The non-monetary benefits of grant submissions

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. Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast. I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is such a pleasure to be speaking with you today. Thank you for tuning in and for listening to what I have to say today about grant writing. So today I'm talking about why grant submissions are not always about the money.

1:22 Yep, I said it, grant submissions are not always about the money. And I hear you saying, what do you mean it's not always about the money? I need money for my program. You absolutely do. I totally agree. And the reason you're writing the grant is because you don't have enough money for your program because if you did, you wouldn't be writing the grant. So yes, grant writing is about money, but it's about more than just the money. And so I'm here to talk to you about five reasons why you should write grants. And I will tell you that when I first started writing grants, I only wrote it because I had to. I mean, I really need that. I had to. I was told to. They were like, well, this is what you're supposed to do. I was like, oh, sure, I'll do it.

2:05 Because for many of us, when we start writing grants, we're fellows, we're postdoctoral fellows. And to be honest, someone's going to pay us whether or not we submit grants. So why bother? Like, why do you have to do that? And it's not until you become a faculty member, like leading your own research program where you're like, yeah, kind of need the money so I can fund the program. And then it becomes very clear why you should continue to submit grant proposals. But in the beginning, it's hard to get yourself to do it. And because you're not necessarily, you don't necessarily need the money. And sometimes, for those of us who are on career development awards, it's like, well, I have a career development award. My time is fully funded. I don't need more money. OK, yes. So this is why you should continue to submit grants even when you do not need money.

2:49 So the first thing that submitting grant gives you that is not necessarily monetary is clarity of purpose, clarity of purpose. Here you are. You have a research program. You have a program of study. And you have all these great ideas. And they're swirling in your head. And they're lovely. You could do this. You could do that. Or maybe you could do this and that together. They're so beautiful, except that they're not really concrete. They're not really clear. And what writing a grant proposal allows you to do is to commit to what you really want to do. Like, what is it?

3:29 Like, you know, there's this wishful thinking that's involved in all these great ideas. But the moment you commit it to paper, and by paper, I mean the, you know, the document on your screen, it really forces you to clarify what is fancy, what is whimsical, and what is real. And it forces you. It forces you to be very clear on where you're going and why you should be going in that direction. I love it. I love it because in a sense, it's like I have all these ideas, but they don't become concrete until I commit them to paper. And so writing a proposal forces you to clearly define your research goals.

4:10 It forces you to really commit. It's like, okay, these are great ideas. What do you really want to do? And so writing a proposal allows you to really, in a sense, it gives you the accountability because you've set it on paper, all of a sudden it's now real. You put arms and legs to it. You say, well, this is the approach we're going to take. These are the future directions. It allows you to clearly, clearly define your research goals. And it gives you focused direction. Here's one thing that I've seen grant submissions do for me. So the moment I commit it to paper, we start moving in that direction because it's so clear.

4:52 It's very clear what we're doing. It's like, well, why wouldn't we move this project forward today? Why wait until it starts? It's funded like a year from now, maybe. As long as you're able to do that, you do that because it's so clear. It's a focused direction. Why wouldn't I go in this direction today to the best of my ability? And now you may not have as much money as you want to move in direction completely, but at least you're able to start taking steps towards it because you've clearly defined it. So the first thing submitting grants gives you that is not necessarily about the money is clarity of purpose. The second thing it does is it allows you to plan. I love it because here's the thing.

5:34 Again, it's kind of like your ideas are nice and they're cool and everything in your head. And the moment you put them down on paper, you're like, no, that's not going to fly. That idea, no, it's not going to fly because it's not practical. In a sense, what it does is it allows you to bring the idea out of the pie in the sky and put it in the ground and actually dig a hole for it and make space for it. It forces you to really plan. So in a sense, it gives you the opportunity to plan your project to say, okay, this is what we'll do first and then we'll do this and then we'll do this and then we'll do that. So what it gives you is a gift of a comprehensive project plan.

6:18 It allows you to set timelines for yourself. It allows you to be very clear about what methods you're going to use, why these methods work, why you wouldn't use alternate methods. If this method fails, what other methods you're going to employ. It really allows you to improve your project management because you outline all that you're going to do. It literally is the, what is the word? It's like your blueprint. It's your blueprints for a building. You can hand it over to someone and they say, okay, this is what you want to do. We can execute your blueprint. And it forces you to do that in a way that you wouldn't otherwise have done except that, well, because you had to submit this proposal, you needed to clarify what that is.

7:02 And because of that, it's kind of like if you've ever heard people who talk about goal setting and the importance of committing goals to paper, the importance of having an accountability plan, grant writing is that. It essentially allows you to commit to paper or to a document on your screen what you're going to do. And it increases the likelihood that you're actually going to be able to do it because the plan is so clear, it's so concrete, why wouldn't you? And so it really allows you to do project planning. And so research planning is reason number two why you should write grants that are not necessarily about the money. Okay. Number three is the fact that you've got to go read to write this grant.

7:47 You know, you're the expert, you know so much, you know, and the papers are coming out because, you know, the table of contents for your favorite journals are always coming through your inbox and you're going to meetings, you're learning all along the way, you have insight as to what's going on in your field. The moment you need to submit a proposal, you've got to really go read the literature, especially with regard to how it integrates with the work that you're doing. You have to go do it. It's a discipline. It's an exercise that you have to do. And as you do it, you're deepening your understanding of the field, you are becoming an expert. It's so awesome. Okay, there's a kind of expert you are in your clinical space, but the moment you have to go read the literature and you're like, oh, this is what this person, this is how my work is in communication with the rest of the literature and these are the gaps in literature.

8:42 Like you get to know that because you have to pull these things together and synthesize them for the proposal. And again, it's not as if you're not really doing that because as you're giving talks, you're doing these things, but it really is a really focused strategy for you to say what does the literature say relative to my idea, relative to my project plan. And it really requires you to really know the literature. Like you've got to understand it. And so you really get to know a field that way. And so one of the things that gives you is just the ability to really become the expert because you're the one in the literature all the time. And the more you're spending time submitting proposals, the more you're really thinking, okay, what's new since the last proposal?

9:25 How does this new manuscript or new article integrate into what's already known or how does it challenge what's an existing paradigm? It's really a great intellectual space to really be able to learn so much because you're writing the proposal that allows you to get a good, good, good deep understanding of the literature. So that's number three. Number four is that it allows you to become a very, very critical thinker. And by critical, I don't mean judgmental of your work, though that may be present too, but it really allows you to think critically about your work in relation to the rest of the work in the literature.

10:08 You are assessing your plan so many times, especially if you're submitting NIH projects. You're needing to discuss what's the rigor of the prior research? What's the rigor of your own research? And so you critically looking at your own research plan, thinking about, okay, what are the weaknesses in my approach? How do we strengthen these gaps? How do we close these gaps? How do we identify weaknesses and adjust for these weaknesses? How do we get other investigators who are stronger in a certain area to be part of this research program? You have to think through all of these. And you're thinking all the time about the gaps in the field, but then also gaps in your knowledge, gaps in your methodology, gaps in your investigator team.

10:54 And so you do that because you're trying to pull it together to make a comprehensive, cohesive proposal. You're trying to pull together a comprehensive, cohesive proposal, and you really have to think critically about the literature, your research plan, your team of investigators, whether you're going to be able to pull this off. And it really is a beautiful thing. I will tell you, it's so amazing. When I'm writing proposals and there's a sense that, oh my gosh, I'm creating the future, and it's not just a future where it's like wishful thinking. It's really a future that's concretely based. And to be able to do that, you've got to really think critically about all of the advantages and the disadvantages of your approach and the benefits or the not so great things about how you're moving the work forward.

11:40 I mean, it's just really, it's a beautiful space of critical thinking. And so the gift you give to yourself each time you pull together a proposal is that you become better at this critical thinking. You become more creative. You become more inventive, innovative, because you're really able to pull disparate things together and make them into one cohesive whole. It's really beautiful. Okay. Number five is that while you become a skilled communicator, yes, you do. Because when we're writing, we're writing these grants, they're complex ideas. Like none of us is working in a field that's so simple because it was so simple.

12:23 You would have solved all the problems anyway, and then you would have nothing to do. But you are really pulling together a complex research proposal, and you're needing to simplify it. You're needing to simplify it for your audience and be very clear and be persuasive. And to be able to do that, you've really got to become a skilled communicator. So it doesn't matter where you start from. I mean, I thought I was a great writer before I started writing grants, but I know I've gotten so much better. And part of my pursuit of writing grants more excellently is that I've gone out and gotten coaching for my writing. Yes, I've paid to sit down with a writing expert so he can assess my writing and say, wow, these are the gaps in your writing.

13:08 And so my communication skills are getting better. I'm able to more clearly articulate what I want, where I'm going, how I'm going to get there because I'm always writing these proposals all the time. And so really you strengthen your communication skills. And one thing you also do, you don't just strengthen your writing skills, you also strengthen your communication skills verbally, because what you're really doing is helping to strengthen your communication thought pattern. That's what you're doing. And so yes, you're able to bring your communication thought pattern and immerse it in your writing because that's primarily what you're doing when you're submitting these proposals. But the more you're thinking critically about your research, the more you're kind of pulling these disparate ideas together and creating a cohesive whole, the better a thinker you're becoming and so that more clearly you're able to communicate about your science.

14:01 The more clearly you're able to communicate the research. When you go to pull together a talk, you can communicate more clearly because of the work you've already been doing as you've been pulling together the literature to write a very clear and compelling and concise grant. So yes, your communication skills increase and you know what, you're always writing other things. Your communication skills increase in other things that you're writing or speaking about as well. And now kind of the side effects too are that you know your typing skills get faster or maybe you're good at dictating your thoughts. Your ability to do that gets faster. So you become a sharper, more focused, more skilled communicator.

14:44 Okay, those are five reasons why grant submissions are not always about the money. And so five reasons why you should write grants even if it doesn't get you money. You get clarity of purpose. That's number one. Number two, it allows you to be a great research planner or project planner. Number three, you're in touch with the literature. You really get to build your expertise because you're the one pulling these things together. Number four, you become a really amazing critical thinker. Number five, your communication skills are sharper and more focused. All right, these are reasons to continually submit grants. Don't let the grant writing scare you. And if you need a coach to help pull you through, I would love to be your coach.

15:25 Reach out to me by direct message. I'm at Facebook. I'm on Facebook and I'm also on Instagram and on LinkedIn as well. All right, please share this with someone else who's like despairing and saying, why do I continue to write grants that don't get funded? Tell them, ha, even if you don't get the money, you're getting so much out of it. All right, share this episode with them, please. It has been a pleasure talking with you today. I look forward to talking with you again 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.

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