PhD Transition Report On-Demand

Skip ahead to:
4:53 – Show Me the Data
29:50 – Creating Atomic Habits As A PhD w/James Clear
1:00:00 – What Is A Regulatory Industry Position? w/Bryant Moeller, Ph.D.
1:02:10 – Power Of Non-Traditional Networking Opportunities w/Jessica Kishimoto, Ph.D.

What is your worst job search habit?

Do you want to create new habits that will lead you to a successful industry transition? 

In this episode of Cheeky Scientist Radio, James Clear, best-selling author of Atomic Habits, discuss practical strategies you can use to create new habits that will not only improve your job search but teach you how to be continuously improving and always reaching greater levels of success throughout your career.

About Our Guest

James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits and a writer focused on habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Entrepreneur, Time, and on CBS This Morning. His website, jamesclear.com, receives millions of visitors each month and hundreds of thousands subscribe to his popular email newsletter.

He is a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies and his work is used by teams in the NFL, NBA, and MLB. Through his online course, The Habits Academy, Clear has taught more than 10,000 leaders, managers, coaches, and teachers. The Habits Academy is the premier training platform for individuals and organizations that are interested in building better habits in life and work.

Key Takeaways

1. Be aware of your personality and genes in order to design the best habit creating strategy for you.

2. Optimize for the start rather than for the outcome by honing in on the first two minutes of the habit you are trying to build.

3. Habits consist of 4 stages: 1. Cue 2. Craving 3. Routine 4. Reward

More About This Show

As PhD, we tend to overachievers. We are go-getters. So, you’ve probably tried to create a new good habit in your life before. You’ve probably tried to make a big positive change in your life. Maybe you thought, “I need to start working out everyday for 2 hours.” You take on this huge goal,  do it for one or two days and then you quit. This doesn’t work. The real key to making big changes is to start small by creating powerful small habits. 

In this episode, our guest James Clear dives deep into the best strategies to create “Atomic Habits” that can create powerful change in your job search and your life. James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits, his website, jamesclear.com receives millions of visitors each month and hundreds of thousands of people subscribe to his popular email newsletter. He is a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies and his work is used by teams in the NFL, NBA, MLB. He has taught more than 10,000 leaders, managers, coaches and teachers how to build habits in their life and work.

Why Habits Save Energy And How To Make New Habits

In The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg a study compared the brain activity of mice from the first time they entered a maze with their brain activity after they had been going through the maze for a week. They found that the first time through the maze, their brain activity was high the entire time, the mouse was struggling to make it though. However, after a week, traveling the maze became a habit, and this caused a dramatic drop in the brain activity while the mouse was completing the maze. Conclusion: habits make tasks that once were difficult and consumed a lot of energy much easier to complete by automating the behavior.

A study published in Health Psychology investigated the effectiveness of creating a flossing habit. They found that when participants used the ‘cue’ of tooth brushing to initiate the flossing habit, the number of times a person flossed in a 2 week period more than doubled from an average of 4.15 to 9.98 times. Conclusion: Creating new habits is most effective when there is a clear ‘cue’ for when you should do the new habit. 

Creating Atomic Habits: A Conversation with James Clear

Isaiah: What I really liked about your book is you offered something that I haven’t seen anywhere else, you talk about how genes and personality influence habits. Can you tell us how genes and personality affect a person’s ability to create good habits?

James: There had been a variety of studies that had linked each of the Big Five personality traits to the genetic code, to DNA, in some way. There’s some biological underpinning for these personality aspects. That is the technical scientific definition of personality is that it’s the quality or set of characteristics that go with you from situation to situation

So for your particular set of genes, for your particular personality, there may be certain habits that are easier for you to do based on what your natural skill set is and there are also may be some strategies that make more sense for you based on where your strengths and weaknesses lie.

So for example, if you are high in agreeableness than maybe things like getting people together for a social night out or writing thank you notes, things that are considered warm and considerate and kind. Those habits might come more naturally to you than they would to someone else who is low in agreeableness.

Similarly, someone who is high in conscientiousness is someone who’s very neat and orderly and organized. So if you’re low in conscientiousness then it might be more important from a strategy standpoint for you to say prime your environment so that you have exposure to have good cues and you leave it less likely for you to just remember to do the right thing because you’re not that kind of person. So the more your environment is primed for that the better you position yourself to follow through with those habits.

Isaiah: Let’s say, I am a PhD, I’m introverted, I have a tough time networking, public speaking, et cetera. But, I want to create some better habits in these areas. Where do I start?

James: So there are a variety things that you can do. In the book, Atomic Habits, I lay out a framework that I call the Four Laws of Behavior Change. One way to think about it is that they’re kind of like four tools in a tool box and you can take out which tool you need based on the circumstance you’re facing.

First I recommend something I call the two minute rule. The basic idea is that you take whatever habit you’re trying to build and you scale it down to just the first two minutes. 

So you take whatever habit you’re trying to build, whether it’s “I want to read 30 books in the next year” or “I want to do 20 minutes of yoga three days a week” whatever it is, and you scale it down to just the first two minutes. So read 30 books becomes read one page or do 20 minutes of yoga becomes take out my yoga mat. And the point of that is that a habit must be established before it can be improved.

Whenever we’re looking to change a habit we often start by optimizing for the finish line. We think about, alright, I want to earn six figures next year or I want to read 30 books. We’re very outcome-focused. But instead I think we should optimize for the starting line instead of the finish line. Because if you can do that, you can master the art of showing up every day then you actually have a chance to optimize and improve something.

Isaiah: Can you take us through what the components of a habit are and then how to use those components to stack habits?

James: My model starts with a cue, there’s some kinda cue that captures your attention. Usually it’s visual, humans are very visual creatures, but it doesn’t have to be. So let’s say, for example, that you walk into a room and you see a plate of cookies on the counter. So it’s a visual cue.

The next stage, and this is the stage that I added to my model, is what I would call craving. It’s about the interpretation that you have regarding that cue. So if you see a cue, you have a high craving, you see the cookies and then you say, oh these are gonna be tasty, you interpret them as being a positive thing. The perceived value is high.

That craving leads to the third stage, which is the response or the actual routine. So you pick up the cookie and you eat it.

And then finally there’s a reward. So the cookie is sugary, it’s tasty, you enjoy it and so on. And these four stages kinda create a feedback loop and as you repeat them more and more it gets tightened and pretty soon you can do all four stages on auto pilot.

Habit stacking is this idea that you can use your current habits to initiate a new habit. So you want to stack the new behavior that you want to perform on top of an old one.

So for example after I make my morning cup of coffee I will meditate for 60 seconds. Or if you want to build a habit of reading more you could say OK, my normal morning routine is I wake up, I turn off my alarm, I make the bed and then I take a shower. And so you could say, OK, now my new habit stack is I turn off the alarm, I make my bed, I set a book on my pillow and then I take a shower. So that when you get in bed at night there’s a book waiting for you to read. But the idea here is that you want to stack that new behavior on top of an old one.

Listen to the full podcast episode to get even more insight into: How to make creating new habits easiest, practical tips for making your habits stick and much, much more!

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post The Power Of Creating Atomic Habits As A PhD (Cheeky Scientist Radio) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Skip ahead to:
2:45 – Show Me the Data
13:55 – Advanced Pitching & Communication Strategies w/Bill McGowan
51:22 – Transitioning Into A Scientist Position w/Tapan Shah, Ph.D.
1:02:10 – How To Get Hired As A Consultant In Industry w/Patricía Silva, Ph.D.

Are you confident with your elevator pitch?

Do you project confidence when you communicate with potential employers? 

In this episode of Cheeky Scientist Radio, Bill McGowan, Founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group and a two-time Emmy Award-winning journalist will share key insights into how you can master your elevator pitch and be more confident every time you open your mouth to speak.

About Our Guest

Bill McGowan, Founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group, is a two-time Emmy Award-winning journalist who has produced and reported for ABC News 20/20; CBS News 48 Hours, Dow Jones Television and MSNBC. In front of the camera, he has anchored hundreds of hours of news and information programming and has conducted thousands of interviews with newsmakers, CEO’s, celebrities, doctors, book authors, attorneys, and professional athletes. Bill now uses that experience to coach clients on how to exude more confidence and command on television and in front of an audience. Those he has trained include Eli Manning, Sheryl Sandberg, Jack Welch, Mary J. Blige, Karlie Kloss, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the CEOs of Facebook, Airbnb, Snapchat, Coach, Spotify, Calvin Klein, Lyft, Sesame Workshop, Whole Foods, etc. He gets clients ready by sharing his insights into the distinctive styles and tactics of different interviewers. As part of his coaching, he helps clients find their authentic narrative and then teaches the necessary skills to enable them to deliver it with passion and persuasiveness. He is also the author of “Pitch Perfect: How to Say it Right the First Time, Every Time” published by Harper Collins in 2014.

In this podcast, you’ll find:

Show Me The Data – Why conveying confidence matters and the importance of good communication

Elevate Your Elevator Pitch – Award winning journalist Bill McGowan shares key strategies for exuding confidence and perfecting your elevator pitch to get hired

Key Takeaways

1. It’s essential to have a plan for the first few sentences that come out of your mouth.

2. Take the pulse of the room to fully understand your audience and make your presentation more engaging for them.

3. Get some large note cards and create a ‘GPS for your mouth’ that you can reference during a talk.

More About This Show

As PhDs, you have the technical skills that you need. You are very intellectually sound and you excel intellectually in terms of technical details,  logic, work ethic, autonomy. But as a PhD, you haven’t had a lot of behavioral practice is in terms of your softer skills, such as communication. You have them, of course, but you’re not used to talking about them. You’re certainly not used to pitching them to employers or other people. How you carry yourself, how you present, how you speak all of these different things really matter. That’s why we have our special guest for this episode, Bill McGowan.

Bill McGowan is the founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group, a two time Emmy award winning journalist who has produced and reported for ABC News 20/20, CBS News 48 Hours, Dow Jones, television, and MSNBC. He has anchored hundreds of hours of news and information programming, and has conducted thousands of interviews with news makers, CEOs, celebrities, doctors. He now uses his experience to coach clients to exude more confidence, to command, whether it’s on television for an audience, or for all of you when you are speaking in front of potential employers. In this episode he teaches you, very practically, how to pitch yourself effectively no matter the situation.

Why Great Communication Matters

In a survey of the executive perceptions of the top 10 soft skills needed in today’s workplace 93% of employers rated integrity as extremely important and 91% rated communication as extremely important. Integrity and communication were the top 2 soft skills according to the executives surveyed. 

A McKinsey & Company study found that improved communication and collaboration through the use of social communication technologies could raise the productivity of workers by 20 to 25%. When communication is smooth everyone is able to work more effectively. 

How To Communicate More Confidently: A Conversation with Bill McGowan

Isaiah: What are some of the things that you tell someone who’s never been in a high stakes communication situation before? What should they focus on? 

Bill: I’m amazed at how many people go into these situations without a game plan for the first two or three sentences that come out of their mouth. They might have a very firm idea what the official beginning of their pitch is, or the official beginning of the presentation, but there’s this gap of getting up to cruising altitude that a lot of people leave completely to spontaneity.

The first thing that pops into their head, and in my mind, that’s a crucial mistake because the first eight to 10 seconds are absolutely vital. You have to nail those first two sentences or people make a dozen value judgments about you.

Are you worth listening to? Do you have credibility? Do you know your stuff? And I find people get off to a very bumpy start because they’re not going according to their game plan, and it means even knowing what that little small talk might be.

I was just in London and over there the first minute that you meet people, it’s always about the weather. Everybody’s talking about the weather, so how do you get from the weather, into what you’re there to talk about? And I said, well, you actually need some kind of segue way line where you know this is gonna be the little small talk, you need to think that through ahead of time. How do I transition and segue way from that small talk banter about the weather into something that gets me started on what I’m there to talk about. That should not be left to chance if you really, really want to be good at this.

Isaiah: How do you balance understanding and communicating to a specific audience as you are pitching?

Bill: I often recommend clients when they have to present to 15 or more people and there is a social component before you have to get up and speak, rather than go off by yourself and obsess about how you’re going to do and get all tight and nervous, I often tell people, go around and have as many 60 second conversations as you can with people.

Take the pulse of the room and that accomplishes two things. One, it now no longer makes people in the audience strangers to you. They’re now familiar faces, and because they’ve met you, they’re probably going to be invested in being better listeners. That means smiling, nodding, giving you that positive reinforcement when you’re standing up there, so they’re probably not going to pull out their phone and start doing that as you’re speaking, which is a total confidence killer.

But, it also helps you take the pulse of the room where maybe somebody says something to you over that cup of coffee, and you realize that’s a great way to start. Maybe I can now give it this feeling of spontaneity by saying, you know, I was talking to John as we were having coffee before we started and he said something really interesting, and it made me realize that’s really at the heart of what I want to share with you today. As long as you feel confident making that a last minute addition at the top, it has a real great effect of pulling a crowd to you and now you’re talking with them instead of at them.

Isaiah: How would you start to train me to be a more effective communicator, especially in terms of confidence if I was a PhD trying to leave academia and new to public speaking?

Bill: I would suggest that you always get out from behind the podium, if possible. The podium really is a barrier between you and the audience, and that you might be able to, you might be able to, in fact, time walking out from behind the podium and approaching the audience at your first key idea. The mere sight of you leaving the mothership and now walking towards them, it is in and of itself an attention getter.

Get those larger index cards. Put little bullet point notes on them as to what it is you want to say, more outline form. I call it GPS directions for your mouth. Not a full script, here’s where I start, here’s the format, here’s the structure, and these cards are great because they anchor your hands where you want them on stage.

And, there are basically three things that I think are really important for people to know cold, that means literally memorized. It’s the first line that gets you into the slide. It’s the main big idea takeaway point on each slide, and then what’s the concluding line, or the segue way line that transitions you to the next slide? Because I find that the really boring, non-engaging aspects of most presentations are how people start each slide. People often say “Okay, so now if we’re were to look at this from a so and so perspective”, that is not the way you want to start a slide at all. You want to start a slide by saying “trade is the biggest issue facing North America today.” A short, declarative statement and then build off of it. 

Listen to the full podcast episode to get even more insight into: How to control the direction of a conversation, how to not bury the lead, the power of analogies and much more!

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post Pitching Yourself To Employers As A PhD (Cheeky Scientist Radio) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Did you know that you can meld your scientific skills with business know how?

Do you want to advance into a high-level management position in industry?

In this episode of Cheeky Scientist Radio, we will walk you through the strategies you can use to leverage your PhD skills and advance into C-suite industry positions. 

Our guest is Himanshu Gadgil, Ph.D. the Chief Scientific Officer at Enzene Biosciences.

He shares his account of how PhDs can leverage their skills to gain C-suite positions and brings a unique account of working in the Indian biotech industry.

In this podcast, you’ll find:

• Show Me The Data – The benefits of doing R&D in industry and why moving beyond the bench is a good thing
• Becoming A C-Suite Scientist – Himanshu Gadgil, Ph.D. discusses how PhDs can leverage their skills to gain C-suite positions

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post The Path To C-Suite Scientist Positions (Cheeky Scientist Radio) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Do you know what is the fastest way to lose money when transitioning into industry?

Does the thought of negotiating your job offer make you cringe?

In this episode of Cheeky Scientist Radio, we will walk you through the strategies to negotiate your job offer the right way.

Our guest Don Asher, Ph.D., is an internationally known speaker, writer and negotiation expert.

He will discuss why it’s essential to negotiate, specific scripts to use and what to avoid to ensure your negotiation is successful, regardless of the position and country you are in.

In this podcast, you’ll find:

• Show Me The Data – What you are missing out on by not negotiating or by doing it badly
• Negotiation Know-how – Don Asher, Ph.D. walks us through the right way to negotiate and get paid what you’re worth

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post Advanced Deal Making and Negotiation (Cheeky Scientist Radio) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.

Do you know why networking is critical for your job search success?

Have you ever thought about the importance of body language when networking?

In this episode of Cheeky Scientist Radio, we discuss how to be a better networker and how you can leave those awkward PhD days behind you.

Our guest Carole Railton, an expert on personal branding and body language, addresses how your body language could be sending the wrong message to employers.

She will discuss strategies you can use to improve your body language and thus improve your networking success.

In this podcast, you’ll find:

• Show Me The Data – Why networking is the single most important part of your job search
• Body Language For Business – Carole Railton, a body language expert, discusses how your body language may be sabotaging your job search and how to fix it so you can get hired in industry

To get advanced access to the full length versions of these podcasts, as well as access to our live training webinars, exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the waitlist for the Cheeky Scientist Association now.

The post How To Stop Being Awkward When Networking (Cheeky Scientist Radio) appeared first on Cheeky Scientist.