A Subtle Guide

Axel calls postdocs the "pillar" of his laboratory, providing the intellectual and experimental firepower for the group. He keeps his door open and reserves several hours a week for each fellow to discuss science, letting them talk through ideas, speculate, and hypothesize. "[This approach] forces them to develop their scientific imagination and scientific approach," he says. "I tend to be intimately familiar with their data but not overbearing in my influence. I like data—it's my friend. I like to pet it, touch it, and embrace it. That's where I can be of help to them. They're smarter than me, but I have much more experience than they do—I'm an old man!"

“The trick is to surround yourself with postdocs who are smarter than you and with whom you have a good personal rapport.”

Richard Axel

Alt follows a lesson he learned from his own postdoctoral days in David Baltimore's lab, then at MIT. He holds a lab meeting every week where all of his 15 or so lab members present their data and progress. "It gets you used to talking on your feet, in front of a regular crowd," he says. "It really helps postdocs going out for seminars and interviewing for jobs."

Most postdocs are ready to test their own scientific wings, Alt says, so a light-handed, subtle approach to mentoring works.

Joanne Chory agrees. "I joke with my lab manager that postdocs are here to come in and do a project," says Chory, an HHMI investigator at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences in La Jolla. "They might wreck the lab, but you just have to let them." After the initial start-up, Chory is a "sink or swim" manager. "I came from that background and I like it when my postdocs work based on their own motivations."

		Leading Women Women who have risen in the academic ranks say they don't use different approaches when recruiting and mentoring male and female postdocs. But when postdocs begin to think about entering the job market, advice for women gets specific. Read More

But what if a postdoc isn't performing to expectations? Addressing a lack of motivation or someone's spinning wheels can be "the toughest thing we do," Chory adds. Conflict management isn't usually part of a scientist's upbringing. She does not like to fire postdocs (nor is that an easy option in many academic settings). Instead, she tries to identify the source of the problem, talking to the postdoc about what might work better. "You cannot make someone work harder by force. It's not worth the energy," she notes.

Luger tries to root out problems sooner rather than later. "I've learned to keep good notes on my conversations. It becomes really handy to remind someone of what we discussed." A written record also becomes invaluable if it does come to letting someone go. "Don't be too squeamish if you see there's a conflict coming. Be proactive and get a dialogue started early." It's not always a "stay or go" decision, either. Postdocs have been known to shift career goals midstream, so it may just be a matter of realigning a project to match the new focus.

Ultimately, says Svoboda, postdocs are adults who must decide for themselves how hard to work. But, he's also frank about time management. "Success as a postdoc demands a certain kind of investment of time and effort. It's like compound interest—put in 10 percent more and the payoff is a lot more over time."

Venturing out on their own

"Getting postdocs well-prepared to run their own lab is a major part of the training, as is trying to enhance their success in my lab," says Alt. "Those two things go together and make it a self-reinforcing system." Clearly, he's tapped into a formula for success—he has trained more than 100 postdoctoral fellows and graduate students and estimates that more than half of his former postdocs are now tenured faculty members.

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