Leading teams into their own power
With Prof. Ralph Mueller
You would think that starting your 1st fellowship straight out of your PhD with a PI who has just left for a sabbatical could be quite challenging and frustrating. It turns out that for Ralph this perceived challenge became a massive learning opportunity. He learned to build a team without the classical hierarchy observed in most labs. This influential experience shaped his perception of what it means to work well in teams, and how he has now structured his own research group in a way that promotes the research leadership transition of others.
About Ralph
Ralph Müller is Professor of Biomechanics in the Department of Health Sciences and Technology as well as Deputy head of the Institute for Biomechanics at ETH Zurich (Switzerland).
Get in touch with Ralph:
Find out
· How the departure of your PI on a sabbatical could be the best gift you get to boost your research independence
· What building trust with your research team could look like
· How not rushing the recruitment of your 1st PhD students may be a wise choice
· Why your leadership approach is a journey of reinvention
· How transparency in promotion panels can turn the hidden process of ranking academic performance into a collective learning opportunity
Some reflections and questions to ponder based on my discussion with Ralph
Choosing your next research post
Even though we may want to be strategic, when choosing each step in our research career, sometimes, just choosing where we want to live next is a strategy as good as any.
Thinking about your dream location, could be a starting point in exploring the research groups around where you would really like to live.
In workshops with researchers, I always suggest to them to have a pro-active approach to exploring possible locations for research positions. Not waiting to see the perfect job advert and just contacting people who work where you would love to live and work is not a crazy idea. You need to be prepared to accept that your dream location and dream research group may not have funding to take you on, but you should definitely not let this be the endpoint. Instead, taking control of the situation by applying for a fellowship through developing your own research ideas with the support of your host is an approach that many have taken.
Even when funding is already available for a Postdoc position, if there is any possibility of applying for fellowship funding, this is most of the time a really important step to take. It creates a very different dynamic and ownership of projects which helps position researchers ahead in their research leadership journey.
Ralph took this approach that landed him a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT.
o Where would you love to live during your next research position?
o Who can you reach out to who may work in a research centre in the location where you may want to live?
o Do you know the funding options available to go and work where you fancy living?
What kind of enabler are you as a PI or PhD supervisor?
When Ralph chose his PhD supervisor, he was keen to join a small lab and he felt that his supervisor was very well organised, had great ideas and gave him a purpose. What strikes me most in the description of his experience is when he says that the message conveyed by his supervisor was: “I believe in you ... I think you have the talent. Here's what you could do. Try it out. And then come back when you're done. And he did not have this very close relationship all the time and telling me what to do. So, I think for me, it was extremely important that I could actually develop myself and find new ways of solving problems.”
Giving PhD students and Postdocs the space to build their confidence as researchers is exactly what each research supervisor may want to aim for.
Creating an environment where early career researchers are able to explore their own ideas, build their skills, mature their understanding and increase their research creativity is a massive undertaking for research leaders.
For Ralph, the departure of his fellowship host even before he had actually started his 1st research position after his PhD could have been experienced as a massive blow to his postdoctoral experience. Instead, it feels like it was the making of his research leadership success. The challenge became a gift, as he had to self-organise and create an informal team around him. This meant much less hierarchy in the way the team was organised. This early experience shaped his approach in how he is organising his research group using agile- team methodologies, so that each subgroup can work on common goals.
Understanding that the hierarchical structure of a research group can contribute to the dynamics of the team, he will often advise Postdocs to think about these things when choosing who to work with.
o Are you aware, as a research leader of the culture you are creating around you?
o How is this culture an enabler for the research transition of your team members?
o What do you do on a daily basis that will be part of building their confidence?
Your leadership approach is a journey of reinvention
Ralph accepts that for many research leaders, they may start on their research leadership journey not putting a lot of thoughts about the structure and the dynamics of the group they are building. They may start doing things initially just intuitively because they just feel like it is the right thing to do.
In revisiting his research journey, Ralph is inclined to agree that getting research leaders to become more mindful about their approach to establishing the research culture could be an important thing. This is certainly something that is hard to do on your own.
Reinventing his approach to research leadership is something that Ralph has done multiple times during his career. Your research leadership with your team will be constantly evolving as your team is in constant flux. Being prepared to review and reflect how you lead your research team owe to be an essential competency in the portfolio of research leaders.
The enthusiasm and motivation of new PIs are likely to help them enthuse their students and researchers, but it should not hide the need to reflect on what is going well and maybe less well in the team. There is always room for improvement in the way we work with others.
Ralph emphasises the need to articulate clear expectations in a team about what success look like. He also stresses that we should not consider trust as something that needs to be earned, but as something that is built through relationships. Trust is established through a two-ways process in relationship building.
Many early career researchers lack confidence in their skills and ideas, and spend a lot of energy punishing themselves through the unhelpful game of comparison. As research leaders, spelling out to your early career researchers that you have confidence in their abilities goes a long way in creating the inner belief that people need to thrive in research. It is not about lacking exigence with the science and the critical analysis, but it is about creating an environment where people are not scared about putting ideas forward.
o How much do you foster individuals’ beliefs in their own potential?
o Do you ask enough questions of your team members and do you leave them the space to answer?
o How much listening are you open to do when leading your team?
The gamble of your first recruits
When you are getting your research group set up and you are recruiting your first PhD student, technician or Postdoc, you may be so eager to get your research group started, that there is clearly a risk of recruiting someone that is not the right match.
So how do you make sure that you don’t mess up this first recruitment?
Ralph’s advice is to take your time and not feel over-rushed by funding/ PhD committees to recruit the first applicants that are sent your way.
You are likely to feel so excited that someone would want to work with you and so stressed about not losing any time, that your eagerness may get in the way of your discernment.
o Does the personality of the applicant resonate with who you want to work with?
o What are you doing to limit your own biases in recruiting your team members?
o How will you assess whether they have the skills you need?
Increasing the transparency in the processes for promotion panels can serve as a collective learning opportunity
Ralph shares the example of an interesting practice in his institution where promotion panels take place in front of the whole faculty.
Individuals being put forward for promotion or applying for promotion are given feedback by members from the faculty through an open discussion and presentation.
This is an innovative and unusual practice that brings transparency to a process too often hidden behind closed doors.
It means that each staff member has the opportunity to be mentored by a range of colleagues.
Such practice has the potential to be a great learning space for everyone in a department. This of course, is a process that needs to be facilitated with great care.
o What does the promotion process look like in your institution?
o Could it be improved to make it a learning/ mentoring opportunity for all in the department, instead of just been an assessment?
o Are these processes reproducing hierarchy and privilege, or are they transparent and open enough so that each research leader understands clearly the expectation placed on them for their promotion?
“Go ask questions and learn again. One needs to build a culture where people listen to the answers and then decide what you want to do with it later.”
