The Effect of a Team Strategy Discussion on Military Team Performance

Abstract

In modern military operations, people from diverging backgrounds often have to work together in ad hoc teams. These team members are often well trained to perform their own part of the teamwork. However, for optimal performance they should also act as a team. The question is how optimal team performance can be realized swiftly. In this study we investigated the effect of a brief team strategy discussion. We hypothesized that a brief team strategy discussion in an ad hoc team at the start of a mission has a significant positive effect on the development of a shared mental model, on team processes, and with that on team performance. In an experimental setting, 46 four-person military ad hoc teams were presented with the distributed dynamic decision-making task. We gave half of the teams an instruction to develop a team strategy in 10 minutes, whereas the other half received no such instruction. Teams were randomly assigned to the two conditions. The results supported our hypotheses. A further exploration of the data showed that the teams in the team strategy condition showed more initiative and leadership. Finally, we concluded that accuracy gained more from the team strategy discussion than speed of operations. The results have important implications for military training and practice.

Análisis del liderazgo a partir de ejercicios de maniobra militar

“…Además, por la complejidad de las nuevas misiones se requiere que los líderes sean más innovadores y adaptativos al contexto para poder desenvolverse eficazmente ante la diversidad situacional y la incertidumbre de los acontecimientos (Pulakos et al, 2000;Whiffen, 2007). Para este nuevo contexto militar se requiere que los líderes militares desarrollen ciertas cualidades como la versatilidad, la agilidad, la capacidad de adaptación, la flexibilidad, la creatividad, la motivación, el manejo de grupos y la capacidad de formarse continuamente para comprender los entornos cambiantes, entre otros (Dalenberg et al, 2009;Halpin, 2011;Morath et al, 2011;Williams, 2009). El diseño de la pista de liderazgo emula un escenario real en el que prevalece la incertidumbre, con múltiples desafíos y con un alto nivel de estrés; por lo cual sirve como una herramienta de evaluación para las competencias requeridas por la formación de militares.…”

“…Esto da cuenta de que la relación más intensa del liderazgo se asocia a la gestión de las relaciones interpersonales de un grupo, luego al dominio técnico del área a desempeñar y finalmente a la capacidad física de los cadetes. En este sentido, se observa como la conducción está asociada fuertemente al manejo de las personas y la capacidad en la distribución de tareas (Bass et al, 1996;Dalenberg et al, 2009;Molero et al, 2007;Molero et al, 2010;Sweeney et al, 2009).…”

“…Los miembros de un grupo deben tener una buena comprensión de los objetivos, de las funciones y de las responsabilidades, así como de la secuencia temporal de los acontecimientos, de las tareas que se deben realizar, de la coordinación de los esfuerzos individuales, entre otras cosas. De acuerdo a Dalenberg et al (2009) es sumamente relevante estructurar una dinámica de trabajo conjunta, organizada y complementaria, porque, además de permitir que cada uno de los miembros del grupo desarrollen su rol eficazmente, posibilita que actúen como un equipo.…”

Designing and evaluating a crew resource management training for manufacturing industries

“…Moreover, the workers were trained to communicate detected errors even to members of a different team who might not be familiar with this type of error. Consequently, an increase of shared mental models as well as distributed SA (Burke et al, 2005;Endsley, 1995) across the heterogeneous workforce was expected and is important because the degree of correctness and sharedness of mental models according to the production process and all the tasks, roles, and responsibilities involved is expected to determine the adequacy of teamwork, communication, coping, and distributed SA (see Dalenberg, Vogelaar, & Beersma, 2009;Mathieu, Rapp, Maynard, & Mangos, 2010). Accordingly, correct shared mental models across the workforce should result in increased CRM performance.…”

Crew Resource Management (CRM)

“…are established beforehand while debriefing is useful for assessing areas in need of improvement. Dalenberg, Vogelaar, and Beersma, (2009) found that teams who were instructed to spend 10 minutes developing a strategy (prior to beginning a mission) developed a better shared mental model, had more productive team behaviors, were more coordinated, and had better performance in comparison to teams that were given no instruction.…”