Monitoring and talking to the room: Autochthonous coordination patterns in team interaction and performance.

Abstract

This paper builds on and extends theory on team functioning in high-risk environments. We examined 2 implicit coordination behaviors that tend to emerge autochthonously within high-risk teams: team member monitoring and talking to the room. Focusing on nonrandom patterns of behavior, we examined sequential patterns of team member monitoring and talking to the room in higher- and lower-performing action teams working in a high-risk health care environment. Using behavior observation methods, we coded verbal and nonverbal behaviors of 27 anesthesia teams performing an induction of general anesthesia in a natural setting and assessed team performance with a Delphi-validated checklist-based performance measure. Lag sequential analyses revealed that higher-performing teams were characterized by patterns in which team member monitoring was followed by speaking up, providing assistance, and giving instructions and by patterns in which talking to the room was followed by further talking to the room and not followed by instructions. Higher- and lower-performing teams did not differ with respect to the frequency of team member monitoring and talking to the room occurrence. The results illustrate the importance of patterns of autochthonous coordination behaviors and demonstrate that the interaction patterns, as opposed to the behavior frequencies, discriminated higher- from lower-performing teams. Implications for future research and for team training are included. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Differences in talking-to-the-room behaviour between novice and expert teams during simulated paediatric resuscitation: a quasi-experimental study

“…Teams of more experienced members exhibited different patterns of implicit coordination than did teams of less experienced members. Similarly, previous research in this area suggests that implicit coordination is autochthonous (ie, occurring naturally and spontaneously, without explicit planning) 11. The current study adds to this research by showing that certain implicit coordination behaviours are more likely to occur and to be maintained in teams with more experienced team members.…”

“…For example, we do not know which type of teams do or do not exhibit specific coordination patterns. This is particularly true with regard to implicit coordination, where researchers have called for investigating the occurrence and conditions of coordination patterns 11. In our view, team members’ experience represents a likely candidate for explaining differences in coordination behaviour.…”

“…Recent research on healthcare teams supports the notion that patterns of team coordination are predictive of performance outcomes. As an example, if one team member engaged in talking-to-the-room, there was a higher probability that another team member responded with further talking-to-the-room in high-performing anaesthesia teams compared with low-performing anaesthesia teams 11. Notably, higher-performing and lower-performing teams did not differ in terms of how frequently they exhibited this coordination behaviour.…”

From routine to uncertainty: Leading adaptable teams within integrated operations

“…At the same time, if a group argues that it has full task-agreement in such changing environments, there is reason to expect difficulties with stereotyping and self-fulfilling expectations (Brophy, 1983;, groupthink or the Not-Invented-Here syndrome Kolbe et al, 2014;, making SMMs a vital part of team processes. The notion of "predictor" is noteworthy, as dominant methods measure SMMs through respondents' perceptions of various outcome variables, such as learning, efficiency, situational awareness, and notice of changes.…”

“…Higher levels of SMMs help team members to interpret and explain the group's purposes, contexts, and behavior patterns Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994;). Due to this, the level of SMMs is considered a vital performance predictor for adaption, learning, communication, innovation, and the understanding of risk Kolbe et al, 2014;.…”