Teaching Important Soft Skills to Scientists

NQ: We all know that scientific knowledge is the primary thing. The deep expertise in some given field is the obvious area you're going to mentor somebody in as a professor, but there are other skills that we want our students to come out with. I'm not in that role, but I definitely play a mentorship role here at STEMCELL.

What are some of those skills beyond just knowing the science that you really look for and try to hone?

NS: I think my students will laugh if I say this word because they can be like, “I knew you'd say this,” but scientific storytelling is one of the biggest things that I'm really hoping my students would embrace and become super proficient in by the time they leave. I always tell them 50% of the endeavor is actually doing the science, and 50% is figuring out how to present it, describe its importance, position it within the context of the field, and share it with the world.

That is a huge endeavor, and you can't just leave it as an afterthought in your scientific process. It's the same concept of, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it happen?” If you did an experiment and no one knows about it or can't understand what you did or why, was it important? Did it have an impact? We talk a lot about scientific storytelling.

Other things that we like to think about are more around confidence. There's a certain element of self-confidence that needs to be acquired, and it's really challenging to do, especially as a graduate student, because you're thrown into this world of uncertainty.

There's no ABC to completing a degree. It's a nonlinear path that you are charting for yourself. There's a certain element of resilience and self-confidence that needs to be built up and does get built up along the way because you realize that, “I can do this, and I have the support of people around me to do it.” I'm really hoping my students acquire this.

DJ: I echo that. I love to tell a story. I'm here doing this podcast, telling other people's stories, and it's the joy of my life.

To piggyback on that second idea of resilience is teaching how to move on and how to take a scattershot approach. It’s like having a few buns in the oven because nothing's ever going to come out right the first time or rarely going to come out right the first time. It can be really demoralizing. I think a lot of that gets washed away as a young PI, or even a young postdoc training at any phase; that you get over that. You get inert to that failure on some level. But I think that it's not impressed enough upon the trainees that it's baked in.

All the technical things—like hypothesis formation, study design, and asking the right questions, using controls—can be taught. But I think what really has to come from within, and what I think trainees need a lot of support with, is that, “Okay, so what's next?” You have to do that 10 or 20 times in your career, at least before you really get your arms wrapped around a tough question that has a deep well of science to unpack. I think a lot of people in science can get really caught up because of all the extrinsic forces about success and achievement.

I think there's not enough room nowadays for failure because it's there for so many people to see. Back in the “Ivory Tower days,” people were failing a million times. No one had to know. Thomas Edison, 10,000 ways, right? No one was looking at him, asking for his funding renewals. I just think we need to bake it in. You're not going to win the first few times. That's what I think I would like to impress [on my mentees] from the first day.

NS: Yeah. Honestly, if you're not failing, you're probably doing it wrong. You're probably picking questions that are too easy, or you need to go bigger.

DJ: Exactly. That said, you have got to have safety as a mentor. You have to especially build that into younger trainees. They have to have something solid that comes with the study design, where the answer, whether positive or negative, is going to have value. I think that's what you can teach. Also, you have got to encourage them to swing big and maybe fail.

Core Skills Trainees Should Develop

What are the fundamental skills needed before becoming an independent scientist?

DJ: Talking more on the trainee level, specifically about graduate students. I think you probably have a lot of experience and have a lot of influence in your life because you do a good job and you make them feel welcome and supported. But what are the core, fundamental skills you nurture in a trainee at that level that you need them to demonstrate before you'll recommend them for graduation? What's the key to take in that first dive into the next stage, as an independent scientist in your postdoc?

NS: Yeah, I appreciate that. I do my best to be the supportive PI, but nobody's perfect. There are failures there too. I'm totally happy to acknowledge that.

I think for me, it's a combination of things, but my expectations tend to shift with the goals of the individual. If that person wants to do a postdoc, then that person has different goals and expectations in my mind than someone who's interested in a different career trajectory.

For example, I have students that are very entrepreneurial and interested in joining a startup or having their own startup. The goals for those students are to get them business savvy and give them experiences. I'm not an expert in that realm, but I try to give them experiences where they can gain expertise that will serve them well. For people who want to stay in the academic route or at least want to do a postdoc, the things that I would expect to see are probably different. There's probably key properties of scientists that we maybe can all agree on, like detail-orientedness and someone who's keeping good notes and keeping their eye on all the variables that could be possibly affecting their results so that reproducibility of what they're doing is high.

I want them to be someone who can present their work clearly for a scientific audience in particular and can plan ahead on experiments, but also have backup plans if things go wrong. I think it depends on the student, but there are probably common denominators for everybody that we would want to see. But I've only graduated one grad student, so I'm not the expert on that.

DJ: Well, yeah, you allude to the fabric of science, and then it's very bespoke, especially now more than ever with so many avenues for trainees at any level to take.

Mentorship in Industry and Developing Resiliency

DJ: Let me turn the mentorship question on you there, Nicole. I think industry is maybe a majority alternative to academia. I wouldn't even call it nontraditional anymore.

What does mentorship look like in industry? Do you find that it's different from your experience in academia or elsewhere?

NQ: Mentorship in industry as a mentor is a bit different. There's a lot more structure around it. We have structured courses that we offer employees at all levels, but certainly employees starting off their careers. I think we have over almost 2,000 different courses on communication and project management and all kinds of stuff like that. There's also just being a leader in business and trying to meet people where they are and help coach them throughout their careers and where they're stuck. Some people come in with stronger project management skills, and that's great. Others have stronger communication skills, and others are really good at working in teams. Some people are very good at independent work.

Finding those strengths and trying to accelerate them and provide opportunities that help people thrive in those situations, but also finding areas of growth and giving feedback and helping provide opportunities for that growth is very important. I would say what both of you said about that ability to fail and the tenacity and resilience that comes from science training is one of the biggest strengths you can bring to an industry role.

When I started at STEMCELL, almost 12 years ago, I was employee number 300 and something. Now it's a different company every year, and you're doing a different job every year. There are projects that come and go. There's a lot of ambiguity, a lot of gray, and maybe a lot of chaos. The ability to live and thrive in that ambiguity is important. Also, you need to be able to invest your time and energy into a project or an initiative that may need to be cancelled by the time you finish it and you're ready to launch; because the environment has changed so much that it's no longer even relevant for it to get implemented. Sometimes, you have to look at that and say, “Okay, I'm going to scrap it and sell it for parts. What pieces of this can be salvaged and applied somewhere else? What pieces just need to be shelved and move on?” That resilience and grit—that I think really comes from an academic background—I see that day after day after day as an asset.

I know when I was training early in my Master's, when I was so green and so naive and didn't know what I was doing, I had spent a ton of time on an assay and it just didn't pan out. I had my head in my hands going, “What?” Three, four months were wasted, or whatever it was. The senior PhD student in the lab walked by, and he was like, “Well, chalk it up to experience and move on.” That was so heartbreaking to hear at the time, but that's what you have to do and you have to be able to do. Like I said, when people are able to do that and really distill the chaos and move on, they tend to thrive in industry.

DJ: Part of that is just time. I feel like as you get older, maybe in any field, three months for me sounds like, “Oh, great. That's a win.” You lost three months. I've lost three years on something that just didn't pan out. Big idea, but maybe a little too ambitious, and that happens. I think part of it is just, again, you become cognizant of the risk and tolerant of it. Then you focus on all the failures that you didn't have or maybe the one failure that you didn't have.

NQ: Exactly. At the time, I was like, I have to get out of this degree in two years. Three months is a big chunk of that. Then looking back, it's like, that was nothing. You learn from the failures. Of course, we all know that, but you don't know that coming in. I think as mentors, we have to try to help our mentees understand that failure is good and you can learn from it.

NS: One of my more senior colleagues, who's also a mentor, always describes his process. He tends to swing big a lot, and he definitely hits big, but often misses, too. I always ask him, “How do you deal with that?” He says that he just sees this whole academic process as a game. He's just playing a video game, and you lose the levels, you replay the levels. It's not a big deal. He's really quick to forget the failures, which I think is a really nice quality. I'm really trying to strive for that more. Also because I really buy into the gaming analogy. I named my cats after Nintendo characters.

DJ: Just as we're talking about this, I'll say to have a more unvarnished view, maybe for some of the young trainees or young PIs even, who are balking and are all, “Oh, fail, fail, fail.” The reality is the pressure is great. I think that's one of the entitlements and privileges of being an established PI, and we all know how the demographics are skewed there, but it really is that they are afforded that privilege to fail. They have either the funding and the reputation or the good faith of their trainees and the other people who serve to judge their science.

We should be clear that we understand that the stakes are really high nowadays. That's part of the problem with science, but I guess that young phase, that green phase, as we're describing it, it's like your kids. You have to protect them so that they're able to become their best thinker. And it’s something that's in them. Let’s let it out.

NS: I love that.

NQ: I do, too. I do recognize that there's a lot of nervousness when somebody enters a new job and it's okay to fail. We do have targets. We do have goals. We do have various milestones we have to meet. We set those every quarter. I've had this conversation so many times when somebody comes to me at a quarterly review and they're like, “I didn't meet them all. I didn't get them all.” They feel like they're going to fail. They feel like their job is at risk. I have to say, “No, we're a growth company. We don't know what's happening quarter after quarter. If you've got most of them, we're good.”

If you've been working hard showing that you're dedicated to the job and you're learning, then we're good. But I do understand that there's nerves there. Sometimes you do have to be a bit of a nurturer or therapist for your mentees.

Mismatch and Working With Others

NQ: Switching directions here. We're talking all about the success that we have with our mentees, but sometimes it doesn't pan out. Sometimes there is a mismatch or somebody has taken the wrong step and you can see the writing on the wall.

How would you advise a mentor to approach a mismatch situation? Then also, how would you advise a mentee?

NS: I guess I like the bet-hedging strategy, diversifying. I don't know. I feel like I'm an economist sometimes, because I say this word a lot. Bet hedging is that by diversifying your mentors, you're not fully reliant on this one person. Instead of your supervisor, for example, who provides all of the support and all of the things that you need, you have a committee. You probably also have other organically formed mentors that you could then rely on and get what you need from them or get their advice.

I think a lot of the times the mismatching or the misalignment can be chalked up to just misunderstanding. Learning how to empathize with that person's perspective is a growth opportunity. I think it builds grit. It builds a different kind of grit, but it's an important quality. It's really not advantageous to not be able to work with people. Even if you don't get along with them and you don't see eye to eye, it's important to, at least professionally, be able to work with that person. I think it's leaning on others to advise and then using it as an opportunity to grow your skills is how I would see it.

NQ: I love that answer. I love that answer because when you get into the professional world, assuming you're training to ultimately take a paid job, you don't get to pick and you don't get to move around. I mean, yes, you can leave a job and find another job, but I guarantee you that when you land that other job, there's also going to be people who you don't jive with. There will always be people that you don't sit on the same wavelength with, or you don't work in the same ways as.

Learning how to find ways to align and to move together and not create conflict or navigate conflict, at least, is absolutely essential. If you don't have those skills, you certainly will not thrive in an industry where things move fast and you have to be able to keep up.

NS: Absolutely. It's also a missed opportunity to learn from someone who sees the world maybe differently than you. I'm sure there's some validity in how they see things, too. Nothing is ever black and white. Learn from people.

NQ: That perspective is really key. I know when I was going through my PhD, early on, I had a lot to learn. I did a PhD in molecular biology and biochemistry, and I somehow got through all of my undergraduate studies without taking any molecular biology or biochemistry. I got there and had to catch up real quick. It was tense for a while because I was not meeting the expectations that my very brilliant molecular biologist PI had of me. I didn't have the perspective that he had, which was, “If I don't get you here, you're not going to get there.”

There was a lot of pressure and a lot of tears, honestly. Now, looking back, I'm so thankful he pushed me so hard because I wouldn't have been able to get over the hurdles I needed to get over and ultimately to be able to graduate with that degree. Understanding that your mentees may not have that perspective and understanding as a mentor that you need to build some perspective, I think is really important.

DJ: I love all those points. Just echoing them again, piggybacking, I think that taking the animus out, at least at the point of decision and confronting the reality. I mean, it's awkward. It's tough. You just have to try and make it as least awkward as possible. I think the key to that is really to not take it personally and not make it personal. I've gone my separate ways from trainees in the past. I'll be honest, I was surprised, and I was hurt. I felt it. I had to remind myself, “Wait, it wasn't about me. It was about this.” Initially, I was like, “But what about the science?”

It was like they were saying my idea was crap. That's what my lizard self was telling me: “Wait, you're rejecting my science?” Then, with a cooler head, I thought about it for literally one second. I was like, “What am I thinking? This is a human who's looking for, in this case, her best interest.”

She went to industry. I've spoken with her since. I wouldn't say we're very close, but there's a mutual respect and understanding. I appreciate the fact that she made that decision. I see it as perhaps a lapse on my part that I didn't concentrate enough on the fit. I didn't see that she wasn't thriving or wasn't happy in the work. I wasn't making contact. The fact that she had to come to me and say that she’s leaving, that hurt. I think that was a real lesson for me that, first of all, we all have to look out for ourselves. As you were saying, Nika, hedge your bets.

PIs always are assumed to have many different postdocs for this exact reason, but the reverse isn't always true. Trainees, they often have this one individual who's the custodian of their entire career. I think that we all, as mentors, have to do a better job of looking out for our trainees. But first and foremost, we have to consider them as individuals and not take it personally when they make decisions that are in their own best interest because you don't want someone who's not happy.

The Biggest Lesson to Learn as a Mentor

What is the biggest lesson, as a mentor, that you've had to learn again and again?

NS: I think I've been surprised, but I really shouldn't have been, at how little I know. I feel like every day I come in and it's a new challenge as a mentor; there’s a thing that I've never dealt with. To be honest, it makes sense. I will forever be learning because people are complicated, science is complicated, and there's probably an infinite combination of variables that can yield different situations that we have to deal with. Learning to be uncomfortable, or learning to be comfortable with discomfort is the thing that I'm constantly learning over and over again and in different ways, both scientifically and in people management, financial management, and all the different hats we wear in these roles.

DJ: Besides the tech, which I have t