Lab MANAGER LEADERSHIP DIGITAL SUMMIT SCHEDULE
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Listening—The Key to Successful Communications
Managers are, at times, overwhelmed with multiple tasks, assignments, and shifting priorities—often distracting or isolating them from their teams. This has an impact on their ability to really listen to suggestions and contributions. Listening is an often overlooked, essential component of effective management and leadership. At times, managers and leaders look at communications in a unidirectional way—providing advice, solving problems, or giving counsel. Active listening rounds out the overall communications strategy of effective leaders and contributes to team success.
How can our listening style influence our communications success? What key factors characterize productive communications? How can one become an effective listener and, thus, an outstanding communicator and leader? This talk will provide nine easy-to-apply steps to become effective communicators and highly effective leaders.
Presenter: Rick Parmely
Polished and Professional
11:00 am-12:00 pm EDT
COVID’s Impact on Attracting and Retaining Top Talent
Recruiting STEM candidates has never been easy. It is a challenge to find the right talent for your team, and convince them to join. The global pandemic has made hiring the most desirable candidates even more challenging. Options for STEM professional candidates continue to grow as COVID has shifted how work gets done, thanks to remote work, flexible schedules, and employee accommodations. In this presentation you will learn valuable recruitment strategies and important considerations, as well as effective retention methods to help keep you on track to build and retain an excellent lab staff. The presenters will walk through how lab managers and staff can execute their work, the recruitment and interview process, as well as the significance of onboarding and culture.
Presenters: Jay Patterson and Melissa Dowd
EASi Sciences
12:30 -1:30 pm EDT
Leading Beyond the Science: Strategies that Engage Employees and Create High-performing Teams
As organizations continue to navigate remote work, staggered schedules, and stretched resources, creating an environment that fosters positive employee experiences has never been more important. Benefits of prioritizing a culture that connects employees to the purpose of the business goes far beyond ensuring a happy staff. Studies prove that companies with engaged employees see significantly better productivity, innovation, and customer loyalty. In this session, Molecular Devices president Susan Murphy discusses three key leadership principles that laboratory managers can employ today to keep teams motivated, engaged, and productive. Susan will draw on her first-hand knowledge as a former lab manager and decades of corporate leadership experience to help attendees explore the value of transparency and two-way communication; empowering employees to become the best version of themselves; and encouraging innovation at all levels.
Presenter: Susan Murphy
Molecular Devices
2:00 -3:00 pm EDT
Wednesday, June 16, 2021
Embrace Humility to Become a Better Leader and Lab Manager
All too often, we associate strong leaders with ego-driven and prideful people. Unfortunately, this model doesn’t produce the best and most effective leaders. Leaders who can employ influence and authority while maintaining a humble approach to the work and to the team are much more likely to be valued as the strongest leaders. Embracing humility is about recognizing that leadership is really about the benefit to the team, mission, and organization. It’s not about the leader. The humble leader values the strengths, knowledge, and experience of the people in the lab, and sets a clear example for staff by getting their own egos out of the way, and building up the morale of those around them, so that everyone feels appreciated for their work.
Presenter: Scott Hanton
Lab Manager
11:00 am-12:00 pm EDT
Navigating Mind Traps
Our mindsets are critically important to success in the technical workplace whether we are innovating new product concepts, developing a new product line, expanding existing products into new markets, or supporting production. However, our team members often fall into mind traps—as do we. Mind traps are thought patterns that cause individuals to make errors in judgment, limit possibilities, and undermine the ability to cope with challenges. Managing mood and mindset is one of the most effective ways technical managers can lead. This talk will discuss some common mind traps in the technical workplace and present strategies to deal with them effectively to support your team and yourself.
Presenter: S. Mark Kennedy
Sustainable Transformations LLC
12:30-1:30 pm EDT
Town Hall
Lab managers often find themselves faced with difficult decisions and situations, and may find themselves struggling with how to transition into a leadership role after working at the bench. It is important for managers to receive the guidance, critical information, and practical advice they need to lead their teams to higher levels of engagement and commitment.
During this Town Hall discussion, leaders in lab management will share their experiences and advice for those looking to improve their skills and motivate their staff. Panelists will take questions from the audience and offer help to those looking to overcome their own challenges related to retention/recruitment, building trust with staff, dealing with burnout, having difficult conversations with colleagues, advancing to a management position, and more.
Presenters: Scott Hanton, Melissa Dowd, Susan Murphy, Rick Parmely
2:00-3:00 pm EDT