The 'Welcome Letter': A Useful Tool for Laboratories and Teams.

The ability to clearly set expectations is an important leadership characteristic. However it is very common for individuals heading up research laboratories or scientific collaborations to struggle with, or not identify the advantages of, explicitly communicating what they expect of the people working in their lab or participating on their team, not to mention what the participants can expect in return. Here we describe a 'Welcome Letter' as a tool that can be used in the scientific setting to effectively create a framework for working relationships and serve as a scaffold for building trust. The 'Welcome Letter' enables the lab leader to articulate expectations prior to incorporating new members into the group. Scientific teams can use the letter in much the same way, crafting it together to develop a shared vision for the functioning of the collaboration and once crafted, sharing it with new team members.