by Stefanie
In our blog post last week, we talked about why our inner Mr. Hyde keeps showing up. Why we
- can be warm and supportive in one-on-ones, but then fire off sharp, hurtful emails as soon as deadlines get close.
- talk about work–life balance and still send messages at 11 p.m. with barely hidden irritation (I’m of course talking about a friend).
- encourage people to take risks and be creative, but then make them feel inadequate when experiments don’t work out.
- say we value open communication, but subtly or very openly punish people who bring bad news.
In those second scenarios, it’s our inner Mr. Hyde at work. The “protector” who reacts fast and hard the moment it smells danger. I described this idea based on Dr. Jill Bolte’s model last week in our blog.
This week, building on that, I want to answer a much more practical question:
Okay… so what do you actually do with this insight?
What do you do the next time an experiment blows up in your face, or a deadline slips and your inner Mr. Hyde starts ripping out of his clothes?
From our work with many research teams and their leaders, we’ve learned that three things really matter: system design, self-awareness, and leadership skills. Together, they form a practical framework for building a motivated research team—and for you to feel a bit more sane in your role.
System design.
A lot of things that look like “people problems” turn into system problems once you look a bit closer.
Think back to the last serious crisis around e.g. a manuscript. The first reflex is usually: Who messed up? Who wasn’t paying attention? But in many cases, the deeper causes are surprisingly basic gaps: a sample-tracking “system” that lives only in one person’s head; handover standards that were defined once in a meeting and then quietly forgotten; problems that only pop up at the very last moment because no one knows when and how to raise a red flag earlier; no shared understanding of what should happen in the first hour after someone notices that something has gone wrong.
When you start naming and closing these gaps, something shifts in the mood of your group. Setbacks still happen—research can be a mess—but they show up earlier and with way less drama. Deadlines stay ambitious, but they no longer feel like suddenly falling off a cliff. The overall vibe in your lab moves from constant emergency mode to a more stable rhythm. That alone gives your nervous system more breathing room and gives your team the feeling that the ground under their feet is solid, even when things wobble.
System design in this sense doesn’t mean heavy bureaucracy. It means simple, clear structures that make good work easier without you having to hover over everything: a visible writing timeline with milestones everyone can see, clear responsibilities for every step in the project, a simple rule for when and where to raise your hand early if something feels off. Every small design decision reduces confusion and pointless frustration and frees up energy for the actual science.
Self-awareness.
You can’t change a pattern you don’t see. In this context, self-awareness means getting very familiar with your stress triggers and your standard reactions.
First, you have to catch yourself in that tiny split second between “threat detected” and “protector has taken over completely.” You need to notice what happens inside you when Mr. Hyde walks onto the stage: your shoulders creep up towards your ears, your jaw tightens, your thoughts start racing, and a perfectly sarcastic line writes itself in your head. You start writing an email and suddenly you sound like your former supervisor—the one you swore you would never become—instead of sounding like you. That’s your protector, running a very old, very familiar script.
In that moment, there is a simple but powerful choice: Which version of you is going to lead this situation? You can quietly say to yourself: My protector is here. That actually makes sense. But he doesn’t get to send this email alone.
It’s about spotting the patterns behind your reactions. Which situations almost always trigger you? What story does your mind start telling you then? For example: I’m the only one who takes this seriously. If this goes wrong, it proves I’m not good enough. I have to fix this alone. Your protector is trying to keep you safe using strategies that were probably useful at some earlier point in your life. It’s not evil. It’s just incredibly fast and extremely loyal to its old rules.
When you understand your patterns, they stop running you. When you start understanding what exactly your protector is trying to prevent, your reaction becomes less automatic. You might still feel the strong emotion in your body, but now you have this tiny window to do something different: one conscious breath before you respond, naming the problem instead of attacking the person, or saying to a colleague: “I’m reacting more strongly than I expected—I’d like to pause for a second and look at what we actually know.”
When you lead from a calmer, more grounded inner state, that experience alone builds trust. You start to notice: The leader who shows up on a good day—the one from the first part of the examples in the beginning of this post—is not random. You can invite that version of yourself in on purpose.
Leadership skills.
Insight and good systems give you a strong foundation. But you still need concrete behaviors that translate your good intentions into daily practice.
One core skill is choosing a leadership style that fits the situation. There are moments when clear instructions are the kindest thing you can offer, for example when safety or ethics are at stake. There are moments when open questions and coaching give someone much more room to grow than quick advice. And there are times when your role is mainly to align the group around one direction or a shared decision. The more options you have, the less you’re stuck in one default style that comes from habit instead of choice.
Another key skill is giving feedback in a way that actually changes behavior instead of just unloading your frustration. The second isn’t really feedback at all, it’s just venting. Useful feedback often looks like this: you describe what you observed, you explain why it matters for the work, and you say clearly what you need next time—short, specific, and linked to the group’s shared goals. Over time, this kind of feedback brings clarity instead of fear. People know where they stand and what’s expected of them, and that’s surprisingly motivating.
Culture building is the next level. A motivated team doesn’t just happen. The way you talk about mistakes, successes, and workload shapes how people show up. You can create a climate where everyone hides doubts and avoids any hint of risk. Or you can build a climate where early warnings, questions, and honest disagreement are treated as contributions to the science, not as nuisances.
Leadership skills also include building your team’s capacity so that productivity doesn’t depend on how long you personally can keep sprinting. That means thoughtful delegation instead of “here, just take this,” clear expectations, and real follow-through—not just handing over tasks and hoping for the best. Together, these skills make your inner changes and your system design visible and reliable for your team.
Putting it into practice.
Reading about all this is one thing. Trying it out in your actual lab, with real constraints and real, complicated humans—that’s another story.
You will still have days when your protector wins and you send an email you later regret. You will introduce a new system and some people will forget to use it at first. You will try a different approach to feedback and the conversation will feel awkward and clunky. That does not mean you’re failing as a leader. It means you’re in training. And training is exactly where progress happens.
The decisive shift is how you interpret these moments. You can read them as more proof that you’re not a born leader. Or you can treat them as data: data about what triggers you, data about what your current systems can and cannot handle, data about which leadership moves feel authentic to you and which ones you’re just copying from past “voices” because you thought you had to.
When you start treating your own behavior and the structure of your lab as something you can observe, design, and adjust, you step out of that helpless feeling. You begin to see yourself as the architect and conductor of your group, not just the chief firefighter who runs in when everything is already burning.
And you don’t have to figure all of this out alone at the end of an exhausting day. That is exactly the work we do in Research Leadership Mastery. Together with you, we design and build simple systems that reduce unnecessary fires and support motivation in the team. We practice leadership behaviors that feel like you and fit your values, instead of feeling like a costume you have to put on to be a “real leader.”
If you feel a gap between the leader you want to be and the version of you that shows up under stress, and if you would like structured support in implementing these three pillars—systems, self-awareness, and leadership skills—with your team, then get in touch about Research Leadership Mastery. Together we can look at what is really happening in your lab right now and see whether this program is the right framework to help you build a team that is motivated, resilient, and stable, while you yourself gain more inner calm in your role. Simply email Ariel (ariel@stefanierobel.com) to get on Stefanie’s calendar.
