Redefining the "Principal" in Investigator: The Hidden Transition from Scientist to Leader

For years, your success was measured by your individual capacity to generate data, analyze results, and write papers. You were rewarded for your deep, specialized expertise and your ability to execute complex experiments. And then, because you were so good at being a scientist, you were promoted. You became a Principal Investigator (PI).

Suddenly, the skills that got you the job are no longer the skills required to do the job. You are no longer just designing experiments; you are managing budgets, resolving interpersonal conflicts, navigating institutional politics, and trying to align the diverse motivations of postdocs, graduate students, and external collaborators.

As one researcher recently shared with us: "I thought being a PI meant leading the science. I quickly realized it meant leading the people."

This realization is often accompanied by a profound sense of disorientation and, frankly, exhaustion. Many PIs feel they are failing because they are struggling with the managerial and relational aspects of their role. But this is not a personal failure. It is a structural blind spot in how we train and support scientific leaders.

The Science of Team Science

This structural blind spot is one of the central themes of the newly released 2025 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS), titled The Science and Practice of Team Science.

The NAS report makes a critical distinction that every new PI must understand: the difference between taskwork and teamwork.

• Taskwork refers to the activities associated with achieving the scientific goals—the experimental design, the data collection, the statistical analysis. This is what you were trained to do.

• Teamwork involves the interactions among team members that are essential for effective collaboration—communicating clearly, managing coordination needs, resolving conflicts, and integrating diverse expertise.

The report emphasizes that for science teams to succeed, they need to develop competencies in both. Yet, academic training almost exclusively focuses on taskwork. When a researcher becomes a PI, they are suddenly responsible for the teamwork, often without any formal preparation.

From Individual Contributor to Team Facilitator

The transition to PI requires a fundamental shift in identity and approach. It requires moving from being the primary individual contributor to becoming a facilitator of team dynamics. The highest form of scientific leadership is no longer about having all the answers; it is about creating the conditions where others can do their best collaborative work.

According to the NAS report, effective science teams do not emerge naturally. They require deliberate design and active management. The report highlights several evidence-based practices that PIs must master:

The first is team assembly. In the traditional model, hiring decisions are based almost exclusively on technical skills and publication record. A team science approach broadens this criteria to include collaborative competencies and cognitive diversity — recognising that how people work together is as important as what they individually know.

The second is project launch. Many PIs assume that because the team has read the grant proposal, everyone understands the goals. In practice, this assumption is a frequent source of misalignment. A team science approach involves developing a formal Team Charter at the outset — an explicit agreement on roles, responsibilities, communication norms, and authorship expectations — before the first experiment begins.

The third is conflict management. The default response to interpersonal tension in academic labs is avoidance, with the hope that problems will resolve themselves. The evidence points in the opposite direction: unaddressed conflict compounds over time. A team science approach treats conflict as inevitable and establishes clear, psychologically safe processes for addressing it early, before it erodes trust and productivity.

The fourth is evaluation. Traditional evaluation focuses exclusively on the final output — the paper, the grant, the data. A team science approach incorporates regular team debriefs throughout the project, creating structured moments to reflect on team processes, identify what is working, and adapt workflows before problems become crises.

The Inner Development of the PI

Mastering these practices requires more than just reading a management book. It requires significant inner development.

To lead a diverse science team effectively, a PI must cultivate self-awareness to recognize their own biases and default communication styles. They must develop the emotional intelligence to navigate the anxieties and ambitions of their team members. They must build the courage to have difficult conversations about performance or authorship.

In the framework of the Inner Development Goals (IDGs), this is the shift from the domain of Thinking (cognitive skills) to the domains of Relating (caring for others and the world) and Collaborating (social skills).

A Call for Institutional Change The burden of this transition should not fall entirely on the individual PI. The NAS report strongly recommends that research funders and academic institutions provide the resources and training necessary to support team development and leadership.

Institutions must recognize that funding a scientific project is also funding a human system. If we want to solve the complex, interdisciplinary challenges of our time, we must stop pretending that scientific excellence alone is enough to lead a team.

If you are a PI feeling overwhelmed by the "people part" of the job, know that you are experiencing a systemic gap in scientific training, not a personal deficit. The first step is acknowledging that leading the people is the work. And like any complex scientific problem, it is a skill that can be studied, practiced, and mastered.

To explore the full findings and recommendations on how to build and support effective research teams, we highly recommend reading the complete 2025 NAS report: The Science and Practice of Team Science: https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBASSE-BBCSS-23-01/publication/29043