Teamwork Coaching in the Research Development Process

Proposal teams play a critical, yet understudied, role in team science. This study advances our understanding of teamwork coaching in the research development (RD) process by analyzing proposal support in a U.S. Medical School (2009–2019). We find that teamwork coaching mediates the positive association between team size and awarded outcomes. We also find that teams with proposer team familiarity need less teamwork coaching and that teamwork coaching is particularly valuable for teams with proposers who have both clinical and research responsibilities. We discuss contributions to team science and team coaching literatures as well as implications for training and educating RD coaches.