optimizing team dynamics in organizations: team mental models

1. optimizing team dynamics in organizations: team mental models Susan Mohammed The Pennsylvania State University

2. Team mental models (TMMs) • Similarity of team members’ organized mental representations of relevant information DeChurch& Mesmer-Magnus, 2010; Mohammed, Ferzandi, & Hamilton, 2010

3. Tmm functions Description • Team members interpret information in a similar manner Prediction • Team members share expectations regarding future events Explanation • Team members develop similar causal accounts for a situation Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993; Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994

4. Importance of tmms • Theoretically • TMMs recognized as one of the hallmarks of effective teams • Featured prominently in multiple team models • Empirically • Meta-analysis of 65 studies (DeChurch & Mesmer-Magnus, 2010) • Team cognition contributed positively and uniquely to team performance beyond other emergent states and team processes • Practically • Lack of TMM similarity implicated in team performance breakdowns • Space missions, surgical errors, airline accidents, fratricide Mohammed, Ferzandi, & Hamilton, 2010

5. Antecedents of TMM similarity • Interventions • Training (e.g., cross-training) • Leadership • Reflexivity • Compositional determinants: • Cognitive ability • Agreeableness • Tenure, experience, organizational similarity • Contextual factors: • Stress Mohammed, Ferzandi, & Hamilton, 2010

6. Expanding The TMM content Domain Temporal TMMs

7. TMM Temporal Deficiency TMM content has emphasized: • Taskwork: • Whatwork needs to be accomplished? • Teamwork: • Howwork needs to be accomplished? BUT NOT • “Timework” • Whenwork needs to be accomplished? Mohammed et al., 2010; Mohammed, Tesler, & Hamilton, 2012; Standifer & Bluedorn, 2006

8. Differing temporal orientations • Convergence on temporal TMMs is nontrivial because team members often have differing temporal orientations: • Time urgency versus time patience • Present versus Future time perspective • Early versus Deadline action style • Monochronic versus Polychronic Mohammed & Harrison, 2013; Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011, 2014

9. Defining Temporal TMMs • Agreement among group members regarding the: • Temporal milestones/deadlines for task completion • Pacing/speed at which activities take place • Sequencing of tasks • Specific order in which tasks must be completed Mohammed, Hamilton, Tesler, Mancuso, & McNeese ,2015

10. Empirical support for temporal tmms • 98 student teams performing a computerized team simulation • Temporal TMM similarity positively and uniquely contributed to team performance beyond traditionally measured: • Taskwork and • Teamwork content domains • True for concept map and pairwise rating operationalizations • Temporal TMMs assessed later in teams’ development exerted strong effects on performance than those assessed earlier Mohammed, Hamilton, Tesler, Mancuso, & McNeese ,2015

11. Temporal tmm implications • Results provide encouraging evidence that temporality should continue to be investigated as a key content domain of TMMs • Disagreement about task sequencing lowered team performance • Establishing and maintaining congruence in team members’ temporal perceptions is a non-trivial task • Need to expand the definition of TMMs beyond shared representations of who is going to do what and how to “when” Mohammed, Hamilton, Tesler, Mancuso, & McNeese ,2015

12. Storytelling as a TMM antecedent • Stories are intended to be engaging, drawing the audience in and elucidating deeper meaning • Could storytelling be used as a team training intervention: • To help motivate the need for team training • To help teams get on the same page • especially in virtual environments Mancuso, Parr, McMillan, Tesler, McNeese, Hamilton, & Mohammed, 2011

13. Storytelling method • N= 107 three person teams performing a computerized team simulation • Storytelling Intervention: • 5 minute video telling the story of: • A student who incurred serious health injuries due to a lack of coordination and timing by the emergency response team • Story Objectives: • Communicate that team members needed to collaborate with each other and arrive at events in a timely manner and in the proper order if they were to succeed • Reflexivity Intervention Tesler, Mohammed, Hamilton, Mancuso, Parr, McMillan, & McNeese, 2011

14. results • The combination of: • presenting important information in story format and • giving members time to reflect upon their strategies had a positive effect on TMM similarity and subsequent team performance Tesler, Mohammed, Hamilton, Mancuso, Parr, McMillan, & McNeese, 2011

15. Challenging simplistic assumptions TMM literature is ripe for theoretical refinement

16. Cannon-Bowers, Salas, & Converse (1993) • Three Research Needs to Advance • Demonstrate that TMMs are critical to team performance • Delineate the relationship between TMMs and expectations • Explicate the nature and degree of TMM overlap required for optimal performance Mohammed, Ferzandi, & Hamilton, 2010

17. Tmm Similarity assumptions • What content should be shared? • Everything • Who should share? • Everyone • How much should be shared? • As much as possible Mohammed, Ferzandi, & Hamilton, 2010

18. naïve assumptions INCREASINGLY UNWORKABLE • Theoretically • Diversity is a key advantage of teams • Empirically • Results for different types of TMM content are not uniform within and across studies • Practically • Increasing complexity of teams exacerbates the inefficiencies resulting from unnecessary redundancy

19. TMMs Versus Transactive Memory Systems Team Mental Models (TMMs) Transactive Memory Systems (TMS) Distributed/Complementary Knowledge Compilational Emergence Narrow Content Domain Taskwork expertise • Shared/Overlapping Knowledge • Compositional Emergence • Broad Content Domain: • Taskwork • Teamwork • “Timework” DeChurch & Mesmer-Magnus, 2010; Mohammed et al., 2010

20. Integration of overlapping and distributed knowledge • Calls for research to integrate across types of team cognition (e.g., Mohammed & Dumville, 2001; Salas & Wildman, 2009) • Transactive memory systems (TMS) integrate: • Unique knowledge held by specific members with a collective awareness of who knows what • Expertise specialization with coordination • Advocating that TMMs integrate: • Taskwork, teamwork, and “timework” convergence and divergence Lewis & Herndon, 2011; Wegner, 1987

21. Toward an integrated model of tmm convergence and divergence

22. Increased sophistication needed • What TMMs content domains should be convergent and divergent? • Which members should share what knowledge? • How much sharing is optimal? Mohammed et al., 2010; Mohammed, Tesler, & Hamilton, 2012; Standifer & Bluedorn, 2006

23. It depends on team/task characteristics • Skill differentiation • Degree of specialized knowledge that makes it difficult to substitute members • Authority differentiation • Degree to which decision making responsibility resides in individuals, subgroups, or collectives • Task interdependence • Team members depending on one another for access to critical resources • Workflows that require coordinated action Courtright et al., 2015; Hollgenbeck, Beersma, & Schouten, 2012

24. What TMM content domains should be convergent and divergent? • High Skill Differentiation & High Task & Outcome Interdependence • More divergence of taskwork TMMs • More convergence of teamwork TMMs • More convergence of timework TMMs

25. Thank you for your time!