Who is driving our bus?

​What would you miss most if you quit research right now?
 
An answer I often hear is ‘having autonomy’. Academic freedom comes at a price, both financially and metaphorically. But having this level of agency is a huge privilege. If we take that for granted, we allow a culture of negativity to prevail without this vital positive to balance it.

The importance of agency
The feeling of being able to exert control over our environment, and to some extent over our destiny, is one of the most basic human needs. Our brains are wired to feel pleasure from having agency over our lives. Even our health depends on it.
 
At its best, research fulfils this need very well. Many of us have substantial autonomy over our research topic and over how we organise our day, while actually getting paid for it.
 
However, it comes as part of a package in which we seem to have very little agency in other areas of our work. Whether it’s a compulsory training course or a meeting where we feel unable to speak, the contrast could not be greater.

​For people drawn to academic freedom, having less freedom on other issues can seem particularly problematic. It helps to understand why these limits are there, and to ask: ‘What agency do we have?’ and ‘How can we use it?’.    

​Accepting the inevitable
There are plenty of truths of research life we can do nothing about, like them or not. Our work has to be done within legal, financial and ethical constraints. We can't drive our bus the wrong way down a one-way street and we do have to stop at red lights!
 
We have to compete for funding, papers and jobs, and research outcomes are uncertain. Our bus shares the road with other vehicles.
 
We have no option here apart from one straightforward choice. Are the parts of research we like the most worth the challenges and limitations in how we do it? The answer will be different for everyone but we can each figure it out. Our agency lies in that choice.

​The grey zone
The next level of truths is harder to accept. It feels like they ‘shouldn’t’ be the case but they are! We can kick and scream all we like – and we all do that sometimes – but they still are the case and always will be!
 
Large organisations such as universities cannot function without rules and bureaucracy. As size and complexity increase, inefficiencies arise. Peer review is imperfect. Some colleagues are unreasonable. Good scientists do not automatically make good leaders and managers.

​There also isn’t enough money to fund all good ideas. Our bus needs fuel and it is expensive.

​We sometimes have a bit of control over these issues, but it requires a lot of effort. We can, for example, complain to an editor about an unreasonable peer reviewer comments and occasionally this works (just three times in my career to be precise!). We have complete control over the wording of our grant application until we press ‘submit’, after which luck plays a huge role. PIs can work on their leadership and management skills and gradually improve. And if we campaign for months or years, we might get one out-of-date rule removed.

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​Pick your battles
All of these interventions cost time and energy. Both of these are limited so we have to be realistic about what can be achieved. In early career, many of us fight too many battles until we learn what is, and isn’t possible within our lifetime.
 
There is powerful morality around ‘good’ people not taking a stance. Dante’s Inferno even says they are heading for the ‘Vestibule of Hell’! But fighting too many minor battles leaves us with no energy for those that really matter.

​Control the controllables
‘Control the controllables’ is a widely discussed concept in many areas of life, including sport, business, health and wellbeing, even war. But in academia I know of only one person who has said it. There may be others but it is far too rare. 
 
Are we missing a trick?
 
For example, our training course may be compulsory but if it’s online we can choose when to do it. If lab equipment breaks we can’t use it but we can choose to reschedule or look for alternative equipment elsewhere. If we are too busy, we do not have to slip into overwhelm. We can begin to say ‘no’ before our emotions lead us down that slippery slope.

​Losing it!
“Until we make the unconscious conscious, it will rule our life and we will call it Fate”.  Attributed to Carl Jung, psychiatrist.
 
Our biggest loss of agency comes from letting our emotions take over. No-one sews our lips together to stop us speaking in a meeting. No-one holds a gun to our head to force us to review more than our share of papers. Even an unsupportive supervisor does not literally chain us to the bench. What holds us back is emotions and how we react to them - embarrassment, guilt, fear, insecurity.

​Feeling these emotions is normal but we can choose how to respond. If our bus is blocked by traffic congestion, we do not have to rage about it so we arrive feeling utterly drained. We can instead choose to reluctantly accept what we cannot change so we retain a clear mind for when we get the chance to use it. 
 
The problem here is that our emotions did not evolve to handle inefficient university administration or the infamous ‘Reviewer 2’! Humans evolved in smaller, less complex communities. Many of the emotions we feel today were appropriate for that environment but have not yet adapted to modern society. We often have far more agency than we think if we understand and manage our emotions.

​Handing control to others
Once we let our emotions power the bus, we give the key to other people. We become more susceptible to influence by culture or manipulation. We all know the feeling of working later than we want to because others are still in the lab or office. We’ve all pretended at some point to know more than we do because we fear the consequences of revealing that we don’t, feeding imposter syndrome and overwhelm. Similarly, a lack of psychological safety can intimidate us from speaking up.
 
But even here we have agency. We can remove ourselves temporarily from the environment so we can find the right space to think clearly and find a way forward. We can speak to a trusted colleague, or someone outside our immediate workplace to help figure out our best solution. Or we can sign up for assertiveness training, or coaching.  There is always something we can do.

​The drama triangle
Perhaps the most common agency-sapping role of all is the Karpman Drama Triangle. More likely than not, we are each in one or more of them right now. And if we aren't, we've certainly been there. We become trapped by our emotional reactions, constantly swapping places, generating a lot of noise but little progress.

As previously discussed, the Karpman drama triangle consists of a perceived ‘victim’, who feels unable to resolve a problem themselves; a ‘rescuer’, who feels motivated to support them but gets locked into co-dependency with them; and a perceived ‘villain’, who feels endlessly compelled to justify their actions.
 
For example, a student (‘victim’) feels unfairly treated by their supervisor (‘villain’) and complains to their department head (‘rescuer’) who tries to intervene. The supervisor, who is doing their best but has an endless to-do list with other major responsibilities, now feels misunderstood and begins to identify as a victim, seeing the department head as a villain for not understanding them. The department head, who is even busier, now feels frustrated and overwhelmed and on a bad day may even begin to see the student as the problem.
 
And so it goes on, probably pulling in other people too. No-one gets anywhere and a lot of energy is wasted. But for all three there is a way out if each of them can find their own agency in the situation. What really needs to happen is a frank but fair conversation between the student and supervisor, where each explains their perspective and gains greater understanding of the other. The department head can facilitate this, ensuring there is full and respectful engagement on both sides, but often will not need to be involved directly. Everybody wins. The student grows. The supervisor learns. And the department head gets an altogether healthier and more productive unit.
 
It is of course important to say there are sometimes very genuine grievances that do need direct intervention from others. There are occasional cases of seriously unreasonable behaviour by someone who will not listen, and this is particularly problematic when there is a big power differential.  But most of the time when problems arise it is because the parties do not understand each other's perspective and are not communicating properly to resolve it.

​Ourselves in the driving seat

​The keys to our bus then lie in understanding the reality of the situation (what can be changed and what cannot); controlling the controllables (especially our response to emotions); picking our battles (channelling energy where it matters most); driving the route we choose with purpose and commitment; and taking the initiative to get back on track when we break down.
 
Agency matters and we always have more than we think!