Shared leadership can promote success in collaborative research networks in ecology

While collaborative science is becoming the norm in ecology, many ecologists participating in collaborations are less aware of the body of research that studies the processes by which collaborative teams organize and communicate. Here, we discuss how we successfully used a shared leadership model in the Dry Rivers Research Coordination Network. We discuss how this model promoted our success in different stages of the project, using the Tuckman model of team development: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Shared leadership in the forming phase helped us recruit a diverse membership from different scientific disciplines. In the storming and norming phases, shared leadership was especially useful in ensuring that all voices were heard in establishing group norms that promoted adhesion among and investment by RCN members. Shared leadership in the performing phase was crucial in providing opportunities for early career members to lead projects, and in the adjourning phase we reflected upon our entire collaboration to identify that shared leadership was crucial to our success, generating the thesis for this commentary. It is our hope that others may find this discussion of our experience in implementing a shared leadership model useful in developing their own fruitful collaborations. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.