Lab members are part of a (fill in the blank)
And what is the role of a lab leader?
This week, Terry McGlynn published a thoughtful piece on why lab members should not be viewed as family.
I highly recommend readers take a look at his post. I completely agree with Terry’s main points. He goes into the rationale of why a lab “family” sounds nice, but can lead to exploitation when familial dynamics lead to unhealthy work practices.
In his post, Terry poses the following questions: Since we know that the “family” model for a lab community is bad news, what then are the positive models that we should aspire to? When we step into a lab, what should we expect? and When we are granted the authority to run a lab, what should be the model that we develop?
I don’t think there are right answers to these questions, but there are clearly better and worse answers. Here, I simply want to provide a pair of metaphors for labs and note some key lab characteristics that might enable us to build a sustainable and equitable academia.
I like the metaphor of team sports for research labs. In this context, as the lab leader, I am the coach. My role involves setting the vision for our team, akin to establishing lab priorities, and crafting strategies, much like devising grant proposals and paper topics. Importantly, I also focus on helping trainees to reach their fullest potential.
I am not actually on the court or field. Instead, players on the team take what they have learned in practice and apply their skills in games or matches. Once in the game, players are making their own decisions. Team players have autonomy over how they work. For labs or projects where multiple team members are working together, the team may resemble one of basketball or volleyball. In these cases, several team members with different specialties may be needed to achieve the goal. I am still coaching in these settings, but there might be additional leadership as some players may have more experience or different strengths than others.
If lab members have individual projects, the lab team may be more similar to wrestling or track and field. Graduate students, each with their thesis, fit this mold well. In these sports, individuals compete in different events and score points that add up to overall team success. Teammates support one another in training and matches. Some teammates may even be friends off the court or field. My job as the coach is to ensure individuals are competing in the events that best fit their talents and potential.
As the executive coaching pioneer John Whitmore noted:
Coaching is unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance.
Similarly, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi said:
Great coaches use their expertise not to control but to inspire and empower their team to greatness.
Coaching at the college sports level is particularly relevant for thinking about leading a research lab. In professional sports, players can be traded or retained by a team for the player’s entire career. Academic traineeships are inherently transitory (although I also argue that we should have more permanent researcher roles). Thus, we have goals on two levels with trainees. We want them to produce good work while they are in their role. We want to succeed as a whole research lab. At the same time, we want trainees to move on to other roles eventually. In college sports, a coach wants to win games and championships, but the goal should also be to help players develop their talents to be successful at the next level.
If we leave the team sports metaphor, I also think the idea of a start-up company is apt for a research lab. I’ll ignore the tech bro culture here. As the lab leader, I am the CEO of the company. As an individual entrepreneur, I might be able to produce some products and attract funding. To scale the start-up, I would hire a small number of employees to come up with ideas, solve problems, and execute work. In start-ups, there might be a CEO, but the hierarchies tend to be relatively flat as the company is small and everyone might be involved in multiple aspects of the business. The start-up metaphor feels particularly relevant for a new lab PI. We receive seed funding from a university to start a group that can be profitable, through teaching and research, over time. Customers, such as the National Science Foundation, pay our labs to produce products, such as papers. As the company grows though, the CEO has to turn their attention to empowering others and ensuring the right mix of employee talents. The CEO eventually has to spend less time writing code or reports and focus on the big picture. As the company grows, the CEO may hire a Chief Operating Officer (COO) to handle day-to-day operations in the same spirit as a lab technician.
Through these metaphors, it is also clear that there is a lot of literature that can guide how we run research labs. Thousands of books have been written about leadership in sports and business. I think lab leaders would be wise to read some of these when forming their lab guides. I’ll write up a list in a separate post.
I think it is a mistake for lab leaders to view students as “their workers”. Instead, I think a lab leader should play the role of a coach, mentor, and CEO guiding their teams. Graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, and undergraduate trainees are all knowledge workers. In the 1950s, Peter Drucker coined the term Knowledge Worker to refer to a new class of high-level workers who apply theoretical and analytical knowledge, often acquired through formal training, to develop products.
As several writers (especially the work of Daniel Pink and Cal Newport) have noted, motivation and success at work for knowledge workers are linked to three key principles.
Autonomy: A desire for freedom over how one works
Mastery: The desire to improve
Purpose: The urge to do important work
To accomplish these goals to enable lab success, I believe every lab group should start by building a lab expectations document. As a lab, we developed an expectations document, but there are lots of good examples1. Embedded in these lab expectations documents, and practiced more broadly, here are a few characteristics that I see as key to supporting trainees.
Practice what you preach: At some point, we are all guilty of telling trainees to have better work-life balance or to enact practices that we don’t follow ourselves. We shouldn’t normalize working 80 hours a week.
Curiosity: I believe PIs and trainees should co-develop projects based on curiosity instead of having a project simply handed to a trainee.
Integrity: We have to hold ourselves and our trainees to the highest ethical standards and to create a culture that enables all lab members to speak up if they have concerns.
Flexibility in work: I think trainees should have flexibility over when and how they complete their work unless we have an experiment or field project requiring particular hours.
A degree is that of the trainee (not the PI): I try to remind myself that a degree is the student’s degree, not ours. At the end of the day, students are responsible for their actions while we are there to guide them along the way.
Setting clear expectations and tracking progress: Sometimes, I think metrics can feel intimidating, but I have found it actually helps relieve stress among trainees while also keep everyone accountable. I’ll try and cover how to set clear expectations by creating and tracking smart goals.
Communication, communication, communication: One of the most important aspects to being successful in the lab is clear, early, and frequent communication. Early communication can save everyone a lot of headaches later on.
What metaphor do you like for research labs? How do you see your role as the lab leader?
Here are a few sources I drew inspiration from in building a lab expectations document.
https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/08/three-keys-launching-your-own-lab
Mehr S. Lab handbooks tweet thread: Twitter. https://twitter.com/samuelmehr/status/1139733291899080705
Masters KS, Kreeger PK. Ten simple rules for developing a mentor-mentee expectations document. PLoS Comput Biol. 2017;13(9):e1005709. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005709.