Well, the drama continues in my lab. I have resorted to digging into my “Parenting with Love and Logic” bag of tricks in an attempt to perform a “soft reset” of my lab personnel.  

After 48 hours of meetings, phone calls and weeping (not me, my lab managers), I resisted the urge to restaff the study completely and decided to switch into “facilitator” mode, which all three of us think will work, just not right now.  If it does not, I’ll have to perform a “hard reset”, but I remain hopeful…

Names have been changed to protect the innocent:

Dear Ann and Lucille,

I write to you with a mixture of relief and sadness, but full of hope as well. Over the last 24 hours I have learned that both of you, my highly competent, caring, smart, incredibly hard-working leaders of my research program, are both incredibly stressed out and generally “in a bad place”. I am relieved, because now I know (you have both been working to handle this and get stuff done without letting your stress and frustration interfere) and now we can work on making it better, and I am sad, because I value and respect each of you deeply and appreciate the work you do and your commitment to the project, and want these positions to be positive experiences for you.

So what now? Well, we will be taking a hiatus until 9/8. I have let Ann know that I will help with samples between 8/21 and 9/8 so we do not lose too many ongoing patients, and that we will shut down recruitment.

You both have a great deal going on in your personal and professional lives, only some of which I knew about before yesterday, and this break, I hope, will help you regain some balance and perspective. Lucille, you and I had a good conversation yesterday and Ann, you and I will talk on Monday, but I want to let both of you know that it’s clear that there are significant issues with communication between the 2 of you that go both ways, although each of you may not be fully aware of them; I am because I am the common point of input in this equation, and have been placed in the middle. I am stepping out of the middle now, and will be serving as a facilitator for the two of you to air and resolve, one way ot another, the issues at play here.

Rather than continuing to try to solve this with SOPs, lab procedures, and individual conversations with each of you, when we return from the break, we will set up a series of at least 2 meetings, which I will facilitate, between you both to air your mutual frustrations about communication and respect, and to work out some solutions that you can put into practice. I will facilitate the meetings, but I am not attached to outcome;  the two of you must take responsibility for your conflict and fix it. That means that if the two of you decide that you cannot resolve your issues after the meetings (we can have more than 2), then so be it; the consequence of this will be that I will completely re-staff the study. I do not want to do that. Please know that as professionals, you will simply have to find ways of working with all kinds of people, so the purpose of this series of meetings is two-fold; first, to get you both to a point where you are communicating frankly, constructively, and professionally with each other when concerns about communication or other things arise rather than triangulating with me or others, and 2) to help you develop skills around dealing with this type of situation. I know this is really frustrating for you both, but rest assured that there will only be more conflicts of this type as you move through your careers in lab, clinic, medicine, or research. I wish someone had held my feet to the fire on this early in my career; it might have saved me and others a lot of grief, so please know that a large part of my purpose in initiating this process is my commitment to mentoring both of you and supporting your professional development.

Please note that the delay of the study and this discussion until after this break is entirely intentional; please do not contact each other about this email or about these difficulties until after the break. Please do contact me, however, to get ready for this process after the DNC if that is helpful, but come with some possible solutions, rather than just frustration, please; our collective job now is to fix this once and for all, so please use that lens. I urge both of you, actually, not to really think about this for a while and to take some steps back. Everyone is really stressed, a bit angry, sad, and frustrated right now, and it’s time to take some deep breaths.

Thanks for reading this, and please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you both for all you do- I am so grateful, and I look forward to working through this, hopefully, to a positive conclusion, which, in my book, would be both of you staying with the project.

Take care,

Mary

Stay tuned!  I’d love to hear form others who’ve resolved this sort of situation one way of another in the past, managed to stay on track with the project *and* retain one’s sunny disposition.

Professional communication is at the core of all effective teams, whether in the boardroom, on the playing field, or in the lab, right?  It’s a nice idea, but as I mentioned in my last post, the “in the lab” part is a challenge for my research team at the moment, and the fun continues! 

Featured this week:  “Emails of Mass Destruction” as a dear colleague of mine calls them.  We’ve all read them.  Perhaps we’ve written them?  Hopefully, we’ve written them and then had the good sense not to send them.  That latter part is harder for more inexperienced lab members, students, and, for that matter, faculty, who have yet to experience the sad but undeniable truth that one NEVER knows where an email will end up.  Sigh.

So.  In my last post I mentioned the ongoing saga of the very bright, hard-working, and somewhat communication-challenged groups of young women in my lab right now.  All seemed to be well to me, the PI (I’m always the last to know) until I received a forwarded email from an unpaid student intern who has been volunteering in the lab for the summer.  The story I got from her was that she was very happy, busy, and enjoying the work my lab director was giving her.  You can probably see where this is going, but please humor me…

The email this student sent to my lad director was absolutely not to be believed in its venom, entitlement, arrogance, and rudeness.  The student took it upon herself in the email to malign virtually every member of our research team and our collaborators, and repeatedly stated how she felt she was being taken advantage of and that she was essentially, far too professional and experienced for our lab, which she had concluded was “ridiculous”.  My lab director forwarded the email to me.

I terminated the student.

I also used the opportunity, given that she is young and inexperienced, to point out the massive damage an email sent in the heat of passion can do, and to mentor her and help her to leave the lab with a lesson under her belt along with the techniques she’s learned.  We had a good exchange about the incredible inappropriateness of her communication and about the risks of email.  I agreed to write her a letter of recommendation for graduate school based on her technical abilities in the lab;  not her ability to work well with others.  She has worked hard, and deserves some reward for all her hard work-  I cannot in good conscience send her away with no recognition for that, but I cannot reinforce her for her incredibly unprofessional behavior.  Hopefully, someday, she will put this experience into practice and will be able to add in the “professional behavior” part-  she is young and bright, and I really think she wiIl eventually get this right.  however…

Although I really hate to can a student, after as many years as I’ve been at this, I’ve learned that when someone treats colleagues in the lab with the contempt and disrespect, apologies do not matter.  The fallout and mass destruction of trust and collegiality that results from an email like this renders the sender a pariah, which, in my experience, has resulted in lack of communication that costs my projects supply money, time, samples, and costs me some of what is left in my admittedly pretty deep well of patience.  Frankly, we have a job to do, and I cannot afford to have me or my lab personnel spend any more time dorking around with communication stuff like this;  I have a renewal coming up and we have a lot of work to do.  The departing student did make some notable contributions to the lab this summer, and I will make sure I recognize her for that, but, as we say in Oklahoma (my home state), “That’s the way the cow eats the cabbage”, and thus, it’s time to belly back up to the bench and crank out some good data.  

I happily lift my canted-neck flask to toast thoughtfully, carefully, flame-less emails-  here’s mud in your eye (or mailbox?)….