What? According to Levi, a group performance depends on the characteristics of the people performing the tasks. The teams should have individuals with different capabilities that match the requirements to obtain a successful result. Some groups fail because their members do not have the needed characteristics to perform the tasks. This take us to consider interdisciplinary teams, constitute of professionals from different areas, whom cover alternative perspectives that lead to novel solutions of the problem. This request more than the simple combination of professional knowledge, new and different results need people with different visions combined in unexpected ways to achieve original conclusions, and different from ones professional training is focused on. Working in this kind of team is not always easy, some conflicts are generated because of the different ways of thinking, but according with the results of Yong et al, task conflict is positively related to creativity. This is part of the creative process, the team members should listen and debate about different ideas to solve the problem and accomplish the goal.
So what? Working with teams where there are people with different skills, there needs to be clear and shared goals, explaining to them which is the objective of the project. Another important point is; even though everyone has to share their opinion, the answer is found and the objective is clear, there are various roles, but this does not mean that one role is more important than another. Also, it is important to not forget about the three main points for team success mentioned in Levi’s book, which leads us to highlight the importance of establishing good relationships between the members and give them the opportunity to grow, not only as a professional, but also as a person.
Now what? People should pay attention with the teams they are working with, try to be more open minded with the people who have different knowledge and skills, and listen to their opinions and point of view because they could be a very valuable source of new ideas that can help the team try original approaches to achieve the task. In addition, when you are trying to solve a problem, and looking for the right people, it is important to answer some questions like: what is the problem? Who is the beneficiary with the solution? Who are the people that should use/work with the product?. The answer to this can help to find the right kind of people and knowledge we need to complete the goal.
References:
-Levi, Daniel. Group Dynamics for Teams. Fifth edition.
-Alan F. Blackwell, Lee Wilson, Alice Street, Charles Boulton, John Knell. Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with interdisciplinary teams (November 2009) retrieved from: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-760.pdf
-Kevyn Yong, Stephen J. Sauer, Elizabeth A. Mannix. Conflict and Creativity in Interdisciplinary Teams. (First Published May 19, 2014) Research Article. Retrieved from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1046496414530789
-How to Encourage Collaboration in Multidisciplinary Teams (June 1, 2019). Retrieved from: https://contactzilla.com/blog/encourage-collaboration-multidisciplinary-teams/
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