ASV Education Workshop 2011
How to Manage People
Rozanne Sandri-Goldin
University of California, Irvine
PI Challenges- Managing People
 To
be an effective leader of a research
group, you must be an effective Personnel
Manager
 As graduate students and postdoctoral
fellows, we are trained to perform research
but not how to direct our own research
labs
Tips that I have learned the hard way
 Selecting
lab members including
technicians, graduate students and
postdoctoral fellows
 Managing and directing your research
group and how to deal with problems that
can arise
 What to do if you can’t fix the problem
How do you choose laboratory
personnel?
 The
top characteristics to look for: a good
work ethic and self motivation.


If you constantly have to try to motivate
someone, you will be both be frustrated.
In today’s competitive funding environment,
you can’t afford a slacker.
Other characteristics are also
important
 The
lab is a social environment where
your lab members will spend more time
than they do at home.
 It’s important that lab members are
sociable and get along and are interactive
and cooperative.

One disgruntled student can create an
unfriendly working environment for everyone.
What if you discover that you have an
unmotivated lab member?
You are a faculty member and you had have good
reports on Jane, a graduate student who rotated through
your lab. You were busy with grant applications during
the rotation and did not observe Jane’s day to day work
habits first hand. Your other graduate students rated her
highly so you asked Jane to join the lab. However, lately
you have noticed a pattern of Jane leaving experiments
uncompleted, arriving late each day, and looking bored
during lab meetings. This morning, when it was an hour
past the time Jane was to meet with you to go over data,
you asked other students about her whereabouts. They
said they didn’t know and appeared to be very uneasy
when asked. The next morning Jane arrives on time, but
says nothing about the prior day. How do you address
this issue with the student?
Talk to the student directly

Have a conversation with Jane and ask about her recent
behavior—don’t put other students in the lab on the spot.
It is not their responsibility to keep track of other
students.

Perhaps this is temporary situation.
 Jane might have a health problem or a family
problem, etc.
 If there are no special circumstances, and Jane thinks
that this is an acceptable level of commitment, clearly
define what you expect of graduate students in your
lab and explain the level of commitment that is
required for succeeding in graduate school.
Your interactions with lab members
are paramount

Set a good example



If you want your students to have a good work ethic,
you should also work hard
If you expect students to meet deadlines, you should
meet deadlines
If you want effective communication between you and
your lab members, encourage them to come to you
with technical questions or problems by being
available to meet with them outside of structured
times such as lab meetings—try to have an open door
policy
Your interactions with lab members
are paramount

Develop good relationships with lab members


Take an interest in your students lives outside the lab
and have some conversations that are not research
data driven
Don’t become “friends” with lab members. You are
the supervisor and director of your research program
and if constructive criticism is needed at some point,
you’ll be viewed as a traitor.
Your interactions with lab members
are paramount

State your expectations up front as soon as
someone joins the lab



Clearly describe what you expect of students and
postdocs in terms of commitment, hours worked etc.
New graduate students may not know that
experiments do not fit a 9 to 5 schedule and require
evenings and weekends too
Make it clear that graduate school or a postdoctoral
fellowship is not a job; it’s a learning and training
experience to prepare them for their careers
Interactions among lab members
 Lab
members should get along for a
productive work environment
 There should be a team spirit of
cooperation and collaboration

If one member of the team is not a team
player, this can lead to an unhappy and
unproductive work environment
What if a member of your lab is competitive rather
than cooperative with other lab members?

Example:
Your lab does a lot of tissue culture and you only have one
tissue culture hood. Your technician develops a sign-up system
so that lab members must plan their experiments in advance
and sign up for hood use. John planned an experiment that
would address a concern raised by a reviewer on a manuscript
that requires modification. He set up the cells for infections
without signing up for the hood. The next morning, he got to
the lab early before Mary who was signed up and started his
experiment. When Mary got everything ready to start her time
course experiment, she found John using the hood. His
response was that this was a very important experiment that he
needed to do and she would have to wait until he was finished.
Mary responded that her time course would go late into the
night as it was and delaying the start time would make it even
later. She also said that her work was important too.
Talk with John and use a solutionfocused approach



Don’t just criticize John because criticism alone does not
lead to solving problems
Propose a solution, namely, that because of limited
resources that restrict the lab to one hood, he will either
have to cooperate and use the hood sign up list or
request permission to use a tissue culture hood in
another lab when the lab hood is booked. Both solutions
require planning ahead on his part.
Let him know that he must be willing to compromise and
that he must accept responsibility for being a member of
the lab group and thus, he must follow the rules of the
group.
What if problems develop with your group’s
social interplay?

Example:
Claire is a new postdoctoral fellow in your lab.
She has a strong CV and is very promising. Recently, you have
been spending more time “on the road” and must leave your
lab in the hands of others while you travel. There are two other
postdoctoral fellows, one technician, and one graduate student
in the lab, all from a similar cultural background. All speak
English as a second language and communicate verbally with
one another in a language that you and your new postdoctoral
fellow don’t understand. Claire comes to tell you that she finds
it difficult to interact with the others and feels it has begun to
have an effect on her research. She needs the assistance of the
technician, but feels there is a “communication gap.” She
requests your presence in the lab full-time to provide close
oversight of the technician.
Talk to each lab member about this
situation in private
Don’t talk to the group because this can alienate
the group against Claire, the new postdoc.
 Explain to each member that lab members must
work as a team and that a team cannot perform
well without effective communication.
 If a player cannot understand other team
members, the whole team will perform badly.
 Explain that as the team coach, you must be
able to communicate with all team members and
therefore, while outside of the lab speaking in
your native language is fine, but inside the lab,
the official language is English.

What if your lab becomes more
social and less work oriented?
 Lab
social interactions are important and
lab social functions like a summer picnic or
holiday party are good mixers
 But if one or more lab members begin to
orient their experiments around social
events, it’s time to intervene
Experiments vs. Coffee breaks

Example:
James, a postdoctoral fellow has come to your lab to do a
second postdoc after doing his graduate work and a first
postdoc in his native country. He is older and has more
experience than the graduate students in your lab. James
begins to introduce new lab practices that he says are standard
in labs at home. He comes in later than you and the rest of the
lab and organizes daily lab lunches with your graduate
students with leisurely discussions that generally take about 1
½ hours. He also states that it is customary to have long coffee
breaks in the afternoon and your students take these breaks
too. James winds up his day around 5:30 and soon your
students start leaving then too. You notice a steep drop off in
lab productivity.
Experiments vs. Coffee breaks

First, talk to James privately in your office. Explain that
you have noticed that his working schedule differs from
what you expect of a postdoc.




Let him know that you understand that there are differences in
the lab culture in his home country and here, but you expect him
to adapt to the new lab environment.
Also explain that he is not only performing below expectations
but he is setting an example that your students are following and
lab productivity has suffered.
Suggest some compromise that will help with the transition. For
example, agree on a bi-weekly lab lunch at a new restaurant or a
pot luck in the conference room that can be planned in advance
so all lab members can schedule this lab event around their
experiments.
Schedule lab meetings for the late afternoon or evening and
bring refreshments—coffee and cookies in the afternoon or beer
and pizza at evening meetings.
Resolving conflicts in the lab
 Sometimes
conflicts will arise between lab
members


Don’t ignore these conflicts and hope they will
go away
Try to get to the bottom of the issue and find a
resolution
Lab conflicts

Example: Cathy is a senior graduate student in your lab and Penny
is a technician who has been in your lab for 6 months. Penny
performs all the technical duties in the lab, but she does not have
her own project. Cathy is frustrated because her work is going more
slowly than she had hoped and she wants to finish her thesis
research by the end of the year. She asks Penny to do some of her
experiments because she says she needs the assistance. Penny
responds that she is the lab technician and does what the PI tells
her to do, not graduate students. Cathy becomes angry at this
response and begins to talk to other lab members about Penny,
stating that she could be doing a lot more work than she does.
Cathy starts criticizing Penny openly in front of others if she finds a
lab reagent that Penny is responsible for is not immediately
available when Cathy wants it. Penny starts to snap back that the
reagent has not been put on the lab board by Cathy. The lab
atmosphere becomes strained and other students don’t want to take
sides. Soon, no one is communicating when Cathy and Penny are in
lab. Pete, a postdoc comes to tell you what has happened.
How could this conflict have been
averted?
 Cathy
could have come to you to ask for
Penny’s assistance with her experiments.



You probably would have agreed to Penny
working with Cathy for awhile if Penny was
still able to do her own work.
Now, Cathy is too angry with Penny to accept
her help.
Penny is too angry with Cathy to be willing to
help.
So what do you do now?

First, talk to Cathy and Penny separately to hear both
sides.



After listening to Cathy, explain to her that you are Penny’s
supervisor and she works for you but had Cathy come to you,
you would have agreed that Penny could assist Cathy. Also tell
Cathy you realize that she is frustrated with the slow pace of her
work but her anger was misplaced.
After listening to Penny, tell her she should have come to you
with Cathy’s request. That Penny didn’t discuss it with you may
mean that she didn’t really want to do Cathy’s work too.
You want to resolve the conflict and restore an amiable
working environment in your lab.
What do you do?

Propose a resolution that will require some
compromise on both sides.



Since neither Cathy nor Penny are likely to want to
work together now, one solution would be to ask Pete
to collaborate with Cathy on an aspect of her project
and to do some of the experiments
In turn, Penny can help Pete with his work so he
doesn’t fall behind.
Make it clear to Cathy and Penny that you expect
them to resume a congenial and cordial relationship
in the lab.
What do you do if a graduate
student is under performing?

Susan has not been making progress on her
project and her lab meeting presentations
suggest she hasn’t been putting in much effort.
In your weekly meetings with her, she always
has an excuse for why an experiment has not
been done or why it wasn’t completed. She
forgets to do important controls and sometimes
mixes up samples because she answered her
cell phone and lost track of what was added to
which tube. When you come to her desk to talk
with her, you find she is on Facebook on her
laptop instead of Pubmed.
What do you do?






Susan has been under performing through most of her time in
your lab. You give her periodic pep talks and try to motivate her
but after a few weeks, she reverts to old habits.
Have a serious talk with her about her career goals. It is
possible that she doesn’t really want a career in research.
Let her know that her current level of commitment will not lead
to success in graduate school and beyond and she should
consider other career choices.
If she insists that she wants to continue and will try harder,
start documenting every conversation with her.
Document her progress at your weekly meetings and tell her
when she starts to fall short.
Ask her to call a meeting with her thesis committee and have
them evaluate her progress too.
What do you do?

After a reasonable time period (6 months) when
you have been carefully monitoring and
documenting Susan’s progress and discussing
her shortcomings with her, and there has not
been significant improvement, you may have to
begin the process of having Susan dismissed
from graduate school.
 The regulations will vary in each university so be
sure you know what these are and follow them
precisely.
The same applies to a technician or
postdoctoral fellow
 Address
the problems directly with the
individual and discuss what is needed for
improvement and how you can help
 Contact Human Resources and follow the
exact procedures outlined if the individual
continues to perform below expectations
and make sure that your expectations are
reasonable
Take Home Message
 Communication
is key
 Don’t ignore performance problems,
changes in lab dynamics or conflicts
 Act to fix the problems
 Use solution based approaches
 Be willing to compromise and consider
alternative strategies