Shared leadership can promote success in collaborative research networks in ecology

Allen, DC, Burgin, AJ, Seybold, EC, Dodds, WK, Busch, MH, Bergstrom, A, Krabbenhoft, CA, Boersma, KS, Stegen, JC, Olden, JD, Atkinson, CL, Jones, CN, Datry, T, Godsey, SE, Shogren, AJ, Walters, AW, Plont, S, Walker, RH, Shanafield, M, Mims, MC, Price, AN, Smith, CR, You, Y, Bogan, MT, Burrows, RM, Messager, ML, Stubbington, R ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8475-5109 and Zimmer, MA, 2025. Shared leadership can promote success in collaborative research networks in ecology. Functional Ecology. ISSN 0269-8463

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Functional Ecology
Creators:	Allen, D.C., Burgin, A.J., Seybold, E.C., Dodds, W.K., Busch, M.H., Bergstrom, A., Krabbenhoft, C.A., Boersma, K.S., Stegen, J.C., Olden, J.D., Atkinson, C.L., Jones, C.N., Datry, T., Godsey, S.E., Shogren, A.J., Walters, A.W., Plont, S., Walker, R.H., Shanafield, M., Mims, M.C., Price, A.N., Smith, C.R., You, Y., Bogan, M.T., Burrows, R.M., Messager, M.L., Stubbington, R. and Zimmer, M.A.
Publisher:	Wiley
Date:	21 July 2025
ISSN:	0269-8463
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1111/1365-2435.70109 DOI 2474695 Other
Rights:	© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Jeremy Silvester
Date Added:	30 Jul 2025 09:28
Last Modified:	30 Jul 2025 09:28
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54065

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