Learning leadership

Posted by Jean Adams 

Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. I didn’t want to go on a leadership course. I have been on leadership and management courses before. They do Myers Briggs, tell you the difference between urgent and important, show you some schematic models of management and send you home. If you’re lucky, there are nice cakes at coffee time.

But, you now. Another fellowship application, another training and development plan. Apart from the knowledge-based things I wanted to learn, I couldn’t think of much. But someone else before me showed my their previously successful form and they had ‘leadership’, so I thought it might be the sort of thing that funders like.

This current leadership course seems a little different from the last few. To begin with, there was an application process. It was made clear I wouldn’t automatically get a place. I had to complete an application form, take part in an hour long telephone interview, and submit a reflective self-enquiry (exactly what it sounds like). As you might be able to tell from the fellowship bit, I do a good line in convincing people that I am totally, passionately, and unfailingly dedicated to whatever it might be that I am trying to achieve today. I felt bad after the interview that I had done such a good job at talking leadership bollocks nonsense. Even worse when I got a place on the back of it. 

Ashridge Business School, Hertfordshire

The course involves four residential stays at a Victorian gothic mansion in Hampshire, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. For goodness sake, do you know how long it takes to get from rural Northumberland to Hampshire (6 hours door-to-door)? I wasn’t awed when I finally arrived in the grand entrance hall. I was grumpy about the length of the journey, infuriated by the assumption that I need luxury to learn, and starting to calculate the monetary and opportunity cost of putting up 21 mid-career academics in this place for 48 hours. And the timetable started at 4pm and didn’t finish until 10pm. By bedtime I was tired and grumpy.

After being invited to record our overnight reflections in our leadership journals (yes, really), day two proper started with an hour creating a pictorial representation of our current leadership context. I was still a bit grumpy. But then I saw the table of art supplies laid out and my making streak took over. What a lovely way to spend a Wednesday morning – making a picture representing my university department with all the art supplies I could ever want. Sometimes I get paid to do the most amazing things.

My current leadership context: no you can't have an interpretation

After coffee we each presented our creation. After lunch we were invited to spend some time walking the grounds with another person we were interested in talking more to. Then, inevitably, Myers-Briggs. Again. By the time I phoned home on the end of day two I was feeling more positive about the whole experience. I’d had an interesting and fun, if long day. What had I learnt? Genuinely? Nothing much. I’d met some interesting and bright people. Perhaps I’d met the crème-de-la-crème of mid-career health researchers in the UK today. I’d established that we share many common experiences, without sharing much in the way of research topic commonality. Maybe I was on my way to making some friends. But I’m not sure I’d learnt anything.

Day three was almost entirely devoted to breaking into groups of seven and sharing our ‘stories’ with our groups. The stories of how we got to where we are today. The stories of the defining moments in our lives. Sometimes, the difficult, traumatic, deeply personal stories. The stories that have perhaps never been articulated before – certainly not to colleagues, but often not to friends either. There were tears – of laughter as well as pain. By the end of 48 hours we had arrived at the very unusual place of knowing each other well enough to share our stories. But not well enough to be scared of sharing our stories. I think the last time I experience this was at summer camp in my teens. It feels very special when you are in the middle of it.

We had learnt almost nothing in the way of leadership. Apparently that will come.

My first blog post

Posted by Emma L Giles

Okay, so I’d better come clean and own up straight away…this is my very first blog. Now, it’s not like I didn’t know what a blog was before now, but I had never been that interested. I have a Facebook account and log on occasionally. I even tried twitter once, but I failed to ‘see the point’ of it. So when I thought I might venture into this blog business I wasn’t quite sure what the purpose was. However, since reading the Fuse blogs in particular, I think I may have seen the light.

The little book of anxiety, by Kerri Sackville

I am a post-doc, which basically means that since handing in my thesis (aka a large door stop that I have since looked at about ten times) in 2009, I have been working at Newcastle University as a Research Associate. My first post-docs were largely teaching-based, and so I would never have even contemplated writing a blog at that time. My topics would largely have been around such thoughts as: oh heck, what do I do when 300 students pile into the lecture theatre?? Oh my goodness, I was caught in the headlights today when I couldn’t answer a student’s questions, what to do, what to do??? I…honestly…cannot…mark…one…more…assignment…that…reads…the…same…

Gladly, such issues are no longer the reasons why I lie awake at night. Mainly because I have moved to the Institute of Health and Society at Newcastle and now I actually do research as a research associate, but also because after six years of teaching groups of 50-300 students I am no longer scared by large groups. I can think of a semi-professional and intelligent answer to most student questions, and I have learnt that every student contributes something different in their assignments (most of the time).

So why then am I writing this blog? Well, I was actually going to write about my experience of publishing academic papers as a new career researcher. However, this thought abruptly ended when I started to type. I realised that my first blog might actually be somewhat lacking: would it be entertaining? Would I need to be funny (I’m not naturally a comedian)? What happens if the editor rejects my blog? What DO I WRITE? 

I think, funnily enough, this blog has actually taught me something. It’s taught me that I’m a born worrier and that there will always be something that I am anxious about. However, this is where I can see some advantages of this blog business (I may even have started to like them as well). Blogs allow you to air your thoughts, to share concerns with others, and to (sometimes) receive helpful comments and advice.
I think I’m going to write that second blog soon, surprisingly about my worries around publishing. That is, if the editor doesn’t reject this first blog.

However, don’t ask me to go on twitter again.

Rules for the perfect supervisor

Posted by Lynne Forrest

We’ve previously had two blog posts explaining what makes a perfect research student. It was hard to disagree with any of it really, but, it’s a two-way relationship and in the interests of fairness, we students now get to respond and say what we require in the perfect supervisor.

Disclaimer: these traits are desirable in a generic ideal supervisor and any resemblance to any actual Fuse/IHS supervisor should not be implied. The views and experiences reported here reflect a consensus of opinion derived from the student body and are not necessarily mine (I’d really like a reference and a job at the end of my PhD…)

So, assuming that we’ve now all become the perfect research student, what can be done to further improve the research experience? Although comments ranged from ‘my supervisors are brilliant’ to ‘my supervisors constantly have me in tears!’ some common themes did emerge.

These are the things we think you should do to become the perfect supervisor:

1. Set ground rules at the first supervision meeting so that everyone knows what is expected of them.

2. Don’t spread yourself too thinly. Although having a ‘big name’ supervisor can be useful to students in terms of being able to utilise your experience, knowledge and connections, if you are always too busy to deal with us then this is somewhat negated. Possibly appoint a more junior colleague as the main supervisor.

3. Prepare for meetings and actually read the documents that the student sends you. If we follow the rules and send a document well in advance but you still don’t read it then this is a hugely frustrating issue. There is a power imbalance in the PhD/supervisor relationship that needs to be acknowledged, but not exploited. If we keep to our side of the agreement, then please can you do the same?

4. Be supportive, approachable and understanding.

5. Be constructive and remind the student that your comments shouldn’t be taken personally. Criticism is fine as long as it is directed at the work rather than the person. A supervisory meeting is not an episode of ‘The Sweeney’ and you need never adopt the ‘bad cop’ role…(unless, of course, this has been agreed in 1.)

6. Promote a healthy work/life balance. 

Promote a healthy work/life balance

7. Forward any opportunities that you think might be relevant to the student. Please don’t just assume that we’ll know what is possible. For example, it was suggested that students should offer to supervise an undergraduate dissertation but I don’t think anyone knew that was even an option for PhDs. It’s hard to be proactive with things you know nothing about. Similarly with teaching opportunities.

8. Deal with each student as an individual. As one student eloquently put it ‘we’re like unique little snowflakes’! A one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t work here. A mature student may need different handling to a younger one. However, on saying that you also need to…

9. Ensure equality of opportunities. Make sure that ALL students know what is available.

10. If you are not the main supervisor you still need to turn up for meetings occasionally. It’s very embarrassing when a student says hello to you in passing and you have no idea who they are. If you really aren’t interested in doing it then please hand the role to someone else.

11. Give lots of clear feedback. And if possible always try to end a supervisory meeting on a positive note. If your student constantly exits in tears then something has gone very wrong somewhere…

12. Sort out any supervisory disagreements outside the meeting. And don’t talk about other stuff over your student’s head. We only get an hour a month so let’s talk about us and our lovely project…

And I could go on and on….there was lots more! Do you agree? Please feel free to comment.

Achieving impact

Posted by Jean Adams 

There are two things that research is judged on in the UK at the moment – the quality of ’outputs’, which means journal papers in my neck of the woods; and ‘impact’. The official definition of impact is “any social, economic or cultural impact or benefit beyond academia”. In public health, the sorts of things that might count are a change in local or national policy or practice that followed from your research findings. 

It all sounds so sensible, doesn’t it? Of course we should specifically value research that has a positive impact on the everyday lives of the people who, by and large, pay for it through their taxes. Aside from the obvious implication that just to know something we didn’t know before is somehow a less valuable than ‘impact’, my experience is that achieving impact is a serendipitous thing. Something that seems to be as reliant on being in the right place at the right time, as on doing high quality research. 

Research impact

I spent two hours last month defending a piece of work that we published earlier this year. It was some of the most intensive questioning I’ve experienced on my research. A bit like my PhD viva, but without the suit and focusing on just one 3,000 word paper, rather than three full years of work and a 50,000 word thesis.

The paper was about TV food advertising to children. It had come to the attention of Ofcom. Our findings were at odds with one of Ofcom’s own reports and so they were keen to discuss differences between our respective methodologies and how we might reconcile our conflicting findings.

It was an interesting experience and the people from Ofcom had obviously done their homework – they’d read our paper in great depth and wanted to talk through every sentence, and every cell of every table. As I say, it was a pretty intense couple of hours. I think we came out okay – sure our research had some limitations, but so does all research – compromises have to be made. But that doesn’t mean we don’t stand by our findings. They were kind enough to leave off pointing out how rude we’d been about their research until the last 10 minutes or so.

As the meeting was winding up, I took the chance to ask: “so what happens next?” Because when you get a chance to speak with people who work for national policy organisations, you kind of think you should take the opportunity to try and somehow make a contribution; to achieve impact.

My polite enquiry was met with a shrug and: “well, this is not something that’s on the policy agenda at the moment.”

Our research findings reflect the final recommendations of NICE public health guidance on prevention of cardiovascular disease, as well as the position of the British Heart Foundation, the World Cancer Research Fund, and the Scottish Public Health Minister. But it’s not on the policy agenda.

And that, I fear, may be that. We did some work that certainly could achieve impact. We even got the chance to speak to some people who might have been able to help us enact that impact. But it’s not on the policy agenda.

Serious question: what else can we do to achieve impact?

See one. Do one. Teach one.

Posted by Jean Adams

There was a time when finding a man who was having trouble urinating was my main preoccupation in life.

I was a final year medical student and "insert a male urinary catheter" was the final, unchecked, procedure in my log book.

In a dingy corner of the male elderly care ward, I found what I was looking for. A man with a full bladder in great pain. Unfortunately, the final tick in my log book was not to be that day. I admitted to the attending doctor that my only knowledge of catheterisation technique came from a textbook. 

All set up and no-one to catheterise

There is an old adage in medical education: see one, do one, teach one. The implication is supposed to be that you'd better be a quick learner, because you don't get much practice in medicine. For me, the implication was that I needed two men who couldn't pee - one to watch being catheterised by someone else, one to catheterise myself.

I think many medics escape to academia because they want a chance to slow down and think problems through, without a constant need to do something, quickly.

Perhaps there is more time to think, this side of the fence. But, ironically, when I'm in the classroom, I quite often feel that I have skipped the "do one" stage.

This week I was teaching our MSc students how to write a press release. I have read a number of press releases in my life; I have sat in how to write press releases workshops; I have even submitted model press releases for assignments; but I have never, ever written a real-life press release myself, let alone a successful one that is picked up by the media.

Delivering a newly devised teaching session for the first time is always a bit nervy. The seat of my pants gets a little frayed. This one had an extra edge of tension. I don't feel an expert in any of the things I teach, but I have come to the realisation that I, if nothing else, have generally thought and read more about the topic than the students. If I have done some actual, published research on it, that alway makes me feel a little more secure in my expertise.

This time, I had nothing but my status as 'lecturer' to carry me through. Early on, I fell back on the rather cruel technique of the trick question to make sure everyone was on their guard. I chose ridiculously bad examples of press releases from other universities to make the students laugh. I filled the time by getting them to do their own writing so that I didn't have to do any of my own. I quite often found myself wondering if what I was saying made any sense at all.

Now I am starting to wonder how many other things I teach without first doing; or do without first seeing. Luckily, my pant drawer is well stocked.