Webinars for Leibniz PostDocs: Addressing mental health and leadership skills to help you excel
Written by the members of the Work & Health Working Group
We want to help you to have the best possible conditions for your work! That is one of our goals in the “Work & Health” Working Group of the Leibniz PostDoc Network. One very important pillar of this is your mental health. We therefore organized the webinar “Well-being: An active approach” on the 22nd of September for you. In this 90-min session, Dr. Vicent Botella-Soler provided us with a great overview on things that empty our bucket and how to identify them in our own life. The feedback from the participants was very positive:
“It was nice to be reminded to take care of ourselves. I feel as scientists we often forget about that.”
“… this will [be] helpful to remove stress and think forward in life.”
“I learned a lot and now I see us from a different point of view. We’re doing damn good work under bad conditions. Thus, we should be kind to ourselves.”
For the next year, we want to build on this foundation and provide you with webinars and online workshops to deepen your awareness and provide you with tools to tackle the empty buckets.
Training in Leadership is another topic that was highly requested by the Leibniz Postdoc community. We addressed this with the webinar “Leading a team” by Dr. Desiree Dickerson, that we organized for you on October 6th. Dr. Dickerson took the attendees to a more personal aspect of leading individuals through thoughts and feelings. She pointed out that, as leaders, one should “deal with their own needs first” to motivate others, and how our mood can impact those around us. Additionally, she shared how embedded positive emotional values and exploring challenges as a group can increase the sense of belonging and contribution.
We were also grateful to gain insights into “building a team”, starting from setting core values as non-negotiables to identifying the values of the people one would like to work with. Then, the importance of acknowledging diversity (in terms of abilities, neurodiversity, and life experiences, etc.) in teams was discussed as a key competence. Finally, the significance of cultural competence was highlighted to recognize differences across cultures, i.e., how silence may have multiple interpretations in different cultures.
“This workshop was so helpful for my career development, I really got an idea of what it means to lead a team in a better way.”
“… in the future, it will be helpful in career development as well as solving critical situations.”
We are very happy that we can provide these webinars for you and are always open for your suggestions. If you are interested in the activities of the Leibniz PostDoc Network and the “Work & Health” Working Group, sign up for the mailing list and stay updated on upcoming events.
If you would like to address issues related to working conditions and mental health, come and join the “Work & Health” Working Group! Just email us at . New people and ideas are always welcome!