If you’re in the lab sciences, it’s likely that you enjoy problem-solving. In fact, being good at solving problems through designing and troubleshooting experiments may be what helped you get promoted to your current role. However, as a lab manager, trying to fix every issue for your team can result in your own challenges—burnout and a loss of control over your day.
Avoiding this challenge requires a shift in mindset. Instead of just stepping in and directly solving the problems that your team members are facing, you can instead focus on teaching your team the skills needed to solve problems themselves. The key is to coach, not solve.
While coaching is a mindset, it shows up in the practical ways that you approach interactions with your team members. Three examples are:
1. Ask questions rather than make statements. When you hear about a problem, it’s natural to want to take ownership and treat it as if it were your own challenge to solve. This is where the shift in mindset is key—coaching means letting your team member retain ownership of the problem. Your job is to be curious and ask the questions needed to help them find their way to the answers. In The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier outlines the different types of questions that you can ask to help someone solve a problem without taking it out of their hands. In the context of lab work, this could mean asking, “What do you think these data are telling you?” or “What are all of the things that could be causing this to happen, and which do you think is most likely?” While this approach may feel slower, the upshot is that it trains team members to think through the questions themselves and build the confidence to resolve issues without you.
2. Let people make mistakes or even fail. Looking back on your own career, there’s a good chance you can think of a few defining failures or mistakes, and the lessons you learned from those. Providing the same learning opportunity to your team members will prove pivotal in their development as scientists and leaders. You can start by allowing someone to own decisions in lower-stakes situations, giving them space to test solutions and learn through experience. When a mistake or failure does happen, your response is crucial to building and sustaining the psychological safety needed for your team members to continue making independent decisions. Rather than stepping in to solve the challenge, you can coach your team member through the process of analyzing their decision-making and identifying where the mistake or failure occurred. This approach can resolve the issue and improve performance of your team member into the future without undermining their confidence or their relationship with you as their manager.
3. Promote help-seeking. Encouraging your team members to retain ownership of their challenges doesn’t mean that they must solve them alone. In addition to technical coaching that you might provide, you can offer coaching on how to seek out information and advice from other sources. This could mean guiding a member of your team through a literature search to find a new protocol for an experiment that isn’t working or asking more questions to help them identify someone else in your organization who has the appropriate expertise and could offer ideas for problem-solving. As your team members develop their skills in seeking help, they will be empowered to go directly to these sources rather than always coming to you first, and they can bring back the knowledge they gain to enrich the expertise of your entire team.
Shifting the conversation starts with you
As you start to shift your approach, you may also need to coach (or at least communicate with) your team on this new way of working together. To frame this in a positive light, you might say, "I see that you have leadership potential and I want to help you build your skills in problem-solving. So, while I would normally offer advice, I’d like to instead help you to think through this problem for yourself.” This can be especially helpful if someone is resistant to the change or reluctant to take ownership, as you have outlined why this is important for their professional development and how it can help your team be more successful. Importantly, communicating directly about your change in management style also keeps you accountable in those moments when you’re tempted to just dive back in and take back ownership of a problem.
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This brings us to one more person who you will likely need to coach—yourself. It may be difficult to break the habit of offering advice before asking questions or to relinquish control of a situation. But it’s important in these instances to build new habits. For example, you can make a list of guiding questions similar to those suggested above. When you feel your brain firing up to offer possible solutions, you can pause for a deep breath and instead ask one of the questions from your list. Similarly, you might create a goal for yourself that in each problem-solving meeting, you will help your team members find at least one outside resource that they can consult with for help. As a bonus, you can even ask them questions to help them figure out who or what the resource is rather than just directly telling them where to look.
Making the switch from solving problems yourself to coaching others through their challenges requires a significant shift in mindset and approach, and you may hit a few bumps along the way. It may also take time for you and your team members to build the new skills and habits needed to implement this approach. However, the change is worthwhile in the long run, even if you have a few mishaps or occasionally fall back into your old habits and need to course correct. Rather than trying to force change to happen overnight, find ways to track progress and offer positive reinforcement when you do see your team members displaying independence.
By empowering the members on your team to solve their own problems, you are creating a path to advancement for them and a more sustainable calendar (and email inbox) for yourself, which can in turn fuel your entire team’s success.
