Background
Interdisciplinary research teams provide the opportunity to bridge differing ideas, methodologies and theoretical frameworks(2) and have the potential to produce high-impact research for the benefit of society(3).
Interdisciplinary research teams can encounter barriers to success, such as misaligned goals and expectations, ineffective communication processes and interpersonal conflict(4).
Team leaders play a key role in helping interdisciplinary research teams prevent and overcome collaboration challenges(5,6).
Establishing and maintaining key conditions7 that enable successful collaboration (Table 1) can increase the likelihood of teams achieving their goals.
A team charter can help establish and maintain enabling conditions(7) and has been shown to substantially improve team effectiveness, including achieving collective goals(8), engaging in more effective communication across disciplines(9) and fostering resiliency to unexpected disruptions(10).
Patient-oriented research (POR) teams are multi-disciplinary(11) and therefore closely resemble interdisciplinary teams. Adopting a team charter similar to an interdisciplinary team charter for a POR team provides comparable benefits.
References
This tool has been adapted from Dr. Dorothy R Carter’s Interdisciplinary Team Charter for the University of Georgia’s Leading Large Integrative Research Teams training series. Dr. Carter is Associate Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University.
Fortunato, S., Bergstrom, C. T., Borner, K., Evans, J. A., Helbing, D., Milojevic, S., . . . Barabasi, A. L. (2018). Science of science. Science, 359, Article eaao0185.
Uzzi, B., Mukherjee, S., Stringer, M., & Jones, B. (2013). Atypical combinations and scientific impact. Science, 342, 468-472.
Fiore, S. M. (2008). Interdisciplinarity as teamwork: How the science of teams can inform team science. Small Group Research, 39, 251-277.
Hall, K. L., Vogel, A. L., Huang, G. C., Serrano, K. J., Rice, E. L., Tsakraklides, S. P., & Fiore, S. M. (2018). The science of team science: A review of the empirical evidence and research gaps on collaboration in science. American Psychologist, 73, 532.
Zaccaro, S. J., Rittman, A. L., & Marks, M. A. (2001). Team leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 12, 451-483.
Mathieu, J. E., & Rapp, T. L. (2009). Laying the foundation for successful team performance trajectories: The roles of team charters and performance strategies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 90-103.
Courtright, S. H., McCormick, B. W., Mistry, S., & Wang, J. (2017). Quality charters or quality members? A control theory perspective on team charters and team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102, 1462-1470.
Asencio, R., Carter, D. R., DeChurch, L. A., Zaccaro, S. J., & Fiore, S. M. (2012). Charting a course for collaboration: a multiteam perspective. Translational Behavioral Medicine, 2, 487-494.
Sverdrup, T. E., Schei, V., & Tjølsen, Ø. A. (2017). Expecting the unexpected: Using team charters to handle disruptions and facilitate team performance. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 21, 53-59.
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2017). Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research. Retrieved from http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/41204.html
Table 1: Six “enabling conditions” to support team performance.
1. Real Team
Real work teams are intact social systems whose members work together to achieve a common purpose. They have clear boundaries that distinguish members from non-members. They work interdependently to generate a product for which members have collective accountability. They have at least moderate stability, which gives members time to learn how to work well together.
2. Compelling Purpose
A compelling purpose energizes team members, orients them toward their collective objective and fully engages their talents. Purpose has high priority when establishing a team because so many other design decisions depend on it – how the team is structured, the kinds of organizational supports that are needed and the type of coaching that will be most helpful.
3. Right People
Well-composed teams have the right number and mix of members, each of whom has both task expertise and skill in working collaboratively with others. They are as small and diverse as possible – large teams and excessive homogeneity of membership can compromise teams that are otherwise well designed.
4. Clear Norms of Conduct
Norms of conduct specify what behaviours are, and are not, acceptable in a team. Having clear, well-enforced norms greatly reduces the amount of time a team must spend actively managing behaviour. The best norms promote continuous scanning of the performance situation and the deployment of work strategies that are well tuned to the special features of the team’s task and situation.
5. Supportive Organizational Context
Having the material resources needed to carry out the work is, of course, essential. But beyond that, team performance is facilitated when:
The reward system provides recognition and positive outcomes for excellent team performance
The information system provides the team with the data and the information-processing tools members need to plan and execute their work
The organization’s educational system makes available to the team any technical or educational assistance members may require
6. Team-Focused Coaching
Competent and well-timed team coaching (by the team leader and/or an outside coach) can help a team minimize its exposure to process losses and increase the chances it will operate in ways that generate synergistic process gains. However, even highly competent coaching is likely to be futile when the other enabling conditions are not in place, or when the team is not at a stage of its life cycle when members are ready to receive it. This is why coaching, as important as it can be in fostering competent teamwork, comes last in the list of enabling conditions.