Psychological safety in interdisciplinary teams: how leadership behaviors empower teams

Interdisciplinary collaboration drives innovation by uniting diverse knowledge and perspectives. However, bias and ineffective team management practices can hinder a team's ability to leverage these advantages by causing interpersonal conflict, eroding trust, and compromising communication. These challenges reinforce the need for leadership skills that extend beyond team management practices that focus on coordination and task execution, emphasizing the relational work required to cultivate healthy team dynamics. By equipping leaders with tools to foster stronger team cultures, teams are better positioned to integrate unique perspectives, unlocking the full potential of their collective expertise.

Taking a phenomenological approach, eight senior leaders with extensive experience in leadership and mentoring were interviewed to learn more about their experiences in promoting psychological safety in teams. Transcripts were coded using thematic analysis during multiple coding iterations.

The behaviors described by interviewed leaders fell into five thematic areas: self-awareness and growth, mentorship and development, amplification and empowerment, communication and transparency, and accountability and integrity.

This study underscores the transformative power of leadership in cultivating strong team cultures while also complementing and strengthening existing leadership-training efforts. Leadership development programs could be strengthened by attending more explicitly to psychological safety, and our findings provide actionable insights that can be integrated into current training frameworks to deepen leaders' capacity to foster supportive and high-functioning teams. Ultimately, this shift not only benefits individual teams but has the potential to strengthen the fabric of the broader research culture.