(S1E3) Meet the Culturositists: Introducing Tony Bromley and postgraduate research

Intro:: 00:00:00

Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be. You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you wanted to be.

Emma:: 00:00:26

Hi, it's Emma, and for those of you who don't know me yet, I lead the researcher development and culture team at the University of Leeds, and this is a role that allows me to work on all different aspects of research culture. You're joining us in season one, where we're getting to know our co-host in a bit more detail before they go on to host seasons of their own.

Each of our co-hosts has knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm for a different area of our research culture at University of Leeds. And I'm delighted today to be joined by Dr. Tony Bromley. Tony leads the provision for our postgraduate researchers, and I think it's fair to say he has a particular enthusiasm for dynamic development, which you will hear lots more about and LinkedIn learning.

Tony:: 00:01:07

Absolutely. Yes.

Emma:: 00:01:09

and I think now is also a really good opportunity to point out that Tony recorded the music that you hear in the intro and outro of this podcast. So Tony, given your obvious musical skills, If you were to receive a phone call from a band asking you to play guitar on their upcoming tour, who would you want that phone call to be?

Tony:: 00:01:26

It would have to be a band that has a, a rhythm guitarist, if I can say the word rhythm rather than the lead guitarist. Oh, I don't know. It would be someone like, um, probably it is all a classic rock, so it would be someone like Deep Purple or ACDC or that sort of genre of music. I don't think I'm on stage person. I need to sit quietly in the background.

Emma:: 00:01:51

There we go. Okay. So luckily we didn't have, um, a rock ballad for our, uh, podcast intro and outro. We're here today to talk about research culture. Um, and as I've already said, you really enjoy working with our postgraduate researchers, but what is it about this particular community that you enjoy working with?

Tony:: 00:02:14

I think it's, it's a starting point, isn't it? I mean, some people, clearly final year projects and bits and pieces have done some research, uh, before where it's getting in at the beginning with, with, with people. Um, there's also, you talked about enthusiasm. The postgraduate researchers is also quite often come to the research with enthusiasm.

I'm not saying that researchers further down the line, don't have the enthusiasm, but it's, it's just great to work with people at the beginning and seeing if we can support and help people make, give them a good start to, um, their research and also to start that process of saying to people that there's a world of opportunity out there.

Don't start restricting yourself. You've got the opportunity to do, to learn your research and take, take it into all sorts of career type opportunities. So I like to start with people from the beginning, I think,

Emma:: 00:03:00

and we've got a fair few here at Leeds, haven't we? So it's not a small group that you're working with going across all different, um, disciplines as well. Any particular groups that might be your favorite?

Tony:: 00:03:12

Do you know, do you know what I I obviously, my background is in the engineering, um, field, and that's where, that's obviously where I started. It's the challenge of all our disciplines because you learn so much from so many different areas. And whenever you speak to people, I do, for example, I do, um, some one to one work on vivas, I always learn stuff.

We did all three minute thesis stuff years ago, and sometimes you forget that you're meant to be doing the development and support side and you just enjoy listening to the learning, learning about various topics. So yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't choose anything particular. Have I have, I gotta say, And so it's all disciplines, and that's the point.

Learning things from all the disciplines.

Emma:: 00:03:56

So you're hedging your bets there a bit, just a little bit . So in terms of, um, what I mentioned in the intro dynamic development, do you just wanna give us a little bit of an overview of what that is because people might not have heard about it yet. I know you'll go into it in a bit more detail in your episode, but this is a, a chance for you to kind of explain what it.

Tony:: 00:04:16

Yeah. As a starting point, a danger of filling a, um, 20, 30, 40 minutes on the topic. Um, one of the things I, I was interested in isa model for how you personally develop. So I felt that we didn't, this is just looking back a few years now. We, we did lots of linear skills, learn this skill and that skill, but we didn't necessarily give people a model that they could work with, um, on how you actually approach personal development as an individual.

Um, Very quickly, dynamic development. It's about situational analysis. It's about disposition analysis, and the idea being that you understand yourself, you under understand the situations, and there should be some coming together in a happy sense. And I think there's plenty of people in all walks of life where they have a disposition that comes together with their employment situation, for example, and there's jarring and cogs falling off.

So it was trying to encourage people to learn about themselves. Learn about the employment situations they're interested in and making sure if we can make a as, as happy, a as marriage, the right word, as happy are coming together between the individual, putting the right people in the right places and letting them do the analysis, um, to support that happening.

Is that good enough? Quick? Is that quick?

Emma:: 00:05:32

I think so. And I said you'll be going into it in more detail when you come to do seasons of your own. Yeah. So you and I often have, uh, conversations around where our postgraduates sit. Are they research staff and potential research leaders of the future, or are they students?

And I think that's possibly a topic for another episode, but do you think the culture is different for our postgraduate researchers? Do they have different challenges or issues?

Tony:: 00:06:00

I think, um, I suppose philosophically we all experience the same culture, but we perhaps see it from a different point of view depending on where we are within that culture.

The starting out PGR probably sees the culture different from the experienced professor, academic, but I think that the. At the, particularly the emphasis of the amplification at the postgraduate researcher side is that relationship between the supervisor and the power position that there is. And there's, you know, there's terrific supervisor relationships.

There's also times when it, when it doesn't go the way we'd like it to go. Um, so that's one of the aspects that the postgraduate researcher always experiences. Um, and the other, the other aspect is that postgraduate researchers have all got the same target, whereas, other levels of research. Um, people may have different things they wanna do, different directions they wanna go, but postgraduate researcher is trying to achieve the PhD.

Um, so they've all got a context of having the same target. And from our professional, uh, development point of view, it sounds a bit strange, but we're also, we are training or developing people for better words to actually leave the organization where. Other levels of research, you are supporting your staff, developing them further to contribute to the organization.

And some of our PPGs do stay in the organization obviously, but there is that element of us training people to leave, um, which makes it slightly, makes it slightly different. And I think it makes it, in some respects, it can make it better because you're talking about opportunity with people.

Emma:: 00:07:33

So would you say that's probably the biggest challenge they have?

Tony:: 00:07:38

Um, it, it probably is, and it, it's probably, it's how you, um, get across to postgraduate researchers the positive, um, side of the academic arena. Uh, depending on, on the sort of supervisor, the sort of environment they have around them. And we all know about the, if I go to the classic science side of things, we all know the cliche supervisor who wants the researcher to stay in the laboratory 24 7 and, and doesn't want them doing anything else.

Um, on the arts and humanities side, they can be the isolated individual who isn't working on campus, but finds that they just don't have the interaction, they don't, uh, meet with people. So I think there are some generalized umbrella sort of issue. Um, power relationships with supervisors, isolation, general issues, uh, but then there will be more specifics of situations and some people in the ideal world and more and more and more, I suppose all universities want to do this, wanna do this.

At Leeds with our research cultures we want our researchers across the board to have great relationships and great times as PhD students and then go away and tell everybody else to come and do a PhD at Leeds so yeah, I think, Did you answer the question? I've almost forgotten what your question was now.

Emma:: 00:08:51

No, you've answered it, that was, that was perfect thank you. Um, so in a similar format to the other episodes that I've recorded with other co-hosts, what do you think we're doing really well at Leeds?

Tony:: 00:09:02

Um, is this another opportunity for me to talk about dynamic development? You can talk about whatever you want.

I'll, I'll, um, I'll put that for one side at the moment. I think what we've, we've got at Leeds and we continue working on this, is over recent years, we've got a much more integrated system in that we, we've brought a doctoral college in, gosh, I'm gonna say five years. It might even. Longer than that cause you, you kinda lose track of these things.

So we've got an umbrella, doctoral college and then we've got a number of services, particularly obviously ourselves, organizational development and professional learning um, one of the major providers. But we have what you might expect, library service providers. We have career service providers and various others counseling, et cetera.

So we have a big group of people we meet regularly and I think we're all on the same page in terms of trying to support the researchers in front of us. So I think the way that works is really, is really good. In recent years, particularly, I've been interested in changing our approach to professional development, and that's where the dynamic development aspect came in.

So one of the aspects was to change approach in terms of teaching a model to people that they can take a hold of. Because what I want to see is more ownership, people taking more ownership of their personal professional development. Um, And the other aspect that we're, we've got this, um, career catalyst program that we're going to, we're introducing shortly with colleagues and, uh, Ruth that you've spoken to and as part of the, of the podcast.

Um, and this is a digital side because in a sense, I think. If I use the analog digital analogy, if I can get the words out, I think the traditional face to face mod, uh, models, uh, face to face interactions, clearly were human beings, they still have their place, but I'm kind of seeing that as the analog version.

Um, now where you had to be in, uh, well, Tony's four times a year presentation skills workshop for three hours, and if you weren't there, that was your last and only opportunity to get some presentation support. So we've moving an awful lot of stuff digitally and online and using LinkedIn learning as a platform, we're getting some success.

Uh, with that it means it we're shifting to 24 7 availability of at least the information as opposed to if I'm talking about an analog model, it was only available at certain times, um, per year. Uh, we have to still continue to work on the, on the human interaction, how we get that right in the digital world.

But I do feel like we're moving from an analog to a digital type setup, and, and I'm still learning as to what that digital in, in the big inverted commas, um, what that whole picture means. Another aspect of the dynamic development, what I'm trying to introduce is to move away, not to move away from skills entirely, but move to looking at the whole pitch of employability.

The whole pitch of the of the person. Because there's a danger with skill, listing skills, listings. Of course, the famous one in our area is, is the Researcher development framework. Um, There's nothing wrong with it per se, but I think it, there's far more to employability than collecting a list of skills. I mean, I don't think anybody, if you ask somebody how they got there, well, we'll stick to these sort of the cliche academic role.

If you ask somebody how they got their academic role, I can't imagine they would say that they saw a list of skills. They collected the skills and then they were, they were given the academic role. Now, that's not what the skills list says to do, but it's kind of a danger of mapping programs across skills if more like you ask people, and I say, Well, one thing is I was in the right place at the right time.

Um, I knew this academic, I went to a conference and met Dave, Jane, Fred, um, So they are only small aspects, but it, it's, I want what we're doing, I think is developing a more holistic, a whole pitch. Let's include everything skills is important, but for the career development, you've gotta look at the whole person and the whole situation.

There was one, um, um, in danger of talking too long, there's one session that was me and you were in Emma, with some postdoctoral researchers and we used the dynamic development that has a particular diagram that will use as situational and disposition analysis. And when we're talking about situational analysis of getting a job, one person mentioned that for academic jobs, it's quite common actually, when advertising a job, they've already got somebody in mind and that you know, they're gonna probably get that job anyway.

And this was an absolute revelation to somebody around the table, they hadn't realized that that can be the case. So that's only one thing. But it's nothing to do with skills. So if there's over emphasis on skills, which is important, then you never understand and feel the whole pitch of employability.

And that's more what I want to paint, be it good or bad. I want to paint the whole picture. And we're starting to do that, and we want to continue doing that. That was a long answer,

Emma:: 00:13:50

but one, one that you know, I agree with. I think it's really important that the individual is at the heart of their development.

We have an idea of what we might want to, to show them, but ultimately it is their development. Only they can make that decision. So, Have we got it all sorted then Tony, can we sit back and say job done?

Tony:: 00:14:10

No, I think, um, I'll use the cliche again. We're on the journey and I think it started a few years ago, but it's an important journey.

One of the things that I felt was really important recently is the, the university as universities do, we looked at its employability strategy, so developed an employability strategy at the undergraduate level. Um, but then, uh, there was clear arguments that while it was an interesting basis, it, it needed modification of changes for the postgraduate research side.

Uh, and we've, we've made those, um, changes and we now have I think, a very good postgraduate research. Um, well, futures and opportunity strategy seems to be the language, rather employability. But the reason I mentioned that is just related to the last. Uh, point that the, the headline for that, where you put the sort of, it, I, I guess it's a mission or vision statement, it very much talks about the individual.

So previous statements have, in a sense talked about making global people who were globally active in the jobs market. And, but this one isn't, It doesn't say that. It's saying that we want to give you the support that you need for what your aspirations are and I much prefer that as, as a, as a way forward.

And we've kept that for postgrad research as well as undergraduate ones. So it, you know, building what you just said, Emma, is we are moving much more personalized, which I think is really important.

Emma:: 00:15:37

So what would you like to see happen in the next five years?

Tony:: 00:15:41

Um, I want us to continue developing the way we are.

So I think we've got some really good things happening. We've got some really good jigsaw pieces and I'm still learning those jigsaw pieces. Um, so if I come back to Career Catalyst, um, one of the great things about LinkedIn learning, because I haven't done the soap box on LinkedIn learning. It's the connections with LinkedIn and LinkedIn learning and making sure, Well, as a university we're, we're lucky because we buy into LinkedIn learning and all, all the students and staff across campus can log in for free. Not every institution does that, but what it does is it gives you the digital AI driven side. So LinkedIn allows you to, and plenty of people, uh, listening will know this, but it's something like 800 million.

Ruth keeps telling me a number, increases each time. So something like 800 million people in LinkedIn, uh, that you, you can interrogate. So rather than having generic, what skills should I need to be a biologist? What skills do I need to work in? Um, a, uh, what else should we have? in the arts? Um, You can now look at alumni who have been from your program, or in fact alumni from any university around the world who've done what you've done, and you can see the careers and they can look at people at all sorts of career stages, see what they've achieved, see the careers they've had.

You can then personally put together your own specific listing of skills that you want, uh, that you think you need to develop to achieve what you want to achieve. And then if you actually, if you put that into LinkedIn learning, um, and tell it what you're interested in, then the I AI will kick in and it, if you go on your homepage, it does the whole Amazon thing.

You, you looked at this last week, people in your area looking at this, people interested in this industry are looking at this. The other bonus with LinkedIn Learning as a platform is that we can add in our own University of Leeds provision. That's what we've been doing. We've put loads of stuff in there, so the AI does the work for us and the individual as well.

And there's less searching. There's some input you need to do in terms of looking around, seeing what you're interested in, but in combination, LinkedIn, LinkedIn learning, the provision we put in there, that's the, the crux of the digitalization side of things and I want to continue doing that. And so we've got, we've got a program coming in October and hopefully we'll see how it's received and we'll push on, but it's a big learning curve for us as well.

Certainly it's quite a change in approaches to career development, I think. I don't know if anybody else is doing it. Perhaps somebody listening in might tell me if they are.

Emma:: 00:18:19

Yeah, absolutely. Get in touch if you are. So Tony has been absolutely fantastic talking to you today. It's clear that you've got a real passion for this.

There's still work to do. Um, so what I'm gonna do now is leave the rest of this episode to you. So that you can describe what's coming up in your season, and I believe you have drawn the short straw and got season two, so you are up immediately after this one. What can our listeners expect?

Tony:: 00:18:43

Yes. And, uh, season two.

Um, so the, one of the things that we, we have at leads, um, is the Researcher Education Development Scholarship conference, which is originally started by, uh, big shout out to Kay Guccione. She started it when she was at Sheffield University um, but it's, it's one that we run and manage now. So for my series, uh, there is, the conferences is in October and we've got, um, a load of presenters and a number of them have very thankfully said that they would like to, they'd be happy to do a podcast with me.

So, um, I've got around half a dozen lined up so far, and we're gonna talk, uh, talk about their respective presentations. Uh, this year, the topic of the conference is very much research culture, which is one of the reasons I'm doing it. And it is about how, you know, how do we stop losing research talent from research?

And it goes into all of the, the access, diversity and multiple research culture issues that there are in both people doing research and people getting involved in research. So I, you know, tune in, There'll be at least six episodes. We'll start with our keynote speaker as well. Um, so I'll, Is that enough? Should I leave it there?

Join us for the second series.

Intro:: 00:20:01

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