ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Scientific Teams: Models and Practices for Enhanced CollaborationView all 10 articles
Psychological Safety in Interdisciplinary Teams: How Leadership Behaviors Empower Teams
Provisionally accepted
Stephanie M Resendiz1Maria Hernandez2
Molly Murphy2
Shannon Casey2Michelle Chui3Elizabeth S Burnside2
Whitney A Sweeney2*- 1Division of Social and Administrative Sciences, School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, United States
- 2Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, United States
- 3School of Nursing, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, United States
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Interdisciplinary collaboration drives innovation by uniting diverse knowledge and perspectives. However, bias and ineffective team management practices can hinder a team’s ability to leverage these advantages by causing interpersonal conflict, eroding trust, and compromising communication. These challenges reinforce the need for leadership skills that extend beyond team management practices that focus on coordination and task execution, emphasizing the relational work required to cultivate healthy team dynamics. By equipping leaders with tools to foster stronger team cultures, teams are better positioned to integrate unique perspectives, unlocking the full potential of their collective expertise. Taking a phenomenological approach, eight senior leaders with extensive experience in leadership and mentoring were interviewed to learn more about their experiences in promoting psychological safety in teams. Transcripts were coded using thematic analysis during multiple coding iterations. The behaviors described by interviewed leaders fell into five thematic areas: Self-awareness and growth, mentorship and development, amplification and empowerment, communication and transparency, and accountability and integrity. This study underscores the transformative power of leadership in cultivating strong team cultures while also complementing and strengthening existing leadership‑training efforts. Leadership development programs could be strengthened by attending more explicitly to psychological safety, and our findings provide actionable insights that can be integrated into current training frameworks to deepen leaders’ capacity to foster supportive and high‑functioning teams. Ultimately, this shift not only benefits individual teams but has the potential to strengthen the fabric of the broader research culture.
Keywords: Leadership, psychological safety, Team culture, training and education, translational teams
Received: 15 Dec 2025; Accepted: 16 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Resendiz, Hernandez, Murphy, Casey, Chui, Burnside and Sweeney. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Whitney A Sweeney
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.