Key leadership practices in transdisciplinary projects

By Susanne C. Moser.

When training transdisciplinarians, which leadership skills and practices is it helpful to encourage? 

The kind of leadership that someone brings to a transdisciplinary project has decisive implications for how a project unfolds and for its likelihood of success. Conventional thinking about leadership often hinges on unspoken assumptions about hierarchies, power, and the significance and impact of a single individual; it also often implies unspoken ideas about inclusion, assignment, or sharing of rights and responsibilities, and those to praise or blame for any outcomes. At the same time, transdisciplinary research encourages practices that flatten hierarchies; challenge power; promote diversification and inclusion of different disciplines, expertise, and ways of knowing; and question traditional research processes.

Experience and the extant literature on leadership in transdisciplinary projects suggests that transdisciplinary projects tend to thrive when leadership responsibilities are not held just by one, but are consciously distributed and based on acquired attributes such as skill for different tasks, access to sites of decision-making, availability, and accountability. The result is a “leaderful ecosystem”, ie., deliberately shared responsibility for the implementation of a transdisciplinary project (Change Elemental, no date).

In such “leaderful” teams, leaders repeatedly and intentionally engage in practices that can be learned and practiced in transdisciplinary trainings. Some practices that experience shows to be critical are:

• seeing and tending relationships;
• being eager and open to learning (forever);
• risk taking;
• having respect and empathy;
• being intentional;
• being accountable; and
• thinking in systems.

Seeing and tending relationships

In collaborative or collective leadership, recognizing the importance of, developing, and fostering relationships is of fundamental importance, be they:

• among researchers;
• between researchers and societal partners;
• among societal partners; and
• among those representing disciplines, sectors, and issues at stake.

Effective leaders understand this, either intuitively, or from experience. Relationships, in fact, are at the very heart of the systems their projects aim to address. While things and outputs are important, tending relationships is potentially the most important key to success.

Being eager and open to learning (forever)

Most collaborative leaders in projects addressing complex challenges take on leadership responsibilities with great passion, ambition, and subject- matter expertise, though not always with extensive leadership training or even much prior thought to what it might take to pull off a successful project. Inevitably things don’t go as planned or hoped. What characterizes effective leaders of transdisciplinary projects is that they do not give up when such challenges emerge but are self-aware, reflexive, and committed to learning. Leadership itself becomes a lifelong learning journey.

Risk taking

Given the complexity, difficulty, frequent uncertainty, novelty, and innovation involved in leading multi-collaborator projects on complex challenges, leaders often must do things they have never done before (eg., give testimony before a legislature, speak to the media, or integrate scientific and Indigenous knowledge), or work in ways they are not accustomed to (eg., give equal voice to collaborators; or share responsibility, authority, and financial resources equitably). They must also allow others to step into leadership roles and try out new things. Effective transdisciplinary leaders create a culture of bravery, acceptance, and safety that makes it possible for all to take risks and even fail. In fact, they don’t see shortcomings as “failure,” but reengage in learning with their team.

Having respect and empathy

Given the complexity of sustainability and other challenges that transdisciplinary research tackles, diverse and sometimes divergent, but equally valid, perspectives must be welcomed, heard, and respected. Similarly, different kinds of expertise, skills, ways of knowing, strengths, and weaknesses come into play in any collaborative project. Embodying a respectful and empathic attitude and continual curiosity are critical for trust and team building.

Being intentional

Complex problems do not arise because systems are broken; they arise from perfectly well-working systems that were designed to create those problematic outcomes. Thus, the systems don’t need to be “fixed,” nor do the problems “solve themselves;” instead, the systems need to be redesigned.

Similarly, project teams don’t come together as effective collaboratives “by accident.” Leadership requires intentionality in:

• building a team, as well as a shared problem-understanding and vision of success;
• group norms that all “own” and abide by;
• a strategy for implementing the project; and
• a timeline that allows for frequent pauses to track progress, take stock, update each other, reflect and learn together, debrief challenges, and celebrate successes.

Being accountable

If trusting each other is crucial in collaborative teams, so is being trustworthy. And that means being accountable – as a leader as much as a non-leading team member. This not only refers to the delivery of assigned tasks, but also to the quality of how roles are being enacted, as well as that of communication among team members. Regular check-ins to actively seek and provide feedback help build a team culture of accountability, transparency, and trust.

Thinking in systems

Leadership of collaborative projects requires thinking of the multiple dimensions of the problem at hand, but also of the research/action collaborative as a dynamic system, or system of systems. This essentially means looking at what is included and excluded in the way we draw the boundary around a set of things and exploring how the parts or people relate to each other, and the dynamics they create.

Importantly, complex systems do not function by simple or linear cause-and-effect causality, but often involve difficult-to-plan, predict, or even detect, system dynamics, such as circular, interlocking, sometimes time-delayed relationships, feedback loops, unpredictable emergent properties, or events and disruptions. It takes many eyes to see all aspects of a system. And it takes time to intuit, learn, and work within these dynamics, ideally, by making small experimental moves, closely observing the consequences, and thus learning about them.

Conclusion

A transdisciplinary training design guide (Transdisciplinary Training Collaborative, 2025) offers a more extensive discussion of these practices, and related tools that can be used to help develop these skills. I would love to hear if you have witnessed or identified other common practices among transdisciplinary research project leaders. Please share!

To find out more:

Transdisciplinary Training Collaboratory (2025). Designing Inspiring Workshops and Courses in Transdisciplinarity: A Guide. Stanford University: Stanford, California, United States of America. (Online – open access): https://itd-alliance.org/resources/design-guide/
This i2Insights contribution is based closely on the section on ‘Leadership’ (pp.53-60) which has been modified in minor ways. References are provided in the original.

Reference:

Change Elemental (no date). Cultivating Leaderful Ecosystems. Change Elemental website. (Online): https://changeelemental.org/cultivating-leaderful-ecosystems/

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)

Biography: Susanne C. Moser PhD is an independent scholar and consultant who works in the US and internationally from a base in western Massachusetts, USA, the unceded ancestral homeland of the Nipmuc and Pocumtuc. Her work over the past 30 years has focused on adaptation to climate change, climate change communication, transdisciplinary engagement at the science-policy interface, and psycho-social resilience in the face of the traumatic and transformative challenges associated with climate change.