Leading a team as its manager

A writing-team manager supports people as well as delivery. The work includes maintaining a healthy team, protecting its capacity, guiding change, building community across locations and balancing scientific and communication priorities.

Leadership quality and results

Effective leadership enables people to perform at their best and sustains a healthy team dynamic, adapting to each employee, the current context and the team. ¹ Results alone can conceal how they were achieved: psychologically safe teams with sound processes and authoritarian teams may show similar annual results for a time, although the latter are more prone to burnout. ^{1, 2} Sick days, turnover and human-resources incidents may take years to accumulate enough to expose destructive leadership. ¹

In a UK study by the Chartered Management Institute and YouGov in late 2023, one in three managers and workers had left jobs because of negative work culture, and half of respondents with ineffective bosses intended to quit within a year. ¹ In a US EY survey, 85–88% believed mutual empathy between leaders and employees increased efficiency, job satisfaction, creativity, idea sharing and innovation. ¹

Confidence, charisma, appearance and gender can distract selectors from leadership skills and experience; research has also associated narcissistic tendencies with career advancement. ² Passive leadership, lacking engagement and clear direction, can be more destructive than deliberate manipulation, even where managers mean well but lack skills or resources. ³ Unclear roles, confused priorities and vague instructions create stress, conflict and inefficiency. ^{3, 2} Organisational demands, superiors' expectations and different employee needs can push managers into passive leadership at times. ²

Improvement requires self-reflection, competence development and regular assessment of personal and team progress. ³ Three practices can support this work. ³

1. Recognise that personal leadership ability may be overestimated, and assess strengths and shortcomings honestly. Confidence does not replace listening, and popularity does not replace clear instructions and expectations; begin with the weakest areas.
2. Focus on employees' needs for presence, tools, coaching, priorities and clear goals. Pay particular attention when new members or projects change the situation, even for previously independent high performers.
3. Treat leadership as continuing development. Use available formal training and set aside time to examine what has improved, stagnated or deteriorated, then adjust.

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Support, capacity and difficult conversations

Managers are responsible for staff training, setting and reassessing workloads, and protecting writers from client or account-team demands that prevent good work. ⁴ This may require standing up to clients or account teams; managers carrying a full writing workload cannot provide effective management, which requires recognised time and effort. ⁴ Senior staff can share leadership work or deputise when the leader is unavailable, while gaining new skills themselves. ⁵

Managers should facilitate work by connecting with employees, understanding their challenges, listening to proposed solutions and providing advice or training where needed. ⁴ Giving employees freedom over their approach, with regular progress discussions, can support them without making them feel isolated or inadequate. ⁴ Difficult conversations, including letting staff go, require learned skills; an internal HR manager can help, or a smaller organisation may use an HR consultant. ^{6, 4}

To help prevent burnout, managers should check in regularly, give constructive advice in an empathetic environment, monitor individual workloads and celebrate achievements. ⁷ The Multiplier approach to leadership creates space for employees to admit struggles and brings out their abilities; the contrasting Diminisher approach micromanages and leaves people feeling small and unappreciated. ⁷ Trust also depends on team introductions, clear understanding of responsibilities and open communication. ⁸

Change, trust and organisational purpose

During change, managers should remain present, calm, honest and realistic, since teams absorb the mood around them. ⁹ Explaining what is known and unknown, why change is happening and what opportunities it offers can support acceptance and trust. ⁹ Loss of a support structure should not simply be normalised: pandemic school closures, for example, left employees working alongside children learning at home. ⁹

Implementing change takes time alongside existing delivery responsibilities, and managers need to address employees' concerns, expectations and needs. ¹⁰ Giving the team information and a part in the change can reduce speculation and rumours; HR support may help. ¹⁰ Managers should watch its effects and explain that responses can be revised if they do not work. ¹⁰ During pandemic remote work, longer hours accompanied greater productivity and burnout; some teams offered mental-health days as Days of Reflection or Curiosity Days. ¹⁰ One in-house manager used more one-to-one contact under these unusual pressures, acknowledged the shared uncertainty and maintained work as a source of focus and purpose. ¹¹

Vendor and internal-team expectations should be aligned from the start. ¹⁰ Inviting contract writers to team meetings and connecting vendor staff with sponsor colleagues can build familiarity, trust and cooperation. ¹⁰

Leaders need to understand how corporate goals should be achieved as well as the stated result, and connect the company's ethos with daily work and their own values. ¹² For example, a submission deadline may depend on hiring a vendor, but a procurement requirement to onboard small and diverse suppliers can delay qualification if the writing leader does not know about it. ¹² That requirement may be absent from the goal itself while remaining essential to how the organisation wants business done. ¹²

A community across regions

A global leader needs to look beyond current projects, regularly reviewing processes, talent development and technology with the leadership team to prepare for future needs. ¹³ In one global writing team's 2024 approach, shared values, safe learning, peer development, open communication, conflict resolution and belonging helped unite geographically dispersed colleagues. ¹⁴ Regular discussion of goals, process reviews, lessons from successes and recognition of good work reinforced the team's purpose and contribution to patients. ¹⁵ Meaningful work, career prospects, work–life balance, comparable opportunities and fair treatment were common aims across locations. ¹⁶

The team encouraged collaboration across regions and experience levels, requests for help, regular global and regional meetings, occasional office attendance where feasible and informal online coffee chats. ⁵ Video-meeting platforms can support engagement while leaving team cohesion difficult. ¹⁷

Standardised training and harmonised assessment can support consistent quality across regions. ^{13, 5} The global team's skill standards aligned with job descriptions and applied the same assessment principles across countries, with expectations available to everyone. ⁵

In that leader's experience, conflicts and ethical concerns differed little by location or culture. ⁵ Listening, negotiation, clear communication and understanding another person's perspective help address conflict. ⁵ A safe environment for learning from mistakes without blame supports transparency, and employees should be able to raise concerns without retaliation through clear routes to company ethics experts. ⁵

Scientific and communication priorities

Creative science-communication teams combine writers, designers, photographers, audio and video producers, digital specialists, brand experts and marketers. ¹⁸ Their work can expose a clash between scientific emphasis on detail and accuracy and communicators' emphasis on accessible language, attention and audience impact. ¹⁹ A researcher may resist simplification or linguistic changes because the professions have developed different standards for good work. ¹⁹ Newcomers should approach the other discipline with curiosity and respect: scientists need communication craft, and communicators need a basic understanding of the science. ¹⁸

Four practices can help managers support these teams. ¹⁹

1. Make room for learning. Staff may need software, social-media, AI or scientific knowledge; short courses or joint work with a research colleague can help.
2. Check both factual correctness and intended audience understanding. Complex life-sciences topics raise miscommunication risks, and health communications can attract the public even when aimed at technical peers.
3. Protect time for creative exploration, experimentation and enjoyment of the process.
4. Explain communication choices to sceptical colleagues, using metrics and results over time where possible.

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