What strategies can you use to build trust and respect in your research team?

In my experience this is about 3rd or 4th on the list and works only when done in collaboration with the team. It also requires stewarding, not “leading” which is what most people think works. The reason it’s later in the order is that there needs to be a certain level of trust that already exists. Note I’m not saying don’t have these things at the start, but make it clear they’re an initial set of thinking that didn’t include the perspective of the team. Even if this is done first, there needs to be that understanding because those things will change (and more frequently than companies like to admit.)

Open and frequent communication is the cornerstone of any successful team. 1.Transparency Definition: Being open about decisions, processes, and challenges. 2.Honesty Definition: Telling the truth, admitting mistakes, and providing genuine feedback. 3.Collaboration Definition: Working together towards a common goal, leveraging each member's strengths. 4.Prevention of Misunderstandings 5.Issue Resolution 6.Leveraging Collective Knowledge In conclusion, open and frequent communication is not just about sharing information; it's about building a team culture where everyone feels valued, heard, and empowered. It's a proactive approach to team management that can lead to more successful research outcomes and a more cohesive and motivated team.

Fostering trust and respect within your research team involves maintaining open and regular communication: sharing pertinent information, providing updates, and discussing challenges with the team, all while actively and respectfully listening to their ideas, opinions, and concerns.

Communication in and of itself won’t produce anything. I’ve been at several companies that use “open and frequent” communication and the engagement, trust, and attrition rates vary widely. The problem with “communication” is that it’s fundamentally a one-way broadcast. All the Q&A and “Ask me Anything” sessions do little to shift the trust needle. They comes from consistent fulfillment of promises, (real) openness to being wrong along with an effective model of engagement in those cases, and conversations as equals working towards a shared result.

Yes and no. For this to work the focus needs to be on the competencies, contributions, and character of the individual. When a team is run well this just happens because the trust is there, everyone knows how to both give and receive effective thanks (there are 3 levels and thanks are most effective in the first person… there siting there so talk to them, not the team.) BTW, none of this is unique to research teams, it’s what works with humans.

This is a potential landmine. The absolute worst thing to do is “give feedback” to someone who hasn’t declared they’re open to it (disciplinary conversations excepted.) The other thing is that conversations around failure or mistakes must take place in a non-judgmental, non-moral, non-emotional space. Think anthropologist… they observe, theorize, but do not judge. Also motivation is not what you want. That’s the carrot stick model. You want mobilization, doing something because you want to.

In research occurrence of Bias and Shortcuts by few research members is the most scary and nightmare for the research manager. While there are several methods to eliminate these bias and shortcuts , one of the important step is the build a trust and respect within the research team. • Establish platform whereby the research team members can openly share the failure of their experiment and collectively work for lessons learnt. • Make every decision collective and based on facts and figures, instead of Hierarchical way of handling. • Let the team members own the research impact factors • Collectively analyse the research infrastructure (e.g. data inputs) and the research methods time to time.

Yes and no. This works really well for some types of people. For others the cognitive load of participating in these “fun” is quite high with an associated high emotional cost. I’ve worked in teams that blow industry performance stats away and that do little to no “fun” stuff.