1. Surprise! The Report You Weren’t Expecting
Team Leader Training
Surprise! The Report You Weren’t Expecting
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2. Surprise! The Report You Weren’t Expecting
You have a fairly new and talented researcher on your team. Just out of graduate school, she is up on the latest research on distributed learning and has the most recent stat analysis experience. In order to help develop the researcher’s skills, and because you have a hot new assignment you plan on giving to the lead researcher who originally collected the data on a distributed learning project, you ask her to go off on her own to conduct the data analysis and produce a draft report. When the draft report comes in some weeks later, it is not at all what you expected. The analyses that were performed in support of the report were executed correctly, but they didn’t address what you consider to be the key hypotheses of interest to the military and those originally approved for the project.

3. Question & Answer Session
Q1. What should you have done differently (if anything) to prepare the researcher to handle this assignment well?

4. Question & Answer Session
Q2. How do you rectify the situation now? What do you ask of the researcher, if anything? What do you tell her?

5. Lessons Learned, Slide 1 of 4
You are tempted to just run the additional analyses and make the changes to the document yourself. Certainly this would get the project moving along more quickly. Plus this would preserve your very positive relationship with your researcher. After all, she seems to be learning quickly and you seem to get along well. You are a bit worried about rocking the boat. However, after some thought you decide that while it may be uncomfortable, this is a good developmental opportunity for your researcher. You bring the researcher in and explain specifically that while the analyses performed might be of academic interest, a different set of analyses would be more compelling to the Army and better fits ARI’s role. You ask the researcher to complete the additional analyses, giving specific suggestions, and to rework the draft of the report accordingly. Additionally, you set up some progress update meetings and outline your expectations for each meeting. You also are clear to say that you should have provided better guidance and asked for feedback on progress, which would have gone a long way to ensuring a better product the first time around.

6. Lessons Learned, Slide 2 of 4
Researchers need increasing amounts of autonomy over time to go forward on their own in order to grow within ARI. There is always a balance between excessive and insufficient oversight into a researcher’s activities. In this case, allowing the researcher autonomy was probably a good idea. However, better communication regarding expectations was needed early on. In retrospect, you did not give enough guidance or oversight.
You should have explicitly communicated with the researcher to ensure she understood the perspective of the Army. This type of perspective taking is an important skill to develop in new people. In addition, you should have clearly communicated the hypotheses that were to be tested and the intent of the original research and analysis plan.
It was a good move to work out a plan for the rework of this project and to put in place regular status update points to ensure things stay on track.

7. Lessons Learned, Slide 3 of 4
Perhaps you missed an opportunity to support collaboration between your new researcher and the researcher who originally collected the data but whom you had to move to another more pressing assignment. If there is time and you believe peer instruction/mentoring can be useful in a situation, don’t hesitate to use that resource.
If due to pressing requirements you can’t involve the original researcher with the new employee from the beginning of this change in assignment, then don’t. You must play the role of mentor and be prepared to answer the new researcher’s questions. It isn’t fair to the original researcher to ‘after the fact’ involve him or her in the problem you created by not giving good guidance to initiate this change in lead.
It was also a very good thing that you took responsibility for your own errors. By admitting that you dropped the ball on setting expectations and performance management, you set the tone that people should take responsibility for their work, both good and bad.

8. Lessons Learned, Slide 4 of 4
Look for developmental opportunities for your researchers, even if they are at times somewhat risky.
Take responsibility for your own shortcomings and your team’s performance.
Look for opportunities to support collaboration and peer mentoring.
Learn how to ‘grease the skids’ for success, not only what you can do but what you can ensure others do in support.
Teach subordinates when and how they need to advise you of change or requests for change from your original agreement with them regarding a task or project. It takes time for anyone to be able to succeed from little guidance where they can rely solely on a shared mental model or their understanding of ‘commander’s intent.’
Themes
Accepting Responsibility; Developing Subordinates; Setting Expectations