Welcome to Leadership Lab with Wendy Hultmark!
This is a monthly newsletter where I share light-bite content on a variety of topics related to leadership in today’s world and times. Whether in the sciences or creative spaces, the word lab has come to be associated with a space for experimentation, innovation, and collaboration.
In this space, I will share tips worth passing on, words I have found worthy of reflection, and the occasional funny story to keep it all in perspective.
Neutralizing the Naysayer
During a recent conversation about leadership in the lab, I shared researcher J. Richard Hackman’s idea that having a disrupter in the group can be beneficial. It’s that person who asks “why are we even doing this at all?”.
Having such a person in the mix can indeed be useful. In my leadership career I have been startled out of an unconscious flow of group-think by such a question. In our haste to produce an outcome under the high pressure of work deadlines and expectations, we neglect, more often than you might think, the question of whether the thing you are doing is right to begin with. So drawn are we to the “how” that we sometimes forget the “why”.
But in discussing the value of this role in the group, a more insidious version of criticism came up as a challenge.
What do you do with the person who just seems to criticize everything?
When does healthy critical thinking become plain critical?
Leaders who find themselves perennially challenged by the same person has something on their side: predictability. If you can predict the moment a person will open their mouth with a negative comment, then you have a special gift: the opportunity to reflect, reset, and break the pattern.
There are a variety of ways to break the pattern of repeated negative commentary in a group. But none of them should involve becoming impatient or summarily dismissing comments. This sends the wrong signal to the larger group. They may be aware of this individual’s disposition and even enjoy a public “smack down”, but they will think twice before they offer any constructive criticism in the future. And you do need constructive criticism. You do need the disrupter who says “why are we even doing this at all?”.
A second key to unlock how you handle unbridled negativity is to sniff out any cynicism. Cynicism boils down to distrust and often results in disengagement. If you sense that cynicism has set in, your leadership tactics need to go in a different direction than an intellectual debate about the surface topic being discussed. And that is probably a private conversation, likely multiple conversations in fact.
Coffee, Anyone?
Join me Tuesdays at 2pm ET for coffee hour for scientists! It’s a free, informal forum to discuss your challenges leading your career beyond the bench. Register here for one of the upcoming Tuesday sessions.
A People Dashboard for PI’s
All leaders must make decisions from time to time about whether to retain a struggling employee and continue to invest time and effort in their development, and when to acknowledge it may be time for a goodbye.
As I am learning in my work with principal investigators, these decisions take on extra weight in the lab. PI’s invest a lot of time in training post-docs and other lab staff. They often have their own personal success tied to their employees’ performance as they anticipate studies that lead to career-enhancing publication. And there may be questions of funding. All of this complicates the decision about whether to retain or release a struggling employee.
To some extent, leaders across disciplines and industries struggle with some version of this question, though the nuances may be different. In my previous life as an HR partner, I have had very candid conversations with leaders who recognize an underperformer, but fear they won’t get budget approval for a replacement. Or they know the market is tough for this kind of worker. They put off the decision.
In these scenarios, it can be helpful to create a dashboard with a few gauges on it. All with green, yellow, and red zones. For the principal investigator, those gauges might be “funding”, “personal capacity to train”, and “individual performance”. Once you have identified the most important things to monitor with this mental dashboard, the next step is to identify what green, yellow, and red look like.
It is often clear what green and red look like. It’s the yellow that needs attention. What are the signs that healthy levels are slipping? What action will you take when they do? Getting crystal clear on what the deciding factors are put the brakes on the endless spiral of indecision, and you back in the driver seat. (Ok, I’m done with the car and driver metaphors, I swear!)
