The transition from graduate student, postdoctoral researcher, or fellow to an independent research position can be daunting. Stepping out from under the wings of a principal investigator or lab director to pursue your own research ideas and funding while managing postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates can be intimidating and confusing.
To be successful, strong management and leadership skills are key. Psychology researchers at Washington University in St. Louis interviewed 52 federally funded researchers and found that cultivating a positive team environment, providing clear supervision and guidance, expressing lab values and expectations, and leading by example are all key aspects of running a lab (Antes, A. L., et al., Accountability in Research , Vol. 26, No. 3, 2019 opens in new window). However, the same researchers also surveyed principal investigators (PIs) in the field of genetics and found that most felt unprepared for their lab management responsibilities, with only three out of the 30 PIs they interviewed stating they felt confident in their abilities when they started their labs (Antes, A. L., et al., Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics , Vol. 11, No. 5, 2016 opens in new window).
This is also the case for many psychologists, who do not receive much training in management skills during graduate school. “As a graduate student or a postdoc, there are not as many formal opportunities to learn to lead,” said Chris Wahlheim, PhD, a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro who launched his own memory and cognition lab in 2016. “When you step into a leadership position on your own, it really requires attention to how your behaviors are perceived and how to set the best examples.”
Wahlheim and other experienced researchers share tips and tricks they have learned on the job:
Observe your early mentors carefully
Find a good mentor during graduate school or your postdoc whose leadership style you admire and who will help prepare you for directing your own lab, said Luke Hyde, PhD, a clinical and developmental psychologist at the University of Michigan who founded a lab that focuses on the development of risk and resilience in children and families in 2012. “I was fortunate to have two different PhD mentors who had different styles, and I was able to take away great strengths from both of them,” he said. One, who had a larger lab, provided steady guidance and support on several larger and slowly evolving projects. The other, who had a smaller lab with more time-sensitive work, met with Hyde more frequently throughout the week but focused less on long-term planning. “Both helped me learn to balance between immediate opportunities and ideas and longer-term projects,” he said.
Now as an associate professor, Hyde has sought out seasoned faculty and staff at Michigan who can answer questions about lab management. “Make sure you get a mentoring committee or otherwise identify senior folks who you can bounce ideas off of,” he said.
Nazbanou Nozari, MD, PhD, a cognitive psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, was proactive at asking her postdoc adviser questions and kept a constant eye on how she ran her lab. “My adviser was really good at running a lab, and I modeled mine very closely after hers,” said Nozari, who has been running her language production and executive control lab, which started at Johns Hopkins University, since 2014. “I learned how to structure my lab, how to have lab meetings, how to divide the labor, how to approach projects and progress reports.”
Hire the right people
A big part of leading a lab is establishing good values and a healthy culture early on, which starts at the recruitment process. “In my first few years, I focused less on the science, but I focused a lot on infrastructure,” said Hyde. “I thought a lot about who we needed to hire, how we were going to collect the data, and how we could set up a lab where I didn’t need to do everything.”
Along with finding people whose training and expertise fit with the lab’s research questions, you want to hire individuals who get along, value collaboration, and are animated about the work. This is something Wahlheim thinks about when recruiting new researchers for his team. “I have an excitable personality, so during the recruitment process, what I usually do is let them see who I am,” he said. “I build that enthusiasm early, and you can tell when a student gravitates towards it, and you can tell when a student doesn’t.”
By creating a cohesive group, the other parts of running a lab—from data collection to writing institutional review board grants to submitting publications—will run a lot more smoothly. “That’s not something you talk about in grad school, but, ultimately, the infrastructure you set up and the lab culture you create is really important in terms of the vitality of your lab,” said Hyde.
Grow your leadership skills
Once you have hired the appropriate staff and students, the next step is to make sure you manage your team well. Barbara Stanley, PhD, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University who studies suicide prevention and has been principal investigator on several large grants, recommends creating distinct order in the lab. “Try as much as possible to establish a clear structure within the lab so that people know what their responsibilities and roles are,” she said. For example, set clear guidelines on how to be an author on a manuscript and the criteria for being first author. “By doing this in advance, it prevents a lot of misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and anger.”
Keeping your team motivated is another challenging but essential part of leading a lab, said Wahlheim. “In academia, the reward structure is so delayed, and so you have to point out that any little victory is big,” he said. This includes everything from learning new software to analyzing a large group of data. “I always do my best to congratulate people on those small victories to help them realize that it’s not trivial that they’re learning these skills—all of it matters and all of it contributes to this much bigger goal that we have.” Maintaining this social component of the lab, especially during COVID-19 when many people are working remotely, helps build morale and boost productivity. “We are encouraging ways for folks to socialize in safe ways, like games on Zoom,” said Hyde.
Wahlheim also makes sure to emphasize the student-professor relationship and budgets a significant amount of his time to mentoring. Sometimes, this means helping a student publish a paper in a journal that is not high impact or giving up first authorship as the principal investigator. But this work builds team morale, is incredibly valuable to the student, and helps build a foundation for their career, said Wahlheim. “I’ve had to learn to be generous and patient with my time to help students toward the goals that we promised we’d help them toward.”
At the same time, it’s important to learn how to tell students no if you’re overbooked or need to dedicate time to fulfilling other PI duties. “You have to grow comfortable with disappointing people,” Wahlheim said. “I will do everything I possibly can to help my students, but at the end of the day, I can’t lose sight of what the university wants from me.”
Manage your budget strategically
PIs spend much of their time writing grants and managing their finances, and doing both well is crucial, said Stanley. “The funders follow along with what you’re doing, not just scientific progress, but what you’re doing with the funding.”
However, most researchers aren’t taught how to manage a scientific budget in graduate school. Wahlheim learned this the hard way when he started running his own lab, which was partially supported by state funds that had to be spent in a particular timeline—the first half in Year 1 and the second half in Year 2. “I had to work quickly to think about what I needed to do that would work in an environment I didn’t yet understand,” said Wahlheim, who successfully spent the allotted money. “If I had to do it all over again, I probably would have had a lot more open and frank conversations with other faculty in the department before I arrived so I could get a clear understanding of how to allocate that money.”
Depending on your research topic, it can also be overwhelming to decide what sort of equipment to invest in. In Wahlheim’s lab, for example, researchers use high-tech devices like an eye-tracking machine. Balance those major purchases that are absolutely necessary to conduct your research with plenty of resources for staffing, Wahlheim said. “You can buy as many computers and software programs as are available, but the work really requires people.”
For example, your wisest investment might be putting aside money to fund a graduate student during the summer who can help with some tough data analysis. Or you can bring on a postdoc who has prior experience working with human subjects and can greatly aid in data collection.
About once every 3 months, Nozari checks in on her finances to see how much money she’s spent. “As a faculty member, you need to be your own accountant,” she said. Her university does offer grant and financial workshops, but she’s found the best way to learn how to write and submit grants is to consult senior researchers who have successfully received funding in the past. “In the beginning, I asked as many questions as I could about the actual process,” said Nozari, who wrote her first grant for the National Science Foundation in collaboration with a colleague who could guide her through the process. “It was during the hands-on work with him that I learned how to write grants.”
In the end, nothing beats the tried-and-true saying: Practice makes perfect. “You won’t be successful unless you jump in it and start doing it,” Nozari said.
Model resilience, humility, and growth
It’s key to note that learning to lead is a never-ending process and nobody is perfect, said Nozari. This is particularly true when it comes to mentoring students. “As you go through your career, you’ll work with new people with new dispositions, so the learning never stops.”
As a result, being open to feedback and willing to acknowledge your mistakes is crucial. Creating a safe culture also boosts employee engagement, reduces workplace tension, and builds a sense of trust throughout the lab. “Don’t meet feedback with a negative response,” said Stanley. “Be open and respectful.” And just as you would wish for someone to give you professional, constructive criticism when you make an error, you should show the same respect to your employees. “We have to be willing as leaders not to be punitive when mistakes come up,” said Maryland Pao, MD, of the intramural research program at the National Institute of Mental Health, who oversees the work of 40 PIs from a range of disciplines.
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of being a PI or lab director is practicing self-care. For Nozari, a big part of that is opening up to her colleagues about her struggles and seeking help when she needs it. “That’s not emphasized enough” in research settings, she said.
Wahlheim agrees that you must “be kind to yourself.” “We set really high standards for ourselves,” he said. A lot of the decisions that determine one’s success in the field, like who wins awards, what publications get accepted, and who gets grants, are outside of your control and aren’t a direct reflection of your competency or abilities as a scientist, he added.
You must remember that everyone has been in the same boat, and the ups and downs of research are unavoidable. “If you look at someone’s good record, there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that a lot of people never get to see,” said Wahlheim. “Having a better understanding of how to be OK with those failures and not internalize those as reflecting one’s own inability—I think that that’s important to remain persistent and resilient.”
