Connecting the Dots Between Team Science, Leadership Education, and the Interdisciplinary Research Pipeline

Short Description Working together with Team Science practitioners, leadership scholars have a unique opportunity to further advance the application of effective team processes. This combined effort can contribute to successful outcomes for science teams working on some of the most complex and wicked challenges of today and tomorrow. Through dialogue, this interactive round table explores possibilities on how academic and Team Science leaders might collaborate to strengthen the talent pipeline. Roundtable hosts will draw upon their own experience with a new graduate-level course (“Team Science, Cooperation, and Interdisciplinary Research”) and encourage sharing of other examples.

Detailed Abstract Increasingly, our society is experiencing problems where there are no easy answers or fixes. These problems require teams of people from multiple disciplines and perspectives to help uncover solutions. As noted by Stedman and Adams-Pope (2019), “in the coming years, the nature of the problems researchers are asked to solve are only going to grow in complexity requiring a greater range of input and support from a diversity of researchers” (p. 22).

The National Research Council (NRC, 2015) has described Team Science as a relatively new definition of team collaboration, which has formed in response to the need for addressing complex challenges in scientific communities. While individuals on these science teams may be well-versed in their areas of expertise, they frequently do not have experience with contributing to team efforts (Adams et al., 2012) and more collective forms of leadership (Wilson et al., 2020). The champions of team science initiatives may have a deep understanding of the scientific issues, but they may not have developed the experience to navigate some of the unique challenges of interdisciplinary science teams, which include: 1) high diversity, 2) need for deep knowledge integration, 3) large sizes, 4) goal misalignment with other teams, 5) permeable boundaries, 6) geographical distance, and 7) high task interdependence (NRC, 2015).

While team science practitioners may not have experience leading team cognitive, motivational, and behavioral processes, their knowledge and skills can be improved through professional development and leadership education. Indeed, findings by Braun et al. (2020) highlighted a potential area for improvement: “the best means of understanding and ultimately improving team performance is by leveraging coordination behaviors” (p. 572). In 2015, the National Research Council recommended “leadership researchers, universities, and leaders of team science projects should partner to translate and extend the leadership literature to create and evaluate science leadership development opportunities for team science leaders and funding agency program officers” (p. 9). This call to action encourages universities and researchers to reimagine how to design academic leadership programs to help address these issues that are being identified in the field. Furthermore, the National Leadership Education Research Agenda 2020–2025 noted the need to connect leadership education to multidisciplinary work: “articulating and contextualizing purpose for the multidisciplinary contexts of leadership education, and creating value for the world” (Andenoro & Skendall, 2020, p. 37). Unfortunately, “professors tend to be sceptical about many things, and leadership is no exception” (Leiserson & McVinney, 2015, p. 281). Even still, there is growing interest in developing science team leaders with the integrative capabilities needed to support and guide disciplinary diverse research teams (Salazar et al., 2019).

Some leadership educators are working to fulfill this need through new courses and programs. This roundtable will explore insight from the broader community of leadership pracademics through the following discussion prompts:

• Should higher education programs in leadership studies include the Science of Team Science as part of the curriculum? If so, how?
• How might the Science of Team Science inform leadership research? Where are the opportunities?
• How can leadership theories, frameworks, models, and practices help to inform the Science of Team Science?
• Where can leadership educators engage and support science teams in ways that have been previously overlooked?
• How might this type of professional development benefit from online and in-person delivery?
• What might a cooperative relationship look like to help build interdisciplinary research pipelines? (Who are the stakeholders?)