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Building and managing a research team

Building your team, what is a research team.

What constitutes a research team in one department or institution might be described elsewhere as a research group, research centre, research unit or research institute. Regardless of the terminology used, the key characteristic of a research team is that it comprises a group of people working together in a committed way towards a common research goal.

Research team diversity

There are many different configurations of research teams in academia and boundaries can be 'fuzzy'. They may comprise co-investigators, fractional or pooled staff, technical and clerical staff and postgraduate research students. There may also be inter- and intra-institutional dimensions and increasingly international ones; some team members' contributions may well be largely virtual, via email, phone or videoconference.

Also, team members may have different disciplinary backgrounds, different motivations and aspirations, and different cultural backgrounds. Over time, team members' roles may change from being core (fully dedicated to the research goal) to peripheral (committed to this research goal, but also working in one or more other teams), and vice-versa.

Assessing the balance and composition of your team. 

Ideally, the balance and composition of the team in terms of skills, expertise and other contributions will be appropriate to achieve the team's objectives, i.e. for the  research goal the team is working towards. The research team leader needs to be confident that team members have, or can develop, the necessary skills and knowledge for the research in hand, and you will make recruitment decisions on that basis.

There is also another perspective on the effective team which it is good to consider. In addition to knowledge, experience and skills individuals have different behavioural traits or characteristics they bring to the way they carry out their work and these can be aligned to particular roles in the team: some are very good at seeing a big picture, others very good at detailed work. Some are very oriented towards action - good at just getting things done; others are natural communicators and networkers. The need for these different roles will emerge at different times and it is worth considering the composition of your team to ensure you have a balance of strengths. 

To find out more about specific team roles and the research by Meredith Belbin on which they are based, see the section further down this page. 

Managing your team

Your responsibilities as a manager of the group.

These are the responsibilities identified in Adair's action-centred leadership model :

• establish, agree and communicate standards of performance and behaviour
• establish style, culture, approach of the group - soft skill elements
• monitor and maintain discipline, ethics, integrity and focus on objectives
• anticipate and resolve group conflict, struggles or disagreements
• assess and change as necessary the balance and composition of the group
• develop team-working, cooperation, morale and team-spirit
• develop the collective maturity and capability of the group - progressively increase group freedom and authority
• encourage the team towards objectives and aims - motivate the group and provide a collective sense of purpose
• identify, develop and agree team- and project-leadership roles within group
• enable, facilitate and ensure effective internal and external group communications
• identify and meet group training needs
• give feedback to the group on overall progress; consult with, and seek feedback and input from the group.

Team  roles and development

A research team consists of people working together in a committed way towards a common research goal. Teams, like individuals and organisations mature and develop and have a fairly clearly defined growth cycle. Bruce Tuckman's 1965 four-stage model explains this cycle. It may be helpful  to reflect on your team's current stage of development  in order to identify relevant approaches to leadership and management. In addition to understanding the development of your team over time, having an understanding of the preferred ‘team roles', the characteristics and expected social behaviour, of individual team members, including the team leader, will help ensure that the team performs effectively together. Using team role or individual profiling tools can offer insights into building and maintaining an effective team, but team role analysis is most useful if all members evaluate their own and others' preferred roles, whichever tools are chosen.

There are a number of team role and individual profile tools available and your institution's staff development department or equivalent may have registered practitioners in one or more of these who can help you and your team understand your preferred team roles or working styles.

In the 1970s, Meredith Belbin and colleagues at the Henley Management College identified nine team roles, based on long-term psychometric tests and studies of business teams. Belbin defined team roles as "a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way". The resulting role definitions fall into three categories, each with strengths and allowable weaknesses, and have been used widely in practice for team development in the intervening decades. Further research by Belbin has led to the addition of a tenth ‘Specialist' role in recent years. Watch this short introduction to the work of Belbin , or read about the team roles.

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Cultivating an Effective Research Team Through Application of Team Science Principles

Shirley L.T. Helm, MS, CCRP Senior Administrator for Network Capacity & Workforce Strategies

C. Kenneth & Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research

Virginia Commonwealth University

Abstract: The practice of team science allows clinical research professionals to draw from theory-driven principles to build an effective and efficient research team. Inherent in these principles are recognizing team member differences and welcoming diversity in an effort to integrate knowledge to solve complex problems. This article describes the basics of team science and how it can be applied to creating a highly-productive research team across the study continuum, including research administrators, budget developers, investigators, and research coordinators. The development of mutual trust, a shared vision, and open communication are crucial elements of a successful research team and research project. A case study illustrates the team science approach.

Introduction

Each research team is a community that requires trust, understanding, listening, and engagement. Stokols, Hall, Taylor, Moser, & Syme said that:

“There are many types of research teams, each one as dynamic as its team members. Research teams may comprise investigators from the same or different fields. Research teams also vary by size, organizational complexity, and geographic scope, ranging from as few as two individuals working together to a vast network of interdependent researchers across many institutions. Research teams have diverse goals spanning scientific discovery, training, clinical translation, public health, and health policy.” 1 1 Stokols D, Hall KL, Taylor BK, Moser RP. The science of team science: overview of the field and introduction to the supplement. Am J Prev Med. 2008 Aug;35(2 Suppl):S77-89. Accessed 8/10/20.

Team science arose from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, which fund the work of researchers attempting to solve some of the most complex problems that require a multi-disciplinary approach, such as childhood obesity. 2 Team science is bringing in elements from various disciplines to solve these major problems. 3, 4 This article covers the intersection of team science with effective operationalizing of research teams and how teaming principles can be applied to the functioning of research teams.

Salas and colleagues state that, “a team consists of two or more individuals, who have specific roles, perform interdependent tasks, are adaptable, and share a common goal. . . team members must possess individual and team Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes ….” 5 Great teams have a plan for how people act and work together. There are three elements that must be aligned to ensure success: the individual, the team, and the task. Individuals have their own goals. These goals must align, and not compete with, goals of other individuals and team goals. Task goals are the nuts and bolts of clinical research. Like individuals, the team has an identity. It is necessary to provide feedback both as a team and as individuals.

In a typical clinical research team, the clinical investigator is at the center surrounded by the clinical research coordinators. The coordinator is the person who makes the team function. Other members of the typical clinical research team are:

· Research participant/family

· Financial/administrative staff

· Regulatory body (institutional review board)

· Study staff

· Ancillary services such as radiology or pathology

· Sponsor/monitor.

The Teaming Principles

Bruce Tuckman developed the teaming principles in 1965 and revised them in 1977 (Table 1). 6 Using the teaming principles is not a linear process. These principles start with establishing the team. The team leader does not have to establish the team. Any team member can use teaming principles to provide a framework and structure and systematically determine what the project needs. Storming is establishing roles and responsibilities, communications, and processes. The storming phase, when everybody has been brought together and is on board with the same goal, is a honeymoon period.

Norming is the heavy lifting of the team’s work. This involves working together effectively and efficiently. Team members must develop trust and comfort with each other. Performing focuses on working together efficiently, and satisfaction for team members and the research participants and their families.

Tuckman added adjourning or transforming to the teaming principles in 1977. The team might end or start working on a new project (study) with a new shared goal. Adjourning or transforming involves determining which processes can be transferred from one research study to another research study.

While the teaming principles seem intuitive and like common sense, people are not raised to be fully cooperative. Using the teaming principles provides framework and structure and takes the emotion out of teamwork. The teaming principles empower team members and provide the structure that is necessary for teams, which are constantly evolving and changing.

The shared goal at the center of the teaming principles provides a sense of purpose. This provides commitment, responsibility, and accountability, along with a clear understanding of roles, responsibilities, competencies, expectations, and contributions. In Dare to lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts, Brené Brown coined the phrase, “clear is kind, unclear is unkind.” 7 It is extremely important to define roles and ensure that each team member knows what the other team members are doing. This prevents duplication of effort and ensures that tasks do not fall through the cracks.

How to Use Teaming Principles

Table 2 briefly describes each of the five teaming principles. Forming begins with gathering the team members and involves determining who is needed on the team to ensure success. Each team member must be valued. The team may vary depending upon the study, project, and timelines. During the research study, team members may enter and exit from the team. Forming the team may mean working across boundaries with people and departments that team members do not know. It is also necessary to establish the required competencies and knowledge, skills, and attitudes of team members, and to recognize and celebrate differences. The team must have a shared goal and vision.

Storming the team involves establishing roles, responsibilities, and tasks. This includes determining who has the required competencies to perform tasks such as completing pre-screening logs or consenting research participants. Also, storming involves defining processes, including communication pathways and expectations. Simply sending an email is not an effective way to communicate. Team members need to know whether an email is providing information or requires a response. Expectations for responding to emails should be described and agreed upon by all team members. Emails might be color coded to show whether an email is informational or requires a response. If clinical research sites utilize a clinical trial management system, the process for updating it must be determined and clearly communicated.

Norming is how team members work together. The shared goal is re-visited often under norming. Team members are mutually dependent upon each other and must meet their commitments and established deadlines.

Trust lies at the heart of the team. Building trust takes work and does not come naturally. It is helpful to understand that there are several types of trust. Identity-based trust is based on personal understanding and is usually seen in relationships between partners, spouses, siblings, or best friends. This type of trust does not usually occur in the workplace.

Workplace trust resides in calculus-based trust and competence-based trust. Calculus-based trust is about keeping commitments, meeting deadlines, and meeting expectations. There are some people who can be counted upon to always do what they are supposed to do. These people have earned calculus-based trust. Competence-based trust is confidence in another person’s skills or competencies.

Swift trust is immediate and necessary during extreme situations where there is not time to develop deeper connections with individuals. It relies on personal experiences, stereotypes, and biases. Some people are naturally more trusting than other people.

The teaming principle of performing involves satisfaction in progressing toward the goal and being proactive in preventing issues from arising. There will always be issues; however, the most effective teams learn from issues and have processes for resolving them. This makes a team efficient. Performing also includes revisiting the shared goal, embracing diversity and differences, and continually improving knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

Adjourning/transforming is the completion of tasks and identification of lessons learned. Team members need to circle back and determine what worked well and can be applied to the next study. Celebrating successes and acknowledging the contributions of all team members are also an aspect of adjourning/transforming. When the author was managing a core laboratory, she performed tests for an oncology investigator’s study. Months later, the investigator gave her a thank-you card for her contribution to the study that was unexpected but greatly appreciated.

Strengthening the Team

Without a framework and structure, team dysfunction is likely. In The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable , Lencioni presented team dysfunction as a pyramid. 8 Absence of trust is at the bottom of the pyramid. Absence of trust results in questioning everything people do and results in team members unwilling to share or to ask for help. Without asking for help, mistakes will be made.

Absence of trust leads to a fear of conflict and an inability to resolve issues or improve efficiencies. Fear of conflict leads to lack of commitment. Doubt prevails, team members lack confidence, and the goal is diminished. Team dysfunction leads to avoidance of accountability. Follow-through is poor and mediocrity is accepted, breeding resentment among team members.

At the top of the team dysfunction pyramid is inattention to results, which leads to loss of team members and future research studies. There are some teams where people are constantly moving in and out. This is

a symptom of team dysfunction. Loss of respect and reputation of the team, department, and individual team members is another consequence of inattention to results.

Table 3 highlights ways to strengthen the team. Recognizing the strengths of each team member starts with self-awareness. For example, the author had to understand her communication and learning style and how this is similar to and different than that of other team members. The VIA Institute of Character offers a free assessment that could be a fun activity for research teams.

There is no one road to self-awareness; however, each team member must recognize that other team members do not necessarily share their understanding or perceptions. There are many options and possibilities for how others may understand or perceive an experience, none of which are right or wrong. Each team member should appreciate that different understanding and perceptions of experiences do not have to threaten their identity or relationships.

One quick way to show this is through ambiguous images, in which people see entirely different things in the same image. Once they are aware that there are different ways of seeing the same thing, they can appreciate other perspectives. As Pablo Picasso said, “There is only one way to see things, until someone shows us how to look at them with different eyes.” Strengthening the team requires embracing demographic, educational, and personality diversity.

Open and honest communication should be encouraged. Team members should give and receive constructive feedback. This is a learned skill that is often difficult. However, tools are available for assessing communication and listening styles. Many institutions and human resource departments utilize the Crucial Conversations program by VitalSmarts, LC. One member of the team can participate in Crucial Conversations and bring the knowledge back to the team. Communication must include managing conflict and an awareness of cultural differences.

Opportunities for education and training to acquire new knowledge, skills, and attitudes/competencies should be provided. Education may be transportable across teams or may be study specific. Team members should be cross-trained, which may be accomplished through several methods. Positional clarification is where one person is told what another person is doing, which is primarily for information transfer. Positional modeling is receiving the information but also shadowing the other person while they perform the task/skill. Positional rotation is performing another person’s job. This is best for back-up positions, which are necessary for research teams.

Team success is facilitated by recognizing individual successes and commitment to shared goals. Recognizing individual successes reflects team success. For example, if a team member becomes a certified clinical research professional, this is a success for both the individual and the team. Also, the team must have a shared understanding of the goal or purpose. This shared goal must be linked to the individual goal of each team member.

Teamwork needs constant attention and annual evaluations, and team meetings are not sufficient. It is extremely important to regularly check in with people. Team members can check in with other team members simply to ask how things are going. Misunderstandings should be dealt with immediately. Clear direction, accountability, and rewards are necessary.

The author has a bell on her desk that team members ring when they have a success. This sounds cheesy, however, it is fun and team members really enjoy it. For example, when the author finished her slides for the SOCRA annual conference on time, she rang the bell. Her team members asked what happened, and they had a mini celebration. This small item helps to build and strengthen a team with small successes leading to larger successes.

Case Study Using the Teaming Principles

The following case study illustrates the application of the teaming principles to a team involving four major players. Olivia is a clinician with three clinic days and teaching duties who is a sought-after speaker for international conferences. In addition, Olivia is the clinical investigator for four clinical research studies: two studies are active, one is in long-term follow up, and one is in closeout. The studies are a blend of industry sponsored and investigator initiated. Olivia is also a co-clinical investigator on two additional studies and relies heavily upon Ansh for coordination of all studies and management of two research assistants.

Ansh is the lead research coordinator with seven years of experience in critical care research. Ansh is very detail-oriented and takes pride in error-free case report forms, coordinates with external monitors, and manages two research assistants as well as the day-to-day operations of Olivia’s research studies.

Bernita is a research assistant with six months of work experience in obtaining informed consents, scheduling study visits, and coordinating with ancillary services. Bernita is responsible for contacting participants for scheduled visits and providing participant payments. Bernita is developing coordinating skills, seeks out training and educational opportunities, and is a real people person.

Delroy is the regulatory affairs specialist for the Critical Care Department, which consists of eight clinicians (not all of whom are engaged in research). Studies include one multi-site clinical trial for which the clinical research site is the coordinating site, and one faculty-held Investigational New Drug/Investigational Device Exemption study. The department’s studies are a mixture of federal- and industry-funded studies. Delroy has been with the department for five years in this capacity. However, Delroy’s coworker recently and unexpectedly took family and medical leave, leaving Delroy to manage all regulatory issues for the department. Also, the department chair recently made growing the department’s industry-sponsored study portfolio a priority.

Olivia has received an invitation to be added as a clinical research site for a highly sought-after ongoing Phase II, multisite, industry-sponsored study comparing two asthma medications in an adult outpatient setting. The study uses a central institutional review board (IRB) and has competitive enrollment. It will require the following ancillary services: investigational pharmacy, radiology, and outpatient asthma clinic nursing. For the purposes of this case study, all contracts have been negotiated and all of the regulatory documents are available (e.g., FDA Form 1572, informed consent template, and the current protocol). The institution utilizes a clinical trial management system.

Oliva shares the study information and study enrollment goals with Ansh with the charge of getting this study activated and enrolling within 40 days. What are the potential barriers that might affect this outcome? One potential barrier to the study activation timeline is Delroy’s heavy workload. To ensure that the timeline is met, Ansh might contact Delroy and explain the situation, asking what Ansh can do to help facilitate study start-up to ensure that the timeline is met. Ansh should be clear in determining what Delroy needs for study activation, the deadlines for each item, and assist in facilitation of communicating to other members of the study activation team (e.g., ancillary services, IRB) what is needed. Priorities include the regulatory work and staff training. Barriers include managing the regulatory issues on time. This might be a good opportunity to connect with Bernita for providing Delroy some assistance, as Bernita is knowledgeable and eager to acquire additional skills and training. The shared goal of starting the study on time should be shared with all team members in order to meet the 40 day study activation and enrollment goal.

Nuggets for Success as a Team Member or Leader

Members of a research team must know the other team members and available resources. They need to know who is needed for a particular study. This will change during studies and across studies. Roles and responsibilities among the broader team should be identified.

Table 4 outlines nuggets of success as a team member or leader, starting with using the framework of the teaming principles. Next, the team member or leader should build and create networks for knowledge and access. A knowledge network enables team members to know who to contact to provide an answer to specific questions. Each team member is a knowledge network for someone else. Also, each team member should find a person who they admire to serve as a mentor, even informally.

Team members should take advantage of available training. LinkedIn has many free training programs, and the institution’s human resources department also offers training. Meeting times should be scheduled to set aside time for reflection. Team members should check in often with the team as a whole and individual team members, set realistic boundaries, and establish priorities. Team members should avoid making assumptions, and instead, communicate clearly and often. Other keys to team success are to be respectful and present, participate, and practice humanity.

This work was supported by CTSA award No. UL1TR002649 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent official views of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences or the National Institutes of Health.

Overview of the Teaming Principles

• Establish team (top-down and bottom-up)
• Establish roles and responsibilities, communications, and processes
• Working together effectively and efficiently
• Individuals develop trust and comfort
• Work together efficiently
• Focus on a shared vision
• Resolves issues
• Natural end:dissolution
• New project (study) with a new shared goal

Description of the Teaming Principles

• Team members may vary depending upon the study, project, and timelines
• Work across boundaries
• Appropriate competencies and knowledge, skills, and attitudes
• Recognize and celebrate differences
• Shared goal and vision
• Determining who has the competencies for specific study tasks
• Communication pathways and expectation
• Completing clinical trial management systems updates
• Revisit the shared goal often
• Requires mutual dependence
• Identity-based: personal understanding
• Calculus-based: keep commitments, meet deadlines, meet expectations
• Competence-based: confidence in skills, competencies of another
• Satisfaction in progressing toward goal
• Proactive in preventing issues from arising
• Revisit the shared goal
• Embrace diversity and differences
• Continuous improvement in knowledge, skills, and attitudes
• Completion of tasks
• Identify lessons learned
• Celebrate success and acknowledge the contributions of all
• Self-awareness and assessments
• Demographic
• Educational
• Personality
• Give and receive constructive feedback
• Acquire new knowledge, skills, and attitudes/competencies
• Cross-train
• Recognize individual success, which reflects team success
• Commit to shared goals

Nuggets of Success as a Team Member of Leader

• Use the teaming principles as a framework
• Build and create networks for knowledge and access
• Find a mentor
• Take advantage of training
• Schedule meeting times for reflection
• Check in with the team and team members
• Set boundaries and priorities
• Never make assumptions
• Be respectful and present
• Participate
• Practice humanity

1 Stokols D, Hall KL, Taylor BK, Moser RP. The science of team science: overview of the field and introduction to the supplement. Am J Prev Med. 2008 Aug;35(2 Suppl):S77-89. Accessed 8/10/20.

2 Bennett LM, Gadlin H, Marchand C. Team Collaboration Field Guide. Publication No. 18-7660, 2nd ed., National Institutes of Health; 2018. Accessed 8/10/20.

3 National Research Council. Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press; 2015. Accessed 8/10/20.

4 Teambuilding 1: How to build effective teams in healthcare. Nursing Times. Accessed 8/10/20.

5 Salas E, Dickinson TL, Converse SA. Toward an Understanding of Team Performance and Training. In: Swezey R W, Salas E, editors. Teams: Their Training and Performance. Norwood, NJ: Ablex; 1992. pp. 3–29.

6 Tuckman, BW, Jensen MA. Stages of small-group development revisited. Group and Organization Studies, 2. 1977: 419-427.

7 Brown B. Dare to lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts. New York: Random House, 2018.

8 Lencioni P. The five dysfunctions of a team: A leadership fable. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: 2002.

One thought on “Cultivating an Effective Research Team Through Application of Team Science Principles”

Hey there! I just finished reading your article on cultivating an effective research team through the application of team science principles, and I couldn’t help but drop a comment. First off, kudos to you for sharing such valuable insights. Your article was not only informative but also highly engaging, making it a pleasure to read.

I particularly resonated with your emphasis on the importance of clear communication and collaboration within research teams. It’s incredible how these seemingly simple principles can make such a significant difference in the success of a research project. Your practical tips on fostering trust and encouraging diversity of thought were spot-on. I’ve had my fair share of experiences in research teams, and I can attest that when everyone is on the same page and feels heard, the results are remarkable. Your article has given me a fresh perspective on how to approach team dynamics in my future research endeavors, and I’ll definitely be sharing these insights with my colleagues. Thanks again for sharing your wisdom! Looking forward to more of your articles in the future.

Keep up the fantastic work, and please continue to share your expertise. Your writing style is not only informative but also very relatable, making complex topics like team science principles easy to grasp. I’ll be eagerly awaiting your next piece. Until then, wishing you all the best in your research and writing endeavors! 😊📚

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Manage My Research Team

Categories:

• Award Management
• Regulatory Compliance

There are many ways to go about building a research team—some more effective than others. If you are charged with or are interested in building a research team, there are several considerations to keep in mind:

Bring together members with diverse backgrounds and experiences to promote mutual learning.

Make sure each person understands his or her roles, responsibilities, and contributions to the team’s goals.

As a leader, establish expectations for working together; as a participant, understand your contribution to the end goal.

Recognize that discussing team goals openly and honestly will be a dynamic process and will evolve over time.

Be prepared for disagreements and even conflicts, especially in the early stages of team formation.

Agree on processes for sharing data, establishing and sharing credit, and managing authorship immediately and over the course of the project.

Regularly consider new scientific perspectives and ideas related to the research. 

Source:  Collaboration and Team Science: A Field Guide 

The Field Guide  discusses:

Team Science 

Preparing Yourself for Team Science

Building a Research Team

Fostering Trust

Developing a Shared Vision

Communicating About Science

Sharing Recognition and Credit 

 Handling Conflict

Strengthening Team Dynamics 

Navigating and Leveraging Networks and Systems

Created: 11.27.2020

Updated: 04.11.2024

Roberts Academic Medicine Handbook pp 317–324 Cite as

How to Lead a Research Team

• Aimee-Noelle Swanson 2  
• First Online: 01 January 2020

1178 Accesses

Leadership. Organizational culture. Managing dynamic teams. Providing effective feedback. Did you miss this course in your advanced training? Is this the class that you slept through only to show up for the final exam – or was that really just a dream? You didn’t, and it was only a dream. Being an intentional leader and building the culture you want to maximize workflow and employee satisfaction is not something that is taught in graduate school. Very few institutions provide a didactic to scientists on how you build an effective organizational structure to deliver the best science possible. In academia, you are taught to think critically; to be a careful, well-reasoned scientist and clinician; and to approach problems with an objective eye, determine the root cause, and create impactful solutions. You are not taught how to be an effective leader, how to hire the right staff, how to engage teams in work during stressful periods, how to provide effective feedback to enhance performance, and how to build trust in a diverse team. However, you do have all of the tools that you need to do all of these things. You’ve been doing them for years and have seen them all around you. Now it’s just a matter of recognizing them for what they are and connecting with them in a way that serves your goals and objectives. That is the point of this chapter. In this chapter we will cover building an intentional organizational culture, being a thoughtful leader, and managing a research team so that with some foresight and effort, you can focus on your science while engaging your staff in meaningful, high-impact work as a team.

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Suggested Reading

These texts are valuable management and leadership tools for scientists. Consider these as key reference materials to set yourself up for success.

Google Scholar  

Allen D. Getting things done: the art of stress-free productivity, revised edition. New York: Penguin Books; 2015.

Barker K. At the Helm: leading your laboratory. 2nd ed. Cold Spring Harbor: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 2010.

Cohen CM, Cohen SL. Lab dynamics: management and leadership skills for scientists. 2nd ed. Cold Spring Harbor: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 2012.

The Harvard Business Review (HRB). 10 Must Reads book series covers a wide range of topics with terrific resources and references.

Making the right moves: a practical guide to scientific management for postdocs and new faculty. 2nd ed. Burroughs Wellcome Fund and Howard Hughes Medical Institute; 2006. https://www.hhmi.org/developing-scientists/making-right-moves .

Patterson K, Grenny J, McMillan R, Switzler A. Crucial conversations: tools for talking when stakes are high. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Education; 2011.

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Swanson, AN. (2020). How to Lead a Research Team. In: Roberts, L. (eds) Roberts Academic Medicine Handbook. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31957-1_34

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4-2 Working Collaboratively: Building a Research Team

Yusuf Yilmaz and Sandra Monteiro

Collaboration is critical to conducting good research and designing good education or innovations. In any discipline, it is a rare situation where an individual has all the knowledge, skills and perspectives required to identify a good idea and develop it to completion and dissemination (1,2). An individual cannot manage all tasks in an efficient or short amount of time.

Critically, health professions education is a rich, multidisciplinary environment that requires collaboration across diverse professions, epistemologies and identities. A scientist may not be able to appreciate the nuances of clinical practice if they do not collaborate to understand the key issues. A clinician educator may not have the capacity to translate all aspects of education science without the support of a researcher. Simply put, we all have gaps in our ability to understand the unique education challenges that we are interested in exploring and can rely on various kinds of experts to supplement our knowledge.

This form of collaboration can create a richer, more complete understanding, but can also be more efficient as experts are much faster than novices at handling tasks within their scope.

Key Points of the Chapter

By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:

• Describe the importance of teamwork for research
• Identify the priorities when setting up a new research team
• Recognize the challenges for collaboration with novel research teams or team members

Samir decided to talk to his supervisor about the challenge he perceived regarding getting such a diverse team to successfully coordinate their schedules and write together. She suggested that he apply his expert organizational skills to create the writing plan, but then involve the others on the team to complete some of the tasks. She also suggested that he take advantage of available online applications, like Google Docs and Microsoft Teams to create shared space for idea generation, without the need for synchronous meetings.

Deeper Dive into this Concept

Organization and clarity are key to the collaborative writing process. Whether you are writing collaboratively to produce an academic manuscript, or to design new learning objectives and activities for a new curriculum, there are some key principles that can help keep you on track.

First, it helps to identify a leader – not everyone can steer a ship all at the same time – so pick a captain who will be responsible for keeping everyone on task. It is also the leader’s responsibility to make sure there is a shared model of the goal, that everyone on the team understands how they can contribute to the goal and that everyone agrees on the key timeline and checkpoints. Although it can be a challenge managing multiple busy schedules, attempt to start with one synchronous group meeting to create a shared model of the goal. Online applications like Doodle (3) polls or When2meet (4) can be useful in achieving this goal. Also consider holding the meeting online in Zoom (5) or Microsoft Teams (6) as this will allow you to easily record the meeting discussion, which can be transcribed for future review by the group or individuals who could not attend.

Second, be clear on roles and authorship. Review the ICMJE authorship criteria so everyone understands the standards for authorship (7). For academic manuscripts, it is conventional to list all contributors’ names in the order of their level of contribution. The key author positions that are often important for those who write in academic medicine are: first author (the team leader), second (the second-in-command), and senior (the supervisor and/or mentor of the first author and/or the person responsible for a broader program of research). It helps to be clear on these positions at the start of a project, although circumstances may require flexibility over time. The first author is most likely to create the first draft or outline. Ideally, the first author is also the team leader, however this may not be the case for every team. Sometimes, the person elected to manage timelines and expectations is someone in the middle or the senior author.

Third, explain the writing process to everyone on the team and assign roles accordingly. It may seem like common sense, but all writing starts with the first and worst draft. The team members take turns editing it to a better version. Ideally, one person is responsible for the final edit in a consistent voice and style. Moreover, supplementary roles that may be required are a content expert – perhaps someone leading the field who can offer consultation. This person may already be on the team, or can be invited at a later stage of writing to consult. Because this consultant would not meet authorship criteria ( see ICMJE criteria ), they can be mentioned in the acknowledgments.

Fourth, collaborative writing can be highly efficient with the support of various online applications. A common application is Google Docs (8) which allows multiple team members to log in simultaneously, or asynchronously, to edit a single document. It is worth your time to learn how to track edits using the version history and make suggestions (i.e., tracking changes style of annotated suggestions). Google Docs also allow using third party citation managers. Zotero is one free and open source tool that fully integrates with Google Docs and provides citation management in a document (9). The table (4.2.1) below, taken from Yilmaz et al. identifies several online resources that can be used in an asynchronous fashion to facilitate collaborative writing, without having to schedule group meetings to write together (10).

Key Takeaways

In summary, when approaching a collaborative activity, whether research design, curriculum design or innovation, always be clear about individual and group expectations.

• Sharing – Create shared accessible material that helps everyone track progress and understand their role.
• Be Explicit – Identify key tasks and connect them explicitly with individuals and deadlines.
• Structure – Ensure that there is a transparent structure to your project. Whether you are building a research team or writing a paper, it is vital to spend time and effort making sure everyone on the team understands the goals, deadlines and their role within the team.
• Support – Encourage psychological safety within your team so that when team members encounter barriers or challenges they can ask for help. Establish checkpoints to make sure everyone can celebrate their progress or can ask for help with their tasks
• Flexibility – Be prepared to change the plan when necessary. As clear as the plan is at the beginning, there is always a chance that new data will lead you to reconsider your original goals or research questions.
• Walker DHT, Davis PR, Stevenson A. Coping with uncertainty and ambiguity through team collaboration in infrastructure projects. Int J Proj Manag. 2017;35(2):180-190. doi: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2016.11.001
• Bennett LM, Gadlin H. Collaboration and Team Science: From Theory to Practice. J Investig Med. 2012;60(5):768-775. doi:10.2310/JIM.0b013e318250871d
• Doodle. Doodle: Explore features for the world’s favorite scheduling tool. Accessed November 18, 2021. https://doodle.com/en/features/
• When2meet. When2meet. Accessed November 18, 2021. https://www.when2meet.com/
• Zoom. Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing. Zoom Video. Accessed March 31, 2020. https://zoom.us/
• Video Conferencing, Meetings, Calling | Microsoft Teams. Accessed November 18, 2021. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software
• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. ICMJE | Recommendations | Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors. Accessed March 25, 2021. http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html
• Google Docs: Free Online Document Editor | Google Workspace. Accessed November 18, 2021. https://www.google.ca/docs/about/
• Zotero | Your personal research assistant. Accessed May 1, 2020. https://www.zotero.org/
• Yilmaz Y, Gottlieb M, Calderone Haas MR, Thoma B, Chan TM. Remote Collaborative Writing A Guide to Writing within a Virtual Community of Practice.  Manuscript submitted.

Other suggested resources

1. MacPFD Google Docs Template for Academic Writing

The above hyperlink leads you to a template that you can use to kickstart your team’s writing. It has the ICMJE criteria listed as well as a grid for scaffolding your initial co-authorship discussions as well.

2. MacPFD Scholarly Secrets – Collaborative Writing – Part 1: Overview of Google docs & Zotero (38 mins)

2. MacPFD Scholarly Secrets – Collaborative Writing – Part 2: The Benefits of Collaborative Writing & Tips (35 mins)

3. MacPFD Scholarly Secrets – Collaborative Writing – Part 3: Timelines, Coordination & Outlines (15 mins)

About the authors

name: Yusuf Yilmaz

institution: McMaster University / Ege University

website: https://yilmazyusuf.com

Yusuf Yilmaz is a postdoctoral fellow ithin the Office of Continuing Professional Development and the McMaster Education Research, Innovation, and Theory (MERIT) program, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University. He is a researcher-lecturer in the Department of Medical Education at Ege University, Izmir, Turkey.

name: Sandra Monteiro

institution: McMaster University

Sandra Monteiro is an Associate Professor within the Department of Medicine, Division of Education and Innovation, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University. She holds a joint appointment within the Department of   Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact ,  Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University.

4-2 Working Collaboratively: Building a Research Team Copyright © 2022 by Yusuf Yilmaz and Sandra Monteiro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Research Process

Research Team Structure

• 4 minute read

Table of Contents

A scientific research team is a group of individuals, working to complete a research project successfully. When run well, the research team members work closely, and have clearly defined roles. Every team member should know their role, and how it plays into the project as a whole. Ultimately, the principal investigator is responsible for every aspect of the project.

In this article, we’ll review research team roles and responsibilities, and the typical structure of a scientific research team. If you are forming a research team, or are part of one, this information can help you ensure smooth operations and effective teamwork.

Team Members

A group of individuals working toward a common goal: that’s what a research team is all about. In this case, the shared goal between team members is the successful research, data analysis, publication and dissemination of meaningful findings. There are key roles that must be laid out BEFORE the project is started, and the “CEO” of the team, namely the Principal Investigator, must provide all the resources and training necessary for the team to successfully complete its mission.

Every research team is structured differently. However, there are five key roles in each scientific research team.

1. Principal Investigator (PI):

this is the person ultimately responsible for the research and overall project. Their role is to ensure that the team members have the information, resources and training they need to conduct the research. They are also the final decision maker on any issues related to the project. Some projects have more than one PI, so the designated individuals are known as Co-Principal Investigators.

PIs are also typically responsible for writing proposals and grant requests, and selecting the team members. They report to their employer, the funding organization, and other key stakeholders, including all legal as well as academic regulations. The final product of the research is the article, and the PI oversees the writing and publishing of articles to disseminate findings.

2. Project or Research Director:

This is the individual who is in charge of the day-to-day functions of the research project, including protocol for how research and data collection activities are completed. The Research Director works very closely with the Principal Investigator, and both (or all, if there are multiple PIs) report on the research.

Specifically, this individual designs all guidelines, refines and redirects any protocol as needed, acts as the manager of the team in regards to time and budget, and evaluates the progress of the project. The Research Director also makes sure that the project is in compliance with all guidelines, including federal and institutional review board regulations. They also usually assist the PI in writing the research articles related to the project, and report directly to the PI.

3. Project Coordinator or Research Associate:

This individual, or often multiple individuals, carry out the research and data collection, as directed by the Research Director and/or the Principal Investigator. But their role is to also evaluate and assess the project protocol, and suggest any changes that might be needed.

Project Coordinators or Research Associates also need to be monitoring any experiments regarding compliance with regulations and protocols, and they often help in reporting the research. They report to the Principal Investigator, Research Director, and sometimes the Statistician (see below).

4. Research Assistant:

This individual, or individuals, perform the day-to-day tasks of the project, including collecting data, maintaining equipment, ordering supplies, general clerical work, etc. Typically, the research assistant has the least amount of experience among the team members. Research Assistants usually report to the Research Associate/Project Coordinator, and sometimes the Statistician.

5. Statistician:

This is the individual who analyzes any data collected during the project. Sometimes they just analyze and report the data, and other times they are more involved in the organization and analysis of the research throughout the entire study. Their primary role is to make sure that the project produces reliable and valid data, and significant data via analysis methodology, sample size, etc. The Statistician reports both to the Principal Investigator and the Research Director.

Research teams may include people with different roles, such as clinical research specialists, interns, student researchers, lab technicians, grant administrators, and general administrative support staff. As mentioned, every role should be clearly defined by the team’s Principal Investigator. Obviously, the more complex the project, the more team members may be required. In such cases, it may be necessary to appoint several Principal Administrators and Research Directors to the research team.

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Despite busy schedules and pressing obligations group leaders should consider investing in development of efficient Life Science teams within their groups. The bigger the group the higher necessity for group-to-team transformation. When properly build, research teams are not only highly productive and cut lab running costs, but are also autonomous and self-directed. So, no need for a tight supervision.  In this video, I provide you with easy to understand information on team building process together with tips and strategy how to proceed in each phase of team maturation: forming, storming, norming, and performing. 

Tips to lead an effective research team  

(adopted from UC Berkeley, https://hrweb.berkeley.edu/guides/managing-hr)

The first rule is an obvious one: to lead a team effectively, you must first establish your leadership with each team member. Remember that the most effective team leaders build their relationships of trust and loyalty, rather than fear or the power of their positions.

• Consider each employee's ideas as valuable. Remember that there is no such thing as a stupid idea.
• Be aware of employees' unspoken feelings. Set an example to team members by being open with employees and sensitive to their moods and feelings.
• Act as a harmonizing influence. Look for chances to mediate and resolve minor disputes; point continually toward the team's higher goals.
• Be clear when communicating. Be careful to clarify directives.
• Encourage trust and cooperation among employees on your team. Remember that the relationships team members establish among themselves are every bit as important as those you establish with them. As the team begins to take shape, pay close attention to the ways in which team members work together and take steps to improve communication, cooperation, trust, and respect in those relationships.
• Encourage team members to share information. Emphasize the importance of each team member's contribution and demonstrate how all of their jobs operate together to move the entire team closer to its goal.
• Delegate problem-solving tasks to the team. Let the team work on creative solutions together.
• Facilitate communication. Remember that communication is the single most important factor in successful teamwork. Facilitating communication does not mean holding meetings all the time. Instead it means setting an example by remaining open to suggestions and concerns, by asking questions and offering help, and by doing everything you can to avoid confusion in your own communication.
• Establish team values and goals; evaluate team performance. Be sure to talk with members about the progress they are making toward established goals so that employees get a sense both of their success and of the challenges that lie ahead. Address teamwork in performance standards. Discuss with your team:
• What do we really care about in performing our job?
• What does the word success mean to this team?
• What actions can we take to live up to our stated values?
• Make sure that you have a clear idea of what you need to accomplish; that you know what your standards for success are going to be; that you have established clear time frames; and that team members understand their responsibilities.
• Use consensus. Set objectives, solve problems, and plan for action. While it takes much longer to establish consensus, this method ultimately provides better decisions and greater productivity because it secures every employee's commitment to all phases of the work.
• Set ground rules for the team. These are the norms that you and the team establish to ensure efficiency and success. They can be simple directives (Team members are to be punctual for meetings) or general guidelines (Every team member has the right to offer ideas and suggestions), but you should make sure that the team creates these ground rules by consensus and commits to them, both as a group and as individuals.
• Establish a method for arriving at a consensus. You may want to conduct open debate about the pros and cons of proposals, or establish research committees to investigate issues and deliver reports.
• Encourage listening and brainstorming. As supervisor, your first priority in creating consensus is to stimulate debate. Remember that employees are often afraid to disagree with one another and that this fear can lead your team to make mediocre decisions. When you encourage debate you inspire creativity and that's how you'll spur your team on to better results.
• Establish the parameters of consensus-building sessions. Be sensitive to the frustration that can mount when the team is not achieving consensus. At the outset of your meeting, establish time limits, and work with the team to achieve consensus within those parameters. Watch out for false consensus; if an agreement is struck too quickly, be careful to probe individual team members to discover their real feelings about the proposed solution.
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Five Tips to Build a Strong Research Team

Building a research team can seem like a daunting task. Bringing a group of people together who may not have collaborated before and who often represent different disciplines is a challenge that carries no assurance of success. However, with patience, proper preparation, and detailed expectations, a research team can emerge that will be productive for years.

“There’s not a magic recipe” for a successful research team, says Paul Whitney, associate vice president for international programs and director of the Health Equity Research Center at Washington State University. “But there are some common factors present in the species that thrive. If you have vegetable seeds to grow, you don’t just go out and throw them on bare ground. You prepare the bed. That’s how I think of building teams.” Determining those common factors and preparing for healthy growth doesn’t just happen. International educators with deep experience in team building identified five factors to keep in mind to put together a successful research team. 

Find the right mix of talent. 

“The most important thing for a really interdisciplinary team is that the people who come to the table have complementary skills around a similar talent,” says Whitney. “That really is the key to a research team taking off.” 

While personalities make a difference, Whitney says that those dynamics are not as big a deal as many people think. “There are certainly people who play well with others and others who don’t,” he says. “I don’t think that accounts as much as people

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• Open access
• Published: 14 January 2020

How to grow a successful – and happy – research team

• Kylie Ball   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2893-8415 1 &
• David Crawford 1  

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity volume  17 , Article number:  4 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Changing academic landscapes, including the increasing focus on performance rankings and metrics, are impacting universities globally, contributing to high-pressure environments and anxious academic staff. However, evidence and experience shows that fostering a high performing academic team need not be incompatible with staff happiness and wellbeing.

The changing academic landscape

Global academic rankings have become a key indicator of the success of universities. Ranking systems are used by universities to mark improvement over time and in comparison to other institutions, and as evidence of progress when requesting government funding. They are also used by consumers to evaluate higher education opportunities [ 9 ]. This intensified focus has led to pressure on universities to improve their performance and position in rankings tables [ 3 ].

Reputation and research citations account for the majority of the rankings. Advice on improving rankings has hence focused on strategies such as hiring research ‘stars’ and increasing research volume; that is, on strategies for growing research. Relatively little attention has focused on growing researchers. For example, a Times Higher Education list of 20 tips for improving rankings included “no pain no gain” (in making tenure decisions) as one tip, yet featured only two fleeting references to strategies focused on nurturing academics [ 4 ].

In addition to the increased pressures associated with achievement of research metrics and rankings, other expectations of academics have increased over the last decade. For example, the impact agenda demands research that makes a difference, that is engaged with industry, community or political partners. Such research requires new tasks, networks and skillsets for which many academics are not trained. At the same time, government funding for research and research staff has declined in many countries, including North America, the UK and Australia. The academic workforce has become increasingly characterised by short-term contracts, workforce casualisation and lack of longer-term job security and pathways. In some countries the sector has also been impacted by the rise of national assessments of research quality (e.g. through the UK Research Excellence Framework; the Excellence in Research for Australia Framework; or the Netherlands’ Standard Evaluation Protocol). The time required to both prepare and assess submissions for these exercises is substantial.

What are the impacts of the changing academic landscape on staff? Academics appear to be generally unhappy. A recent (June 2019) Google search showed the following suggestions based on common searches for ‘academia is’:

Universities have been described as “Anxiety Machines” [ 6 ]. Mental health problems are at levels described as ‘epidemic’, with one study showing staff referrals for counselling increasing by between 50% to over 300% between 2009 and 2016 [ 6 ]. These problems have been linked at least in part to excessive workloads and demands in an increasingly competitive culture.

Are high performance and happiness incompatible?

Highly successful academic teams require intensive focus and effort; this may be perceived as incommensurate with a happy workplace. A web scan of publically available university strategic plans shows that many focus heavily on performance yet lack consideration of strategies that can foster enhanced staff happiness and wellbeing. Possibly, the latter are generally not considered as important in the ‘rankings race’.

Happiness makes people more productive at work. One study found that happiness resulted in a 12% increase in employee productivity, whereas unhappy workers were 10% percent less productive than average [ 7 ]. Psychological wellbeing is also positively correlated with staff retention [ 10 ], which is particularly important in a university context considering the long lead times required to build a successful research program. Promoting happiness among university staff is a worthy goal.

Our experience shows that fostering a high performing academic team is not incompatible with staff happiness. Our School has been twice ranked number one globally in its discipline (Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2016, 2017; 3rd in 2018) ( www.shanghairanking.com ). In addition, our staff survey and Early-Mid Career Researcher (EMCR) evaluation results show that our staff feel happier and more supported when benchmarked against the broader university sector. Staff survey results show, for example, that on measures of feeling supported in research (‘I am given enough support to achieve my research goals’), our staff score 27 percentage points higher than the sector average. On indicators of wellness (‘I feel emotionally well at work’; ‘I am able to manage stress at work’), our staff score 5–8 percentage points higher, and on various measures of job satisfaction our staff score 4–6 percentage points higher than the sector average. Similarly, evaluation showed that our School’s EMCR initiatives were associated with increased career satisfaction and morale, and decreased perceived distress.

We’ve implemented initiatives that focus on people and their happinness, as well as performance. These include a dedicated role with oversight of the development, care and support of early- and mid-career researchers through a range of mentorship, face-to-face and virtual support channels.

Academic workloads are an often-cited source of stress, and evidence shows that researchers who are happy are those who have time (particularly unfragmented time) to do research [ 2 ]. We designed strategies to create uninterrupted time, including batched teaching within semesters, and an ‘internal sabbatical’ program to free up extended time for staff to advance their research without teaching commitments.

Other strategies we have implemented include providing flexibility to allow staff to work to their strengths; adhering to publication guidelines whereby authorship is truly representative of inputs; greater recognition of not just winning funding but having a go; and encouraging and modeling a team-based approach in which individuals are not just working in a group, but encouraging colleagues to look out for and after each other at all levels. This is consistent with evidence that shows building social interactions and high-quality connections fosters knowledge-intensive workers’ happiness at work [ 8 ]

Other leading groups have adopted similar initiatives. The University of Ghent has recently initiated an approach that directly addresses the signs of increasing pressure on academic staff. Their new model emphasises staff development; collegiality rather than competitiveness; reduced reliance on quantitative metrics; and being a ‘caring’ employer ( https://www.u4network.eu/index.php/news/2707-ghent-university-is-changing-course-with-a-new-career-model-for-professorial-staff-press-release-ghent-17-september-2018 ).

A successful and happy research team does not just happen. To grow research, you need to grow and nurture researchers. This means more than the usual professional development opportunities, annual performance meetings, perks such as subsidised gyms or childcare and performance bonuses. In our experience, leadership is the key. Modern reseach leadership is not about being the most successful or highest-cited academic - it is about a commitment to supporting and developing others, and creating an environment in which they can succeed. Leadership styles which focus on people have greater impact on happiness at work compared to transactional leadership styles [ 8 ].

Nurturing a successful and happy research team

Based on our experience and the existing evidence, we advocate a shift in academic leadership, cultures, training and practice, towards a kinder, more people-focused approach. Our top tips for academic leaders interested in growing successful and happy research teams include:

Focus on individuals and their career development

Facilitate career conversations and pathways that offer opportunities for development. Set up one-to-one mentoring relationships and a culture in which senior staff are expected to mentor not only their direct reports but others from whom they stand to gain no ‘KPI’ benefit.

Prioritise staff happiness and wellbeing

Seek ways to reduce, not increase, staff workloads. Allow staff to set their own schedules and enable uninterrupted times for scholarly contemplation and research. Encourage and model a balanced perspective, with sensible working hours, in which work is not the only or most important component of life. Support collegial social events.

Foster a culture of kindness

Academia is very good at teaching us to be critical, but neglects to skill staff in practices embodying kindness, despite evidence that such practices improve organisational effectiveness [ 1 ]. Encourage workplace kindness through expressing appreciation and gratitude to staff. Tell staff what you value about them. Share and celebrate staff successes, and foster a caring attitude to ‘rejections’. Embody a leadership approach that is both empathic and holistic, considerate to the ups and downs of non-work, as well as working life (for example through allowing greater flexibility in terms of staff work hours and locations during challenging life circumstances). Model respectful treatment of colleagues and compassionate support. When hiring new staff, seek those who are caring as well as competent.

Challenge cultures and workplace models

  - in which all academics must be all things. Instead endorse essentialism [ 5 ]: the disciplined pursuit of less. Recognise that performance can be judged collectively across teams in which people have strengths across different domains – some are outstanding writers; others, great orators/teachers; others masters at industry engagement; others science communicators or policy influencers. Allow people flexibility to specialise and channel time and effort into making the best possible contribution to the most meaningful and important activities as part of a successful team.

Advocate for a kinder approach to metrics

Foster collaborative, team-based approaches focused on improving the research quality of the team, rather than on metrics per se. For example, a focus on strengthening team members’ research skills and shared learning can both improve team ethos and raise collective rankings. We advocate that new rankings should incorporate a focus on the happiness of staff, given the strong case that happy, engaged workplaces foster both staff wellbeing and organisational productivity.

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What science can tell us about

Building great teams.

Assembling and managing successful teams is a core leadership skill, whether you are convening a temporary task force, managing a full department, or running a school fundraiser.

But how well do you understand what makes a great team?

If you think it’s simply assembling a group of highly talented people and letting them do their thing, then you’re in good company. Research shows that’s what people tend to believe. But, unfortunately, you’d also be wrong.

Teams are more than the sum of their parts. In fact, sometimes having lots of top talent on a team actually hurts performance. We’ll get back to that in a minute.

First, let’s look at why it’s become increasingly important to know how to lead, and be part of, teams.

Teams are more important than they used to be because there’s so much more to know in a given field.

You’ve likely been taught the importance of teamwork since you were in kindergarten. Today, those lessons are more important than ever, as teams have become a mainstay in organizations. The world of scientific research offers a telling example: a study of 19.9 million scientific papers and 2.1 million patents generated over 5 decades shows that teams are increasingly producing more work than individuals are. And, those teams are getting bigger over time. Teams also generally produce research and patents that are more frequently cited—a measure of the paper’s or patent’s impact within its field—than research by individuals. That trend has also increased over time. ( Wuchty, Jones, and Uzzi, Science , 2007 .)

Here’s one way to explain the trend toward teams: As technology advances, the quantity of knowledge in the world grows. With more and more to know, it becomes harder and harder for any one person to have a deep general knowledge in a field. Instead, people are joining forces to combine their specific knowledge and cover more of a field. Another study on 2.9 million patents issued from 1963 to 1999 shows that team-size increases are bigger in fields with a larger “depth of knowledge,” such as biotech. ( Jones, Review of Economic Studies , 2009 .)

Teams have their own level of intelligence, which is separate from the combined intelligence of their team members.

A well-assembled team can be more than the sum of its parts. Research shows that teams have their own level of intelligence, dubbed “collective intelligence,” which is a measure of the group’s ability to perform a wide variety of tasks. And, importantly, having a lot of individually intelligent team members does not mean the team will have a high collective intelligence. Lab experiments in one study had teams spend several hours on a variety of exercises, from brainstorming to solving visual puzzles. The results point to three ways to increase a team’s collective intelligence:

• Have more members who are socially sensitive, meaning they’re perceptive of their teammates’ views and feelings.
• Have more women on the team (in large part because women tend to be more socially perceptive).
• Make sure team members take turns talking instead of being dominated by just a few voices.

( Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi, and Malone, Science , 2010 .)

Sometimes building a team with lots of really talented people actually hurts the team’s performance.

Packing your team with top talent boosts success—but only up to a point. Research from the world of professional athletes shows that in sports that require a lot of interdependence, there’s a point at which lots of talent starts hurting performance.

This happens because top talents don’t always coordinate effectively, perhaps because superstars are angling to be top dog instead of focusing on winning. (The researchers note similar findings in the animal kingdom, citing a study of chickens. Having too many high-producing egg layers in a colony reduces overall egg production “as a result of intense conflicts.”)

The human-based study found that professional soccer and basketball teams suffer the diminishing returns of top talent, but Major League Baseball teams do not, likely because the nature of baseball means players can coordinate less and still win games. ( Swaab, Schaerer, Anicich, Ronay, and Galinsky, Psychological Science . 2014 .)

By definition, those who are highly skilled at something have, well, lots of skills. But sometimes those top performers share the same skills as their high-performing peers. And this is another reason that overemphasizing top talent can hurt teams.

One study looked at the relative merit of having a team made up of the very best problem-solvers versus a team whose members were accomplished problem-solvers but had a diverse set of approaches for tackling those problems. The results showed that the diverse teams outperformed the teams made up of the very best individuals. ( Hong and Page, PNAS, 2004 . )

Diversity is often an asset for teams, but can also lead to common pitfalls. So be thoughtful and deliberate in how you lead diverse teams.

As the importance of teams has grown, so has the diversity of the American workforce. Yet, there’s no simple prescription for how to effectively lead diverse teams. Sorry, even researchers disagree on the nitty-gritty pros and cons. However, research does point to a benefit in having a diversity of thinking on teams that tackle complex tasks. Meaning, teams of people who approach problems differently (often, but certainly not always, as a result of gender, cultural, or educational diversity) are usually better at solving those problems. But that diversity brings a set of potential pitfalls as well. Scholars generally agree that these include the following:

• Team members may splinter into subgroups of similar people.
• These teams can have higher turnover.
• Teams tend to lose their diversity over time as members start thinking similarly.

But researchers have also identified ways to prevent these pitfalls. Here are some tips for leading diverse teams in ways that boost their performance.

It’s unlikely to solve all of diversity’s conundrums, but here’s one easy tip: explain to your team that a diversity of thinking can help them succeed. This was the takeaway from a study of four-person teams of university students, comprised of two men and two women. When teams were told ahead of time that gender diversity helps with team decision-making and group processes, they performed better on a complex decision-making task. ( Homan, Knippenberg, Van Kleef, and De Dreu, Journal of Applied Psychology , 2007. )

Another study found that diversity enhances group performance when teammates have a mutual understanding of each other’s skills. Meaning, if Luisa considers herself creative and hard-working, then her teammate Larry also sees these traits in her.

Roughly 400 MBA students were grouped into small, highly diverse teams. The members of each team assessed themselves and one another on 11 attributes, such as leadership ability and competitiveness. The groups then worked together on creative tasks for four months.

The researchers found that diversity improved team performance in groups with a high level of mutual understanding. Yet diversity hindered teams at the opposite end of the spectrum. ( Polzer, Milton, and Swann, Administrative Science Quarterly , 2002.)

A study of NBA teams points to a beneficial way of structuring diversity for organizations that have two clear tiers of workers—think partners and associates, or physicians and residents. On the court, these two tiers are the starters and subs.

Researchers analyzed 23 years of league data, using players’ college conferences as a measure of diversity, since different conferences tend to have different playing styles. The results show a benefit to having a diversity of playing styles among starters that is duplicated among bench players. Teams with this sort of overlapping diversity won 10.7 percent more games per season.

The researchers point out that without this redundancy of diversity, people might forget about the skills that make them unique. ( Smith and Hou, Organization Science, 2014 .)

Don’t always opt for a generalist. Sometimes you need a specialist.

The allure of recruiting a jack- or jill-of-all-trades is strong. So strong, it seems, that managers are biased against recruiting and rewarding specialists—even when a specialist is exactly what their organization needs. This was the finding in a set of experiments, where participants were tasked with assembling a fictional team. They were more likely to favor generalists, even when a specialist would have a bigger impact. Why? We have a natural tendency to compare people against one another, the researchers say. And when you compare specialists who excel in a single area to generalists who are high-achieving in multiple areas, those specialists don’t look as impressive. The lesson: evaluate job candidates on their own merits, as opposed to in contrast to another candidate, when you know a specialist is what your team needs. ( Wang and Murnighan, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , 2013. )

Simply bringing a specialist onboard, though, may not be enough to make your team hum efficiently. Team members should talk through how to use their expert before embarking on a group task.

This was demonstrated in an experiment with four-person teams that had to crack a hypothetical terrorist plot. To do so, the teams needed experts in facial recognition to analyze security footage and experts in verbal memory to analyze email evidence. Teams with these experts performed better than those without them only when they started with 10 minutes of collaborative planning before diving into the challenge. ( Woolley, Gerbasi, Chabris, Kosslyn, and Hackman, Small Group Research , 2008. )

Team members’ history together , especially if it’s been successful, can help a lot .

There’s a euphoria to being part of a winning team, whether you claimed the championship title or nailed the product launch. And, research shows, winning together also predicts future success—over and above simply having highly skilled people on your team. In looking at four professional sports leagues and a multiplayer online game, researchers found that the level of talent helped to predict whether a team would win. But taking into account a history of shared successes also helped predict wins—above and beyond the effect of talent. ( Mukherjee, Huang, Neidhardt, Uzzi, and Contractor, Nature Human Behaviour, 2018 .)

Having a history of collaboration matters for scientific teams, too. A different study looked at researchers in cell biology and physics and found that some groups of scientists had collaborated frequently enough to be dubbed “super ties.” Those super ties were a significant boon to a scientist’s career, leading to more published papers and a higher rate of citations on those papers, which is an indicator that the papers were considered higher impact. ( Petersen, PNAS , 2015. )

Relying on super ties alone would be a mistake. You want some inflow of new people and ideas. But how much?

One study looked at the six-person teams that create Broadway musicals. (These creative teams tend to be made up of a composer, lyricist, librettist, choreographer, director, and producer.) The researchers wanted to explore the best way to assemble teams within tight-knit fields where the same people often collaborate with each other or with people who have one degree of separation from previous collaborators.

They found that both critical acclaim and financial success peak when there is a medium level of these tight-knit connections: Too much, and new ideas don’t flow in. Too little, and there aren’t enough of the common bonds that allow teams to establish trust and enable members to vouch for each other’s innovative instincts. ( Uzzi and Spiro, American Journal of Sociology, 2005 .)

Another study looked specifically at the benefit of bringing new people into team brainstorming exercises. In several experiments with three-person teams, groups that retained their same makeup generated fewer total ideas and fewer different kinds of ideas than did teams that had one of their three members swapped out.

And it wasn’t simply that the newcomers came in with their creative guns blazing. The study showed that having a productive new person join a team increased the productivity of the old-timers, as well. ( Choi and Thompson, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , 2005. )

So Broadway musicals and brainstormers benefit from some turnover. But how about the very different world of private equity? Indeed, investors often seek out team stability among private equity managers with the assumption that this cohesion boosts profits.

But a study of 138 private equity managers over 20 years shows that this is not the case. Some degree of team turnover actually improved fund performance over both the short and long term. This is likely because turnover helps get rid of poor performers while also bringing in team members with new skills, which helps private equity companies adapt to a changing environment. ( Cornelli, Simintzi, and Vig, Working paper, 2019. )

A study of nearly 18 million research articles over five decades showed that the highest-impact papers were ones that combined a little bit of novelty with otherwise conventional prior ideas. ( Uzzi, Mukherjee, Stringer, and Jones, Science , 2013. )

How big of a team should you convene? It depends on what your ultimate goal is.

How big of a team should you assemble? It depends whether you are trying to advance the field by building off prior discoveries—in which case a large team is best—or whether you're trying to disrupt your field by going in a totally new direction—in which case you might want a small, nimble team. That’s the finding from an analysis of 65 million scientific papers, patents, and software products from 1954 to 2014. This may be because large teams need to secure significant and ongoing funding, so they are less likely to pursue something risky and novel—whereas smaller teams or solo authors are able to take more risk, as they have less to lose. ( Wu, Wang, and Evans, Nature, 2019. )

Delegation is nothing new. But it has become increasingly easy, as advances in technology allow highly skilled professionals to offload more of their work to subordinates in order to focus on the tasks that require the knowledge that they, alone, possess. So managers within these “knowledge hierarchies” should ensure that their teams are big enough to accommodate sufficient delegation.

Take lawyers, for example. Once upon a time, law partners were the exclusive fonts of knowledge in their firm, holding much of the institution’s information and expertise in their brains. This made it difficult to delegate to associates. But new technology, like the legal search engine Lexis, changed that by collecting much of that knowledge in a place that associates can easily access. One study of all U.S. law firms found that these and other changes helped increase the productivity boost that partners got from delegating to associates by 30 percent between 1977 and 1992. ( Garicano and Hubbard, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization . 2018. )

Teams are more important than they used to be because there’s so much more to know in a given field. 

Teams have their own level of intelligence, which is separate from the combined intelligence of their team members. 

Sometimes building a team with lots of really talented people actually hurts the team’s performance. 

Diversity is often an asset for teams, but can also lead to common pitfalls. So be thoughtful and deliberate in how you lead diverse teams.

Don’t always opt for a generalist. Sometimes you need a specialist.

How big of a team should you convene? It depends on what your ultimate goal is.

Emily Stone

Jessica Love

Michael Meier

Aaron Geller

Dashun Wang

Wuchty, Stefan, Benjamin F. Jones, and Brian Uzzi. 2007. “The Increasing Dominance of Teams in the Production of Knowledge.” Science . 316(5827): 1036–1039.

Jones, F. Benjamin. 2009. “The Burden of Knowledge and the ‘Death of the Renaissance Man’: Is Innovation Getting Harder?” Review of Economic Studies . 76(1): 283–317.

Woolley, Anita W., Christopher F. Chabris, Alex Pentland, Nada Hashmi, and Thomas W. Malone. 2010. “Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups.” Science . 330(6004): 686–688.

Woolley, Anita. W., Ishani Aggarwal, and Thomas W. Malone. 2015. “Collective Intelligence and Group Performance.” Current Directions in Psychological Science . 24(6): 420–424.

Swaab, Roderick. I., Michael Schaerer, Eric M. Anicich, Richard Ronay, and Adam D. Galinsky. 2014. “The Too-Much-Talent Effect: Team Interdependence Determines When More Talent Is Too Much or Not Enough.” Psychological Science . 25(8): 1581–1591.

Hong, Lu, and Scott E. Page. 2004. “Groups of Diverse Problem Solvers Can Outperform Groups of High-Ability Problem Solvers.” PNAS. 101(46): 16385–16389.

Homan, Astrid C., Daan van Knippenberg, Gerben A. Van Kleef, and Carsten K.W. De Dreu. 2007. “Bridging Faultlines by Valuing Diversity: Diversity Beliefs, Information Elaboration, and Performance in Diverse Work Groups.” Journal of Applied Psychology .92(5): 1189–1199.

Polzer, Jeffrey T., Laurie P. Milton, and William B. Swann Jr. 2002. “Capitalizing on Diversity: Interpersonal Congruence in Small Work Groups.” Administrative Science Quarterly . 47(2): 296–324.

Smith, Edward (Ned), and Yuan Hou. 2015. “Redundant Heterogeneity and Group Performance.” Organization Science . 26(1): 37–51.

Wang, Long, and J. Keith Murnighan. 2013. “The Generalist Bias.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes . 120(1): 47–61.

Woolley, Anita W., Margaret E. Gerbasi, Christopher F. Chabris, Stephen M. Kosslyn, and J. Richard Hackman. 2008. “Bringing in the Experts: How Team Composition and Collaborative Planning Jointly Shape Analytic Effectiveness.” Small Group Research . 39(3): 352–371.

Mukherjee, Satyam, Yun Huang, Julia Neidhardt, Brian Uzzi and Noshir Contractor. 2018. “Prior Shared Success Predicts Victory in Team Competitions.” Nature Human Behaviour . 3: 74–81.

Petersen, Alexander Michael. 2015. “Quantifying the Impact of Weak, Strong, and Super Ties in Scientific Careers.” PNAS . 112(34): E4671–E4680.

Uzzi, Brian, and Jarrett Spiro. 2005. "Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem." American Journal of Sociology. 111(2): 447–504.

Choi, Hoon-Seok, and Leigh Thompson. 2005. “Old Wine in a New Bottle: Impact of Membership Change on Group Creativity.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes . 98(2): 121-132.

Cornelli, Francesca, Elena Simintzi, and Vikrant Vig. 2019. “Team Stability and Performance: Evidence from Private Equity.” Working paper.

Uzzi, Brian, Satyam Mukherjee, Michael Stringer, and Ben Jones. 2013. “Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact.” Science . 342(6157): 468–472.

Wu, Lingfei, Dashun Wang, and James A. Evans. 2019. "Large Teams Develop and Small Teams Disrupt Science and Technology." Nature. 566(7742): 378–382.

Garicano, Luis, and Thomas N. Hubbard. 2018. "Earnings Inequality and Coordination Costs: Evidence from U.S. Law Firms." Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization . 34.

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Team Building Research Studies

Here is our list of team building research studies .

Team building research studies are academic papers that present experiments and observations on the science of team building. These scholarly articles have been published in reputable journals and are cited often by experts.

These studies help highlight team building statistics , the elements of team building  and team building process .

Specifically, this list includes:

• research studies on team building
• team building research paper
• scholarly articles on teamwork in the workplace
• literature review on teamwork
• team effectiveness research paper

Here’s the list!

List of team building research studies

Team building has some serious science behind it. Here are some of our favorite team building research studies.

1. Klein, Cameron & DiazGranados, Deborah & Salas, Eduardo & Le, Huy & Burke, Shawn & Lyons, Rebecca & Goodwin, Gerald. (2009). Does Team Building Work?. Small Group Research. 40. 181 – 222. 10.1177/1046496408328821.

This study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of team building by measuring goal setting, interpersonal relations, problem solving, and role clarification. Through a comprehensive literature review, the researchers found team building to have a positive influence on teams, especially larger ones.

Access the study .

2.  De Meuse, K. P., & Liebowitz, S. J. (1981). An Empirical Analysis of Team-Building Research. Group & Organization Studies, 6(3), 357–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/105960118100600311

The authors of this study reviewed 36 team building research studies, concentrating on research design, sample size, dependent variables, and experiment duration.. However, the scholars found that the researchers could have structured the studies better, which made it difficult for the researchers to determine team building’s ultimate effectiveness.

Read the paper .

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3. Lacerenza, C. N., Marlow, S. L., Tannenbaum, S. I., & Salas, E. (2018). Team development interventions: Evidence-based approaches for improving teamwork. American Psychologist, 73(4), 517–531. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000295

This study argues for the importance of “psychologically-sound, evidence based” team development interventions, such as Productivity Tracker or Online Office Games , as opposed to unstructured hang outs, where coworkers do not have an agenda. The researchers also provide added value by recommending ways to increase the effectiveness of team building activities.

Check out the study .

4. Tannenbaum, S. I., Beard, R. L., & Salas, E. (1992). Chapter 5 Team Building and its Influence on Team Effectiveness: An Examination of Conceptual and Empirical Developments. Issues, Theory, and Research in Industrial/Organizational Psychology Advances in Psychology, 117-153. doi:10.1016/s0166-4115(08)62601-1

For a general overview of the concept of team building, this chapter of Advances in Psychology defines teams and team building, while also reviewing major research studies on the topic. The authors point out an interesting commonality of these studies—the fact that most team building studies were performed on white-collar teams, which indicates missing research on blue-collar teams.

View the article .

5. Ms. Neelam Saraswat and Dr. Shilpi Khandelwal, Impact of Team Building Exercises on Team Effectiveness. International Journal of Marketing and Human Resource Management, 6(3), 2015, pp. 89-97. http://www.iaeme.com/currentissue.asp?JType=IJMHRM&VType=6&IType=3

This study also seeks to examine the influence of team building exercises on group effectiveness. Using a control group that did not go through team building and another group that did, the researchers scored these teams’ performance. By the end of the experiment, the researchers found that the team building exercises had a positive influence on effectiveness.

Peruse the paper .

6. Fapohunda, Tinuke. (2013). Towards Effective Team Building in the Workplace.

In this literature review, Fapohunda analyzes factors in team building that improve team performance. She identifies eight factors that help develop cohesive teams. These factors include: “clear goals; decision making authority; accountability and responsibility; effective leadership; training and development; provision of resources; organizational support; and rewards for team success”.

See the study .

7. Huang, W. W., Wei, K., Watson, R. T., & Tan, B. C. (2003). Supporting virtual team-building with a GSS: An empirical investigation. Decision Support Systems, 34(4), 359-367. doi:10.1016/s0167-9236(02)00009-x

In the only study on this list that focuses on online team building, researchers discovered the significance of a goal-setting structure on improving team building for virtual teams. The results indicate that the best team building experiences rely on planned objectives.

Look up the article .

When planning your company’s team building events, it is important to consider the science behind them. With these research studies, you can structure your activities, so the team benefits from a more focused, effective approach to bonding. As employees become closer and engaged, you will find that your company will become more productive in return, which is a win for everyone.

Next, check out the history of team building , our post on team building psychology and this explainer on employee engagement theory .

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Marketing Coordinator at teambuilding.com. Team building content expert. Angela has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and worked as a community manager with Yelp to plan events for businesses.

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Psychological safety and the critical role of leadership development

When employees feel comfortable asking for help, sharing suggestions informally, or challenging the status quo without fear of negative social consequences, organizations are more likely to innovate quickly , unlock the benefits of diversity , and adapt well to change —all capabilities that have only grown in importance during the COVID-19 crisis. 1 Jonathan Emmett, Gunnar Schrah, Matt Schrimper, and Alexandra Wood, “ COVID-19 and the employee experience: How leaders can seize the moment ,” June 2020, McKinsey.com; Tera Allas, David Chinn, Pal Erik Sjatil, and Whitney Zimmerman, “ Well-being in Europe: Addressing the high cost of COVID-19 on life satisfaction ,” June 2020, McKinsey.com. Yet a McKinsey Global Survey conducted during the pandemic confirms that only a handful of business leaders often demonstrate the positive behaviors that can instill this climate, termed psychological safety , in their workforce. 2 The online survey was in the field from May 14–29, 2020, and garnered responses from 1,574 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, we analyzed the results of 1,223 participants who said they were a member of a team that they did not lead, where a team is defined as two or more people who work together to achieve a common goal. CEOs were included in the findings if they said that a) their organization had a board of directors and b) they were not the board’s chair, so that they could think of their board when asked questions about their team.

As considerable prior research shows, psychological safety is a precursor to adaptive, innovative performance—which is needed in today’s rapidly changing environment—at the individual, team, and organization levels. 3 Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, first edition, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, November 2018; Shirley A. Ashauer and Therese Macan, “How can leaders foster team learning? Effects of leader-assigned mastery and performance goals and psychological safety,” Journal of Psychology, November–December 2013, Volume 147, Number 6, pp. 541–61, tandfonline.com; Anne Boon et al., “Team learning beliefs and behaviours in response teams,” European Journal of Training and Development, May 2013, Volume 37, Number 4, pp. 357–79, emerald.com; Daphna Brueller and Abraham Carmeli, “Linking capacities of high-quality relationships to team learning and performance in service organizations,” Human Resource Management, July–August 2011, Volume 50, Number 4, pp. 455–77, wileyonlinelibrary.com; M. Lance Frazier et al., “Psychological safety: A meta-analytic review and extension,” Personnel Psychology, February 2017, Volume 70, Number 1, pp. 113–65, onlinelibrary.wiley.com; Nikos Bozionelos and Konstantinos C. Kostopoulos, “Team exploratory and exploitative learning: Psychological safety, task conflict, and team performance,” Group & Organization Management, June 2011, Volume 36, Number 3, pp. 385–415, journals.sagepub.com; Rosario Ortega et al., “The emotional impact of bullying and cyberbullying on victims: A European cross-national study,” Aggressive Behavior, September–October 2012, Volume 38, Issue 5, pp. 342–56, onlinelibrary.wiley.com; Corinne Post, “Deep-level team composition and innovation: The mediating roles of psychological safety and cooperative learning,” Group & Organizational Management, October 2012, Volume 37, Number 5, pp. 555–88, journals.sagepub.com; Charles Duhigg, “What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team,” New York Times, February 25, 2016, nytimes.com. Amy Edmondson’s 1999 research previously found—and our survey findings confirm—that higher psychological safety predicts a higher degree of boundary-spanning behavior, which is accessing and coordinating with those outside of an individual’s team to accomplish goals. For example, successfully creating a “ network of teams ”—an agile organizational structure that empowers teams to tackle problems quickly by operating outside of bureaucratic or siloed structures—requires a strong degree of psychological safety.

Fortunately, our newest research suggests how organizations can foster psychological safety. Doing so depends on leaders at all levels learning and demonstrating specific leadership behaviors that help their employees thrive. Investing in and scaling up leadership-development programs  can equip leaders to embody these behaviors and consequently cultivate psychological safety across the organization.

A recipe for leadership that promotes psychological safety

Leaders can build psychological safety by creating the right climate, mindsets, and behaviors within their teams. In our experience, those who do this best act as catalysts, empowering and enabling other leaders on the team—even those with no formal authority—to help cultivate psychological safety by role modeling and reinforcing the behaviors they expect from the rest of the team.

Our research finds that a positive team climate—in which team members value one another’s contributions, care about one another’s well-being, and have input into how the team carries out its work—is the most important driver of a team’s psychological safety. 4 Past research by Frazier et al. (2017) found three categories to be the main drivers of psychological safety: positive leader relations, work-design characteristics, and a positive team climate. We conducted multiple regression with relative-importance analysis to understand which category matters most, and our results show that a positive team climate has a significantly stronger direct effect on psychological safety than the other two. Based on these results, we tested a structural-equation model (SEM) in which the frequency with which team leaders displayed four leadership behaviors predicted psychological safety both directly and indirectly via positive team climate. Exploratory analyses were conducted to determine whether the effect of the leadership behaviors affected psychological safety at different levels of team climate. By setting the tone for the team climate through their own actions, team leaders have the strongest influence on a team’s psychological safety. Moreover, creating a positive team climate can pay additional dividends during a time of disruption. Our research finds that a positive team climate has a stronger effect on psychological safety in teams that experienced a greater degree of change in working remotely than in those that experienced less change during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet just 43 percent of all respondents report a positive climate within their team.

Positive team climate is the most important driver of psychological safety and most likely to occur when leaders demonstrate supportive, consultative behaviors, then begin to challenge their teams.

During the pandemic, we have seen an accelerated shift away from the traditional command-and-control leadership style known as authoritative leadership, one of the four well-established styles of leadership behavior we examined to understand which ones encourage a positive team climate and psychological safety . The survey finds that team leaders’ authoritative-leadership behaviors are detrimental to psychological safety, while consultative- and supportive-leadership behaviors promote psychological safety.

The results also suggest that leaders can further enhance psychological safety by ensuring a positive team climate (Exhibit 1). Both consultative and supportive leadership help create a positive team climate, though to varying degrees and through different types of behaviors.

With consultative leadership, which has a direct and indirect effect on psychological safety, leaders consult their team members, solicit input, and consider the team’s views on issues that affect them. 5 The standardized regression coefficient between consultative leadership and psychological safety was 0.54. The survey measured consultative-leadership behaviors by asking respondents how frequently their team leaders demonstrate the following behaviors: ask the opinions of others before making important decisions, give team members the autonomy to make their own decisions, and try to achieve team consensus on decisions. Supportive leadership has an indirect but still significant effect on psychological safety by helping to create a positive team climate; it involves leaders demonstrating concern and support for team members not only as employees but also as individuals. 6 The survey measured supportive leadership behaviors by asking respondents how frequently their team leaders demonstrate the following behaviors: create a sense of teamwork and mutual support within the team, and demonstrate concern for the welfare of team members. These behaviors also can encourage team members to support one another.

Another set of leadership behaviors can sometimes strengthen psychological safety—but only when a positive team climate is in place. This set of behaviors, known as challenging leadership, encourages employees to do more than they initially think they can. A challenging leader asks team members to reexamine assumptions about their work and how it can be performed in order to exceed expectations and fulfill their potential. Challenging leadership has previously been linked with employees expressing creativity, feeling empowered to make work-related changes, and seeking to learn and improve. 7 Giles Hirst, Helen Shipton, and Qin Zhou, “Context matters: Combined influence of participation and intellectual stimulation on the promotion focus–employee creative relationship,” Journal of Organizational Behavior, October 2012, Volume 33, Number 7, pp. 894–909, onlinelibrary.wiley.com; Le Cong Thuan, “Motivating follower creativity by offering intellectual stimulation,” International Journal of Organizational Analysis, December 2019, Volume 28, Number 4, pp. 817–29, emerald.com; Jie Li et al., “Not all transformational leadership behaviors are equal: The impact of followers’ identification with leader and modernity on taking charge,” Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, August 2017, Volume 24, Number 3, pp. 318–34, journals.sagepub.com; Susana Llorens-Gumbau, Marisa Salanova Soria, and Israel Sánchez-Cardona, “Leadership intellectual stimulation and team learning: The mediating role of team positive affect,” Universitas Psychologica, March 2018, Volume 17, Number 1, pp. 1–16, revistas.javeriana.edu.co. However, the survey findings show that the highest likelihood of psychological safety occurs when a team leader first creates a positive team climate, through frequent supportive and consultative actions, and then challenges their team; without a foundation of positive climate, challenging behaviors have no significant effect. And employees’ experiences look very different depending on how their leaders behave, according to Amy Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School (interactive).

What’s more, the survey results show that a climate conducive to psychological safety starts at the very top of an organization. We sought to understand the effects of senior-leader behavior on employees’ sense of safety and found that senior leaders can help create a culture of inclusiveness that promotes positive leadership behaviors throughout an organization by role-modeling these behaviors themselves. Team leaders are more likely to exhibit supportive, consultative, and challenging leadership if senior leaders demonstrate inclusiveness—for example, by seeking out opinions that might differ from their own and by treating others with respect.

The importance of developing leaders at all levels

Our findings show that investing in leadership development across an organization—for all leadership positions—is an effective method for cultivating the combination of leadership behaviors that enhance psychological safety. Employees who report that their organizations invest substantially in leadership development are more likely to also report that their team leaders frequently demonstrate consultative, supportive, and challenging leadership behaviors. They also are 64 percent more likely to rate senior leaders as more inclusive (Exhibit 2). 8 We measured investing in leadership development by asking about agreement with the following statements: “my organization places a great deal of importance on developing its leaders,” and “my organization devotes significant resources to developing its leaders.” However, the results suggest that the effectiveness of these programs varies depending upon the skills they address.

Reorient the skills developed in leadership programs

Organizations often attempt to cover many topics in their leadership-development programs . But our findings suggest that focusing on a handful of specific skills and behaviors in these learning programs can improve the likelihood of positive leadership behaviors that foster psychological safety and, ultimately, of strong team performance. Some of the most commonly taught skills at respondents’ organizations—such as open-dialogue skills, which allow leaders to explore disagreements and talk through tension in a team—are among the ones most associated with positive leadership behaviors. However, several relatively untapped skill areas also yield beneficial results (Exhibit 3).

Two of the less-commonly addressed skills in formal programs are predictive of positive leadership. Training in sponsorship—that is, enabling others’ success ahead of one’s own—supports both consultative- and challenging-leadership behaviors, yet just 26 percent of respondents say their organizations include the skill in development programs. And development of situational humility, which 36 percent of respondents say their organizations address, teaches leaders how to develop a personal-growth mindset and curiosity. Addressing this skill is predictive of leaders displaying consultative behaviors.

Development at the top is equally important

According to the data, fostering psychological safety at scale begins with companies’ most senior leaders developing and embodying the leadership behaviors they want to see across the organization. Many of the same skills that promote positive team-leader behaviors can also be developed among senior leaders to promote inclusiveness. For example, open-dialogue skills and development of social relationships within teams are also important skill sets for senior leaders.

In addition, several skills are more important at the very top of the organization. Situational and cultural awareness, or understanding how beliefs can be developed based on selective observations and the norms in different cultures, are both linked with senior leaders’ inclusiveness.

Looking ahead

Given the quickening pace of change and disruption and the need for creative, adaptive responses from teams at every level, psychological safety is more important than ever. The organizations that develop the leadership skills and positive work environment that help create psychological safety can reap many benefits, from improved innovation, experimentation, and agility to better overall organizational health and performance. 9 We define organizational health as an organization’s ability to align on a clear vision, strategy, and culture; to execute with excellence; and to renew the organization’s focus over time by responding to market trends.

As clear as this call to action may be, “How do we develop psychological safety?” and, more specifically, “Where do we start?” remain the most common questions we are asked. These survey findings show that there is no time to waste in creating and investing in leadership development at scale to help enhance psychological safety. Organizations can start doing so in the following ways:

• Go beyond one-off training programs and deploy an at-scale system of leadership development. Human behaviors aren’t easily shifted overnight. Yet too often we see companies try to do so by using targeted training programs alone. Shifting leadership behaviors within a complex system at the individual, team, and enterprise levels begins with defining a clear strategy aligned to the organization’s overall aspiration and a comprehensive set of capabilities that are required to achieve it. It’s critical to develop a taxonomy of skills (having an open dialogue, for example) that not only supports the realization of the organization’s overall identity but also fosters learning and growth and applies directly to people’s day-to-day work. Practically speaking, while the delivery of learning may be sequenced as a series of trainings—and rapidly codified and scaled for all leaders across a cohort or function of the organization—those trainings will be even more effective when combined with other building blocks of a broader learning system, such as behavioral reinforcements. While learning experiences look much different now than before the COVID-19 pandemic , digital learning provides large companies with more opportunities to break down silos and create new connections across an organization through learning.
• Invest in leadership-development experiences that are emotional, sensory, and create aha moments. Learning experiences that are immersive and engaging are remembered more clearly and for a longer time. Yet a common pitfall of learning programs is an outsize focus on the content—even though it is usually not a lack of knowledge that holds leaders back from realizing their full potential. Therefore, it’s critical that learning programs prompt leaders to engage with and shift their underlying beliefs, assumptions, and emotions to bring about lasting mindset changes. This requires a learning environment that is both conducive to the often vulnerable process of learning and also expertly designed. Companies can begin with facilitated experiences that push learners toward personal introspection through targeted reflection questions and small, intimate breakout conversations. These environments can help leaders achieve increased self-awareness, spark the desire for further growth, and, with the help of reflection and feedback, drive collective growth and performance.
• Build mechanisms to make development a part of leaders’ day-to-day work. Formal learning and skill development serve as springboards in the context of real work; the most successful learning journeys account for the rich learning that happens in day-to-day work and interactions. The use of learning nudges (that is, daily, targeted reminders for individuals) can help learners overcome obstacles and move from retention to application of their knowledge. In parallel, the organization’s most senior leaders need to be the first adopters of putting real work at the core of their development, which requires senior leaders to role model—publicly—their own processes of learning. In this context, the concept of role models has evolved; rather than role models serving as examples of the finished product, they become examples of the work in progress, high on self-belief but low on perfect answers. These examples become strong signals for leaders across the organization that it is safe to be practicing, failing, and developing on the job.

The contributors to the development and analysis of this survey include Aaron De Smet , a senior partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office; Kim Rubenstein, a research-science specialist in the New York office; Gunnar Schrah, a director of research science in the Denver office; Mike Vierow, an associate partner in the Brisbane office; and Amy Edmondson , the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, an associate editor in the Atlanta office.

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Managing Anger, Frustration, and Resentment on Your Team

• Nihar Chhaya

Four strategies to help managers respond with compassion.

Anger and resentment across your team can make an already stressful leadership job feel worse. But how you respond to your employees’ frustrations is critical to ensuring negative emotions don’t limit your effectiveness. The author offers four recommendations to try: 1) Balance your emotions first before reacting to your team’s frustration. 2) Lean into their anger with an intent to learn. 3) Redesign team goals together. 4) Build deeper trust by owning your part.

With so much instability in the workplace these days, you may feel untethered in your daily job responsibilities as well as your long-term career. And when insecurity leads to frustration, it can be hard to keep your temper. But when you are in a leadership role, you face an even more formidable challenge: managing your team’s moods without letting their episodes of anger impair your effectiveness.

• Nihar Chhaya  is an executive coach to senior leaders at global companies, including American Airlines, Coca-Cola, DraftKings and Wieden+Kennedy.    A former F500 corporate head of talent development, he is the President of  PartnerExec , helping leaders master influence for superior business and strategic outcomes. You can sign up for Enviable, his weekly newsletter .  

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Basic Steps to Building a Research Program

Allison baer.

American Society of Clinical Oncology, Alexandria, VA; Howard Regional Health Care System, Kokomo, IN; Berman Cancer Institute, Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Baltimore, MD; and Clinical Trial Support Unit Hematology/Oncology, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Naftali Bechar

Susan devine.

Establishing a clinical trial infrastructure is an important step when developing a successful research program. Two areas required for success include financial oversight and a qualified research team.

Establishing a clinical trial infrastructure is one of the most challenging, yet important, steps when developing a successful research program. Two areas required for success include financial oversight and sustaining a qualified research team. This article, part of the Attributes of Exemplary Research series, 1 targets new investigators and those expanding their research programs and provides practical advice from successful experts.

Planning From Within

Taking an entrepreneurial approach is a successful mechanism when developing a clinical research program. Maintaining a sustainable program requires fiscal planning, much like a business. When developing the financial infrastructure, it is helpful to consider budgeting from both broad and narrow perspectives. For example, a study budget must be developed for each individual trial, whereas the program itself requires a budget that manages indirect costs required regardless of patient enrollment. The amount dedicated to indirect costs and the mechanisms by which the funds are used vary by institution and are pre-established at some sites. Sites that do not have a pre-established rate make this determination by calculating overhead costs not directly related to the study protocol, including space, utilities, information technology, and staff compensation. The amount varies by program, but many sites require roughly 25% from each study budget to cover the total of all indirect costs.

It is important to remain realistic when considering the amount of money needed for both direct and indirect costs, and to plan meticulously before initiating a new clinical trial, negotiating for industry trials, or establishing a budget within the institution. Institutions with a clinical trials office usually have guidance regarding budgeting and have contracts established with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) regarding the institute's indirect cost requirement. In contrast, practitioners in community settings have increased autonomy to predict costs and negotiate accordingly. Finding a mentor or establishing an institutional partnership can be helpful for physicians in this situation. Greater detail regarding cost-neutral budgeting is discussed in a previous article in the Attributes of Exemplary Research series published March 2009, entitled “Cost-Neutral Clinical Research Enterprise.” 2

Thinking Globally

Researchers are often frustrated that per-patient reimbursement does not always cover the actual costs of conducting a trial and that reimbursement is usually given after patient enrollment. With NCI cooperative group trials, inadequate federal funding is well documented, including an ASCO study that determined the average cost of each patient in a clinical trial to be $6,000, whereas per-patient reimbursement is only $2,000. 3 The key to success is awareness of alternative funding mechanisms and using them to supplement program needs.

A good place to start is within an institution. Some physicians and their staff members receive salaries through a hospital or clinic that supports clinical research, a great employment option for individuals dedicated to conducting trials. These physicians are under less pressure to increase patient volume and are able to dedicate additional time to clinical research. This model has a record for success and is often cited as a reason pediatric clinical trials accrue so well. Physicians who are not salaried can build a similar mechanism into their practice. For example, because research requires additional time not reimbursed by insurance or Medicare, consider adding physician reimbursement as a cost covered by the study budget. Reimbursing physicians for their time is a reasonable study cost and helps create a research culture within the institution.

Sites also benefit from offering a broad menu of clinical trials. If the program is not breaking even conducting federally funded trials, adding industry trials may be a good option. Though investigators are generally pleased by the higher reimbursement rates provided by industry, some complain that industry trials are less stimulating and provide fewer opportunities for publication. Using a combination of trials from industry and the NCI Cooperative Groups can help clinical researchers get the best of both worlds. Always be selective before choosing trials and consider the question being investigated as well as patient demographics. If researchers open a trial that cannot accrue, they tax the program budget by wasting time and resources. Before initiating a new trial, also be mindful of the degree of trial complexity a practice can facilitate, such as the ability to properly prepare biospecimens, manage unstable investigational agents, and meet all eligibility criteria. Financial balance will certainly fail if there are unexpected equipment upgrades required to support the conduct of a trial.

Though NCI per-patient reimbursement alone is often insufficient, many additional options are available through NCI and other federal sources. 4 Becoming a community clinical oncology program (CCOP) is a great option for community sites dedicated to research. CCOPs benefit from having access to numerous phase I, II, and III trials and have autonomy to choose with which research bases they wish to partner. CCOPs also manage their own budgets and receive some funding before patient enrollment, unlike standard cooperative group partnerships. Becoming a CCOP requires a previous record of success.

If a program is still in initial stages, consider becoming an affiliate member of a cooperative group instead. This enables a researcher to partner with a member institution and participate in all trials offered through the institution's cooperative group affiliation. In this mechanism, reimbursement is provided after patients are enrolled and is initially given to the member institution, which is then responsible for channeling funds to partner institutions. Joining the NCI Clinical Trials Support Unit is also an option worth pursuing for programs at all levels. Also, NCI has many investigator-initiated funding opportunities, including training grants and administrative supplements, all of which are listed on the NCI Web site.

In addition to federal options, enhancing knowledge of funding opportunities offered through philanthropic organizations can be beneficial. From professional societies to advocacy organizations, most offer varying levels of grants, and some exceed several million dollars in annual funding. Many of the grants can be used to supplement the research one is already pursuing, such as ASCO's community oncology research grants. 5 Be clear about the requirements associated with grants funded by nonprofit organizations. Most researchers find these grants helpful, but some are not applicable because of conflicts of interest or inability to meet associated requirements.

If a researcher thinks it necessary to cut items from the budget, plan strategically. For example, an easy expenditure to cut may be the funds allocated to conferences and poster presentations. However, name recognition is an important aspect of peer review, and establishing oneself in the research community is imperative for future success. Consider instead applying for an employer travel grant or fee waiver, or through an external organization, such as the one conducting the conference. Also, do not automatically dismiss grants for small amounts of funding; instead, consider realistic ways to incorporate these mechanisms into your program. Smaller grants can be useful to fund feasibility studies or pilot projects. Using supplemental funding mechanisms can greatly enhance a clinical research program.

Developing the Research Team

Physicians dedicated to clinical research are the key to successful programs. Many physicians have endorsed the importance of clinical trials, but few enroll 10% of their patients, an attribute of an exemplary clinical trial site. 1 In the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG), 80% of ECOG community hospital accrual comes from only 20% of registered investigators, indicating that most oncologists do not fully integrate research into their practice. When identifying new staff, it is important to recognize individuals who see clinical trials as an important treatment option. Training physicians who do not already value research is difficult.

Conducting clinical trials in a community setting presents challenges that novice researchers may not have confronted while training at academic institutions. 6 One example is the sheer number of trials onto which community researchers enroll their patients. Whereas academic physicians generally have narrow areas of expertise and accrue to a subset of studies, community physicians typically treat a variety of primary tumors and participate in a broader range of trials. Some physicians overcome this barrier by carrying a booklet that includes a brief explanation of each trial their practice offers. Community physicians may also have to spend more time educating patients and assuring informed consent because patients in the community setting may be less familiar with clinical trial options. In general, it is important to realize that conducting clinical research in a community setting takes time and adaptation. Hiring physicians committed to research and providing them with site-specific training is key to creating a successful research program and sets the tone for other clinical and support staff.

Although the physician is vital to creating a research culture and enrolling patients on trials, nonphysician staff are imperative to the overall success of the program. An ASCO study completed in 2003 found that physicians accounted for only 9% of the overall time required to conduct a clinical trial, whereas nurses and data mangers contributed more than 30% each. 3 At least one dedicated research staff member is critical to ensuring studies receive necessary attention. The clinical research associate (CRA), who may or may not be a nurse, is responsible for research study tasks and assuring all deadlines are met. Study success relies heavily on this person because they are responsible for everything from meeting submission deadlines and reviewing inclusion/exclusion criteria to collecting data and serving as the main source of interaction with patients on study, which can substantially influence participant enrollment and retention. The CRA is also responsible for maintaining the program's regulatory compliance, which is essential to the research program and requires dedicated time beyond the scope of clinical practice.

If the program is small and only one staff person is supported, it is generally best to select a nurse because there are clinical components of research that only nurses are qualified to do. However, if more than one staff person is available, it becomes important to consider the tasks that need completed to determine the best mix of clinical and nonclinical staff. For example, it makes no sense to pay a nurse to photocopy papers or extract data from medical records when appropriately qualified but lower-salaried individuals can be assigned to the task.

Training staff is imperative when developing a research team and should combine on-the-job instruction with formal training. Training within the institution may include mentorship from senior staff, active observation of study tasks, participation during industry initiation visits, and involvement during monitoring/audit preparation. Formal research training can be obtained through professional societies, universities, and online. If the program is new, it may be helpful to gradually build the research portfolio so the CRA has time to learn properly the many responsibilities associated with specific research projects. If a new CRA is starting at an established program, consider initiating incremental advancements so the CRA can be promoted as responsibilities increase. In either situation, the goal should be to prevent overwhelming the individual and providing achievable goals that lead to job satisfaction. These extra steps are important for staff retention. Considering that it takes roughly 6 to 12 months to fully train research staff, frequent job turnover can affect data quality and impede program development.

Other staff that cannot be overlooked include pharmacy staff and those responsible for reimbursement. From the study initiation, clear roles must be established assuring all study tasks are accomplished. Development of standard operating procedures, which are written instructions regarding study responsibilities, are often a good way to be certain that all tasks are consistently met. 1 Although this step requires time up front, it can be highly beneficial during audits and staffing changes and may be required by the study sponsor. Pharmacy staff members, for example, need procedures regarding proper storage and handling of study drugs. Reimbursement specialists need to know how to submit research claims properly and what to charge against the study budget versus the patient insurance. Some practices find it useful to schedule regular meetings to educate staff regarding research and provide updates regarding new protocols. Incremental auditing is also a helpful way for a new program to ensure the quality of research at the institution. Occasional external audits provide feedback not available through internal auditing alone and assure the program is meeting Good Clinical Practice guidelines. Developing a successful research program can be challenging but can provide great personal satisfaction and offers a wide range of treatment options for patients.

Upcoming Events

ASCO plans to offer online educational opportunities in which content providers to the series will discuss these topics in more detail. See ASCO's Web site at www.asco.org/ClinicalTrialResources for more information and access the entire Attributes of Exemplary Research series at http://jop.ascopubs.org/ . The next article in this series, which will provide practical tips regarding contracting, will be published in the March issue of Journal of Oncology Practice .

Feedback Request

Suggest future topic ideas for the series and provide your feedback by sending an e-mail to gro.ocsa@secruoserhcraeser .

For additional literature on this topic, read the article “Clinical Research by Community Oncologists,” published by the American Cancer Society and available free online at http://caonline.amcancersoc.org/cgi/content/full/53/2/73 .

For more information about the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Community Clinical Oncology Program, visit the Web site at http://prevention.cancer.gov/programs-resources/programs/ccop .

View free NCI education modules entitled “Incorporating Cancer Clinical Trials into Your Practice” at http://cme.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/learning/course7.asp .

Learn about grant and award opportunities offered through ASCO at http://www.asco.org/ASCOv2/Research+Resources/Grants+%26+Awards .

Formal staff training and certification is offered via the Society of Clinical Research Associates and the Association of Clinical Research Professionals.

ASCO Statement on Minimum Standards and Exemplary Attributes of Clinical Trial Sites

The ASCO statement addresses the minimum requirements for sites conducting quality clinical trials as well as the attributes of exemplary sites. Both minimum requirements and exemplary attributes were based on a review of the literature, current regulatory requirements, and consensus among community and academic clinical researchers. To conduct quality clinical research, sites should meet the minimum requirements. It should be noted, however, that the exemplary attributes are voluntary and suggested as goals, not requirements. Not all attributes will apply to all clinical trial sites, and many sites may be able to conduct high-quality clinical trials without accomplishing all attributes.

Authors' Disclosures of Potential Conflicts of Interest

The authors indicated no potential conflicts of interest.

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HuiChing Tan,Head of Research Services Delivery

HuiChing has over 15 years of research years (and still counting). She started her research career with Millward Brown Singapore, and subsequently in Ipsos Singapore. During the last 14 years, HuiChing has worked on various multi countries tracker across APAC across various sectors (i.e.: FMCG, Tourism, Banking, Tech). 

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Four clas faculty researchers secure prestigious early career awards.

Continuing  an upward trend of University of Iowa faculty securing prestigious early-career grants, four investigators from the Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Computer Science have been awarded notable grant awards to advance their careers.

DeRoo, Hoadley advance space instrumentation with Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowships in Astrophysics for Early Career Researchers

Casey DeRoo and Keri Hoadley , both assistant professors in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, each received a Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship in Astrophysics for Early Career Researchers. The NASA fellowship provides each researcher with $500,000 over two years to support their research in space-based instrumentation. 

Hoadley’s research is two-pronged. She will design and ultimately prototype a mirror-based vacuum ultraviolet polarizer, which will allow researchers to access polarized light from space below 120-nanometer wavelength. Polarizing light at such a low wavelength is crucial to building optics for NASA’s future Habitable World Observatory (HWO), the agency’s next flagship astrophysics mission after the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. 

“Our vacuum ultraviolet polarizer project is meant to help set up our lab to propose to NASA for one or more follow-up technology programs, including adapting this polarizer for use in vacuum systems, duplicating it and measuring its efficiency to measure additional flavors of polarized UV light, quantifying the polarization effects introduced by UV optical components that may be used on HWO, and building an astronomical instrument to measure the polarization of UV from around massive stars and throughout star-forming regions,” said Hoadley.

In addition, Hoadley and her team will build a facility to align, calibrate, and integrate small space telescopes before flight, using a vacuum chamber and wavelengths of light typically only accessible in space, which could help the university win future small satellite and suborbital missions from NASA. 

DeRoo will work to advance diffraction gratings made with electron beams that pattern structures on a nanometer scale.   Like a prism, diffraction gratings spread out and direct light coming from stars and galaxies, allowing researchers to deduce things like the temperature, density, or composition of an astronomical object.

The fellowship will allow DeRoo to upgrade the university’s Raith

 Voyager tool, a specialized fabrication tool hosted by OVPR’s Materials Analysis, Testing and Fabrication (MATFab) facility.

“These upgrades will let us perform algorithmic patterning, which uses computer code to quickly generate the patterns to be manufactured,” DeRoo said. “This is a major innovation that should enable us to make more complex grating shapes as well as make gratings more quickly.” DeRoo added that the enhancements mean his team may be able to make diffraction gratings that allow space instrument designs that are distinctly different from those launched to date.

“For faculty who develop space-based instruments, the Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship is on par with the prestige of an NSF CAREER or Department of Energy Early Career award,” said Mary Hall Reno, professor and department chair. “Our track record with the program elevates our status as a destination university for astrophysics and space physics missions.”

Uppu pursues building blocks quantum computing with NSF CAREER Award

Ravitej Uppu, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, received a 5-year NSF CAREER award of $550,000 to conduct research aimed at amplifying the power of quantum computing and making its application more practical. 

Uppu and his team will explore the properties of light-matter interactions at the level of a single photon interacting with a single molecule, enabling them to generate efficient and high-quality multiphoton entangled states of light. Multiphoton entangled states, in which photons become inextricably linked, are necessary for photons to serve as practical quantum interconnects, transmitting information between quantum computing units, akin to classical cluster computers. 

“ In our pursuit of secure communication, exploiting quantum properties of light is the final frontier,” said Uppu. “However, unavoidable losses that occur in optical fiber links between users can easily nullify the secure link. Our research on multiphoton entangled states is a key building block for implementing ‘quantum repeaters’ that can overcome this challenge.”

Jiang tackles real-world data issues with NSF CAREER Award

Peng Jiang, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, received an NSF CAREER Award that will provide $548,944 over five years to develop tools to support the use of sampling-based algorithms. 

Sampling-based algorithms reduce computing costs by processing only a random selection of a dataset, which has made them increasingly popular, but the method still faces limited efficiency. Jiang will develop a suite of tools that simplify the implementation of sampling-based algorithms and improve their efficacy across wide range of computing and big data applications.

“ A simple example of a real-world application is subgraph matching,” Jiang said. “For example, one might be interested in finding a group of people with certain connections in a social network. The use of sampling-based algorithms can significantly accelerate this process.”

In addition to providing undergraduate students the opportunity to engage with this research, Jiang also plans for the project to enhance projects in computer science courses.

Disconnected Messaging Breeds Mistrust

Barry Vasudevan , VP, Principal Analyst

Ian Bruce , VP, Principal Analyst

The challenges organizations have with disconnected messaging are plentiful. Marketing and communications pros have long struggled to create cohesion across different audiences — everyone from buyers and customers to employees, partners, and investors. The root of the problem is a disconnected organization. Our research finds that 41% of marketing leaders acknowledge that messaging is built in silos, and half of those leaders also note that their companies create messaging top-down versus being audience-centric.

Connected Messaging Drives Positive Business Outcomes

A remarkable relationship exists between connected messaging and brand trust, a primary driver of B2B buyer purchase intent. For example, the most trusted B2B organizations in the Fortune 500 share a common attribute — they are great at connected messaging. The messaging they deliver drives trust, and that, in turn, drives positive business outcomes . These few companies across industries invest time and effort to create detailed messages that connect back to a central theme. They convey audience-specific messages while combining with messages from other parts of the organization to create resonance in the market.

A Dedicated Team Can Reconnect A Disconnected Organization

Addressing the root of the problem — a disconnected organization — starts with building a team of dedicated people. Specifically, cross-departmental leaders and doers should be tasked with building messaging together. This team enables the organization to align around its most impactful messages to deliver value to each audience. Members of the team not only build their own messaging for the audience they serve, but they also review each other’s messaging to ensure that it’s connected. Additionally, they test it to ensure that the messaging is resonant, and they come back together to make changes. Connected messaging is a team sport, and the team must work together to be successful.

Learn More About The Connected Messaging Team At B2B Summit North America

Join our session, “Building A Connected Messaging Team That Drives Aligned Organizational Value,” at B2B Summit North America in Austin, Texas, next month. We’ll discuss the current state of B2B messaging, dig into examples of companies that get it right, and provide guidance on how you can get started on building your team. Forrester clients can also read our latest report on building connected messaging teams and schedule guidance sessions with us to learn more.

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European research teams to increase battery life with new charging protocol

An improved charging protocol could significantly extend the service life of lithium-ion batteries. In experiments, an international team of researchers has found a way to reduce the effects of ageing during charging - using only the charging protocol.

• Helmholtz Institute
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• Battery research

Currently, the protocols provide for charging with a constant current flow. However, as the study by the team led by Philipp Adelhelm (Helmholtz Centre Berlin and Humboldt University) in collaboration with TU Berlin and Aalborg University in Denmark has shown, this is not the best method. The study, which was published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials , analyses the influence of the charging protocol on the service life of the battery.

As part of the project, the researchers analysed commercially available NMC532 cells with a graphite anode. In the cathode, the compounds of nickel, manganese and cobalt are mixed in a ratio of 5:3:2 alongside the lithium. Many electric cars are currently on the road with such a mixture, even though the trend in new cars is now moving towards NMC811.

Some of the battery tests were carried out at Aalborg University. The batteries were either charged conventionally with constant current (CC) or with a new charging protocol with pulsed current (PC). The cells were then disassembled and scrutinised in post-mortem analyses, which revealed “clear differences” according to the researchers. For example, the solid electrolyte interface (SEI) at the anode was significantly thicker on the samples that were charged with a constant current, which impaired the capacity. In addition, the team found more cracks in the structure of the NMC532 and graphite electrodes, which also contributed to the capacity loss. In contrast, PC charging resulted in a thinner SEI interface and fewer structural changes in the electrode materials.

These initial observations were analysed in more detail with further investigations. At ‘BESSY II’, a 240-metre-long ring accelerator for electrons at the Helmholtz Centre, researcher Yaolin Xu examined the cells using operando Raman spectroscopy and dilatometry as well as X-ray absorption spectroscopy. This enabled him to analyse what happens during loading with different protocols. Additional experiments were carried out at the PETRA III synchrotron. “The pulsed current charging promotes the homogeneous distribution of the lithium ions in the graphite and thus reduces the mechanical stress and cracking of the graphite particles. This improves the structural stability of the graphite anode,” he concludes. The pulsed charge also suppresses structural changes in the NMC532 cathode materials.

In other words, charging with high-frequency pulsed current reduces ageing effects. However, the research teams have also discovered that it depends on the frequency of the pulsed current. Charging protocols with high-frequency pulsed current extend the service life of commercial lithium-ion batteries the most, up to doubling the cycle life (with 80 per cent capacity retention). Co-author Julia Kowal, an expert in electrical energy storage technology at TU Berlin, emphasised: “Pulsed charging could bring many advantages in terms of the stability of the electrode materials and the interfaces and significantly extend the service life of batteries.”

helmholtz-berlin.de

• Optimiertes Laden
• Aalborg University

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