Julie Gould: 00:09
Hi, it’s Julie Gould and this is Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. Welcome to this series on the podcast all about leadership.
Each episode in this series explores leadership from a different perspective. We’ll hear from academic leaders, research leaders, industry leaders, young leaders, as well as someone who studies leadership and what it really means.
As part of the conversations, I tried to find out what they think leadership is, how they got to these positions that they’re in, where they learnt their skills and what they think of the scientific leadership we have at the moment.
There is a big drive to increase diversity in leadership positions, and Charu Kaushic is on a mission to make this happen. Charu is the scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Infection and Immunity. And she is a research group leader at McMaster University, where she studies women’s health and reproduction.
So in this episode, we cover diversity in leadership and why it is important, adapting your personality to fit a certain style of leadership and also what leadership courses really teach you.
So to get the ball rolling, I asked Charu how she defines leadership.
Charu Kaushic: 01:32
Leadership to me is being a role model, having a sphere of influence that others don’t. And C, being able to use that to make changes, you know, or do things better. Or, yeah, really about making change.
For a lot of people, leadership is about personal ambitions.
Right, like, do you have the power?
Do people see you as having the power? You know, so there’s different perceptions of it. For me, personally, it’s an opportunity to make things better.
Julie Gould: 1.50
Young people are often encouraged to take on leadership roles as they move up the career ladder, but why is this? What is it about these leadership positions that make them leadership positions?
Charu Kaushic: 2:00
Well, again, because all of these positions come with responsibilities and opportunities to shape and guide, you know, whatever the sphere of influence is.
You know, so if you are an associate dean of education, then you, as the leader, have an opportunity to shape those programmes, and how those programmes are delivered, and who gets into those programmes. So that’s your sphere of influence.
You know, if you are a vice-president of research at a university, then you have the opportunity to have your voice heard on what are the important priorities for research for your university.
You know, make some decisions around those, be able to figure out if not, why, or what, at least the how.
Right, so those are all opportunities to shape things, and to make a change and improve things.
Julie Gould: 03:31
So what do you think are the sort of skills that are needed for someone to be in a leadership position?
Charu Kaushic: 03:36
Um, protoypically, you know, I would say the current leadership model is of a person who projects confidence, who projects calm competence, confidence and has that voice that basically convinces everybody that what they’re saying is the right thing and will lead to achieving the vision.
Right. So that’s what everybody currently looks for in a leader. And that’s why leadership positions are still, for the last 20 years, are dominated by men. Not because women are not rising through the ranks, but at a certain point they hit that ceiling, because that projection of competence, confidence, convincing people that their vision is the way to move things, is a very Alpha white male strategy.
And the corporate leadership, most leaderships, are still functioning at that.
Julie Gould: 04:42
Why doesn’t this model fit most women?
Charu Kaushic: 04:47
A lot of women are very hard on their own competence, right? I think Hillary Clinton said that in an interview, that she’s hired hundreds of men and women into positions, and most frequently women will come after they get the position and say, “Why did you hire me? I didn’t think I was gonna get this position.”
And I can certainly see that of myself, that I didn’t think I was gonna get this position, because I could see so many gaps in my climb up through the ranks.
For most men, as per, you know, Hillary Clinton’s interview, they will come and say “What took you so long? I’m amazing.”
Right? So that competence and confidence difference is where women hit the ceiling. So either you override that by adapting your personality, so you become people like me who can speak up, who are not afraid to speak up multiple times, not afraid to be the loud voice on the table. And adapt your personality to look and act confident. Or you’re not considered a leader.
Julie Gould: 06:06
Okay, but I can see another “or” here. So either you change your personality and adapt, or you don’t become a leader.
Or, (and here’s the other ‘or’) the current view of leadership and leadership models in academia are themselves adapted. Do you see that happening?
Charu Kaushic: 06:23
So you know, it should adapt, because that’s not to say, and I certainly know, and have a lot of admiration for leaders who fit into sort of the prototypical leader, because they are generous people who have been … executed amazing visions and have done as much as they could for people who work with them.
You know, so they’re amazing leaders who fit into that alpha male, you know, phenotype.
But there are also an equal number of them, or more, who are very focused on, sort of, their own ambitions, and what they want to, you know, do and succeed.
Bringing in more women, and a lot of women like to basically get consensus views, you know, so they’re not afraid. In fact, they want to hear what other people’s views are, and how they can build consensus so that they can be a forward movement with everybody on board.
And I think both models have good complementarity. And I think seeing the, and having open recognition of that is really, really important. Which is why women occupy a lot of the middle management. And men occupy sort of the top-tier level, because consensus-making is important at that middle management level.
So having more women at the table starts to bring in a different point of view of how to make decisions and how to execute vision. So the hope is that as you go from 10% or 20% of women sitting around the table, you have 50% women sitting around the table, you can get the benefit of both kinds of leadership.
Julie Gould: 08:15
At the beginning of our conversation, you mentioned that you weren’t that typical personality type for a leader.
Does that mean that you actually adapted who you were in order to prove to others that you were just as good as them?
Charu Kaushic: 08:31
You know, I come from a culture where I grew up with my mother continuously telling me, “You’re not special, don’t try to stand out or attract attention.”
You know, so that was kind of like my upbringing to say, “You’re one of the crowd, don’t think you’re special, Blend in.” Which does not fit in at all with the North American culture, it doesn’t fit in with carving a career out in STEM, being a woman, being a racialized woman in this society.
So you can just imagine the adaptations that had to happen, right. So even through even though I got scholarships on the way. You know, I had lots of recognitions for my PhD work. It was just sort of that humbleness to sort of say, “I’m honoured, I’m humbled, you know that my work is being recognized.”
Coming into North America. I thought that that’s how I was supposed to be, that I was I was doing great work. I was trying very hard.
It was clear that my papers were getting published. I was doing really good work. So people would recognize that. And it took me a very long time to realize that here you actually have to talk yourself up.
You know, people perceive you for who you project yourself to be. And that continues to this day, that I see a lot of my male colleagues, you know, sort of build this image, if I may call that, you know, of success.
And that’s what they project. And that’s what works very well in this society.
So as a woman, and as a racialized researcher, that doesn’t … that’s not who you are, or your experiences don’t match with that.
So you have to adapt, right, and it doesn’t come easily. So I started to, you know, for example, talk about my own research, or talk it up and give media interviews, recognizing that it’s my responsibility to my funders, and to my institution, that if my research was something to be worth talking about, I needed to talk to people about it and disseminate that information.
Julie Gould: 11:05
I want to talk a little bit now about your own leadership positions. So you hold two different positions of leadership. One, as a research group leader, and the other as a leader of an institute of research. Now how did those two different leadership positions compare?
Charu Kaushic: 11:22
I’m very different in those two roles. You know, so when I’m running my own institute team, and my lab team, you know, the lab team is mostly trainees. So you do require somebody who can provide guidance, direction, mentorship, you know, in terms of where they’re going.
The institute team of about 8 or 10 people that I provide leadership to is really professionals who know their jobs, who know exactly what they are supposed to be doing, have very high level of responsibility.
You know, so that team I really lead by sort of what would be my comfort zone, which is consensus building, right?
So we put together a strategic plan. Every member of my team participated in that, regardless of whether they were doing administrative roles, or they had PhDs, and they were specialists.
You know, we all sat around the table multiple times over a year-and-a-half, and had a good discussion of … ‘How would we do this? What would be the best outcomes? What are the different voices.’ And you know, everybody had an opportunity to chip in and give their opinions. And every good idea was incorporated, regardless of who it came from.
When you said, when I sit at the upper-leadership tables, you know, I’m one of the 13 people, or one of those 15, 16 people dominated by men.
And there, you have to speak up. You have to fight for your ideas. You have to be insistent that, you know, this is important, you know, this has to be looked at, more than others. because your voice needs to be, have a higher weight than everybody else’s voice.
You know, so, and it’s an experience, we have a community of practice within the female leaders of that table so that we can support each other when we speak up.
Julie Gould: 13:31
One of the other roles of leadership that you mentioned earlier was that leaders are influencers. So when you sit in these two different leadership roles that you have, do you also have different types of influence? And how do you make those influences come about?
Charu Kaushic: 13:48
Yeah, you know, so your sphere of influence is direct and indirect, right? So direct is my institute’s funding, you know, the $30 million, that pretty much are within my purview.
And my predecessors may have chosen to just do what they think was right. I have a complete influence on how I determine what’s the best ways to make the decisions. And then the other sphere of influence which is indirect, is where I’m not the ultimate decision maker, but certainly my voice counts, right?
So you have an indirect way of advising, influencing, providing your best advice. And that’s where your competence and confidence comes into play.
Julie Gould: 14:43
And what about for someone who is just starting out their own research lab? They’re a new group leader. So what is their sphere of influence like? And how do they build up their leadership style and profile?
Charu Kaushic: 14:55
For early-career investigators, you do not get trained when you start running a lab, to be a leader? You know, because leadership basically means …First of all, you have to figure out your own value set.
And then you have to bring in people who, who fall within that sphere of that value set.
And then you have to mentor people to (and your team) to mirror that, and the outputs that come out of it. But nobody actually tells you that. You know, you don’t even get to learn research management, which is how do you manage your finances when you’re in the research lab?
You know, how do you mentor people? Right, so most people will sort of have a style that they cannot articulate, clearly, to themselves or to others.
And then there is an unclear expectation that everybody who works for them will follow their instructions or their unarticulated expectations. You know, so having that instead of learning it by trial and error. And some people learn, if you have a learning personality that reflects on how things went well, and what went wrong, you will learn from those experiences, but it takes a while.
And other people never learn. They just do what they do. And everybody around them either learns to adapt or falls by the wayside, wayside, right.
So that’s why some graduate students will say, “Oh, my experience was amazing.” And other people in the same lab will sort of say, “I was miserable.”
Because those frameworks and expectations and leadership style doesn’t match with what they were expecting.
Julie Gould 16:49
So these leadership courses that are recommended for early-career researchers and for all researchers, really, what do they do in your experience? What do they teach?
Charu Kaushic: 16:59
Taking these leadership courses doesn’t make you a leader. I think it helps you articulate yourself and provides you opportunities to think about those things for yourself.
Because most of us are too busy to really sit down and sort of say, “What should I think about? What is my leadership style?”
So enrolling in these professional-development or leadership courses really helps you to find that space and that guidance from somebody who does this, to be able to have that clearly in your head so that now you can actually go and articulate that more clearly. You know, so I did that kind of in my late mid-career.
And I was able to identify, and say “Yeah, that’s my style. That’s how I like to do things.” And then to learn and find my areas of discomfort. Like, now I know why I always hate to tell people to do their work, because that’s my area of discomfort.
I don’t like to confront or conflict with people to say “You’re not doing your job.” So how can I get better at that? You know, and how can I do it in a way where I can overcome my discomfort, but also make it comfortable for the other person?
You know, so it helps you with those skills. And I can’t emphasize the earlier you do it, the better. Because people around you are happier and you yourself are a much better and happier person because nobody enjoys seeing people miserable around them.
Julie Gould: 18:35
Definitely not. So if you don’t mind, one last question about leadership, but maybe a slightly meta one. How well do you think science is served by its leaders?
Charu Kaushic: 18:52
I guess that would depend on the old-style leaders or the new leaders. So I think … Is science being served well?
I don’t know. I think we are now in an era of flux, where the old leadership style is still very much dominant and holding on.
But I don’t know that they have the support and respect of the younger scientists and trainees.
So, hopefully, as things, you know, as the older generation sort of passes over, the newer people who are much more culturally aware, or aware of the changes, or aware of the change in expectations get up to those levels, then they will serve well. Because to serve well, really is a subjective thing.
You know, the served well includes a respect for who is in that position. So when leaders are respected, they serve well.
Julie Gould: 20:00
Okay, Charu, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me about leadership. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Charu Kaushic: 20:07
Thank you so much, Julie.
Julie Gould: 20:11
So before I sign off, I just wanted to ask that if you learnt something new, you had an epiphany or you just enjoyed listening to this episode of Working Scientist, please do let us know by leaving a review wherever you get your podcasts. That’s all for today. Thanks for listening. I’m Judy Gould.
