As Research Administrators, we tend to keep our heads down and noses to the grindstone by toiling away, keeping on task, cranking out applications, reviewing budgets, managing PI’s and other various aspects of research. Your records should support some type of rhetoric in stating how good you or someone is. Records should also go to helping to support those on your very team whether you are in a leadership position or not. One-on-one praise is always good, but you should think about the impact that it has on your team member when you praise them “UP”, by including your immediate leadership in your praise/recognition of that team member.
We are emerging out of an era of craziness and diving deep into uncertainty with funding opportunities and organizational restrictions due to cash strapped institutions, but you continue to work hard on chasing outstanding activities, which sometimes you just feel like you are always chasing after your own tail. Now that the COVID hibernation is over, it is important that workflows and continuous processes are implemented and maintained. It is quite a feat with the few resources you tend to have and possible hiring freezes or limited pools of applicants, you still get the work done.
Here is an example of one of my team members with whom I lead. Since the transition away from a centralized finance department, my team member has been working hard on chasing outstanding collections, some of which are two years old. Now that she is finalizing her own workflow and processes in reconciling, she can identify exactly those sponsors that are outstanding in paying our bills. By far this is the largest recorded deposit for a month since we decentralized finances and brought it into our Business Unit. This is quite a feat considering most of the cash she has collected this month is quite old.
By including my team member in my message to my immediate leadership confirming that it was not me who has helped reconcile and collect the cash that is owed to us but it was the hard work and persistence of the team member. The team member can be assured that I am praising them “UP” so that this recognition goes beyond just me. The invitation is now out there for my leaders to praise the team member directly. It also reflects you as a leader that you have a competent and skillful team member and that you are humble enough to give praise to where praise is deserved. I am in the process of wanting to create/promote her to a higher level position and by including my immediate leadership on some of these messages, it’s a lot easier for me to present the idea of promotion for the team member to them when the time is right.
As an advocate not only for my team member to be supported, acknowledged, and looking out for them, I feel this is what I can bring to being an At-Large Board Member. To represent all of us who are out in the field and bring discussions, questions, or provide suggestions from every boot on the ground to the Board of Directors of SRAI in order to continue a collective experience through education, conferences and resources. It is important to praise ‘Up’ and assure that each team member knows I have their best interest.
Authored by Jason J. Claes, Manager, Oncology Research
TriHealth, Inc.
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