I think that all of us RP intern managers took the same 12-hour management training from The Management Center. I thought that there was some high-quality advice in it but I’m not sure if it applied that much to our situation of managing research interns. I haven’t been to other such trainings so I can’t compare.
Thanks salius! I agree with what you said. In addition,
A lot of the value was just time set aside to thinking about management, so hard to separate that out without a control group
(but realistically, without the training, I would not have spent ~16 (including some additional work/loose threads after the workshop) hours thinking about management in one week.
So that alone is really valuable!
I feel like the implicit prioritization for some of the topics they covered possibly made more sense for experienced managers than people like me.
For example, about 1⁄3 of the time in the workshop was devoted to diversity/inclusion topics, and I’d be very surprised if optimal resource allocation for a new manager is anywhere close to 1⁄3 time spent on diversity/inclusion.
A really important point hammered throughout the training is the importance of clear and upfront communication.
Again, I think this is something I could have figured out through my usual combination of learning about things (introspection, asking around, internet research), but having this hammered in me is actually quite valuable.
I find a lot of the specific tools they suggested intuitively useful (eg, explicit MOCHA diagrams) , but I think I have to put in work to use them in my own management (and indeed failed to do this my first week as a manager).
Side question: what was the management training you took, and would you recommend it?
I think that all of us RP intern managers took the same 12-hour management training from The Management Center. I thought that there was some high-quality advice in it but I’m not sure if it applied that much to our situation of managing research interns. I haven’t been to other such trainings so I can’t compare.
Thanks salius! I agree with what you said. In addition,
A lot of the value was just time set aside to thinking about management, so hard to separate that out without a control group
(but realistically, without the training, I would not have spent ~16 (including some additional work/loose threads after the workshop) hours thinking about management in one week.
So that alone is really valuable!
I feel like the implicit prioritization for some of the topics they covered possibly made more sense for experienced managers than people like me.
For example, about 1⁄3 of the time in the workshop was devoted to diversity/inclusion topics, and I’d be very surprised if optimal resource allocation for a new manager is anywhere close to 1⁄3 time spent on diversity/inclusion.
A really important point hammered throughout the training is the importance of clear and upfront communication.
Again, I think this is something I could have figured out through my usual combination of learning about things (introspection, asking around, internet research), but having this hammered in me is actually quite valuable.
I find a lot of the specific tools they suggested intuitively useful (eg, explicit MOCHA diagrams) , but I think I have to put in work to use them in my own management (and indeed failed to do this my first week as a manager).
Thanks, good to know!