Knowing What You Don’t Know

Is your research team dysfunctional?

You know that moment when someone brings up a concept that everyone else seems to understand, but you're completely lost? When working in a profession with "knowing things” at its core, we tend to feel somewhat inadequate when we don’t know something. The Dunning–Kruger effect describes an overestimation of our knowledge or abilities in areas where we have limited expertise; the less someone knows about a subject, the more likely they are to overestimate their competence. This can sometimes play out in problematic ways in academia because academia is built on specialized knowledge. It can be difficult to maintain perspective on knowledge beyond our immediate focus.

Universities are full of experts in highly complex topics, and most experts are quite good at identifying blind spots in their specific area of study, estimating how well their expertise translates to different contexts in a research setting, and identifying when they need to bring in someone with different expertise for things like statistical and data analyses. There’s typically good awareness of potential limitations in research studies, including plans to address them. But what about the skills needed to effectively manage a team and communicate with them? The emphasis in academia is almost entirely on specialized research knowledge and technical skills, with limited opportunities to obtain training in more of the “soft skills” that underly research—effective communication, discernment, strategic adaptability, self-regulation, and risk awareness, among others. Issues arise when people believe they can just do these things without knowing that they don’t know how to or that they’re not actively doing them.

A research team operates like a small business—one where most of the team members are looking to the next stage in their career as they work, with their own interests intertwined with the lab’s interests. Both the PI and the lab members need to work with discernment to see through the complexity and noise that comes with all of these ideas and goals blending into the core research team. And when that doesn’t happen, problems will seem to arise out of nowhere. Discernment in communication is rarely taught in academia—or, for that matter, anywhere—and contributes to the development of dysfunctional team dynamics and challenges in resolving issues. Over time, this can create quite a toxic working environment. Why? Because things tend to be addressed too late. New ideas are introduced at the wrong time. Problems are brought up when they’re causing active conflict rather than minor irritations. PIs and others in positions of authority often don’t know how to address and work through conflicts. Emotion comes into play, or concerns are dismissed as just interpersonal problems as if interpersonal relations don’t matter in research. They do.

I have spent time working in ~10 research labs and with so many research teams that I’ve lost count, and none of them have had a framework in place to proactively manage team issues. When asking people in various roles in a lab what they think their role is, their answer is often very different from how their PI will describe their role. Similarly, when asked what is needed for success in their position, many team members have an answer that is focused on their specific career goals and not centered within the team itself. Expectations are unclear, and I’ve only worked with one research team that had clearly defined values and goals.

If your team is dysfunctional, find out why first. Don’t assume that you know what the issues are. Assume that you don’t know—even if it seems to be obvious—and then find out. If your team isn’t dysfunctional, find out how it could become dysfunctional before it does. Being proactive will save you time and energy later.

Here’s one way you can do this and help identify the “soft skills” you and your team could benefit from training to keep things going smoothly.

Have a defined set of values and goals for your team, and come up with descriptions of how you want people to work together, how you want communication to work, how independent you want your team members to be, etc. Write up specific descriptions for each position and make sure everyone knows exactly what it is that they are supposed to be doing, including the things that will make them successful in your team and how they can bring their own ideas into that mix. Specifically outline expectations and describe what it means to get things wrong in your team and how you want it to be handled when that happens so that everyone knows who to highlight problems to and how.

Now, talk with everyone on your team individually and get an understanding of what they think their role is. Compare it with the role you think they have and work through any misalignments together. Ask about any problems they have and what they think the solutions could be. Be open to being told that your management style sucks, because it might. Many micromanagers, for example, don’t know they’re doing it. Once you have all this information from all of your team members, treat it like experimental data. Look at the big picture and not which individuals are saying what. Where are the common themes in mismatches between your expectations for roles and your team members’ expectations? Where are the common misunderstandings regarding values and goals? What are the common problems in terms of interpersonal relations? What are the potential root causes of all of these challenges, and what measures can you take to address them?

The more data you have, the more intentional you can be about identifying and planning for issues before they arise. And if there are existing issues, knowing exactly where they are and what is causing them (unclear expectations? Lack of communication?) is the first step in resolving them. I recommend everyone have a “How to Work In This Lab” framework that all team members can consult and use to work effectively within the team and bring any issues to you before they start slowing down the work process. Having this sets clear expectations that can be modified as needed whenever new issues and solutions arise, and it acts as a useful communication tool, showing your team that you are interested in how everything is working beyond collecting data. If you’ve ever had a problem with someone apparently not progressing or not producing any data, I guarantee there’s a mismatched expectation or miscommunication somewhere that could be revealed and handled through strategically analyzing the team’s function and developing a management approach that considers individuals beyond their core roles.

If you have the budget for it, consider bringing someone in to do this analysis and framework development with you who can take an objective approach and highlight areas where you can seek training for yourself and your team members (DM or email me if you’re interested in doing this!).