Anxiety is baked into many academic cultures, but for some that fear can be debilitating. In this episode Mark talks about his own struggle with anxiety after a failed attempt to return to face-to-face work post-COVID, and brings a message of hope and healing for anyone struggling to give themselves the self-compassion they need to move through difficult times. Trigger warning: this episode includes references to sexual and spiritual abuse.

Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. If you want more information about training courses, please write to [email protected]

Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books

Most researchers suffer from imposter syndrome at some point in their careers, but few talk about it, so it can feel like you are alone in feeling the way you do. In this episode Mark shares his own experience of imposter syndrome and introduces another audio chapter of his book, Impact Culture, which provides practical advice to prevent and overcome imposter syndrome.

Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. If you want more information about training courses, please write to [email protected]

Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books

Why do we say "yes" to things we later regret, or struggle to share early drafts of our work with collaborators? Why we get upset when colleagues ask for help and then don't follow our advice? Are you really driven by a desire to help others, or are you seeking external validation? Why do we need to make sure we've got everything right - can you have a healthy level of perfectionism or are you expressing a deeper need to "be right"? This week, Mark explores some of the common ways in which researchers experience people-pleasing and perfectionism, and how you can harness these challenges to learn more about yourself and the decisions you make. In so doing, Mark argues, it is possible to regain control of your work-life balance and start making decisions that make time for the most important things in your career and life.

Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. If you want more information about training courses, please write to [email protected]

Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books

In this episode, Mark considers the difference between influential versus manipulative impact, and shares insights and practical tips that can help you identify early warning signs that you might be about to cross a line and say or do something you might later regret. He builds on previous episodes about leadership for impact and his chapter on empathic leadership in his new book, Impact Culture.

Read the blog version of today's episode here

Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. If you want more information about training courses, please write to [email protected]

Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books

This week, Mark interviews Dr Katerina Cidlinska from the Institute of Psychology at the Czech Academy of Sciences about research she conducted with Early Career Researchers (ECRs) who left academia. Her work identifies four trajectories and impact could be part of the problem as well as part of the solution. There were unique challenges for women and researchers in STEM subjects, and Katerina now runs workshops to help ECRs think about how they can balance the competing demands of their roles, or whether they need to start thinking of an exit strategy.

Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. If you want more information about training courses, please write to [email protected]

Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books

In this episode, Mark is joined by Dr Joyce Reed, health coach and CEO of Fast Track Impact, to talk about the transformative power of coaching for academics, and how it can increase both productivity and resilience. They talk about individual and group coaching, and the benefits of upgrading from a mentoring to a coaching programme in schools and departments, and how coaching can tackle burn-out before it happens, rather than picking up the pieces after everything has gone wrong. 

Find out more about Dr Reed's health coaching practice: https://www.drjoycereedhealthcoach.com/

Read Mark's blog for Times Higher Education on "Why every researcher needs a coach"

Get your copy of "What works in executive coaching" by Erik de Haan.

Find out more about health coaching via the NHS (UK only).

Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. If you want more information about training courses, please write to [email protected]

Mark interviews Saskia Gent (Insights for Impact) and Jennifer Locket and Dawn Ashby (Plymouth Marine Laboratory) to learn from research that reviewed over 70 impact strategies from around the world. The research suggested there are just two types of impact strategy to choose from - enabling impact and achieving impact strategies. Mark discusses the paper with Saskia before interviewing Jen and Dawn about how they developed their strategy, which features as an example of good practice in the paper. Read the pre-print of the paper: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/impactstrategies

Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. If you want more information about training courses, please write to [email protected]

Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books

Mark interviews Professor Gemma Derrick from University of Bristol about her work to understand the characteristics and drivers of negative unintended consequences from research, what she calls "grimpact". You can get in touch with Gemma to share your grimpact case studies at [email protected].

Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. If you want more information about training courses, please write to [email protected]

Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books

This week, Mark concludes his series on empathic leadership for impact by considering evidence from studies of expert negotiators that suggests empathic leaders can be significantly more influential. As he revises the empathic leadership model to move beyond service, he suggests that the third and final pillar of empathic leadership is about our ability to both influence and serve others by understanding their positions and needs more deeply.

Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. If you want more information about training courses, please write to [email protected]

Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books

In this episode, Mark discusses how leaders that want to facilitate impact need to cultivate bridging expertise to bridge ideas and networks, bringing people and solutions together to make a difference.

Read the blog version of today's episode here

Follow Mark at @fasttrackimpact and @profmarkreed or on LinkedIn. If you want more information about training courses, please write to [email protected]

Impact Culture is available now, as a hardback, e-book and audio book: https://www.fasttrackimpact.com/books