 My name is Sam Kral, I'm the Head of Training at Embo Solutions, which is a non-profit owned by Embo, the European Molecular Biology Organization. My name is Céline Carré and I'm a trainer for Embo Solutions. In a lab or research setting, some qualities that are probably important is, I would say, to be a good communicator, being clear and specific and making your expectations very obvious to people you are working with. It's probably being a good listener, being able to listen to people with empathy and use your curiosity that comes naturally when you're a scientist. Use your curiosity, your data-driven knowledge and apply that to other people, how to work with people, how to get to know them and how to be empathetic and how to be more attuned to the relationship that you're going to have in your lab. Conflicts are a disagreement, so a difference of opinion on a project or a strategy coupled with the experience of a negative emotion in relation to that disagreement. So to resolve a conflict, you both have to manage the disagreement and support the person with the emotions that they're feeling. And it really begins with the emotion. You've got to take the emotional tone down really before you can get to tackling the actual disagreement that's taking place. So things that support that are listening to people, showing them empathy, reflecting back to them what they've said, letting them know that you have heard how they're feeling, that you've heard their perspective. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to agree with it, but you want to validate their experience so that the emotional tone comes down. And then lots of open-ended questions, lots of appealing to their preferences, their insight to see if you can collaborate on finding a solution to the disagreement in the first place. But that first step, that empathy, that reflection, that holding space for them to process their emotions, that's really the starting point. Emotional intelligence is probably something that is extremely relevant for any type of job, but definitely in research. Emotional intelligence starts often with self-awareness. And it's important, I think, for scientists to become more self-aware. Sometimes it's not something that may always be on their radar. And it's probably a good idea to get to recognize those signs that make them react this or that way, try to maybe self-manage their own emotions. And also recognize signs of whatever they are doing that might be affecting other people. And this is the social awareness part of emotional intelligence. Developing these aspects, developing self-awareness, social awareness, and managing relationships is probably one of the most helpful things that one can do in order to work with other people. Being a scientist is part of, it's about communicating your research as well, working with other people. You never work on your own. You are always collaborating with people, you are always interacting with other people. And emotional intelligence can be really an asset to develop and to hire the emotional intelligence. And the more adaptable and flexible people are going to be to succeed in their career. Pieces of advice for young scientists aspiring to become group leaders. The first is to say that you're hopefully, by this stage, very highly trained as a scientist. And depending on who your supervisors and mentors have been, you may or may not have had training for all the other parts of being a group leader which are around things like budgeting, developing work packages for project planning, and especially, and this is where we spend a lot of time working with group leaders and postdocs, how to work with people, how to listen to them, how to engage them, how to motivate them. So advice number one, get some training. Ask your supervisor if you can sort of take training. Ask them if you can shadow them so you understand some of what they're doing, some of the things that might be on the horizon for you. And I think what's also important is to start to take ownership of your ideas and what you're doing and really think about what is it that inspires you, what is it that you're passionate about and how can you turn those into interesting questions and a number of interesting questions to sustain a group. So to be an effective leader and maintain your personality, a lot of my perspective on that is that your leadership is really, to a large extent, driven by your personality. Different people lead in different ways. There's no single recipe that works for everyone. It depends on you, depends on your group, depends on the institute you're working for, depends on the parameters of your job. You have already collected a number of skills, a number of tools, a number of strengths that have gotten you this far in your career and there will be areas that you are still challenged. And your personality, your identity, your experience, your ability to be flexible, to be empathetic, those are unsteadened stone. You can learn, you can develop. And so it's not so much about maintaining your personality or trying to lead in a way that doesn't fit you. It's about working out what comes naturally that's effective and where could I develop. And while the things you develop will feel, you know, unfamiliar to begin with, over time they start to feel natural and they become part of who you are.