Employees from 26 Rhode Island life sciences companies now have a much better grasp of leadership during the coronavirus pandemic after graduating from RI Bio’s Leadership Certificate Program.
As one of the main life sciences industry groups in southeastern New England, RI Bio has been offering leadership training since long before the pandemic. But like many other organizations, RI Bio decided to pivot this year, transitioning the course to focus on leadership skills in a remote work team environment and managing workplace issues during the pandemic.
The 26 graduates come from some of the top life sciences companies in the Ocean State, including Ximedica, Rubius Therapeutics, EpiVax, the Rhode Island Quality Institute, the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health and the Visiting Nurses Home and Hospice.
“When you are facing an environment of disruption and uncertainty, you are not only having to manage your employees, but you also have to look at the operations of the organization and figure out where is the best return on investment at the current time,” Carol Malysz, executive director of RI Bio, told Rhode Island Inno. “How do you manage workers that are either going to be partially remote or totally remote or a combination of the two?”
RI Bio divided its leadership program into two different tracks, one for emerging leaders and one for advanced leaders.
Emerging leaders included new managers to their teams as well as those early on in their career who show potential, while advanced leaders had at least four years of experience and are key to the future of their companies. All participants were selected by their employers.
The course for emerging leaders focused on skills such as interpersonal communication and emotional intelligence in a multi-channel world, how to manage conflict and hold difficult conversations online, building team cohesion remotely and building a respectful workplace through diversity.
The course for advanced leaders focused on skills like working through challenges with a remote workforce, managing conflict online, strategic and critical thinking to drive business results during the pandemic and leading as a coach to build team productivity, engagement and accountability.
Malysz said remote work proved to be a huge challenge for most employees, whether that was due to anxiety from being at home all the time, balancing child care or a lack of adequate internet access.
That created a huge challenge for managers, especially when it came to engagement.
“When people are on Zoom for a long period of time, it’s difficult to keep their attention and to keep them focused when you are not physically together,” Malysz said. “It’s much more challenging to do that digitally, to show people this is the path forward and this is how we are going to get there and hang in and persevere during these times.”
Despite the speed of the transition, Malysz said the program proved to be a huge success. RI Bio’s team is gearing up to run another leadership program on remote training in 2021, bringing with them all the lessons they learned from this recent batch of graduates.
Malysz also said RI Bio is planning to conduct some basic life sciences training for people who lost their jobs during the pandemic to show them what a great career opportunity the sector can offer them.
“Life sciences is one of the top, fastest-growing parts of the economy in Rhode Island,” Malysz said. “We want to make people aware of the opportunities, and the innovations that are happening that they can take part of.”
Bram Berkowitz is a contributing writer for Rhode Island Inno.
