Most Principal Investigators (PIs) receive no management training before they assume positions of leadership . They learn how to manage their team by emulating their mentors, with at times predictably unfortunate results. If institutions have a responsibility to ensure that their postdocs and graduate students are managed and trained in accordance with best practices, they also have the responsibility to train their faculty and staff in what those practices are. I can imagine a time when not training PIs in management skills will be considered a form of institutional negligence, or worse, malpractice.
For PIs these skills include mentoring, managing a team, negotiation, managing conflict, setting goals and giving feedback, running productive meetings, and recruiting and hiring scientists. For trainees they include those same skills (to prepare them for roles beyond the postdoc) as well as effective speaking, how to interview for a job and how to give a job talk.
Making the acquisition of these skills a requirement for being a manager or PI in your institution is not a radical idea. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies invest considerable resources and time in training their scientists in management and leadership. The US National Institutes of Health requires anyone (including their most senior leaders) who manages or supervises to participate in management and leadership training not once, but every three years .
These are not skills that can be learned in an on-line 45-minute webinar. Real learning takes time and commitment. When you ask scientists to make such a commitment you are reinforcing the importance of these skills.
Providing management training for PIs ensures that we are living up to our commitment to provide the best educational and mentoring experience for our undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs. Just as important, we believe that scientists who are managed well, who are given clear goals with helpful feedback, and who see that their managers have an interest in their career and development are more motivated than those who lack these advantages. The result can be improved communication, collaboration and productivity.
The best way to send the message that this training is important (other than making it mandatory) is to ensure that the senior scientific leadership of your organization is 100% behind it. It is even better if senior scientific leaders at your institution personally introduce the training and attend training sessions (since few of them will have received such training themselves). If support is half-hearted and if allocating time for training is done grudgingly scientists will get the message that it is not important.
Beyond training their PIs in key extra-scientific skills, institutions should do the same for their postdocs. Why should you spend money training postdocs on how to interview for a job or how to run their own labs once they leave you? First, because the skills that your postdocs will learn will improve their ability to work as part of a team, and to collaborate and interact productively in their current labs. These skills will directly impact their productivity at your organization. Second, because your postdocs are trainees you have a responsibility to give them the skills they will need to be productive in their careers after they leave. If all you’ve taught them is how to do science, you’re sending them into the job market ill equipped to be successful. I know from experience that today’s postdocs are hungry for training that will give them an advantage both in the job market and in their future scientific productivity.
When recruiting for postdocs your faculty and staff should emphasize that your institution takes your training and mentoring responsibilities seriously and will provide them with skills that will help them become successful in their own careers. Institutions that do this will almost certainly have an edge in recruiting the best and most productive postdocs.
Today’s postdocs and junior faculty know the value of these extra-scientific skills. In some organizations they have gotten together and created their own training seminars when their organizations have not . Such efforts should be applauded and supported. It is time for institutional leaders to emulate their trainees and expand their vision of what it means to train future generations of scientists.
Carl M Cohen, Ph.D.