Leadership in science

Creative leadership

Over recent years, I have reflected on leadership, power, and loyalty in scientific research and creative practice. I consulted leadership literature and training materials,but they failed to reflect my lived experience. Most leadership models are designed for corporate organisations with clear hierarchies and formal systems of reward and penalty

What is missing is a nuanced discussion of leadership in science, where authority is diffuse, outcomes are uncertain, and innovation is central. This is fundamentally different from administrative academic leadership. Scientific leadership is about guiding a group of people toward the creation or discovery of something new. It therefore requires creative leadership.

Leading without authority

Leadership discourse often centres on two dominant models. The first is power-based, where leadership relies on control, strategic alliances, and information management. While this model can function in corporate or political settings, it is poorly suited to science. Authority cannot generate ideas or discoveries; leaders cannot simply instruct people to innovate.

The second model emphasises inspiration, motivation, and shared values. This approach is more appealing and often more ethical, but it typically assumes a stable reward structure. In science, rewards are often delayed or symbolic, and leaders rarely control them. Decisions about recognition, authorship, funding, or career progression are usually made by journals, funding agencies, or institutions.

As a result, scientific leaders often lack leverage. They cannot easily reward, penalise, or replace team members, yet they remain accountable for outcomes.

Excellence

In competitive and fast-paced environments, it is tempting to lead in ways that avoid conflict. While this may preserve harmony, it is insufficient. Scientific leadership must guide teams toward high-impact, novel outcomes.

Such outcomes require sustained intellectual engagement, risk-taking, and tolerance for uncertainty. This inevitably creates tension. Leadership in these contexts is not about pleasing everyone; it’s about articulating a clear vision and maintaining high standards while preserving trust. Scientific teams function best when their leaders are recognised as scientists whose expertise commands respect.

Attribution

Scientific research is inherently fragile. Progress depends on individuals sharing ideas they may perceive as uniquely valuable. Fear of appropriation or misattribution, often unfounded but emotionally powerful, can inhibit openness. While few ideas have tangible value without execution, leaders must recognise this fragility and create environments where sharing is safe and encouraged.

Because rewards in science are delayed and symbolic, rivalry and envy can easily arise. Small decisions, such as authorship order, conference presentation, or visibility, have significant career consequences. Leaders must therefore prioritise fairness and transparency.

Clear communication minimises misunderstandings. Silence or ambiguity often causes more harm than difficult but honest conversations. While leaders cannot share everything with everyone, manipulation or excessive secrecy will erode trust, which is difficult to rebuild.

Benevolence

Science leadership often requires a benevolent attitude. Leaders must be willing to give more than they receive, absorb frustration, accept delayed outputs, and tolerate minor transgressions. Projects may span many years, and outcomes are never guaranteed. Leading primarily through authority or incentives is not sustainable over long timeframes.

Another emotional challenge is impermanence. Leaders invest significantly in people knowing that most will eventually leave. Students graduate, researchers move on, and collaborators pursue new opportunities. Loyalty is often temporary because it is centered around discovery and ideas. This reality can be painful, particularly when projects end without tangible outcomes.

Heterogeneity

Scientific teams are heterogeneous. Some members are highly independent and innovative; others are solid but less original, while some are still developing. Leaders cannot work only with top performers, nor can they ignore weaker contributors. Projects must progress while accommodating these differences.

In addition, leaders manage a wide range of roles: students at different stages, postdoctoral researchers, technical and administrative staff, senior colleagues, external collaborators, industry partners, and reporting and funding bodies. Each group has different needs and expectations. Treating everyone identically is ineffective, but treating everyone differently is demanding and can create tension if not handled transparently.

Continuity

Personal circumstances strongly affect scientific outcomes. Illness, family responsibilities, mental health challenges, visa issues, exhaustion, and low motivation all influence innovation and productivity. Even with best practice, motivation may decline, priorities may shift, and people may leave before projects are completed. Technical or external obstacles can also stall progress.

Scientific research relies heavily on early-career researchers whose lives are often unstable. Short-term contracts, mobility, financial insecurity, and personal change can disrupt projects, meaning that significant investment does not always yield to proportional outcomes.

Leaders therefore need contingency plans that allow for minimal but meaningful outcomes even when teams experience a difficult time. Maintaining an independent research line, producing conceptual or review work, and ensuring clear intellectual ownership are essential. Equally important is planning for continuity: enabling others to take over projects, documenting methods and data, and ensuring publishable outcomes even if contributors move on.

Flexibility

One of the central paradoxes of scientific leadership is the need to demand excellence while relinquishing control. High-quality outcomes require strong standards and sustained effort, yet innovation cannot be forced.

Leaders must tolerate ambiguity, uneven progress, and unexpected directions. They must also accept that some of the best ideas will not originate from them and that credit may need to be shared in ways that feel asymmetrical or personally unsatisfying. This tension cannot be resolved through technique alone; it requires emotional maturity and a commitment to placing the project above personal validation.

Stewardship

Scientific leadership is best understood as stewardship rather than ownership. Leaders temporarily hold responsibility for ideas, methods, and people, knowing these will eventually be passed on. Leadership is not about control or permanence, but about continuity and renewal.

Projects end, teams dissolve, and intellectual property evolves. Leaders must therefore continue innovating and reinventing themselves rather than relying on past achievements. Scientific leadership involves accepting that one’s most significant contributions may be carried forward by others. This requires humility, resilience, and a belief that science itself stands above individual careers.

Because ideas are eventually handed on, scientific leaders need to continue evolving. Leaders who cling too tightly to their ideas, authority, or status risk blocking the very innovation they are meant to foster. By contrast, continued intellectual renewal inspire humility and courage in the next generation.

Conclusion

Leadership in science differs fundamentally from corporate or administrative leadership. It is oriented toward creation rather than control and is therefore inherently fragile, high-risk, emotionally demanding, and deeply human. Authority is limited, rewards are delayed, and success depends less on hierarchy than on trust, motivation, and collaboration.

To lead well in this space is to accept uncertainty as a constant companion; to invest in people who will eventually move on, to work without guarantees, and to pursue outcomes that may never fully materialise. It requires balancing vision with empathy, ambition with fairness, and standards with restraint, while navigating uneven abilities, diverse roles, and the realities of personal lives.

In practice, this means building relationships grounded in trust and integrity, articulating a shared vision that is revisited as projects and people evolve, and acknowledging human limits without abandoning high expectations. It requires careful attention to recognition and visibility, open and timely communication, and an explicit acceptance of fragility through planning for risk and discontinuity.

This form of leadership is often quiet and largely invisible. It is rarely rewarded in proportion to its difficulty, and its most important contributions may only become apparent years later, carried forward by others. Yet it is essential. Without such leadership, science cannot renew itself. Those who manage to sustain the conditions for shared thinking, creativity, and intellectual courage perform a form of stewardship that deserves recognition, not because it guarantees success, but because it keeps discovery possible.