Supervision and Leadership during the doctorate

Before starting a doctorate, doctoral students often only worked on smaller research projects as part of their Bachelor's and Master's degree programmes. Until now, this has been done under the close collaboration and guidance of other researchers.

In the course of the doctorate, they should develop into independent researchers. This development is very individual and each doctoral student has different prerequisites.

Support doctoral students in this development and encourage them to express ideas openly and discuss them constructively. At the beginning of the doctorate, candidates often need a little more support and guidance than later in the doctorate.

As the leader of a research group, you have a major scientific question or problem that you are trying to answer or solve. This big picture often spans several generations of researchers in your research group. To do this, they divide the big picture into individual sub-problems, which are often worked on by different group members, but which all make an essential contribution to answering the larger problem.

It can be challenging for doctoral students to maintain an overview at the beginning or during the course of their doctorate. This can lead to doctoral students getting lost in the details and failing to make any major progress in the project. Or doctoral students do not find access to their individual project. Help your doctoral students to formulate clear questions and at the same time encourage dialogue within the research group so as not to lose sight of the overarching goal.

Free, result-open research is essential for innovative developments and findings. However, various framework conditions can make this difficult.

Third-party funding is often awarded with a specific time frame and a doctorate at ETH Zurich usually takes about 4 years.

Realistic and clear goals are therefore particularly important for doctoral students in order to successfully complete their doctoral thesis. However, doctoral students themselves are often not experienced enough at the beginning to formulate these goals themselves. Support your doctoral students in learning how to do this without avoiding free and result-open research.

A common central question, the big picture, connects the researchers in a group. At the same time, most of them aim to publish their research results. This pressure to publish can lead to competition within a research group.

A certain amount of competition can be motivating, but too much competition can lead to conflicts between colleagues and the common goal can be forgotten.

Different expertise is often required from employees in order to comprehensively address a common issue. Clear agreements on responsibilities, deadlines and authorship are recommended here to ensure smooth collaboration.

Hierarchies often remain flat in the academic landscape. In some cases, this is very helpful for academic discourse at eye level. Researchers at different stages of development (doctoral students, postdocs and senior scientists) engage in open and critical dialogue with each other and with their supervisors.

However, the responsibilities of individual functional levels are sometimes blurred. This can lead to uncertainty and conflict among employees.

A flat hierarchy and clear decisions are therefore not necessarily mutually exclusive. Draw clear boundaries for yourself and communicate them transparently. In this way, scientific dialogue remains lively, open and critical and at the same time you, as the superior, have the responsibility for decision-making.

As the supervisor of doctoral theses, your doctoral students are dependent on you in many ways. On the one hand, you are a pioneer in the research topic and, at the same time, you evaluate the doctoral thesis at the end of the doctorate. You are a superior who must make clear decisions in the interests of the research group and at the same time a mentor who responds to the individual needs of the employees. Due to the flat hierarchies, you can even meet on a friendly level. However, be aware of how eager doctoral students may be to please you and consider whether they would really feel free enough to disagree with certain requests.

But you are also dependent on your doctoral students to a certain extent. A successful collaboration will bring you closer to solving your big question. Successful and productive collaboration often continues beyond the doctorate, when doctoral students have become independent researchers who lead their own research groups.

Personal development and lifelong learning are important for all of us. For doctoral students, this is additionally influenced by the question of how their career path will continue after the doctorate. During their doctorate, doctoral students should think about where they want their doctorate to take them. Intuitively, an academic career is the obvious choice, but positions are limited and not all doctoral students aim for a professorship.

As the supervisor of doctoral theses, you are usually best placed to give advice and tips on how a career in academia works. You may be unsure how to support doctoral students who have other goals.

However, an exact goal or a specific career is not the decisive factor. Talk openly with your doctoral students about which competencies they can further strengthen or develop. Give them space to develop these. When deciding which researchers work on which projects, it can also be helpful to know whether doctoral students want to continue on an academic path or whether they would rather leave research work behind.