When Tom Cech was a first-grader growing up in Iowa City, Iowa, he didn't spend his free time playing baseball, football or soccer. He spent it playing scientist.
He would walk around the neighborhood with a rock hammer smashing open rocks to see what was inside of them.
By the time he was in 7th grade, his fascination with science got even more pronounced. While his friends went to hang out at the mall, he hung out at the local university where he would knock on the office doors of geology professors and ask them questions about rocks, minerals and fossils.
Then, in high school, he'd hang out with his nerdy pals and discuss scientific theories.
"It was clear that being academically inclined wasn't the way to be popular in high school, but it was who I was and who I continue to be," said the now 77-year-old Cech.
Good thing he listened to his heart and remained true to himself. In 1989, when he was just 35-years-old, Cech won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Sidney Altman for their discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA. Essentially, they figured out that life itself might have started as RNA.
Don't Follow The Crowd
Leaders don't lead by following the crowd. Leaders lead by becoming themselves. And once you have figured out who you are, he says, it is incumbent upon great leaders to always listen first.
"Leadership is mostly about people respecting and having empathy with the people who report to you," said Cech. "But you also have to hold them to a high standard and be willing to have tough conversations when things aren't going well."
In the world of science, he's had the unique opportunity to do that again and again.
First, as a distinguished professor of biochemistry at the University of Colorado. Next, as an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute where he ultimately became president of the non-profit whose massive annual endowments rank second globally only to the Gates Foundation.
And currently, back at the University of Colorado where he recently started the BioFrontiers Institute, which brings scientists from all fields together to help solve future problems.
Know Your Organization Well
Great leaders, he says, must be familiar with the organization they lead at multiple levels. At the spur of the moment, he says, a great leader should be able — and eager — to talk for an hour about any of the 50 programs in which that company or organization is involved.
Just as important, he says, is to regularly speak with folks at all levels of the organization. At the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, for example, that meant regular trips to the dining hall where he not only met with employees at all levels but even was on a first-name basis with the food servers and cooks.
Overcome Your Weaknesses
To accomplish this, however, Cech had to learn at an early age to not be isolated by his extreme shyness. He spent a lot of time, alone, as a kid reading and writing. His parents wisely encouraged his interest in science and math by taking him to museums, musical performances and to the local universities where Cech learned to exchange ideas with professors.
His dad wanted to be a scientist but was pressured by his own parents to go to medical school and become a physician. Cech's father learned to do the very opposite with his son and encouraged him to walk a scientific path from a very young age. Cech remembers that whenever he'd go for walks through the woods with father, there would be countless questions that his father would hypothetically pose, such as: Why is the sky blue? Why do leaves turn colors? And why does the river seem to run faster when it narrows?
Find Out What You Don't Like
Perhaps Cech's most critical early discovery of his scientific career was that he didn't like chemistry research. It was particularly uncomfortable for him to discover this while he was a graduate student specializing in chemistry research at the University of California at Berkeley.
That's when he befriended a professor who was, instead, focused on DNA and chromosome research. That instantly became his new passion — if not his life's passion.
Develop Persistence
Science can be painstaking — if not frustrating.
A very good week doing scientific research work in the lab is two steps forward and one step back, he says. But a more typical week in the lab, he notes, is two steps back and one step forward.
"We are always disappointed and sometimes experiments fail for technical reasons and other times our hypothesis is completely wrong," he said. "This happens all the time."
By his own estimates, for every experiment that results in success, there are five that result in failure.
"Dealing with adversity is the most important thing to be a successful scientist," he said. "Without that, you're dead in the water."
Maintain Your Enthusiasm
Even more frustrating for most scientists working on groundbreaking work, he says, is the reality that there are almost always other brilliant scientists — who you probably don't even know about —who are working on the exact same thing.
This a moment when real leaders have to step up.
"When someone else makes the big discovery first — and your lab comes in second — you still have to keep the enthusiasm up," he said.
While he mostly stays away from politics, he strongly believes that the scientific community needs to do a much better job of explaining its accomplishments to the general public. "If we can't explain the wonder of science to the non-scientists, why should they care about funding our research?" he asked.
"We scientists have done a terrible job of getting into conversations with non-scientists," he said.
Learn To Communicate What You're Doing
That's why he recently wrote the book, "The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets," which tries to put in layman's language why RNA — not DNA — is the true key to understanding life on earth.
To stay agile, he hikes several times weekly where he lives in the hills above Boulder, Colo. And even at age 77, he still downhill skis with his eight-year-old granddaughter.
But he worries, too. He worries that we are vastly underestimating the impact that AI will have on business and society. "It's a self-accelerating system," he said. "All technologies are double-edged swords."
Know What's Next
For his own future, Cech says, he wants to return to the classroom and teach younger college students again.
For decades, he taught freshman chemistry classes at the University of Colorado, not because he had to but because "he loves teaching," says Roy Parker, a professor who worked alongside Cech at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and at the BioFrontiers Institute.
When Cech was president of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, he demonstrated his support for the next generation by changing the format of their annual science meetings, says Parker. Cech initiated a new policy to permit each of the institute's prestigious investigators to bring a student — or post-doc former student — along with them to the meeting.
To nurture a living legacy may be the greatest accomplishment of truly great leaders, Cech says. He certainly has. Some 56 of his own trainees have become professors at Yale, Stanford, Berkeley and other prestigious scientific schools. One, Jennifer Doudna, has even won the Nobel Prize.
"I call them my scientific grandchildren," he said.
When he attends conferences, he says, he even meets his scientific "great-grandchildren," as well.
The way Cech figures it, he's making the world a better place not just by his own discoveries — but from the discoveries of the very students he's taught.
That's why he plans to go back to the college classroom — once again to teach freshmen. After all, he says, it should be the mission of truly great leaders to help mold the next generation of greatness.
Perhaps you could call Cech's legacy what it is: a Ph.D. in leadership.
Cech's Keys
- Won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1989 at just 35 years old along with Sidney Altman for their discovery of the catalytic properties of RNA.
- Overcame: Natural shyness that makes it more difficult to communicate his ideas.
- Lesson: "When someone else makes the big discovery first — and your lab comes in second — you still have to keep the enthusiasm up."
