Insights on Gaming Serendipity, Mentoring, and Productivity with Nobel Laureate Dr. Bob Lefkowitz
Everybody has a Superpower. Do you know what yours is? And how will the world be different if you know what yours are? And if we help one another discover theirs? This biweekly newsletter gives you the perspectives, stories, and tools to do just that.
When I sat down recently with Dr. Bob Lefkowitz, the 2012 Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry, we talked about his long and impressive career—how his plans of being a medical doctor were derailed during the Vietnam War and he became a researcher instead; his residencies; his five children; groundbreaking research.
Here are three insights this scientist shared about magic, mentoring, and productivity that relate to superpowers.
In medical school, Bob was committed to being a physician. He wanted to work with patients and take care of them. But when he was drafted to the Vietnam War, he received a commission as Lieutenant Commander in the US Public Health Service. He was assigned to NIH, where the majority of his time was spent in research laboratories. The first year was rough; Bob had no interest in being a researcher. He wanted to be a practicing doctor. But because of his two-year commitment, he couldn’t back out, despite the number of times he failed.
Then, as the first year turned into the second, something surprising happened. Bob began to derive satisfaction from the work. Something began to dawn on him—he was pretty good at his job. By the time he finished, he had written three papers that were all published in major journals.
Of course, we know looking back that Bob would become a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry—a prize he won because of his dedication to research. Had it not been for the Vietnam War, Bob would probably never have had a research career—which the world would be worse off for.
Bob attributes part of his success to his resilience and optimism. He had no idea going into his military post that he would be good at researching. In fact, he believed the opposite was true of himself. But he was determined to let the context do its work on him.
He wanted the experience to be a positive one, and he was willing to curiously engage it. “I think one of the things we have to accept in life,” Bob said, “is that there’s a certain amount of magic. I don’t mean card tricks; I mean real magic, and you can’t fully understand it.” Being open to positive experience, even in difficult situations, is an attitude we can all cultivate and leverage to become our best selves—even if those selves are unexpected.
So what does this mean in the superpowers context? Sometimes, we may have latent superpowers that remain to be expressed because the situation for discovering them may not have arisen yet. In Bob’s case, it was a superpower for research. So, what if we reframe embracing challenges as a way of gaming serendipity, to discover yet to be discovered superpowers?
We often get trapped into hierarchical notions of mentoring. The higher-up instructs the new employee, or educates them, or passes on perceived wisdom. But Bob has different understanding—one that is less about linear knowledge transfer, and more about relationships.
Bob says that the most important thing a mentor can give to their mentee is their support, belief, and encouragement, even if the mentee’s project and goal is different from the mentor’s. As a mentor, he makes sure that everyone in his lab knows that their project is the most important project happening—not because he’s being insincere, but because he really does believe that every research project has so much good potential and he wants to be intentional about communicating that importance.
So what’s the superpowers implication? When we mentor, when we believe in another, that’s a way we can help them discover their superpowers.
When I asked Bob about how long it can take to become productive or proficient in an area of expertise, Bob said that the relationship between productivity and success is almost always an inverse one. Why? Because research is slow and methodical and tedious—sure—but more so because the best minds are drawn to the hardest questions. The important questions take the longest time to crack.
While this might not always be exactly the same outside of scientific research, the idea was encouraging. It’s not possible to put success on a timescale. Sometimes productivity doesn’t pay off when we expect it to; sometimes productivity doesn’t correlate directly to success. But Bob reminds us that in the economy of success, nothing is wasted.
And here’s the superpowers implication - this is a process of living life as my friend and behavioral science designer Troy Campbell advices - as a true scientist - which is in experimentation and testing out of our goals and habits. And that’s about creating the latitude for failure and learning from it, as well as the time to do so.
Thank you for reading this issue of Leadership Playbook: Unleashing Your Superpowers! A reason for me in writing this this newsletter is to refine the ideas that I’m developing. But I need your help.
To do that best, I’d love to know what question you may have on each issue, or how it applies to your situation. Please email questions to me at CoachSanyin@gmail.com and share your feedback with me. THANK YOU!
The next issue -out July 19th - will be on Superpowers and Building Championship Teams.
More next week!
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