Characteristics of an Expert Team

Salas, Rosen, Burke, Goodwin, and Fiore (2006) have defined “…an expert team as a set of interdependent team members, each of whom possesses unique and expert-level knowledge, skills, and experience related to task performance, and who adapt, coordinate, and cooperate as a team, thereby producing sustainable, and repeatable team functioning at superior or at least near-optimal levels of performance” (p. 440).

Rosen, Salas, Lyons, and Fiore (2008), adapting a table from Salas, et al. (2006), presented a list that characterizes members of expert teams.  They (pp. 221-222):

1. Develop shared mental models.
   • They anticipate each other’s needs and actions.
   • They can communicate implicitly.
   • They interpret cues in a complimentary manner.
2. Learn and adapt.
   • They self-correct.
   • They learn from past decision-making episodes.
   • They adapt coordinating processes to dynamic environments.
   • They compensate for each other.
3. Maintain clear roles and responsibilities.
   • They manage expectations.
   • They understand each other’s roles and how they fit together.
   • They maintain clarity of roles while maintaining flexibility.
4. Possess clear, valued, and shared vision.
   • They develop their goals with a shared sense of purpose.
   • They guide their decisions with a common set of values.
5. Develop a cycle of pre-brief -> performance -> debrief.
   • They regularly provide individual and team level feedback to one another.
   • They establish and revise team goals and plans.
   • They dynamically set priorities.
   • They anticipate and review issues/problems of members.
   • They periodically diagnose team decision making “effectiveness,” including its results, and its processes.
6. Are led by strong team leaders.
   • They are led by someone with good leadership skills and not just technical competence.
   • They believe the leaders care about them.
   • Leaders of expert teams provide situation updates.
   • Leaders of expert teams foster teamwork, coordination, and cooperation.
   • Leaders of expert teams self-correct first.
7. Have a strong sense of “collective,” trust, teamness, and confidence.
   • They manage conflict well; they confront each other effectively.
   • They have a strong sense of team orientation.
   • They trust other team members’ “intentions.”
   • They strongly believe in the team’s collective ability to succeed.
8. Cooperate and coordinate.
   • They identify teamwork and task work requirements.
   • They ensure that, through staffing and/or development, the team possesses the right mix of competencies.
   • They consciously integrate new team members.
   • They distribute and assign work thoughtfully.
   • They examine and adjust the team’s physical workplace to optimize communication and coordination.

References

Rosen, M.A., Salas, E., Lyons, R., & Fiore, S.M. (2008). Expertise and naturalistic decision making in organizations: Mechanisms of effective decision making. In G.P. Hodgkinson & W.H. Starbuck (Eds.), The oxford handbook of organizational decision making (pp. 211-230). New York: Oxford University Press.

Salas, E., Rosen, M. A., Burke, C. S., Goodwin, G. F., & Fiore, S. (2006). The making of a dream team: When expert teams do best. In K. A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich & R. R. Hoffman (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (pp. 439-453). New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Expert Decision Makers

Have you ever wondered what separates expert decision makers from average ones?  Rosen, Salas, Lyons, and Fiore (2008) have developed a list of mechanisms that characterize expert decision making.  They include (p. 216):

1. Are tightly coupled to cues and contextual features of the environment.
   • They develop psychological and physiological adaptations to the task environment.
   • They are sensitive to and leverage contextual patterns of cues in decision making.
2. Have a larger knowledge base and organize it differently from non-experts.
   • They have a more conceptually organized knowledge base.
   • They have more robust connections between aspects of their knowledge.
   • They have a more abstracted and functional knowledge base.
3. Engage in pattern recognition.
   • They perceive larger and more meaningful patterns in the environment.
   • They are able to detect subtle cue configurations.
   • They are able to retrieve courses of action based on situation/action matching rules.
4. Engage in deliberate and guided practice.
   • They devote time and effort to improving knowledge and skills.
   • They have high motivation to learn and long term learning goals.
5. Seek diagnostic feedback.
   • They seek out input from other experts.
   • They self-diagnose their performance, indentify weaknesses in their knowledge and processes, and correct them.
6. Have better situation assessment and problem representations.
   • They spend more time evaluating the situation.
   • They create deeper, more conceptual, more functional, and more abstracted situation representations.
7. Have specialized memory skills.
   • They functionally increase their ability to handle large amounts of information.
   • They anticipate what information will be needed in the decision making.
8. Automate the small skills.
   • They quickly and effortlessly do what requires large amounts of attention for non-experts.
   • They have more cognitive resources available for dealing with more complex aspects of decision making.
9. Self-regulate and monitor their progress.
   • They evaluate their own understanding of a situation.
   • They judge the consistency, reliability, and completeness of their information.
   • They make good decisions about when to stop evaluating the situation.

References

Rosen, M.A., Salas, E., Lyons, R., & Fiore, S.M. (2008).  Expertise and naturalistic decision making in organizations: Mechanisms of effective decision making.  In G.P. Hodgkinson & W.H. Starbuck (Eds.), The oxford handbook of organizational decision making (pp. 211-230).  New York: Oxford University Press.

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HFES Technical Groups

The discipline of human factors and ergonomics is so broad and diverse, that at times, I find it challenging to adequately convey an overview to someone new to it in a timely manner.  Thus, besides providing a general definition and discussing some relevant examples, I’ve started talking more about the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, including its 23 Technical Groups.  They include:

• Aerospace Systems
• Aging
• Augmented Cognition
• Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making
• Communications
• Computer Systems
• Education
• Environmental Design
• Forensics Professional
• Health Care
• Human Performance
• Individual Differences in Performance
• Industrial Ergonomics
• Internet
• Macroergonomics
• Perception and Performance
• Product Design
• Safety
• Surface Transportation
• Systems Development
• Test and Evaluation
• Training
• Virtual Environments

You can learn more from their descriptions or by visiting their individual websites.

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Is The Door Locked – Or Unlocked?

Yesterday, I volunteered at the Rededication Celebration for the newly remodeled Idaho State Capital Building.  As part of my duties, I was stationed at the (unlocked) door leading into the office of the Attorney General.  As one might expect, given the visual feedback of an illuminated red bar located next to the door knob, many people asked if it was unlocked.  This is an example of improper feedback.  A more appropriate design would have used an illuminated green bar to minimize confusion.

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One Year Blog Anniversary

Today marks the one year anniversary of The Human Factor Advocate.  While I posted on a variety of human factors-related topics during the previous year, there’s still much to explore.  Some of the topics I plan to cover in the upcoming year include:

• Aging
• Automation
• Checklists
• Decision Making
• Firearms
• Future of HFE
• Human Error
• Innovation
• Leadership
• Macroergonomics
• Neuroergonomics
• Persuasive Design
• Situation Awareness
• Sustainability
• Teams & Teamwork
• Training
• Usability
• User Engagement
• User Experience

I’m looking forward to a 2010 filled with countless opportunities to further educate readers about the discipline of human factors and ergonomics!

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