How to structure your research collaborations

0:00 Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients. When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research program. Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit. However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

0:40 For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene. All right everyone, welcome to today's episode. I am Toyosi Onwuemene. What a privilege it is to be talking with you today. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. I'm talking today about how to structure your research collaborations, and I want to invite you, if you have not already, to sign up for Academic Negotiation Academy, where we show clinicians how to negotiate their careers so that they can lead the research programs that help them thrive and make a significant difference in the lives of their patients.

1:33 So if you're interested, please sign up on our website, clinicianresearcherpodcast.com. I would love to be your coach and help you negotiate your research career. Okay, so today we're talking about how to decide on collaborations. And I think that collaborations are so awesome because what one person can do when you bring two or three people together, oh my goodness, you can do so much more. And then if you bring four or five people together who have the same goal, who have the same focus, it's pretty awesome. And the thing about collaborations though is that they kind of have their dark side as well. And I'm going to talk a little bit today about the dark side and the bright side of collaborations.

2:18 And the specific collaboration I'm thinking about is kind of one collaboration in particular. I got together with a group and we had a specific rare disease population that we were interested in. And over the course of years, we worked really hard on building a panel of patients that we could answer questions in. And so there was a lot of excitement at the beginning and we were able to kind of craft solid research questions and think about what variables we wanted to collect. And we built a red cap registry and really a lot of the work moved forward. But one of the things that I appreciated is that some people were moving the work forward and others were not.

3:02 And many times we would come to meetings and some people would say, oh, I haven't had time. I haven't had time. And really, you know, there were years and years that went by of, well, we haven't done this and we haven't done that. And maybe two or three other programs that were kind of leading the charge in terms of like, you know, making things happen. And then the pandemic happened. And then of course, it was really hard to move anything forward. And I remember just thinking about how much I had invested time into this particular collaboration. And oh, yeah, it did yield fruit. We had publications that came out of the collaboration. But it also was a lot of energy. It was a lot of energy. And I think I had such a great vision for what could be achieved in this collaboration that somehow wasn't really happening.

3:47 And I finally got to a point where I thought, hmm, it may be time for me to transition this collaboration or at least stay in a peripheral rather than be in a leadership role. And that was an important move for me because ultimately what it allowed me to do is focus energies on other areas. And so it's helped me really think about collaborations and how do you get value out of your research collaborations? How do you structure your research collaborations so that they serve you? And yes, research collaborations are kind of about the greater good. And the greater good is always important. But it takes a long time to get to the greater good. And many times people don't always agree on what that greater good looks like.

4:29 And so in some collaborations, arguing about what is the greater good, what does it look like, who benefits from it can overwhelm discussion so that instead of moving forward and doing the greater good, you're spending a lot of time trying to figure out what that greater good looks like. And so for that reason, I want to just share with you today ways to think about collaborations. The first thing I want to share is that you are the most important piece of any collaboration. Can I say this again? You are the most important piece of any collaboration. And I hear you saying, no, I'm not. Get over yourself.

5:10 What I'm saying is that from the perspective of your career as a clinician researcher, you are the most important piece of the collaboration. No, not the collaborative leader, not the program that's making it happen. It's you. And you're here because you're advancing your career as a clinician researcher. That's why you're here. And it's great that at the end of the day, other people's careers are served by your work. The primary, most important person to be served by the work that you do is you and your career. And so any collaboration needs to first be structured with you in mind. How will you benefit? Oh, yes, at the end of the day, patients will benefit.

5:53 That's great. Patients will always benefit from your work because you're a clinician. That's what you do. But how do you structure collaboration so that you win? Yes, the whole collaborative body wins, but how do you win as well? What is your win? And so that's why it's important to recognize that you are the most important piece of that collaboration, you. And because you're the most important piece of that collaboration, every collaboration you enter into must have a clear definition of how you win, how you succeed within the confines of that collaboration. And I know that there are collaborations where it's like, well, you put in your time and maybe after seven or eight years of being part of this collaborative group, you can lead something.

6:38 Yes, those kinds of collaboratives exist. But I need you to understand that you are the most important piece and you need to be very clear on how you win. And if the win is seven or eight years down the road, be very clear about that because you need to be winning before seven or eight years are up. And if for whatever reason the collaboration turns sour before the seven or eight years are up, does that mean all the work that you did turns out to be nothing? You want to just have that in mind that your winning is an important piece of any collaboration and you should consider that if any collaboration does not advance your career as a clinician researcher, I want you to consider if it's a collaboration you should be part of.

7:19 And if you're part of it, consider whether it should be a major piece of your portfolio. Okay. Make sure you recognize that you're the most important piece of this collaboration. The second thing that I want you to think about is that you are a great collaborator when you lead your own research program. So one of the things that collaborations help you do is in a sense they take pressure off of you so you don't have to be the one necessarily like driving the program or leading the questions or necessarily applying for funding to fund the collaboration unless you're the person who's actually the leader of the collaboration. It does take pressure off of you, but the best collaborators are people who understand how to move work forward.

8:03 The best collaborators are people who are actually doing the work and there's no greater laboratory to test your work than your own. Whether that's a wet or a dry lab, there's no greater place to test your skills as a clinician researcher than your own personal research program. And so when you've gone through the growing pains of building a research program, of thinking about research questions and how to answer them and helping people come to do your work, you get very good at collaborations because you have something tangible to bring to the collaboration. You have your wealth of experience. You have the work you've done. You have new ideas that you're consistently workshopping in your own research program.

8:47 So your strength as a collaborator is enhanced when you actually lead your own research program. And I want to say this because I think for many clinician researchers, there's this sense of like, well, I don't have to lead. I can just join other people. And yes, you can. And there's value in that. We need more people kind of contributing to the enterprise. But you become really, really good and effective as a collaborator when you actually lead your own program yourself. For example, when people are asking you for letters of support because you ask for letters of support, you know what that means. You know how to craft a good letter of support. You know why it's important to be timely with getting your letter of support out to your co-investigators because you've had that experience.

9:32 So you are a great collaborator when you lead your own research. And so don't let collaborations deter you from actually leading your own research. Okay. Number three is that collaborations are really only as good as the collaborators that contribute to them. What is the strength? What is the investment? What is the commitment level of the investigators that are contributing to the research program? And that's important because if the investigators who are part of the collaboration are not invested, then it's a collaboration that may just continue to have subpar impact over time.

10:17 If collaborators are not committed, then kind of they let things slide. And it's a month later, it's two months later, it's three years later, and the same things are happening over and over again and your work is not moving forward. So you have to recognize the collaborators that make up the collaborations. And this is not to say anything wrong about the people you may be collaborating with. It's just that everybody has different time pressures and everybody has different levels of support for research. For many clinicians, there isn't support for research. People talk about sweat equity. So every time you're talking about sweat equity, just recognize that it means people are really doing this work on their own time. Most of the time, if people are not resourced to do work, it's just work that they can't always do well.

11:01 They can't do as well. Some people are able to make a lot happen on just kind of doing things on the side. But for the most part, most people can't. And so just as you're considering your collaborations, consider how much time do people have to actually put into this work? And is it sufficient to move the work forward? You want to recognize that. You want to consider collaborations where people actually are able to do work. They lead their own research programs, which means that they actually have time during the day and space to do the research, and those collaborators tend to be much stronger than collaborations where collaborators are kind of doing things as they can on their own time. And this is not, again, to down that or to say, oh, that's not a superior collaboration.

11:45 It's just to say you want to recognize these collaborations and you want to determine where in your work they fit. Do they come before the work you do? Which collaboration should be the most that you prioritize? Because you're always making an investment. You have to ask to what extent will I get a return on my investment and in what time frame? So recognize who your collaborators are because collaborations are only as good as the collaborators that contribute to them. Number four is that collaborations actually take a long time to come to fruition. Collaborations take a long time to come to fruition, and you have to recognize that time horizon.

12:28 In fact, much of research takes a long time to come to fruition. And when we're moving forward in our research careers, we're thinking what's short term, what's going to bring something fast, what's going to take more time to come to fruition? You in general tend to have research projects at various stages of maturation. But when it comes to collaborations, usually it's a long process for you to really, really see benefit, for you to really see gain. And you want to recognize that. It takes time. And for that reason, it's like, okay, while you're doing this collaboration, what else are you doing? How else are you moving your research project forward? If it's going to take a few years for this research project to come to fruition, what else are you doing in those years?

13:12 You want to recognize that collaborations can take a long time, and then you want to adjust accordingly for how much collaborations feature in the work that you do. And this is not to say they shouldn't feature. It's just to recognize that maybe they shouldn't be as prominent relative to the work that you generate for yourself. Okay. The other thing is that the leader of the collaboration is key to its success. So invariably, there's a leader of the collaboration, and they have energy, they have vision, they have focus. Who is the leader of the collaboration? And to what extent do they embody the things that you find valuable about that collaboration?

13:54 And you want to really think through who's the leadership of this collaboration. And also recognize that if the collaboration, if this particular leader ends the collaboration, what does that leave you? If there's a charismatic leader that's not you, and all of a sudden, for whatever reason, they can't lead this collaboration anymore, is it a collaboration that's structured to continue beyond this person? And these are just, you know, again, things to consider that is this a leader who actually is able to make the investment, has a wealth of experience, is able to continue to lead this group to success. So the leader is important, and you want to take time to think about that.

14:38 Number six is think about what the end of the collaboration could look like for you. And sometimes I see faculty who are very, very invested in collaborations to the exclusion of any work for themselves. And then sometimes the collaborations end abruptly. Maybe the leader moves to another institution and changes job focus. And then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, all this work, where is it going to go? Or sometimes there's just a change in the environment and something else becomes more important and then this collaboration falls to the wayside. And so it's important to think about, okay, if this collaboration comes to an end, how do I move forward? Are all my eggs in this one basket such that I would suffer a lot of loss if this collaboration doesn't move forward?

15:24 So you want to think about what the end of the collaboration could look like for you. And number seven, number seven is that if this collaboration did not exist, would your research still exist? If this collaboration did not exist, would your research still exist? And so it's important that we do collaborations because there's a lot of synergy there. But also consider whether this collaboration is all of your research program. And if for whatever reason this collaboration ceased to exist, would your research program still be there? Would it still be functional? Would it still be viable? Or would you now start thinking about, oh, great, I put all my eggs in that basket.

16:05 Now I need to do something else. And so the reason I want you to consider all these things is not to give you like a negative experience or a negative sense of collaborations, but it's just to consider that collaborations should be part of your portfolio. They should not necessarily be all of your portfolio. And sometimes collaborations feel easier because you know what, there's so many people doing the work, therefore it's moving forward or somebody else is leading, therefore you don't have to worry about it. But again, I want to say that my conversation is mostly to research leaders because clinicians have the most amazing ideas that really will transform the way we do health care, will transform the way we do patient care. And if you have one of those ideas, depending on a collaboration, to move that research forward is important as long as you also have kind of like a great framework for moving the project forward even when there's no collaboration.

16:59 And so I just wanted to share these seven things with you because I think it's important that you collaborate for synergy and also consider how you use a collaboration to your own advantage. So to summarize those seven, recognize that you're the most important piece of the collaboration. You're a great collaborator when you lead your own research. Collaborations are only as good as the collaborators that contribute to them. Collaborations can take a long time to come to fruition. The leader of the collaboration is key to the success of the collaboration, so maybe you should be the leader or create a collaboration in which you lead. Number six, think about what the end of the collaboration looks like for you and ask yourself the question, if this collaboration did not exist, would my research program still exist?

17:45 So definitely consider carefully how you structure your collaboration and make sure you're leading as well. So lead your own research program, lead your own collaboration, and then be part of collaborations as well. And I want to also invite you to think about who are the people you collaborate with. Many times clinicians are more comfortable collaborating with other clinicians, and I want to argue that you should think about collaborating with PhD scientists. And so how much synergy could come from the clinician expert and the methodological expert coming together to answer questions? I mean, that would be so phenomenal. And so I want you to consider synergy in collaborations and thinking about other methodologists who could help you really, really craft an amazing, amazing research program.

18:34 Okay, that's all I have for today. I want you to please share this episode with just one other physician, just one clinician today needs to hear about how to structure, how to think about structuring research collaborations, and I want to invite you to please share this episode with them. All right, it's been a pleasure talking with you today. I look forward to the next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.

19:15 If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself. Someone else needs to hear it. So take a minute right now and share it. As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.