Shared Mental Models
The concept of shared mental models refers to team members having some degree of similarity in how they approach problems and evaluate protential solutions. Shared mental models are posited to influence the behavior of the group. How individuals thinks is reflected in their behavior, and the term given to the thinking process is cognition. A team is a social aggregation in which a limited number of individuals interact on a regular basis to accomplish a set of shared objectives for which they have mutual responsibility. The fusion of cognition (as a psychological process) and a team (as an interacting collectivity) produces the concept of shared cognition or shared mental models, which reflects how the team acquires, stores, and uses information (Gibson, 2011)
Canon-Bowers and Salas (2001) address the fundamental question of what is actually shared among team members in establishing mental models. Four broad categories were identified : task-specific information, task-related knowledge, knowledge of teammates, and shared attitudes and beliefs in Figure
9-4. Each type of knowledge has increasingly broader generalizability across differing task. Task-specific information is shared information among team members that allow them to act without the need to discuss it. Task-specific information involves the particular procedures, sequences, actions, and strategies necessary to perform a task. It can be generalized only to other instances of similar task. Task-related knowledge refers to common knowledge about task-related processes, but it is not limited to a single task. It is more generalizable because it is knowledge of processes that apply to many specific tasks. Knowledge of teammates refers to how well the members understand each other, including their performance, strengths, weaknesses, andtendencies. Thus team members must learn how the collective expertise of the team is distributed across the members. This type of shared knowledge helps teammates compensate for one another, predict each other’s actions, and allocate resources according to member expertise. The final category of shared attitudes and beliefs permits team members to arrive at comparable interpretations of the problems they face. It enhances team cohesion, motivation, and consensus. In summary, shared mental models do not refer to a unitary concept. It appears that all the types of knowledge in these four categories needs to be shared in effective teams.
Canon-Bower and Salas added there is also not a singular way that knowledge can be “shared” among team members. Some common knowledge must be held by all members of a team, particularly as it relates to the specific task. Other types of knowledge are shared by being distributed or apportioned across the team members. Certain knowledge is complex or specialized, and it is unrealistic to expect all members of a team to possess this level of knowledge equally. Thus what is important is that the knowledge resides within the team as a team, not held by each team member. Shared knowledge is common in military combat teams and surgical teams. Cross-training (where team members learn to perform each other’ task) has been found to enhance shared mental models (Marks et al., 2002)
As compelling as the evidence is for shared mental models for effective team performance, there is a potential dark side to team members “thinking alike.” The phenomenon is called groupthink. Noted problems in history that arose from groupthink are the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in the 1960s and the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in the 1980s. Groupthink refers to a deterioration in the cognitive processing caused by team members felling threatened by external forces. The defects in decision making include incomplete consideration of options and alternatives, poor information search, and selective information processing. Groupthink is a model of thinking in which team members consider consensus to be more important than rational, independent thinking. Some symptoms are the illusion of team vulnerability, the false assumption of the team’s morality, stereotyping of opposing groups, the illusion of group unanimity, and the emergence of a process that keeps opposing viewpoints from the team’s consideration. The team, operating with a siege mentality, fails to perceive environments correctly and looks for confirming evidence that it is being threatened. Choi and Kim (1999) noted that the conventional interpretation of groupthink is a negative influence on performance. The team is used in reference to fiascoes like the Bay of Pigs invasion. However, although they found that some dimensions of the groupthink phenomenon (such as suppressing dissenting opinions) were related to negative team performance, some other dimensions (such as a strong sense of group identity) in fact were related to positive team performance. Turner and Horvitz (2001) concluded that groupthink is more likely found in teams that have a strong sense of social identity. In such cases team members often feel compelled to maintain and enhance their evaluation of the team and its action. Furthermore, members become motivated to protect the image of the team. When the image is questioned by a collective threat, the response among members is to seek concurrence about the threat and, by virtue of that, attain greater acceptance as bona fide team members. A threat to an individual member of a team is not as likely to engender groupthink as is a threat to the entire team.
In sort, effective team performance requires members to operate on similar or complementary knowledge bases, but under conditions of perceived threat to the team, groupthink often produces the opposite effect and can drive the team to undesirable behavior.
The amount of research on shared mental models is growing, but we still have much to learn about the process of forming a “team mentality” and how the performance of a team is effected by it. Marks, Zaccaro, and Mathieu (2000) found that shared mental models provided teams with a common framework from which to perceive, interpret, and response to novel environments. However, shared mental models were not as critical to team success in routine environments. Research by Mohammed and Dumville (2001) and Rentsch and Klimoski (2001) has expanded our understanding of the conventional statement “Great minds think alike.”
Decision Making in Teams
Guzzo (1995) asserted that decision making in teams is different from individual decision making. In teams, information is often distributed unequally among members and must be integrated. Choosing among alternatives is made more complicated by having to integrate the often-differing perspective and opinions of team members. The integration process usually includes dealing with uncertainty, with the effects of status differences among members, and with the failure of one member to appreciate the significance of the information he or she holds. Ambiguity, time pressures, heavy workloads, and other factors may become sources of stress that affect the group’s ability to perform its task.
Holleneck, LePine, and Ilgen (1996) described the development of a multilevel theory of team decision making. The theory is called multilevel because effective team decision making is related to characteristics of the individuals who make up the team, pairs of people within the team, and how the team functions as a team. The theory is based on three concepts. The first is the degree to which team members are adequately informed about the issue they are evaluating. Teams can be well informed on some decisions but poorly informed on other. The general level of how well informed the team is on the issues they must address is team informity. Second, teams are composed of individuals who differ in their ability to make accurate decisions. That is, some individuals can make poor decision, while others typically make very accurate decisions. The concept of staff validity is the average of the individual team members abilitiesto make accurate decisions. The final concept is dyadic sensitivity. A team leader must often listen to the differing opinions or recommendations of team members. The relationship between the leader and each team member is a dyad. The leader must be sensitive to weighing each team member’s recommendation in reaching an overall decisions. Thus an effective decision-making team leader knows which member’s opinion should be given more weight than others. The theory has been tested with computer-simulated military command-and-control scenarios in which the team is asked to decide on the level of threat posed by a series of unidentified aircraft. The results revealed that the three concepts of team informity, staff validity and dyadic sensitivity explained more variance in team-level decision-making accuracy than other concepts. The authors concluded that getting accurate information, making accurate recommendations, and ensuring that these recommendations are incorporated into the team’s over all decision are the core requirements for decision making in teams.
Virtual Team
Recent advances in computer technology and electronic communication networks allow for a form of social interaction that was previously unavailable. The boundaryless nature of cyberspace has resulted in a new dimension to our lives—the “virtual” environment. The definition of virtual is “begin in essence or effect, but not in fact. “ A more concise definition is “almost.” One application of the electronic communication technology virtual teams. According to Avoliotetal. (2001), virtual teams have several defining characteristics. First, communication among team members primarily takes place electronically. The electronic communication processes use multiple communication channels, which may include text, graphic, audio, and video communication. As Axtell, Fleck, and Turner (2004) reported