On October 23, 2025, a mixed group gathered in the university archive to discuss in how successful teams work, what role mutual appreciation plays in that, and how to translate this to research group leadership practice. For the community talk titled “How to celebrate your team and yourself: Appreciative research cultures”, Johann Hlina, a chemistry group leader, and Johanna Stadlbauer of the Research Careers Campus gave inputs, and the participants shared their own experiences and practices.
We explored:
- How can we foster a spirit of trial and error?
- What practices allow research team members to be curious and motivated to try new things?
- How can we as leaders celebrate our teams' wins and help handle setbacks?
- How do we celebrate our own milestones?
- What leadership styles are helpful and how can we improve in our daily practice?
Johanna Stadlbauer's input centered around milestones in researchers' lives that deserve celebration, joyful aspects of research life, as well as structured tools used in academia to make a failure-friendly and appreciative culture.
Joyful experiences mentioned were:
- Being able to feed the curiosity to discover new results; Opportunities for international exchange and inspiration from wonderful colleagues; Good support by and relationships with superiors and mentors; Engaging with students and teaching; Making an impact in the world through research; In Successful data gathering, fieldwork, or experiments; networking that pays off; accepted papers and funding applications.
Structured tools for appreciation and failure-friendlyness mentioned were:
- a weekly/monthly “what is good and new” circle
- a devil's advocate session before major submissions
- logging rejections across the whole department in a shared spreadsheet and celebrating every time it reaches a certain number
- installing a “graveyard of ideas” for everything that didn't work out
- doing a show-and-tell on rejected grants or papers, outlining how revisions were made and what happened afterwards
Johann Hlina started his input by explaining that synthetic chemistry is known for the high tolerance researchers have to have for failure, since it is integral to the research process and progress. He then asked everyone present to share what their goals are as leaders - as a group leader, as a postdoc leading students, as a team member on the cusp of leadership. He stated the goal is usually to be able to produce good, reliable research results and publications - both for the people being supervised and the PI. Investing into leadership skills is justified because it is key to producing good research.
Some bullet points from his talk and the discussions:
- the postdoc phase is a “sandbox of leadership”, because you get to try out different styles and adjust them, and see what works for you
- many research leaders want to create an atmosphere were people feel safe to speak up, takes into account specific personal circumstances and challenges, allows them to build on and expand their individual strenghts, is open to individual personalities and ways of working, and doesn't overly controll or clip their unique spirit
- academia has some unique challenges, in that autonomy and independence is valued so much, and that can lead to hands-off, uncaring leadership;
- it's also important to recognize that research leaders have responsibility for training and education, as well as for project goals, because very often they will work with PhD candidates, who are both researchers and students
- motivation in a team cannot be “created” from nothing, but it can be preserved and nourished
- what motivates team members is being given responsibility, learning new things, knowing what they contribute to the shared goals, being visible and recognized
- leaders also have someone who is responsible for their own development, and can and should reach out to institutional support and their own manager
- rituals, because of the fact of repetition, are very impactful for setting a culture in a team, and values have to be put into practice on an ongoing basis, not just stated once
- leaders have an important function in modelling their approach to failure, making themselves vulnerable by admitting mistakes, and effectively react to mistakes of team members
- as a leader, you model the behaviour you want to see from your team, be it in terms of cleaning up the lab or in communication styles
There were also several topics we had no time to explore further, such as:
how competition and appreciative team culture go together
how different international academic systems compare in terms of leadership and team culture and how to combine the best of all worlds
how to systematically appreciate yourself on an ongoing basis
how to effectively “lead behind the scenes” without overstretching yourself, if you are not yet formally in a leadership position
We're looking forward to expand our exploration of the topics raised in this community talk in our next events!
About the facilitators:
- Johanna Stadlbauer is Head of the Research Careers Campus and holds a PhD in anthropology, leads a team of six, and is passionate about creating a collegial research culture in academia.
- Johann Hlina is a senior postdoc leading a research group in coordination chemistry working with rare-earth metals in the context of carbon oxide utilisation for hydrocarbon production. He has a degree and PhD in chemistry from TU Graz, went to Edinburgh as a postdoc for two years (to do uranium chemistry) and came back to Graz after that. He supervised numerous students from Bachelor level to PhD candidates.
Report: Johanna Stadlbauer, Oct 23, 2025