Everything you don´t learn in the lab

Leadership skills for scientists How to row the boat

Topic area
(Self-) management

Format
Online or in-house workshop

Workload
Online: 4 x 2.5 h-webinars plus self-paced work on our learning platform

In-house: 2 workshop days

Target group
Postdocs and junior group leaders

In brief

This workshop gives you the essential leadership skills you need as a scientist: whether you are taking on leadership responsibilities during your postdoc or preparing for a leadership role in industry.

Description

Leadership has evolved alongside our work environments. Flatter hierarchies, project work within a matrix structure, and more rapid changes in assignments, locations and colleagues are among the new challenges we all face. Scientists often assume leadership responsibilities before taking on a formal leadership role. This can pose an interpersonal challenge, and it leads to a shift of responsibilities and expectations. Suddenly, success is no longer just about doing good work yourself: you need to delegate, give feedback, select staff, resolve conflicts and help very different people work well together.

In this course, you’ll learn about:

Situational leadership

• How can we adapt our leadership style to the different people in a diverse team?
• How can we delegate effectively and fairly within the team?
• Staff development.

Staff selection: Hire people who fit the task and form a team

• How to get the best team and not just clones of yourself.
• Overcoming biases in staff selection and other work processes.
• Gender equality and diversity in the hiring process.

Feedback and other one-on-ones

• Giving and receiving critical feedback.
• Feedback in the international context: address cultural barriers.

Conflict management

• Establish a communication culture in your team.
• De-escalate and resolve conflicts by mediation using the Harvard Negotiation Principles.

Workshop format and materials

Online: Four to six interactive 2.5-hour webinars, combined with self-paced work on our learning platform. Alongside the webinar phase, participants have three weeks to deepen their learning and can receive individual feedback from the trainers.
In-house: All participants receive a PDF script of the course, allowing them to revise the material at their convenience.

More information and next steps

Interested in shorter formats about the workshop topics? The talk Hire only the best: de-bias your workplace will focus on the topic staff selection.

Interested to read more about the workshop topic? The excellent book Lab dynamics will give you insight into the social interactions in a lab.

We wrote an article in Nachrichten aus der Chemie about difficult decisions, one of the main challenges of any leader: Decide: If, then how.

Do you want to see a preview of the Online Workshop?

A glimpse into our leadership training for scientists

Would you like to see how we cover leadership topics in our workshops? This short video offers a glimpse into our leadership training.