Talking about dialogue

In many ways this entire book is about team communication, and for good reason. Researchers are drawn together by a shared interest in the subject matter of their investigations and have no problem spending an abundance of time doing and talking about that. Their training enables them to develop hypotheses and test them, read papers and critically appraise them, evaluate research results, troubleshoot, and figure out what to do with unexpected findings. It can feel like conversations about the research and associated processes flow easily and are enormously satisfying even when there is disagreement.

As we have seen previously, a research collaboration is more than dialogue about different ideas. To start with, teams need to acknowledge that they are invested in their ideas and feel strongly that their interpretations of data are rooted in a particular methodology or committed to an explanatory concept. It takes effort and time to effectively listen to how someone from a different discipline might view and interpret that data, with the understanding that they too will be as invested and passionate about their ideas (Khuri, 2020).

There is a certain irony that even discussions of research can have their challenges, particularly in cross- disciplinary collaborations. Academic advancement thrives on disagreement, and teams thrive when members collaborate. The paradoxical charge of research teams is that they must foster an environment where disagreement is freely expressed and simultaneously strengthens working relationships, and where questioning and challenging builds shared understanding. Academia is energized by clashes between conceptual frameworks, differing methodologies, competing analyses, and interpretations of data – this is often where the breakthroughs emerge.