Engineering Leadership Review

Preprints @ http://lot.utoronto.ca/elr Posted 1127 January 2012

Embracing Self-Leadership in Early Career Academic Research

Taking on the real academy in graduate school

A LP KUCUKELBIR

Graduate students are usually faced with the full challenges of academic research at the doctoral level. Although some are exposed to the research setting as early as their sophomore year in college,1 undergraduate and Masters research projects are intended to be focused and well-structured. At the doctoral stage, however, the nature of research changes. As a professor of mine once said, your guess is [now] just as good as your advisers welcome to the real academy. The rising popularity of post-Bachelors doctoral programs, particularly in the United States, is driving students to tackle academic research earlier than ever (Altbach, 2006). As a result, rst- and
NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards are awarded to second- and third-year students at Canadian institutions (NSERC, 2011).
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second-year doctoral students are expected to hit the ground running as productive researchers. While undergraduate research experience is certainly helpful, students quickly encounter the unique challenges of long-term, independent, and creative research. At this point, embracing strong self-leadership skills such as effective thinking and fail-proof discipline can be immensely useful. Kouzes and Posner state that the instrument of leadership is the self, and mastery of the art of leadership comes from mastery of the self (Kouzes and Posner, 2007b). Self-leadership is precisely this art of mastering ones self. Specically it is the development of an emotional, intellectual, and ethical foundation to accept and surpass challenges (Colcleugh, 2008). It involves prompting oneself to become more effective at what one does and ne-tuning oneself to think creatively. Most importantly, it is something that can be discussed, developed, and learned. This short article presents three aspects of self-leadership particularly useful to engineers in academia: a design-measure-evaluate approach to self-development, an incentives-based system for maximizing discipline, and an effective thinking framework. Prior to diving into these three methods, however, it is worth understanding the specic nature of early career academic research. This will provide context for the self-leadership tools presented later on in the article.

Early Career Academic Research

The Good
The thrill. The excitement of working on something cutting-edge and unsolved that will eventually lead to a thesis. In this sense, a doctoral project is akin to a new world in need of exploration. As newcomers to this realm, students are at a special stageone where they are encouraged to think outside the box. This position permits highly creative and original thinking, both crucial aspects (2)
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of academic research. Leaders are perceived as innovative and visionary thinkers, embodying strong creativity (Kouzes and Posner, 2007a). By embracing self-leadership skills, students can develop an understanding of how leaders cultivate and maintain such creativity throughout their careers.

The Bad
The unknown. While thinking outside the box may result in many intriguing ideas, it is challenging to see which ones are worth investigating. This is partly due to the nature of academic research. Doctoral projects may seem dauntingly broad to begin but should narrow down in scope within a few months. Struggling with scope changes is too often attributed to either a lack of experience or an inability to see the forest for the trees. This is misleading, as successful leaders are known to make such choices on a regular basis. The process of not only dening but constantly reshaping an organizations vision requires effective decision-making. Leaders maintain the thrill of their work while dealing with its unknowns through a mastery of their thought processes. There is nothing stopping engineering graduate students from learning to do the same.

The Ugly
The process. The act of doing research, deciding what to do at each step and following through with the required work. There are many formulae, lectures, notes, and textbooks on doing research. Yet there is no one size ts all solution. It is an experiential education rendering graduate school a highly specialized adventure, and in many ways, a daunting one. Nevertheless, leaders manage to tackle similarly ill-posed problems through unwavering disciplinea learnable skill for all.

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Self-Development: Design-Measure-Evaluate
As described in the previous section, early career academic research can be intimidating. It is not uncommon for students to lose courage when facing its Bad and Ugly parts (The Economist, 2010). A student may be tasked with nding an unsolved, yet signicant, problem relating to a certain topic. Months of literature review may reveal nothing useful. Another may need to prepare an academic report, only to receive extreme criticism from colleagues. Every graduate student has likely struggled with similar problems, yet there is a way to surmount such obstacles: active self-development. An active engagement in self-development can make a significant difference in how one tackles problems in research. The reader is likely already working on self-development, as it is indeed part of ones education, if not life in general. Yet, self-development can be taken for granted as a passive component of life, a sideeffect of education. This should not be the case, especially for engineers who are already well prepared to engage in active selfdevelopment. Engineers, arguably, differ from natural scientists in that they are specically trained to design and evaluate solutions to problems. Therefore, they can easily apply the familiar design-measure-evaluate framework (Pahl, 2007) to active selfdevelopment. This is best exposed through an example. Problem: Literature review on a specic topic. Goal: Finding an unsolved, yet signicant, problem within said topic. Design #1: Read one paper electronically per weekday. Keep track of papers via two-paragraph summaries in a notebook. Measure: Number of papers (actually!) read per week. Evaluate Progress: Track performance over a couple of weeks. Share and discuss results with adviser and/or colleagues. Design #2: Read one paper every other day. Print papers and an(4)
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notate/comment with red ink. Measure: Number of papers (actually!) read per week. Evaluate Progress: Track performance over a couple of weeks. Share and discuss results with adviser and/or colleagues. This framework may be applied to a variety of tasks. Academic writing is another case where an active engagement makes a noticeable difference. Doctoral graduate students will quickly realize that much of their time is spent on academic writing, such as grant applications, academic reports, and conference papers. Here is another example illustrating possible designs to improve writing skills. Problem: Academic writing. Goal: Becoming more procient at academic writing. Improving written communication skills. Design #1: Write a one-page research proposal on any topic, as if applying for funding. Measure: Amount of time to write proposal. Evaluate Progress: Share timing results with adviser, colleagues, or writing center. Solicit honest comments and criticisms. Design #2: Write a weekly report on recent research efforts. Measure: Amount of time to write report. Evaluate Progress: Compare timing and quality with previously written reports. Consult a writing center if adviser or colleagues are unwilling to provide useful input. One must systematically measure and evaluate designs, quickly adopting those that work well and ruthlessly discarding others that do not. Discovering and embracing methods like those presented above can help surpass many of the challenges of early career academic research. Some may consider such an approach to be too complex or demanding, however adopting systematic and active
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systems should help in developing ones research skills. While the design-measure-evaluate framework may appear unsustainable (too much work!) or unrealistic (not enough time!), leaders manage to constantly invest in self-development. Whether they use this particular framework or not, they manage to improve themselves through dedication and unwavering discipline.

Maximizing Discipline via Incentives

The reader is now familiar with the design-measure-evaluate framework. Following through with a chosen design, however, may not appear easy. For instance, writing a weekly report is probably an intimidating task for many graduate students. One must become disciplined enough to carry through with such a task. Luckily, building fail-proof discipline can also be systematically approached, specically by nding minimum-effort actions that produce maximal results. The idea here is to experiment with ways of tackling a task such that one nds and adopts an easy and/or fun method. There are many ways to approach this. One is to split tasks up into smaller, manageable, mini-tasks. Perhaps the most popular example is writing at least one sentence per day to accomplish any sort of writing job. The essence is to make accomplishing the mini-task easy, hoping it becomes a daily habit. While this may work in certain cases, there is a much stronger concept that can be exploited: incentives. Incentives have been used in business to improve productivity for decades, and much of the same methods can be used to establish habits and boost self-productivity. While incentives are often externally enforced in corporate settings, self-set incentives have been shown to have a substantial impact meeting ones personal goals (Locke, 2001). Therefore, incentives can be employed to form the necessary discipline to accomplish a certain task. (6)
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Incentives come in two avors. Positive incentives can be regarded as rewards, in this case, for accomplishing a given minitask. Recalling the previous example of literature review, one may allow for 15 minutes of random web-surng after having successfully written a two-paragraph summary of a paper. To enforce this incentive, one may want to employ a temporary internet-blocker,2 while reading said paper. Others may want to take a trip to a library or coffee shop. In either case, the completion of the task should result in some sort of reward. Negative incentives can also be surprisingly effective, as the greater the shame, the greater the incentives to avoid failure (Carsrud et al., 2009). There are various ways to apply negative incentives; the authors personal favorites are http://habitforge. com, http://stickk.com and http://getupp.com. HabitForge is a website that allows one to set up email reminders pertaining to a specic task. It is very exible and provides a shameful reminder in the form of a daily email looming in ones inbox. StickK and getUpp are a social websites that permit one to set public stakes and garner community support. Supporters (and skeptics!) can track ones progress online, further increasing the incentive to avoid failure. The crux is to experiment and nd minimum-effort methods to maximize ones productivity. Positive and negative incentives, along with helpful tools, can be used to strengthen ones discipline and stick with a method. In both cases, systematic and structured thinking is required to determine what works best for each task. Thinking in this fashion can boost productivity and form stronger discipline. Moreover, this sort of structured thinking can also be extended to other areas of academic research. As the reader probably expects, there is a system to facilitate this process as well.

Such as http://macfreedom.com available for both Macs and PCs.

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Thinking Effectively, Effortlessly

Thinking is hard, particularly when stuck on a problem. Some go outside to clear their heads, while others lock themselves in to focus. Leaders somehow manage to nd clarity in their thoughts and often enable others to do so as well. One way they succeed in thinking effectively is by systematically considering different levels of thought. Although it may seem strange to think about how thoughts are structured, the levels of thought framework, modied from (DuPont Company, 2008), can be very useful. A thought can be placed on the scale shown in Figure 1. Recognizing where ideas fall on this scale can aid in guiding ones thought process. Perhaps the best way to dene3 these different levels of thought is through a concrete example: designing a robust, easy-to-use, blood pressure meter.4 P RINCIPLE C ONCEPT S TRATEGY D ESIGN A CTION E VALUATION

Why?

Why?

How?

How?

What?

What?

Figure 1 Levels of Thought Framework (modied from DuPont Company, 2008).

P RINCIPLE and C ONCEPT sit at the top of the scale, and repLike many aspects of leadership, it is hard to dene these levels in any other way than how a painter denes lines with a brushmore art than science. 4 A sphygmomanometer, to be exact.
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resent elevated thoughts. I want to work on applied problems rather than theory may be considered a P RINCIPLE, while I could invent an easier way of measuring human blood pressure would be a C ONCEPT. This C ONCEPT-level thought is consistent with the previous P RINCIPLE, as measuring blood pressure is undoubtedly an applied problem. These high-level thoughts generally provide answers to questions that begin with why, such as why am I working on this project? S TRATEGY and D ESIGN stand in the center of the scale, and describe mid-level thoughts. Continuing with the example, a S TRATEGY may be to discard the idea of cufng the arm altogether. This poses the problem of measuring blood pressure without a known strain to the blood vessels. S TRATEGY-level thoughts often result in multiple new obstacles, which are then addressed through D ESIGNlevel ideas. A potential D ESIGN may be an electronic device that uses a microphone to listen to blood ow turbulence, without constricting the arm in any way. As one considers how turbulence may be connected to blood pressure, one approaches lower-level thoughts. Most of what is traditionally considered engineering work takes place at the D ESIGN-level, and involves nding answers to questions that begin with how? The remaining two levels, A CTION and E VALUATION, lie at the bottom of the scale. A CTION-level thoughts are often tightly connected to D ESIGN ideas. What causes blood ow turbulence? would be an A CTION-level thought and would lead to the act of researching the answer to that question. E VALUATION is the more important of the lower-level thoughts, as it fuels higher-level thoughts such as C ONCEPTS and S TRATEGIES. An E VALUATION-level question, such as what does my implementation accomplish? and what can be done to improve it? may connect back up to the D ESIGN level, or even instigate a new C ONCEPT-level idea. Training oneself to be aware of what level one is (or should be) thinking at, can enable effective thinking. It can, most importantly, help resolve frustrating standstills in research. For instance, realE NGINEERING L EADERSHIP R EVIEW

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ization that one is unable to identify a viable D ESIGN, may push one back to reconsider ones S TRATEGY. Alternatively, an A CTIONlevel thought may help spur creativity and result in a novel C ON CEPT . Researching the causes of blood ow turbulence may beget a new C ONCEPT of measuring something completely different, yet still correlated to blood pressure. At rst, attempting to place ones ideas in the levels of thought framework may feel articial and perhaps even counter-productive. However, this type of systematic thinking can quickly become an effortless component of ones standard thought process. The author has found it immensely useful not only in research problems, but also in graduate-level coursework, where there is likely to be more of a disconnect with ones undergraduate experiences. Students may take courses from other departments, especially in interdisciplinary elds such as biomedical engineering. Structuring ones own thoughts when exposed to a new concept will likely enable better integration and adoption of new material, despite interdisciplinary disconnects.5 Failing to do so may cause students to miss important connections and inhibit their ability to construct useful insights into the material.

Conclusion
Early career academic research can be particularly intimidating to rst- and second-year doctoral students. While the obstacles in graduate school are certainly formidable, surpassing them need not necessitate a miracle. A systematic approach to setting and sticking to self-development goals can present students with a means to navigate the rst few years of graduate school. Engineering students are already equipped with many of the tools
This has been an active research area in education and learning. There are parallels here with Blooms (Anderson et al., 2000) and Finks (Fink, 2003) learning taxonomies.
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necessarily to become effective researchers and creative thinkers. By embracing the self-leadership skills exposed in this article, the author has no doubt engineering doctoral students will succeed in becoming highly-inuential leaders of the future.
[ELR

Acknowledgements
The author would like to extend his most sincere gratitude to the reviewers, whose comments played a signicant role in the development of this manuscript.

References
P.G. Altbach. Doctoral Education: Present Realities and Future Trends. International Handbook of Higher Education, pages 6581, 2006. L.W. Anderson, D.R. Krathwohl, P.W. Airasian, K.A. Cruikshank, R.E. Mayer, P. Pintrich, J. Raths, and M. Wittrock. A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Blooms Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Allyn & Bacon, 2000. A. Carsrud, M. Brannback, J. Elfving, and K. Brandt. Motivations: The Entrepreneurial Mind and Behavior. Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind, pages 141165, 2009. David Colcleugh. Leadership and Leading in Groups and Organizations. APS501: University of Toronto, 2008. DuPont Company. Components of thought. DuPont Canada with Charles Krone., 2008. L.D. Fink. Creating Signicant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses. Jossey-Bass Inc Pub, 2003. ISBN 0787960551. J.M. Kouzes and B.Z. Posner. The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. The Jossey-Bass Reader on Educational Leadership, pages 6372, 2007a. J.M. Kouzes and B.Z. Posner. The Leadership Challenge. John Wiley & Sons, 2007b. ISBN 0787968331. E NGINEERING L EADERSHIP R EVIEW

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Kucukelbir E.A. Locke. Self-set Goals and Self-efcacy as Mediators of Incentives and Personality. In Miriam Erez, Uwe Kleinbeck, and Henk Thierry, editors, Work Motivation in the Context of a Globalizing Economy, page 13. Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001. ISBN 080582815X. NSERC. NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards Program, 2011. URL http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/students-etudiants/ ug-pc/usra-brpc_eng.asp. G. Pahl. Engineering Design: A Systematic Approach. Springer Verlag, 2007. ISBN 1846283183. The Economist. The Disposable Academic: Why Doing a PhD is Often a Waste of Time, December 16 2010. URL http://www.economist. com/node/17723223.

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