By Aislynn Taggart, Head of Technical Services – Research Labs Services, College of Science and Engineering.
This blog post is part of the Research Professional Staff Network’s 2026 Conference.
Behind every successful research project is a team of technical professionals. They are the teams who enable research to happen. Recently I had the opportunity to discuss this further at the RPSN network conference with colleagues who provided valuable insights into the theme and topic.
My reflections from our journey in College of Science and Engineering Technical Services and our experience of building and leading a new technical team dynamic is however not focused on traditional organisational structures or operational models. Technicians spend a lot of their time discussing research, teaching, facilities, equipment and infrastructure and I have come to realise that the most important thing we’ve been trying to build over the last couple of years is not anything listed above, it is a community of technical specialists.
In this post I share 5 (among many) of the lessons I have learned from both being a research technician and subsequently leading and working with a connected technical services community. Each of the five lessons are framed around the increasingly complex research environment, that technical services are increasingly diverse, and traditional structures don’t automatically create teams.
Before I joined the team, the Director of Technical Services for the College of Science and Engineering examined the skills and responsibilities of all our technical staff to understand the connections between individuals and small groups of shared competences. Once the teams were established and our leadership team appointed, we were then challenged with the reality of starting with a new structure, this included different identities, different priorities, growing expectations and supporting different disciplines spread across different schools with local prioritises. This became our starting point to lead an interdisciplinary technical team and build our technical community.
One of our focus points for our Research technical team is the complexity of research and its success, therefore our focus moved to communication norms, effective collaboration and collective leadership. The first lesson is that is it how a team functions that matters. That our value is not simply just a collection of expertise but how that expertise connects. One of the ways we approached this with our Technical Services Managers is producing Strategic Review Reports for each of our teams. Covering KPIs, objectives, roles, dynamics and development plans for our teams. These covered where are we now and, more importantly, where we wanted to be. This was perhaps the most strategic act to take as a leadership team because you are starting by visualising your service like an ecosystem.
Lesson two is that connection begins when people feel seen and valued. The focus shifts to connectivity, resilience and adaptability. Technical Staff engaging in team activities such as contributing at meetings, leading the agenda, having ownership of actions, volunteering for projects, representing the services at showcase or conference events and mentoring colleagues sends a message that their expertise matters. Once your team feel seen as part of a collective ecosystem, they are much more likely to engage with wider team activity.
Which leads into lesson three, professional identity matters. Technical professionals are essential contributors to research and innovation and that visibility and recognition improves our research culture. We’ve learned that colleagues contribute more readily to a team when they feel recognised as part of it. Each member of the team actively engages and is encouraged to engage in national technician initiatives, including the UK Institute for Technical Skills & Strategy (ITSS) and the Technician Commitment, while also contributing to internal events such as the university’s Technical Conference through posters, hosting and panel participation. We also support cross-organisational engagement at the university by welcoming staff to knowledge-sharing events and facility visits, such as our recent SUREC (Centre for the Isotopes Sciences) visit, fostering collaboration and the exchange of best practice internally.
The fourth lesson is that trust grows through shared experiences. Trust comes from solving problems collaboratively and embracing innovation and the shared research support experience. This is where the impact can happen. An example would be recruitment: the common assumption being that recruitment fills vacancies, but as a leader the perspective is more than this, recruitment shapes culture. To build the culture we want, we use cross school/discipline panels, focusing on questions such as: will the candidate collaborate? Will they share their expertise? And, will they contribute to our wider service? This is a leadership insight that we should all recognise as being beneficial to a wider team dynamic by focusing on building trust through shared experiences and not being dependent on the passage of time to build this for you – which often does not work. This is also applicable across lots of leadership tasks, service redesign, budget pressure and staffing challenges, often then the strong collaborations emerge when working together on the difficult problems.
Much like trust being built deliberately, the final and fifth lesson is building a ‘community culture’. This is especially relevant to supporting research labs. Previously, many technicians identified primarily with their laboratory, workshop, facility or school. Location was – and still is – a part of identity and culture. In our new model, we want to recognise the institutional knowledge technicians carry related to locations and labs while at the same time creating a common identity across the college. This could look like someone from one school helping solve a problem in another school because they’re part of the same professional community or stretching further to an organisational level where our research services support the Centre for cEllular MicroenvIroment (CEMI) located in The Advanced Research Centre alongside a cross-college collaboration supporting labs in both the College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences and the College of Science and Engineering. This is the biggest leadership lesson in building a community culture; to engage and build working relationships that connect across the teams. This is created through hundreds of small decisions. The things that shape culture are surprisingly ordinary for example who is invited and involved to conversations and projects, what forms recognition takes in your teams, and what the development opportunities are on offer.
So, what makes the biggest difference? PI/Research groups are visible and buildings and equipment are visible, and technical professionals deserve the same. Visibility creates belonging and engagement, and this engagement creates better research support. Our aim as leaders is to create opportunities for technical staff. For them to lead initiatives rather than simply implementing them changes the message from a team that needs to be managed to a team that is leading and taking ownership. Research is measured in papers, grants and discoveries. But behind and included in every one of those outcomes is a team of skilled collegues who chose to share their expertise, support one another and work towards something bigger than themselves. That’s the community of Technical Service Managers and Technical Staff, I have the privilege of leading, and that’s the kind of research culture I hope we continue to build because when technical professionals feel connected, valued and empowered, it accelerates their ability to support research.
