Leadership & Communication in Science: Interview

with Dr. Wayde Konze

Aasha Turner, an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, interviews Dr. Wayde Konze about his
experience in the professional scientific world.

By Aasha Turner
Nov. 29, 2022

Dr. Wayde Konze is a current Senior Research Director at Dow, the Materials Science Company.
Konze received his Bachelor of Sciences in Chemistry from the University of Minnesota and his
Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Iowa State University. Following his graduation, he
completed Postdoctoral research at the Los Alamos National Lab before beginning his career at
Dow. He began as a Research Specialist focused on wet lab bench work and has held a variety of
leadership roles before serving in his current position. Konze is presently focused on leading the
upgrade of early Dow campus assets which includes updating new research buildings and labs as
well as consolidating older spaces and their high throughput instrumentation. I had the pleasure
of interviewing Dr. Konze to learn more about his experience in leadership and communication
within the professional scientific field.

What are the biggest markers of progress in your work and workplace?

When you're in a company, success comes a little different because you have to shift your
mindset from the academic environment. Academically, your progress could be tracked by
publications; even if you don’t necessarily get the results you were expecting, interesting
publications may still be a marker of success.

In industry, your success becomes how do you quickly fail so that you can spend time doing
something more valuable. Failing fast is something we value and celebrate at Dow. Later, the real
success becomes moving something down a pipeline. We always look at projects which can
expand and change. Teamwork and collaboration are also essential at Dow; you don’t want to
drive a culture of “individual pet projects” always succeeding because that isn’t reality, that
doesn’t always work. People get so attached to their projects, they may even start to look at data
differently. And if you have that mentality, it’s just poisonous to success and teamwork.

What kind of writing and communication do you produce in your work?

It’s a whole gamut of that! When I'm presenting to the CTO of the company, it better be
completely digestible. People don’t have an hour to chit-chat about every nuance of what you're
working on so you've got to be able to get to your point exceedingly fast. If you’re trying to
persuade a person and drive them one way or another, it's all about how you present it and
convince them. You've got to be convincing but without a lot of data.

On the flip side, if you’re communicating to a large group, that's a unique communication too
because you have to hit or resonate with a lot of people. It’s almost like giving a political speech.
You have to tell them what you’re doing, what direction the group is moving, how much you
appreciate everything that everyone is doing, and give great examples of everything that's
happened within the group. Then you move into the “ask” of the situation, what we need to do
more of, why and how this is going to help us to get to our goals, and how to get people on
board. It's an emotionally-charged type of communication because you need to be motivating
without just stating things, you need to be convincing too.

If you’re doing a presentation with slides, you should have primarily graphical content that’s
easy to digest. If you’re doing this type of motivational speaking, don't read bullet points. You
probably shouldn't even have bullet points, maybe a single word or a title per slide. If you’re
reading your slides, you’ve lost your audience immediately. You need to assume the audience is
asking themselves, “Is he confident? Is he nervous? Can we trust him?” You need to build that
trust with the audience to get them on board with your goals.

With technical presentations too, especially for research and design, you’re competing for
funding, so you need to justify your existence. People have short attention spans, and so you
have to “Wow!” them with the technical side to show why you and your group are the best suited
to be able to solve the problem. Overwhelm them with the science. It's all science with some
convincing. All the talks I’ve given at Dow have been to convince somebody.

What skills from your technical education experience have translated most to your
leadership and management experiences?

I think it's really critical to have the scientific background to be able to lead a scientific group. In
the past, we’ve had managers that were pretty non-technical, and then we would have arguments
and debates over projects because there was a gap in knowledge. I think the skills that you
develop in problem-solving, in putting together cohesive stories for publication, and in using the
scientific method in general all translate into how you lead an organization or project.

It's a lot of the same thing between the two experiences; now you just mediate different kinds of
obstacles: Why are these people not getting along? Why do we have an issue with the progress of
the project? How do we solve this? You still come up with hypotheses, and you still analyze
different situations. I think there are a lot of similarities except that it can be more difficult
because people are not as predictable as molecules. Understanding how to listen to people first
and how to gain people’s trust is crucial. There's a lot to learn from people by reading through
different books, learning from other leaders, and recognizing where there are failures.

What advice would you give to young scientists in college or graduate school?

I think students have to quickly pivot from working on individual or personal projects to working
with a team or group-oriented project. Graduate school trains you to be individually successful as
opposed to emphasizing teamwork; it’s getting better, but I still notice that independent attitude
in new hires at Dow. The more you seek partnership, instead of just accepting it, that’s how you'll
be successful.

Another thing that becomes really critical is not being afraid to talk to anybody about anything.
Academia is more hierarchical; the professor is this ultra-knowing person whereas the students
are just “minions.” In industry, you can go down the hall to see the top technical person in that
entire field, and they're just a normal person that wants to talk to you, get to know you because
you're a new employee and they want to know how they can partner with you. People come in
with a fear of reaching out to those kinds of people; the sooner people get over this fear, the
sooner they will be successful. Be bold and don’t be afraid to talk to anybody about anything at
any time. Just assume that you have something to bring to the table because you do.

Any closing words?

The way you succeed is by partnering with other people. There's no project where one person has
a “Eureka!” moment and they rush off into the sunset as the hero. Everybody works together and
shares the credit, the successes, and the failures.

Dr. Konze spoke highly of his experience in leadership at Dow, and I admired his dedication to
teamwork and his appreciation of learning from failures. Our conversation made me excited
about pursuing a career in industry and solidified how intentional, well-writen communication is
critical within scientific careers and research.

Interview questions and answers have been edited for clarity and concision.