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Explainers

Team Science Skills

Given the rise and need of ever complex teams to answer critical ecological, biological and environmental questions, many teams ask us how they can (1) make better teams and (2) be better teammates. While the "science" of team science allows us to investigate what works for teams and what doesn't, team science is actually composed of four main areas: practice, science, education and training.

  • Practice focuses on leveraging skills and tools to improve collaboration such as decision-making, psychological safety, etc.
  • Science focuses on empirical studies of team dynamics, effects of size and team composition, etc.
  • Education focuses mainly on undergraduate courses on leadership, but can also include professional development of groups like graduate students, postdoctoral associates, junior faculty, and general team leadership (e.g., PIs, directors)
  • Training focuses on consultation or facilitation; training on team norms, how to collaborate, etc.

At ESIIL we have created a variety of explainers for those of in the practice and education spaces of these four areas. We continue to add more explainer documents that you can find at our ESIIL SciTS webpage.

To date our available explainers include:

  • A suite of explainers on decision-making methods including: compromise, consensus building, majority voting and multivolting.
  • Rules of scientific collaboration including: size and distance.
  • Our ESIIL productivity framework
  • A decision making toolkit
  • A suite of explainers on understanding team dynamics including: decision gradients, decision levels, groupthink, and scientific culture.