EMBO Lab Leadership for Postdocs

Welcome, Introduction, Warming up

Participants are invited to engage in warm-up exercises that help them to settle into the course space and start to connect with each other. They are also introduced to the work for the next three days.

Leadership & Management

Key question: What is leadership?

Scientists often develop skills to plan and execute their own tasks yet receive little training about empowering, supporting, and mentoring other people to do the same. This module establishes a shared definition of leadership that fosters hard work in a healthy and sustainable way. Participants reflect on good leaders that they have experienced and their own current approach and then start to think about what mix of skills, qualities.

Role Development

Key question: Where do I focus my attention?

The course builds on the skills and abilities of participants to help them hone their approach to leadership. Participants are introduced to J.L. Moreno’s ‘Role Atom’ tool, which helps them assess their strengths and weaknesses, as well as where they place their focus and spend their time. They are supported to identify roles and tasks that are critical to their success and those that are not, using the insight to refine or focus their effort, growth and development.

Team Development

Key question: How do groups of people work effectively together?

When leaders are aware of the dynamics that show up in a team they can focus more intentionally and respond more effectively to build a healthy team culture and functional norms. Participants are introduced to Bruce Tuckman’s model of team development and are invited to consider the practical steps they could take as a PI to foster their group’s performance. Participants also see how to deal with the high fluctuation of people in research teams to ensure that work remains on track and published, even when people leave.

Values

Key question: How do my values help me lead?

Leading with a set of values shared with your group improves efficiency, decision-making, and conflict resolution. By recognizing the intrinsic values already at play in the workplace, a leader can collaborate more effectively with colleagues, and by nurturing a positive value system in their future group, they can empower people to work with greater cohesion and impact. Participants reflect on the values that drive their work and leadership and are introduced to a strategy for implementing values within their groups.

Emotional Intelligence

Key question: How do I navigate emotion in the workplace?

The quality of the relationships that leaders develop with the people they lead have a huge impact on work and well-being. Effective leaders manage their own emotions and behaviour and are curious and aware of how their people are feeling. Participants are introduced to the concept of Emotional Intelligence and use its framework to develop their self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and relationship management skills.

Communication

Key question: How do I communicate clearly, assertively, and empathetically?

Successful leaders are effective communicators. Participants are introduced to Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis model of communication to help them understand the dynamics of their interactions with peers and those they lead. They use this insight to understand that the emotional content of a conversation needs to be handled skilfully and how to do so strategically. Participants then work in small groups to practice difficult conversations using the model with the support of the trainers.

Feedback

Key question: How can I help my people be the best they can be?

Feedback is an effective tool to support growth, performance, and quality. Because giving feedback can feel uncomfortable or trigger strong emotions, we introduce a tool that ensures the conversation remains respectful, meaningful and leads to real change. Participants are encouraged to develop a culture of giving and receiving feedback within their groups to support everyone’s development and success.

Motivation

Key question: How can I support high levels of motivation?

The uncertain, exploratory nature of research requires relatively high levels of optimism and motivation in researchers to move forward despite challenges, setbacks, and failures. Feeling low levels of motivation is common and often attributable to factors in the environment or the work itself, rather than to a character flaw in the individual. We introduce a tool that helps leaders work with people experiencing low levels of motivation to diagnose the source and then to look for effective solutions that will allow motivation levels to rise and work to proceed.

Conflict Management

Key question: How do I manage conflict effectively?

Conflict is sometimes only a problem if nothing is done about it. This module encourages participants to view conflict as normal and addressable and provides tools and ideas for identifying conflict and acting. By working to resolve conflict, leaders can mitigate or avoid the downsides (loss of productivity, bad feelings, reputational damage) and take advantage of the energy, ideas, clarity, and change that conflict can bring once it is resolved effectively.

Psychological Safety

How do I help my people take initiative and do great science?

By reducing the fear of failure, increasing openness and collaboration, and encouraging contributions and respectful disagreement, leaders can increase trust, commitment, and effort in their people. Developing a psychologically safe work culture helps people be more willing to take calculated risks, strive for excellence, admit mistakes, and learn from each other. Participants reflect on and share practices in their current or previous research groups that they feel contribute positively to the level of trust and openness in a team, laying the foundations for a healthy research culture.

Delegation

Key question: How can I make the most of my people’s skills?

Effective leaders assign and delegate work to others to ensure the team is performant and work proceeds. Because team members possess varying levels of skill and motivation, successful delegation depends on a leader’s ability to gauge the specific support and encouragement required for a task. Participants learn about situational leadership and how to use it to adapt the way they assign work to different people and support them to succeed. Participants also learn about the Eisenhower Matrix method of prioritising work.

Empowering Others

Key question: How can I empower my people and free up my time?

Many of the simple problems that team members bring to leaders they could realistically solve themselves. This simple method applies a coaching style to help leaders encourage appropriate levels of independence in their people to think critically and learn to problem-solve themselves. The module draws on the famous Harvard Business review article from W. Oncken & D. Wass (1974): Management Time: Who’s got the monkey? It also happens to be a fun exercise with which to close the course!