Building and maintaining momentum

Getting on the same page

Most disciplines or research group have their own ‘norms’ or ways of working – this is one of the reasons why working across disciplines is so rewarding and exciting. However, it’s important you surface as many of these invisible norms as possible at the start of the project, to help you work well together and minimise misunderstandings later.

Working through the questions below will help you better understand the other disciplines and be clear on expectations. Involve all team members in these discussions and revisit them during the project, in case anything shifts over time.

Theme	Some questions to explore
Understanding the other discipline – developing a shared language and understanding of what ‘good’ research looks like:	What interests you about collaboration? What misconceptions have you faced about your research? What does rigour look like in your discipline? Tell me about some of the challenges associated with your research approach Are there words that you use in your discipline which might not mean what I think they mean? What feedback have you had from reviewers on your area of work? Are there particular professional codes of practice or ethical standards you work to? What legislation applies? (e.g. data protection, safeguarding) What assumptions might I make about your research or discipline? What external pressures might impact on the project (e.g. political)?
Understanding each other’s career needs, motivations and expectations:	What is important to your career from this project? Which of the likely outputs or outcomes from this project are most exciting for you? Where might there be tensions between this project and your career?
Anticipated outputs and contributions to these:	What types of outputs do you anticipate and how would you like people to access these? What intellectual property might this generate (think broadly about all the outputs)? What potential might there be for commercialisation? What are the publication practices in your discipline? Who would you expect to be named on a publication and in what order? How will we know it’s the right time to publish? What is your approach to open research? What confidentiality agreements might be required?
How each of us likes to work:	When have you felt frustrated in a collaboration? What will you take responsibility for in making a collaborative project work? What is your strength? What strengths do you bring to making a collaboration work? What is important to you in how we work together? If, in x years’ time, the project has failed, what went wrong? Who do you need to report to regularly on progress? What do you need for that reporting? What might it be useful for me to know about your working pace? (This could be particularly useful if collaborating with non-academic partners as they may have very different expectations).

Think in advance about what an author contribution statement would look like for your project outcomes. Check your institutional guidance on authorship and have an open conversation about conventions and expectations. Most projects involve many types of contribution but not all of these meet the criterion of authorship. CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is a set of definitions of different types of contribution which might help you put these into words.

These discussions may surface important issues to put into your risk or data management plans, as well as eliciting some core values for how you go about the research, such as embedding inclusivity or researcher wellbeing. You might agree to set joint expectations, e.g. ‘everyone will undertake training in data management’. You could create a team Charter, which acts as a guide for new people and is a living document which evolves over time.

Roles and responsibilities, project and risk management

Your funding bid may already have set out who will do what, but it is important to revisit this as the people come and go or develop new skillsets or other priorities. Have an honest and realistic discussion about other commitments, teaching loads, fluctuating priorities and pressures.

As well as the technical work, who is responsible for overall project management? What does this role include and what do others expect from it?

Looking at your project plan and risks from multiple perspectives

Technicians, research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and students bring insights from the day-to-day practice that more senior people aren’t always aware of so it’s important that representatives from across the team are involved in considering project risks.

Use the mind map below as a starting point or create your own as a collaboration. Encourage suggestions from across the team on the risks they foresee in the project. This could be things like delays with ethical approval processes or differences in legal requirements on data handling which could slow down getting contracts in place. They could be more about value clashes between partners or a lack of availability / response to key issues. Or you might foresee the issue of scope creep”, where people bring in new ideas which might be exciting but take you further from the original project. Taking each risk in turn, rank them on their likelihood and impact, and put in place a mitigation plan for each, with a nominated person in charge of managing it. Your project board should regularly review your risk register and project dependencies as a standing agenda item in your meetings.

Your institution may offer project management training and templates for risk management to help you think through the requirements of your current project and how to keep things on track.

Invite the team to bring their broad range of experience and perspectives to get creative in identifying potential risks in your project.

Stakeholder analysis and management

You can use a stakeholder mapping template as a way of understanding groups who might be interested or involved in your collaboration. This mapping will inform how, and how often, you engage with each of these groups. Ask yourself: what information do they need and who will be responsible for managing the relationship?

Considerations for recruiting to collaborative projects

You may be recruiting research assistants, technicians and students to work on your project. These are key stakeholders, with the project success strongly linked to their careers. It’s important that you are clear about expectations on both sides. Ask about their interest in collaboration and be prepared to have an honest conversation about what this might mean for their professional identity, and things like the speed of success or outputs. Will they need training or formal learning? Will they get a chance to ‘stand in their collaborator’s shoes’ via shadowing, joint fieldwork or time at the partner’s facilities?

It is likely that you will need to continue this conversation at a later point to address ‘imposter’ feelings, comparisons with other students around them who may seem to be progressing more quickly in a single-discipline project or doubts about being a ‘jack of all trades and master of none’ when it comes to their next career move.

Contact your local HR team for support with institutional recruitment process and policy.

Building psychological safety in your collaboration

Collaborations and innovation thrive when people feel able to openly share their ideas and also question the approaches or ideas of others. They also need to feel safe to raise concerns and to admit to failures or mistakes. Amy Edmondson, who pioneered work on this area in the context of healthcare settings in the 1990s, describes psychological safety as the ‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking’. Think about what this means in the context of your research collaboration – how can you make sure that everyone feels able to contribute ideas, uninhibited by real or perceived hierarchies such as those related to career stage, gender, discipline or many other characteristics? What steps can you take to make sure people don’t feel they’ll be rejected or humiliated if they share a different idea or question an approach? A study by Google with its employees (Project Aristotle, 2016) demonstrated that psychological safety was one of the most important factors in making teams work.

Here are some tips to maximise different methods of communication and meeting types, to make sure that all voices can be heard, and you get healthy debate and challenge.

Activity or event	Considerations
Project meetings (virtual or face to face):	Your governance structures may require steering group or management meetings with a formal agenda (e.g. reviewing project plans, finance and risks) but there may also be technical meetings and informal catch-ups. Agree how much time in the meeting you want to spend giving updates and sharing information vs discussing future plans. What do you want the outcome of the meeting to be? Is there a formal chair and minute taker in each meeting?
Project reporting:	Are there specific reporting requirements for your institution or funder, as well as reporting to each other on technical progress?
Virtual collaboration tools:	We recommend you explore collaborative workspaces on SharePoint or MS Teams for GW4 projects. If you want to use another tool, think about institutional and project expectations on data security and confidentiality.
Emails and other ways of messaging:	What are your expectations of each other on email communication and responses? Some people may prefer to answer emails about the collaboration only on a particular day or within explicit working hours (unless marked as urgent). Have a conversation about boundaries and what people are comfortable with. If you are travelling to visit another lab or doing fieldwork together, you might use WhatsApp as a way of communicating, but that won’t necessarily mean that everyone in the collaboration is willing to be part of a WhatsApp chat, or to get messages at all hours of the day.
Social events and team building:	Try to have a variety of options for people to build social connections outside of formal project spaces. Could you schedule time at a conference you’re all going to anyway to meet for dinner or a walk? You might want to do something more in-depth at the start to give people time to get to know each other. Just remember that not everyone is going to be comfortable with some types of activity, such as going to the pub, socialising over food, or doing something active. Don’t make assumptions about people’s capabilities, ask for feedback, and have a few options. 10-pin bowling is often a fail-safe!

Activity or event

Considerations

Project meetings (virtual or face to face):

Your governance structures may require steering group or management meetings with a formal agenda (e.g. reviewing project plans, finance and risks) but there may also be technical meetings and informal catch-ups.
Agree how much time in the meeting you want to spend giving updates and sharing information vs discussing future plans.
What do you want the outcome of the meeting to be? Is there a formal chair and minute taker in each meeting?

Project reporting:

Are there specific reporting requirements for your institution or funder, as well as reporting to each other on technical progress?

Virtual collaboration tools:

We recommend you explore collaborative workspaces on SharePoint or MS Teams for GW4 projects.
If you want to use another tool, think about institutional and project expectations on data security and confidentiality.

Emails and other ways of messaging:

What are your expectations of each other on email communication and responses? Some people may prefer to answer emails about the collaboration only on a particular day or within explicit working hours (unless marked as urgent). Have a conversation about boundaries and what people are comfortable with. If you are travelling to visit another lab or doing fieldwork together, you might use WhatsApp as a way of communicating, but that won’t necessarily mean that everyone in the collaboration is willing to be part of a WhatsApp chat, or to get messages at all hours of the day.

Social events and team building:

Try to have a variety of options for people to build social connections outside of formal project spaces.
Could you schedule time at a conference you’re all going to anyway to meet for dinner or a walk?
You might want to do something more in-depth at the start to give people time to get to know each other. Just remember that not everyone is going to be comfortable with some types of activity, such as going to the pub, socialising over food, or doing something active. Don’t make assumptions about people’s capabilities, ask for feedback, and have a few options.
10-pin bowling is often a fail-safe!

GW4 Collaboration Guide: Building and maintaining momentum

Getting on the same page

Roles and responsibilities, project and risk management

Stakeholder analysis and management

Considerations for recruiting to collaborative projects

Building psychological safety in your collaboration