Weaving Research Leadership into your Narrative CV

By Dr Rachel Herries, Research Culture Manager and Dr Rhoda Stefanatos, Fellowships Development Manager

Narrative CVs, continue to be introduced widely, with aims to support the reform of research and researcher assessment. The underlying ambition of this format is to provide a level platform where more, work, achievements, contributions and conditions, can be made visible and recognised. In essence, to support the evaluation of individuals’ varied contributions to research.​ In the UK, adoption and implementation has been led by The Royal Society in collaboration with the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and by UKRI in the funding space. Individuals and teams are invited, through this format, to provide context to their achievements, contributions, and capabilities to lead and deliver.

At Glasgow we have been encouraging you to harness this format not only at the point of funding applications, but as a career reflection and planning tool for yourselves and those you lead. Through this work to support you, we have observed the sticking points, where it feels like a struggle.

Leadership, the concept, practice and presentation of, is an important one and in this short post we use the familiar format of the UKRI R4RI Narrative CV template to support you to weave your leadership narrative through the four NCV modules, drawing on all aspects of your experiences, values and successes. For each module in Part A below we offer ideas, and questions to prompt your thinking. We suggest you work through this, making notes, then use the guidance in Part B to draw it together.

Part A: Evidencing your leadership module by module

Module 1. Contributions to the generation of new ideas, tools, methodologies or knowledge. This module is an opportunity to reflect on and evidenced how you have led the intellectual direction of your research and to clarify the unique space you occupy and how you got there.

Evidence could include:

• Your key research communications and outputs

Using different projects or output types supports you to showcase the range of responsibilities and contributions. We suggest using CRediT as a thinking and language tool for defining your roles and contributions. If you can, include what your contributions have enabled.

• Your contributions to the knowledge infrastructure

The tools, methodologies or resources you have created that have gone on to support others to generate new knowledge and impact.

• Your strategic vision

This asks you to speak to a coherent, long term, plan. How did you bring different elements together to ensure success? A key component of this kind of research leadership is resourcing your research vision. What funding have you secured as a Principal or co-Investigator?

• Your approach to Good Research Practice

Consider your values, approach and examples related to how you align with Good Research Practice. This could be your approach to Open Research or your approach to the communication of your research, and recognition of all contributors. It could include ethical considerations related to your research. The University of Glasgow Code of Good Research Practice can provide further insights here.

Module 2. Contribution to the development of others and maintenance of effective working relationships. This module is an opportunity to reflect on and evidence your leadership and actions in developing people, teams, and important relationships. It is where you will likely have the most and richest examples of your leadership.

Evidence could include:

• Your approach to Team Leadership

How do you formally (i.e. via an annual review cycle, or informally via organic, open, transparent conversations) establish a clear direction and expectations, for your team? How do you create the conditions for all members of a team to succeed? How do you promote positive working relationships, equitable experiences, and ensure that everyone is valued and enabled to contribute? How do you strategic shape the local working environment e.g. by using Standard Operating Procedures, improving processes, or reducing error and waste in the ways of working across your team and the communities you support? What has your approach enabled? For example team cohesion, risk reduction, innovation, security, inclusion, equity, trust.

• How you approach mentoring, supervision, and line management

How do you support people through the relationships you build? How do you create a safe environment for risk, failure, for people to ask for help, and for career conversations? How you recognise individual strengths and enable people to recognise and achieve their goals? What has your support enabled for those you develop (e.g. achievements, autonomy/independence, career progression, confidence).

• Your approach to Culture building

How do you shape the culture within your area, across your institution, or through inter-institutional initiatives? What behaviours, standards, and values do you espouse? How do you influence strategic decisions through your roles on committees, steering groups, or working groups (particularly in areas such as research direction, learning and teaching, good research practice, Concordat implementation, and Equity Diversity and Inclusion). How do you initiate, build on and sustain collaborations? How do you foster cultures of openness, shared knowledge, and mutual support? What has your cultural leadership enabled for those you develop and collaborate with?

Contextualising your approach by sharing how it is informed by and furthers sector or institutional standards and expectations will enrich and strengthen your narrative. You may also want to detail what action you have taken to equip yourself to do this well and any recognition you have received for this work.

Modules 3 and 4 are going to take your leadership beyond your immediate community.

Module 3. Contributions to the wider research and innovation community. This module is an opportunity to reflect on and evidence how, via your leadership, you are creating and leading opportunities that benefit and service your wider research community. Identifying who your wider research and innovation community are (or who you want them to be!), and what communities or networks are you a member of, are essential to construct your narrative here.

Evidence could include:

• Your approach to strategic influence

How do you engage and activate different communities. And for what purpose are you engaging with them (perhaps to inform, to collaborate, co-create, consult)? Thinking about the potential strategic direction and influence of you and your research. What are the spaces that you can inform and influence?

• Community stewardship

What are your contributions to the growth and success of your community, or environment? This could be via the dissemination of research at conferences, leading meetings or networks, or workshops that foster collaboration. Consider community-accessible resources that you contribute to, manage or curate. Your leadership here is in service to growth and sustainability of a community or network via active contributions.

• Peer recognition

Consider here how your community have recognised your leadership and seek your leadership and contribution. This could be recognition via invites to contribute keynote talks, chairing, external examining, committee membership, reviewer or panellists, honorary or board positions. How have you been nominated and recognised by others? Consider how you share and make these opportunities open within your community?

Module 4. Contributions to broader research/innovation-users and audiences and towards wider societal benefit. This module is an opportunity to reflect on and evidence your leadership and the translation of and impact of your research towards societal benefit.

Evidence could include:

• Knowledge Exchange and Policy influence

How can or have you lead and delivered on bringing together key stakeholders and partners (researchers, research users, communities, government, policy makers etc) with the aim to share best practice, expertise and exchange ideas? How have you contributed as a leader in your field to the development and implementation of policy, standards, or guidelines?

• Partnerships

What partnerships have you established and maintained, and how. What do this enable that you couldn’t do alone? How do you set out the purpose and potential of a partnership and how do you reflect on your approach to connecting and building those relationships? What are the resulting outcomes of your contribution?

• Public engagement

Recognsing that public engagement includes an array of individuals and groups outside of academia, how can you engage, inform, consult and involve the public with you and your research? What does success look like within these interactions? How do you build and lead trusted and respected relationships with these groups specifically. What do you intend the impact and outcome to be? How can you lead and contribute to societal benefit through making your research accessible, relatable and relevant to the public?

Part B: Weaving your narrative – things to consider.

1. Where to start? Your notes from above have made a great start! Time to organise them, and trim each into a clear concise statement that focus on you. Think about a reflective statement that summarises your leadership for each module to focus your narrative’s starting points.

For example – starting statements could take the format of:

• M1: My expertise is in [blank] and I’m a leader in the areas of [blank]
• M2: My approach to [blank] leadership is driven by [blank], examples of my practice are [blank].
• M3: My contribution to [blank] has been recognised by [blank]. I contribute [blank] in the pursuit of [blank].
• M4: My contribution to [blank] and engagement/collaboration with [blank] has led to [blank].

2. Be patient. Weaving your narrative can take time and will be continually evolving as you progress through the task and through your ongoing leadership development. As you craft your narrative remember to include context on what informs your approach and how it has developed, this will substantiate your narrative.

3. Start small. Crafting your narrative can often feel unwieldy, and that your plethora of examples are disconnected or sprawling – that’s ok. And it’s fine to have a document to collate all possible content and then refine each Narrative CV you produce, for specific uses or applications.

This post has focused on a practical activity to support you to create a Narrative CV. To read more about the background and context for Narrative CVs please see these previous Auditorium articles: ‘Making Narrative CVs work for your researchers‘, ‘Are Narrative CVs better?‘ and ‘It takes a village‘.