How to communicate in an interdisciplinary team

Researchers increasingly find themselves working with disciplines other than their own specialism to solve complex issues where science and society intersect. For example, understanding and adapting toclimate changerequires expertise ranging from ecology to sociology.

Interdisciplinary research aims to get different fields to jointly find something new, usually a solution to a problem that requires broader expertise than that of researchers from a single field.

But solutions don’t appear simply because different disciplines meet in the same room. Experts are trained in their field’s specific language, theories and research practices, and these create barriers in three groups: language, perspective and knowledge.

Communicationis key — from making yourself understood to trusting people you don’t know to do work you don’t easily understand. This guide outlines challenges you might meet and provides some practical tips.

Sharing language

Each discipline uses its own terms, definitions and jargon, and this often leads to miscommunication. Interdisciplinary colleagues may have different meanings for the same words, or not even recognise some terms used by team members with different expertise.

For example, ‘荒漠化’, which describes a major climate change impact, has more than a dozen definitions. Ecologists use it to describe loss of productiveagriculturalland — the transition from fertile soil to a desert-like landscape — but this definition is not shared by all natural scientists. Economists use ‘desertification’ to describe the spiral of poverty in developing nations, while agricultural scientists use it to mean过度放牧行为。

“Communication is key — from making yourself understood to trusting people you don’t know to do work you don’t easily understand.”

Jessica Thompson

不要试图掩饰这种差异：从一开始就承认它们。团队经理应故意补充有关任务的讨论，并明确讨论语言差异，并将其作为整个团队的学习机会。

I have spent the past few years working with an interdisciplinary study of climate change in Mongolia. Surprisingly, our differences in native languages (English and Mongolian) are less problematic than the differences in our specialised, disciplinary language.

Accept different perspectives

Different fields also have different concepts of what research and knowledge is. Some fields see science as objective, while others believe objectivity is impossible. Some researchers work with qualitative information while others will trust nothing but ‘hard’ empirical data.

But these differences might not be easily apparent — researchers might assume they are thinking along the same lines when they aren’t.

例如，在我们的蒙古项目中，我们挣扎了几个月来制定共享的现场工作时间表，部分原因是我们没有解释我们的理由datacollection preferences, and partly because of different views on what data was ‘important’. Researchers investigating rangeland and生态系统健康need to work when vegetation is blooming;分水岭data need to be gathered at multiple, seasonal intervals; and the team collecting household data needs to work around the herding and community schedules.

我们使用一个简单的过程解决了差异。通过共同列出我们在黑板上需要的所有数据，我们可以绘制团队一起穿越蒙古五个农村地区的最佳时机。

观点的差异也来自文化和国籍。在该项目的早期阶段，我们的蒙古合作伙伴期望正式的沟通，并仅对美国研究人员最高的电子邮件做出了回应。但是，美国领导的研究人员对蒙古人并不能流利，通常需要蒙古团队成员进行较低的蒙古团队来翻译（如果不写）她的团队信件。这在蒙古被认为是不尊重的。我们花了几次对话来弄清楚文化方案并进行相应的调整。

Another cultural challenge I’ve had to reconcile is that of gender. Working with a team studying ecosystem services in Mexico, my peers from a Mexican university would speak directly to my male graduate student, while barely making eye contact with me.

Acknowledge what you don’t know

In most interdisciplinary research projects, there isn’t time to understand one another’s work intimately. And that’s also the point — you need to trust your colleagues and their expertise. After all, the intention is to combine people’s knowledge to serve the project.

However, research training sometimes instils an ingrained sense of authority that tempts team members to debate the merits of each other’s expertise, either through innocent exploratory questions misunderstood as challenges or to maintain ego as ‘the expert’.

For example, during a group discussion on modelling空气质量in Salt Lake City, United States, two lead researchers, one an urban planner and the other a plant ecologist, had a heated debate. An innocent question from the plant ecologist was belittled by the urban planner. The ecologist’s response was to genuinely challenge the planner on a point, in turn embarrassing him.

显然，互相辩论的辩论是不可接受的。在讨厌的习惯成为群体规范之前，应设定基本规则。

在这里，研究团队可以从使用专业主持人中受益。促进者可以帮助团队管理无助的沟通习惯，积极地调节“不运动的人”行为。越来越多的资金机构，非政府组织和大学正在培训专业的促进者，以专门研究团队管理和研究合作。

美国科学技术政策办公室管理Science of Team Sciencelistserv, which connects facilitators with interdisciplinary research teams across the globe.

花时间

成功的跨学科团队互相花费时间。喜欢一起度过时光的同事更开放，愿意互相学习。在我参与的许多项目中，团队成员表达了他们的感觉，他们没有足够的时间讨论，联系和探索想法。

Making time is difficult because researchers often do interdisciplinary projects in addition to their own specialist work. But project proposals and team agendas should include time that is explicitly for building trust, talking around potential communications issues and interacting socially. Don’t be tempted to think of this as a ‘waste’ of time — your working relationships will benefit.

You should be aware of how you’re behaving when spending time together too — make sure that you listen attentively and are open to new thinking and viewpoints. You might not always have a professional facilitator, so it’s vital that everyone is aware of their behaviour and its effects on team communication and collaboration.

Humour can relieve stress, support common values and group goals, and integrate ideas. More importantly, it can diffuse problems before they grow. Joking and laughing can build cohesiveness within a team.

Teams should consider scheduling social time for mingling, building relationships and laughing. Researchers may be much more motivated to participate in collaborative work if social benefit accompanies the professional rewards.

我最喜欢的例子是来自盐湖城队。在正式会议结束后，一些研究人员出去吃披萨。受到一群高中啦啦队的启发，他们最终讨论了高中田径运动及其中学教育的不同经历。

This conversation provided an unplanned bonding opportunity that helped team members begin to trust each other, look forward to spending more time together, and even find additional opportunities to collaborate — six of us still meet to discuss the nuances of the research, and we have written more than a dozen further collaborative research proposals.

但是请记住，并不是每个人都可以承诺与同事在一起，这可能是由于家庭承诺所致。尝试确保这种非正式时间不会排除人们 - 想想如何将其建立到正常的一天。团队成员通常只需要“空间”即可进行社交交谈，这可以在咖啡和午餐时间与晚上一样多。

Getting the work out

Once the research is completed, you must get your results to those who need them. There can be tensions around deciding where research should bepublished。Each field has its own ‘top’ journals, and people may be reluctant to plump for journals they see as inferior.

This is exacerbated by the fact that many journals don’t publish interdisciplinary research, and that journals focusing on interdisciplinary research can be seen as low quality compared with more specialised publications.

当“写作”时，您必须确保您反映整个小组完成的工作，并确保每个人都进食。但是，您还应该任命某人为整体编辑，以确保论文连贯，并以“一个声音”读。

You should also discuss who will be the ‘face’ of the research if it gets media coverage, or whether you want more than one person to be featured. These are issues that apply to all research — you can get further advice from SciDev.Net’s otherpractical guides to science communication, including how to communicate research via写博客andsocial media。

While the challenges can be frustrating, interdisciplinary research offers rich learning opportunities. Once you’ve finished a research project, try to avoid going back to your traditional silo. It would be a shame to close the lines of communication now you’ve opened them. Depending on your field, you might find that you often have the opportunity to get involved in interdisciplinary projects — try to share what you’ve learnt and spread the word.

杰西卡·汤普森是一样的助理教授ronmental and organisational communication at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan.