When Jeremy Linden ended his blog post with the sentiment that to be successful in cross disciplinary work “we have to step beyond our range of comfort,” it got me thinking. I had never really given too much thought to the relationship between ranges of comfort, vulnerability, and interdisciplinary collaboration. In reality though, they are deeply intertwined. And so, when we are asking people to do interdisciplinary work and collaborate with disparate disciplines, we need to be cognizant of what we are actually asking: 

• We are asking people to open up to discourse with others.  
• We are asking people to “cede” technical control over the conversation. 
• We are asking people to make themselves vulnerable.

But to open themselves like this, people have to be ready to admit that they might not know everything about a topic. Once people (myself included) become “professionals” though, I think it becomes even harder to admit this. So consciously or unconsciously, people hide in the terminological and methodological silos of their field. They hide within their range of comfort.

As an engineer I know there have been times I am guilty of this in one way or another. I know I have tried to hide behind “complicated” terminology when discussing a concept with collaborators in conservation. 

Situation 1: Lone engineer

In a room as the lone engineer with a group of conservators. I have to explain how we are planning on figuring out which type of sensors we should be installing in a particular room.

My internal dialog: What happens if I don’t sound like I know EVERYTHING there is to know about my field? Or worse, what happens if I have to admit that aloud?  Is that going to make them think less of me? 

So, I hide behind sentences like, “Yes, then we can use dimensionality reduction techniques to ascertain the feature importance of each independent variable.” 

I see confused faces, and I think ok great they still think I am smart. 

But why can’t I just say, “Yes, then we can use some data science methods to understand how important each thing is that we are monitoring.” Then we might actually be able to communicate with each other and move forward. 

For many of us the rephrased sentence might set off some internal warning messages: What if the conservator actually understands what I am saying and asks for more details on the methods and how they work?! What if I don’t exactly know how this works? Does this make me look less legitimate? These types of questions make us feel vulnerable and the professional in us tries to shut down those feelings as quickly as they arose. 

Situation 2: The “look-how-smart-I-am” engineer

In a room with other engineers and a group of conservators. Again, the context could be that I have to explain how we are figuring out which type of sensors we should be installing in a particular room.

My internal dialog: What happens if the other engineers in the room think that I can only grasp this material at a novice level if I “dumb it down” for a simple explanation? Is that going to make them think less of me? 

And so again, I hide behind sentences like the one above even though the rephrased version might actually enable some communication so we can move forward on the project.  

In both of these situations my inability to embrace what I don’t yet know and be vulnerable would inhibit an open and honest dialogue. In a world where Situations 1 or 2 play out, the conservators might not understand what the techniques I am proposing would need as input and I as the engineer might not understand the specific questions they are trying to ask about their environment. Well that certainly isn’t collaborative…

Let’s try out a third situation. 

Situation 3: The room of engineers and conservators

In a room with other engineers and a group of conservators. Again, the context could be that I have to explain how we are figuring out which type of sensors we should be installing in a particular room.

Aloud I say “Yes, then we can use some data science methods to understand how important each thing is that we are monitoring.”

Then one conservator asks how this is possible and another asks how we will measure this difference. Then one engineer asks about the specific method we want to use and how generalizable it is to other datasets. 

That is a conversation! That is where mutual understanding and collaboration can actually thrive.

So, how can we encourage and embrace vulnerability when we are collaborating across fields? How can we create safe spaces for people from different fields to come together and feel okay admitting theydon’t know something so that we can learn from each other and work together?

Author bio

Dr. Rebecca (Becca) Napolitano is an Assistant Professor of Architectural Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. She graduated from Princeton University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering department with her MSc in 2017 and her PhD in 2020. Becca is a strong advocate for interdisciplinary collaboration and often finds herself playing different roles (engineer, computer scientist, historic preservationist) depending on the context of a project and the makeup of the rest of the group. Over the last 5 years she has published over 30 articles across a disciplinary array of journals such as Science, Journal of Cultural Heritage, and Computer-aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering.