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Dryad

Five core themes of intentional team formation

Love, Hannah12; Dickmann, Ellyn3; Brennan, Andrea4; Rollinson, Christy4; Fisher, Ellen21

Published Mar 12, 2026 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3ffbg7b0d

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Abstract

Cohesive group dynamics and innovative scientific ideas are essential components of successful research collaborations. However, the group dynamics (i.e., the “people”) and the scientific process and outcomes (i.e., the “science”) are often considered separately and with unequal emphasis, such as when the focus on the science comes at the expense of individual team members. This results in a loss of team energy, motivation, and direction. Innovative ideas will only arise and thrive if team members feel psychological safety to propose, take ownership of, and pursue new project directions. As a case study, we describe a large collaborative and crossdisciplinary project team navigating the proposal development process. These efforts were carried out with design grant funding, and the sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a fully virtual collaboration. This experience led us to identify Five Core Themes of Intentional Team Formation to develop and align teams and ideas: Team Development, Effective Communication, Perspective Alignment, Team Management, and Project Workflow. Here, we use the experience gained from our own crossdisciplinary proposal project to: (1) explain the importance of each theme to team formation, (2) describe our team's approach to each theme in terms of process and interventions, and (3) evaluate the extent to which these approaches contributed to team formation and function with an emphasis on multiple metrics of success. We found that when individual contributions and expectations are aligned through psychological safety, mutual trust, and respect, idea generation and contributions can launch a team towards achieving goals and objectives. In this article, we discuss limitations, future directions, and crossdisciplinary team applications of our five core themes for team formation. Ultimately, these five core themes provide teams with the team formation tools they need to set a strong foundation to effectively tackle big challenges.