What Is the Function of Leadership?
Updated March 12, 2025. Originally created out of a Twitter thread.
Sometimes I hear talk about people who “ooze leadership”. That’s charisma. If you're the head of a group of people and not consciously functioning as a leader, you're doing them and yourself a disservice. And leadership can be learned, shows up in a lot of different ways. Oozing is optional.
If you head up a research group, even if that group consists only of you and the occasional undergraduate assistant, you need to lead. Even people who run labs will say, “I’ve never been in a leadership role.” First, they’re wrong; they lead their labs. Second, positions of authority or responsibility get referred to as leadership roles, but we all know people inhabiting those roles who do not show real leadership. Leadership is hard to define, and yet there are common behaviors of effective leaders and a lot of “you know it when you see it”.
I won’t use this post to define leadership or describe the behaviors, although there is much to be said about both. Instead, I want to address the assumption that as a lab head, you are not in a position of “leadership.” To point out that you, indeed, should function as leaders, I focus here on why leadership is a fairly human constant. What purpose do leaders serve?
According to Heifetz*, leaders serve five general social functions. They provide direction, protection, role orientation, norm maintenance, and they control conflict. Let's take those apart in the sense of research leadership.
Direction: Lab leaders provide the direction for the group. What do we work on? What are our major themes? Where will we head next? What project will each student and post-doc have? Leaders should also provide direction for how the work gets done--technically and socially. Both of these show up again below.
Protection: Lab leaders often protect their group from unneeded stress, and I can think of several practical examples where PIs shield their team from stress where possible, like working behind the scenes to secure student funding without letting the student know there's an issue. Lab leaders may also make the effort to actively protect the voices and space of the most marginalized people in their group—making sure the undergrad can speak up at lab meetings. They may protect individuals by setting social behavior expectations (civil discussions, no bullying) and maintaining the norms.
Role orientation: Many lab leaders do not consciously think about this, to their detriment, IME. Teams function better when roles and responsibilities are clear. Do you have a clear sense of Grad Student vs Post Doc roles? Beginning vs advanced student? I don’t mean rigid roles. You do need to have a clear sense of how those roles, student vs postdoc vs technician or staff scientist function. Treating a first-year grad student like a postdoc is a recipe for disaster. And on the other side, I’ve had clients with new postdocs who continue to behave like graduate students. They don’t see how they play a different role as a post doc.
Roles are not people; people inhabit roles. In the system of a research group, there may be missing roles, confusion about roles, or poorly occupied roles. A leader pays attention to this and helps the individuals and the system of the lab with role clarity. In research, the roles don’t typically have the rigidity we assume happens in the business world, but there does need to be some clarity and attention to how roles change over the arc of a trainee’s time in the lab..
Norm maintenance: To quote Gruenert and Whittaker again, "The culture of any organization is based on the worst behavior the leader will tolerate." Norm maintenance starts with a leader setting the norms they want. How do we treat each other? What are our scientific standards? If you, as a leader, do not set and model the norms for your group, and push back to correct when someone is out of bounds, then you may get a culture you don't want. "Everything that happens in an organization reflects the leadership." Or lack thereof.
Above, under Direction, I mentioned that leaders provide direction for how the work gets done, both technically and socially. Norms for technical approaches should be set, ideally so that the post-doc’s data can compare equally to the grad student’s using the same technique. Standards of evidence, of rigor, should be set by the leader. And the leader sets the tone for the social interactions. Humans are primates and when you put them in a group, you have social interactions. What culture and tone do you want? Are you sarcastic and argumentative? Do you put up with a person who bullies others because they produce data? However you want your group to behave, you have to model it and enforce it.
Controlling conflict: This doesn't mean stopping conflict, but rather keeping it from blowing up. Sometimes it means figuring out how to use the friction of conflict productively. Either often means stepping in and having or brokering difficult conversations. Strong leaders do not avoid difficult conversations.
Heifetz was a practicing psychiatrist before moving over to Harvard Business School, and it shows. His book Leadership Without Easy Answers has a long and fascinating set of citations for the points he makes. There's a LOT more to say about the five social functions of a leader that he enumerates, and I hope I've shown how they apply in research.
As the lab head, your group looks to you to lead; to provide direction, protection, and order. That’s what humans do. There is no single or “right” way to lead, but good leadership shares a number of characteristics, such as creating the space in which others can do their best to work toward a shared purpose.
If that sounds like a given to you, great. The next step is to consciously think about how you achieve it.
*Leadership Without Easy Answers, Bellknap Press 1994
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