Collaboration Agreements
Highly functional scientific research teams that embrace a culture where communication is grounded in transparency and inclusivity help promote collaborative conditions that bolster innovation, productivity, and cross-disciplinary efforts. As the interconnected landscape of scientific research continues to evolve and require more collaborative forms of knowledge creation, teams must be better prepared to engage in skills for facilitating open dialogue, managing conflict, and working together on complex projects.
To support this process, team science experts L. Michelle Bennett, PhD, Michael O’Rourke, PhD, and Edgar Cardenas, PhD, developed a Collaboration Agreement Template and Collaboration Agreement Tips (PDF) to set teams up for success and to help them achieve desired scientific research outcomes. The resources on this page provide strategies for establishing communication norms when working in teams, ways to facilitate meaningful dialogue, and guidance when developing a shared understanding of the details of your collaboration.
Many of the resources and all the videos in this section are repurposed from a webinar held in August 2024 on “Collaboration Agreements for Successful Team Science Processes,” presented by Edgar Cardenas, PhD, co-founder and associate director of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative Center at Michigan State University.
Developing Team Norms
Norms are agreed-upon rules or standards for behavior in specific teams or settings. They represent “shared agreements among members about what behaviors are valued in the group, and what behaviors are not. They refer only to behavior, including things members say, not to unexpressed private thoughts and feelings” (Hackman 2011). Research shows that norms are inherently social and cultural in nature, holding significant value in promoting collective action in teams. You can ensure your team’s norms represent shared values by talking explicitly about mutual expectations.
In the video clip below, Cardenas examines the primary properties of norms and what it looks like to facilitate their development in team settings:
Supporting Team Communication
Strong communication is a fundamental aspect of advancing the research efforts of teams to achieve desired outcomes. Oftentimes, communication surfaces as a major challenge for teams to effectively collaborate across disciplines and sectors. You can anticipate and navigate communication challenges by establishing norms that are specific to how your team will communicate and manage conflict.
In the following video clips, Cardenas discusses various examples of communication norms along with guiding questions for operationalizing the process and minimizing potential conflict:
Creating Collaboration Agreements for Team Success
A collaboration agreement is a document that outlines the norms, standards, and practices a team has agreed on to reach a specific goal. It is a useful document that allows teams to find clarity and consistency in the process and be explicit about the details of the collaboration, building a shared understanding about the values, norms, and goals for the collective work. There are several collaboration agreement templates available for scientific research teams, all of which are designed to help you come to agreement about what you are working toward and how you will get the work done. You can use an existing template, such as the Collaboration Agreement by Bennett, O’Rourke, and Cardenas, or create a customized version for your unique team and project. For mentee-mentor and group mentoring agreement templates, check out our page on Mentorship in Clinical and Translational Research.
Collaboration agreements are comprehensive, covering many topics which can make the experience seem like a significant undertaking. To maximize your results, approach the process with a mindset of mutual learning, focusing on what you can learn together as a team while establishing alignment. Keep in mind that collaboration agreements do not exist in a stagnant state; they are designed to be living documents that you can continue to come back to with your team.
In the documents below, Cardenas provides helpful tips to consider when getting started with the process of collaboration agreements, along with examples for how to engage with them:
Handout: Collaboration Agreement Template
Use this template, developed by Michelle Bennett, PhD, Michael O’Rourke, PhD, and Edgar Cardenas, PhD, to explore tools and prompts that facilitate team management, dynamics, and communication to maximize the impact of your work with teams.
Handout: Collaboration Agreement Tips (PDF)
Explore these tips, developed by Michelle Bennett, PhD, Michael O’Rourke, PhD, and Edgar Cardenas, PhD, to learn about strategies for developing norms and forming a collective sense of agreement. In addition, check out the featured exercise from this PDF for a guided process of reflection on past collaborative experiences.
The collaboration agreement is a living document that teams can revisit and revise when disagreements or changes emerge, serving as helpful points of reference and reflection. Use these resources with your team to establish clear and consistent communication norms and maximize the impact of your collaborative work across disciplines and sectors.