’s three reasons why advice isn’t always the best thing to do.

One is that what worked for someone else in a specific situation might not be right for that individual and their situation. They might feel duty-bound to act on your advice because you’re a trusted mentor, and they don’t want to be disrespectful to you. they might know that it’s not the right thing for them, but they feel they have to do what you said. It’s also quite disempowering for someone to be told what they need to do. It might be that what they most need you to do is to give them the structured space and the opportunity to build their confidence back up so that they can make their own decisions about what’s going to come next for them.

It’s not always about giving advice. I’ve been one of the Prosper career coaches over the last two years, and as part of the Prosper pilot we asked researchers what gets in the way of them thinking about their career. before we look at their answers, I want you to think about a time when you felt stalled in your career. When were you unable to make a decision or to move forward? What was the specific context? What was going on, and what was it that was stopping you? Can you remember what really was behind that? How were you feeling at the time?

Make some notes. What helped you? Who helped you? What else did you try? What didn’t help? Now, with the benefit of hindsight, what might have helped you? What else?

Here are some of the things that Prosper participants felt got in their way from making progress with Prosper. Unsurprisingly, the number one thing was work. There was also a lack of structure to it. They weren’t sure where to start. It felt a little bit open, and like nailing down jelly. Not sure where they should prioritise their efforts. Almost a bit of overwhelm. Some of them struggled to get back on track after something unexpected happened, whether that was illness, a work opportunity, a secondment visit came up, caring responsibilities.

You know, a lot of people, you probably recognise that yourself, they feel like they’re playing catch up and they’re not quite sure where to put their effort next because it feels like everything’s unachievable. There was also a bit of a preference for live sessions. Sometimes they felt this was a little bit easier to make the time for and keep the time for than something that they had to organise and have the motivation to show up to for themselves.

I found all of that quite interesting, and there’s probably things that you recognise here for your own researchers that you’re working with where they struggle to get around to thinking about their career development because of some of these things, because it is unstructured, because there will be other unexpected life or work events that come up, and maybe they do prefer to be able to put aside the time in a different way.

A few other things that I noticed were very practical issues, things like visas or networks, having a spouse or partner who also had to find an academic job. Sometimes they had issues with saying no and taking on too much, and almost a sense that they should be grateful for being given an opportunity, whether that’s an opportunity to do another postdoc or to go and speak at a conference, to take on some supervision or teaching.

Again, it’s that idea that they have to please someone else, maybe a mentor who’s put a lot of effort into mentoring them. Are these things that you’ve noticed with researchers you’re working with? Are they taking on too much, finding it difficult to say no? Have they got a sense of perfectionism? Are they keeping working and keeping working, or maybe they don’t have to. Maybe it’s good enough. Have they got a sense of guilt that they always need to be doing more? Maybe these are things you recognise in yourself.

There could also be a lack of confidence that is this maybe not the finished article that they’re willing to share yet, especially when it comes to sharing your own work. The sense of an inner critic or impostor phenomenon. There’s also sometimes an idea that the number one value in academia is stoicism. This idea that you have to keep enduring, keep enduring, keep enduring, and you shouldn’t ever complain about how challenging it is to work so hard for your postdoc, and maybe eventually you’ll be gifted with a permanent job.

In that situation, I hear people talking about that, again, that being grateful for the opportunity and feeling very lucky. which of these are things that you’ve noticed in your own postdocs which maybe get in the way of them then focusing on thinking a bit more creatively about their career opportunities or what else they could be doing, maybe doing some of that exploration and also a bit of playfulness.

Maybe the things that help bring them in, new perspectives or ideas, or something that isn’t going to immediately be of benefit but just gives them a chance to explore. Just think about, are there any practical things that you might be able to do in your research group to help people navigate some of these, or in a one-to-one meeting just to acknowledge that they exist? Maybe share some support or resources, some of your own experiences. Or maybe there’s ways that you can set things up so that, as well as exploring the what of the research that you’re doing, you’re exploring the how of how people navigate their careers and play about with ideas.

These are just some general ideas that can help with people who are feeling a little bit stuck. You might be able to encourage them to build their own networks, share some of your own networks as well. This can help people get more data, get more perspectives on what else is out there beyond academia. It helps with that fear of the unknown, as well as boosting their confidence.

It is very scary, I think, to try to speak to someone from another industry, but maybe helping them think about what questions could they ask, or doing a bit of an intro, might just give them that boost that then they can do it for themselves with other people. Are there workshops or other ways that they can engage with the wider ECR community in their universities or their discipline? I think having that engagement with other people, that connection and you realise that you’re not the only person feeling these challenges or experiencing these sorts of feelings like imposter syndrome.

The number one bit of feedback I used to get from workshops, regardless of what the workshop subject was, was that, ‘I came back feeling more motivated,’ and you probably recognise that yourself. Sometimes you just need to break that sort of cycle of perfectionism or something else. Zoom out, get a bit of perspective, meet some other people, and then you can go back and finish it and know that you’ve done enough.

Public engagement is also another way of getting that break in the perspective. Sometimes people tell me that they rediscover why they love the subject itself in the first place. It also helps them to build their networks and get different perspectives on where their work might be relevant in the future in different sectors maybe, and that could give them some career information.

Another thing that you can help with is the goal setting and accountability, and they might not want you to do that, and you can’t know whether or not someone’s going to feel like that’s something that they need from you as a PI. They might prefer to get it from someone else, but you can offer you can signpost to it, and offer again another point because things might have changed. Doesn’t have to happen. It’ll be different people, different things for different people.

Sometimes just having someone ask you what your goals are and how they can help, and they might say that there’s no way you can help, but having had that conversation where they’ve had to articulate what their goals are and knowing that maybe in a few weeks’ time you might just ask them how it’s going. They’ll then think, ‘Right, I need to make that time to have that career conversation,’ to go and interview someone about their job.

I wanted to look just quickly at a couple of specific issues, because there are ones that I see quite often with early career researchers, particularly when they’re high achievers, they’re doing lots of different things really, really well. You’ve probably noticed some people experience quite negative self-talk. This so-called inner critic, also known as imposter syndrome, where they tell themselves that they’re not good enough, not qualified enough. That that good feedback that you got from your teaching was just because the students were being nice.

That might be something you recognise in yourself. It often appears when people are stepping out of their comfort zone to take up an opportunity, whether that’s to share their work or to share their ideas with collaborators, maybe to do some teaching or supervision for the first time. It’s usually something new that stretches or challenges them, and this is always a great opportunity for learning. When you are being stretched, that’s when you learn. That’s often, unfortunately, when this inner critic kicks in and people start to think about themselves in a more negative way. for the individual, there will be things that are triggering for them that might be very different for other people.

Everyone’s got these triggers from previous experiences, and that voice is there to protect you. You know it’s there, it’s your survival instinct. It keeps you safe from threats, threats of humiliation, particularly at conferences, threats of stress, failure, criticism, and the voice tries to throw you back into your comfort zone and take away that opportunity to learn or grow.

It’s likely that your post-doc has struggled with this at some point, and while you’re not going to know when or what’s going on for them, and probably it’s going to come across as quite patronising if you say to them, ‘Oh, I notice that you’re struggling with imposter syndrome.’ You can’t tell what’s going on in their head, but be alert to it and empathetic, and just be ready to know that this might be one of the reasons why perhaps they’re not taking up opportunities that you thought would be a great experience for them.

It might be that you feel surprised or frustrated that they haven’t put themselves forward for something. Can you think about how you might help them break it down and identify what would be a first step towards them being able to take up that opportunity in the future? Could they go and observe being part of a committee first before they take up a committee position, for example? Or what might help them feel more confident about chairing a conference session? Could they first go and ask questions or meet someone else who’s done it? Are there ways that you can help them get towards feeling more confident about that?

Maybe it’s about sharing your own experiences of that inner critic and signposting to resources that you’ve found useful, or to networking and peer support. Or you could ask questions which help the individual to gather facts and evidence and look for other interpretations.

Try open questions, which don’t imply a judgement but encourage them to reflect themselves. Asking them things like, ‘What is it specifically that’s giving you pause for thought here?’ It just disrupts their thinking and makes them think, well, actually, you know, what am I scared of? Then, once they’ve named it, can they actually test out whether it’s true, check whether they’ve got evidence, or could they put in place a mitigating step so that that’s less of an issue for them?

You could also ask what could be the best case or worst case scenarios if you do this? Or, you could challenge or disrupt a particular idea by saying, ‘Well, when hasn’t this been the case?’

A final thing to do is to think about how failure is talked about in your research group. this isn’t so much a one-on-one conversation thing, but actually how is your research group set up so that you look at how you critique the idea rather than the person? You probably do this, again, with research all the time, but do you do it with how people are doing research as much as the what that they’re doing? How do you encourage people to test out things and test out ideas and play around? Are there approaches here that you could adopt to help people have a bit more sort of playfulness in their career exploration? Could you ask them what happens if universities don’t exist? What happens if research doesn’t exist?

Just get them thinking about things in a way that’s fun and feels a bit less high-stakes than saying, ‘What happens if you don’t get this fellowship? What happens if you don’t get an academic job?’ The other thing I wanted to specifically mention was time. I said earlier on that people who are a bit stuck might look busy on the surface and tell you they’re too busy for career development or anything else like that. I often introduce this model of time to researchers to help them think about what’s important.

The idea here is that you can fill up a glass with a mixture of sand and rocks. If you put the rocks in first, the sand is going to filter in around about it. If you put the sand in first the rocks won’t fit. The sand is normally the meetings, the emails, all the other stuff that populates an academic career. How can you make sure that the postdocs that you’re working with feel like career development activities are one of those rocks that they have to create time for first, and be accountable to themselves and to other people? How are they role modelling to PhD students in your group about career development being an important thing?

Just a question here about how do you encourage playfulness, exploration, and resilience in career development? How do you encourage it, and how do you place value upon it so that that’s one of their big rocks? I want to leave you with two tools for reflection, which you might have come across. One of them is quite new. It’s from the UK Council for Graduate Education, and it’s a Recognised Associate Supervisor Award.

This one I found really helpful for postdocs, because the award’s been designed specifically for people who are supervising PhD students but not in a formal capacity. that could be postdocs or technicians. The award takes you through a guided reflection on how you’re doing this. What are the particular elements that you’re contributing to?

For researchers who maybe find it difficult to articulate their skills and their strengths, undertaking this sort of reflection and being encouraged to go and observe other people and to think about that, being encouraged to collect feedback, all of that will help to build up their confidence, as well as this portfolio of what their skills and strengths are, and encourage a bit more dialogue and just a little bit more self reflection. That could be something that you suggest to your postdocs as a way for them to feel like they can claim the experiences they’ve had of supervision.

Then, the other one is the Resume for Research and Innovation from UKRI, also called narrative CV formats. these are becoming much more widely used in things like fellowship applications, and just the format itself, by populating it someone could apply for a fellowship. The questions in it can also help you think more broadly about what are the other contributions that I’m making to my discipline and to my academic community, to my research group, to making things work in the lab, or in a conference, or with publications and journals, peer review.

Helping people to sort of articulate those contributions to the wider academic endeavour again just gives them a little bit more confidence. It helps give them that objective evidence that we talked about earlier. It’s the evidence that they need to be able to counter some of those limiting beliefs that they have or the sort of voices in their head about, you’re not good enough. Well, actually here I’ve got a document that someone else maybe has helped me write.

The best bit of advice that I have for writing a narrative CV is that you get someone else to help you, to ask you. What else were you proud of here? What other feedback did you get? What did you love doing about this? That can really help bring out the best of people. Here’s just two reflective tools that might give people some of the evidence that they need to be able to combat the inner critic, and feel like they can move forward with their career development and decision making.

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