For all science career paths, being able to explain yourself and the value of your work is an invaluable skill. Funding our research is vital to keeping the lab running and grant/proposal writing is the responsibility of the entire lab. My lab members and I collaborate together to write grants and proposals to fund themselves, to fund lab research and equipment, and to request use of scientific facilities outside of UCSF. There are resources on the internal website to assist with this.
Talk about your work openly. Share early. A key component to information transparency is getting it out there. People should present their work at conferences as they are great ways to communicate our results and get other people excited about our work. Conferences are important to build your network as well as your science communication skills. I think everyone should attend 1-2 conferences a year. I encourage people to charge lab-related travel expenses to the lab. Your time is valuable; consider this when booking flights and ground transportation.
This development of this compact was guided by similar compacts and philosophies of several labs, see links.
Matreyek Lab, Case Western Reserve University
Syed Lab, University of Minnesota
Heemstra Lab, Emory University
Mentoring resources, University of Wisconsin-Madison ICTR
Moghe Lab, Cornell