5.1 Networking and Mentoring
Research can feel isolating, especially during challenging periods such as writing up results, waiting for funding decisions, or troubleshooting experiments. Studies show that social support significantly contributes to psychological resilience (Cohen & Wills, 1985). Engaging with peers, mentors, and collaborators provides encouragement, feedback, and practical guidance that buffer against stress and setbacks.
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In this video, Prof. Graham Pike reflects on how collaboration and support networks can help researchers navigate setbacks. He shares how working with others – through teams, partnerships, and mentorship – can reduce isolation and strengthen resilience during challenging periods.
Download this video clip.Video player: Video 4: You’re not alone: From rejection to resilience – working with teams and partnerships to stay motivated.
Transcript: Video 4: You’re not alone: From rejection to resilience – working with teams and partnerships to stay motivated.
Graham Pike
Hello, I’m Graham Pike, Professor of Forensic Ignition at The Open University, and I’d like to share some of my personal experiences of motivation and resilience in writing grant applications and journal articles, and also in setting up partnerships.
With regards to grants and articles, I want to focus on involving others in the application writing process, either through a research team or through a mentor.
My experience has been that working as part of a team provides natural motivation.
Not just because missing a deadline means you are letting someone else down, not just yourself, but more because of the enthusiasm and energy that results from working in a team.
Teams also help with rejection.
I found they mean I don’t suffer from imposter syndrome and spirals of anxiety.
If a grant or paper is rejected, then all of the people in the team are in the same position.
This provides a natural decompression when the team get together to discuss the reviews, which helps considerably with personal sense of failure and puts the emphasis not on replaying the past, but on looking to the future.
It also means that it wasn’t just you that had something rejected, your team did too.
It stops me from feeling like an imposter because I know my colleagues are very good at their jobs, so I know they are definitely not imposters, so therefore neither am I.
When working alone, and not part of a team, then I found it very helpful to get feedback from mentors and colleagues throughout the drafting process.
Not only will this feedback be invaluable, but it can help you feel like the application was shared, that people you trust and value thought it was worth submitting, which I found really helps with taking the reviews on board ahead of resubmission.
Setting up collaborations and particularly formal partnerships with other organisations, especially those outside the higher education sector, can be incredibly time consuming.
Indeed, it can and does take years.
A lot of my work is with the police, and partnerships might take a year of establishing trust and building relationships with individuals, and another year of working things out at an organisational level.
On more than one occasion, I’ve spent time building a collaboration for it to fall apart either just before or after the start of the project.
The most common reason for this was changes in personnel.
Police officers often rotate through positions, and there is no guarantee that the newcomer will want to continue to pursue your project.
But of course, there are many other reasons that collaborations can fail, including the often substantial bureaucratic hurdles.
Because of this, I always try to have a contingency plan and also always try to have multiple outputs mapped out, especially some that happened during the process of building the partnership.
For example, if the partnership was about access to a particular data set or group of participants, I’ll have a plan to use a different data set or different set of participants.
Importantly, I found that you need to plan some events or papers that can be co-created with a partner organisation as you build up to the full project itself.
Not only do these ensure you have something to show for your time, but they can be very useful in getting the other organisation on board.
In addition, having something tangible helps motivate the people from all the organisations involved and also helps you stay resilient should the project not work out, because it will not feel like a complete waste of your time.
Finally, just a quick note to say not to worry if you cannot relate to a particular approach to motivation and resilience or if these doesn’t work for you.
Whether it’s something I’ve said or anything you’ve seen throughout the course, remember that everyone is different, so don’t let it get you down.
If something doesn’t work for you, just move on and try something else.
Video 4: You’re not alone: From rejection to resilience – working with teams and partnerships to stay motivated.
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Activity 8: Support network map
Timing: 10 minutes
List one way you could strengthen connections with your peers this month (e.g., joining a study group, organising a joint task).
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