In this week's episode, we have our first and very special guest: Dr. Max Happel is a group leader in Magdeburg. In this episode, we chat with him about expectations, realisations and disappointments in the path to becoming and being a group leader. 

These are some of the topics we cover in this episode:

• Word of the week: unpredictability. How you can embracy unpredictability, focus on the process and not so much on the result which will never be in place e.g. there is no perfect group leader, just a group leader who tries to improve


• Max' books recommendations: 


• Covey's 7 habits of highly effective people, Ferris' 4h work week, Kahnemann's thinking fast and slow


• If was minister, Max would try to remove the "swiss army knife" image of a scientist and substitute it with one of a specialist, much like with medical doctors. After all, there are so many roles in a lab, the group leader is just one of the many important figures needed for a successful research group


• If Max was giving his younger self advice, this is was he would say: "focus on your strengths, because there is no swiss army knife"


• The biggest challenges as a group leader is likely going to be the thing that is your weakness. For Daniel it is the organisation, for Max it has to do with handling people and their emotions and being able to see but at the same time separate between the scientist as a worker and the scientist as a person/colleague/friend.


• What is most important is people, integrating seeing people as scientists contributing to the project, but also as people having private problems, as a leader you need to integrate that


• Why Max thinks that flattening the hierarchy is a process that will take time and effort from everyone involved


• Why being transparent to everybody helps in taking decisions (even if they are tough ones). And how you can also delegate decisions to committees and democratic processes and then be the implementing leader

As you can see, we cover many interesting topics in this episode. Most importantly, we talk heart to heart with someone who you might want to become in the future. In fact, we have 2 of them in the podcast today ;-) 

We hope you enjoy our open discussion and find some inspiration in it. Remember that you have any further questions for ur or for Max in this case, you can leave us a comment and we'll be happy to respond!