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Conflict resolution, financial planning, human resources management, public relations – all of these and other tasks came along as part of my college career, and it’s safe to say that I didn’t feel adequately prepared for any of them.
Looking back, the first few years of my teaching career were marked by situations where I was faced with challenges and had no idea how to overcome them, including resolving authorship disputes, providing feedback to someone who was underperforming, and trying to figure out if I had enough money to pay all the students and postdocs in my research group.
Over a decade later, I now lead a successful chemical biology research group at an institution where I hold an endowed chair and also currently serve as chair of the Chemistry Department. Many of my leadership mistakes have turned into funny stories or teachable moments, but the difficulty in the moment was real – and not just for me.
My lack of preparation also affected the members of my research group. In one case, we had a tight deadline to submit results to a funding agency. As an inexperienced leader, I assumed that I simply needed to frequently and forcefully convey the importance of the deadline to those involved in the project in order to achieve the desired result. Thankfully, after a few weeks, my lab members had the courage to come up to me and say, “We know this is important. We are working as hard as we can. We will probably be more successful if you support us rather than add even more pressure.” Needless to say, this was an eye-opening moment and a lesson I have carried with me ever since.
How could this happen? In science, the training period before we get a permanent position is one of the longest of all career paths. So shouldn’t we more better prepared than most other people starting their first job?
The fact that this is often not the case underscores a key challenge in academic STEM: the education that prepares for a professorship with the prospect of permanent employment focuses primarily on research, but once we have acquired a professorship, many of our tasks involve leadership roles, be it in the laboratory or in the lecture hall.
And the reality is even more troubling. Not only do we have a critical gap in our training, but relatively few people realize that this gap even exists. As a result, those who enter a faculty position that involves running a lab all too often simply discover that they need certain skills to be successful – skills that they were never really taught. Some faculty may never realize this.
I still remember my first workshop on academic leadership when I was still an assistant professor. Although I didn’t yet have tenure, I sat in a room full of established faculty members who wanted to be department chairs, deans, provosts, or presidents, and hung on every nugget of wisdom that the panelists and session leaders shared with me. This wasn’t because I wanted to be a department chair (yet), but because I realized that these leadership skills were critical for me to get through the next week of running my research lab.
From conversations I have with other faculty members, it’s clear that I’m not alone in this problem. Moreover, many of the challenges of academic culture are related to this gap between our training and our responsibilities as faculty members. Imagine how much more effective we could be as research mentors if we were adequately prepared to have difficult conversations and provide candid but constructive feedback to members of our lab. Likewise, the skills needed to create a healthy environment in our research group could help address some of the biggest challenges in academia, including the mental health crisis facing graduate students and the replication crisis resulting from deficits in scientific rigor.
The good news is that we can make this happen—it just takes the intention. Fortunately, many institutions and professional associations now offer workshops on laboratory management or related topics. (Examples can be found here and here.) And even if your institution doesn’t have such offerings, there are plenty of resources available in the form of books, articles, and podcasts.
Much like learning a new research skill, we can also learn leadership skills. The first step is to recognize what we don’t know and then seek out resources to fill that knowledge gap. As with a research skill, achieving mastery requires that we regularly put our new knowledge into practice and continue to reflect on what we can do to improve. If you’re not sure where to start developing the leadership skills needed to run a lab, I’ve provided some ideas below.
- Reward quality failure. The pressure to publish or perish can be real, and it should concern us all—though not surprise us—that this pressure has been linked to scientific misconduct. As lab leaders, we can protect our group members from this pressure by creating a lab culture that rewards the quality of the research process, rather than the fit of the data with the hoped-for results. Think about how you reacted the last time a member of your lab told you about an experiment that failed despite your best efforts. Now think about how you would have liked to have reacted, and implement that reaction next time.
- Communicate expectations. You may know exactly what you expect from your lab members, but do they know what those expectations are? This can include a wide range of topics, such as work hours and free time, presentation formats, the process of writing a manuscript, or organizing samples in a freezer. If we assume this is common knowledge, we are creating a hidden curriculum that is challenging for everyone and disproportionately affects people from marginalized groups. If you don’t already have a lab policy manual outlining your expectations and how to run the lab successfully, now is a good time to create one. Even better, involve your entire group in the process of creating the policy manual—their feedback is likely to be helpful, and their involvement will ensure everyone knows what is being communicated.
- Ask for feedback. Whether it’s peer reviews of manuscripts or grant proposals or student evaluations of teaching, we in academia receive a lot of feedback. But little of it helps us become better leaders of our labs. While the thought of gathering even more feedback may seem daunting, you’ll discover one benefit: Serious flaws have been identified in both peer review and student evaluations of teaching, but you have the opportunity to create a better system for capturing input from your lab members. There are numerous options, such as creating an anonymous online survey that each lab member completes, or encouraging your lab to organize an in-person discussion after which a trusted member of the group shares the compiled and anonymized feedback with you. The important part is talking to your group to find a format that you’re all comfortable with and that everyone feels safe to talk about openly.
- Pass it on. While you may have taken on a leadership role you weren’t prepared for, that doesn’t have to be the reality for the next generation of STEM professionals. You can break the cycle by sharing your leadership knowledge and wisdom with those currently working in your lab. If you’re in the process of learning such skills yourself, you can still point your group members to resources you’ve found helpful and discuss challenging situations with them. No matter what career path they each take, you can ensure that they don’t end up in the same situation—that they’re better prepared because they understand that they have both a leadership role and a research role, and people are counting on them to get it right.
