Work is getting a rethink postpandemic, as a wave of people have quit in the so-called Great Resignation. And workplace culture is coming under the microscope. Analysts at workforce analytics firm Revelio Labs crunched 2021 data from a sample of large U.S. companies. They found a toxic corporate culture was the biggest factor pushing people to resign, and it was 10 times more likely to contribute to attrition than compensation rates (Sull, D., et al., MIT Sloan Management Reviewopens in new window, 2022). And a study of Australian workers found long hours and a poor psychosocial safety climate were associated with increased depression (Zadow, A. J., et al., BMJ Open, Vol. 11, No. 6, 2021opens in new window).
Think your lab is humming along fine? You might want to take a closer look. A 2018 Nature survey of 3,200 scientists found lab heads have more positive views than lab members about their involvement in checking data, reviewing experimental designs, and understanding lab members’ projects. For instance, 97% of principal investigators (PIs) reported that they were almost always available to discuss experiments or career development, but just 69% of lab members said their PIs made time for such discussions (Van Noorden, R., Nature, Vol. 557, 2018opens in new window).
Some labs are operating near their peak; others are toxic. Most lie somewhere in between, said Alison Antes, PhD, an organizational psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis who has an NIH grant to develop leadership and management skills training for scientists. “It’s often the really unhealthy, disastrous labs we hear about. But it’s the ones in the middle that are most interesting, because there’s the most room for growth,” she said. “With some awareness and intentionality, you can get close to the ideal.”
Yet there’s often a misconception that spending time on interpersonal dynamics is a distraction from the real work, Antes said. “Leaders often think being too caring is a weakness, that it means sacrificing high standards. But you can have a healthy, caring lab culture and do awesome science,” she said. “Research is hard, and it comes with setbacks and failures. To have thriving research, you need thriving people who are doing it.”
Why lab culture matters
Healthy culture matters for several reasons. Most obviously, a harmonious lab leads to happier lab members. “One of the biggest predictors of student burnout is how supported they feel by their mentor,” said Jay Van Bavel, PhD, who directs the Social Identity and Morality Lab at New York University. Research has found high rates of clinically significant anxiety and depression among psychology graduate students, with 49% reporting anxiety and 39% reporting depression. Many of those students reported a lack of support from supervisors and faculty (Rummell, C. M., Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol. 46, No. 6, 2015opens in new window). Other work has found that faculty support is significantly related to program satisfaction and overall life satisfaction among psychology graduate students (Tompkins, K. A., et al., Training and Education in Professional Psychology, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2016opens in new window).
When lab members aren’t supported, they’re less likely to speak up and take risks that could result in stronger, more creative research, Van Bavel added. “When people become disengaged, they tune out, do the minimal amount of work, stop showing up,” he said. And they’re more likely to cut corners—or even behave unethically. “Mistakes happen to everyone. In a healthy culture, you’re more likely to report them and learn from them. In a toxic culture, you’re more likely to hide them,” he said.
Interpersonal dynamics are a huge part of a PI’s job, but few researchers ever receive formal training in mentorship or management. “We have these high-stakes learning experiences in labs and research environments, and everybody’s taking an armchair quarterback approach,” said Angela Byars-Winston, PhD, a counseling psychologist and professor of medicine and faculty lead in the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
But these skills don’t have to be elusive. Researchers can take advantage of trainings and dig into the rich literature in management from industrial/organizational psychology, Van Bavel said. “Approach the job with a growth mindset and assume you can always improve.”
Here’s some advice on how to start.
Set the standard
Good workplace cultures don’t happen by accident. “All healthy labs don’t look the same. But you have to put it on your radar and be intentional about what kind of environment you want to create,” Antes said. “Your behavior sets the tone. Your communication style, the way you interact with people, the standards of expectations and behavior. It sounds cliché to say ‘lead by example,’ but it’s so true.”
Many experts recommend establishing a set of formalized practices to guide life and work inside the lab. Byars-Winston suggests researchers develop a mentoring compact with students. Many scientists create individual development plans (IDPs) with students and mentees. “The IDP is the ‘what’ part of establishing goals. A mentoring compact is the ‘how’ part,” she said. “It can describe how you’ll work together and resolve conflicts, expectations and metrics for measuring productivity, what happens if you reach an impasse, and even how you’ll wrap up the relationship.”
Those plans should recognize mentees’ goals—which may not be the same as the goals a PI would choose, said Cynthia Willis-Esqueda, PhD, who leads the Race and Ethnic Psychology Lab at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. “It’s important to be supportive of students’ learning journeys,” said Willis-Esqueda, whose lab is made up almost entirely of first-generation students and students of color. “We discuss how they will achieve their ultimate goal—whether that goal is academic or nonacademic employment after graduation.”
Wear multiple hats
Being an effective PI means being both a mentor and a manager—and those two roles require different sets of skills, as Antes and colleagues have written. Management involves practices such as holding effective meetings, establishing rigorous research habits, addressing mistakes, and establishing operational and training procedures. Being a strong leader and mentor involves abilities such as building relationships, encouraging lab member engagement, creating a team atmosphere, addressing conflict, and providing routine feedback (McIntosh, T., et al., Translational Issues in Psychological Science, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2020opens in new window). “Management is the nuts and bolts, the day-to-day. Leading is having a vision and a plan and being conscious of the type of environment you want to create,” Antes said.
June Gruber, PhD, at the University of Colorado Boulder, and colleagues drew from research to describe best practices in research mentoring in clinical science (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 129, No. 1, 2020opens in new window). They found that effective mentoring provides multiple types of career and psychosocial support, including advising, sponsoring, coaching, counseling, and promoting visibility and exposure. Among the strengths that mentees most value in mentors are role modeling, effective communication, and honest and constructive feedback.
Gruber and colleagues also found evidence that multiple-mentor models benefit both mentor and mentee. Christine Dunkel Schetter, PhD, a distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry and associate vice chancellor for faculty development at the University of California, Los Angeles, oversees a health psychology training program in which predoctoral and postdoctoral students work with and learn from two mentors. Trainees work to varying degrees with each mentor, and they all communicate as a group to help the trainee grow. “It adds richness to their training, and trainees benefit from seeing the style of multiple faculty members,” said Dunkel Schetter, who received a 2022 Excellence in Health Psychology Mentoring Award from APA’s Division 38 (Society for Health Psychology). That richness often results in better science—and more satisfied mentors.
Nurture relationships and discourage competition
“When you don’t spend much time getting to know lab members as people, it makes it harder to connect about the science itself,” Antes said. Effective lab leaders establish positive relationships with lab members and encourage members to develop good relationships with one another. Ivan Hernandez, PhD, who graduated from Northwestern University in 2022, praised his adviser Mesmin Destin, PhD, for “being very intentional about creating a supportive and positive environment.” Hernandez said, “He cares about you as a person and asks about your family, your health. He works hard to create a warm home for his students, fostering a sense of community with constant kindness and humor.”
Of course, in labs with many personalities, not everyone will always get along. “But effective PIs are conscious of helping lab members navigate conflicts in healthy ways,” Antes said. One way to reduce conflict is to make sure lab members are working toward a common goal and that you’re clear about everyone’s roles and your expectations for getting there. Minimizing conflict doesn’t mean that everyone just smiles and nods. On the contrary, creating a safe space allows for good-faith disagreements to be discussed in a productive way.
Indeed, a common feature in many respected labs is a culture of cooperation and collaboration. Creating such a culture can involve a range of efforts, such as encouraging the team to brainstorm together, delegating based on individuals’ strengths, determining authorship up front to avoid disagreements, communicating often, and celebrating all types of contributions (not just publications). “There’s no reason in today’s science to compete. Competition undermines our goals,” Dunkel Schetter said. “When the climate is collaborative, everyone benefits.”
Create a safe environment
Safe environments are free of harms such as harassment, bullying, and sexual misconduct, and PIs have a responsibility to maintain awareness and intervene when such events are taking place. Some lab heads create specific policies around alcohol use or other activities that may result in uncomfortable or unsafe situations.
But safety extends beyond the obvious. Establishing a safe space also means making people in the lab feel supported in speaking up. When Van Bavel is workshopping a paper or proposing a new experiment in lab meetings, he almost never speaks first. “Research on groupthink finds that if a more powerful person shares their opinion first, it’s hard for others to disagree,” he said. “By getting others to share their opinions first, I hear better ideas and criticisms of my original belief, which leads to better ideas and insights.”
A safe space is one in which PIs are open to accepting feedback from lab members, said Diego Reinero, PhD, a former graduate student in Van Bavel’s lab who is now a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University and has written about the importance of good mentorship (Behavioural and Social Sciences at Nature Portfolioopens in new window, 2019). Van Bavel, for example, experimented with the idea of using lab meetings to set “sprint” goals and check in with team members on progress toward those goals. “But it wasn’t really working. People felt like they had to say they’d accomplished a lot in front of him,” Reinero said. The idea didn’t really take off until Reinero and the other students decided to do it without the lab head—a move that Van Bavel was fine with. “It worked so well in that format that it continues to this day, and I’ve carried the practice to my new lab at Princeton, where it’s been well received,” Reinero said.
“Many PIs don’t solicit feedback on how they’re doing, and [if people do raise concerns], there are fears of backlash from the PI. That creates an unhealthy culture of silence,” Reinero added. “I think lab heads should build in systematic ways to receive feedback on what’s working well and what’s not—and be receptive to that constructive criticism.”
Antes agrees that creating a healthy lab doesn’t mean only focusing on the positive. Sharing the failures and setbacks is valuable for students’ learning too. “Research is like a roller coaster a lot of the time. It invokes stress and anxiety,” she said. “Part of a leader’s job is helping students understand what the research journey is like.”
Embrace diversity and inclusion
Over the last few years, equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts have gained much greater attention. But such efforts are more than just a trend. “The data show that diverse perspectives foster innovation and creativity,” Antes said. “Diversity is good for science and for society.”
Higher education settings often are hosts to people from a variety of backgrounds, and some lab leaders assume that having diversity is enough. In reality, creating a welcoming and inclusive culture takes thought and effort. And doing it right may improve lab members’ success. Research found that when White people treated non-White people in a “colorblind” fashion, the non-White individuals had decreased cognitive performance compared with those who were treated in ways informed by multiculturalism (Holoien, D. S., & Shelton, J. N., Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 48, No. 2, 2012opens in new window). “Diversity doesn’t improve success unless it comes with inclusion,” Van Bavel said.
Some scientists still operate under the belief that science is “a-cultural,” said Byars-Winston. “But the doing of science is completely contextual and is affected by the culture of the people doing it,” she said. As chair of a National Academy of Sciences’ report on mentoring in the sciences, she and her colleagues described the science of mentorship and its role in supporting students from underrepresented and marginalized groups (The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMMopens in new window, National Academies Press, 2019).
They found data that show student satisfaction with mentorship is increased when mentors show interest in students’ cultural perspective, help students’ make links between what they’re studying and their own lived experiences, and directly address cultural variables, especially around race, ethnicity, and gender. “Culturally aware mentoring contributes significantly to effective mentorship,” she said.
Byars-Winston is also a PI in the NIH-funded National Research Mentoring Network, which provides evidence-based mentorship and professional development programming that addresses diversity, inclusivity, and culture. She and other mentoring experts encourage researchers to avail themselves of those and other resources. “There is a science of effective mentorship that can help us optimize lab cultures and lab experiences,” she said.
Mentoring and management skills don’t always come naturally, and there’s no shame in seeking out research and resources (see Further reading) to help you improve the culture and climate of your lab. Indeed, making the effort tends to be a win-win for everyone in a research group, and for their science. “People usually get hired as a professor because of their research skills, but few are actually trained in building cultures,” Van Bavel said. “In a healthy culture, people have a shared mission and a shared purpose, and they become creative to help the group succeed. That’s the highest level of engagement you can have.”
