3. Prof Phillip Dawson on becoming a key person of influence
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Episode show notes
Today’s episode is a deep dive with Professor Phillip Dawson, a leading expert in feedback and cheating, on becoming a key person of influence (KPI) in academia and the benefits it brings — not just for the individual researcher, but for the research centre and the broader community.
Phill is the co-director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University, and as you'll hear, Phill has made it part of his job to become a key person of influence in his field.
Phill shares his experiences and strategies for finding your niche, communicating your expertise, and building a sustainable career in research. We also discuss the importance of effectively disseminating your work through various channels, including traditional academic publishing and broader public engagement.
If you’re a researcher aiming to elevate your profile, secure your career, or make a lasting impact in your field, this episode is packed with practical advice and insights.
Our conversation covers:
Why work to become a KPI, including how it can lead to more opportunities and career security.
Benefits to research organisations.
Strategies for finding and honing your niche to stand out in your field.
How to effectively communicate your expertise to different audiences, including peers, stakeholders, and the general public.
The role of digital platforms and social media in building and maintaining your influence.
Tips on balancing traditional academic publishing with broader public engagement to maximise the impact of your work.
Giving yourself permission to invest in this side of yourself.
Real-world examples from Phil’s career that illustrate the journey of becoming a KPI in higher education.
Resources mentioned:
Key Person of Influence — https://www.keypersonofinfluence.com
The Problem/Gap/Hook Heuristic by Lorelei Lingard — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4602011
Practical tips from this episode:
Finding your niche:
Go broad before specialising: Early in your career, explore various opportunities rather than hyper-specialising immediately. This can help you discover where the interesting opportunities and funding lie, allowing you to find the right area to focus on .
Balance exploration with focus: Avoid specialising too early, but also recognise when it's time to narrow your focus to a few key areas where you can become the go-to expert .
Be strategic in choosing your niche: Look for indicators like where the most citations, interest, or funding are coming from, and where the field is heading. This will help you identify the most impactful area to specialise in .
Effective communication:
Engage with the broader community: Make it part of your job to be accessible and to ensure your work has a broader impact, not just within academic circles but also with the general public and stakeholders .
Find a framework that works for you: The problem/gap/hook heuristic can be a good start.
Avoid memorised pitches: Instead of relying on a rehearsed pitch, engage with your audience in the moment, asking questions, responding to their reactions, and tailoring your message accordingly.
Simplify complex ideas: Practice explaining your work in simple terms, whether in ethics applications, lay audience statements, or when communicating with stakeholders .
Mentorship and collaboration:
Leverage mentoring: Seek and offer mentoring as a key part of your career development. Successful KPIs often have strong mentors and are also mentors themselves .
Create space for others: As a senior academic or leader, encourage the development of junior academics by allowing them to carve out their niche, rather than just following in your footsteps .
- Public engagement
- Career development
- Team alignment
- Storytelling
- Your pitch
- Listening
- Mentorship
- Collaborating with professional staff
- Communicating in different formats/mediums
- Comedy
- Failure
- Stakeholder/audience mapping
- Philanthropic funding
- Relationship management
- Community engagement
- Making your work relatable
- Feedback
- Playfulness
- Talks and presentations
- Representing your discipline
Quotes:
"I make it part of my job to be that key person of influence."
"You never understand something as well as you do when you're explaining it to someone in simple language..."
"I think the idea of a researcher that can just be able to talk to other researchers, I don't think that sort of person can exist anymore. You might be able to get a PhD by doing that, but you certainly can't hold down a job doing that anymore."
"Ultimately I do the niche that I do because it excites me... It ignites something in me that few other things in the world do... And I think part of the KPI thing is people can see that you love it. They can see this is what you live for."
"And I think as well in specializing in a research centre, you make room for other people."
"If your centre director is like, I am everything in this centre, well, how is there a role for junior academics to say, yeah, I'm gonna do something that's complimentary to the centre's mission, but here is like my piece of it. And they're not just like a lesser version of the centre director. 'Cause I think treating junior academics like they're just mini clones of the director is terrible. You wanna develop them so they've got their thing that they're the world leader on."
"The grant stuff pulls at my sort of sense of self preservation a little bit, so that's probably the hardest piece of it. But when you commit to like a three or four year grant, if you do that on something that's not in your specialisation, you are pushing that sort of specialisation point down the road by three or four years. And that's, that's a long time."
"There's an infinite amount of things you could do that are all fascinating and stimulating, but but you gotta finish that main quest. And I think too many academics don't actually get to finish their main quest."
"People think of a pitch as like, I only give people my tight five minute slide deck or something. But a pitch is to a degree sales, and I have had the discomfort of having a lot of sales calls over the years. And one thing I've noticed is the ones that never work start off with the slide deck and at the end of like a half hour they're like, do you have any questions? The really successful ones start with questions to me, to build that rapport and the pitch has to have that. But I mean, even if we go away from sales, we go to my home domain of education, one thing we know about education is that prior knowledge and sort of people's background is the single biggest influence on their learning."
"Good educators try to connect with where people are. They ask questions, they try and understand where someone's at so they can help people build on that. And that's what your pitch needs to do. It needs to build on someone's existing schemas and understandings."
