EMBO Laboratory Management course - Research Leadership for Group Leaders

Many of my current and former colleagues asked me about my experience at the EMBO Laboratory Management course, so I decide to write up something to share.

About a year ago, I received information about the EMBO laboratory management course from a senior colleague at IMB. Initially I was hesitated to apply for this course because it is both expensive and far (Germany). However, in the end I decided to do it, and I am glad that I made this decision! My past training in US as a graduate student and postdoc focused mainly on science itself, and I was not paying much attention to acquire knowledge related to managements. Now, after running the lab for almost 2 years, I feel inadequate in management skills and think that attending the course will help me and also benefit people in my lab.

I came back from this course feeling enriched! Each day we discussed different topics centering lab management. For example, how do we communicate? How to give feedback? What’s our responsibility and roles as the leader? How to manage our time? How to resolve conflicts? How to interview the job candidates? How different personalities affect people’s behavior? What motivates people? What’s the team dynamic? I had little knowledge on any of these topics, but I observed and learned from my Ph.D. and Postdoc mentors. Therefore, it is very helpful to have someone present these knowledge and skills to me in a very structured and clear manner and help me realize what I have done right or what I could have done better.

There were 14 participants in the course. Some are going to start running their labs, some just started not too long ago (like myself), and some have been a PI for more than 20 years. For each topic introduced by the instructors, we had many chances to have discussion in small groups to practice our skills right away. From listening to the other people’s stories, I quickly realized that many issues occur in a laboratory setting world-wide are incredibly similar. This is in regardless of the research fields and countries. From listening to my peers’ stories and their comments and suggestions when they listened to mine, we learned much from each other!

Overall, this course is extremely helpful to me, and I will suggest Academia Sinica to invite EMBO to organize such training course on site for new PIs.