“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the leader is a servant”.
-Max Dupree
I truly love to teach, mentor, and coach young professionals. As an ecologist, I have used my research as a platform for intensive mentorship for undergraduate, postgraduate, and REU students interested in pursuing a scientific career of their own. My research informs my mentorship, and mentees inform the research. Since my first field season in 2013, I have mentored dozens of young scientists over thousands of mentorship hours. Through my program, past interns have received college credit, & published REU-led research papers, while some have gone on to later receive prestigious NSF GRFP awards. Most have gone on to pursue successful scientific careers in agencies or academia.
In industry, I pride myself in building high-functioning technical teams by recruiting and mentoring promising junior staff, and giving them what they need to succeed. My management philosophy can be summarized as:
- A leader’s job is to advocate for their team’s needs, while holding them accountable to their goals.
- An environment of trust and candor is critical, so that when leaders are wrong, their team is unafraid to speak up.
- Goals need to be clear, achievable, and regularly revisited.
- Every mistake is a learning opportunity for the employee as well as for the leader.
- Meetings are for discussing a topic and coming to a decision on it- rarely should they be used for ‘info-dumping’.
- If you trust people to deliver, give them the right tools, and give them a reason to care about success, they will succeed.
Robert J Nowicki 