Recognizing that there’s more to doing great science than technical skills, the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has taken the brilliant step of sending a free copy of “Lab Dynamics: Management and Leadership Skills for Scientists” to ALL of its faculty members.
Giving chemists new tools.
We have seen this trend over the last couple of years, as organizations that bring us in to run management and leadership workshops for their scientific staff also hand out our book to the workshop participants. Having the book on hand after attending one of our workshops is a great way to brush up on the skills we teach because the content of our core workshops is all in the book. We also recommend the book to those who ask us how they can ensure that the lessons learned during the workshops are not forgotten as time passes. To them we recommend that they make sure the workshop attendees have a copy of the book that they can refer to. We suggest that organizations convene facilitated discussion groups every three or four months following our workshop. These groups can use chapters of the book as jumping off points for group discussions relating to the themes in a chapter.
Science Management Associates also offers the workshop “The Front Lines of Science” to organizations where we have run our popular “Management Skills for Scientists” workshop, a two-day “boot camp” in management and leadership skills. With the “Front Lines” workshop, we return to an organization about six months to a year after the original two-day training and engage the participants in in-depth discussions of case studies that they prepare, focused on issues they are currently dealing with. These discussions refer to and reinforce the lessons of the two-day training workshop and serve as a powerful reminder to participants of what they have already learned and how to apply it to their own challenges. An added benefit of the “Front Lines” workshops is that they are co-facilitated by Science Management Associates partner and “Lab Dynamics” co-author Dr Suzanne L. Cohen whose insights are grounded in years of experience as a psychologist.