Growing Your Research Group: A Practical Guide for Early-Career PIs

As a starting point for exploring the growth of your research group, it is useful to draw on Greiner’s growth model. This model describes how organisations expand through phases, and how each phase ends in a predictable “crisis” that requires a different way of working.

You can envisage the Greiner growth model in a research-group setting as follows:

• Creativity: you do a lot of the research; processes within the group are informal or non-existent; decisions are rapid. This is likely to be how the group was as you transitioned into an independent fellowship and were working primarily alone, with minimal additional input such as from a research student.
• Direction: as the group gets bigger (probably 2–6 people), you start to step away from doing hands-on research work (e.g. experimental work/data analysis). At this stage you clarify:
  • priorities and key research questions
  • standards (e.g. by leading on peer review)
  • expectations of how the group works together

During this phase of group growth, it is likely that you will have introduced basic routines, but these have often been developed on an ad hoc, as-required basis.

• Delegation: As the group gets bigger (probably around 4 – 10 people), you start to delegate some of the tasks which you had been doing at the direction phase (e.g. training junior researchers, leading on peer review, leading sub-group meetings). This requires developing the leadership and supervisory capability of more senior researchers in your team (for example taking the lead on training others on techniques, supervision of master’s students).

• Coordination/Control: At this stage you move to more formal structures (e.g. introduce sub-groups with a designated individual taking ownership for leading this area of research). Quality assurance, knowledge management, and decision-making become more structured (i.e. who can make what decisions).

 

When the work of running the group starts to feel harder, it may be a signal that the group has outgrown its current operating model. Your role as the PI is not simply to “work harder”; it is to redesign how the group works so that it can function well at its new scale.  These phases describe how you lead and organise the group as a whole — not individual projects within it. If you are at a later stage with several research strands running in parallel, you are likely already in the Coordination or Control phase and the later sections of this resource will be most relevant.

 

Reflection questions:

• Which stage of the group development process best describes where the group is currently operating?
• What challenges does this bring?
• How could redesigning how the group works enhance the group’s productivity and culture?

 

 

The first crisis that most researchers face as the group grows is rarely operational. It is psychological. As the group gets bigger, the way you create value for the group shifts. Early on, that value comes through direct contribution: designing studies, analysing data, writing papers, solving technical problems and making rapid decisions. As the group grows, you create more value by shaping direction, judgement, priorities, standards and culture.

This shift can trigger a sense of loss. Many early PIs describe guilt about delegating, anxiety about stepping back from the hands-on work, or a fear that they are becoming less of a scientist and more of a manager. In practice, the change is not from research to administration. It is from doing more of the research yourself to leading the conditions in which good research can happen.

“You worry about de-skilling — and you do deskill. But you have to up-skill in supervision and leadership. To build a successful group you have to delegate the technical side to allow you to focus on the academic side.”  Prof Matthew Dalby, University of Glasgow

 

A helpful way to think about this is to distinguish between two different kinds of closeness to the research:

• Execution proximity: you are close to the practical doing of the work. You are directly involved in experiments, coding, data cleaning, fieldwork, analysis or drafting.
• Sensemaking proximity: you are close to the interpretation and direction of the work. You may not be running every part of the project, but you are shaping questions, helping others think well, spotting patterns across projects and strengthening judgement.

As a group grows, your role often shifts from execution proximity towards sensemaking proximity. That does not mean becoming distant from the research. It means staying close to the parts of the work that only you can do – setting direction, building capability, maintaining quality and helping the group make sense of what it is finding.

A related challenge is knowing how much you can reasonably ask of research staff as you delegate. Research staff bring their own career priorities and professional development needs, and may have defined role boundaries and line management structures. Delegation works best when it is explicit about what is being asked, why it supports the person’s development, how it fits within their job role and what authority they have to act and take decisions on their own initiative.  Always be mindful to ask about people’s capacity to deliver — for example, whether they are already at full stretch on another project or approaching a thesis deadline — and, if required, engage in a conversation about which tasks have priority.

 

Warning signs this may be becoming an issue

• You are still the default person for solving practical problems that others could reasonably handle, and most questions come to you one-to-one rather than being worked through in shared discussion.
• Stepping back from hands-on work feels like loss or guilt rather than a deliberate leadership shift.
• Team members wait for your view before moving, even on issues they could decide themselves.

 

Practical approaches

• Protect a recurring research-first conversation with each team member — a discussion focused on interpretation of results, research direction and decision making about what is next rather than progress reporting. The distinction matters: a progress update asks “what have you done?” whereas a research conversation asks “what does it mean, what should we do next, and where are you uncertain?”
• Create group sensemaking activities. This could include a journal club that discusses rigour and robustness, work-in-progress sessions, group discussion of ambiguous results, or explicit conversations about what counts as analysis that is robust enough to publish.
• Decide what you will stop doing. If you do not decide, the group and inbox will decide for you.

 

A final practical point: tell the team what you are trying to achieve in your change of leadership approach and let them know that this might be challenging for you. If you are stepping back from some tasks so that others can grow, say so clearly. Otherwise, colleagues may interpret the change as withdrawal rather than development.

 

Reflection

• What are the activities that you do as the PI that create the most value for the group (for example working with external partners, final reviewing of papers)?
• Which tasks are you holding onto for reassurance rather than necessity?
• Where do you need to give your team clearer permission to decide without you?

 

“I realised I would become a bottleneck (and frustrate the team) if I insisted on editing all of the group’s papers so they would be exactly as I want them. Individual papers matter less for me at this stage in my career — but they are important developmental opportunities for others, and I have to let others have agency.” Dr Oliver Mytton, University College London, FLF

“I was so used to thinking I had to be closely involved in everything and that it was faster for me to do things myself. It became unsustainable and was unfair on early-career researchers who wanted the opportunity to grow. It was a scary realisation — but also a relief.” Dr Anne Templeton, University of Edinburgh

“A new postdoc and I both received the raw data from an experiment she had run. While she was working through it for the first time, I ran the full analysis myself. When she came to explain what she’d found, I already knew all the answers. I realised I had crossed a line and undermined her ability to take ownership of her project.” Prof Ed Hutchinson, University of Glasgow

“I hadn’t appreciated how little control I would have over the size of the group at various points. I’ve learned it is completely fine not to put in a PhD application every year if you don’t have the right project or the right person. Accepting — even embracing — the fact that the group might grow in fits and starts has been an important shift.” Dr Sandy Hetherington, University of Edinburgh, FLF

 

Universities often communicate a simple story: grant capture equals success, and therefore the implicit expectation is that growing the size of the group is the route to success. Yet group growth is not automatically a sign of a better research strategy. Bigger groups create more coordination demands, more supervision demands and more dependence on systems. The practical question is not simply how much funding you could win. It is what size and shape of group can deliver high-quality research at pace.

Start by separating two questions that often get mixed together:

• How many people could I employ if I won funding?
• What team structure do I need to deliver high-quality research at pace?

In the early phases, a common structural risk is becoming bottom-heavy: multiple PhDs and junior staff without enough senior capacity, postdoctoral support, or peer review to help the work progress well. Another overlooked decision is pacing: hiring several people at once can create a cohort effect and shared momentum, but it can also overload induction, supervision and systems. Sometimes, the issue is not whether you can recruit, but whether the group can absorb new people well. In practice this can mean supervision becoming stretched, induction taking longer than expected, or norms that worked informally breaking down under the weight of several new starters at once.

Finally, build consolidation phases into your growth plan — periods where you focus on completing outputs and stabilising systems rather than adding new people. After rapid hiring, productivity often slows before it improves, because the group is learning how to work together. Consolidation is not stagnation. It is often the period in which existing work gets written up and published, and basic systems become reliable enough for the next phase of growth.

 

Warning signs this may be becoming an issue

• Growth is being shaped mainly by available funding rather than by a clear view of what structure the group actually needs.
• The group is becoming bottom-heavy, with too many junior researchers and too little senior capacity.
• Periods of rapid expansion are followed by overload, confusion or loss of momentum.
• You are adding people, but not yet consolidating outputs, norms and ways of working.

 

Practical approaches

• Define your critical mass for the next 12-18 months, i.e. the smallest number of people and roles that can deliver reliably the research you want to do.
• Map where the group is over-dependent on you: technical decisions, supervision, writing, analysis, administration or coordination.
• Consider not only what you want to add, but what you may need to pause in order to consolidate.

 

Reflection

• What is your critical mass for the next 12-18 months?
• Where is the group over-dependent on you?
• What would a deliberate consolidation phase look like, and what would you pause to make it possible?

 

“Think about what your research question is, what amount of money you need to achieve that, and what sort of team is necessary. Do not put in underfunded grants — it’s terrible for you, terrible for the postdoc, terrible for everyone.” Dr Hana D’Souza, Cardiff University, FLF

“Our purpose is straightforward — to enable careers through understanding the workings and applications of light. That thread runs through everything we do.” Prof Miles Padgett, University of Glasgow

 

As the group grows, vision and strategy become less about having an interesting set of projects and more about creating coherence. In the early stages, that coherence often comes naturally because the work is closely shaped by the PI. As the group expands, that becomes harder. More people, more collaborations and more opportunities can create momentum, but they can also lead to drift from the group’s core aims.

As the group grows, strategy becomes less about responding to opportunities as they arise and more about making active decisions about direction. A growing group needs a clear enough sense of purpose that individuals within it — and external collaborators and funders — can understand what it stands for and how their work connects to something larger. It is about being clear what holds the group together, what kinds of opportunities strengthen that direction and what is not a priority right now.

 

A strong group narrative helps answer three questions:

• What are we really trying to understand, improve or change?
• Why does this matter?
• How do our different projects connect?

Without that narrative, the group can start to feel like a collection of separate activities rather than a recognisable programme of research. That can make it harder to recruit well, make decisions, build collaborations and explain the group’s value to others. A further strategic challenge is how to manage funding in ways that support more sustained growth rather than repeated peaks and troughs. In practice, this is difficult. Many research groups operate in a funding environment shaped by short-term project grants, uneven success rates, delays in decision-making, and limited control over when opportunities arise.

Even so, it can be helpful to think strategically not only about securing the next grant, but about the overall pattern of funding across the group. If several projects start and end at similar times, this can create sharp cycles of expansion and contraction. These peaks and troughs can be hard on the group’s knowledge base, on staff careers, and on the group leader’s ability to build momentum over time.

Seen through this lens, funding strategy is partly a form of knowledge management. When too many projects end at once, groups can lose not only capacity, but also tacit knowledge, technical expertise, key relationships, and shared ways of working. Important learning can disappear with departing staff, especially where systems, handovers and documentation are still developing. Staggering projects where possible, or building some overlap between them, can help preserve continuity and reduce the risk of repeated loss and rebuild cycles.

This also matters for career development. Staff are often looking not only for a role on a particular project, but for some sense of future opportunity, progression, and stability. Where funding arrives in short bursts with little continuity between projects, it becomes harder to retain strong people, create developmental pathways, or offer meaningful progression. While no group can remove this uncertainty entirely, a more strategic approach to the shape of the portfolio may create better conditions for retaining expertise and supporting careers over time, something that funders, including UKRI, are increasingly attentive to.

 

Warning signs this may be becoming an issue

• Team members struggle to explain how their work connects to the wider group.
• The group feels coherent mainly because you personally connect the dots.
• New projects and collaborations are accumulating, but the centre of gravity is becoming less clear.
• Several projects are likely to end around the same time, creating risks to continuity of knowledge, staffing and direction.
• The group feels active and productive, but intellectually scattered.

 

Practical approaches

• Define the core research question and connective thread across the group: what is the overarching questions we are exploring, common methods, contexts or research challenge that gives the group its identity? Revisiting this during away days can be a useful way to keep this live for the group (see the FLF Development Network Away Day Toolkit).
• Turn that into a narrative: We are trying to… This matters because… Our work contributes by… Across our projects, the common thread is… Over the next few years, we want to be known for…
• Use the narrative to make choices: which opportunities strengthen the core direction, what expertise do you need more of, and what are you choosing not to prioritise at this stage?

 

For some PIs the connecting thread will be a shared research question; for others it may be a methodology, a community, or a type of problem. The form matters less than having a thread that the group can articulate.

 

Why narrative matters internally

A clear group narrative is not just for websites, funding bids or external audiences. It also matters inside the group. It helps people understand how their work fits into something larger. It supports better judgement, stronger motivation and a greater sense of shared purpose. For groups where individual projects share less common ground, the connective thread is often found in culture, shared ways of working, and the sense of collective momentum rather than in a single research question.

 

Reflection

• What is the central problem or territory that holds the group together?
• How clearly could your team describe the group’s overall direction?
• Which current projects are central to that narrative, and which are more peripheral?
• What do you want the group to be known for in three years’ time?

 

“It took a while to articulate how all of our individual projects fit together into a big picture — and to work out the trajectory for future work. Of the various things I tried, discussions with the whole group at away days were the most helpful.”  Prof Ed Hutchinson, University of Glasgow

 

 

“We are big on systems and structures now. We have a lab expectations document, a moving to Edinburgh document, a welcome to the lab document, a first week document. When you have done induction five times and people keep asking the same questions, you realise it is worth writing it down properly once.” Dr Sandy Hetherington, University of Edinburgh, FLF

“Grants can be a bit like buses — nothing for ages and then they all turn up at once. What it did do was underscore the importance of having systems and processes in place, and most importantly meant I naturally drew more on the strengths across the whole team. Put your faith in your brilliant team and seek their support as much as they look to you for it.” Dr Sarah Sowden, Newcastle University

 

Once you hit the delegation crisis, effort is no longer the limiting factor on group size: systems and processes become the constraint. The aim is not to over-bureaucratise the group. It is to create a minimum viable group operating approach: enough structure that people can work well without everything routing through you.

 

Warning signs this may be becoming an issue

• The same practical questions keep returning because routines are still living in people’s heads rather than in shared systems.
• Meetings happen reactively — driven by problems rather than rhythm — and the PI remains the default centre point for most conversations and decisions.
• Different people are working to different assumptions about responsiveness, preparation, authorship or use of shared spaces.
• Data, code, documents or decisions are hard to locate unless a particular person is available.
• If one or two people left unexpectedly, parts of the group would quickly stop functioning well.

 

Practical approaches

A group handbook can be a useful anchor for this. In the literature, these are commonly referred to as lab handbooks, but the benefits are just as relevant in wider research settings. The handbook does not need to be long. Its value comes from making expectations, routines and ownership visible. Some groups also find it useful to develop a group charter alongside or as part of the handbook: a short co-created document that articulates shared values and ways of working.

 

“When group leaders trust other group members to lead and input into group systems like lab handbooks, it creates a more resilient and well-organised research environment. This shared ownership benefits the whole group, while giving researchers valuable experience in leadership, decision-making, and shaping research culture.” Dr Emma Hall, University of Edinburgh

 

Meeting architecture

• Meeting structure is often the simplest change and one which gives good results. An effective pattern is to batch internal meetings onto a protected lab day so ad hoc interruptions reduce and people know when decisions and discussion will happen.
• Within that structure, a routine 1:1 pattern works well. What works will depend on the importance of close technical supervision, but consistency matters more than perfection.
• Implement brief written updates ahead of 1:1 meetings so that they do not become solely an exercise in reporting.
• Consider introducing a light-touch periodic report. Quarterly reports work well for many groups — a short report where team members summarise progress, note where data and outputs can be found, and flag development needs. This can allow shorter routine 1:1s for most of the year, with a longer in-depth conversation when the report is reviewed together.

 

“Getting a sensible balance of meetings — both getting the frequency right but also bunching them up, to have meeting days and non-meeting days helps everyone’s productivity.” Dr Oliver Mytton, University College London, FLF

“I find quarterly reports with summaries of work, where to find the data, and reflections on soft and hard skill gaps really helpful to guide 1:1 meetings. It means I can have shorter meetings most of the year, and then go in depth every quarter where the report really supports the conversation.” Dr Jenny Zhang, University of Cambridge

 

Behavioural expectations

As the group grows, assumptions that once worked informally need to become explicit. This may include expectations around:

• Responsiveness: clarity about timescales can help everyone avoid unnecessary task switching while also creating clear expectations about response times for different kinds of issue.
• Meetings: Preparation for meetings (what is needed / quality of slides)
• Peer support: both in helping others learn methods and solve problems, and in contributing to output production.
• Authorship: ensuring that it is clear what contributions will generate authorship (a useful starting point is the CRediT contributor role taxonomy)
• Shared space and equipment maintenance: including cleaning rotas, storage standards and safe handling of materials. As groups grow, informal social pressure to maintain standards weakens.

Making expectations explicit early is considerably easier than rebuilding a deteriorating culture once resentment has set in.

The aim is not to police behaviour. It is to reduce friction and make it easier for people to work together well. How you set behavioural norms also shapes who feels included and able to contribute fully. The FLF Development Network’s Building Inclusive Teams and Away Day toolkits offers practical guidance on designing for inclusion from the outset, and are a useful companion to this section.

 

Digital structure and ownership (turnover-proofing)

Researcher turnover is guaranteed, therefore clarity about where data, code, documents and decisions live is key to ensuring that the group remains functional when people leave.

 

A combination of tools that many UK research groups find works well is :

• Teams (or Slack) for communication. A pragmatic structure usually includes a small number of core channels: a general channel for whole-group announcements, project channels where decisions and updates are visible, a practical help or FAQ channel for searchable fixes, a papers-and-funding channel, and a social channel.
• OneDrive/SharePoint for shared documents.
• GitHub/GitLab for code.
• One lightweight task tracker such as Microsoft Planner, Trello, Asana or Notion for task coordination.
• If a dedicated task tracker feels like too much overhead, a simpler alternative is a shared document updated after each meeting with agreed actions, owners and deadlines. The tool matters less than the habit of recording decisions and following up on them.

The key is not the tool; it is having one agreed place for each type of information. Other practices that often help are agreed file naming conventions, ownership of shared folders, a standard handover note and a simple map of where things live digitally.

The same principle applies to physical materials. Samples, reagents, chemicals, and equipment records should have clear ownership, labelling, and handover documentation. Discovering unlabelled materials in a freezer or fume cupboard after someone has left is a common and avoidable problem — and in some cases a safety one.

 

Reflection

• Where are you currently acting as the first port of call for avoidable questions?
• Which single norm would remove the most friction?
• If two people left unexpectedly, what would break first: access, data, code or decisions?

“Before I see drafts — especially from PhD students — they should have been looked at by peers in the lab. The university system trains people to think individually, so building a culture where people genuinely help each other takes active and deliberate effort.” Dr Sandy Hetherington, University of Edinburgh, FLF

 

As the group grows, quality can no longer depend solely on your individual review of everything. That approach may feel safe, but it does not scale. The task is to build a quality architecture around the group so that standards become visible, shared and reinforced by routines.

Peer review before PI review is a significant route to scaling the group. Make it a default that presentations, paper drafts, analyses and key decisions have at least one round of peer review before they come to you. This improves the work, develops judgement in the team and reduces the risk that you become the only source of quality control.

Quality also depends on making standards discussable. In many groups, colleagues know that rigour matters, but they are less clear what that means in practice. Shared discussion helps here: what counts as analysis that is robust enough to publish, what level of checking is expected before results are shown, how negative or ambiguous findings are handled, and how methodological disagreement is surfaced?

 

Warning signs this may be becoming an issue

• You are still the default reviewer for almost everything important.
• Quality varies across projects because standards are assumed rather than made explicit.
• Drafts, analyses and presentations come to you late, when problems are harder to fix.
• Team members are unclear what “rigorous enough” means in practice.
• Methodological concerns, ambiguities or authorship issues are surfacing

 

Practical approaches

• Introduce peer review before PI review for talks, drafts and analysis plans, using a simple rota where useful.
• Use regular group discussions to make standards visible: journal club, work-in-progress sessions, methods review and discussion of unexpected results.
• Be explicit about a small number of non-negotiables for the group, e.g. around rigour, documentation, authorship, openness to challenge or reproducibility.
• Establish review structures and expectations: full review or skim read? Focus on narrative, structure, or data analysis? Ask them to specify the feedback element they want.

 

Reflection

• Where does quality currently depend too heavily on your personal review?
• Which standards are currently implicit, and therefore inconsistently applied?
• What are your three non-negotiables, and how will you make them visible and understood?

 

“We have a data annotation meeting — half an hour each week where we randomly pick a video and work through instances where two coders disagreed. I have never seen another PI do this, but it keeps me genuinely close to the data, and makes clear to everyone that this work matters and needs to be done well.” Hana Dr D’Souza, Cardiff University, FLF

“When you find someone talented and invested, treasure them — they are rare. The biggest challenge I face is not getting the funding. It is hiring good people.” Dr Hana D’Souza, Cardiff University, FLF

 

The FLF Development Network’s Recruitment Toolkit covers hiring and induction in depth and is worth reading alongside this guide. This guide therefore does not go into the detail of the recruitment process but covers a few common issues as the group grows. The key framing question when recruiting is: what is the capability gap that is currently slowing the research most — technical execution, supervision, writing, analysis or coordination? Defining the role around that gap, rather than simply filling a post because funding is available, is the most important hiring decision you will make.

It is worth noting that PhD students occupy a distinct position within the group — they are working towards a qualification shaped by institutional and external regulation, which makes the supervisory relationship different in nature from managing research staff. As the group grows, the quality of supervision inevitably becomes harder to sustain as numbers grow. It is worth being deliberate about how many PhD students you can supervise well at any one time, though in practice there can be significant pressure to take on more students, particularly when they come with their own funding attached.

If recruiting internationally, engage your institution’s HR and visa support team early — onboarding international researchers can add weeks or months to a start date and is easy to underestimate when planning against a grant timeline.

Staff leaving is not a sign of failure; it is a predictable feature of fixed-term research employment – and staff building meaningful careers after being in the group is one of the longest lasting impacts and signs of a successful group. The practical question is whether the group has made turnover survivable.

 

Warning signs this may be becoming an issue

• Important methods, administrative knowledge or project history sit mainly with one person.
• Staff leaving feels like sudden disruption rather than something the group has prepared for and can manage.
• It is incredibly hard to write up a paper after someone has left, even if they remain happy to support the process.

 

Practical approaches

• Normalise handover through ongoing documentation of methods, protocols and key outputs.
• Build shared ownership of important methodologies and administrative tasks to avoid single points of failure.
• Keep career development conversations active so that likely departures are less of a surprise – and so that when people leave, it is on good terms and with the work in good order.
• Complete papers before someone leaves wherever possible. Writing up after departure is significantly harder, even when the person remains willing to help.

 

Reflection

• What capability gap is currently slowing the research most?
• How many PhD students can you supervise well at your current stage of group development – and is your current or planned cohort within that number?
• What does a good handover look like in the group – what must be captured before someone leaves?

 

“Don’t recruit people you are not sure about – there is no point just getting people through a PhD or to the end of a postdoctoral position. It is not in the best interests of either of you.” Prof Matthew Dalby, University of Glasgow

 

“The people who have made the most difference to how our research group functions are often the professional services teams that support everything we do.” Prof Miles Padgett, University of Glasgow

 

As the group scales, you are likely to become more dependent on the institutional system: research services, finance, HR, procurement, ethics, visas, core facilities, technicians and estates. Many early PIs experience this as friction. In practice, part of building a sustainable group is learning the institution well enough that routine processes stop repeatedly derailing the research.

A practical approach is to keep an up-to-date map of your institutional support systems. Identify the key individuals and teams who can support recruitment, purchasing, contracts, grant applications, ethics, visas, equipment and facilities. Know who to go to, what they need from you and what lead times are realistic.

It is also worth building a simple lead-time register for the group: approximate timelines for HR approvals, procurement, ethics, visas, equipment installation, data-access approvals and facility booking. This helps you plan backwards from deadlines rather than discovering too late that institutional processes are now on the critical path.

Where the group depends on core facilities or technician expertise, be proactive about service expectations and scheduling. Strong working relationships here can remove significant friction.

 

What this looks like in practice

• The same administrative problems recur because the process is relearned each time.
• Planning assumes research tasks are the critical path when institutional processes are actually the bottleneck.
• Key relationships with professional services are only activated when something has already gone wrong or become urgent.

 

Practical approaches

• Map the institutional relationships that matter most to the group.
• Add guidance on common institutional processes that group members need to navigate to the group handbook.
• Create a simple lead-time register for recurring processes so researchers can plan ahead for institutional processes.
• Standardise what can be standardised: templates, timelines, checklists and named contacts.
• Delegate responsibility for some of these documents to a member of the group.
• Build into your funding strategy resource for project management and professional service support – especially if you are significantly scaling up the size of project you are bidding for.

 

Reflection

• Which two institutional relationships would remove the most friction if they were stronger?
• What are the three processes with the longest lead-times that you need to plan around?
• Where do you keep reinventing the wheel rather than learning the system once and standardising your approach?

 

“My relationship with project managers on big grants is very helpful. If they can be developed to lead, and if you are good at delegating, they can be an amazing resource and allow you to think more strategically.”  Prof Matthew Dalby, University of Glasgow

“Don’t look to those ten or twenty years further down the line and think you need yourself and your team to look like that now. It’s OK to take time to grow in a compassionate and supportive way, learning as you go – it is a marathon not a sprint.”  Dr Sarah Sowden, Newcastle University

 

Most of the systems and structures in this resource are designed to make the group more sustainable. This section is about making you as the PI more sustainable — recognising that wellbeing is shaped by both individual choices and institutional context, and that while institutions have a responsibility here too, focusing on what you can control is a practical starting point.

Early-career PIs in UK HE are operating in a context that creates significant pressure: teaching loads, REF obligations, committee demands, grant capture, and the expectation of continued research output — all alongside the growing demands of leading a group. The practical reality is that group growth, if unmanaged, tends to expand into whatever time is available. Without deliberate boundaries, the group can consume the PI.

This is not simply a personal wellbeing issue. A PI who is chronically overloaded becomes a bottleneck, makes poorer decisions, and models unsustainable working practices to their team. Protecting your own capacity is a leadership responsibility, not a luxury.

 

Warning signs this may be becoming an issue

• Your working week has expanded significantly but your output has not kept pace — you are busy but not productive on the things that matter most.
• You are routinely the last person to leave, the first to reply, and the default for problems that others could resolve.
• You have stopped doing the parts of the research that you find energising (e.g. deep thinking, writing, intellectual exploration) because operational demands have filled the space.
• You are finding it harder to be present and thoughtful in conversations with team members.

 

Practical approaches

• Audit your time before redesigning it: Spend two weeks logging where your time actually goes in broad categories: research-facing work, supervision, writing, administration, meetings, email, institutional commitments. Keep a real-time log, e.g. in 15 min increments, rather than estimating based on your sense of how long things typically take. The pattern is often surprising, and it is hard to make good choices without knowing the baseline.
• Identify your non-negotiables: What are the two or three activities — deep writing time, a regular run, an evening protected from email — that most reliably maintain your capacity? Treat these as fixed commitments rather than rewards to be earned after everything else is done.
• Learn to use “not yet” and “not me”: In a UK HE context, requests accumulate: committee membership, seminar organisation, external review, collaborative bids. Many are reasonable individually but collectively unsustainable. A useful rule of thumb is to ask whether a request serves the group’s core direction or your own development, and to be explicit about declining or deferring what does not.
• Audit your ongoing activities periodically: Are there roles / responsibilities (e.g. committee memberships) which you have been doing for a long time that could be handed over to others who would benefit from the opportunity
• Make your boundaries visible to the group: If you protect evenings or do not expect responses outside working hours, say so. Senior researchers set the implicit norms for the group. If you are visibly always on, that becomes the expectation (even if you say that it’s not what you expect of others).
• Social events: Prioritise attending group social events that signal you value the group as people, e.g. a leaving event or a paper celebration, rather than feeling obliged to attend everything.
• Use peer support: FLF cohort networks, peer coaching, and informal PI communities exist precisely because these challenges are shared. Regular conversation with peers who understand the context — and who are not your line manager or your team — can provide both practical insight and useful perspective.

 

Reflection

• Where is your time going on activities that are least aligned with what matters most?
• What are you doing out of habit or obligation that someone else could do, or that does not need to happen at all?
• What would you protect first if your available time halved — and why aren’t you protecting it now?

 

“I use coaching sessions in a very intentional way — when things are getting on top of me, that’s exactly when I reach out. It resolves so many problems. I really think people should tap into that resource early in their fellowship, rather than waiting until things feel overwhelming” Dr Hana D’Souza, Cardiff University, FLF

“I work best in the morning, so I protect that first slot from admin and meetings. It sounds simple, but it has made a real difference to what I actually get done.” Dr Sandy Hetherington, University of Edinburgh, FLF

 

Growing a research group is one of the most demanding transitions in an academic career — and one of the least prepared for. The shift from doing research to leading others to do it, the challenge of building systems that survive turnover, the difficulty of maintaining quality at scale, and the work of sustaining yourself through all of it: none of these are instinctive, and few of us are taught them explicitly.

What the PIs whose voices appear throughout this resource have in common is not that they got everything right. It is that they paid attention, adapted, and purposefully worked to build groups that work, not just for the research, but for the people in them.

The frameworks and approaches in this guide are a starting point, not a prescription. Every group is different, every PI is different, and the right answer for your group at this stage of its development may not be the right answer in two years’ time. Return to the diagnostic at the start, revisit the sections that feel most pressing, and use the reflection questions to have honest conversations with yourself, and with the people around you.

If working through this resource has surfaced challenges that feel bigger than a practical guide can address – whether around leadership confidence, group dynamics, managing difficult situations, or simply navigating the complexity of the PI role – the FLF coaching and mentoring offer exists precisely for this. It is a valuable resource, and one that Fellows often find most useful when they engage with it early rather than waiting until things feel overwhelming. You can access the FLF coaching and mentoring offer here.

 

 

 

Background reading

• Gigerenzer, G. (2022). Simple heuristics to run a research group. PsyCh Journal, 11(2), 275–280. https://doi.org/10.1002/pchj.533
• Greiner, L.E. (1972). Evolution and revolution as organizations grow. Harvard Business Review. https://ils.unc.edu/daniel/131/cco4/Greiner.pdf

FLF Development Network resources

• Recruitment Toolkit: https://www.flfdevnet.com/recruitment-toolkit-2/
• Building Inclusive Teams Toolkit: https://www.flfdevnet.com/building-inclusive-teams-toolkit/
• Away Day Toolkit: https://www.flfdevnet.com/toolkit/designing-an-away-day-for-your-research-group-toolkit/
• Coaching and mentoring: https://www.flfdevnet.com/coaching/

Practical tools and templates

• Nature (2026) lab handbook article: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00390-6
• Purdue lab expectations template: https://www.purdue.edu/research/oevprp/regulatory-affairs/docs/Lab%20Expectations%20-%20Life%20Sciences%20Template_March2022.pdf
• CRediT contributor role taxonomy: https://credit.niso.org/
• GitHub docs — About Git: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/using-git/about-git

UK sector resources

• White Rose University Consortium — Established Researchers Hub: https://whiterose.ac.uk/what-we-do/resources/established-researchers-hub/
• Imperial College London — The Academic’s Success Guide: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/academics-success-guide/

Other useful advice is available from the FLF Development Network:

Toolkits:

• Recruitment toolkit
• Building inclusive teams toolkit
• Away day toolkit

Fellow-led projects:

• Toolkit for Managers to Support Early Career Researchers
• Researcher wellbeing toolkit

 

 

This resource was developed by MY Consultants Ltd on behalf of the FLF Development Network. The text was written by a human author and reviewed by subject-matter experts. Artificial intelligence tools were used to support the drafting and editorial process, including structuring content, refining language, and identifying gaps. All content has been reviewed, edited and approved by the author prior to publication.

The author would like to thank the following researchers for generously sharing their experiences and insights, which appear throughout this guide:
Hana D’Souza, Cardiff University; Emma Hall, University of Edinburgh; Sandy Hetherington, University of Edinburgh; Ed Hutchinson, University of Glasgow; Oliver Mytton, University College London; Miles Padgett, University of Glasgow; Sarah Sowden, Newcastle University; Anne Templeton, University of Edinburgh; Matthew Dalby, University of Glasgow; Jenny Zhang, University of Cambridge.

Thanks are also due to Tracey Stead and Steve Joy for their detailed review of the text and to Elizabeth Adams and Jenny Zhang for sense checking an early draft.