Young Investigator Programme
promoting the scientific leaders of tomorrow

Contact   EMBO YIP Programme, Meyerhofstrasse 1, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany yip@embo.org Laboratory Management Discussion Forum (for course participants)

EMBO Advanced leadership skills training
(Summary- Group leadership II)

Time and Self Management
Group leaders are scientists and managers. A rising number of duties and responsibilities, deadlines for grant writing, membership in committees etc. very easily result in bottleneck situations.
Frequently people are rather driven by their tasks than being in control of them.

In this course, you will

• Reflect your own habits and patterns of time structuring in order to detect inefficiencies and determine areas of improvement
• Learn and practise tools that will help you with time and priority management
• Learn and train to structure your daily tasks and goals according to your diverse professional roles

The HFP Consulting team, Sašo Kočevar and Thomas Frick, will give participants the opportunity to exchange and evaluate practical experiences of participants. The focus will be on case studies accompanied by short theoretical input. In addition participants will learn about and practice coaching as one of the most important management tools.

Managing Lab Conflicts
Group leaders are faced with a challenging variety of conflicts in the lab:

• Authorship of papers
• Competition for specialist equipment and scarce resources
• Dealing with low-performing staff or students
• Negotiating with the organisation (institute, university, …) or colleagues
• Resolving collaborations gone sour, or
• Ethical issues

In this course you will learn how to:

• Recognise and expand upon your own style of dealing with conflict,
• Recognise and analyse conflicts to understand how to manage them
• Negotiate with research partners and suppliers
• Manage authorship conflicts

Coaching: An Approach to better science and leadership
Group leaders face many challenges in leading their labs and bringing clarity to the confused thinking of their students (and sometimes even post-docs). Coaching offers group leaders skills both to improve the leadership and management of their labs, as well as cut through much of the confusion that sometimes arises during scientific discussion.

Coaching places emphasis on sharpening people’s awareness of an issue and taking responsibility for their work. It is also suitable for teaching people new skills in the lab. Research shows that people taught in this way retain 90% of what they learn, compared to as little as 10% for some traditional methods.

 In this course you will learn how to:

• Ask questions that increase people’s awareness of and responsibility for a topic
• Help staff and students to solve their own scientific, technical and general lab problems
• Show staff and students new techniques so that they can use them themselves afterwards
• Guide scientific discussions and debates to be productive and satisfying
• Use a variety of problem-solving tools to improve your own and your lab’s productivity