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Episode 2: What you do when you want to grow
31 Plays16 days ago
In this episode, Sam and Steve talk about how they try to grow their skills. What kinds of strategies work early in your career? What works later in your career? We call this the "get over it" episode.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Off the Path' Podcast
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to Off the Path, a show where we talk about research careers, especially our own. I'm Sam Ladner. And I'm Steve Portigal. Sam and I have been having a bunch of conversations about research careers. And with Off the Path, we're going to share those conversations with you.
00:00:30
Speaker
What do you do to continue to grow and learn? That was what the one you were thinking? That's the one that you were thinking and I'm just affirming what you were thinking. Oh, okay. But not taking any responsibility myself.
00:00:41
Speaker
I'm just going to push it back on you. So you said. You were the one who decided you wanted to go in this direction. So go ahead. Why miss a chance to be passive aggressive if it's in front of me? Why would I ever pass that up?
00:00:57
Speaker
I don't know, because ah it's corrosive to your soul, maybe. Maybe that's why. Maybe that's why. I don't think it's corrosive. You know, I actually been thinking a little bit about
Discussing 'The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem'
00:01:06
Speaker
this. about I read ah a book recently called The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. Did I tell you about this book?
00:01:12
Speaker
I don't think so. There's a few Easter eggs in the book that are surprising, and if you're not really paying close attention, you will miss them, but they are the most interesting. Apparently, he had a long relationship with Ayn Rand met her as 18-year-old.
00:01:31
Speaker
eighteen year old And had a relationship with her, as he described, became sexual at some point for 20 years. And then he eventually broke it off with her because he thought she was too self-absorbed.
00:01:46
Speaker
So I was like, okay. after After 20 years, like, you know what, I've had enough. That's right. After 20 years. I don't know what the straw was that broke the camel's back in for him. But so to me, that was kind of like a ah like a profiling opportunity. Like I was like, OK, what kind of person would have a relationship with Ayn Rand for 20 years and then eventually break it off?
00:02:08
Speaker
I was like, OK. So my point is take it with a grain of salt. The six pillars of self-esteem that he talks about, and I can't remember each six one of them, but... The thing that I got from the book a lot was like, basically, you have to be a grown up in order to have strong self-esteem and confidence and and to show up with like a presence and have courage and all of these things that most of us
Transitioning in Careers: Self-Empowerment and Mentorship
00:02:33
Speaker
want to have.
00:02:34
Speaker
In order to do that, you have to be a grown up. That's more or less the message of the book. And I completely agree with that. Being a grown up is kind of like when you realize that no one's there to like your manager isn't there to parent you.
00:02:49
Speaker
Your client is certainly not there to parent you. You have to parent yourself. That's really kind of a weird transition point. I think when you become like senior enough that nobody thinks to guide you like it's kind of on you now.
00:03:03
Speaker
I don't know if we've ever made this an explicit theme, if we've even talked enough, but that is sort of a lesson or principle that applies to this work context. And it applies to our lives and ourselves as we grow and go through different decades. And it applies to us in romantic relationships and in friendship relationships, to being a grown-up advice and sort of all the pieces that go with that. And that you have to take care of yourself in order to do anything.
00:03:32
Speaker
It makes me think about get over it and how get over it is the intent and the delivery makes all the difference. Get over it is, and I think there's just some things in the news most recently where it's a absolutely dismissive, patronizing way of saying your concerns are irrelevant.
00:03:54
Speaker
But get over it can also be, you know, an invitation to parent yourself, an invitation to self-empowerment. and Maybe it's not the right phrasing, but I feel like I've been in situations with people that I know where I want them to get over it. And maybe that's selfish of me because I don't want to try to fill the need that they have to fill themselves. But, you know, sometimes you want someone to have that realization that you're describing that and hu they hold the key, right? They themselves. Yeah.
00:04:23
Speaker
And that the role that we might find ourselves in as a supportive person or a mentor or a guide or advisor, whatever that is to is to tell people they have the key. There's an Eagles lyric in here somewhere that we don't need to go into. You know, showing showing people that. and i don't know. I want to, like, take back and get over it from to the assholes of the world.
00:04:47
Speaker
Well, it depends on who you're talking to, of course. Like if you tell yourself, get over it, that's a different story than some abusive person telling you to get over something that is legitimately a concern.
00:04:59
Speaker
The wording is is the key here, but I think there's a sentiment that says you identified a problem for yourself and there's a future state where you can choose to have that not be as much of a problem.
00:05:13
Speaker
Well, I think that word is most important, choose. You can choose. And I think for me, when I think about growth that I've had in my life, it's It is that realization that I have a choice.
00:05:24
Speaker
Like, was this a fair situation? No. Do I like what happened? No.
Influence and Impact in Research Careers
00:05:30
Speaker
Can I even defend how that person or that group managed the relationship? No, I don't defend any of that. But what are you going to do about it?
00:05:39
Speaker
I've said to myself, now that sometimes means you can walk away. But you you can't have your cake and eat it too, as it were, right? You can't say, this research was really good and they didn't act on it and I'm really upset about it and I've done everything I can to get them to see it as valuable and they still don't, period. So what are you going to do about it?
00:06:01
Speaker
Are you going to walk away? i mean, is that fair? No. Do you have to walk away? No, you can stay and accept the situation and the power that you have and don't have. Or you can say, well, what are you going to do about it? Well, you know what? I am going to do something about this. I'm going to make sure that they really do respect this research or that they really do hear these recommendations.
00:06:22
Speaker
And I'm going to do everything I can to make that happen. And if you try that and it doesn't work, then what are you going to do? What are you going to do about it? Basically, to me, that's the question. This just triggers me a little bit on the overwhelming discussion, I think, for many years around researchers having impact, researchers being judged on right decisions and actions taken by other people that in some sort of org structures, your performance is assessed based on ah thing that you don't control.
00:06:53
Speaker
Mm hmm. I guess like a lot of these things both can be true, right? Striving to do better and being creative and building relationships and doing what it takes to have impact. Let's say that's your recommendations to get adopted or the thinking that you brought forward is incorporated in how other people behave. i mean, being influential.
00:07:14
Speaker
Yes, like that's why we're, most of us are doing it to have that outcome. And that's the value that we claim and the value that we bring. But it's outside our control.
00:07:25
Speaker
yeah No one can make anyone do anything. Even if you put a gun to somebody's head, they're still going to make a choice to do it or not do it. That's right. That's right. So I fear about the culture and research sort of perpetuates the like self-flagellation. the If I had just done this other thing and I don't know what it is yet, then...
00:07:46
Speaker
this other person would have taken some action and you can't control that. So I like your scenario. I did this. I tried really hard. I got some of what I hoped for and I didn't get some other things. What am I going to do?
00:07:58
Speaker
Am I going to keep going? Am I going to give up? Am I going to reframe my expectations? Am I going to learn new things? Mm-hmm. I think those all are empowering. You have failed because this other person didn't do something. It's it's not helpful for the individual. It's not helpful for the practice. It doesn't give you anything.
00:08:14
Speaker
but Let's talk a little bit about the self-flagellation culture that you just mentioned. You know, somebody comes to me and asks for advice, like, how do I grow? ah Once I've become senior enough that people aren't giving me day-to-day feedback, you know, I have all the education I think I need.
00:08:28
Speaker
How do I grow? and This self-flagellation culture, how would that play out in that conversation, do you think? It's the thing we always do in research. We're like, what do you mean by grow? And what does that look like today? And what does it look like in the future? And what's blocking you? And how do you perceive those things? And, you know, you look for people's baked in models that maybe aren't true.
00:08:52
Speaker
and you know, someone is senior. They've probably already grown and reflected on and and kind of made some changes. You might ask somebody about where they have been as well as where they want to go and what that looks like.
00:09:04
Speaker
But if you're a self-flagellating member of the research culture, yeah what are you going to do that's going to get in your own way, in your opinion? ah like how do we perpetuate self-flagellation as individuals? Yeah, how do we do that?
00:09:18
Speaker
I think it's like, is the phrase like self-talk? I think there's kind of a language that I think like creeps up in small ways. And you were sort of modeling it in a scenario a moment ago. Like, i did a good job, but... or ah We should be passionate about our work. Otherwise, like, why do it?
00:09:37
Speaker
But I think you can deconstruct, like, how do I feel about the experience I had data gathering? And how do I feel about the. Me, individually, my opinion, not my stakeholders, not blah, blah, blah, but me personally. Yeah.
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah, there's those moments in, i mean, I think in data gathering, but especially in sense making where yeah it's just triumphant and joyful or it's like something washing over you like, oh, I understand something new and I understand something new based on what I just learned and how I'd heard somebody else talking about it. Right. And now I've kind of unlocked something that I can use to bequeath or gift this insight in a way that it's an opportunity for us or for somebody else.
Finding Joy and Satisfaction in Research
00:10:22
Speaker
Very satisfying to do that. Yeah. And the part that's about the handoff or the influence or the transfer or I mean, how many conversations have you had with people or experiences yourselves where like you might not see the results for literally years?
00:10:36
Speaker
Right. Like depending on how much observability you have and multiple conversations, looking for the right people, the right moments to sort of see the thing that you think you want to measure in kind of a binary way to prove whether or not all this aha stuff and satisfaction actually has a consequence. And so I would love us all to sort of keep that in mind. Like, this was awesome.
00:10:59
Speaker
I learned something. It has power. I know how it could change what our company does or what our team does or what my client does. I know this could really make a better product, make more money, create better experiences for customers, open up new lines of revenue, change the world of how people do disintermediated remote data transfer, you know, retail. What have you. well you know That sort of innovator's mindset, that excitement about potential, it's maybe like necessary but not sufficient. But can you or we in incubate that sense in ourselves and be like, yeah, I nailed it or we nailed it or we had these amazing moments and found these things.
00:11:40
Speaker
And now there's this other part that is really, really important to me and important to my organization, which is activating, socializing. Downstream impact. all that stuff. And to maybe sort of decouple, like, I did a great job at this. I was excited. I was stimulated. I found something new.
00:11:58
Speaker
good at this. And that part is mostly within my control, right? There's, oh, we I wasn't given enough time. I couldn't scope it properly. The recruiting wasn't. there There's reasons why, you know, but I would say, and this may be naive of me, I would say sort of the execution of the research is probably more in the senior person's control than the activation and impact part of it.
00:12:22
Speaker
Yeah. That's true. So I like this kind of like these two big buckets that you talked about. And I think the let's just call it the activation bucket, like the impact people act on your things.
00:12:33
Speaker
That is the only one that people really talk about inside organizations. And when they talk about growing their career, they talk about having that bucket perfected.
00:12:45
Speaker
And they rarely, if ever, talk about that first bucket that you talked about, which is, I guess, internal experience. I became a researcher because I'm fascinated with humans. And I'm fascinated with how they use technology. And I want to understand something new about this area.
00:13:02
Speaker
And it's almost as if that doesn't get any attention. at all. Haven't we beat that out of people? Have we? Don't say that. You're going be able to get a job. Don't that on your LinkedIn profile.
00:13:14
Speaker
No one cares about how much you love studying people. They care about you're going to help their business grow or why they should invest. Well, that might be true. I mean, that might be true. They don't care about that. It's not going to get you a job. That's totally fine. But that doesn't change the fact that you, as an individual, need to construct a sense of meaning every day.
00:13:34
Speaker
And if you outsource that, to that second bucket of impact and activation, you're going to have many meaningless days. I called it self-flagellation, but I think that's a more nuanced way of of of looking at it.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yes, if you seek meaning, it's it's less about beating yourself up and more like where do you derive satisfaction and meaning and joy
Personal Meaning vs. External Validation in Work
00:13:57
Speaker
this work? I have a bit of a theory as to why that activation bucket is the only one that we tend to pay attention to generally as researchers. And I think it's because researchers tend to be conscientious people.
00:14:09
Speaker
They spend a lot of time learning methodologies and perfecting them. And dotting the I's and crossing the T's in anticipation of the big aha moment. it It isn't just conscientiousness for conscientiousness sake, but it's still there, right? Like we are careful, thoughtful people. We tend to think things through.
00:14:29
Speaker
And unfortunately, I think that also comes in when we talk about impact and satisfaction with our jobs. All we tend to think about is what are the metrics that are coming toward us to say that we've done our jobs?
00:14:42
Speaker
And they're all in that external validation. Some vice president thought you did a good job. Way to go. And we just get inculcated into this like I got to be conscientious to my numbers kind of thing. And my numbers, I didn't even make any for myself.
00:14:59
Speaker
I didn't create these impact measures. They just came from HR or whatever. And I think we do that. I think we do that perhaps in a uniquely cultural way as researchers because we are very focused on humans in general. That's kind of who we are.
00:15:17
Speaker
But also because we're just really conscientious and we just haven't paused for a second and say, wait, what what matters to me? Like, what do I care about? And being conscientious about what you yourself care about, nobody's going to tell you to do that.
00:15:32
Speaker
Right. Now we're really building on and get over it, I think. I think, yes. I get over it is sort of saying stop doing something, but there should be like a positive thing, like get on it. Like get on the part about the satisfaction and the meaning that you drive. Go towards that light a little bit more.
00:15:48
Speaker
I like that reframing. Instead of get over whatever is bothering you, get on the thing that's going to help you. Yeah. I know maybe conversations like this one or things that we're involved in in our communities can just be a a little bit about but giving permission.
00:16:03
Speaker
This reminders that we were sparked by this field for probably many, many reasons, but I bet there's some commonality in that excitement, that discovery, that This isn't even about researchers, right? Everybody has to find meaning in their work. And most people's work is of course doing something that someone else experiences or consumes.
00:16:22
Speaker
I don't know, like you hear chefs talking about like, well, they like to feed people. yeah You know, if you talk to librarians, it's a service industry. right They really, really care about that. I don't know. Research seems to sort of straddle.
00:16:35
Speaker
i don't think it's fully a service industry, but it does have elements of that. But there's also something very backstage-y for us. Like we like feeding people, but we like making discoveries in the kitchen as well late at night when there's no one around. Absolutely. I think chefs do that as well, but that's sort of the conviviality of feeding people is just so much part of that industry's language right now.
00:16:55
Speaker
I think you can over-index on either one of those things. So if the feeding people is like the impact bucket and the discovery is like the self-guided meaning bucket, you can over-index on either one of those things.
00:17:10
Speaker
If you think about academics and how we tend to say, oh, that's academic, what you're implicitly saying is like, this person is so caught up in their own discovery and their own exploration.
00:17:21
Speaker
None of what they're saying has any relevance to anyone. Okay, fine. But are they okay with that? Like, did they manage to do something what great? But on the other hand, as applied researchers, I don't think we talk about over-indexing on feeding others. Because I think that's what you're saying, right? You're over-indexing on like, oh, it has to feed everybody. And if it doesn't feed anybody, it doesn't work. It's not good. And I don't have any satisfaction. Yeah.
00:17:48
Speaker
If you're thinking about back to the original prompt, the prompt was, how do you continue to grow when you're already senior? Personally, I think these two buckets, there's something to that.
Analogies and Lessons in Growth and Innovation
00:18:00
Speaker
If you are using the chef analogy again, you've nailed it, right? Like, you know how to do service every night. Things are, you know, all arriving on the plate at the same time. They're all warm.
00:18:14
Speaker
The guests are very satisfied. The food is, you know, often creating excellent results. Terrific. But then you want to grow a little bit more. I think you need to go back into the kitchen.
00:18:26
Speaker
The front of the house is going to be fine. And there'll be some nights when, you know, maybe the guests aren't liking the new thing. But you need to do that. You need to grow yourself. Do you watch the bear?
00:18:38
Speaker
I haven't seen the bear. Everybody says I should see it. Okay, why is this relevant? It's a really great show because it's a about a brilliant chef who can make things that are just incredible in the kitchen.
00:18:54
Speaker
i think at one point he writes up his philosophies and it's about perfection. And i think tied with that is sort of a never being satisfied. And you can see...
00:19:05
Speaker
Right. The show is also about trauma. And, you know, I think the trauma that a lot of these people have makes them unable to feel any satisfaction or joy. oh that's really sad.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's an intense show. And I think there's a lot of precarity in the situation that they're in. You know, running a restaurant is very risky financially. And I think, don't know, part of my frustration in that show, which is and good, like you feel for the characters, is why can't they see that they are awesome and just take like a moment of satisfaction and say like, I have accomplished all this and it's good.
00:19:39
Speaker
You know, I think we have that idea of like, you know, never letting up and being relentless. You can always do better and always do do more is a terrible thing for the soul. Yes, indeed. And the bear is about, again, many, many things, but one of them is like a character who can't get off of that, who can't yeah ever take a moment to feel like he's accomplished something. And and that's pretty sad.
00:20:03
Speaker
it It is sad. And I think, you know, that makes great storytelling. Why is that? What are all the traumas? What are the consequences to everyone that set up that situation? How does that harm everyone else around them?
00:20:13
Speaker
How are they sort of similarly pulled into, i think, a professional culture that says hustle, hustle, hustle and improve, improve, improve. And perfection is just this sort of militant religion.
00:20:25
Speaker
And, you know, I think we've sort of seen stories in our culture where that is inspiring. We've seen stories in our culture where that's toxic. Like, ah was it Whiplash about the Whiplash is a drum yeah yeah good example.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, when you think about the the the story to me of Whiplash is actually kind of interesting because the kid in the in the story, he has real Yeah. And yet he doesn't really know it. Like he kind of hopes it's like this brittle hope that he has talent. And the teacher knows this.
00:20:57
Speaker
The thing about getting to be like that junior person with this perfectionistic teacher who has probably really bad faith desires for you. Let's imagine Whiplash in the years in the future, and the drummer did everything this teacher wanted him to do and got to an amazing level of skill.
00:21:15
Speaker
And now he's stuck because he had this, like, hard-driving, excellence, relentless, never-stopping kind of improvement ethos. And he never paused ever to really examine, like, where could I possibly grow?
00:21:35
Speaker
What is exciting for me? Instead, he just like internalized all the the hardness of you're not good enough, you're not good enough. And even if he had not broken down in the movie, which he did, but let's say he graduated to an amazing level.
00:21:50
Speaker
he would eventually break down. You cannot do that. You cannot grow if you're constantly getting your satisfaction or your validation from that impact bucket from somebody else. You cannot grow.
00:22:03
Speaker
You're reminding me of a book by the drummer from Rush, Neil Peart. Neil Peart. Yeah. He wrote about, i mean, he was, let's just say, one of the world's top drummers for decades.
00:22:16
Speaker
And he decided to relearn how to drum at a certain point. He sought out some different kind of drum teacher. And it sounded like he had to kind of unwind or unlearn everything and then rebuild it back up.
00:22:32
Speaker
That must have been incredibly hard for him because he was a virtuoso at that point. Yeah, and had been extremely successful, had sort of had the measurable impact. right. And the, you know, the adulation and was sort of considered up there.
00:22:46
Speaker
And maybe we shouldn't put it kind of on a linear thing. Maybe he didn't want to be better as like a plus eight of what he was or a plus 23, but maybe there's more a qualitative evolution that he was seeking. I think...
00:22:57
Speaker
And if, you know, a Rush person would know this better than me, because i just don't really remember. But he had unlearn a lot and embrace some new models as to what drumming was, what the hands were doing, how you thought about it, what rhythm was, all these sort of very fundamental things.
00:23:11
Speaker
And that was, no one made him do that, right? He wanted to, I think he wanted meaning. Right. Like I've been doing this for a long time and I'm how do i continue to find meaning by growing?
00:23:24
Speaker
Yeah. I think for him, they were the same thing. right How do I get better at this? That really reminds me of something I talk about in the the class that I teach through Epic. i do this little mini section on like self-assessment and I help people kind of understand their skills that they're really good at and all the skills that maybe they have neglected a little bit that might help them grow.
00:23:44
Speaker
And I talk about when you reach a certain level, nobody knows how to grow you anymore. Like they're not going to be able to. And so talk a little bit about Tiger Woods, right? Tiger Woods at some point well totally reworked his swing, which is a crazy thing to do.
00:24:03
Speaker
It is really hard to do as a golfer to redo your swing. Not to mention Tiger Woods reworked. Why would he have to rework his swing? He was already doing almost perfect swing every single time, but he decided he wanted to try to see if he could make it even better. So he had to get a new teacher, a new coach, and he had to try different exercises that he never tried before. And then he had to stop doing the stuff that he did before.
00:24:26
Speaker
Obviously, he was such a winning golfer. There was no need to do any of this. In fact, there's a risk, right? Both of those very successful artist performers took a risk.
00:24:37
Speaker
They did. Yeah, they took big risks. Obviously, it paid off in both cases. And so the way you're talking about relearning how to do the basic stuff, the foundational stuff, how many researchers do you know have really done that?
00:24:54
Speaker
Like, I'm going to really get at the core of my interviewing skills, for example. I'm going to redo that. I think people refresh and I think people branch out.
00:25:05
Speaker
ah It's fine for me to talk about Neil Peart, but to imagine doing something like that myself is absolutely terrifying. You're not even Neil Peart with yes millions of dollars and many Grammys.
00:25:16
Speaker
And also exceptionally talented. I mean, yeah, virtuoso. Right. So for those of us that are like pretty good at something or very good at something. Right. And take that on. i mean, I have a lot of sort of why bother reactions and yeah Right. The Neil Peart example and Tiger Woods, they're inspirational. But yeah, how does that connect to the sort of the world that we live in and are our resources? Well, one easy way I think a lot of people, particularly on the qual side, can do this is just to simply challenge themselves to start doing more quant. Hmm.
00:25:50
Speaker
and I don't really understand why people are hesitant to do that. But I think the reason they're hesitant to do that is because they think there's this like advanced technical knowledge that they will never have and cannot possibly have unless they were trained by, you know, Stephen Hawking at Oxford or something.
00:26:11
Speaker
And since that's not going to happen, they don't even go there. I don't know. What do you think? Is that why? Right. I think both quant and qual research are things that anyone, quote, can do a mediocre job at, like a passing job at. A passable job. Yeah. Right. And I have a limited exposure to quant people.
00:26:29
Speaker
But when I've met them, it's been sort of astonishing, like in a really great way. I worked with some quant people who are... being creative and subjective in the ways they tell stories and interpret things. and Right. you know And then they're working through a bunch of different frameworks to try to understand what something can be. And in some ways that made me feel like, oh, I actually have more in common with them Than you thought. Than I assumed.
00:26:54
Speaker
But it also makes it more intimidating because I think there is a technical barrier to get in there. And then the gulf between what I could do passably in quant and what someone who is this Stephen Hawking Yoda virtuoso with...
00:27:10
Speaker
tables and tables or whatever the format data comes in. Like, I want to be able to do that. And then I saw what someone could do and I'm like, you know, well, I'm out of here. Let me let me stick to where because being expert, I mean, to your point about this, this individual who's a senior IC, they've got some mastery and some success that is safe.
00:27:31
Speaker
You know, we use safe as a pejorative term, but like safe is good, right? To be competent and be able to like You're mentoring other people and you're... And know what you're doing.
00:27:42
Speaker
And you're rubbing shoulders with people who were previously your mentors. They're now your peers. And yeah, you know what you're doing. But, you know, you're making me think about discomfort as as growth. As opposed to pain, which is different. Yes. Yeah.
00:27:57
Speaker
Discomfort, you know, that was one of the things that I learned like in there on the rugby field is like how do you play with discomfort versus pain? And you need to know the difference. If you don't know the difference, you get seriously injured and perhaps can't play ever again, right? Like it's quite difficult. You know, runners have this problem a lot.
00:28:16
Speaker
Running with discomfort is a pretty normal thing, but you need to know when it crosses over into pain. i had this yoga instructor who once described it. He was hilarious. He was Czech and he described it. goes, that moment in the shower when it is hot, but not scalding.
00:28:35
Speaker
And so he was trying to teach us how to like not pull our muscles, you know, when we did deep bends and things like that. When you know it's going to be painful, you can prepare. But if you're completely like alienated from understanding pain for yourself, that's what the whole story of the Whiplash movie was about. was like he didn't know where pain was.
00:28:56
Speaker
He crossed well into pain and it was irrevocable harm. Yeah. So in a work situation, can we get slightly less abstract? So we're talking to a senior IC. They're asking about growing and we're saying, OK, we'll try something.
00:29:10
Speaker
Why not quant and try something that's uncomfortable? But now I think what you're saying is part of the advice. Yeah. right yeah Just like we're saying, we think the buckets are part of the advice to find the thing that's exciting to you. Find a safe way to be uncomfortable, but also be mindful about pain. yeah So yeah volunteering or and or creating some initiative on your own They don't feel qualified for with a deadline and a bunch of stakeholders eyes on it and no access to resources is is a recipe for pain.
00:29:42
Speaker
yeah I would agree. It is a recipe for pain. i actually think you're onto something there about the I mean, safe. we You're right. We use it as kind of a pejorative, but it does it's actually good to know what is a safe space to play.
00:29:56
Speaker
So you have an area that you know deeply. You're probably going to really understand when quant data comes back, what it it could look like, what it should look like. You're not like reaching for something that you've never heard anything about or know anything about. It's not the deadline with the lack of resources, you know, trifecta problem. Like, that sounds terrible. Like, why would you do that to yourself?
00:30:19
Speaker
I would always do these little forcing functions myself that were low stakes, but they gave me a reason to try something. So for example, like once, you know, i remember at Microsoft, I used to get these requests from time to time just to give a presentation to visiting customers, right? So customers were coming to do some kind of like tour or it was like a sales meeting or whatever. And from time to time, I was asked to get presentations about, hey, why don't you tell us about the future of work kind of thing? What are you working on? What kind of research do you have? And I had absolutely no need to do this.
00:30:54
Speaker
Like it wasn't going to be part of my review. In fact, most of these people that were asking were completely out of my line of reporting. So it wouldn't have made much difference on my annual performance review.
00:31:06
Speaker
It also wasn't like an opportunity to like meet people that were going to be like promoting me or whatever. They're completely different people. So why would I do it? Like, what was the point of that? And I thought, well, this is good practice.
00:31:19
Speaker
I'll put together little presentations and I'll see how the customers react and how the stakeholders react. And maybe I'll get some feedback. And then then I can tell stories like that I've already test drove.
00:31:31
Speaker
You know, so when I do have that chance with the vice president and he wants to know what's the future of work, I've already done it. And it was just uncomfortable because it's it's an extra thing on your plate. It's a sales type thing, which is not what I do. Right. So it was like, I'm not really sure what they're looking for. Like I had to learn.
00:31:50
Speaker
i thought that was a really good way of learning how to grow myself. There's a future proofing thing there. Like, I don't know what this is for, but it fills in a portfolio for things I might want to do.
00:32:02
Speaker
But it's also in a context that is low risk. so Yeah, it was. it's it's It's low risk and sort of delayed gratification, which sounds like growth. it As opposed to your next project, it's you investing in a time horizon that makes sense. And this might be slightly
Embracing Opportunities and Risks in Research
00:32:21
Speaker
adjacent, but thinking, as I do, from the world of consulting, where anyone that I've ever talked to has a story about Someone called me up and said, can you do X? And I said, yes.
00:32:33
Speaker
Like, I mean, that's the rule of being a consultant. Is it? i didn't know that rule. Is that when you have a prospective client that asks you about performing a certain service, There's obviously you come up with examples where that would be a bad idea.
00:32:46
Speaker
i think lots of people, market has found them and then they have said yes they've had to figure out how to do it as opposed to like you telling everybody what you do and then picking from a menu.
00:32:57
Speaker
That's not really how it works. Like people may come with a need and then you might pitch them something. Like I've had that happen where I think there's a thing that I could do for people and just saying that to yourself manifests it. Like, because then the next time somebody calls or you're like, oh, that thing I was thinking about doing that was talking to my friend Sam about, like, oh, here it is.
00:33:19
Speaker
I'm going to pitch it And I had this happen to me last fall. had a couple of requests for things where it was a little different and didn't always have clarity, like of what the request was, and we're not all using the same words and I always do it this way and they had sort of a different way for me to work.
00:33:38
Speaker
Here's an example. I led a how might we workshop that did not follow on from research that I had done. In fact, there was no research and all my guardrails for being good at that are about the thing we talked that activation bucket. Right. Like I'm good in those workshops to help people take action in a way that the presentation didn't sort of activate for them.
00:34:01
Speaker
Right. So we're going to brainstorm. We're going to brainstorm. and I'm going to remind them and sort of be their coach about what their research revealed. Well, I didn't have any research. I didn't know anything about their category. And I had to sort of do a thing that other people are good at. Like there's people that can do this.
00:34:16
Speaker
and And so here I was. i was stressed beforehand. Like, what am I going into? Like, this is not how it works. This is Not what I do. Yeah. It was super fun. i was super good at it.
00:34:28
Speaker
The client got a lot of value out of it. They actually didn't know like who I was in air quotes or what research was like. They saw me as the provider of this thing they had engaged me for.
00:34:39
Speaker
And so i was very uncomfortable for enduring and like really happy after because I found myself in a situation that I didn't have full confidence in. Enough confidence to like put together a proposal and have a bunch of meetings and put together the workshop. Yeah, but you didn't really know.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah. Is this is this going to screw up? I started thinking about people I know that like this is what they do and both like inspired by them and also feeling a little bit of self-doubt like, well, it's not as good as so-and-so would do, but I'm going to go for it. I was telling someone about it the other day and they commented both on my reporting of my own discomfort and they commented with pleasure on my behalf about the growth.
00:35:23
Speaker
It was good to hear that reflected back. It's like, oh yeah, it was uncomfortable and I was growing and that's why I felt good after, even though I felt like bad before. And that's, you know, I'm not one of those consultants that just goes for anything and everything like,
00:35:39
Speaker
You know, I've had people ask me, if do you want to run some usability test, Steve, for years and years and years? And like, there's people that are good at that and that that's their like happy place. And I made a choice not to seek that out, even though I probably could have a closed business doing that. So I don't think you don't have to take everything that comes your way. No, you don't. And there was something in that conversation. clarity process where you're talking with that potential client and they're using weird words, there was something in there that you were thinking to yourself, I could help them.
00:36:12
Speaker
I'm not really sure how yet, but I i know I can. I'm going to try. i can think of another example for myself, same kind of thing where it's like, I don't know how this is going to go. i was working with some stakeholders who were trying to put together a survey.
00:36:28
Speaker
What they had was terrible. It was just not going to do anything. It would be a big waste of money. And I thought to myself, OK, well, this is a chance for me to try these vignette style questions that I've been looking at.
00:36:42
Speaker
And I said to myself, I don't know how this is going to go. i really don't know how this is going to turn out. And I was like, well, I'm a little uncomfortable, but let's go for it. I'm Tiger Woods and I'm trying this new swing. Is it going to work? I don't know.
00:36:54
Speaker
And it worked great. It worked amazing. Did it work perfectly? No, did not work perfectly, but it worked pretty good. And I think it's that getting used to, okay, let's see how this turns out. I don't know.
00:37:08
Speaker
Is that something that researchers culturally don't do? Back to your point about like, is this why we're not growing enough? Because we're quote unquote playing it safe too much?
00:37:20
Speaker
Let me back up a little bit. but In our stories, I think there's a difference between my competencies are in a bullet list or in a spreadsheet and my competencies are a meta level of like learning how to try something new with some ambiguous parameters. Right. And pulling something new into it and taking a shot at something.
00:37:41
Speaker
That's a skill. It's like a mastery of working in the unmastered area or something. I had someone say this to me a few years ago, like we were in some workshop and they said, Steve, this is it. This is what we do. We go into room, we get on a whiteboard and we just we just do it.
00:37:57
Speaker
i i don't mean to make it sound shallow. was actually very rich. It was there is just an approach to like unpacking a problem, pulling the skills and resources and references that you have and figuring out how are we going to deal with this new thing? Mm hmm.
00:38:10
Speaker
I mean, how many conversations have you had with people they like, what method should I use to know to get a job or what software packages should I know? way of trying to like bulletize these things. Oh, bulletized. Yes, of course. Versus that the ability to do what you're talking about with with this sort of uncertain project.
00:38:28
Speaker
That metacompetency issue that you're talking about, like going into the discomfort and knowing that you can do it, is that constitutionally missing from researcher culture? Yeah.
00:38:39
Speaker
I feel like I meet a lot of researchers who... It's the whole thing with if you've ever done field work, something goes wrong, right? Oh, of course. I wrote a whole book about that. Every time. Yeah. And there is something about the ah researcher's ability to, like, roll with the ah changes, you know? And like, well...
00:38:57
Speaker
all right, everybody came in wearing elephant hats. I guess we're going to reorder the questions. Like just of doing something different in a responsive way. like you can't control everything. So how do you kind of show up in the moment?
00:39:09
Speaker
Or i we're meeting somebody and the place is too noisy. So we're going to have to go somewhere else. So we're going to do this. Like ah yeah adapting to this. You know what? I hate that. I hate that about fieldwork. I hate that there's always some some people like it. They think it's exciting. And I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that I hate it.
00:39:26
Speaker
I hate that because it makes me nervous every single time. It makes me like have to act quickly, which I prefer not yeah to do I prefer to just have like these luxurious kind of open-ended connections with other human beings.
00:39:43
Speaker
And when things go wrong, You have to respond quickly and you have to figure out how to grapple with it. And I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that that is something that I dislike intensely. And yet it's exactly what I have put in front of myself it for my entire career.
00:40:01
Speaker
So I hear you on dislike. Do you think you're good at it? Oh, yeah, I am good at it. I'm very good at it. And I can't really reconcile those two facts. Like, I don't really like it, but I'm actually really good at responding. Like, i I'm able to get myself into that mindset where I'm like, OK, everybody showed up wearing elephant hats.
00:40:21
Speaker
I guess we got to change X. I'm quite good at that. I prefer not to do it. We're talking about discomfort a lot. And I think there's there's anticipatory discomfort as well. Like fieldwork is uncertain. And now I remember knocking on somebody's door after I just hadn't been in the field for a long time.
00:40:39
Speaker
And i I felt like i was going to have a panic attack just knocking on the door. It's like I used to be so comfortable here and I'm very rusty and I'm extraordinarily uncomfortable. There was nothing to be uncomfortable about. It just was I don't know.
00:40:52
Speaker
don't what I'm doing all of a sudden. Yeah, ah you wouldn't be the first person to have that experience. Even veteran drummers have that experience, you know. I mean, I like hearing you say, it you don't like this, but you're good at it. And I think you would probably rather be anxious about something else, like why am I talking to these people about the future of war?
00:41:10
Speaker
Things where it's uncertain and uncomfortable. Maybe it's the same amount of discomfort as worrying about what's going to go wrong in the field, but you might be more willing to have one discomfort than the other or more When you have a participant that does not really understand how to get to the point of what you're asking, maybe they're being quote unquote helpful by going long distances into tangents and telling you how to fix everything, even though they have no idea what you're even looking for. i don't mind that.
00:41:41
Speaker
Because I know I can like bring them back in. It is unpredictable. And I think a lot of times when I've had stakeholders with me, they get very anxious because they're like, oh, time's ticking down and there's only so much, you know, and i that doesn't bother me at all because I know how to bring them back. In fact, I almost enjoy yeah that moment where you've got this participant who is completely down some rabbit hole. And i know how to bring them back. And it's so enjoyable to see when they get back engaged. And the stakeholder was like, whoa, you really brought that back. Like, that was really interesting. All that stuff they told you, I didn't think it was relevant, but it turned out it was. And, you know, I'm good at that. And I know how to do it. And I actually am almost ready and waiting for that to happen.
00:42:21
Speaker
What I don't like, any kind of research where I take the time. plan things out. I think about them very carefully. build in buffers and contingencies and this and that.
00:42:32
Speaker
And it never ceases to annoy me that nothing sticks inside the boxes. And I'm like, this is needless. I'm spending all this mental energy on these things that don't
Discomfort and Growth in Research Careers
00:42:42
Speaker
matter. And I don't want to.
00:42:44
Speaker
yeah But I do spend the mental energy on it when things go off the rails. I try to keep things organized. I will say if I had never embraced qualitative, because I don't think quant researchers have this problem as much.
00:42:57
Speaker
I don't know if I would have had that level of comfort with my discomfort. Yeah. I don't like it, but now I can deal with it, you know? You're making me think about workshops where, because I'm probably more loosey goose in interviewing, but in workshops, you write up the time for each yeah activity yeah and when the food's going to be delivered at a certain time and there's break here.
00:43:18
Speaker
huh And like, it never goes like that. And I have a lot of different feelings at the same time, like, this is great, let's just kind of see where it goes, and oh my goodness, we're not going to get through everything, or this is screwed up, and if I don't have somebody to turn to and and externalize that, and say like, should we let them go longer, is this and that, or like, what do you think, or whatever, if I have to sort of wrestle with that all in my head, it gets much, much worse, and much more into I don't like, maybe less so in the, I don't think I plan as much in the field, so I am a little more
00:43:56
Speaker
It's already open. and It's already open. Yeah. There's still anxiety. And I think it's part of the energy from the field is is trying to balance the openness and the constraints and the... That flies in the face with this other bucket that we're talking about, about impact with your stakeholders, right? This external validation bucket.
00:44:15
Speaker
Your entire context is engineered for certainty. Everybody thinks that that's what a good worker does is plans properly. A good worker says they're going to have 10 participants and they have 10 participants. And a good worker can tell you what they're going to find out and they can tell you with certainty what they found out, you know, exactly. And they can model it quantitatively, et cetera, et cetera. And all of that flies in the face with this desire to grow. Because if all you ever do is put yourself into these little perfect boxes, you're
00:44:51
Speaker
There's no Neil Peart growth happening in a situation like that. You're not breaking your fundamental training. You're doing exactly the same thing over and over and over again.
00:45:01
Speaker
And I think it's also disingenuous because nobody really believes that everything is that predictable because it's not. If we are talking about tech, it seems like engineering culture has really created a lot of structures and metrics and there's a lot of processes. It's so overwhelmingly about you do a planning meeting about the eight things you're going to do and you assign a number of hours to go do them and then you kind of go off and do them.
00:45:29
Speaker
And yet I think there's a lot of creative problem solving that's happening, but yet you're predicting like this is a three-hour thing this is a four-day thing i'm gonna get this and there's people whose jobs it is to sort of facilitate the gathering of that and and putting it into gantt charts and so on and and it's really operationalized around that it is sort of manageable and predictable and i i don't know maybe it is i don't do that kind of work or manage those people I don't think it is ever that predictable. And, you know, we were talking earlier about some of the things I do in that class. Another thing I do in that class is I talk about the gap between being a project manager, just a plain old project manager where you do the Gantt chart and the hours and the estimates and all that, and then being kind of like a critical interpreter project manager.
00:46:18
Speaker
Where you recognize a project plan is just a representation of the project. It's not the project. You know, your workshop proposal is just a representation of the workshop. It's not the workshop.
00:46:30
Speaker
And we get really hung up about what the representation, like it's the thing. Oh, that Gantt chart is the project. No, it's not. It's just one way of talking about the project that makes everybody feel a little bit more comfortable, little less scared.
00:46:45
Speaker
And if you can hold that in your head at the same time, like, okay, there's a Gantt chart, there's hours, there's a prediction, but then I got to do something for me. I've got to work around these hours somehow. I've got to fit in some kind of like challenge or interesting thing for myself that I don't even have to tell anybody about. Like I don't even have to tell people that, oh, I've never done this kind of an interview before or whatever.
00:47:09
Speaker
You don't even have to tell people that. But we feel like we have to sometimes. I don't know why. Something you were saying X minutes ago was just making me think about a way to grow is to be mindful of some of these things for o ourselves. So I did something that was uncomfortable and it went well.
00:47:26
Speaker
Like to to know that. You know, what things am I going to try that are different? And it doesn't have to be relearning to drama, relearning to golf. But for every time that we step outside or in the meaning bucket, every time that we are excited about what we learned and we just say to ourselves, like, that's that and it's own thing and it's in this bucket.
00:47:47
Speaker
And now i'm going to go work on the other part, which is helping the rest of the company. Which is a separate thing. Yeah. But to just, again, because like the bear, like take some moments to acknowledge and just point to like, this was good. I'm good at this. This went well. I'm excited about it.
00:48:05
Speaker
i love this participant that I met. Like whatever it is, there's a thousand sort of moments of meaning that can happen at any point in that process. Like give yourself a good baseline. If you're, yeah and I don't mean musically, I mean B-A-S-E.
00:48:19
Speaker
Give yourself some a foundation with what you are successful at and what you feel satisfaction in. And this is not to say that the activation bucket is is empty.
00:48:30
Speaker
We have lots of wins. We have small wins. You give a presentation and someone reflects your language back to you and it's a new term that you use. I love that. I love it. That's the greatest moment.
00:48:41
Speaker
It's the greatest moment when they use the term that you just gave them. And they and then you hear it somewhere else in that organization. It's amazing. So can we do a better job as individuals or as a culture of just acknowledging those, that there are moments of success and reward and joy in the meaning bucket for ourselves.
00:49:02
Speaker
And there are many pieces in the activation bucket if we only measure did it ship or whatever kind of thing, then yeah I think we're setting ourselves up to fail. But if we can see that there's sort of a foundation of creating interest, creating excitement, creating learning-ready moments, creating buy, and all those things are Nobody in your company may care about any of that.
00:49:27
Speaker
And if that's the case, I'm sorry. But I think what happens for a lot of people is they kind of like are aware they're supposed to recognize those moments, but they don't really know how to do it.
00:49:37
Speaker
And the next thing you know, life has gotten in the way and it's been a year, two years before they really saw that they had moments of joy. One thing that I often do, and I don't even know how I started doing this, but I realize that when I have good moments, I really need to record them somehow. When I have bad moments, I do that too.
00:49:58
Speaker
I record them. And it just very briefly, like I'd write a little note to myself or snap a pic and put it in my journal area of my Notion database and with a little note on it or whatever.
00:50:10
Speaker
what What do you do? I'm a storyteller, so think I make sense of things by telling other people about things. But I did have a, this was maybe overcoming some negative self-talk. i don't I don't know if this is it or not, but outside of the the realm of work, but with creative writing,
00:50:26
Speaker
that is just a hobby of mine, had one of those experiences that maybe is familiar to to all of us of revising something, feeling really good about it, sending it out, opening it up again before bedtime, and just cratering.
00:50:40
Speaker
Like, this isn't good. I'm not good. I'm not going to be able to get good. I think what sort of helped me a little bit was that I could see myself having that reaction.
00:50:51
Speaker
Oh, yeah. It's cliched enough that I think I can say it to you and you're like, you're nodding along like, oh, yeah, that reaction. So knowing that a thing is a thing and that you're having that thing gives me a little bit of distance off of it.
00:51:05
Speaker
And I told a couple of people about it and then I sent it off because I was going to be sharing it in ah in a workshop setting. The response, not universally, but the response from the workshop, which is a very positive, encouraging little community, was really solid. People send you their notes, but you sit there in the group and kind of talk about it.
00:51:25
Speaker
And I was just taking notes about what people were saying. They were things like, I like this piece. I always like your pieces, Steve. I was happy when I saw it was going to be a piece from you. So it was not only the critique of the piece, but also of me as someone that they have an expectation from. Mm-hmm.
00:51:42
Speaker
people were making comments that this wasn't all the feedback, but some of the feedback spoke directly to what I had all the self-doubt about. And so I was just taking notes, you know, kind of mindlessly because i want to just be able to have it all and then go back for my next iteration based on their input.
00:51:57
Speaker
But someone said something and I just wrote it down. And then I like put a bracket and then I made, went all caps. And I said, pay attention to this, Steve. Because what that person had said that I had just written down was like unknowingly by them was directly responding my negative self-talk. And so I took this external piece that was affirming and put it in opposition to the thing that I had made up for myself. As if telling yourself, hail that self-talk that you had for yourself unchallenged. Guess what? It was wrong.
00:52:31
Speaker
Here's the evidence. Yeah. And I think it's, for me, like going that extra step. Just the brackets. And just saying to myself, see, someone says something different.
00:52:43
Speaker
Not just sort of sitting there and like feeling bad or feeling good, but telling myself, hey, the thing that you're feeling good about now is different than the thing that you were feeling bad about before. And so can you, Steve, sort of step up a level and see that these different feelings and these different inputs right are kind of all part of the whole mix so that I have a more balanced take of it?
00:53:05
Speaker
That's just being mindful of how you're feeling and what you're hearing kind of how it goes. And I think there's, i don't know what the name for this phenomenon is, the sort of the fight or flight version of feedback, right? You hear negative feedback much more loudly than and you hear positive feedback.
00:53:20
Speaker
I think maybe it's good for us to tweak that like I think striving quarterly review performance of all stuff says ask for feedback that's negative and yeah to improve that but I think that that may make us less happy and oh it absolutely will make you less happy for sure so maybe you can be skewed towards like some confirmation bias of of the good things What you're describing there when you, okay, a good thing was happening and you risked not noticing it, like just letting it go by, you know, yeah and not really reflecting on it, relishing, savoring it, remembering it for later. You made a choice to notice it and to integrate it and to directly challenge your own negative self-talk.
00:54:10
Speaker
And said, this is the moment that you are going to forget when you have your next moment of negative self-talk. Pay attention. I guess for me, that's the same thing about writing things down. When I'm having something really good, I even have a tag in my database called good feedback.
00:54:27
Speaker
Oh, nice. And so I'll write little notes like, oh, this was a nice thing that i heard from so-and-so. Because sometimes they're so pathetically tiny. Like, they're just little like, oh, I really enjoyed your email that you sent me. well I'll put that in there and I'll write a little note to myself to remember.
Reflecting on Success and Growth in Research
00:54:42
Speaker
That's what i wanted to do. Like, I wanted to spark interest in other people. And if I get information coming back, this is I did, it doesn't go in my performance review. It doesn't give me a promotion. It doesn't get any of these things that I'm supposed to want, blah, blah, blah. But if I took all of that pressure away, i know that's impossible. Most of us live in contexts where you can't take that pressure away. But if ah you live in a way where the pressure is put in its proper place, it's tied up, it's in a little box, you know, you can only let it out when you need it.
00:55:09
Speaker
And the rest of the time you're paying attention to the reflective, ah did this help me grow? that was really challenging. But look, i I carried it off. I managed to make it work. That kind of conscious choice to like reflect on it, you know? I mean, I think copying and pasting and and tagging, that's barely a reflection, but I think there's something about stepping out of the flow of sort of consuming and dismissing of data and just giving it a little, like a microspace. A microspace, yes. I think me writing in all caps, Steve, look at this. Microspace. I don't even remember what but it was in response to, but even I think just that action.
00:55:47
Speaker
and it's and I'm not going back and saying that self-talk was wrong. It just was. I just felt a certain way. And I might feel that way again. i'm sure I'll feel that way again. i think there's sort of an acceptance of it, but also trying to, let's not balance it out, but just try to maybe, i don't know, pay some duty towards the positive as well. Mm-hmm.
00:56:08
Speaker
So if we go back to the original like prompt that we were talking about, which is how do you grow when you're already senior? Because nobody's going to pay much attention to your growth because that's not that important to them.
00:56:22
Speaker
It sounds like You need to try things that are difficult, but you also need to, like, give those micro spaces to yourself to construct a joyful bubble of a moment where you consume that meaningful context and you, like, really pay attention to it. And and the examples that you and i are telling are ones that are external.
00:56:45
Speaker
but I don't think they have to be, right? no like Like that workshop went well and I didn't know what I was doing or these question types that I tried were interesting or I love using Google Forms, whatever. Like I think they could just be so moments of joy or moments of self-recognition or moments of just reflection. Maybe they don't even have value attached to them that that all go in the meaning that just it's spending time in that meaning bucket and yeah and nurturing it.
00:57:15
Speaker
And you won't be surprised later either if you do that on a regular basis. I mean, and I think this is true. I could tell from my own experience. If you do that, make those micro spaces for moments that were meaningful for you and you know what they are, you're going to get more familiar with what that feels like and the conditions under which it happens.
00:57:35
Speaker
So you're less likely to kind of get like fooled by things that look good on paper. But like in reality, don't really do anything for you. You know, I can't tell you how many people, you know, I've met people working in research that did all the things that they were supposed to do and got the engagement that they were looking for, the job that they were looking for, and they feel empty.
00:57:55
Speaker
And they're clueless as to why, how did that happen? I'm empty inside. I'm supposed to be so happy. And it's like, well, what does make you happy? And it's a very hard question for them to answer sometimes.
00:58:08
Speaker
I mean, going back to your suggestion of like try some, if you're a qual person, try some quant. You didn't say, because that's going to make you a more valuable member of your team. Or it's going to more marketable, or that's going to help your stakeholders believe in your responses.
00:58:23
Speaker
I think it was about stretching yourself and being uncomfortable. That's right. Yeah. And so there's a whole category of, well, there's a zillion things you could do to grow, but you can optimize for anything. It might be optimized for meaning, e.g. not empty inside, as opposed to optimizing for marketability or the hustle or the activation part. Right. That might end up happening for you.
00:58:48
Speaker
You might get more marketable and you might get better activation and whatever. But if you start with that as your outcome, who's to say it's going to have have any alignment with your own meaning at all?
00:59:03
Speaker
Yeah. If this was advice for somebody, it's very much not LinkedIn influencer top seven things you need to do to be a, you know, a top UXR 2025. It's not. We're talking about it very differently. Yeah, we are talking about it differently. And I think I think it's maybe back to your your point about like this, this researcher culture part.
00:59:23
Speaker
You kind of have stop reading the influencer content, whatever, and taking that as gospel. Instead, you kind of have to turn inward a little bit.
00:59:34
Speaker
Do we not do that enough as researchers? I don't know. Yeah, it's hard to generalize. I'm thinking about people that are wannabe researchers or people who do research. You can definitely see the lack of insight kind of blocking them, at least in the early learning yeah points of a lot of this, right? ah her You know, your your scenario where the person is talking about something that seems irrelevant and your stakeholders are anxious about There's no method that you have to learn. That's about yourself, right? That's about being uncomfortable with the reality of real people and their messiness and that data is not extracted from people like it is from a line. You got to get over yourself to be able to do that. And that's that's the fun thing actually about teaching newbies research is that
01:00:23
Speaker
You can see them hit the wall on that stuff, and you can just give them those little moments of like, well, yes, I know you wanted to change the other person, but it's actually, this is actually about you.
01:00:35
Speaker
These are all life lessons, right? So you see it definitely in those people, that but our researchers... I don't know. I'm sort of optimistic about quality of people that go into research and the way that they sort of manifest the best qualities of researchers and how they live their lives. But that could be just little ah Pollyanna-ish or something. It could be.
01:00:56
Speaker
It could be. i'll I'll tell you, though, I would I have seen that moment that you talk about where people, you know, they they're looking for like What kind of question type do I ask when the participant goes off on a direction? And what kind of tools or software can I use? Or, you know, what technique? And it's like, it's not really about a a technique. It's about managing a really uncomfortable, internally ah uncomfortable situation and learning how to bring it back under control in a way that is
01:01:30
Speaker
understandable, enjoyable, seamless, etc. And you can't do that unless you're okay in your own skin. So it takes time. You know, it's an embodied skill. I have optimism.
01:01:41
Speaker
I have optimism about researchers too, right? They are good-spirited people. i just wish they cared a little less about, i used to say this a lot in my old job, when researchers would be like, why aren't they doing what i ah what i found? Like, why are they ignoring my findings and whatever?
01:01:58
Speaker
And I was like, listen, you know what? We're in charge. We're already in charge. They just don't know it yet. So you gotta to be yeah you got to be comfortable as the secret agent for a while. And then after they figure out you were leading them this direction all the time,
01:02:14
Speaker
then it becomes apparent. But until then, you have to let them have their little fiction where they think that they're telling you how to ask questions. And they're not, ever, are they telling you. Why why on earth would you ask, but like, a product manager how to ask a question? Like, why would why would you do that?
01:02:33
Speaker
Now, do you have to ask them How would you like to ask this question? Or what do you want to know? Yes, of course you have to ask them. Do you take that as gospel? No. Good Lord, no.
01:02:44
Speaker
God help you if if you do. Listen to what they have to say. Interpret it. Make sense of it. But reinvent it. it's ah It's a hard skill, I think, for a lot of researchers to get to.
01:02:55
Speaker
They kind of want that guidance. You know, they want somebody to say, this if you do X, you get an A, you know? that the people you're asking actually can't answer that question. no they cannot.
01:03:07
Speaker
But they can give you, just to reiterate what you're saying, they can give you so much context that's super important to help you make a decision yourself. That's right. Right? it's It's input. It's super valuable input, including that person seems to think that if we ask people what features they want, they're going to tell us and we'll go build it.
01:03:28
Speaker
That's insight for me. It's the difference between sort of, you know, get gathering input and being a stenographer, both with your stakeholders and with your participants. It's a meta level. but Yes, absolutely.
01:03:40
Speaker
That's it's it's all grist for the mill. And it's all fun to kind of bring it together and make something of it. But if you think that, yeah, either a participant is going to tell you what to do or a stakeholder is going to tell you sort of how to do it, like,
01:03:54
Speaker
It's a collaboration, ideally, and you have an expertise and they have an objective and you're going to work together to figure out like what's the approach that's going to going to help us get there.
01:04:06
Speaker
You need some authority in order to be able to do that or you need some some air cover. Yeah. Uh-huh. From a manager in order to be able to do that. And sometimes you don't get it If you're one or few researchers and you don't have leadership that kind of has your back, then, yeah, I think you get told, here's what we need and here's how you have to go about it And I just smile and say thank you.
01:04:28
Speaker
And I don't do what they say because they don't know what they're talking about. But it takes some experience to know that. And it takes some confidence to follow through on that.
01:04:41
Speaker
Well, if you're going to do one thing, if you know, if there's a researcher listening and they want to say, OK, I'm going to listen to this and I'm going to grow. One thing you should do is try this. Somebody tells you how to do your job.
01:04:55
Speaker
All you have to do is just interpret it. Just one time, do not take it as marching orders. Just one time, try to reinvent it with your own spin.
01:05:06
Speaker
And not to say that you're ignoring them or you're not. You're listening to what they have to say, but they don't know it as well as you do. So just try, like even mentally.
01:05:16
Speaker
I'm going ask the stakeholder for feedback on this interview script or whatever, and I'm not going to do exactly what they say.
01:05:25
Speaker
I'm going to integrate their feedback somehow without doing it exactly the way they said I should do it. The anti-pattern can be really distressing. And I spoke with a young researcher few years ago. They were stuck because they didn't have any mentorship or anyone that sort of understood research above them. Common problem.
01:05:43
Speaker
And they were told, do this method and get these results. The method would not be a method that produced those results. And they were like put under performance review because they did the method and it didn't produce the results. and the Oh, no. And the team was like, well, where are the results? And so they kind of went back and did it again. But they're just trying to squeeze blood from a stone like it wasn't in there. It wasn't going to happen.
01:06:08
Speaker
It was never going to happen. And they didn't have the experience to know that. And they didn't understand. him They didn't have the authority or the credibility to push back. And they were, as my mom used to say, like the meat in the sandwich. Like they got caught.
01:06:23
Speaker
and And they took the shit for it, which was completely unfair. And they didn't understand. We had a conversation and all I could do was like affirm like, There was no way you could get that result that they've sort of forced you to try to produce. Like you weren't in the wrong. There's no you weren't a bad researcher. You were just given but wrong constraints.
01:06:44
Speaker
And we talk about precarity at the bear like this person had precarity in their job. They couldn't say, no, I'm going to do it this way because they didn't know and because they didn't know that they should know. hmm.
01:06:55
Speaker
You know, it's someone came out of like a some junior program and got put into this job without yeah any support. It's a very common story. I hear that kind of story a lot. And I call them research orphans, you know, because like they are the most senior person in research, even if they're like a very junior person in the company.
01:07:14
Speaker
And so people just don't know how to manage that situation. Somebody tells you, here's the method. I need to find out from this method which feature is the number one feature we're going to build. And they're telling you to do a focus group.
01:07:30
Speaker
And you're like, well, OK, I'll give that a try. And you realize it doesn't work because you didn't have the experience. Well, one of the things that you can probably try next time is to, I'm not going to take this verbatim.
01:07:43
Speaker
Just like one thing, I'm not going to take the focus group slash feature stack rank direction verbatim. I'm going to do a little bit of an investigation before I do that. And I'm definitely going to see if I can like reinvent it a little bit.
01:07:59
Speaker
And nobody's upset when you give them the thing that they're looking for, which is like the stack rank feature list, but you didn't do the focus group. You're like, yeah, and we did the little focus group, but I also knew it wasn't going to work.
01:08:10
Speaker
So i all I did this little survey instead. Or in addition. Who's going to be mad about that? So the difference between a junior person and maybe maybe even below senior is its just like an awareness of, I don't know how to use every tool or approach, but I have some heuristic for what thing I do is going to get what kind of result and I can make intelligent choices about that I can make intelligent choices. Well, everybody can make intelligent choices. It may just take them a little bit longer to come to that decision.
01:08:39
Speaker
You know, like you're going to read up a little bit about it. Somebody who doesn't know anything told you to do a focus group. Are you going to take that verbatim? Maybe not. Right. Maybe you're going to read up about it a little bit. and And you and i we would be like, you're not going to get that result with a focus group. I don't have to read anything to tell you that.
01:08:56
Speaker
But that, you know, you don't necessarily have to be that quick on it. You can take a little bit more time and then the next time it's going to take less time and the next time it's going to take less time. Like just investigate a little bit. Just don't take it verbatim.
01:09:09
Speaker
Yeah, that is good advice. i it's good advice at all levels, but it's more acute, I think, if it's a new it's a new concept for your own practice. So Sam, we did what we always do, which is sort of start somewhere and meander. You're really good at kind of bringing us back to kind of keep investigating our our query.
01:09:28
Speaker
i I really like the idea that growth is not something you can get without going into discomfort. Like, I think we got to that point where we were like, you know, that's the price. That's the price you got to pay at a little bit.
01:09:42
Speaker
It's not about pain. It's about being a little uncomfortable and like, not sure if it's going to work. And if you can't do that, if you're not ready to do that, maybe there's some other work you got to do first.
01:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think and you talked about risk or mitigating risk or sort of finding safe spaces to play, the phrase you use, but safe spaces to play that still could be uncomfortable, that still give you those chances to grow. So we're not saying like risk losing your job or piss off your colleagues. No, we're saying like be creative and even this could all be backstage.
01:10:20
Speaker
Absolutely. You don't have to tell everybody. You don't have to tell everybody about it. You know, you should tell yourself, I think then and tell yourself, I did this. It was good. It was hard. I learned something new. I feel good about it. Whatever that is. Absolutely.
01:10:34
Speaker
You said we started talking about like, get over it. Oh, just get over it. And then you changed it to like, no, get on it. You should tell yourself that you are going to get on this.
01:10:45
Speaker
Yep. This was a great podcast. It was uncomfortable before we got on the call and I didn't know what was going to happen. And I think we did a good job. I think so, too. I think so, too. I hope other people think so.
01:10:57
Speaker
But that's in the other bucket. Yeah. I'm going to just just in the first bucket. I'm pretty happy. I had a good conversation with you. Thanks for listening to the Off the Path with Sam and Steve, the show that takes you off the beaten path of research careers and onto your own chosen path.
01:11:12
Speaker
Hire Sam for research projects or research coaching. Take one of her classes or sign up for exclusive video content at samladner.com. Sam's books, Practical Ethnography and Mixed Methods are both available on Amazon. And her new book on strategic foresight is coming out in 2026. Sign up for her newsletter to find out more at samladner.com slash newsletter. Hire Steve Portigal to lead a research study with your team or to help build user research skills in your organization or to deliver a talk or workshop for your event. Learn more portigal.com slash services.
01:11:52
Speaker
Steve's classic book, Interviewing Users, is in its second edition with an audiobook. Check out portigal.com slash books for more. And Steve has his own podcast. dollars to donuts where he talks with people who lead user research that's a portugal.com slash podcast you can also connect with him on linkedin