The lab lights are still on at 9 p.m. again. Someone’s running an overnight experiment, another is writing up results before a grant deadline, and someone else is fielding emails from three time zones away. So how can science leaders create a healthier work-life balance?
If you work in marine science or any other research field, this scene may feel uncomfortably familiar. In many scientific workplaces, long hours are not just tolerated, they’re quietly worn as a badge of honour.
And yet, as more scientists step into leadership roles, the tension between relentless output and sustainable working cultures is becoming impossible to ignore. Creating a healthier work-life balance isn’t just about individuals setting firmer boundaries. It’s about leaders shaping a culture where work-life balance is genuinely valued.
This is where science leadership begins to intersect with behavioural science and systems thinking in powerful ways.
The Culture of Overwork in Science
Many scientists are promoted into leadership because of their technical expertise, not because they’ve been trained in people management. That’s especially true in research institutes, labs, and marine science organisations, where success is often measured in papers, citations, or funding milestones.
The result? A culture that subtly rewards overwork.
Psychological safety, a concept developed by Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson, tells us that people do their best work when they feel safe to speak up without fear of negative consequences. But if the culture signals that leaving on time equals a lack of commitment, people stop speaking up. They stop asking for flexibility. Over time, burnout quietly takes root.
This is not a “soft” issue. Chronic overwork has measurable effects on cognitive performance, team dynamics, and innovation. Leaders who model healthy boundaries are not just being kind, they’re enabling their teams to sustain high-quality work over the long term.
Leadership Is More Than Technical Excellence
For many mid-career or senior scientists, leadership can feel like stepping into another discipline entirely. Suddenly, it’s not about your data. It’s about people.
This is where leadership coaching in science can be transformative. It helps leaders shift from “managing the work” to shaping the system in which work happens. That includes setting expectations, modelling behaviours, and creating space for conversations that might not appear on any Gantt chart.
Organisations like Google have famously studied what makes effective teams. Their Project Aristotle found psychological safety to be the single most important factor, not IQ, not technical brilliance. Scientists are no exception. When leaders show that rest and reflection are valued, it gives everyone permission to follow suit.
Frances Arnold and Rethinking Leadership Norms
Dr. Frances Arnold, a Nobel Prize-winning chemical engineer, is often cited not only for her pioneering work in directed evolution but also for her commitment to leading in a human-centred way. In interviews, Arnold has spoken candidly about how she structured her lab to make space for people’s lives beyond work, including her own responsibilities as a single parent.
Rather than romanticising exhaustion as a sign of scientific dedication, Arnold advocated for doing great science without burning out. Her leadership style showed that excellence and balance aren’t opposites, they’re mutually reinforcing. By creating an environment where scientists could thrive as whole people, not just as researchers, she built a lab culture renowned for both creativity and resilience.
Practical Ways to Foster Work-Life Balance as a Science Leader
Creating a supportive culture around work-life balance isn’t a one-off initiative. It’s an ongoing leadership practice. Some practical starting points include:
- Model the behaviour you want to see. If you send emails at midnight, people assume that’s the expectation.
- Make it discussable. Regular team conversations about work-life balance create shared language, not silent assumptions.
- Acknowledge complexity. Scientific work is unpredictable. Building in flexibility, rather than rigid rules, often works better.
- Reward sustainable work, not just heroic effort. Publicly celebrating smart, efficient collaboration can shift cultural norms over time.
- Develop your leadership practice. Coaching can provide reflective space to navigate the messy, human side of leadership with clarity and confidence.
For many leaders, these steps are part of a longer process of sensemaking, understanding how multiple forces interact in complex systems. Stanford research on leadership development suggests that sustained change comes not from one-time training, but from ongoing reflection and peer learning.
Why Leadership Coaching Matters
This is precisely why leadership coaching has become such a valuable tool for senior scientists. It’s not about learning “management tricks.” It’s about understanding how your leadership shapes the environment around you, and how small shifts in your behaviour can ripple across entire teams.
At Barefoot Thinking, our coaching programmes are designed to support scientists as they navigate this transition.
We work with leaders who want to create meaningful impact without burning themselves or their teams out.
A Culture That Sustains Science
Science is, by its nature, long-term work. Whether you’re mapping ocean ecosystems or advancing new technologies, you need teams that can sustain energy and creativity for years, not just grant cycles.
Creating a culture that supports work-life balance isn’t a luxury. It’s a leadership responsibility. When senior scientists model balance, they don’t just help individuals, they make the entire system more resilient.
If this resonates with your own leadership journey, consider taking a moment to reflect on the culture you’re shaping around you. And if you’d like support in that reflection, you can learn more about leadership coaching in science or about our approach.
