Supervision 101 - Lab Manager Edition

The purpose of this document is to provide descriptions and examples of effective and empathic RA supervision. There are no “perfect” supervisors because being a supervisor is an underdeveloped and ongoing process, so rather than a manual, this document aims to provide suggestions and tools that could be helpful for your growth as a manager. For questions, please contact arielguicheng@gmail.com.

Introduction        3

Recruitment        4

Example from Ariel’s Materials        5

Tips for Recruitment from Ariel        5

Recruitment Templates        5

Onboarding        9

Tips for Onboarding from Ariel        9

Training        11

Different Learning Styles        11

Supervisor Responsibilities        12

Supervision Questionnaire        12

Effective 1:1        13

Organization and Tracking        17

Effective Team Meeting        18

Accountability        19

Appreciation        23

Communication        24

Performance Evaluation        25

Teaching Assistant        27

Introduction

Supervision is a continuous learning process of overseeing and managing others. There are various styles of supervision that one can implement through their leadership, and the execution of your supervision will vary depending on your supervisee and your own leadership style. Not all students will require the same type, amount, or level of supervision, thus it’s important to note and adjust strategies based on the need of your team. Additionally, what worked for others (e.g. your supervisor, coworkers) might not work for you due to different personalities or preferences, so part of your supervision journey is also to discover and refine your own supervision style. Effective supervision can help you manage projects and build cohesive team dynamics, and it requires good leadership, organization, and communication skills.

As a lab manager, you have the unique opportunity to be a manager, mentor, and advisor for your students. Below are some distinctions among these competency areas:

Here is a recording of Ariel’s presentation on Supervision 101:Supervision 101 - How to Be a Lab Manager Part 2

Recruitment

Your supervision begins with recruiting staff - strategic hiring allows you to build teams and start the conversation about expectations, responsibilities, and growth early. Hiring the right person (think about “fit”) can be very instrumental for you, your staff, and your team's success. The “fit” comes in different shapes or forms (e.g. needed skills, compatible philosophy, aligned goals), which then requires you as a supervisor to know what your needs are. This requires a level of reflection on the traits and requirements that an ideal candidate should have, as well as presents an opportunity to get feedback from your colleagues and team:

• What are the most important traits for this role? And what questions do I have to assess this in my candidates?
• What type of team member would be a good fit for our team? What types of skills and experiences is my team currently looking for?
• What are trainable vs. non-trainable characteristics?
• What are required vs. desirable experiences?
• Am I looking for a generalist (a person who can do a little of everything) or a specialist (a person who has a specific set of skills)?

Your recruitment process (e.g. flyers, application, interviews) is also your first impression of the candidate. It’s always good to have clear job descriptions and realistic skill expectations when walking into an interview. The strength of having an application process and short answer component (e.g. “Why do you want to join our team and what are you hoping to gain?” allows you to learn about a candidate’s written communication skills, and it also allows the candidate themselves to take a moment and reflect on their goals and skills. Because most RAs are students with limited experiences that are seeking mentorship, you should provide the proper resources and necessary tools in the recruitment stage - this is not only a professional practice, but also an equity and diversity practice. Not all students have the resources and social capital to know what’s expected of them, so when preparing application materials, it’s good to provide them with links to campus resources or examples of answers you are looking for in short answers (e.g. provide career center resources on resume writing when requiring to send a resume). Academia is full of hidden curricula which put certain students at a disadvantage (e.g. first-generation college students), so a part of your recruitment process can interrupt this by making it a learning opportunity for yourself and others. You can:

• Interview and observe your RAs to refine job descriptions
• Look around and collect available resources
• Clarify ambiguity of roles and expectations by asking current RAs for feedback and answering questions from candidates
• Be honest with yourself and others about the realistic expectations of this role

Example from Ariel’s Materials

Working Memory and Plasticity Lab Research Assistant Application - Google Forms.pdf

Tips for Recruitment from Ariel

• It’s helpful to get a “committee” of people to help with processing applications, doing interviews, and deciding on candidacy; the committee can be colleagues or other senior RAs.
• During the interview, use pre-written questions to maintain consistency across candidates but remain flexible on how you ask questions -

• Explain and emphasize that this is a conversation so candidates feel more at-ease to being themselves
• Give candidates the opportunity to ask you questions
• Always introduce yourself to build a connection at the beginning
• You can even consider sharing questions ahead of time to reduce barriers and promote equity

• Having templates will save you lots of time, such as:

• Interview questions and notes
• Interview Email
• Offer email
• Next step/onboarding email

• Explain about recruitment timeline so the candidate knows when they can hear back
• Let people know when they did not make it and provide helpful resources if applicable
• Rephrase questions or ask follow-up questions if candidates don’t understand what you are asking for

Recruitment Templates

RA Recruitment Language for a Specific Study

This template is best used for those who are recruiting RAs with specific skills (coding skills, drawing skills, experiences working with infants, etc.) or with a specific interest.

RA Interview

RA Rejection Email

RA Offer Email

Onboarding

Onboarding is the process of integrating a new employee into an organization or familiarizing a new customer or client with one's products or services. This means that onboarding meetings are generally more general and usually occur once on the first day of their work. In an onboarding meeting, you should be focusing on the culture, people, and expectations of your team so new staff can feel integrated and orientated in a new environment. Some activities to include are

• ice breaker
• lab information
• expectations
• team building

Because an onboarding meeting is all about the team and culture, you should make it engaging by mirroring it to an orientation meeting or experiences you’ve previously had. This onboarding meeting is setting the tone for your team and establishing your role as their supervisor. Setting up an onboarding meeting requires a level of organization and documentation, which answers the question “what are the necessary tools that make an RA successful?”. A part of this preparation is preparing a RA handbook modeled after an employee handbook. Topics to include are:

• Position description
• Access/Technology
• Expectations
• Communications
• Tools & Resources
• Necessary training (e.g. CITI training)

Here is an example of Ariel’s onboarding PPT: Spring 2023 - ArielWMPTeam Onboarding.pdf

Welcome Email Template

Tips for Onboarding from Ariel

• In your meeting, have very clear expectations and adhere to your words

• You can use explicit language such as: Do xyz; don’t xyz
• You can organize expectations based on theme or quality/traits

• Exemplify the expectations that you have outlined for your staff
• To fully integrate team members means to fully introduce them to the team mission and vision, so spend time introducing PI and the lab’s research agenda. By articulating values that are important to the role and connecting this experience with their future goal, you are also helping them to see why these values are important to their RA role and personal growth.

• It is also important to track the progress of your staff’s onboarding action items. To make sure each staff is receiving adept training and support, you can create a progress tracker to track the completed and to-be-assigned training and onboarding tasks for staff.

Training

Training is teaching a person a particular skill or type of behavior. This means that training is more specific and can occur multiple times depending on the assignment. In a training meeting, you should be focusing on the task itself, teaching and allowing people to practice how to operate, administer, and complete a certain task or learn a certain skill.

In training for a study, it’s always helpful to give the background of the study so that RAs can see their contribution to the bigger picture. It also helps them to refine their skills and gain self-awareness by discussing how this experience or skill can help them grow. Prior to conducting the training, you can consider sending RAs “homework” to prepare or read - this is especially helpful when the project itself is overwhelming or when your staff has different learning styles.

Some tips for training from Ariel:

• Review protocol with your staff and add examples/demonstrations to show staff how a certain thing is done.
• Host group training or buddy-training-system to save yourself from duplicating efforts and cultivate a team learning environment.
• For the purpose of running sessions, we’ve generally followed the following steps to ensure RAs feel comfortable and confident in their ability to run sessions alone:

• read and answer a worksheet
• watch the video (if applicable) and go through the experiment themselves
• shadow a session
• mock run a session with senior RA
• run while supervised by senior RA
• check-in meeting to confirm competency

Different Learning Styles

It’s important to keep in mind that people will have different learning styles, so some will need more time and explanations than others. The key is to provide your staff with an environment where they feel comfortable asking you and others questions, as well as to understand their own agency in seeking help and initiating additional practices.

Supervisor Responsibilities

As a supervisor, you are expected to directly oversee and manage your staff. Some general responsibilities and guidelines include:

• Create supervision questionnaire
• Bi-weekly 1-1s for 30 minutes each
• Student Staff evaluations
• Monitor and track training process and readiness
• Continuous conversations surrounding growth and development
• Accountability conversations as needed across the team
• Give and receive constructive feedback in a timely manner
• Open office hours and organized resources

Supervision Questionnaire

The purpose of a supervision questionnaire is to learn about your staff on a more personal level so that you can provide the necessary support while adjusting your supervision style as needed. This questionnaire can be combined with your basic information form that collects a staff’s logistics and basic information (e.g. contact, availabilities) and sent out at the beginning of your training as a part of the “get to know your staff” exercise. Some questions to consider to include in your supervision questionnaire include:

• I want our relationship to be
• I expect my supervisor to help me with  
• The top 5 priorities I have in my life.  
• I expect this experience will affect my career goals in this way:
• I want to learn...
• I can help you learn...
• My top 3 strengths
• The 3 things I struggle with  
• The way I like to communicate...
• When I need help, I usually...
• When I am angry, I usually...
• When I am stressed, I usually...
• I receive feedback by...
• The best way to approach me with a problem is...
• I tend to approach others with a problem in the following manner...

Here is what Ariel has used in the past - All about me! - Google Forms.pdf

Effective 1:1

In order to be a great supervisor, you should know both the details of their responsibilities and the context which might affect their work performance. What’s happening in our personal life has a direct impact on our work, and one should practice emphatic leadership to foster positive work relationships and mentorships. Here are some aspects of one’s life that could affect research assistants, many of which line up with school events/dates. While the exact interaction and format vary based on your capacity and relationship with your staff, these are helpful topics to be in mind or check in during your 1:1:

• Exam dates
• Graduation dates
• Holidays and travels
• Wellness and health
• Expedited study dates
• Personal identities and current events
• Life changes and transition

To guide 1:1 conversation and to promote more efficient communication, Ariel suggests using weekly reports to allow staff to document their own growth and development while providing context to staff’s recent updates. Below is an example of the weekly report template (which has been included in the CHIRPxWPA resource guide). Please note – this is not an all-encompassing list, and you should adjust your supervision plan based on your team’s needs.

RA Weekly Report – Ariel WMP Team

The Basics of Effective 1:1

Organization and Tracking

It is important to keep track of your 1:1 conversations throughout the semester. Below is a sample tracking form that can help keep you organized. Another form of tracking is keeping a Word document for each staff and listing all major updates, events, and items to follow up on. This should be updated after your 1:1 is over.

You can also use a weekly to-do list to encourage RAs in making this a collaborative process.

Effective Team Meeting

Having periodic team meetings is helpful for disseminating team-wide updates, iterating important changes and areas of concern, and building a sense of community among staff. Ideally, a monthly team meeting is established at the beginning of the school year so staff can get into the habit of sharing timely updates. However, depending on the work format or staffing constraints, team meetings might happen as needed (e.g. project delay or concerns, significant changes in study or staffing). Oftentimes, staff meetings are space for updates and development/learning opportunities. While meetings can be used for staff development (e.g. team building), they should still have a business agenda attached.

Here is an outline in which you can structure your staff meeting:

• Before your meeting

• Determine your structure and purpose.

• Location?
• Where is everyone going to sit?
• Is it comfortable and conducive to learning?

• Prepare a meeting agenda

• Determine your objective/list out topics of discussion
• Prepare presentations if needed

• During the meeting

• Delegate note-taking role
• Check-in with the team climate
• Start and finish on time
• Keep track of time. Place items in the “parking lot” if time is going over.

• The “parking lot”: an area of note-taking when something needs discuss later in the future due to lack of time or being off-topic.

• Provide context when possible to encourage buy-ins (e.g. “the reason why we are doing this is…”)
• Create and delegate action items as needed with deadlines

• After the meeting

• Have the note-taker send out notes
• Create reminders for self and the team for action items
• Review what worked/did not work and change for next time

Accountability

Accountability is a critical component of a staff’s development from both team and personal perspectives. For the team, failure to be responsible and accountable for the given tasks can lead to team conflict, equity issues, and compounded concerns down the road (e.g. making a mistake that triggers a domino effect). For the staff, failure to be responsible and accountable is a disservice to their own learning in the team and stunts their growth.

However, staff can only be held accountable for items and expectations that have been clearly communicated and understood. This means it’s important to document expectations and established verbal and written agreements, especially at the beginning of new projects or initiatives when a norm has not yet been established. When learning new tasks, it’s helpful to assign staff a mentor or accountability buddy so that they have both informational (e.g. handbook) and personal support.

To be successful at having accountability conversations, you will need to be comfortable with having conversations that are often-time confrontational in nature. Here are some resources on how to give and receive feedback.

Nonviolent Communication (NVC)

Criticism Sandwich

Conflict Management Style Inventory

https://www.usip.org/public-education-new/conflict-styles-assessment

Other online resources

• https://centerstone.org/our-resources/health-wellness/hard-talks/
• https://medium.com/mind-cafe/how-to-better-approach-and-handle-difficult-conversations-a928f8570eba
• https://www.verywellhealth.com/how-to-have-a-difficult-conversation-4589092

Appreciation  

Appreciation is just as important as giving feedback, as it allows staff to feel empowered, recognized, and thus more motivated. More than a supervision component, appreciation should also come from a genuine place such that you are being aware of the growth and dedication coming from your staff. It is important to take a moment to appreciate the work your team is doing on a regular basis. The exact format can vary based on your staff’s love language, your own capacities, and your relationship with your staff. Appreciation does not have to be monetary. Some examples include:

• Weekly kudos/shoutouts
• “You Rock” rocks
• A thank you note
• A post-it note
• A thoughtful email shouting them out
• Meaningful time together (e.g. 1:1 over coffee, getting lunch together)
• Time off for staff

Love Language Exercise

https://5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/love-language

Communication

Besides what has been listed in the general expectations, here are some tips for effective communication practices.

• Focus fully on who is speaking to you
• Practice active listening skills
• Avoid interrupting
• Show interest in what is being said both verbally and non-verbally
• Set aside judgment
• Provide feedback
• Avoid jargon whenever possible
• Document the conversation as needed

Potential barriers

• Physical barriers (closed doors, distance, physical discomfort)
• Cultural conflict
• Personal bias
• Misinterpretation
• Role conflicts (someone not feeling comfortable sharing due to different roles within the department)

 Communication Style Inventory

https://ogefacultymentoring.web.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/11490/2016/09/Communucation-Styles-Inventory.pdf

Performance Evaluation

In a professional setting, evaluation (performance review) serves as a permanent record of one’s performances, a communication tool to identify values and goals, a reminder of the performance standard and areas of improvement, and documentation on feedback and recognition provided for the employee. From a RA perspective, it gives students an opportunity to have formal conversations about their growth and development in the lab, as well as coaching on improvement for challenges or new projects given their strengths. It’s important to note that while performance evaluations serve as a summary of one’s performance at the point of the meeting, there should have been consistent discussion about their role, growth, and needs throughout the year with constructive feedback.

The performance evaluation starts with self-appraisal where staff can assess and detail their accomplishment and shortcomings. In the actual performance, the supervisor and staff compare ratings and notes to form a discussion about what went well vs. what could be better. Below is a preview of the RA Evaluation template (full template is included in the CHIRPxWPA resource guide).

Teaching Assistant

If your RA is taking the RAship for course credit, you should develop a course syllabus with a rubric, scaffolded topics, assignments, and projects to make the course work more engaging and meaningful. Some teaching methods and contents include:

• Journal club
• Research proposal
• Presentation at lab meeting
• Poster presentation
• Essay responses
• Literature review
• Reflection prompts

For an example of assignments and syllabus, you can refer to the first three sections of the Resource Guide for CHIRPxWPA 2023

[WIP] Leadership Development and Opportunities

Depending on the stages of your study and projects, RAs might not always receive assignments. In my experience, data collection and data cleaning are often the busiest time for our RAs, such that they tend to have a lot of downtime when a study is not in active recruitment/data collection. To facilitate and encourage self-learning, here is a list of tasks that RAs are encouraged to do when they have not been assigned a specific task:.

• [Admin] Finish coursework assignments
• [Admin] Organize drawers
• [ProDevo] Read PI and graduate students’ publications
• [Admin] Update lab’s social media accounts
• [Admin] Check and verify study calendars
• [Admin] Update protocols and study manual
• [Admin] Update and organize lab drive
• [Admin] Update and organize task/project list
• [Admin] Update lab manual with new information
• [Admin] Check the lab email
• [Admin] Update To-do list
• [Admin] Complete your weekly to-do tasks
• [ProDevo] Set up an informational interview with any staff from the lab
• [ProDevo] Work on your conference proposal
• [ProDevo] Work on your resume/CV
• [ProDevo] Work on your UROP ideas
• [ProDevo] Work on your Linkedin page
• [ProDevo] Work on your website
• [ProDevo] List out projects and qualities you want PI/lab manager to highlight in letter of recommendation
• [ProDevo] Check out the professional channel on Slack for development opportunities
• [ProDevo] Propose and create a workshop on a topic of your interest
• [Experimental] Practice saying scripts and instructing participants based on protocol
• [Experimental] Charge equipment/replace battery
• [Experimental] Clean equipment
• [Experimental] Data checking
• [Experimental] Organize and clean equipment cabinets
• [Experimental] Practice sessions with your lab partners