Interdisciplinary science teams combine diverse expertise to address complex societal challenges and are increasingly vital for advancing research and innovation. However, differences between team members can hinder effective collaboration in these teams. This mini review examines common challenges in interdisciplinary science teams and outlines strategies from team science to address them. We highlight five challenges that undermine team effectiveness: communication across disciplinary boundaries, developing shared mental models and role clarity, navigating hierarchies and status differences, building shared affect and trust, and efficiently using and distributing knowledge. The review includes different recommendations for managing interdisciplinary teamwork, emphasizing evidence-based practices that promote integration, collaboration, and long-term team success.

OBJECTIVE:We investigated the impact of leaders' interprofessional teamwork behaviors on NICU staff perceptions of teamwork processes, trust, psychological safety, and voice behavior. STUDY DESIGN:To develop a measure of leaders' interprofessional teamwork behaviors, we observed 199 rounding events at a NICU in the Southeastern United States. We evaluated the effect of leaders' teamwork behaviors on teamwork by observing 931 interprofessional rounds and collecting 115 staff surveys. RESULTS:We identified three categories of leaders' interprofessional teamwork behaviors during rounds: sharing information, inviting input, and maintaining positive rapport. Results indicated a small, positive effect on staff ratings of psychological safety and voice behavior. Leader behaviors did not significantly predict staff ratings of teamwork processes or trust. CONCLUSION:Results indicate that NICU leaders' interprofessional teamwork behaviors can improve NICU staff perceptions of psychological safety and voice behavior during rounds, but did not indicate that these behaviors significantly affect teamwork processes or trust.

As technology is increasingly integrated into teamwork, it is important to consider how and when human and non-human entities may function as teammates and the conditions under which they may be regarded as such. Drawing on cross-disciplinary literature, we advance a comprehensive conceptualization of “teammate,” which suggests that teammates take many forms, operate within various contexts, and are perceived as teammates. From this definition, we outline a set of guiding questions to consider before viewing technology as teammates with case examples to illustrate how one might use these questions in practice. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1724127.].

Change is ubiquitous in today's world of work. In order to achieve and remain successful, teams must be able to adapt to environmental changes and bounce back from adversity. Psychologists are well suited to help teams build change capability by providing coaching to team leaders and members and by implementing evidence-based team-development interventions. In this article we provide an overview of team attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions that drive team change capability, providing practical strategies and recommendations for psychologists to help teams build these change capabilities before, during, and after team performance episodes. In doing so, we equip psychologists to support their teams in becoming more adaptable, more resilient, and ultimately more effective over the long haul.

To better understand the effects of demographic diversity on teams, we conducted a meta-analytic investigation of the relationship between team demographic diversity and team processes. Drawing from the categorization-elaboration model, we hypothesized that team demographic diversity elicits opposing effects on team performance via information elaboration and social categorization processes. We also explored several team-level and contextual moderators on these relationships. In our meta-analysis of 406 effects from 38,304 teams, we found that team demographic diversity is related to increased social categorization processes, but we did not find support for a relationship between team demographic diversity and information elaboration. In addition, we identified team education level and occupational and industry context as moderators of these relationships, finding stronger support for moderators of the relationship between diversity and social categorization than the relationship between diversity and information elaboration. We discuss implications of our findings for research and practice.

Family-centered care is vital in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), where family involvement is linked with improved patient outcomes. However, collaborating with patient families presents unique challenges for medical teams. The purpose of this research is to identify behaviors NICU teams use to promote family-centered teamwork. This study used qualitative data from observations of 320 patient rounding events. Results were analyzed using content analysis. Observed behaviors were categorized into five themes, which captured medical team members' efforts to include patient families in teamwork: inviting families to participate in teamwork, developing a shared mental model of goals and plans, empowering family caregiving in the hospital and preparing family for discharge, coordinating communication between family and medical team, and developing positive relationships with patient families. The findings from this study emphasize that providers can include patient families in the NICU team, despite challenges associated with doing so.

Purpose Teams across a wide range of contexts must look beyond task performance to consider the affective, cognitive and behavioral health of their members. Despite much interest in team health in practice, consideration of team health has remained scant from a research perspective. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues by advancing a definition and model of team health . Design/methodology/approach The authors review relevant literature on team stress, processes and emergent states to propose a definition and model of team health. Findings The authors advance a definition of team health, or the holistic, dynamic compilation of states that emerge and interact as a team resource to buffer stress. Further, the authors argue that team health improves outcomes at both the individual and team level by improving team members’ well-being and enhancing team effectiveness, respectively. In addition, the authors propose a framework integrating the job demands-resources model with the input-mediator-output-input model of teamwork to illustrate the behavioral drivers that promote team health, which buffers teams stress to maintain members’ well-being and team effectiveness. Originality/value This work answers calls from multidisciplinary industries for work that considers team health, providing implications for future research in this area.

Background: Perioperative handoffs entail transferring responsibility for surgical patients from one specialized group or team to another. Multiteam system (MTS) theory has not yet been considered within perioperative handoff literature, even though multiple teams must work within and across the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative settings to care for Methods: Using a case study from gynecological oncology, the authors demonstrate the applicability of an MTS taxonomy to the perioperative context. Compositional, linkage, and developmental MTS attributes are defined, along with the concept of boundary spanning, using examples from the case study to illustrate their relevance to the perioperative environment. Key research issues invoked through the application of the MTS taxonomy are discussed alongside overarching recommendations regarding approaches and methods to study these issues. Results: This discussion of perioperative handoffs considers team functional diversity and motivation, between-team interdependence and communication patterns, changes in MTS composition and structure, and boundary spanning. The authors make overarching recommendations for future research that specify mapping perioperative MTSs, identifying weaknesses in MTS functioning and possible handoff design countermeasures, and evaluating handoffs designs' impact on patient care and MTS outcomes using several study designs. Conclusion: An MTS perspective can uniquely inform key research questions to advance the practice of perioperative handoffs. Processes that affect complex patient safety and care quality outcomes demand consideration of between-team collaboration quality during perioperative periods. The application of MTS theory in intervention research addressing perioperative handoffs can support MTS functioning for the benefit of safe, high-quality care.

Fluid teams, characterized by frequent changes in team membership, are vital in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) due to high patient acuity and the need for a wide range of specialized providers. However, many challenges can hinder effective teamwork in this setting. This article reviews the challenges related to fluid teamwork in the NICU and discusses recommendations from team science to address each challenge. Drawing from the current literature, this paper outlines three challenges that can hinder fluid teamwork in the NICU: incorporating patient families, managing hierarchy among team members, and facilitating effective patient handoffs. The review concludes with recommendations for managing NICU teamwork differently using strategies from team science.

Gender inequity is globally present in the labor force and advocating for gender equality is not merely a fairness issue, but a benefit for organizations. In this paper, we identify common challenges for gender-diverse teams (i.e., turnover, discrimination, communication issues, conflict between team members, and low team cohesion). We also discuss the importance of inclusive leadership to overcome these challenges. Correspondingly, we provide practical actions for inclusive leaders to implement on their teams to address issues regarding diversity, and subsequently leverage its benefits.

Misinformation is by no means a new topic. Documented efforts to misinform date back as far as 44 BC with a political smear campaign against Mark Antony carved on coins. Advances in communication technology, ranging from the invention of the printing press to the explosion of social media platforms, have accelerated the speed with which misinformation can travel and its global reach. Research has revealed numerous diverse contributors to our susceptibility to misinformation, including cognitive processing factors or reasoning styles; characteristics of the information and source; ease of consumption; political ideology; and demographic factors. Dr. Shurney elaborates on some of these factors later in this issue. Misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic has been rampant since the outset, particularly with regard to mask-wearing and vaccines. In fact, theWorldHealthOrganization and other global health organizations called on the world leaders and other stakeholders to take action tomanage the parallel infodemic (ie, overabundance of information that includes incorrect information to undermine the public health response). The first Surgeon General’s Advisory issued during the Biden Administrationwas released byDr.VivekMurthy in July, 2021 to caution the American public about the urgent threat of health misinformation. The Surgeon General warned that misinformation (ie, information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading based on the best evidence available) “can cause confusion, sow mistrust, and undermine public health efforts, including our ongoing work to end the COVID-19 pandemic.” Misinformation has also led to the use of unproven – and potentially dangerous – treatments for COVID-19, including ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug used to deworm animals. In addition to overdoses that required hospitalization in some cases, people’s use of this baseless treatment has caused a shortage of the drug for animals who need it. Research has uncovered links between hundreds of deaths and thousands of hospitalizations globally and misinformation about other untested COVID-19 treatments. Beyond the pandemic, misinformation also has very real and dire consequences in other areas, not the least of which is its potential to influence voting behavior and spur violence. Addressing the threat of misinformation will require coordinated and comprehensive efforts on the part of the media; health care In This Issue

Front-line medical teams are experiencing unprecedented stressors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the face of these pressures, teamwork has become both more important and more challenging. Fortunately, numerous examples of naturally occurring cooperation are appearing at healthcare institutions around the globe, including instances of people trying to work together during the crisis who may not have done so under ‘normal’ conditions. A crisis can stimulate some people’s willingness to cooperate, for example, to ignore prior disagreements to tackle a shared predicament. But even when the intent to cooperate is present, the incessant stress present during a crisis makes it significantly harder for teams to sustain coordinated performance over time.1 2 Focused attention on teamwork is required.3 Prior research conducted on teams under stress can be used to help anticipate risk points that can adversely impact teamwork and reveal what can be done to help teams coordinate effectively, maintain resilience and ensure patient safety during the pandemic. This article offers several evidence-based recommendations to help clinical teams that work directly with patients during COVID-19 and in future crises. Tips are included for clinical care team leaders and team members, as well as for members of management who support or oversee clinical teams (senior leaders, middle managers, crisis management teams). Over the last 30 years we have studied and advised teams across a broad range of settings. Some of these teams work in what you might think of ‘normal’ or routine settings, such as manufacturing or sales. But many perform in high-stress conditions where the consequences of failure and personal pressures are high, including teams of astronauts, deep sea divers, jet fighter pilots, smoke jumpers, miners, emergency medical technicians, soldiers and trauma teams. During this time, research on team effectiveness has expanded and close to 50 meta-analyses …

Recent articles in the popular press stress the importance of soft skills in leader performance evaluations, noting a shift from organizations’ earlier focus on hard skills. Despite the popular belief that organizations have shifted to valuing soft skills over hard skills, it remains unclear if managers have shifted to rely on assessments of soft skills in their leader performance evaluations. This study drew from archival data from an extensive, non-for-profit healthcare organization’s feedback process for managers. We hypothesized that soft skills would predict leader performance above and beyond hard skills in recent years, but that this finding would not hold in earlier years. We used multiple regression analysis to test if soft skills significantly predicted leaders’ performance above and beyond hard skills in a dataset collected between 2009 and 2013 and in a dataset collected between 2014 and 2018. In support of our hypothesis, we found that evaluations of soft skills predicted performance evaluations above and beyond hard skills in the 2014–2018 cohort, but soft skills did not predict performance evaluations above and beyond hard skills in the 2009–2013 cohort. These findings suggest a successful bridge between research and practice, and demonstrate that the increasing emphasis on soft skills in popular press articles is reflected in leader performance evaluations.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the United States. health care teams are on the frontlines of this global crisis, often navigating harrowing conditions at work, such as a lack of personal protective equipment and staffing shortages, and distractions at home, including worries about elderly relatives or making childcare arrangements. While the nature and severity of stressors impacting health care teams are in many ways unprecedented, decades of psychological research exploring teamwork in extreme contexts can provide insights to understand and improve outcomes for teams in a crisis. This review highlights the psychological principles that apply to teams in a crisis and illustrates how psychologists can use this knowledge to improve teamwork for medical teams in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic., The review also provides a glimpse toward the future, noting both how psychologists can help health care teams recover and rebound, as well as how additional research can improve psychologists' understanding of teamwork in times of crisis.

As the need to tackle complex clinical and societal problems rises, researchers are increasingly taking on a translational approach. This approach, which seeks to integrate theories, methodologies, and frameworks from various disciplines across a team of researchers, places emphasis on translation of findings in order to offer practical solutions to real-world problems. While translational research leads to a number of positive outcomes, there are also a multitude of barriers to conducting effective team science, such as effective coordination and communication across the organizational, disciplinary, and even geographic boundaries of science teams. Given these barriers to success, there is a significant need to establish team interventions that increase science team effectiveness as translational research becomes the new face of science. This review is intended to provide translational scientists with an understanding of barriers to effective team science and equip them with the necessary tools to overcome such barriers. We provide an overview of translational science teams, discuss barriers to science team effectiveness, demonstrate the lacking state of current interventions, and present recommendations for improving interventions in science teams by applying best practices from the teams and groups literature across the four phases of transdisciplinary research.

Teamwork in healthcare is particularly salient in the dynamic domains of critical care: emergency medicine, surgery, and trauma and resuscitation. Within and across these services, teams must be coordinated to provide optimal care in order to provide optimal delivery of health care. Although many disciplines study teamwork, it is unclear how scholars and clinicians conceptualize, study, and apply these processes. The current systematic review investigates how these fields 1) study teams through the application of a teamwork processes rubric and 2) distinguish themselves from other medical disciplines through the empirical research. We drew upon a taxonomy of teamwork processes (Marks et al., Acad. Manag. Rev. 26, 356 ‐376; LePine et al., Person. Psychol. 61, 273 ‐307), operationalizing transition, action, and interpersonal processes, to guide this work. Overall, the dynamic domains of literature studied teamwork processes at high rates, relative to other medical fields. Specifically, they were strongly associated with transition and action processes and the content areas of leadership and performance. Given these emphases, research and practical interventions may want to focus on more interpersonal and collaborative approaches in teamwork