EMBO Lab Leadership for Postdocs

On the first day, we spend some time getting to know one another and building a level of awareness and trust. The course thrives on your contributions and insights, so we want you to feel welcome to share your experience and knowledge.

We spend time thinking about what it means to be a leader and how your values, experiences, and emotions impact the way you approach leadership. We look at how teams work effectively together and what sort of support they need from you, both as a collective and as individuals within the research space.

We look at how you manage your time and attention across the many roles you play as a leader in research; from bottle-washer or debugger to visionary and everything in between.

Finally, we spend some time reflecting on the values that drive our perspectives and behaviour and explore how values can help diverse groups of people understand each other more deeply and find effective ways to share resources and work together.

On the second day, we will spend time reflecting on how we are influenced by our emotions, and what impact this has on our effectiveness as leaders. We will also explore one perspective on the rich variety of personalities in the world and how each person’s focus, habits, needs, and motivations leads them to understand and interact with the world.

We will examine a model of communication that looks at how and why people communicate in certain ways, and what impact our own communication style has on the willingness of others to work hard, be honest, develop themselves, and take ownership of their work.

In the afternoon, we will look at the importance of clarity and empathy when delivering feedback to ensure that it is effective and will lead to development and change.

We will finish the day by looking at motivation and what different people need to feel motivated. We will share a diagnostic tool to support you in trouble-shooting low levels of motivation.

On the third day, we spend time understanding the nature of conflict and looking at communication and other tools that can help us to identify and resolve conflict.

We will explore the environment in which we work and the impact of other people’s expectations, emotions, and needs on our work together.

We will share a tool for supporting the students you are supervising to help them take on work effectively; delegating to them in a way that is aware of their level of development and motivation

We will look at the importance of empowering your students to find their own solutions and develop their own strategies and how to support people in an adaptive way to ensure that when you assign work to them, they are set up for success.