This grant supported the development and deployment of an innovation in graduate education which uses the results of the science-of-team-science literature, draws on best practices in teamwork, as well as our own research to develop leaders in engineering practice. The grant focused on developing graduate students who work in interdisciplinary teams where they are tackling complex problems that no one discipline could solve. It is essential that members of these team develop the skills needed for different disciplines, with different points of view, training, and experience, to work effectively together.

Materials, including a participant workbook and a train-the-trainer facilitator guide, were developed to enable workshops to be done in different modes (in-person, on-line, and self-study) and in different formats (1/2 day and full day workshops, 50-minute modules, self-serve modules done at the user’s pace). The train-the-trainer materials have been used to successfully train faculty from other universities, so that they can offer workshops on their campuses.

This grant work was part of the Effective Team Dynamics Initiative (ETD) which delivers on the vision that everyone’s unique contributions are recognized in research teams and outcomes are reached that could not be reached by individuals. ETD cultivates a supportive, productive, and harmonious learning community grounded in strengths-based collaboration. This work has resulted in the initiative impacting 8000 undergraduate and graduate students and 1800 post docs, faculty, and staff in just the past five and a half years. The initiative partnered with the Center for Teaching and Learning at Georgia Tech to develop the curriculum and train faculty and staff as certified facilitators to deliver its content. The work has been disseminated to other institutions including the University of Texas San Antonio, University of Wisconsin Madison, Sagrado University Corazon, University of Georgia, and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

This project contributed to both intellectual merit and broader impacts in the following ways:

Intellectual Merit:

This project was both innovative and transformative for a number of reasons. Our outcomes are distinct from the National Science Foundation’s other team science investments in that training is not limited to graduate students from a specific program, and that it focuses on team science competencies such as knowledge about the nature and value of teamwork; skills in team formation, communication and conflict management; and attitudes about diversity and inclusiveness, including working across interdisciplinary boundaries. Our three-dimensional approach has allowed Georgia Tech to add to the knowledge base about effective graduate STEM education. The robust and comprehensive evaluation plan enabled the project team to answer research questions such as, “Which instructional materials and approaches are most effective for students’ development of team science competencies?” and “What setting is most suitable for learning and retaining specific transportable skills?” The comprehensive training program we developed has also be transformative because the team science training has become a standard, required part of graduate education and postdoctoral training in some of the schools at Georgia Tech. The supplemental funding received enabled the team to develop online modules which can be accessed through our learning management system, Canvas, and are appropriate for self-study or research group training.

Broader Impacts:

“Integrating Team Science into the STEM Graduate Training Experience” achieved three primary societal outcomes. First, the project has improved graduate student STEM education by providing students with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in team-based work environments, whether in academia, industry, or the non-profit sector. Our work has had impact nationally and internationally because we committed to creating flexible, scalable, and sustainable team science training practices which have be implemented in graduate programs across the country and in Japan (note that Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology and Georgia Tech funded this collaboration in Japan). Improvements in STEM education have led to a second key societal outcome: M.S. and Ph.D. graduates who are better prepared to participate in a diverse, globally competitive workforce. When members of the workforce are able to work effectively in interdisciplinary teams, we reap the economic and technological benefits of solving what the National Academy of Engineering has identified as the grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century.

By Spencer Chalifour

Working in teams has countless advantages, but it’s also very easy for collaborative projects to go awry. Previous articles for this blog have described how group members can learn from each other and pool their strengths together to approach projects more effectively than any group member could individually. However, to get to this place as a team, you must first learn about each other and determine how best to collaborate. This step becomes even more complicated when your team can’t meet in person and must instead rely on remote collaboration.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers and students in all disciplines have had to become more accustomed to remote collaboration. That said, just because working online has become a new normal doesn’t mean everyone knows how to collaborate remotely successfully. A recent study showed that 75% of employees ranked collaboration, as opposed to productivity, as having suffered the most in the shift to working virtually.[1] While everyone can work at the same pace as before, we still need some help adjusting to working together virtually.

In this article, we’ll cover three ways you can adapt activities developed by the Effective Team Dynamics Initiative (ETDI) at Georgia Tech to better collaborate with your team members when you cannot meet in person.

Create a Team Action Plan

The first thing you generally do when getting to know new people is talk about your likes and dislikes. You make friends based on shared passions like music, sports, and movies. Similarly, couples usually begin by discussing their shared values. In the same vein, a strong team should understand each other’s needs, but this can be difficult when you’re not in the same room.

By creating a team action plan, you can clearly outline what each team member wants and how you can support them. You can adapt the team action plan activity on the ETDI website for remote work by having each member contribute to the team action plan handout through a platform that allows online collaboration, such as Google Docs or Dropbox. Team members can indicate what they resent when working collaboratively by choosing statements based on their strengths from the personal value activity.

Next, the team can use a video call or group chat to discuss how to respond to the most prominent “I resent” statements. Keep in mind that even if two members choose the same “I resent” statement, they might require different ways of addressing it. Let’s say two people state that they resent chaos and confusion. One might request the team have a written reason or plan of action for every major group decision, while the other might require that the team record and assign responsibilities in a task manager tool.

Once your team action plan is complete, you will have a clear document that provides actionable steps to ensure your team collaborates effectively. This process eliminates the need to check in with each other constantly, saving time. For more information on how to make your plan actionable, see the instructional video here.

Practice Effective Email Communication

The disappearing teammate is everyone’s least favorite magic act. Nobody wants a Houdini on their team—someone who is nominally part of the group but doesn’t show up for meetings or turn in work on time (or ever). To help address this issue before it arises, consider adapting our email communication and team expectations activity.

In this activity, students draft emails to the infamous fictitious Georgia Tech student George P. Burdell, a practical joke from the 1920s who has evolved into a legendary alumnus who has achieved immense honors despite never existing. If drafting your own emails would be too time-consuming, you can also critique the sample email correspondence in the activity instructions.

The most important step in this activity is to clearly establish a template for email correspondence where you can be respectful but firm in addressing any issues that might come up, including nonappearances from teammates. Staying on top of group members when working remotely can be especially difficult. However, if everyone understands how to address these issues, it will be much easier to correspond with your group members in the long run.

Delegate Tasks and Responsibilities

With any collaborative work, it’s important to identify tasks and responsibilities for each group member. However, it’s equally important that everyone in the group understands the difference between tasks and responsibilities. While tasks are the specific actions or short activities each group member will do, responsibilities are major aspects of a project that a particular member oversees by encouraging other group members’ contributions so that aspect moves forward.

You can think of tasks and responsibilities in the context of sports: The quarterback of a football team has the task of throwing the ball, but it’s their responsibility to know which player to throw the ball to depending on the play. Responsibility also means knowing your teammates’ skills and being able to maximize those skills for the occasion; if a quarterback is always throwing to their wide receivers, they aren’t effectively taking advantage of their running backs or tight end.

In this activity, you identify every group member’s strengths according to their CliftonStrengths profile. Then, the group will work together to determine the major steps they must complete for their project. Each member will claim a step as their responsibility using their strengths as a guide.

Once you’ve determined your responsibilities, you can then define the tasks you will complete as part of your responsibilities. For example, if one of your strengths is Consistency, your responsibility could be ensuring that a written document maintains the same tone and voice despite having multiple authors. An initial task you could complete is creating a style guide for your group members to ensure they all know how to write your document. When working remotely, this would be an ideal activity to implement when you begin collaboration. This way, you will all have specific tasks to complete, and you can rely on your teammates to support you through their unique responsibilities. Sometimes the hardest part of working virtually is being responsible for yourself, but with this activity, all teammates can share responsibility and support each other.

Develop Successful Remote Collaborations With Effective Team Dynamics

If you’d like any additional assistance creating successful remote collaborations, or if you’d be interested in participating in a free ETD workshop, please contact us here. 

Sources: 

1. [1] https://lucidspark.com/blog/report-collaboration-and-creativity-during-covid

By Spencer Chalifour

For the past two years, DeMarco Williams has served as the project manager for the marketing and digital strategy team at Georgia Tech. His work often involves projects marketed to people wanting to return and continue their education. “It’s demanding,” he says, “but it’s really nice to see your work in person, because when you see someone graduate, you know that they came through your website.”

As an Effective Team Dynamics (ETD) workshop facilitator, Williams similarly encourages many members of the Georgia Tech community to reach their full potential. However, Williams’ path to ETD wasn’t straightforward. “In my previous job, we had done some kind of personality test – I think it was a Myers Briggs,” he says, “and I don’t like boxes and being told that this is who I am or this is what I am.” Williams had heard of CliftonStrengths through a friend who was a coach, and he “liked how they talk about your strengths and how you can use them and what you’re good at.” So, when Williams came to Georgia Tech, he was excited to discover he would be participating in a CliftonStrengths workshop as part of his new role. He contacted Dr. Mary Lynn Realff, the workshop’s facilitator, and took the coaching certification class so he could continue helping others develop their strengths.

As for his own strengths, Williams identifies his most used CliftonStrengths themes as “strategic, arranger, learner, and connectedness, which are four of [his] top five.” These strengths frequently come up in his professional life: “Strategic is very helpful for me because of the position that I’m in; I have to be really clever with how I get work done. We don’t have a lot of resources, so I have to really think about how to map it out.” He notes that his skills as an arranger help to put everything together and see the big picture. “I have to rely on people to do a job like I’m not actually doing the work. So, I have to really goad people into understanding why we have to get this done in this manner or in this amount of time. So being able to connect to a person quickly but also genuinely is really helpful to push work along. All of this is possible because of the team I work with. They constantly go above and beyond.”

As far as being a learner goes, Williams says, “I love being able to learn things and spit that knowledge back out if needed, but it also helps me adjust quicker and just be flexible with the demands that come.” Williams says that all these strengths “have helped me really catapult in my career, and I think they’re going to really take me even further.”

Though Williams recognized himself in four of his top five strengths, he does say that one was a surprise: “My fifth strength is self-assurance, and I think that’s probably one where I was a little unsure about how that got in there. But once I started to understand how [CliftonStrengths] worked, I said, ‘ohhh ok.’” Even though Williams didn’t originally recognize self-assurance as a strength, he notes that this strength has become one of the most important in his current work: “Self-assurance is really good for my role because I’m making decisions. If I’m not confident or if I’m not exact on what we’re going to do, then that’s going to cause people to waver or maybe question some of the things that I’m asking them to do. I feel like self-assurance also comes in with internally saying, ‘Hey, you’re good enough to do this, you know that you can do this, you’ve shown you could do this type of type of work.’”

Finding this self-assurance was important for Williams as he transitioned into project management from his previous roles: “My background is IT. I started off as a software developer, [and] I didn’t like it. I moved more toward customer-facing roles and business analysis, and now I’m doing project management, and I really like it…I like people. I like talking to people. I like working with people. I like seeing how people think and tick, and I think that’s the part of the job I gravitated towards.”

Since becoming involved with ETD, Williams states that he has seen the benefits of approaching team dynamics through a strengths-based approach. He says, “I enjoy learning about myself and others, so it’s really fascinating to see how some people work together, even if you have the same strengths. Dr. Realff and I share a few of the same top five, but we’re still very different in how we approach those.” Outside of his work as an ETD facilitator, Williams has witnessed the benefits of implementing effective team dynamics in his project management work, too. “I’ve been using those strengths to work with my team and communicate with them in the language of their strengths,” he notes, “and I’ve seen a great impact on not just my team but GTPE as a whole. We’ve done a few facilitations with teams there and the feedback has been tremendous.” Williams remarks that even his personal life has been positively impacted by ETD: “I’ve been coaching a few friends on the side, and I got my wife to take the session, and that was really fun to see how we work together.”

When asked what advice he has for students at Georgia Tech who are new to ETD or group work in general, Williams recommends, “Just be open, don’t have any expectations walking into the room, because if you come in there with a certain mindset and it doesn’t meet your expectations, you’ll already feel a little defeated. Be observant. Listen to your teammates. Listen to yourself as well.” Williams also says that understanding your role means understanding when to defer to someone else’s expertise: “My advice would just be to feel where you fit in and then really fill that space to your best capability, and lean on your teammates to fill in the other gaps.”

Williams has similar advice for members of the Georgia Tech community in administrative or leadership positions, but adds, “Really be open to hearing what your team has to say… I remember we had one session with a manager, and they were not necessarily taken aback, but they felt what their team members were saying. They really took it home, and you could see the difference already in that team. They’re more upbeat. They’re more communicative with each other. They appreciate the work that they’re doing. And I think from a management standpoint, that’s the key.”

Williams also advises everyone interested in ETD to follow up. Even if you’ve already done one session, Williams recommends continuing to build and understand your strengths with ETD facilitators so they can continue to assist with group dynamics: “Let’s make sure we really reinforce these things that we’ve learned. That helps the team, that helps everybody.”

If you’d like to get started with ETD or would like to schedule a workshop or follow-up session, please see the ETD contact form here.

By Mike Lehman

The terms “interdisciplinary” and “interdisciplinary collaboration” are used frequently across academic institutions. A quick Google search results in over 100,000 uses of these terms in relation to Georgia Tech specifically. In our teaching, grant applications, and individual research, offering some form of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary angle has nearly become a necessity. In fact, Georgia Tech has 10 interdisciplinary research institutes across all six colleges that help scholars and researchers collaborate with partners outside of the institute.

The idea of interdisciplinarity and its importance to successful and innovative research has steadily increased from the 1950s, becoming a common phrase in academic books from the 1970s to the 2020s. Yet, the term “interdisciplinary collaborations” has seen a significant uptick in usage in the last two decades, with a sharp upward yield over the previous ten years. While it is an integral part of our work both inside and outside academia, it’s often difficult to decode how to best implement and complete interdisciplinary collaborations.

Georgia Tech’s Effective Team Dynamics Initiative (ETDI) offers workshops for students and faculty to help them thrive in their interdisciplinary collaborations. But what exactly is interdisciplinary collaboration, and how can we successfully create effective team dynamics within these collaborations?

This article discusses successful interdisciplinary collaboration, the benefits of interdisciplinary work, and effective collaboration strategies.

What Is Interdisciplinary Collaboration?

In short, interdisciplinary collaboration happens when people from different disciplines work together to complete a project. What is unique about interdisciplinary collaboration is that it moves people away from working in isolation toward a collaborative process from inception to completion. Each team member brings their unique methods and ideas to the project, which is especially important when moving academic work and research out into the world.

For example, Georgia Tech recently announced the launch of the Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Research Program. The program’s Neuro Next Initiative brings together a range of faculty at GT, including Christopher Rozell (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering), Simon Sponberg (Physics and Biological Sciences), and Jennifer S. Singh (School of History and Sociology). These collaborators bring together applied research and community-facing liberal arts scholarship. Thus, the Neuro Next Initiative brings together researchers to develop potential practical applications of neurotechnology to serve and improve our communities.

Benefits of Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Research

Interdisciplinary collaboration draws various researchers together to implement projects that are often hard to move from an academic institution into the community or industry. By creating a collaborative environment with a shared vision from the beginning of a project, interdisciplinary collaboration enables the development of a research framework that moves beyond the boundaries of individual disciplines. This approach is especially important when a project seeks a comprehensive understanding of complex issues to provide real-world solutions that may involve policymakers.

Benefits of Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Teaching

Like collaborative research, interdisciplinary collaboration in the classroom opens up new avenues for students to learn from others, understand how they can blend their work with research in other disciplines, and create projects that matter outside their coursework. Incorporating an interdisciplinary collaboration framework in course design offers opportunities for innovative work that transfers to their future careers.

Often, faculty can implement interdisciplinary collaboration with small assignments and group work, but you can also:

• Create projects that enable students from different disciplines to work together
• Bring in instructors from other disciplines to guest lecture in your class
• Add a service-learning component to your course
• Invite community partners to give input on community impact
• Offer flexible assignments that require students to engage with work outside of their disciplines

Examples of Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Time and scheduling can seem like barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration, but teams can use resources that are already in place. For example, many academic institutions have teaching tools and resources to enhance interdisciplinary projects.

We can use Georgia Tech to illustrate. Say, for instance, you’re designing a course focusing on an aspect of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. GT’s Center of Teaching and Learning has materials and resources for faculty to help support innovative sustainability and SDG teaching strategies.

Another practical teaching resource often used to highlight the role of interdisciplinary research and what it can develop is a tour of the Kendeda Building. This activity fosters discussions about how blending research and interdisciplinary collaboration offers solutions to practical problems. Additionally, the Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education helps faculty develop relationships with community partners and offer guidance for collaborating with community stakeholders.

These types of resources are available across academic institutions, and they’re an efficient way to improve interdisciplinary collaboration and research for students as soon as they step on campus.

What Are Effective Collaboration Strategies?

A key tenet of interdisciplinary collaboration is each team member should provide input from ideation to completion of a project. However, creating a team from different disciplines and backgrounds can often cause issues with communication and lead to disagreements about how to work as a team effectively.

These common interdisciplinary collaboration strategies can facilitate more efficient teamwork:

• Define Goals and Objectives: Share goals and clarify member responsibilities from the beginning of the project and make adjustments as necessary
• Share Language: Conduct workshops to open communication and reduce disciplinary jargon
• Exchange Knowledge: Develop an environment that encourages members to share their expertise
• Resolve Conflicts: Create protocols to resolve conflicts
• Create a Collaborative Environment: Foster creativity and create a shared learning community
• Promote Diversity and Inclusion: Encourage inclusive decision-making and value diverse backgrounds
• Evaluate Progress: Have a system to assess progress regularly

How GT’s ETDI Helps Create Effective Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Georgia Tech’s ETDI uses Gallup’s CliftonStrengths Assessment to train students, faculty, and staff to use their strengths to work effectively in a team. To efficiently collaborate across disciplines, developing effective team dynamics is important. Understanding your CliftonStrengths Assessment allows individuals to leverage their unique traits in different contexts. Collaboration can be more effective if each team member knows and understands their strengths. 

ETDI offers curriculum sets for undergraduate and graduate students to help them establish the necessary team dynamics to collaborate across disciplines successfully. Likewise, ETDI provides workshops that focus on team activities to enhance collaboration. 

Please contact us to set up a free workshop or to have ETDI help you navigate interdisciplinary collaboration.

By Mike Lehman

While Gallup CliftonStrengths is commonly used to improve and enhance workplace culture, it has particular benefits for students. Georgia Tech’s Effective Team Dynamics Initiative (ETDI) uses the CliftonStrengths Assessment to teach students practical methods to improve team dynamics.

ETDI facilitates discussions and workshops to demonstrate how students can effectively use the CliftonStrengths Assessment to take advantage of their unique abilities. Understanding roles and responsibilities in a team helps individuals work together to solve problems, make decisions, and achieve their goals.

The CliftonStrengths Assessment identifies innate strengths and talents that enable effective team dynamics. In this article, we discuss five benefits of taking the CliftonStrengths Assessment for students, including:

• Self and Social Awareness
• Leadership Development
• Academic Success
• Career Planning
• Interview Preparation

Understanding your CliftonStrengths helps you explore career options and set goals that will benefit your personal and professional lives.

What Are CliftonStrengths?

The CliftonStrengths Assessment was developed by the Gallup Institute and was created by Don Clifton. Formerly known as the StrengthsFinder, Don Clifton sought to supplement the field of psychology to help people identify what they do right and empower human development.

One of the most prominent misconceptions about the CliftonStrengths Assessment is that it focuses on personality, like the Myers-Briggs personality test. Instead, the evaluation focuses on statements about your strengths and skills. The assessment uses 177 statements to categorize your results into 34 different themes under four domains:

• Strategic thinking
• Relationship building
• Influencing
• Executing

Following the assessment, you’ll receive a detailed report highlighting your five key strengths. These five CliftonStrengths themes teach you how to transfer an understanding of yourself into your daily activities. Recognizing your strengths allows you to better engage with others and leads to more effective team dynamics.

Students can use their CliftonStrengths domains and themes to consider their role in teams, relationship building, and academic and career development.

Using the CliftonStrengths to Develop Self-Awareness

For many young adults, college is a key moment in life to develop self and social awareness. Recognizing your talents allows you to see how they influence your behaviors and interactions with others. Discovering how your strengths influence your social interactions will enable you to build more successful personal and professional relationships.

The five most common CliftonStrengths are:

• Achiever
• Responsibility
• Learner
• Relator
• Strategic

It’s essential to gain strengths awareness is an important step to understand how your talents impact your interactions with other people. For example, if one of your themes is strategic, then you can use strategic thinking to develop a plan for personal growth and map out social interactions to build more lasting connections.

Likewise, learners can apply their openness to engage and understand others to reflect on the benefits of cross-cultural relationships. Being open to discovery creates opportunities to develop personal and professional connections across the globe.

Once you become more aware of your strengths, you can create a personal growth plan by reflecting on your past behaviors and identifying patterns to continue building on your strengths.

What are the Best CliftonStrengths for Leadership?

Often, one of the more difficult traits to recognize in ourselves is leadership. For students, understanding individual traits can benefit yours role in effective teams and help you establish leadership roles in different settings and circumstances.

Leadership roles depend on context and situation, but the more common CliftonStrengths for leaders are:

• Achiever
• Strategic
• Maximizer
• Includer
• Responsibility
• Command
• Adaptability
• Futuristic
• Communication
• Empathy

While these are the most common CliftonStrengths for leadership, it is important to remember that influential leaders use a combination of strengths and adapt to the needs of a team. By understanding your role in a team and your strengths, you can leverage your talents to become an effective leader when organizing and directing a group.

Benefits of the CliftonStrengths for Academic Success

College registration is one of the most pressing times for students. But knowing your CliftonStrengths can help you select courses in areas where you excel. Beyond your major, knowing your strengths can help you determine the best type of instruction style and assignment type to make sure that you are successful in the classroom.

The CliftonStrengths test allows you to gain the self-awareness to determine the best tools and resources that will enable you to shape your unique academic experience. Also, as you learn your own talents, you will notice and appreciate the special skills of others. This social awareness is the foundation of developing effective teams inside and outside the classroom.

How Can You Use CliftonStrengths for Career Development?

The CliftonStrengths are a powerful tool for career discovery and development. After reviewing your strengths, you can do a tailored career or job search based on your talents. For example, while reviewing job descriptions, you can match key terms to your CliftonStrengths themes and domains.

You can also use your CliftonStrengths for interview preparation. Many interview questions focus on strengths and weaknesses, and you can anticipate these types of questions to answer based on how you have used your strengths in the past. For your elevator pitch, you can highlight your strengths by showing how you have navigated team dynamics, which translates into more effective performance.

Get Started Using the CliftonStrengths Assessment at Georgia Tech

The CliftonStrengths Assessment is a powerful tool to gain insight into your strengths and talents, but it should be used in collaboration with other resources, such as career counseling, academic advising, and individual or group tutoring.

Georgia Tech’s ETDI can help you understand how to leverage your strengths in the classroom and choose your career path. Please contact us to set up a free workshop or have ETDI help you realize your full potential.