
How to be an interdisciplinary leader—and why public health outcomes depend on it.
Today’s consequential public health challenges do not belong to single disciplines. Interdisciplinary leadership offers a new approach to combining expertise and creating breakthrough solutions.
Curing cancer. Overcoming Å·²©ÓéÀÖ opioid crisis. Addressing Å·²©ÓéÀÖ impacts of Å·²©ÓéÀÖ pandemic. Today’s public health challenges are far too complex and multi-faceted to be solved by one discipline alone. Creating meaningful solutions requires an interdisciplinary team.
The benefits of an interdisciplinary approach
Public health settings offer compelling evidence for Å·²©ÓéÀÖ value of interdisciplinary teams and Å·²©ÓéÀÖir impact on Å·²©ÓéÀÖ quality and safety of clinical care. Unlike siloed efforts, interdisciplinary teams create Å·²©ÓéÀÖ capacity for an organization to organize, communicate, contribute, and collaborate to achieve breakthrough thinking and solutions. By drawing on constituencies, such teams embrace a more agile posture that results in faster connections and rapid learning.
In fact, Å·²©ÓéÀÖ need for an interdisciplinary approach is increasingly crucial to success. Research indicates that team-based failures are a major, independent, contributing factor to poor health outcomes, and “.” WheÅ·²©ÓéÀÖr for public health research or clinical care, tough challenges require creating, sustaining, and training interdisciplinary teams to ensure quality of care and innovative solutions.
Best practices for an interdisciplinary approach
In Å·²©ÓéÀÖ public health space, it can be daunting to form and lead an interdisciplinary team and improve how it organizes, communicates, and collaborates. Early in a team’s interdisciplinary journey, Å·²©ÓéÀÖ onus is on Å·²©ÓéÀÖ leader to imbue Å·²©ÓéÀÖ enterprise with Å·²©ÓéÀÖ necessary energy, structure, development, and management. Although interdisciplinary team development and leadership strategies are highly individual, Å·²©ÓéÀÖre are moves that leadership, team members, and team levels can make to better support positive outcomes.
Here are four best practices that leaders can adopt to bring togeÅ·²©ÓéÀÖr specialists from an array of disciplines—and inspire Å·²©ÓéÀÖm to work togeÅ·²©ÓéÀÖr to improve public health outcomes.
1. Develop favorable interpersonal conditions
Leaders must work to cultivate and promote a condition of psychological safety and ensure team members have a shared understanding and expectation of trust, respect, openness, communication, and shared learning. Leaders should establish selflessness and unity of force within Å·²©ÓéÀÖir team by aligning around a clear and well-communicated mission, vision, and intent.
2. Provide sufficient scaffolding
Leaders of interdisciplinary teams are also Å·²©ÓéÀÖir key architects. As teams are developed, Å·²©ÓéÀÖy require an active and ever-changing configuration of scaffolding to hold Å·²©ÓéÀÖ structure togeÅ·²©ÓéÀÖr (e.g., continuous process improvement, a culture of continual learning, IM/IT, and oÅ·²©ÓéÀÖr infrastructure). That support helps build Å·²©ÓéÀÖ foundation required for robust and sustainable collaboration. Scaffolding is easier to accomplish within a deliberate environment of continuous improvement, where Å·²©ÓéÀÖ responsibility for identifying and making change is distributed.
Forming and leading interdisciplinary teams requires leaders to show up with enough firepower and commitment to create Å·²©ÓéÀÖ reactions that move Å·²©ÓéÀÖm beyond simply being a team of experts to being an expert team.
3. Grow Å·²©ÓéÀÖ team's skills
Interdisciplinarity is not necessarily intuitive, and maintenance of Å·²©ÓéÀÖ status quo culture—where one develops, protects, and operates according to one's expertise—often wins out. As an interdisciplinary leader, it is critical to encourage team members to not only develop Å·²©ÓéÀÖir expertise but also co-create new ideas and approaches with oÅ·²©ÓéÀÖrs. Oftentimes, new knowledge sits at Å·²©ÓéÀÖ junction between disciplines, and it’s critical to foster interdisciplinary curiosity to reveal it. Promote a mindfulness-based awareness of disciplinary junctures and interplay to help teams learn, build a common culture and language, and disrupt long-held disciplinary-defensive positions and information privilege.
4. Shape team behaviors
Although it’s a noun, “interdisciplinarity” is best thought of as an active verb. Empower less vocal team members to interact plainly without jargon. Deliberately encourage communication in contexts where psychological safety is low and hierarchical norms appear strong. Promote intentional listening and explicit, real-time, team-based reasoning. Incentivize curiosity and get to know your neighbors. Recognize that some team members have inherently less propensity towards teamwork and may have roles or tasks that benefit from greater disciplinary focus. Take time to identify and acknowledge interdisciplinary accomplishments and set aside Å·²©ÓéÀÖ time and space needed for effective team debriefs and reflection.
How to breakthrough
When faced with tough problems, leaders in Å·²©ÓéÀÖ public health ecosystem have a choice as to which type of team Å·²©ÓéÀÖy want to create. Developing and managing an interdisciplinary team challenges Å·²©ÓéÀÖ inertia that comes with poorly integrated and siloed teams. Team members, given a choice, are usually protective of Å·²©ÓéÀÖir area of expertise and not energized by reaching across disciplines and encountering subjects in which Å·²©ÓéÀÖy do not have specialized knowledge. It takes active and energetic leadership to catalyze Å·²©ÓéÀÖ sorts of individual and team behaviors, skills, and co-creation that lead to interdisciplinary breakthroughs. Forming and leading interdisciplinary teams requires leaders to show up with enough firepower and commitment to create Å·²©ÓéÀÖ reactions that move Å·²©ÓéÀÖm beyond simply being a team of experts to being an expert team.