So You Want to Be a Leader

Management & Leadership

“I could run this place better!”  We’ve all said it about something, from our workplace to our car repair shop to our cable company.  But, well, what if you really could?  What if you not only see problems with how your department or institution is run, but you think you know—or are willing to learn—how to fix them?  What if you have great ideas for helping your department or institution succeed?

Check out these resources on positioning yourself for leadership:

The Academic Dean – So, uh…what does a dean do, anyway? See also the entry for Chief Academic Officer (aka Provost) and this guide to titles and jobs in university admin.

Twelve Tips for Department Chairs – From essential phrases to know to how to get organized.

10 Suggestions for a New Department Chair – Thinking like a farmer, inflammatory responses, and more.

Should I Be The Next Chair? – What are the responsibilities, what could you lose, and how can it help you? These are some things you should ask first.

Admin 101 – By the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s venerable David Perlmutter, a dean at Texas Tech.  This is a great series that takes you from deciding whether you have the skills and the interest to lead through tips for the job hunt and interviewing for positions.

How Do I Become an Administrator? – Another Chronicle package, this one features essays from a variety of contributors on why and how to become part of the administration.

So You Want to Be a Dean – You’d better be skilled at strategic thinking, risk management, and compromise.

Ask the Administrator: What Skill Sets Do Deans Need? – Patience, empathy, and boundaries are some.  By Inside Higher Ed’s ever-popular “Dean Dad,” Matt Reed.

Becoming a Dean – Further advice on what you need as an administrator, from a former dean and vice president for academic affairs.

On Being a Provost: Four Simple Truths About a Complex Role – Daniel Julius has been a provost at small and large institutions around the country. Rule number three, which includes tips for managing just about any interaction, is actually pretty applicable to everyone who works with other human beings.

The Education of a Provost – Thoughtful reflections on lessons learned from years of being a provost, as well as strengths that will help you do the job.

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Watch the Front Lines

Management & Leadership

One of the more common issues I encounter in conversations with junior faculty has to do with people management.  We all know that the best leaders can sense when and how much to delegate. Delegation is an important part of team building, for it instills a sense of ownership and engagement. This is true especially when the tasks you are delegating tap into creativity, enterprise, independence and design. These kinds of tasks allow the members of your team to develop their own skills. Such opportunities ultimately contribute to job satisfaction, which is an important metric for any institution, academic or otherwise. From the standpoint of a faculty member, delegation frees time to pursue other priority areas that you, as leader, are best positioned to serve. This includes writing grants and papers, hiring new staff, serving on committees, or just stealing away to think big thoughts (which, by the way, is one of the reasons you signed up for the job in the first place).

Here’s the catch: one must tread warily. The line is fine indeed that separates healthy delegation from neglect.  While good management by necessity involves delegation, it also involves spending time on the front lines, so to speak. The bottom line is to challenge yourself to remain familiar with every part of your program, top to bottom. This includes that which may seem less glamorous, less exciting, or even mundane – those things you think (surely) ought to be easy enough to do without you.   The reality is that research moves so fast now and involves so many moving parts, that no one can be an expert in everything.  That’s why you delegate.

But if you don’t take the time to peak under the hood, by the time you catch a problem it may be too late to fix  – which means lost time and resources.  Over the years, I have tried to keep in mind one simple rule: you can’t fix what you can’t see.  This does not mean feel free to hover, which tends to undermine ownership, increase anxiety, and generally drive everyone around you nuts.  Just meet with your team, talk to your team, and show interest in your team.

As you grow in your career, spending time on the front lines becomes more and more difficult as demands on your energy increase. However, there is true benefit in doing so. By engaging as the leader, you are reinforcing a sense of value, both for the work itself and for your staff or trainees personally. By extension, you also are reinforcing their buy-in to your research program and their commitment to your mission.  Often the balance between success and failure rests upon what you might consider a small detail.  Remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link – so pay attention to all of your links. As a leader, if you put yourself above any part of your research program, you risk weakening that part and the people who support it.  Travel, be an ambassador, spend quiet time to think and move things off your desk. Do all of those things that bring professional fulfillment and make you happy. However, as you do, remember to make an effort to stay engaged with those who make it their business to help you with yours.

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How to Manage People as a New Investigator

Management & Leadership

We recently hosted three newly independent investigators who run research teams humming with activity and people, who told us what it takes to manage a lab full of humans in all their idiosyncratic glory.  Here are their tips:

Defining Expectations and Gathering Feedback

  • Define your expectations of your team members and communicate them clearly and consistently.
  • Ask your team members (students, post-docs, research assistants, etc.) what their expectations are of YOU.
  • Give people responsibility
  • Celebrate negative data. Trainees and staff sometimes feel pressure to get the “right” results and celebrating negative data helps to alleviate this pressure.
  • Harmonize expectations between employees, grad students, and postdocs; make the playing field as equal as possible given constraints of institutional expectations for different job categories.
  • Use feedback, and create the opportunity to receive feedback.
  • As a manager, actively seek training in management – be thoughtful concerning your own development as a manager, not just as a scientist.

Encouraging Buy-In

  • Lab and mentorship meetings can be in a group setting on a regular basis so that everyone in the lab/mentees know what everyone else is doing. This also helps learning and cross coverage in the lab.  But don’t exclude the one-on-one meeting times with mentees every 1-2 weeks.
  • Allow every team member – from students to research staff to trainees – to have their own project.
    • While the primary focus of our team is pushing the main projects forward, each person has a small side project that they are working on during their down time. We have students, research staff and trainees who submit abstracts and present at national meetings because of this.
  • Explore opportunities for every individual in your team to develop and advance their career, whether they are a postdoc, research analyst, or administrative assistant.
  • Encourage camaraderie among the team.
    • For example: Buy lunch for everyone once in a while. Our group goes out to lunch every time someone gets a paper accepted – the PI’s treat.
  • Make your team members feel valued and respected.
    • Lead by example – don’t ask people to do things that you would not be willing to do yourself.
    • Involve your team members in decisions that will affect the group at large.
    • Put the day to day tasks into context. I often send my grant proposals to my trainees and staff so they understand why I am asking them to do 27 different western blots.
    • When on-boarding a new team members, enlist the help of your whole team.
    • Keep an ear to the ground for administrative items such as job reclassifications so they are not a surprise to you and your team.
    • Remember people are your most valuable resource!

If It Goes Wrong

  • When you start to have “trouble” with a team member, document early and document a lot.
  • Get HR involved ASAP – they are present to help.

Managing Up

  • Mentorship is a two-way street.  You need to “reverse mentor” your mentor.  Not all mentors are perfect, but nearly all are well-meaning.
  • Help your mentor to be her/his best mentor and to set up a productive relationship in a variety of ways:
    • Value her/his time.
    • Keep a running agenda of items to discuss by email or your next meeting.
    • Keep emails short and to the point.
    • Not all meetings need to be 30 or 60 minutes.  Come prepared to optimize efficiency.

Other Resources

  • Sign up for the Harvard Business Review brief tip of the day.
  • Check out the Management and Leadership tags at Edge for Scholars

 Thanks to Dr. Eric Austin, Dr. Julie Bastarache, and Dr. Christine Lovly for these tips!

More Resources

Build a Great Team: Help Your Staff Help You

A Guide to Managing Research Teams

Go go go…read The Progress Principle

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Managing a Budget as a New Investigator

Management & Leadership

Got your R and the realities of budget management sinking in?  Want to prepare yourself financially to get to that R?  Three newly independent investigators at Vanderbilt shared their wisdom with Newman Society members today.

Budgeting Before You Get Your R
Dr. John Stafford

  • Have a budget to start with.
    • As a new investigator this means negotiating a good startup package
      • 3+yrs support
      • ask for support for postdoc
      • funds to be unrestricted
      • not to be reduced for grants obtained
      • not to expire
  • Apply for all of the CDA awards, early career awards, P&F awards you can. These have a high payline for early investigators, and add up to a lot. You won’t be able to apply for them later.
  • Get your salary fully supported if possible. This frees up your research money for research.
    • Get your trainees supported by training grants, or their own grants.
  • Collaborate with others and get effort on their grants.
  • Aim for other non-clinical effort that is aligned with your career goals.
  • Don’t use your startup funds as a savings account.
    • Spend this money to get your science off the ground and get papers. Papers are the currency you need for grants (and nearly everything else).
    • Don’t buy expensive equipment that a colleague has. $25-30K might be useful in years 4-5 of your faculty time.
  • While getting grants (R01, VA Merit) is critical, in the first 2-3 years it is more important to get papers.
  • Don’t do too many things that don’t support your salary. You need to stay focused on research .
  • Be of value at Vanderbilt, be part of the team. You might need bridge funds.
  • Know your value at Vanderbilt and elsewhere.
  • Consider industry sponsored studies that leave unrestricted money, but be wary not to get off of mission-central.

Budget To-Do’s
Dr. Meira Epplein

  • Your budget will very likely be cut an unknown amount (in my experience 2-17% the first year and anywhere from 0-6% thereafter). You need to figure in this wiggle room not only in your own costs & FTE but for your subcontracts.
  • Monthly tracking of expenses once awarded your grant is necessary and difficult, and may differ from the official records, depending on your division’s administrative policies in terms of cost center accounting (and often lack of details in the spreadsheets).
  • There can also be a lag/difference between your accounting, your institutions’s accounting, and NIH’s accounting, which can be an issue if you want to apply for an administrative supplement, for example.
  • For grants with subcontracts, establishing a regular invoicing process (monthly, for example) up front will help enormously.
  • Again for grants with subcontracts, a new agreement will have to be established with each collaborating site every year, and the amount of the subcontract can vary based on actual costs and actual work.
  • The time lag for paying contractors and collaborators (even those with established subcontracts) is much longer than you expect, and must be figured in when needing to spend down 75% of that year’s budget before the progress report is due (6 weeks before the end of the grant’s year).

Budget Items To Remember
Dr. Digna Velez Edwards

  • Budget for staff and trainees.
    • There is often the tendency to use all of your budget to pay for experiments, but you need people to do the work.
    • Contact your institution’s office that deals with grad students and postdocs to get specific grant text information and budget details on how to properly budget for graduate students and postdocs.
  • Plan your budget with good timing for completing experiments and getting your papers published.
    • You need papers to get new grants and to get your grant renewed so you can’t have all of your experiments budgeted to be complete at the end of the grant.
    • Try to plan budgets with published projects throughout the life of the grant rather than at the end.
  • Have regular meetings with your grant support once your grant is funded as well as during the planning stages.  They have good insights to help you prepare budgets and will let you know what seems reasonable with regard to effort distributions.
  • Set up your subcontract budgets well in advance of a grant submission and begin the paperwork to start subcontracts as soon as your grant is funded.
    • Subcontracts take a while to finalize and set up and often have significant delays.
  • Get letters of support from everyone.
    • There is a tendency to forget to get letters of support from both those you have budgeted such as subcontracts as well as from resources you will be using.
  • “Rollover” funds may be used as bridge funding but do not rely on those to be there for you.
    • Plan the end of grants and where you will get new effort from.
    • Foster collaborations that may provide co-investigator support when you need it.
    • Pace new grants submissions ahead of your grants ending.

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Why you should read The Opposable Mind

Book Reviews / Management & Leadership

For fifteen years prior to this book’s publication, author Roger Martin studied successful leaders, interviewing more than fifty of them for up to eight hours at a time, trying to find a pattern to their success.  The pattern he discovered was what he calls “integrative thinking.” Such thinkers have the predisposition and capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads.  And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they’re able to produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea.

Martin breaks this way of thinking into four identifiable differences from conventional thinking: First, when integrative thinkers face a problem, they include as many “salient features,” or points of consideration, as possible.  They welcome the mess, because it assures them that they haven’t edited out features necessary to the contemplation of the problem as a whole.  This is critical for all the steps, which rely on looking at problems as a whole rather than as component parts.  Relationships between parts of a problem are multidirectional and nonlinear (considering these is the second step of integrative thinking), and considering these relationships and components as a whole avoids the trap of coming up with the perfect solution that’s impossible to execute, or which will solve one part of the problem but worsen another (yep, that’s the third step).  Finally, rather than settling for one option or another, integrative thinkers ?search for creative resolution of tensions, or the best of both worlds, even if it means delays and rework at the last minute.

Martin illustrates this process with a case study of the Four Seasons Hotel, whose founder refused to settle for either large, lavishly-appointed but impersonal hotels or small, cozy motels that lacked state-of-the-art amenities, instead creating a business model that provides both.  Other examples discussed include the Institute for OneWorld Health, whose founder decided it was “unacceptable!” that many lethal diseases afflicting primarily the world?s poor went unacknowledged by traditional for-profit pharmaceutical companies.  She filled the structural gap between companies that developed new drugs they needed to sell at high prices to recoup costs, and non-profit organizations that distributed existing drugs to the world?s poor at subsidized rates, with a not-for-profit pharmaceutical development company.  Have there been instances in your career where you had to choose between the proverbial rock and a hard place?  Then you need to read this book.

As Martin acknowledges, The Opposable Mind largely chronicle[s] the obvious that has been taken for granted.  However, looking at the obvious from new angles and considering new salient features is the first step of integrative thinking.  What better place to start than right at the beginning?

The Opposable Mind
Roger Martin
Harvard Business Review Press, 2009

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Lessons in Leadership: Why You Should Read Colin Powell’s It Worked For Me

Book Reviews / Management & Leadership

it-worked-for-meFormer Secretary of State Colin Powell offers leadership advice through storytelling in this collection of anecdotes and true tales.  Each short chapter derives a lesson from an incident encountered in his military and political service, and occasionally from private life.  Often chatty and rarely preachy, the text is as enjoyable as it is informative.

An admitted people person, Powell’s advice concentrates largely on motivating, respecting, and taking care of “the troops,” which he notes can be anything from an Army platoon to sales managers, students to family members (or research assistants!).  He sums up his guiding principle early on: “Kindness connects you with other human beings in a bond of mutual respect.  If you care for your followers and show them kindness, they will reciprocate and care for you.  They will not let you down or let you fail.  They will accomplish whatever you have put in front of them.”  At the same time, he advises, don’t neglect your own development, because “Troops—followers—will only go up the hill for leaders who have character, integrity, and moral and physical courage.”

One of Powell’s specific lessons hinges on the importance of mutual respect.  He illustrates this with several stories, including one about his stint as a battalion commander in Korea in the 1970s.  Because he had laid the groundwork by knowing his soldiers (through talking to them and by keeping a notebook of observations on each one’s performance, conduct, ambitions, strengths, and weaknesses), socializing with them, and earning their trust, when he had to drag them to a pointless lecture on extremely short notice, he heard this from a subordinate: “The troops are fine.  They know you needed them there and you would never have come up with such a nutty thing.  They are with you.”

There’s also the lesson to examine solutions with an eye to the secondary effects rather than just the immediate payoff, embodied in a half-baked idea to install beer machines in Army barracks to keep DUIs down.  Powell writes that he was for the idea (if only to quell the “bitching” from the troops who wanted the machines right then) until a sergeant pointed out that “putting machines in the barracks won’t end the bitching.  They’ll just start to bitch about the brand of beer in the machines, except they will be drunk when they bitch.”

Those are only two of the many stories and lessons included in the book.  Powell’s wit, sometimes gentle and other times trenchant, makes this essential leadership book both fun and funny.

It Worked for Me: Lessons in Life and Leadership
Colin Powell with Tony Koltz
New York: Harper-Collins, 2012

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