Showing the love as a science leader: the emotional side of empowering and inspiring others

How do you learn leadership skills as a researcher, and how well is science served by its current crop of leaders?

These are just two of the questions asked of scientific leaders from a range of sectors and backgrounds in this five-part Working Scientist podcast series, all about leadership.

In this final episode, Gianpiero Petriglieri focuses on the emotional aspects of leadership — describing it as a love for an idea, and for a group of people whom you’re trying to both protect and advance.

Petriglieri, who researches organizational behaviour at INSEAD Business School in Fontainebleau, France, says that being in the physical presence of an effective leader should ideally make you feel calm, clear about priorities and cared for.

Julie Gould also talks to Robert Harris, a past president of ORPHEUS, the Organisation for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences in the European System; he’s also a research-group leader at the Centre for Molecular Medicine, part of the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden.

Good leadership is all about effective communication and being able to inspire and empower others, he says. To do that, you need to ask the right questions, and make suggestions, rather than giving orders.

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