In this blog article, I will attempt to describe my journey to become a leader of a functioning research group, while providing some useful information that could help others to achieve this goal too. While such a journey is largely individual and will always depend on many specific, often personal aspects, there are many lessons learnt that can be universally transposed to others. As a disclaimer, I should say that I never intended to become a PI (principal investigator), professor or a group leader. I always loved science and wanted to be a scientist, but I never wanted to deal with the stress I perceived from the constant grant applications and management (and possibly bureaucratic) duties associated with such positions. I always liked teaching, which is a part of a classical academic career, but I always felt I could do that separately without having to be a professor and I found several good options to do so. My personal goal was to become a facility scientist, that is someone who looks after technical aspects of scientific experiments at user facilities such as lasers or accelerators. Such a position often comes with less management, no need for grant applications or teaching. One can do their own research supported by the institution, but with some limited scope and the payoff is support work for scientific users of the facility that come to carry out short term experiments there. I felt that this kind of work would be the right thing for me, plenty of interesting technical challenges, possibility to do original research, certain financial situation, long-term prospects and cooperation with plenty of interesting scientific teams. As a bonus, one also becomes co-author of the publications coming from these experiments. Alternatively, position as a staff scientist in national labs seemed like a good option.
However, as one is forming plans life makes changes to those. At one point, while I was working towards being a permanent research facility staff, I found out that due to unfortunate combination of external factors, such a position was no longer an option for me. Due to some issues I had to deal in my last position, I was forced to become more independent. I was looking into what I could do next, while I developed several original ideas for my own research. I attended a great mentoring program and I learned about several options to start my own independent research group. I was also warned that doing another postdoc after already being a senior staff scientist, could hurt my future career in science as it would be seen as a step backwards. It was primarily the bad experience I had with my past employers that made me decide that I no longer felt comfortable being at the complete mercy of my managers that decide everything from my projects to the finances and other resources I get for those. So, there I was, I found myself writing several grants and applying for multiple positions.
The most important step was to select the right grant scheme and institution to apply for. I identified several factors that were important for me:
1) Sufficient financial independencewithout the need of applying for more money in the near future.
2) The grant needed to be minimum 5 years long, any shorter would not give me sufficient time to develop my own independent research group and train my team.
3) Autonomy/scientific independence: both in terms of my scientific freedom as well as institution/upper management.
4) Long-term prospects(beyond the initial funding period): there had to be a plan for further employment and prospects for the group to continue at the institution. Essentially, tenure track positions.
5) Possibility to teach:I decided that adding former teaching experience to my portfolio would be a great asset for my future in academia. And above all, I really found that I enjoy teaching and it gives me new inputs and ideas for my research.
6) Research facilities:The institution needs to have appropriate facilities (high power lasers and technical support) so that I could conduct my research, since it is experimental in nature.
7) Location:since would move my entire family, this place also had to be a good location for my partner’s career, childcare (free and available), close proximity to nature (ideally mountains), good social and healthcare facilities and several other factors defining good life quality. This point immediately excluded the US for us and narrowed our search for some parts of western Europe and Scandinavia. We decided against the UK due to Brexit.
8) A proper control of diversity, equal opportunities and unconscious bias:Particularly after my bad past experience with unconscious bias and gender discrimination, I decided I could only apply to places or institutions that made equal opportunities and control of unconscious bias during the selection process as well in their management structure a high priority.
My initial steps involved staying in Prague applying for local grants like GACR (Grantova agentura Ceske republiky), but I really quickly realized that all grants available at the time (2016-2017) were too short (3 years maximum), with no level of independence. The grant was awarded to the institution, not to the applicant and the grant holder had no control over it, it may even be taken away from them and the institution could give it to anyone else they liked. This was unacceptable after my terrible experience with scientific institutions management in the Czech Republic. The application and result reporting process was disproportionally difficult for the amount of funding one could receive. Expecting publication in the first year of the grant, while it takes minimum 3 years to produce a publication in my field seemed completely insane. The selection process was also somehow non-transparent and the direct statement of the agency towards equal opportunities also immediately excluded this option. So GACR or any other call in the Czech Republic was out. It was obvious we would have to move internationally. Due to my preferences stated above, I reduced my search to Germany and Sweden. It turned out that the grant schemes in Sweden were usually too short and multiple grants were usually required to get sufficient funding for a group.
I looked seriously into an ERC (European Research Council) starting grant application. The ERC Starting grants have several great features: they provide 1.5M EUR funding for up to 5 years, which is sufficient for a sufficient young research group, although it is bound to an institution, one can move the grant to other locations and the primary point of this funding scheme is a complete scientific independence. At the time, when I could make this application, I was still based in the Czech Republic and I was only starting to communicate with institutions in Germany and Sweden about relocating. Our negotiations were still in a very informal initial stage and there was no sufficient time to get a formal agreement with a new host institution, so I decided to try with my current Czech employer. That turned out to go badly on several levels and I did not receive the support I needed.
I was also looking into alternative funding schemes in Germany. Picking Germany was a natural step since it is a country with some of the best funded scientific infrastructure in the world. Specifically, high power lasers and accelerator facilities which I need for my work are in a large abundance in this country. Especially in my field, there is a large number of institutions of high reputation. But above all, Germany supports a large number of schemes for young researchers to start a group. Whether it is the national funding agencies like DFG (Deutscorschungsgemeinschaft) or BMBF (Das deutsche Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung), individual university schemes or large research associations such as the Max Planck Society, the Helmholtz Association, or Fraunhofer, Germany offers an abundance of so called “Young Investigator” funding schemes and positions. One can also try to apply directly to a W2 professor positions, which are however more competitive and often require insider knowledge of the system and negotiations take 2-3 years to complete. They often offer a nice starting package that can be used to fund student and postdoc positions, laboratory equipment and a travel budget. And of course, some teaching responsibilities, but also absolute freedom in research and life-long permanent positions – in many ways a very sweet deal. It is generally advisable not to try for W1 professor positions, because they seldom lead to a permanent or tenure-track positions and provide no decent research funding and are focused primarily on teaching with shorter term contracts. All German institutions are obligated to take care of equal opportunities during their selection process. During some interviews I had a special equal opportunities expert sitting in looking after the process being fair. The selections boards are diverse and measures are taken to counter potential biases against the selectees background. Germany was also a lucky location for our family with relatives in the Czech Republic and Sweden. The difficulty was the language, since I never did any German at school, so this meant starting from scratch with another language. Well, challenge accepted! The proximity to the family, which is easily reachable by train was also quite important for us.
Fortunately, I found the perfect funding scheme for me there. I applied for the Helmholtz Young Investigator Groups programme. While this funding scheme is tied specifically to the Helmholtz centres all over Germany, there is some level in flexibility in the location and upon special negotiations, the funding could be also moved to another location within Germany. It offers 1.8M funding for 6 years. This generous offer easily covers expenses for staff, laboratory equipment, travel, consumables, etc. The main advantage of Hemholtz and the main reason why I picked this scheme and location in Dresden, HZDR (Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf), is that they usually already come with fully equipped laboratories and generous research funding, so the group funds often do not have to cover all of these research expenses and can be used towards the extra PhD student position or travel to outside facilities and conferences. Indeed, HZDR has one of the top high-power laser facilities in the world. The DRACO and PENELOPE laser systems together with the connection to the HIBEF project with the European XFEL in Hamburg was all that my research could ask for. The existing infrastructure was the primary pull. It also helped I already knew the institute director and greatly respected his work. I felt like we could get on and this would be a pleasant place to work with a great support, which turned out to be very true. The scheme promises a complete autonomy of research interests. While the research focus should fit to the local Helmholtz institution and department, it is considered fully independent. A huge bonus is a mandated partnership with a local university which gives the Young Investigator group leader the right to teach courses and lead PhD students at the university. One can work towards habilitation and/or full professorship through this scheme and keep their options for future career at research institutes, national laboratories or universities open. An ideal path for me was a combined path with a base at the research institute with a teaching position at the university, which this programme makes possible. A very cool bonus of this position is also a thorough leadership/management course for all young investigators, the Helmholtz Leadership Academy. I will talk about this in more detail in the second part of this blog, but in a nutshell this is exactly what is missing in most positions for young group leaders. This course provides exactly the soft skills needed to build and manage a research group from scratch. That is something us scientists are usually not taught and that causes plenty of trouble. I was happy to see that the Helmholtz Association addresses this in the best possible way.
In order to qualify, the candidate must be 2 to 6 years from the competition of their PhD. A provision of up to 2 years is provided to extend this deadline for each child born in this period. Although the requirements state minimum of 6 months spent abroad, I immediately saw that the Helmholtz Association is looking for truly worldly researchers. All Helmholtz Young Investigator group leaders I have met had minimum 2 years of a postdoc or PhD study completed outside Germany or their home country. It does make sense, since they look for experienced researchers that have a broad range of expertise and contacts that can usually only be gained during longer stays in different countries. It does take minimum one year to settle in another country and figure out how the local institution works and another year before the person fully functions in that place becoming a full participant of the local culture. I would most definitely not underestimate this aspect in your potential application and interview. There is a three-stage selection process. First, the applicant must contact the local institute with the intention to apply for this funding. The local Helmholtz institute will decide whether the applicant will be supported or not. The process thus starts with a letter of intent, which is around two A4 pages long document outlining the key ideas for the proposed research. The institute will internally evaluate the general quality of the candidate, the proposal idea and how this work fits into their institution. Each Helmholtz centre will support a limited number of these applications. If the applicant is successful here, the centre will provide a letter of support of the candidate and facilitate an agreement of partnership with the local university (in my case that was the Technical University in Dresden) that must be submitted together with the body of the application and the budget plan. The candidate also needs to submit a signed list of suggested referees for the proposal, their resume (CV), a separate list of publications, declaration, cover sheet and the application summary. All templates for the required documents together with a detailed (yet easy to follow!) guide to the application process are available on the Helmholtz website in English as well as German. The application is submitted by the Helmholtz centre through which the candidate is applying. This also means that plenty of time needs to be given to provide all of the documents to the administrative support in the centre, so that they can send it off in time. In general, the centre has been very helpful and provided excellent feedback on my application and helped me to get it all in a good shape. Especially helpful was the feedback on the budget planning, which is particularly important if you are not familiar with the salary tables in Germany.
The body of the proposal itself is obviously the most important part of the applications. Mine was 16 pages long including the abstract on the cover page and references. I used the same format as I originally started writing for the ERC Stg. grant part B1, which worked very well for this proposal. A section on the relevance of this proposed research to the Helmholtz research programme had to be added. The centre helped me to put together about a half page long text on how the proposed work fits into the programmatic research (in my case Matter) within both the institute (HZDR) and the whole Helmholtz Association. It is generally advisable to provide a challenging and novel idea with a quite specific focus. My proposal was a bit different, withsomewhat wider range research ideas and topics, but both together by a central idea. This turned out to be a successful approach, but it is clear that each idea and research is unique and thus requires to be communicated in its own specific way. Fortunately, the research centres are generally very helpful with providing feedback to improve your proposal and the previously successful young investigator group leaders are very happy to provide advice too. Again, it is a good idea to give them plenty of time to help you. The deadline for the application is usually in April each year. On top of the description of the project, methods, technical developments, scientific goals and milestones, they proposal should also include a reasonable risk assessment and outline of the budget plans. It is helpful to provide a description of the individual projects for the PhD students and postdocs and the Helmholtz Association greatly cares about the smooth progress of their projects and timely completion of PhD theses. Good contingency plans are advisable. Beware that the PhD projects are by default limited to 3 years of duration with a potential extensions by 6 months for thesis writing. Further extensions may be possible if the centre allows that, but might reflect badly on the group and the group leader. It is thus a good idea to have a good plan that can be managed in this time-scale.
If the candidate is successful in this second step, they will be invited to the final, third-stage of the selection process, which is the interview. The invitations are usually sent out in July/August and the interviews take place in September, giving the candidate some time to prepare. The interviews are held at the Helmholtz Association headquarters in Berlin and they kindly cover all lodging and travel expenses. Though at this point the candidates has about 50% chance to be selected (they usually invite around 30 people and up to 15 get funded each year), a good preparation is crucial here. I was given advice by the institute director and one of the previously successful candidates. I then presented the talk to the director of HZDR, who gave me some very useful comments, that I believe actually significantly improved the chances of winning the grant. It is very important to be brief and on time with the presentations, they really do not like it if the candidates takes longer. So, practicing the talk is very important. My talk had only 9 slides for total of 10 minutes of presentation. The presentation should, unlike ERC, focus less on the science, but more on the background of the candidate, the management plans, the research relevance to Helmholtz, the cooperation with international partners, other researchers within Germany and the local university, as well as leading of PhD students. Of course, I provided a nice outline of the key points of the research and why it is interesting and challenging, but it was not going into any technical detail. It was much more like an outreach/popular science talk in this respect. It is important to remember that the committee is consisting of scientists of all fields ranging from history to quantum physics. I was surprised how many members the committee had. I recall something like 15-20 members. There were additional 5-10 minutes for questions. The questions ranged from some technical ones to other more soft-skills related. They asked me why my research has not been done before, what is the reason to go to that specific laboratory, why I was leaving my older place, how I would deal with a situation if a PhD project was not producing required results (here is where I took out my contingency plans), or how I form my international collaborations (here I answered honestly and said that I mostly rely on informal connections, which turned out to be the winning answer). After your time is done, you are advised to stay longer in the waiting room as the session is followed by an informal coffee break with the committee members, where they like to talk to you further. It is definitely hard to resist running away at this point, but trust me, it is a good idea to talk to them after. The best thing about this scheme is that they give you the results pretty much right after. I found out that my proposal was successful the next day! I estimate the overall success rate to be of the order 10-20% depending on the number of applicants that year, so slightly, but not much higher than the ERC starting grant scheme. I however feel that the Helmholtz selection scheme is more transparent and open. I guess they can afford to pay more attention to each application with so much lower number of applicants as they are more limited by the field and initial pre-selection by the research centres.
Overall, I must say I am very happy with the scheme. The whole concept is well thought out, managed, and organized. It has a clear aim and purpose. I always felt a lot of support both from my centre and the central office in Berlin or even the European Helmholtz office in Brussels later when I was applying for further European funding. The annual reports are well structured and not too time-consuming. Generally, the administrative support has been great and allowed me to concentrate mainly in my research, group management and teaching without any extra administrative load. I really liked the Helmholtz Leadership Academy. I made use of their advisory and mentoring programmes too. I can honestly recommend everyone to try for this grant. If your research happens to fit well with the Helmholtz research programmes, this may be the best ticket into becoming a scientific group leader in Europe. There are of course other similar awards given directly by the research centres within Helmholtz and other associations like Max Planck or Fraunhofer, so it is definitely worth to contact them and enquire about the various options. Good luck and feel free to contact me if you have specific questions about these funding schemes and the application process.
How to start a research group – part II: Setting up the research group
Many starting group leaders find the first steps to build a functioning team and ensure that the team is well balanced, happy, self-sufficient and productive rather challenging. The main problem with us scientists is that we have never been taught any communication, inter-personal, management or leadership skills. We have always been told that you have to be a great scientist, know your maths, theory, technology, etc. very well and all will be fine. Even teaching is often underestimated in university and postgraduate education. In general, especially for us in natural, physical, mathematical and technical sciences soft skills are frowned upon. And that is a huge mistake! As any of us young scientists find when we start leading our own team, we encounter problems that have never even occurred to us that could possibly exist. This is a transition in my career I found the most challenging of them all. In the second part of my blog article, I will try to make the journey easier for the others by accounting for my own experience, all the things that I have done right and all the mistakes I made in the past two years, since I first became a scientific group leader in Dresden. I must say it has been a rough, yet immensely rewarding journey. I am very happy that I can now say that I have a great team full of enthusiastic young scientists, who do their job with passion and the sense of responsibility. But the most amazing thing is to see how they truly became a team, I even dare to say friends, not just a few people who happen to work together. This I feel, might be the greatest feeling and the most important achievement of my career to date. It is indeed very important, because seeing how well they work and interact together also motivates me and makes my everyday work enjoyable and interesting. So, thank you guys!
I wrote in the first part of this article that I felt very fortunate to be able to attend the Helmholtz Leadership Academy. This course was provided for all of us Helmholtz Young Investigator Group Leaders as a compulsory part of the program. Having gone through all of the individual workshops, I must say that much of the success in establishing my group can be attributed to it. I feel that the Helmholtz Association truly tackled the big problem that keeps on appearing in science everywhere: bad management with no guidance. I am quite confident that at least to some level, this program will improve the situation. But, even if you do not have such a specific course available to you under your funding scheme, there usually are many other available resources, either online or in a form of other workshops you can enrol for. Often universities offer something like that, or one can simply search outside. I do strongly recommend to try to get some training in communication, management and leadership skills just as you start leading your research group. It is something that can make your life and the lives of the people in your team a lot easier. From this course I learned a lot about how to communicate, set up a strategic research and management plan, motivate my team, manage my own time, how to delegate tasks, coach, stress management and how to effectively resolve conflicts. I have implemented many of the tools in my own research group with great success. I find that many of these things are indeed common sense, but it really helps to formalise them in some structured way and these courses can be super useful for that.
When you start you are alone and you must quickly find the suitable people and start building the team. That is much easier said than done. When I first started, I had no significant experience with job interviews nor did I know anything about good hiring practices. But I had to hit the ground running and fill the positions. I was lucky that I was able to get an excellent postdoc to come with me from Prague. We had already worked together for some three years together, so we knew each other pretty well and we knew we could work together with no issues. Having an experienced and independent postdoc that you can rely on is by far the most important first step. I would resist the temptation to get more cheaper PhD students instead of one postdoc. One experienced postdoc can manage work of 3 PhD students, with minimum guidance and with their own motivation. Usually, you do not have to teach them much and they can quickly become your right hand and the backbone of the entire group. When you start taking on students no matter what level, the postdoc will help you co-supervise them, help them get started and mentor them. This is why it is so important to get the right person you can trust and rely on. This is indeed not easy. Selecting the right people is one of the hardest tasks a starting group leader encounters. I soon had two PhD students. One came “for free” with his own funding and the institute put him in my group. It seemed like a good idea and it turned out very well, but this was a very hard journey as it was somebody I did not select and did not know.
I then started looking for another student. It is not enough to put a job add and hope for the best as you often get lots of very strange applications. I even got people from organic chemistry applying for a physics job. Later I found that writing a job add is a true artform. Firstly, I recommend stating very clearly the key points of the projects, required skills and their level. I would emphasize here to try to use inclusive language, avoid any potential gender, ethnicity or nationality biases or stereotypes. This is sometimes hard to do as we are usually not aware of our own biases. As guidance in this matter I recommend the book What Works by Iris Bohnet from the Harvard university. For example, putting too much attention to competitiveness of the position and innate ability of the candidate in the job add might deter women. Putting too much emphasis on specific type of communication skills might put off some national groups. There is also plenty of online material available for free on the Harvard website, so I recommend looking into it. It is worth it as you can get access to much wider and more diverse talent and that inherently improves your group. Of course, there are difficulties that some with diversity too and I will get to them later. But I honestly think it is worth the effort. Secondly, tap into your network. Make a nice poster with the job advertisement and send it everyone you know in the field. You never know, they can put it up in the department or might just have a Master student with the right interests just finishing up. Especially, when starting off, it is hard to attract good talent, even at top institutions as your group is not yet well known and established in the field. But with clever advertising, it is possible to get good people to join your group.
The second student came after an interview we conducted together with my postdoc. Looking back on how we conducted the interview, I feel like a complete amateur. We went by our gut feeling, the interview was not structured at all and I have to admit, it was even quite messy. We selected him as we really liked him personally, which may not be the best way in the hindsight. This student came recommended through a collaborator in another institution, so in some ways it was safe and indeed that is often a good way of accessing students, but so many things could have gone horribly wrong. We got lucky, this student turned out to be excellent and matched our team very well. In fact, it was his personality that was the key to getting a coherent tight team. All of this happened unfortunately before I got the appropriate training for hiring. With my next team members I tapped into the knowledge and what I learned from the book by Prof. Bohnet and proceeded with only structured interviews. First I identified the key technical and personality points that needed to be satisfied for someone to fit in. For example, I needed to make sure that the person would manage the pressure and exhaustion associated with long experiments and night shifts at user facilities. I added some points for diversity and personality traits that would make a good match for the rest of the group. And above all I value the ability to work independently, methodically and self-motivate. I made a list of questions that would probe these key traits and required to elaborate on the questions, i.e. yes/no answers are not much help to you. It is always good to ask questions like: “Describe the time you had to deal with a difficult situation”, or “Can you tell me about your favourite lecture course at the university”. Let them talk and you may learn more than you thought you would. Each question had points assigned to it and I then summed the points total. I also had a set of sections such as: technical skills, stress management, team work, etc. that had each separate scoring system. This system gives me the possibility to properly compare the individual candidates.
Now comes the crucial point. You have funding for people, the department might even give you more staff. How many people should one take on and when? One piece of advice that kept on coming up was: “do not grow too fast”. I think this is right and everybody should listen to this advice for the good of their mental state, wellbeing of all of their team members and the good of humanity. I am not exaggerating! Leading a PhD student, or even a fresh postdoc is very hard and can easily lead to frustration on both sides. Students often need a lot of attention. Surely, there will be some independent and able ones, but there are many other clever students, which however need a lot more attention for various reason. There are, of course, also bad students. But this is not just about the needs of the students and other staff. All situations can be dealt with, but you must have the mental space, energy and time to deal with them. Starting a group takes a lot of effort and mental space and it is easy to get lost in it all if you bring it too many people too fast. It also takes some time to learn the management styles and getting used to this kind of work. The group also needs a bit of time to start running smoothly and establish itself. It is good to manage your ambitions at start first, learn how you and your group work and start thinking about growing the group with time. With a reliable postdoc one can then take more students as there is an established chain of supervision. I started with just two students and a postdoc. After the first two years I am finally hiring additional student and I have started applying for grants to start growing the group further, one (or maximum two) person at the time. I have heard a fair share of horror stories from postdocs and students that started in newly established groups that within two or three years grew in numbers beyond 10-15 people and the PI completely lost track of what was happening, just kept on applying for more money leaving his staff to their own devices and the group was growing dysfunctional very quickly with many unhappy members.
Just like all the young group leaders I have laid out my overall research strategy in my proposal with properly set milestones and deliverables. Well, in the real world, most things do not go according to the plan. Something breaks, something takes longer, somebody turns out to be less able than hoped, planning fails, the laboratory equipment or access is not as good as originally planned, whatever the reason, things will not always go according to the plan. I found the same. Of course we make contingency plans, side projects, etc. and that is one of the reasons why I kept my proposal still relatively general. One of the things I learned that it is important to still keep your strategy updated, both on the political level as well as the overall research trends. I try to make smart connections within, watch what is happening at the institute and outside and constantly update the strategy and long term plans accordingly. And all of this has to be done on top the normal networking and keeping up to date with cutting edge science. It can indeed be exhausting, but its important. I keep my long term plans in my mind and revisit the strategy plan constantly. It obviously still needs to keep some overall backbone so it all makes sense, but flexibility is a good idea. The nice thing about joining a large institute with multiple research groups is that I get constant new inputs and many of my projects expanded and even several new ones started, while others did not turn out to be as good as originally expected. Having a clear strategy that you often communicate with the department heads and others in the institute as well as your own team is great for motivating others around you too. I find that keeping my plans transparent and well communicated to those around me helps me achieve my research and management goals better.
There are many cultures of management around the world and at the different sectors and institutions. One advantage of me moving around the world and working in so many countries and different institutions is that I have seen almost all of it in practice. I can therefore well pick and choose what I like and how I want to lead my group. But one thing is to have a plan, the other is implementing it. I found, just like so many others, that especially in small teams you need to on some level deal with each team member individually. Each learns in a different way and pace, yet another reason not to start with too many people (especially students) if you want to do this well. But I also found that the management styles evolve with the individual people and the whole group as they evolve and the group dynamic changes over time. It is important to adjust the management style to the current status. The general advice is to avoid “micro-management” and I on a high level agree with that, BUT there are many situations where it might be needed. Some people specifically require it, some do not want it, but cannot get started without it. In some cases it is expected culturally, for example I find that micromanagement to some level is very common in Germany. It is a big contrast to my past experience from the US or UK, where I was given total freedom and almost no guidance in my work, while in Germany everybody is expected to keep their management in loop with what they are doing to an unexpected detail. I decided to try to keep my management style closer to the American style that I found really suited me well. It gives a lot of freedom to the team members to do their own thing without me looking over their shoulder constantly and keep all our communication on the same level and informal, which is in some contrast with the more traditional german ways that are more hierarchical. For the most part, this was well received by my team who appreciate the trust I put in them and the freedom I give them. However, this does not work always and in everybody’s case.
I had a particularly difficult situation with one student. Coming from another culture, the student was used to much more hierarchical approach and expected to be explicitly told what needed to be done, while I expected more independence from start. On top of that our situation was complicated by a language barrier and cultural differences that lead to many misunderstandings. I also have to admit that I fell into the unconscious bias trap for a little while, assuming the student was less able than he really was. But over time, we both overcame our own limitations and now we have a great working relationship which is very productive and friendly. It required a lot of patience, empathy and structured leadership. I was given a very useful advice to start with a bit more micromanagement in the beginning and gradually let go and give the student more freedom and trust. The issue is that this was not at first well received by the student and was seen as a lack of trust in their ability. It helped to explain my objectives to them and keep my plan fully transparent. They understood the need for the regular meetings where he had to tell me all about his work step by step. Eventually, we could start loosing this up and as they built up good research and presentation habits I was able to give them more independence until in the end they were as independent as the best postdocs I know around. This was a great success story and I could tell that even the student was very pleased with this progress. I always made sure that I communicated when something was done well and thanks to this regular feedback the student could see the progress made, which in turn motivated him. As I was letting go, he also got the clear message that I am gaining trust in his abilities and that further motivated him. The key was clear communication and a transparent plan. Small hurdles were experienced with all of my team members. I find that sometimes, when too much freedom and too little guidance was given, the style had to be changed sometimes to more hands-on management. Once the hurdle was overcome, then I could (and should!) let go again. Mutual trust is very important in smooth running of a research group.
There were also several practical things I have implemented in my group. Fox example, particularly useful turned out to have the right kind of communication channels. We have regular group meetings every week. These are kept informal over coffee or tea. I keep them under an hour of duration. I open up with big news an strategic points relevant for the group. Each team member gets to talk about what they are doing and what issues or successes they have encountered. If the discussion gets too detailed, I delegate it to a dedicated meeting on that specific topic as I do not wish to highjack everyone’s time with unnecessary detail of project that may not be relevant to them. At the same time, I find it important that everybody has some awareness what the others in the group are doing, so they can cooperate better. Structuring these meetings is important to keep them brief and efficient. The worst thing one can do is to end up with too much time wasted on useless meeting. The other extreme is not having any communication, so finding the right balance is important. We have also setup a group WhatsApp (and WeChat) messenger group where everything from urgent matter to informal chitchat can happen and I must say this has worked great. We do anything from sharing most recent data to calling people together for a lunch or evening drinks. This was so successful that we even started setting up similar groups for each user experiment we attend which we share with people from other teams. I make a careful distinction what is communicated this way and other things that get sent via email (more serious, usually less urgent tasks) or left for a personal meetings (coaching, brainstorming, strategic discussions, etc.). I also try to make sure that I minimize sending emails late at night or on the weekends. This is important not to stress them out and give the bad example that work off-hours is expected (even if I am sometimes guilty of doing that myself). One can make use of various tools like setting a timer on the email to be sent the next morning at 9:30 am, or simply exercising self-control. Another example of a useful management tool that I implemented in my group was a task board, which is a modification of the Kanban board. We have a physical one in our office and with the COVID-19 crisis we started a virtual taskboard on Gitlab, where each team member (including myself) has task stickers of designated colours put in various separate categories: doing, urgent, medium urgency, in confluence (awaiting feedback on input from others) and done. This helps everyone to self-organise and me to see what is happening and if tasks are distributed evenly. We also have a shared group calendar, Google drive with online planning/data analysis documents, lab notebooks and other relevant documents. Larger files are shared through various cloud services (in Germany we have the Owncloud drive).
Not many realize at this point of the career (some never do) that there is a distinct difference between supervision, mentorship and coaching. Supervision is something that we all have to do with students. I form their projects, make sure that the research progresses well, that they gain the correct skills and knowledge and produce decent scientific product, publish it and eventually graduate. That is NOT mentoring. Mentoring goes much further than that and reaches students on a personal level. I have taken a part in many mentoring programs both as a mentee and mentor. The idea behind mentoring is to help develop in all career aspects not related to the work itself. It is usually done in a pair with one person being a couple of steps ahead of the mentee in the career progression, e.g. a PhD student can mentor Bc students, a young professor is a great mentor for a postdoc. It is advisable that the mentor is in fact not the academic supervisor of the student as there might be some conflict of interest situations, e.g. research output vs. personal struggles. In a role of an academic supervisor I apply an empathetic, honest and open approach, but I keep some boundaries when it comes to sharing personal matters. When I could see one of my students struggling on a personal level, there were signs of serious sleep deprivation, I mentioned I noticed a problem and suggested a mentoring program. I serached the local resources and a suitable mentor was found for the student. I made sure that I was not being told about what they talked about. And after some months I could see that this helped, the student looked a lot happier and healthier. As a mentor I dealt with many struggles including issues with the supervisors. I helped to motivate my mentees and find good working habits. Based on my mentoring experience I even compiled an article with some general advice for PhD students. I have used mentoring as a mentee in all stages of my career and I continue to do so now. It helps me to decide what are the suitable career steps, in fact this current position is a direct result of mentoring consultations in Prague. It has also got me on the right path to good work-life-family balance. I recommend making use of such programs, they are offered at many institutions and by many external organisations, or can even be done informally, so make use of them. In contrast, coaching is focused on specific personal development or problem solving. It is in that respect more like training, thus can and should be done by the academic supervisor.
Based both on the Helmholtz Leadership Academy and my own experience I find that people have an amazing capacity to self-motivate. The main motivation is almost never money and this is particularly true in science. I found that my team felt most motivated when they felt progress in their learning and achieved goals, when they have done something good for others and when their work was appreciated. A good and constructive feedback is important here. It took me sometime figure out how to do that myself. I am not a naturally empathetic person. But I was able to learn how to work with people in an open and empathetic manner and mind you, I am still learning lots. This is indeed a journey. I find that criticism must be evidence based, constructive and never demeaning. Belittling people is never productive, but it can be hard to avoid if you yourself are frustrated by the other person’s progress, mistakes or simply a missed communication. I always started with myself and looked for what I could do better next time. Especially when you are being honest and open, it is surprising how much can be forgiven and done better the second time round. When progress was made, I always make sure that I tell the person that this was good and show my appreciation. It is good to make sure you say these things in front of their peers and who you respect and appreciate their work. It is often underestimated how much positive feedback can do to help others to stay motivated and lift their self-esteem. There needs to be always structure in both the feedback, interaction and goal setting. I sometimes write up key points for a discussion with each student, postdoc or other co-workers before the meeting. Especially, if I expect the discussion to be difficult. I regularly follow up on older conversations and keep track of each person’s progress (without nagging and micromanagement!). And I try to keep unconscious bias on my side constantly in check by asking myself, would I see this issue the same way if the candidate was male/female/English/German/Chinese/Algerian/Russian/black/white/social/introverted/extroverted/religious, etc. This aspect can never be truly removed, but it can be effectively minimized by keeping track of your own actions and thoughts and constantly questioning them. And above all, it is important to remember how hard it was for you when you are at that stage. I struggled with my doctorate a lot and I can relate to a lot of my students’ concerns, I just have to regularly remind myself. Then there is one completely different thing and that is counselling. Indeed mental issues, usually stemming from low self-esteem and too much stress, are alarmingly common in scientific research. This is something I am painfully aware of myself and during my doctoral studies I have also made a use of those services. I have tried to create a honest and safe environment in my group where everybody can openly share such issues and seek help in time. This has paid off and I found out that it worked and I could not be happier for that. I urge all young supervisors to be aware of this and not underestimate this issue.
I found that team building is very, very important. There is a difference between a group and a team. It is not necessarily bad if your group is not a true team, where everybody works towards a common goal and even become friends. However, if you do manage to create a team, especially when the group is small, it makes the work more enjoyable for everybody, it improves the levels of motivation and it surely makes the manager’s life a lot easier. With a well-functioning team, it is much easier to let go and trust that everybody will do their part. I always made sure we had lunch together and that we socialized with others from the institute. Lunch and coffee breaks are the ideal opportunity for that. Doing activities together is always a good idea. This may come as obvious to some, but not so much to too many others. Scientists are sometimes a special breed. We had some parties together, we go our for a pub dinner and drinks on a regular basis. Surely, it is harder when you have small children, but I made it work and it was worth it. Being in Dresden, close to a famous national park and wonderful nature, we have been organizing hiking trips together, which is another great way to bring people together in an informal setting. Some groups even go out on longer trips in the mountains together. Renting a cottage and spending some time together, maybe even turning it into a little conference with a social program can be a lot of fun and also very useful. Whatever activity you choose, the time invested in forming informal bonds between the members is invaluable. Yet, it is still important to keep some professional boundaries. I struggled to find the right balance, but I feel I found it. This is something we all need to keep in mind, but have to work on individually. That is the trouble with social situations, they depend on a lot of individual characteristics and the situation. One has to be observant. And this makes another case for not growing too fast. Especially a small group is very sensitive to social interactions between individuals and thus it helps to get to know each other gradually and test out the relationships one by one. I found that once the team members knew each other better, they were more likely to cooperate, help each other with individual tasks, understand what the others were doing and took interest in their wellbeing. My team now is fantastic, they are great people that look after one another, there is a strong team spirit and loyalty, which is precious and wonderful. We all keep each other motivated and support each other and I wish the same experience to everybody.
Thanks to the structure of the Helmholtz Young Investigator programme, I was able to also fully indulge in teaching at the university. My affiliation is the Technical University in Dresden (Technische Universität Dresden). I managed to negotiate with the local Physics department to open my own course on Plasma Physics, which loosely continued on an old similar course given years ago by Prof. Cowan. I wrote my own curriculum and started lecturing in the summer semester 2019 with great success. I have also participated in teaching other seminars at the university. Teaching is definitely a gateway to an full academic position or potentially professorship as it is one of the basic requirements for a job in academia. It is also a great experience. The official channels will tell you that habilitation is not a requirement to get a full professorship in Germany, but in reality it is usually expected and at least getting on the habilitation track will significantly improve your chances of obtaining professorship. So, I also decided to work on mine. I have started the process in autumn 2019. In order to commence the process one needs a sponsor at the university, which is a full professor. The sponsor will then organise a department colloquium talk to be given by the candidate to start the habilitation. The focus of the lecture is the research of the candidate and future plans, not their CV. The talk should be very general and low-level, i.e. not too technical or specialised to make it accessible to people from other specialisations too. A committee of professors then get together to approve (or not) that the candidate can be considered for habilitation and provide recommendation. I have done my talk in October 2019. A part of the habilitation process is the teaching credit, both in terms of lectures and seminars taught, but also direct supervision of students projects. The candidate then writes a habilitation thesis. This is like another PhD thesis, but summarizing all relevant research done by the candidate to date. The Physics department TU Dresden allows to staple the papers of the candidate together with a summary introducing the research works (which could be of the order of 40 to 50 pages). The work will need two external referees, which should ideally be well-established professors familiar with the German academic system. Throughout the process, the habilitation candidate should have a mentor helping them through the ordeal. I was fortunate to get a great sponsor and mentor at the university, who has been very helpful with both habilitation as well as my teaching at TU Dresden. However, it is important to mention that the individual rules will vary between different universities and if you wish to try for german habilitation, you should first check the rules at the local institution.
I hope you find this brief summary of my experience as a young investigator group leader useful and motivating. It is an ongoing journey and I still have plenty a head of me, so it is likely I will write further articles about my path through the academic jungle.
Good luck!
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