By Richard Gallagher
Top of the PI Wish List: Interpersonal Skills
Making sure people work well together isn't just the right thing to do. It's the moral thing to do.
When I worked in the lab I was lucky: My coworkers were generally agreeable and often became my close friends, and the lab heads, despite lacking any obvious training, applied plenty of common sense. We worked in a relaxed, low-pressure environment where the human interactions and group dynamics were never sorely tested. I dread to think how we would have coped with the higher stress levels of a competitive situation and a couple of obnoxious coworkers.
