Much of lab management is ensuring that the lab delivers the technical work properly. The first two courses of this track emphasize the lab manager’s role in ensuring that the lab meets its quality and safety responsibilities. The Quality Assurance course will teach lab managers the fundamentals of a lab quality program to ensure accurate output, and the Safety course will ensure the lab manager has the knowledge to create and sustain an effective safety program to keep staff healthy and whole. All labs need the equipment and instruments required to execute the science. The Asset Management course will help lab managers develop effective processes to obtain equipment, keep it running, and when to retire it. The Effectively Advocating For The Lab course will help lab managers differentiate between needs and wants, and improve their process to win support for investment in the lab. Finally, the Metrics and Productivity course will help lab managers use the data within the lab to ensure the operational objectives are met, and to recognize how to improve lab productivity, when needed.

Strong leadership provides a foundation to build a successful culture for the lab that enables staff to deliver the lab’s mission. The Creating an Environment of Success course shows lab managers how to use their leadership skills to ensure that the lab provides a supportive community to drive success. Within this supportive environment, the lab manager needs to provide for the basic needs of the individual staff members. The Employee Engagement course will help lab managers understand the benefits of engagement and how to accomplish it. Since a large portion of leadership is dealing with the people and the issues that can arise between people, the next three courses focus on different aspects of people interactions. The Personality Types course will demonstrate the range of different healthy personalities, how that diversity is beneficial to the lab, and how to recognize and address issues driven by different perspectives in the lab. The Positive Communication course will teach lab managers the benefits of using positive communication skills to better deliver their messages and build stronger relationships with staff. The Conflict Prevention and Resolution course will help lab managers identify the sources of conflict and how to address these situations with grace and confidence.