Nate W. wrote:
You are right about something. Academia is horrible at leadership and management issues. Why? This is not brain surgery even Forest Gump can figure how to lead or motivate other people.
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Hi Nate,
This is a very wrong assumption. Leading and motivating People is an art as much as it can be considered a science. Even those who may have some Level of innate leadership (usually linked to lead by example behaviors) Need development and understanding here on how to have others follow their lead willingly while ensuring high Motivation and performance. And this is why both on the industry side there is alot of Training here, in fact there there is a whole industry here that includes academicians in the world of psychology and Business sciences actively researching and understanding this and even though we think we know alot we continue to learn.
Even in circumstances of authorative leadership by rank as in the miltary or law enforcement there is mandatory people Management training here that, believe it or not, are centered on NON-authoritative leadership styles and approaches (i have received such Training in this Environment as well) if its so easy to do, then why the acknowledgement and Investment?
Not to bash academia the issues have been presented and no one is going to overarchingly solve the Problem System wide - its down to the individual to manage. I wouldnt link academic PI behavior to what you would see on the corporate side, both on the Management side and the employee side. Regarding your example with academic PI with risk of distoring truth, this is why we have other People who can talk to your Performance as a peer such as a post-doc or even committee. Also work-ethic is not defined by number of hours in a lab, it may be one of many serrogates but that can also be viewed as well maybe the Person has a good worth ethic but....well we have some performace issues, why is the Person working 60 to 80 hour weeks? maybe they are poor at time Management?
We had this discussion on another thread so don't want to re-hash so please don't bring it up again.
I wouldn't go in to laws here as Dave mentioned.
The other Point to mention, some of These bad behaviors are in the minority of PIs to be honest - especially today ist more and more common for Folks to be looking externally to academia, ist not a suprise anymore in my opinion and the majority of Folks i've met didn't have such issues so lets just contextualize it. Alot of it is also perception driven - i remember thinking my PI would have never supported me to move out of academia and I resisted talking ot her about it, it was not until I was in my post-doc that I approached - know what I found...a completely supportive Person willing to bat for me whereever I had interest. Wow. What if I approached sooner? That was only because of fear and my persception that I didn't Approach sooner.
Also when you're looking for a Job outside academia during Transition, rare the reference of the PI will be solicited - like we do on the corporate side, they don't expect you to have a reference from your direct current employer so if you treat it like that then go to go. Dick mentioned that.
Follow the advice Dick gave.
Best,
DX