#169 - STEM Researcher Leaders Need More Help With The Basics, Part 2

Manager, Ph.D. is a newsletter and community which helps people from the world of research reach their full potential managing teams and leading organizations. We’ve already developed the advanced skills to be exceptional managers; we just need help with the basics.

If you’re new to the community, drop me a note!  Some past issues from the archive which you might be interested in include:

• #60, “Quarterly goal setting & review sessions”

• #108, “Management sensory deprivation”

• #125, “I want you to outgrow this newsletter”

Plus of course the one-on-one and feedback guides.

And whether you’re new to the community or not, feel free to email me, or even have a quick chat with me about problems you have, or things you’d like to see!

Last time we talked about Google’s research, the skills great managers seemed to have, and the pitfalls that poor managers seemed to struggle with. I argued that most people with our research backgrounds have already developed many of those great-manager skills, and we just need help with the basics.

That’s been my experience personally, and as a peer and coach to my fellow researchers-turned-managers. But we can see some evidence of this elsewhere, too.

In Success Factors in R&D Leadership by Louis Gritzo, Alan Fusfeld & Dan Carpenter published in the IRI Research Journal, studied R&D leadership. There was a literature review of relevant works (far too few seem to exist!) — but there was also a new data analysis of study data with 36,000 respondents answering 155 questions about leaders capabilities. 2,500 of these respondents were from R&D organizations within companies, and 4,700 were from other parts of organizations.

With this dataset, the authors look at some of the differences between R&D leaders and other leaders. “R&D” is an imperfect proxy for “was in the STEM research world” — some non-R&D leaders won’t have been and some of the non-R&D leaders will — but this group of 2,500 leaders is likely broadly representative of the sorts of strengths we have and challenges we face, and the teams we’ve been tasked to lead probably have some similarities to R&D organizations in the study. And the “other” leaders are probably not that dissimilar in aggregate from our more typical business peers.

Sure enough, Gritzo et al find that R&D leaders consistently score more poorly than other leaders. It’s actually a little discouraging - we consistently score roughly 0.1/5 worse on most all of the 155 attributes.

But! I think it’s worth highlighting some key points.

First, it’s not inevitable - the more senior the R&D leader, the smaller the difference. We can in fact learn new skills (what are our degrees after all if not “we can learn stuff” certificates?). And if we do, it seems we’re more likely to advance in our careers.

Secondly, there are real strengths we have: R&D leaders excelled compared to their peers at, for instance:

• Quickly masters new knowledge necessary to do the job

• Is creative or innovative

• Fosters a climate of experimentation

• Offers novel ideas and perspectives

• Understands international issues/global trends that may affect the organization/how world events might affect organizations plans

• Sees underlying concepts and patterns in complex situations

Several of those were specifically executive leadership skills.

Finally, though, there are some basics we need to improve on:

• Can’t make mental transition to general manager (sound familiar?)

• Doesn’t resolve conflict among direct reports

• Hires people w/ good technical skills but poor ability to work with others

• Isn’t able to fire or deal firmly with incapable staff

• Struggles to take the lead on unpopular yet necessary actions

• Doesn’t communicate confidence and steadiness during difficult times

• Doesn’t regularly seek data about customer satisfaction

But look at that list. Look at how straightforward those basics are compared to the strengths just above.

If someone comes to me asking me to help them learn how to “be creative or innovative” or to “quickly master new knowledge”, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to help them, to be honest, and I’m not sure who could. But “seek data about customer satisfaction”? Learn how to “resolve conflict among direct reports”? How to make sure “ability to work with others” is part of your hiring screen? Yeah, those are things we can get you up to speed on pretty quickly.

Again, this stuff is not rocket science - and that goes in both directions. Yes, we’re rocket scientists, and this isn’t the stuff we learned in school. But it’s straightforward and easy to learn. Becoming really capable in these areas is just a matter of some basic perspective, and then developing a practice of routinely doing some uncomplicated stuff.

We can do this.

And with that, on to the roundup!

Managing Individuals

How does imposter syndrome impact developer productivity? -

I don’t always get to bring you a bunch of actual research papers in an issue, but this week we’re going to see a few papers in addition to the one I cited in the leader.

In this article, Matusov discusses a preprint looking at the impact of imposter syndrome specifically on software developers. I like software development and often refer to papers and articles about managing and leading software teams because there’s a lot of such teams, and having done some of each, I think the challenges facing these highly technical teams in a rapidly changing field have a lot of similarities to the kinds of work we’re likely to be managing.

It won’t shock you to learn that there’s some impostor syndrome in those teams, too, but the levels might surprise you:

That’s a majority of the people, higher for those who aren’t white men (hardly surprising given societal expectations and norms), and higher in the more technical roles.

The people who report feeling imposter syndrome self-assess lower productivity across all dimensions in the SPACE framework, a recent framework for developer productivity.

This can pretty easily spiral; someone who starts feeling like they’re struggling in some aspect can start feeling impostor syndrome, and because of that start feeling they’re struggling more broadly.

We can help short circuit this cycle: Matusov recommends:

Working on psychological safety, which is the foundation for trust and free flow of information (including credibly sharing with these team members that they’re doing well generally) is something we can start doing in our own teams quickly and for free, although it’s not necessarily straightforward.

Some strategies for building and boosting psychological safety from some researchers at INSEAD are given here - and I want to point out that an early one mentioned is simply being strategic with how you approach one-on-ones. Again, just working consistently on the basics and building from there is what 90% of excellent management is about given what we’re already good at.

How To Build Trust - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Building trust with individuals is normally pretty straightforward but not easy or quick. Kaplan-Moss has some suggestions, including some foundations which I heartily endorse:

and

Kaplan-Moss has good descriptions of some more specific areas you can focus on:

• Act Consistently

• Communicate clearly and transparently

• Be reliable

• Set and respect boundaries

• Use role power rarely – but when you do, don’t be coy

• Give feedback: quite a lot, mostly positive

• Give credit; take blame

• “Give away your toys” - delegate

• Sponsor and coach

• Respect confidentiality but be clear about the limits

• Ask for permission to give feedback, suggestions, etc.

That’s a lot to remember, but in general, I think using “will this build or erode trust” as a lens through which to view what you’re doing and saying, and being honest about the answer, is a useful guide. That doesn’t mean always doing popular things or constantly sharing good news, but it means having some integrity, credibility, and honesty when you have to do something unpopular or when there’s bad news to be shared.

Managing Teams

Staying on the path to high performing teams - Will Larson

TBM 256: The Slide -

Evolution of leadership: from pioneers to protectors - ,

These are three articles on the evolution of teams that read well together. Again, these are mostly software development teams but I think apply

Larson’s article is more from a senior director or executive’s point of team, and thinks of teams as either falling behind, treading water, paying off debt (e.g. putting investments into things that are going to help them succeed in the future) and innovating. The implication very explicitly is not that this is some inevitable linear progression but that teams can very much backslide.

His recommendations at each stage are:

1. When falling behind, hire more people to get the team to “treading water”

2. When “treading water”, the fix is to consolidate efforts, reduce concurrent work, and start generally working more as a team

3. When “repaying debt”, try to make room in the team’s work to make these investments in future productivity

4. When innovating, maintain enough slack in the team’s schedule so that they can continue excelling and building new ways of working together.

I think this is a useful mental model, except I don’t much care for the recommendation for teams that are falling behind.

There’s two reasons for that - one is that “hire more people” was a viable solution for a very specific type of team during a very specific time. Generally that’s not something we can just ask for and expect to happen (and can cause other problems).

The other is that in a team that’s in “falling behind”, things can get really ugly really fast and start causing other dysfunctions which have to be addressed first.

Cutler’s article describes The Slide that can happen when a team starts to struggle. Teams that become overwhelmed start losing sight about what is important and the big picture, then they start making mistakes, then they start losing confidence, then others start losing confidence in the team.

Frankly, reading Cutler’s description of the slide was a little unpleasant for me because it brought to mind one particular workplace a little too keenly.

Digging your way out of that is not a problem that you can solve with “hire more people”. It takes significant interventions, usually starting with a massive constricting of focus, creating a couple quick wins to start to rally the team around and help rebuild confidence, and then working outward from there. Such a turnaround requires a lot of work with the individuals in the team, the team as a whole, and with outside stakeholders.

Ostovic’s article describes different phases of managerial/leadership involvement in a team

• as pioneers, leading from the front

• as companions, walking besides the team, collaborating where necessary

• as protectors, simply providing the environment in which they can do their own thing and shine

As with Larson’s article, this isn’t necessarily an irreversible linear progression. Once you’ve dug the team out from struggles and the team is starting to succeed we can (and should) dial back our direct involvement, paying close attention to the signals we’re getting to make sure things are on track.

Zombie leadership: Dead ideas that still walk among us - S. Alexander Haslam, Mats Alvesson, Stephen D. Reicher, The Leadership Quarterly

I haven’t talked about leadership myths for a while.

They’re surprisingly common, even in our community. For instance, you’d think a group of people who had at one point committed themselves to careers in discovering things that had never been known before, developing new skills all along the way, would realize that “you have to be a certain way to be a leader” is just goofy. Effective management and leadership is just a set of behaviours and skills, not some hereditary trait. And yet these ideas persist - we might scoff if they were said out loud, but they still rattle around in the brains of people I talk to.

Here the authors review some leadership literature specifically to debunk some common leadership myths they see:

• Leadership is all about leaders

• There are specific qualities that all great leaders necessarily “have”

• There are specific things all great leaders do

• We all know a great leader when we see one

• All leadership is the same

• Leadership is a special skill limited to special people

• Leadership is always good and is good for everyone

• People can’t cope without leaders

None of the above is true. Helping a group of people do excellent work together sustainably, while supporting the professional and skills development of the individuals in the team, is always going to really depend on what the team and the individuals need, and what others need from the team. There are some skills that are broadly applicable, and relatively straightforward, but anyone can do it well and with professionalism.

Managing Your Own Career

Shifting from Star Performer to Star Manager - Annie McKee, HBR

Finally, McKee writes about the challenges going from a star performer as an individual contributor (which was most of us) to a star manager. What’s worse, most of us are probably managing people who are themselves high achievers.

We need to give ourselves some grace while making this transition. McKee cites a scholar David Mclelland studied three human motivators particularly relevant to managing teams:

• The need for achievement - which is way easier to see as an IC than as a manager (but we can help using our habits with lab handbooks, #165)

• The need for affirmation - we no longer are part of a hands on team the same way, we need to find camaraderie with our new peers or people in similar positions elsewhere

• The need for status/power - which is something we typically have pretty ambivalent feelings about, and the status we got as being an excellent IC is no longer available to us. We need to again communicate with peers, and learn to see our role in the success of the team as a whole and the individuals therein as a source of status without turning that into empire-building.

It’s not easy, but we need to pay attention to what we need in these roles and find some way of meeting those needs and satisfying those motivations rather than pretending they don’t exist. Sometimes just talking to someone who understands can help - feel free to email me (hit respond, or email [email protected]) if you ever want to ask questions, vent, or share something you’re working on!

That’s It…

And that’s it for the week! I hope it was useful; Let me know what you thought, or if you have anything you’d like to share with me about how a newsletter or community about management for people like us might be even more valuable. Just email me, leave a comment, reply to this newsletter if you get it in your inbox, or schedule a quick Manager, Ph.D. reader input call.

Have a great weekend, and best of luck in the coming weeks with your team,

Jonathan