I just wanted to take the opportunity to open 
here for just a minute or so.
One of the things I want to do is, again, thank 
Human Health and Performance for sponsoring 
the Innovation Lecture Series that they had
for a while because it certainly fits into all the 
things that we have been talking about here at 
JSC.
Including JSC 2.0, which is about advancing 
human space flight by looking at how we can do 
things differently, and so
any time we can understand how we can 
perform our jobs more effectively, more 
efficiently, and all in the goal of 
advancing human space flight.
That is what we are encouraging everybody to 
do across the center.
And of course I think this directorate has really 
taken the lead in a lot of areas in terms of 
innovative tools, innovative processes, and 
really trying to do things differently.
So, that was probably the main thing I wanted 
to talk about, but of course this is a very 
interesting topic, I think, for all of us here at 
JSC because teamwork, team performance,
debriefs, lessons learned, all of those things are 
just real--have always been and will continue to 
be very important for us. As we do operations, 
we want to make sure we are learning from 
everything that we are doing and carrying that 
forward and understanding how we can be more 
effective. So, a very relevant topic for all of us.
So, with that, I am going to hand it over to Jeff 
Davis 
So, a few words about Scott.He is an industrial 
organizational psychologist with over 25 years 
as a practitioner leading the Group for 
Organizational Effectiveness, which he 
cofounded in 1987. Through that group and his 
work, he has worked with over 500  
organizations globally, including more than 75 
Fortune and Global 1000 companies, working 
on teamwork. He has worked in a wide array of 
organizations which I think you will find 
interesting. So, he has worked with medical 
teams, aviation, finance, technology, research 
and development, customer service, and 
leadership teams.
So, a wide background.
He has also been doing current work on 
research in our space flight environment, which I 
think you will find very interesting
 in a variety of different areas.
And, finally, he is a fellow of the Society for 
Industrial and Organizational Psychology, a 
fellow of the Association for Psychological 
Science.
He is coeditor of the book Developing and 
Enhancing Teamwork in Organizations: 
Evidence-based Best Practices and Guidelines.
And just bringing it even closer to home, Scott 
worked with our Human Health and 
Performance Group twice, which we found very
valuable for our teamwork understanding.
So, without further ado and not cutting into any 
more of Scott's time, I will introduce Dr. Scott 
Tannenbaum.
Please, join me in welcoming him.
>>Thanks.
[ Applause ]
I love getting applause before I even say 
anything.
That is just a great way to start the day.
I think everyone should start their day that way.
For the last three years or so, I have had the 
good fortune of being able to do some research 
with people at NASA.
I am certainly going to share some of that 
information with you.
And, as Jeff mentioned, we have worked with a 
lot of teams over the years, so I will also share 
some of our experiences there, but to start I 
just want to give a quick thank you because our
three years of work that we have done would not 
have been as successful if it wasn't for the 
support of a lot of people and
certainly colleagues on the BHPHRP side, 
including Brandon Vessey and others have been 
very instrumental in guiding us.
Early on, we had the opportunity to interact with 
a number of subject matter experts who pointed 
us in the right direction. I think we would have 
missed the target had we not gotten the
advice from some of the folks that you see here, 
including Al Holland and others.
And then we have had the chance to gather 
data from HERA and NEEMO environments.
we have gotten great support there as well, so 
Mark Reagan at NEEMO and Yvonne Parsons 
has been very helpful on the HERA side as well 
and I will share a little bit about that with you.
And, of course, I would be remiss if I did not 
mention our research team, folks that have 
been working with us from my organization and 
from University of Connecticut and University of
Central Florida.
While I'm going to share with you mostly 
applied practical sort of things today, I did just 
want to let you know that this group has been 
working on trying to disseminate information
scientifically as well.
So, this effort sort of reduced a number of 
publications and we have got some other things 
coming down the pipeline as well. Going to do 
both the science and the practice side.
OK. So, here is what I would like to do today.
Based on some of the experiences that we have 
had in a wide range of organizations, 
I'm going to start by sharing five observations-- 
excuse me, four observations that we have seen 
across many companies.
Secondly, what I want to do is I would like to 
share with you some of the underlying 
psychological science. If I'm successful today,
I would like you to know a little bit more about 
what underlies team effectiveness and really tap 
into the empirical research.
What's the data telling us really makes a 
difference in driving team effectiveness,
what we'll call the seven C's and I will share 
those with you.
Third, I will take a little time and share with you 
some of the research that we have been doing 
at NASA in the NEEMO and HERA
environments and elsewhere.
And I want to leave some time at the end for 
you to pose questions, I would be happy to 
answer those.
I will also foreshadow one punch line.
So, I'm going to tell you that you need to debrief 
more frequently.
You're going to hear this a few different ways.
So, in the back of your mind, process that and 
when we get to the end I will show you a tool 
and some methods that are associated
with that as well.
Now, as we go through, I would like to 
encourage you to conduct a thought experiment 
and by thought experiment I mean I would
encourage you to think about a particular team.
So, first of all, how many of you are on a team?
OK.
That's encouraging.
This would have been a very short session.
I would say thank you, we can go now.
Any of you leading any teams, a project team, 
work team at all?
Yep. OK.
Any of you on more than one team?
Yeah, very common, right?
So, I would like you to pick one.
Pick one team that you're either a member of or 
that you're a leader of and as I go through and I 
share with you sort of what the science says 
about teamwork, I would like you to think
how does what I'm saying compare to your 
team and where might there be opportunities to 
boost your team's effectiveness a bit?
Now, Jeff mentioned to you, my company's 
called the Group for Organizational 
Effectiveness and we work with a lot of different
types of teams.
So, in addition the types that Jeff mentioned, 
we have had a chance to work a lot with military 
teams and medical teams.
We have been out on some oil rigs and cruise 
ships.
My team liked it when we got a project with the 
cruise ships.
They preferred that to the oil rig. I'm not sure 
why.
But, we have gathered data in a number of 
places and we have worked extensively with 
teams and that's what I want to share
with you today.
I want to start off with four observations based 
on what we have seen across organizations.
And the first observation is that there is a lot of 
teams out there and there is a proliferation and 
more teams.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that, if 
anything, collaboration requirements are 
increasing rather than decreasing.
When I asked you how many of you were on 
more than one team, most of you raised your 
hands.
Now, the corporate executive board gathered 
data from some 20,000 plus people and over 
two-thirds of people in
organizations report that collaboration 
requirements are on the rise in their 
organization.
But, I also want to make clear though is I am 
not here to advocate we need a team for 
everything.
I know I'm a team guy, but I'm not telling you 
teams are the answers to everything.
What I am telling you is you're going to be on a 
lot of teams.
Throughout your career you're going to be on a 
lot of teams.
So, whether you like them or not, some people 
love working on teams, some people hate it, it's 
just important that we understand how they 
work so we can get the most out of the
experiences with them.
Second observation. We're talking about this a 
lot. I don't know if you've ever seen Google's 
Ngram system,
but it counts the number of times words appear 
in print on a decade by decade basis.
We are talking about teams with an all-time 
high. Interestingly, a little bump at World War II 
talking about collaboration, but as you can see 
the trend. We're talking about teams and there 
are a lot of them.
And although there is plenty of teams that are 
out there, the bad news is-- and I'm sure you 
know this from your experience--that 
many, many teams are not as effective as they 
could be. We use the euphemism suboptimal, 
you know, but if you've been on a bad team 
experience, you know what that's like.
And there is some data that shows that-- this is 
from Liane Davey-- that over 90% of people in 
organizations recognize that teams are 
essential to their organization's effectiveness,
but less than a quarter of them think that their 
own teams are effective.
So, there is this gap there and this suboptimal 
performance has a couple of obvious 
implications. It clearly has implications for our 
business, for our organization.
When our teams aren't performing optimally, 
then it's going to affect business success.
But, in addition, from a personal perspective, if 
you've ever been on a poor-performing team, 
what does that feel like?
It just drains you.
Right?
There is a reason for that.
There is a psychological reason for that and the 
reason is that experiences that we have in the 
presence of others is amplified.
So, if you're eating a great chocolate bar, it 
tastes better when there is people around you.
And when you've had a bad team experience 
and you fail, it hurts more than just failing alone.
Second observation.           Third one...the best 
teams are those that self-adjust.
So, here is a second thought experiment.
Not the team that you picked, but think about 
the very best team you've ever been on and the 
question is was that team great on day one.
Probably not.
Very, very, very few teams are great on day one.
What makes teams great is that-- their ability to 
be able to adjust over time.
Some teams do this naturally, but most teams 
don't.
Even great teams need to be able to make 
adjustments if they want to sustain their 
success.
The third observation.
And, finally, a lot of organizations talk about
creating a culture of collaboration.
So, Procter & Gamble has gone on record of 
saying we want to be the best in the world at 
collaborating. Inside and out.
And Microsoft did a full reorganization, driven 
largely by their intent to try and increase 
collaboration in their organization.
So, while it's easy to talk about collaboration, 
it's difficult to build a culture of collaboration if 
our teams aren't collaborating effectively.
It starts at the team level. So, you know, 
internally and then with our vendors and outside 
suppliers and other organizations, 
but it starts at the team level. This is 
particularly true with leadership teams.
Any of you that are on leadership teams, you 
know, be aware. 
I will share with you some data about how what 
happens there permeates through the 
organization.
One way to think about this is every team 
experience that you're involved in, if it's good, 
it's contributing towards building a culture of 
collaboration and when it's bad, it detracts from 
that culture. So, with these four observations in 
mind, what I would like to point out is
it's critical for us to crack the code.
There is a lot of teams out there, some of them 
aren't working as well as we'd like to.
We want to build a culture of collaboration, they 
have to work well. We have got to crack the 
code.
And the good news is, in the last, let's say 15 
to 20 years, there is a growing body of empirical 
research that's actually giving us some tangible 
insights about what drives team effectiveness.  
And that's what I want to share with you.
We refer to it as the science of teamwork. And 
before I do that, though, let's pose this 
question. Because I just told you it's hard, 
right?  It's not easy.
It doesn't happen naturally.
You know, less than a quarter of people report 
their own teams as successful, so is it worth 
the effort?
And the data here is actually quite compelling.
Jeff LePine and colleagues did a meta-analysis 
of over 100 prior studies.
I'm going to use that term meta-analysis a few 
times, so if you're not familiar with it, all it is is 
we take all prior empirical studies that we could 
find and we statistically combine them.
So, we're more confident in the results of that 
than we would be any one study.
So, in Jeff LePine's work, they found the teams 
that demonstrate good teamwork processes are 
20 to 25% more likely to be successful.
And there is some interesting data coming out 
of the medical world.
We work a lot with medical teams, too.
The Institute of Medicine discovered that one of 
the primary causes for problems and sentinel 
events in hospitals are teamwork breakdowns.
To give you an idea about a sentinel event, 
that's like we perform surgery on you and we 
leave the scalpel inside of you.
Now, I'm not a doctor, but I think that's bad.
OK?
And there is even some data that shows 
financially.  You know, organizations that are 
able to drive collaborative performance show 
financial benefits.
So, I think the data's pretty clear.
You know, it's worth the effort. It doesn't happen 
easily, but it's worth the effort.
What I'm talking about now, though, is true 
teamwork.
So, I'm not necessarily talking about whether 
we like each other, although that's good.
I think it's awesome to like your team members.
I think it's great, you know, may occasionally go 
to dinner together or do those things,
 but that's not what drives team effectiveness. 
There is other factors that drive team 
effectiveness.
When we get those right, that's when we get 
these payoffs that occur.
And I use the term team effectiveness a lot.
Let me be clear.
I'm not talking about one shot, we succeeded.
What I'm talking about is sustainable 
performance over time.
That's-- when I talk about teams that are highly 
effective, these are teams that are able to 
demonstrate sustained performance in terms of 
results, terms of maintaining vitality,
and some of the research we have been doing 
here and elsewhere is about resilience.
Being able to bounce back because all teams 
face challenges.
The best teams are those that bounce back.
So, when I say effective teams, this is what I'm 
referring to.
Now, I want to pose this question because 
before I start going into the research, the 
answer to this question will-- is important for 
interpreting the research that's out there.
The answer to this is, of course not.
And yet, I go into many organizations and all 
teams are kind of treated the same way.
I went into a manufacturing organization, same 
policies and guidelines for all teams.
Teams differ in a number of ways, but one of the 
key ways they differ is in terms of 
interdependency.
The extent to which people on the team have to 
rely on one another to be able to get their work 
done effectively.
So, if you don't mind, I'm going to use a sports 
analogy here to sort of illustrate this.
Ten different types of teams.
We can think about them falling a long 
continuum from low to high.
A team with low interdependency, this is a team 
that can prepare together and might be able to 
train together, but when it's
time to do work, when I'm actually performing 
my job, my task, I'm on my own.
Now, ultimately we add up the scores of 
individuals and we figure out whether the team 
won.
Some sales teams are like that, right?
We call it a region, but really it's 12 sales 
people, each out selling, at the end we add it up 
and figure out if we made quota.
If we move along the continuum to medium, this 
is a team in which some team members need 
to coordinate with other team members 
periodically.
Maybe not all the time, but certainly on some 
occasion.
And then farther to the right are teams that 
need to coordinate on a consistent basis and 
they have a shared understanding of things.
So, ten types of teams.
Soccer team.
High.
Gymnastic team.
Low.
What about a relay race?
A relay race is a classic example of medium.
Individual punctuated by tight coordination.
If that coordination is handled wrong, the team 
fails.
Swimming.
Mostly individual.
American football, basketball.
Wrestling, clearly individual.
When I'm on the mat, you can't help me.
We can train together, but once I'm on the mat, 
I'm on my own.
Cricket.
Baseball.
Does this distinction make sense?
Right?
In soccer, if we don't have a shared mental 
model, we can't set the other team off side.
Imagine a football team that doesn't know the 
same play.
Alright?
So, the key here--
[ Laughter ]
Pick your team of choice, if you want.
Synchronized swimming, maybe the ultimate 
example. 
If the toes are pointed different directions, the 
team loses.
It has to be coordinated all the time.
The reason this is so important is that as you 
move from left to right on the continuum, 
teamwork, coordination becomes more 
important in predicting success.
There are some work teams-- and I put teams in 
quotes here--really all that's needed is just not 
getting in each other's way and being civil.
Because really it's more a wrestling team.
But, if your team moves at all on the continuum, 
starting here to wrestling plus and over, you're 
going to require some coordination.
So, let's go back to the thought experiment.
You have your team in mind.
Where do you fall today?
Is your team operating more like a wrestling 
team, wrestling plus, baseball, baseball plus, 
football?
Where are you?
And, equally important, should you be there?
You know, would you be better moving along?
I know in some senior leadership teams that I've 
been working with, almost consistently they've 
been saying, you know, we need to move a little 
bit left to right on this.
OK.
This is important background before I talk about 
the research itself.
So, here is what the research reveals.
It reveals there are seven consistent drivers that
determine whether a team is going to be 
effective or not. Again, let's do that thought 
experiment. Have your team in mind as I talk 
about the seven C's.
Where is your team on the C's?
                                                                       
The seven C's are this.                                 
The first one is capability.
Do I-- do we have ample knowledge, skills, and 
ability on our team to perform the task that we 
have been assigned.
The second is about mindset. We call it 
cooperation. Attitudes. Do people on your team 
want to be on your team?
Third.
Coordination.
This is about the behaviors.
This is at the heart of teamwork.
Are we behaving as a team?
Fourth. Communication.
Both within the team and from the team outside 
to others.
Fifth we call cognition.
This is the extent to which people on your team 
have a shared understanding about priorities, 
about sense of direction, about roles.
Seventh we call coaching.
It's really about leadership.We would have 
called it leadership, but then we wouldn't have 
seven C's, that wouldn't have been very good.
We use the term coaching, but it's not just 
about the leader, it's about whether other people 
on the team also are demonstrating leadership 
behaviors.
And lastly, conditions. And my colleague Ed 
Salas and I have been working in this space for 
a while. Ed likes to say conditions may be 
most important because teams don't operate in 
a vacuum. So, what are the conditions in which 
your team operates?
What I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about 
these seven C's and share one or two research 
findings that may be of interest associated with 
each of them.
Let's start first with capability.
Remember, this is about does your team have 
the knowledge, skills, abilities, the capabilities 
to be able to be successful.
And sometimes in the movies you get the 
impression that teamwork can overcome 
anything.
The Bad News Bears, you know?
Ragtag team.
They don't have the talent, but somehow they 
still win.
In your work experience, does that really 
happen?
No.
So, let's be clear and the data shows this.
If you have big talent gaps, it's hard to be 
successful.
Teams do need competent individuals to be 
successful.
But, what's very interesting is simply boosting 
talent levels won't always boost team 
performance.
It's true on the left end of that continuum.
You add another star wrestler in an independent 
task, they'll be fine.
But, the research shows that if you start looking 
at above baseball team interdependency, 
sometimes adding talent actually decreases a 
team's performance.
The fourth star on an NBA basketball team 
decreases that team performance.
And very interestingly, you even see it in 
chickens.
Chickens.
And I'm from the Bronx, so I don't really know 
much about chickens, but what I read is that if 
you take another alpha rooster and put them in 
a hen house where there is already a
few roosters, egg production goes down.
So, it's not always-- because you need talent,
 I want to be clear, but it's not always the 
answer let's just get another talented person on 
the team.
What matters very much are the other six C's.
How the team works together.
And some very interesting data from the 
financial analyst industry where Boris 
Groysberg and others have done work here--
we have actually done work with them as well.
These are folks that make seven-digit salaries.
They're stars in the ultimate sense.
Their supposed to be an analyst of an industry, 
the auto industry.
You take these folks and I see these 
organizations who think it's all about that 
person and they steal them from another
organization, on average, five year decline in 
performance from that person until they're back 
up to their levels.
Particularly true if their team doesn't move with 
them, because it's not just about them, it's 
about the people around them.
And particularly if they go to a place that has 
less favorable condition.
OK.
That's capability.
Matters, but it's not the sole picture.
Let's talk about cooperation.
Remember, cooperation is about attitude.
One of the attitudes and mindset that really 
matters is something called collective efficacy.
We use that term as psychologists to mean the 
belief that individual team members have that 
their team will be successful.
Not that I will be successful, but I believe that 
my team will be successful.
And what the research shows is that all things 
being equal, teams with higher levels of 
collective efficacy outperform other teams.
Stan Gully and others published a meta-
analysis on this.
And when your team is all the way to the left, 
it's about self-efficacy and self-confidence, but, 
once you start getting a little more into 
dependency, it's a matter of having a belief that 
we can be successful. And I talk to teams 
pretty regularly where I ask individuals do you 
think you'll be successful and they go yes.
What about your team?
Eh, not so much.
Those teams are at risk.
Now, I will share with you that I'm a Boston Red 
Sox fan in baseball.
Yes, I know. I'm from the Bronx and I root for the 
Red Sox. You really don't need to know 
anything else about me other than that one fact.
In 2012, they were the worst team in baseball.
On the start of the 2013 season, Dustin Pedroia 
and a few of his teammates get in a taxicab
who's driving erratically and Pedroia says, hey, 
buddy. Slow down. You're carrying this year's 
World Series champions.
He maintained collective efficacy, even when the 
team wasn't performing well.
Pretty impressive. 
If you're following them now, this is the second 
year in a row they're doing badly.
I wonder what their collective efficacy is today.
Maybe not so good.
The second sort of cooperation or attitude that's 
of interest is collective orientation.
Collective orientation is-- we sometimes use the 
word team player, you know?
They think team first, not me first. So, collective 
orientation, people like being on a team.
And the data shows, Jim Driscoll, Ed Salas, 
and others have shown that collective 
orientation is in fact related to team 
performance, in part because it improves team
interactions.
But, here is my experience.
Not everybody on your team needs to be high in 
collective orientation.
You need enough.
Your team doesn't have enough, you struggle.
Your team has enough, it sort of greases the 
skids a bit.
And some very interesting research coming out 
of the Australian Special Forces.
Their special forces are just like us in the U.S., 
very rigorous, you know, very difficult.
Individually demanding skill set.
You want to know what one of the top predictors 
they found of success in the Australian Special 
Forces is?
Whether people perceive themselves as team 
players or not.
It out-predicted physical fitness scores and 
other cognitive ability scores.
This also helps dispel a myth, which is, oh, I 
can either be a team player or I can be an 
individual success.
The data doesn't support that.
You can be both.
You can have the mindset that team matters 
and still be an individual success.
And most of the cooperative attitudes like trust 
and respect and cohesion, they emerge from 
the other six C's.
So, I can't make respect on my team.
I can't make trust.
We do the other six C's right and those things 
tend to emerge from it.
So, let's do our thought experiment.
Would your team benefit from some additional 
capabilities either by bringing in somebody or 
maybe training?
If I asked all the people on your team, hey, is 
this team going to be successful, what would 
they tell me?
And do you have enough of these team-oriented 
people on your team?
If not, those might be opportunity points.
OK.
Coordination.
Coordination is about the behaviors that teams 
exhibit.
Like I said, it's at the heart of teamwork.
I already shared with you Jeff LePine's work that 
shows that behaviors improve the probability of 
teamwork success.
Now, Michelle Marks and John Matthew from 
our team and Steve Zaccaro have taken this a 
step further.
They did a nice job of sort of splitting out and 
understanding the factors.
I could probably spend an hour and just talk 
about that.
Alright?
But, what I will tell you is as you move from left 
to right on that continuum, these things become 
more important.
And I just picked two to talk about today.
I want to say a few words about back-up 
behavior and about conflict.
Let's talk back-up.
What I've seen is that whether or not back-up 
behavior, helping out one another on the team 
occurs is a function of three things.
First of all, do people-- have I staffed my team 
with people who have the ability to back-up one 
another?
Right?
How have I designed the team?
Secondly, have I trained people so they have 
the skills and they also-- they understand where 
they're supposed to back-up.
Sometimes people don't back-up because they 
don't think they're supposed to.
And the third piece is about attitude.
It's beneath me to back-up.
If I have people on my team that think that, 
we're not going to see support and coverage for 
one another.
Here is a true story.
I was flying from Albany, New York to Boston, 
Massachusetts.
I get to the airport, we're waiting for the plane 
and it's a little nine-seat propeller plane.
And I'm dressed like this, you know, and I'm the 
first person to board the plane.
And there is one pilot and there is nine seats.
So, I jokingly ask the pilot, do you mind if I sit 
up front and
she said no, come on up.
Cool.
Now you're on the plane, you're getting up 
behind me.
You look in the cockpit and you see, like, 
someone in a pilot suit and Scott.
How do you feel about that back-up?
And so I will tell you my attitude was awesome.
So much that she had to keep saying things 
like, oh, don't touch that.
So, it's not just attitude, it's knowing when and 
when not and also having the skills.
Now let's talk conflict.
Conflict is complex.
Is conflict good?
Is it bad?
Depends.
What does it depend on?
Well, first of all, it depends on what your team 
is disagreeing about most frequently.
If you reflect back on your team-- alright, all 
teams disagree about things.
Where are you spending your time disagreeing?
This is from Frank De Wit and some of his 
colleagues have discovered this.
If most of your time disagreeing is about 
interpersonal sorts of things, performance 
declines when you have conflict.
If most of your time is spent on process things, 
tactical stuff, scheduling, things like that, 
performance goes down. 
But, when most of the disagreements are about 
the work itself, the task, then it depends.
Sometimes performance goes up, sometimes it 
goes down.
But, what does it depend on?
Bret Bradley from the University of Oklahoma 
and others have shown that it relates to 
psychological safety.
We use that term to mean the extent to which 
you can be yourself in a particular setting.
When psychological safety is high on a team, 
task conflict actually boosts performance.
When psychological safety is low, almost any 
conflict hurts the team.
So, that's one factor that drives it.
The second factor is the way in which conflict is 
handled.
What the team's style is.
And there is three common styles.
This is from Leslie DeChurch's work.
One style that we see in teams we'd call a 
competitive one.
We're going to have to fight and it's about 
whose idea wins.
Well, no, not exactly. It's about who wins.
So, it's really important that I win the arguments 
here.
You've probably been on teams in which that's 
the predominant mode.
In contrast, have you been on a team that's 
been in avoidance mode?
Shouldn't disagree because that's bad.
We won't like each other.
But, let's not voice our opinion.
Let's be very careful about things.
This won't surprise you, but those two don't 
work particularly well.
The third style is more collaborative in nature 
and it's not that there is not winner-- winning 
and losing, but it's the ideas that win or lose, 
not the people that win or lose.
And the goal is to come up with the best idea.
And teams that adopt that style, which is we're 
not avoiding it, we're engaging in it, but may the 
best idea win and it's fine.
When they have conflict it boosts performance.
What about communication? Anyone here think 
communication is not important?
Right?
I mean it's a fundamental premise of teamwork, 
right?
Very often when I say teamwork, you think 
communication.
But, what's clear about the research is it's not 
always the case that more is better.
It's not just we need to communicate more.
It's about the sharing of unique information that 
drives team effectiveness and communicating in 
a way that has closed-loop communications, 
meaning that both parties understand what's
been said.
So, one thing you need to be careful about if 
this unique information sharing is really what 
drives things is that people inherently tend to 
assume that other people have the same
information that they do.
In a study that was done, it took one participant 
on a team, pulled them out, gave them some 
information and told them you're
the only person on the team that has this 
information, and yet when they put them back 
and watched the team, that person
almost inevitably did something or said 
something that only makes sense if other 
people had that information.
Think about that.
They were just primed and they couldn't avoid 
doing it.
Sometimes unique information isn't shared 
because people assume that other people 
already know it and so we have got to
really be conscious about drawing out that 
information and for any of you that are on 
hierarchical teams, we see this in the military 
and medical, but other hierarchical teams, the
leader really has to encourage this speaking up 
or else sometimes junior people won't share 
information that they have.
Here is a counter-intuitive finding.
I was in Las Vegas.
Let's say I was doing research on probability 
theory.
And I went to a restaurant called L'Atelier.
Very, very nice restaurant.
Has an open-kitchen concept where you can 
watch the kitchen staff.
And during the meal I'm watching and this 
kitchen is quiet.
Stuff's flying out there.
And coordination without even saying anything.
Like one person's working on their plate, they 
look and they see a little sauce stain over here 
and they just take their--clear of the other 
person's plate. Humming.
And partway through the evening, a group of big 
spenders come in and they want to order these 
meals that are off the menu and truffles and all 
sorts of things.
All of the sudden they huddle up.
Someone comes out of the back.
The volume level increases.
They figure out their plan, they get back to work 
and quiet again.
So, it's not always the case that it's about more
communication.
In fact, there is an inverted U.
Some of the most effective teams don't talk 
quite as much as other teams do.
OK.
It's about unique information sharing.
OK.
So, let's do-- back to our thought experiment.
Have your team in mind.
Members of your team know who's supposed to 
back-up and about when and what they're 
supposed to be backing-up about.
Which of those styles, those conflict styles, 
would typify your team and where do you spend 
your time disagreeing about?
What about your team sharing of unique 
information?
And is it possible that your team could do a 
better job of keeping each other well-informed?
Just process that a little bit.
Let's talk cognition. Remember, cognition is a 
shared understanding.
We like to use the term shared mental models.
Research shows that highly effective teams 
have shared mental models or having a-- and we 
could have shared mental models about a 
variety of things, like how a task gets
performed or if this problem occurs then what.
When we worked with oil rig crews, what we 
would do is we would take folks on the offshore 
and on the ground here in Houston, video 
connection and we would present scenarios and
talked about what would happen if this occurs 
for them to build the shared mental model about 
ifs and thens.
But, it can also be about where we're headed 
and who's responsible for things and priorities.
This is why that quiet kitchen could be quiet.
Because they had a shared mental model about 
how things were supposed to be performed.
I watch surgical teams where the person's 
handing the scalpel before the surgeon even 
asks for it.
And in sports you see, like, you know, the 
ability to be able to do a blind pass in 
basketball because I know that forward's
going to be filling the lane.
Good teams have shared mental models.
Now, a little deviation here.
I decided I want to include one very tangible sort 
of thing that I've seen in many, many, many 
project teams and management teams.
So, if you take away only one tangible thing, 
this is the one I would like you to do starting 
tomorrow.
Be really clear when you're in team meetings 
whether what you're involved in is trying to make 
a decision, whether you're seeking input from 
the people that you're sharing the
information with, or whether this is simply 
updating.
I see this being a source of conflict on a very 
regular basis in teams.
You think it's about a decision being made and I 
think I'm just coming here to update you and I 
get annoyed that you're querying things.
Just this simple thing seems to have a boost in 
teams that we work with.
OK.
Now, back to the regularly scheduled program.
Alright?
Let's talk coaching.
Look, we could talk about leadership for days.
I want to point out two things that we see from 
the research related to coaching.
And the first is what we refer to as servant 
leadership.
The research has started to show that when a 
leader is perceived at least as part of the time 
as a servant leader, you get some
better results.
What you get are perceived fairness, trust, and 
these-- we call organizational citizenship 
behaviors.
Going above and beyond your job description.
Right?
And what do I mean when I say servant 
leadership?
Well, here is the difference.
A servant leader, the perception is that the team 
members-- the leader works for the team 
members.
My job as the team leader is to remove barriers.
Football analogy is I'm the offensive lineman.
Very often, though, the perception is that the 
team's job is to make the leader look good.
That's not servant leadership.
So, it's not that it has to happen all the time, 
but when teams perceive some degree of 
servant leadership occurring, you get better 
results.
Second finding that I think is really interesting 
relates to shared leadership.
And I'm not talking about the official assignment 
of two or more leaders.
What I'm talking about is having members of the 
team step up at times and demonstrate 
leadership behaviors.
So, you're not the leader, but you coach 
somebody on your team.
You're not the leader, but you give them 
feedback.
You're not the leader, but you're ensuring there 
is some accountability among other team 
members.
Teams that demonstrate a little bit higher levels 
of shared leadership tend to outperform others, 
which is not surprising as we move 
organizationally to teams that have flat-- we 
have flat organizational structure, meaning the 
leader can't be available for everybody all the 
time.
And conditions.
The seventh C.
Teams do not operate in a vacuum.
What happens around them makes a very big 
difference.
And I told you earlier, it's very interesting when 
we look at what happens at the senior level in 
organizations.
So, this study of over 60 top management 
teams I find fascinating.
In this study, when they took a look to see the 
level which senior leadership teams were 
operating in a collaborative
manner, it would predict not only employee 
satisfaction in the organization, but tangible 
retention levels.
What's so interesting is that things are 
happening behind closed doors, so you would 
think that what's going on, you know,
among senior team members is not seen.
It doesn't have to be seen.
If  the members of the senior team were not 
collaborating, somehow that message gets 
conveyed through the organization.
So, for any of you that are sort of a little more 
senior in the organization, it's not just about 
your team.
What you do with your team has a ripple effect 
to others throughout the organization.
OK.
Do our thought experiment.
If I asked everybody on your team who's 
responsible for doing x, would I get the same 
answer?
There is a really important shared mental model 
about roles.
Is there any servant leadership?
Are people stepping up at times?
And then, lastly, do you have the resources you 
need?
And if not, is it possible to get some of those?
So, let's go full-circle here.
Seven C's.
You were to focus attention on one or two C's 
for your team, which would be the ones that 
would both boost your team's performance and 
where there might be some capability of
making adjustments.
That's what I would like you to take away from 
this piece.
Alright.
So, how do we effect the seven C's?
Five times, five opportunities for being able to 
effect the seven C's.
I'm only going to focus on one of them, but I do 
want to mention what the five are.
First one is when we're hiring people into our 
organization, are we hiring enough people with 
collective orientation?
That's the first one.
Second is, when we're forming teams, do we 
spend time to think about the mix of people and 
not simply who's available?
Second.
Third, what are we doing to prepare leaders and 
teams?
Whether that's about training or other sorts of 
things.
Fourth. How do we help them adjust?
And, finally, rewards. If you want to ask me 
questions about rewards, please do so at the 
end. I won't have a lot of good stuff to tell you.
It's one of the trickiest areas, but still one of the 
places where we can either encourage 
collaboration or discourage collaboration.
But, let's talk about adjustment.
And the reason I want to talk about 
adjustment-- and when I'm
talking about adjustments here, I'm talking 
about teams engaging in constructive 
conversations to allow them to self-adjust.
Remember, the best team that you were on 
wasn't the best team on day one.
It was the best team because it adjusted, but 
that's why this is one of the ones that I think is 
one of the most powerful levers
and the reason it's so powerful is having 
constructive team conversations can influence 
any of the seven C's.
You might agree, you know what, we need to 
bring someone in who has some skills that we 
don't have.
That's what's missing from this project.
You might agree we have a difference of opinion 
in terms of priorities; we need to talk about this 
because we're getting in each other's ways.
So, really want to encourage and the research 
here is pretty clear.
Chris Cerasoli and I published a meta-analysis 
that shows that teams that debrief perform 
about 20 to 25% better.
It's a very simple intervention, you know, to have 
a structured debrief, but the impact, the benefits 
are pretty high.
And if you think 20 to 25% sounds high, which 
it does for a very simple intervention, I want to 
share with you in what we did with the U.S.
Navy.
We taught perspective commanding officers 
how to conduct debriefs.
Love the Navy.
They let us randomly assign people to 
conditions.
Some people got our training, some people got 
two more hours of technical training.
They were in simulated combat and the teams 
that had leaders who ran effective debriefs 
outperformed the other teams by 40%.
Four-zero.
That's a massive number.
We taught them nothing technical.
Like I don't know which end of a tomahawk 
missile you're supposed to stand behind, which 
does not make me popular onboard ship.
I can tell you that now.
So, I want to encourage you, if, you know, 
again, a key take-away here is I want to 
encourage you to do some more of these
debriefs and here is what I mean when I say 
debriefs.
I'm not simply referring to elaborate deep dive 
after action reviews or after there is been a 
major problem or once a project's over.
I'm talking about pausing periodically from your 
work, doing a little bit of reflection on how we're 
working together, engaging in a discussion 
about what's working and what adjustments we 
need to make. Pick one or two things you want 
to do a little bit differently.
Agree to it and get back to work.
And this doesn't have to be a day-long activity, 
but this periodic cycle helps teams be 
successful.
Now, I'm going to segue here and talk about 
some of the research that we have been doing 
at NASA and really a key focus that
we have had has been on debriefs.
That's the piece that I will focus on with you.
So, switching gears here now to talk about 
some of the research we have been doing here 
and our grant has this title.
Has a lot of really good words in it.
You know?
I 
mean you got to like-- who's against composing 
and resilience?
But, we did do some research in the 
composition area, but I want to focus on the 
sort of self-sustaining teams.
Our primary focus was on long duration space.
You know?
And innovations to be able to help with that.
But, secondarily, we have been asking 
ourselves as we go through this research what 
are the implications for teams here on Earth?
Is there any secondary benefits from it?
So, you know far better than I do, right, the 
need in long duration space missions is 
different than in other missions.
So, it's isolated, confined, extreme 
environments with long communication lags 
with mission control, in very tight quarters.
All this means that crews doing long duration 
space missions are going to be more 
autonomous, by definition, than any other prior
crews than we have ever had.
Right?
And what that also means is that they're going 
to need self-management counter measures.
Things they can use on their own without 
ground being able to help them all the time.
That's what our focus was on.
The other thing they need to do is they need to 
be able to sustain resilience.
Remember I talked about resilience, that ability 
to bounce back.
In the face of both acute and chronic stressors, 
think about the two types of stressors as low 
level stressors that might annoy you.
You click your pen, you know, during the 
meeting all the time.
Ugh.
You know?
Or in a small, confined habitat, you know, your 
definition of privacy may be different than mine.
But, also to be able to deal with big stressor.
You know, when a big problem occurs.
So, this is kind of our focus.
OK.
This is the need, what can we build in terms of 
a counter measure?
And we reflected on, you know, how useful 
debriefs were in some of our prior work and we 
thought what about a debrief capability
that can be self-guided by teams themselves?
So, we conducted research on this team-led 
web-based debriefing tool based on an 
architecture that we have.
We have put together a short training video that 
goes with it.
In our research, teams ran anywhere from one 
to four debriefs during their life cycle and we did 
publish some research on this.
Now, the reason we wanted to do research is 
because the prior research that was done on 
debriefs did not deal with self-guided debriefs.
It did not deal with isolated, confined 
environments.
We were pretty confident that project teams 
would benefit, you know, from a good debrief, 
but what about teams that are going to be in 
these tight quarters,
who have to sustain resilience?
So, what we did is we built something using 
this DebriefNow architecture and the
architecture itself we'd been using with military 
and medical teams.
We used it with the forward surgical teams 
before they deployed to Afghanistan and also 
with a variety of corporate teams, but in each 
case what we populated the tool with was
designed to fit the specific environment or 
mission.
Like if I say communication is important, 
communication in a senior leadership team is 
different than communication in
an astronaut team or in a manufacturing team.
So, we can't just ask a general question about 
communication.
It's got to be targeted and you'll see what we're 
trying to do here.
So, the way this tool works is they go online, 
they're given a series of questions about their 
team, it takes them three to four minutes.
They're all multiple choice questions, they 
answer quickly.
The tool then produces a customized 
discussion guide which is unique for each team.
So, this team gets a different debrief guide than 
the other debrief-- than the other team does.
They use that to discuss what's going on.
They pick a few things to make adjustments on 
and they move on.
In our research, we have been allowing them 
anywhere from 15 to 40 minutes.
You heard Jeff Davis say earlier that we worked 
with his team.
Jeff's team also allowed-- was willing to be sort 
of guinea pigs to try this out.
With senior leadership teams, we might take an 
hour or 90 minutes with them.
The key thing that we tell teams when we 
introduce this is that you own it.
So, you can have a discussion-- and this is true 
for your teams, too.
You can have a discussion, but the team needs 
to own any agreements.
So, it's not like, oh, because something showed 
up in the guide we have to make a change.
No.
You decide what changes you want to make, 
which is why I think it's well-received and why 
actually changes are occurring in teams that do 
the debriefs.
So, here is an example.
This is one of the questions from when we did 
research with NEEMO.
I will talk more about NEEMO, but this is an 
undersea group of astronauts undergoing 
training and they were asked a question
about whether they were getting sufficient sleep 
because we know that that can drain resilience.
And based on their answers, that would target 
what the team should talk about.
Do they need to talk about this or not?
here is an example of one from our senior 
leadership research that we did.
This is an interesting one.
We asked the question the pace at which 
you're operating on, we found that a source of 
conflict in senior leadership teams is
when some people think the team is moving too 
fast and some people think the team is moving 
too slow and it never gets articulated, but it 
creates friction during meetings.
But, this surfaces it.
Do we need to talk about our pace or not? In 
one CEO team that we had, they agreed to do a 
better job of triaging problems that came in.
Do we need to take our time with this or not?
And then the team would get a sort of summary 
guide like this.
This is the, you know, sort of the screen they 
see.
They can see their high, moderate, and low 
priority levels and then for any one that they 
want to be discussing, the start with the highest 
priority, it gives them a screen that
looks like this.
One thing we found is not to give exact 
numbers.
Not 3.71 or 82% because then they debate 
about the numbers.
Instead what we do is we just give enough to 
say this important.
Your team felt it was important.
Hey, here is a big open-ended question.
Let's start talking about it.
Let's follow-up a bit.
And then the last one is always a forward-
looking question. So, do we want to do anything 
differently about it?
And the team could say no.
On to the next one.
When we did the research at NEEMO and 
HERA, the types of topics that we focused on 
fell into three categories.
Resilience-related topics.
Teamwork topics and task work.
And these are all important.
So, these are factors that are really important 
for teams that are going to be working and living 
together in confined spaces.
Questions about privacy and meals and 
maintaining connection with home when you're 
isolated.
But, then there is also some of the classic 
things related to the seven C's and some things 
related to specific tasks.
Like in the NEEMO thing, their most recent 
EVA.
And, again, the content was revised to fit the 
particular missions.
So, I'm going to briefly tell you about some of 
the results that we found in four different 
environments testing this tool.
And the first study we did was at a lab 
environment.
It was at the University of Central Florida.
It was really a chance for us to have very tightly 
controlled conditions.
It wasn't realistic in the sense of it being folks 
that are like astronauts; these were student 
teams, but it was a space simulation and we 
could create a lot of need for resilience for
them.
Forty-eight teams.
Chance for us to refine things.
Up here, this is the little thing that tells you we 
did sophisticated analyses, but I decided not to 
show you pages of little things with asterisks 
and bullets on it. Instead, I cut through all the 
stuff. This is what we found.
Teams that debrief and teams that entered with 
higher levels of efficacy was almost a surrogate 
measure of capability,performed better. 
But, here is what's interesting.
The reason they performed better, it was all 
predicted by going through resilience.
What happens is teams that had these sorts of 
discussions and had the ability, they were more 
resilient, which in turn led to their performance 
improving.
Second thing we did.
We did a small usability study with three teams 
here.
Two leadership teams and one hardware team.
The focus was really more on is this something 
that is perceived as credible, you know?
It's good that the research says it works, but if 
people don't find it a useful experience, they're 
not going to use the tool.
So, this is just some data that we have.
Five point scale.
Yes, these teams felt it help uncover problems.
They thought teams would benefit and since I 
was actually running the debriefs on this rather 
than the team, we asked them could we
train leaders to do this and, as you can see, on 
a five point scale, they're saying yeah.
You know, four points there.
But, then we did a series of studies in two 
habitats that you have at NASA.
First of all, I think these are really great habitats 
for doing research.
Folks we worked with in both these habitats 
were extremely supportive and I want to tell you 
a little bit about each.
Some of you, maybe many of you, are familiar 
with the HERA habitat that exists here at JSC.
This is a great place to conduct research on 
teams.
You know, we're able to put people in an 
environment that's similar to what they might be 
living on in a-- on a planet during a long duration 
mission.
We can close the doors and when we did 
studies with them we did a series of teams that 
lasted seven days and 14 days and I
understand next year it's going to be up to 30-
day periods of time.
Eight four-person astronaut, like, teams.
We gathered a series of data from them.
What was nice, too, is that we could make 
some manipulations.
So, we could change work levels on given days.
You know, we could sort of put some things that 
test their resilience and delay communications.
And for the teams that were in for one week, we 
had them do two debriefs on days three and 
five.
Again, this says fancy analysis.
This is what we really found.
Here the effects were more direct.
The debriefing tool and resilience both predicted 
team performance, but one thing that we found 
that I thought was really interesting, we found a 
moderator effect.
The time influences the relationship between 
resilience and team performance.
So, as a mission goes on, resilience is more 
closely related to performance.
At the beginning of a mission, resilience and 
performance are unrelated, but over time we 
have a loss of resilience, it will affect our team 
in some way.
And this has implications for long duration 
missions because it's not going to stop at day 
six or day 14, right?
We're up on year three, resilience is likely to be 
even more important.
Another thing that we wanted to make sure was 
that a good self-management tool should have 
diagnosticity. It should be able to identify where 
there is potential concerns.
So, this is just at a glance.
We chose four teams from our research, ten 
factors, and you could see sort of the fact that 
results were different on different days and for 
different teams.
What that means is that different crews need to 
discuss different things at different times.
Right?
And that's-- that makes sense.
So, whether it's this tool or another tool, just 
some way to be able to make sure that we're 
guiding our teams to have conversations about 
the right types of things.
Now let's talk NEEMO.
NEEMO is an undersea habitat.
Again, many of you might be quite familiar with 
this, but it's off the coast of Florida.
About 60 feet below the sea, think about a 
habitat that's about 40 feet wide, confined 
space.
We conducted studies there with two crews.
One did a seven-day mission, one did a ten-day 
mission.
These are international crews of astronauts.
Here they are actually sitting around using the 
tool.
Depending on the length of the mission, we had 
them do two or three debriefs and some of the 
questions were about those resilience topics.
You know, about sleep and food and privacy.
Others were about teamwork and task work.
And we gathered data from them and right off 
the bat I think what we really wanted to find out 
here, since this is the target audience for future 
missions, would they find this useful because if 
the astronauts don't find this useful, it doesn't 
matter what the science says.
Alright?
It's got to be something that's both acceptable 
and empirically valid.
Very positive reactions and one really nice thing 
is that when the NEEMO 18 crew had a chance 
to use this, they said afterwards is there a 
possibility that we could also allow NEEMO 19 
to be able to try the tool.
Which I thought was pretty encouraging.
In our five point scale, we'd get data from the 
various groups and pretty consistently positive 
reactions from the folks.
Both analog environments.
Here's just a few thoughts from them.
A chance to be able to encourage people to 
speak up.
It's a conversation starter.
Opening answering honestly, which I think is 
really important.
And, you know, look, when communicating with 
ground is going to be a little bit of sort of 
screening that takes place.
This was an important one.
We find that one of the pitfalls in team debriefs 
is that maybe not spending time on the 
important things. And then some comments 
here about the missions. My favorite quote I did 
not put up here was one that said is there a
family marriage version of the tool? You know, 
to make sure that we-- the soccer pick up 
schedule is handled properly.
So, I want to share with you based on all of 
that, a couple of things looking forward to the 
future.
So, in space, a few things we found.
It's going to be really important to allocate time 
on the schedule for the crews to be able to do 
their own debriefs.
It's not going to happen naturally.
They all like it, but they all-- this is from them.
They told us please make sure that there is 
time allocated in the schedule and allow some 
time for us to talk amongst ourselves.
That's very important.
Third.
The content can't simply be on task work.
we have got to guide them towards things about 
resilience and things like that.
They may not naturally talk about privacy, but if 
they talk about it early enough and deal with it 
early in the mission,
it's not going to be a problem.
And they suggested more frequent ones at the 
beginning and then less frequently.
And they also said is it possible for crew 
members to be able to trigger their own.
Hey, we have been out for a while, we think 
maybe it's time to huddle up and have a 
conversation.
Here, on Earth, probably should be trying to 
ensure that astronauts are doing some of this 
sort of self-debriefing, self-management stuff 
here.
So, having them lead some of their own 
debriefs.
But, here is the real take-away.
I 
just want to encourage you.
You don't need this tool.
I mean the tool's great.
There is other tools that are out there.
What I really want to encourage you, those that 
are on management team, project team, R&D 
teams, et cetera.
Just get in the habit of periodically huddling up 
and conducting these debriefs.
The DebriefNow tool is one.
Some of you may be familiar with Team 
Dimensional Training,
there is other tools that are out there, but what I 
would suggest is there just needs to be enough 
structure around this.
So, it's not just at the end of projects and it's 
not just let's get together to discuss.
Make sure you put a little bit of structure to 
your effort.
So, final words.
Three take-aways.
Teamwork matters and it won't necessarily 
happen on its own, so we need to spend some 
time and focus on it.
There is some science out there.
Let's focus on the things that matter.
And you probably could have predicted this one.
OK?
At this point I would welcome any questions 
that you might have related to teams, 
teamwork, teams you're on, et cetera.
[ Applause ]
>>Let's see if this is on.
OK. Perfect.
So, we wanted to leave the last 30 to 45 
minutes for a Q&A session.
I know some people came ready with 
questions, so please don't make me stand up 
here awkwardly.
Ask your questions.
Raise your hand and I can get you the mic.
>>Thank you.
Can you describe how the debrief compares to 
the classical lessons learned?
>>Yeah.
So, most lessons learned review occur at the 
very end of something.
We have gone through the experience, we have 
completed a project, we have completed a 
mission, we have done something and we want 
to huddle up and figure out what lessons can 
we take away from this.
Now, those are useful.
You know, the military calls them after action 
reviews.
The very end.
That's the good news, they work pretty well.
The bad news is that it's too late to make 
adjustments during the mission at that point.
Right?
And very often what happens is they go in a 
binder and sometimes those binders go up on a 
shelf someplace and the next team may not 
have access to them.
So, when I talk about debriefs, that would be an 
example of a debrief, I wouldn't say that's not a 
debrief, but what I want to encourage is not just 
those.
What I want to encourage is on a periodic 
basis.
Like for project teams, we should do a debrief, 
you know, a couple weeks in.
Before we even get too sort of entrenched in the 
way we're operating, how's it working?
Any quick adjustments?
I would want to do a debrief at the midpoint at 
the project because research shows something 
changes in terms of team dynamics at
that point.
And then maybe then an after action review or 
lessons learned at the very end to see their 
take-aways for future projects.
So, a real key to the debrief is that it has to be 
relevant and it has to resonate with the team.
So, this is why sort of asking generic questions 
doesn't seem to work as well as asking very 
targeted questions.
Whenever we build the questions for this, we 
work very closely with subject matter experts.
So, we built, you know, a debriefing tool for
manufacturing teams at Frito Lay.
We spoke to the folks that were experts in 
packaging and processing.
Where are the potential breakdowns, you know, 
which--they may be based on the seven C's, but 
when we talk about communication in a 
packaging team, what's it about?
So, when we built this out for HERA and 
NEEMO, we talked to the folks that were very 
familiar with the mission, got their
input from it and then what we'll typically do-- 
and I encourage you in any debriefing tool that 
you use, you speak to the experts, you draft it, 
you put it back to them and you say
does this make sense.
And then the real test for us is-- in a tool like 
ours is does it prioritize them properly? So, the 
reason we did all this usability testing is to say, 
OK, it guided you to talk about privacy first.
Did that make sense?
You know, it guided you to talk about EVAs, did 
that make sense?
And that's sort of the second validation and at 
that point we feel like we're pretty confident in 
the content.
>>I have an additional one, too.
Sorry, real quick.
Just to tag onto that, can you speak a little to 
the balance of task work type questions in the 
debrief versus more the teamwork as you were 
talking about in your--
>>Yeah.
Yeah.
So, if I leave teams alone, I put them in a room, 
and I go we have allocated an hour and we'd like 
you to just huddle up and discuss how things 
are going.
Have a conversation.
Engineers will talk about tensile strength.
Doctors will talk about, you know, the patient's 
disease.
Right?
Finance people are going to talk about whether 
they hit the numbers or not.
Teams don't naturally gravitate to talk about 
teamwork-related things.
Someone doesn't say did we back-up at the 
right time, are we sharing the right information.
You know?
Are our priorities clear?
So, I think it's important to have a balance and, 
you know, when I lead debriefs, it just requires a 
little more effort on my part to focus the team 
on teamwork-related things because
they're naturally going to bring up the task work, 
but I think a balance is appropriate.
It's perfectly appropriate.
In fact, it's useful to engage in conversations 
about a particular event that occurred and how 
we handle it.
That's very much about task work.
You know?
Like the EVA questions.
Very much about a particular task.
Or if we want to explore why a certain problem 
occurred, that's about the task.
But, I think what I would encourage you is to 
make sure that if you're allowing it to happen 
naturally, what you'll probably need to do is 
be sure there is someone in the room, a team
member, a team leader, whatever, that says, 
hey, let's talk about some teamwork-related 
things as well and not spend our whole
time just on task work things. That's where the 
comfort zone is.
Yeah. 
So, my point of comparison is when I've run 
them just with me there versus when there is 
the tool there.
And you can run into a challenge in either of 
those cases. I mean probably the biggest thing 
is if a leader  really, really, really doesn't want 
to do this, it's very difficult to be able to run 
debriefs effectively, right?
But, the other thing is, yeah, you can run into a 
group that takes a little bit longer to warm up.
I find that the warm up occurs a little bit faster 
with the tool because people have already 
thought about it and weighed in and they've 
done it anonymously. This is a really important 
point.
When they answer those questions, they don't 
put their names in. So, this topic makes it to 
the top. It's one that a lot of people think
 
it's important, sometimes all it takes then is 
one person to say, yeah, I thought that was a 
concern and all of the sudden you see the flow 
in, but you're absolutely right.
Different teams have different dynamics.
We just used the tool with a half a dozen teams 
in Hong Kong.  You know, I was participating 
remotely, so I gave a talk remotely and then 
there were six teams.
What was really interesting is that these teams 
were cross-cultural teams.
So, much in the way our astronaut crews are
international, this was a-- these teams were 
made up of people, half of whom were from 
Israel and half whom were from Asia.
And you want to talk about cultural distance in 
terms of style, there were style differences 
there and there was no facilitator.
So, someone from the team was the one that 
ran the sessions and the feedback we got was 
that actually it's the first time in a while they 
had open conversations.
And I think it's because they first had a chance 
to think and weigh in.
You know, and introverts tend to process things 
a little bit first.
So, you come to a thing where you all huddle 
up and ask the question how are things going 
and the biggest extrovert in the room goes well, 
let me tell you 42 things that I've seen.
You know?
And by the time the introvert's ready to go, it's 
like OK, great.
Thanks.
Let's go.
So, oh, I did not have the chance.
You know?
Research shows and Kim Jentsch from UCF 
has some data on this that shows that the best 
debriefs are those in which a higher percentage 
of the team members participate in the
discussion.
So, you're onto something important there.
If you're a team leader, you have to ask, you 
have to draw things out a little bit and 
sometimes you can say what do
you think or what do you think about that.
Yeah.
So, I think, ideally, teams should get in the 
habit of doing a series of them and in part 
because of just what you described.
You know, if we haven't done them a lot-- alright, 
I'm on a team, we haven't done these before, we 
starting to do this, some things are starting to 
surface, it's kind of interesting. We may not get 
a chance to touch on all these things.
And very often, in fact, what I will do is I will 
leave some materials behind when I run them 
so that a team can have their sort of own 
discussion-- their own discussion continued
afterwards.
So, I do think those sort of over time make 
sense.
What we found in some of the research we did 
with crews that were together for 14 days or for 
long periods of time, we had to start varying the 
content.
So, it wasn't going to be the same questions on 
day three, five, seven, and nine.
On day seven we started asking some 
questions about connection to family and 
disconnect and as we were thinking about this 
with long duration space crews we thought we 
need to have a pool of items, some of which will 
be more appropriate at different points in the 
mission.
I think that's also true with leadership teams.
You know?
I've done these both ways.
With some leadership teams, we ask the same 
questions and we were able to do a check to 
see if there is progress.
And in other teams it's like less introduce a 
couple of new things into this next set and see 
whether it's something worth talking about.
But, I do think you get more benefit if it's part of 
an ongoing-- again, regardless of the tool you 
use, just to periodically do the check ins.
They don't have to be long, elaborate, but follow 
up to the conversation you had probably would 
be worthwhile.
>>OK.  I had a couple questions emailed to 
me, so I know we're kind of going the debriefing 
path, so I'm going to throw a wrench.
We're going to utilize you as the team expert 
that you are.
One emailed question to me was asking about 
what do you do if you are on a team with 
individuals that are essential at the same level 
as you, but the competency isn't there and
so in meeting deliverables or tasks, certain 
individuals are pulling their weight more than 
others and it's causing dissention and kind of 
tension, but it's a difficult topic to address.
What are your thoughts on how to approach 
something like that?
>> So, first of all, that's probably a very rare 
occurrence.I can imagine that none of you--
[ Laughter ]
Have ever experienced a team where some 
people were contributing more than others.
So, you know, like any good detective, I think 
we have to sort of sort through the clues to 
figure out what's going on. So, I'm asking 
myself as I think, which of the seven C's.
Right?
So, is this a capability question?
I mean sometimes you see people who aren't 
carrying their weight because they don't have 
the skill or the expertise to be able to do the 
job.
It's a bad fit, right?
And it's as frustrating for them as it is for others 
on the team.
But, other times it may be more about the 
mindset and are people willing and able to sort 
of step up and do what they need to do.
Do they believe it's important?
Do they believe in the mission?
Right?
And then I ask the question is it one person, is 
it two people, or is it the majority of the team?
One thing we have got to be careful about is 
I don't like using team interventions to deal with 
one person. We do this sometimes, if I'm being 
honest, we do this sometimes as a copout
because we're afraid to confront the person.
Rather than having a frank conversation and 
saying, hey, you know, you're not getting it 
done. Let's talk about what's getting in the way.
Why are you not, you know, getting some of the 
work done you need to get done?
And dealing with them one on one.
We have a team discussion about what's going 
well and everybody in the room's waiting.
You know?
Are we going to-- is that person going to be 
called out or not?
So, in some cases, the answer is it's a one on 
one conversation.
Right?
Now, if you tell me that it's over half the team, 
that's a more systemic question.
We have got to figure out what's getting in the 
way.
It could even be a cognition issue, right?
Where some people aren't aware of their roles 
or the priorities?
So, it appears to me like you're not carrying 
your weight because your priorities are different 
than my priorities.
I see this with over half the team, then we 
definitely need to huddle up and talk about it.
And in this particular team you describe, you 
talked about it as being, you know, fairly similar 
in level, but if there is a leader, there is some 
coaching responsibility there as well.
It's not always going to be the team self-
correcting the team.
Yes?
Yeah.
So, you know, remember the slide about the 
degree of interdependency?
Well, first of all, your Tour de France example is 
a great one.
It's a-- boy, talk about interdependency.
You know, for anybody who's sort of an 
untrained observer, it can look like it's an 
individual bicycle race.
It's as far from an individual bicycle race as 
possible.
You can take one of the best riders in the world, 
similar to those financial analysts, and plug 
them on another team and if they don't have 
good supporting cast around them, that person
will not win the race next time. Right?
The current winner would not win on an inferior 
team.
So, when I think about interdependency, right, 
we're talking about interdependency within the 
team.
And in the case of Tour de France, what that 
competition does is it actually ups the ante for 
everybody.
That's fine.
And there isn't interdependency between them.
Other than driving recklessly, what your team 
does and what my team does, they're not really 
dependent.
You know?
You could drive fast or slow, it's not going to 
help me.
It might motivate me, but inside an organization 
it's different and what you're starting to describe 
is the concept of team of teams where it's not 
simply the case that I'm on my team and
that's it, but I'm on a team and you're on a team 
and you're on a team and to the extent there is 
some interdependency, that competition which 
might appear healthy in other cases gets in
the way.
So, what we have been starting to advocate in 
those environments is it's great to huddle up 
your own team.
It's great to huddle up your own team and 
engage in debrief discussions, but if we really 
need to have cooperation with a secondary 
team, then we need to sometimes huddle up 
with them as well.
And that's true even if you think about ground 
crew and, you know, a flight crew.
Right?
They each have their own.
They should be having their own discussions, 
but periodically there is got to be the bigger 
circle drawn.
And if we don't, we don't create any context for 
those teams that are both competing and need 
to collaborate.
The natural tendency to compete is going to win 
out and that's where the problem occurs.
>> I had another email question. I promise 
these are just not my questions.
Somebody asked--
>> And I would like to report that I did not email 
them either, so--
[ Laughter ]
>> Another question that was sent to me was 
asking about--and I was-- so, now in the context 
of your presentation, the team maybe is well 
selected, so kind of different from the
last scenario I gave you and there is a high 
motivation, but some of those conditions, the 
C-- the-- one of the seven C's isn't there.
So, you have a very highly motivated team, 
maybe the leader isn't as receptive to using 
some of these strategies or the organization 
doesn't provide the resources or the team just
doesn't feel supported that way.
What can a team do in that situation to 
continue to thrive?
>> Yeah, let me differentiate between two-- let 
me differentiate between the coaching C, right, 
when it's about the leader, and the conditions C 
when it's about the resources, the environment, 
the support.
On the conditions side, one of the things I try 
and coach teams about is we need to be clear 
about our negotiable and non-negotiables.
Right?
And also, you know, I like to talk about there 
being over three zones.
You know?
There is a zone of control that we as a team 
can simply decide we're doing this differently.
We don't need anybody's permission.
Great.
That's like the blue zone.
Right?
And there is a middle zone where we can't 
control it, but there is a chance we can 
influence this and that's kind of the yellow
zone.
And then there is the red zone.
And the red zone are those things that we can 
neither control nor influence and it's really 
important to be able to be aware of those 
distinctions.
It's important from a personal health perspective 
because, incidentally, spending a lot of time in 
the red zone is physically debilitating.
Research has been done with adolescent girls 
and lately been extended to older humans and 
systemic inflammation levels go up, which is 
related to a lot of diseases, when you spend too
much time in that red zone.You're unable to let 
go of unattainable sorts of things.
So, the first is let's be aware.
The second is let's-- the things that are in our 
blue zone, let's just do it.
You know?
And then let's figure out those things we can go 
after and request and that's that yellow zone.
And I think as a team sometimes it's worthwhile 
saying what are we lacking and let's put 
together a compelling business case and 
request it.
But, let's be clear.
If it's in the yellow zone, just because we put 
together a good case doesn't mean we're going 
to get it.
Right?
And then when members of the team come 
back and keep referring to things that are in the 
red zone-- have you ever had this experience on 
a team?
There is someone that keeps going back and 
bringing up those things that you know you 
can't do anything about?
It's like-- of course you haven't.
So, it's like the software has been delivered to 
us and it has bugs in it.
Well, first of all, one thing I can tell you, any of 
you that have done technology work know that 
all software have bugs.
As a psychologist, I will tell you all people have 
bugs, so it's just natural.
OK?
But, you know, it's-- so it's-- so we're looking at 
the software and we have been told there'll be 
no corrections made to this for the next three 
months.
And then at each meeting somebody on the 
team comes and goes I can't believe the bugs 
on the-- we got to get these bugs fixed.
You know?
Like what does that do to the energy in the 
team? It's like wah-wah. You know?
So, on my team we have what we call the 24-
hour wallow rule.
You can try this at home, too. The 24-hour 
wallow rule goes something like this. If you're 
having a problem, you're having a bad day,
something's going wrong, if you come to 
anybody on our team, we will be extremely 
supportive for 24 hours.
And then we'll ask you two questions.
Is there anything you can do about it and is 
there anything I can do to help?
And if you say no and no, we'll say LIG.
Let it go.
And I will tell you, it's a lot better to say it than 
to hear it, but I've been both the giver and the 
recipient of that and I think in teams it's really 
important to focus attention on those things.
Blue and yellow and have the discipline not to 
get stuck too much in the red.
The second part of your question, which was 24 
minutes ago, dealt with the leadership aspect of 
it and this is a little bit tougher.
So, if I am on a team and my leader doesn't get 
it. It's hard because it's clearly not a blue zone 
issue. There is things that only the leader can 
do and I can't do them.
It's a yellow zone issue to the extent that I can 
try and influence my leader to do some things 
differently.
I sometimes see teams that are able to be 
effective when they start sort of demonstrating 
some of the coaching C's themselves.
So, if my team leader isn't going to be able to 
help us in certain ways, can we rally up and do 
our own coaching and give our own feedback 
and do our own job of trying to generate some
resources and support that working for a difficult 
leader--and any of you who have been in your 
career for a long time have had this experience 
at some point. Hopefully not currently.
That's a little bit tougher one and I really look at 
what can we huddle up and do as a team and 
how can I possibly give some constructive 
feedback to my leader.
So let me-- so the first one's about multi-team 
systems and the second one's about timing as 
to when you introduce a debriefing tool.
So, we did some research in the medical world 
and this is military medical.
So, remember the TV show MASH?
Yeah, so there is a modern version to that.
You know, the research shows that you have 
like what they call the golden hour and in 
combat situations you need to keep wounded 
people alive for an hour.
That's kind of a critical window and when you do 
that your mortality rates go down tremendously.
And so what starts happening is the military 
starts putting medical facilities nearby.
Closer to the action so we're able to treat 
wounded soldiers faster and closer to the 
action.
So, they'll set up these sort of tents, you know, 
nearby.
And in some cases, what will happen is if 
something bad happened, they have mass 
casualty incident.
Right?
Where multiple people are coming in at once.
So, what they really are is they are a multi-
team system and there is these multiple places 
inside the tent that people can be treated.
And some of it's individual people being treated, 
you know, soldiers being treated independently, 
in other cases it's handoffs that need to occur 
from one station to another station around this.
Complex.
Tricky.
You know?
But, they need to be able to maintain sort of a 
shared mental model about some things.
So, back to your question earlier about how do 
you get the content right.
What we had to do in that case is figure out 
where are the interdependencies.
So, there are certain things that everybody in 
the big tent needs to know.
They need to be maintaining an awareness of.
There is other things that only the people on my 
little table here need to be aware of.
We need to know whether this patient has 
allergies.
More collectively, we need to know what 
resources are available and whether it's 
possible to move the patient off
to someone to sort of a higher level of medical 
care.
But, when I start becoming aware of those 
interdependencies, it gives me some insights 
about how we should be handling both
development on the training side and also the 
debriefing process.
But, having a large group debrief where most of 
the conversation are about things that are really 
about the small teams, it's just a frustrating 
experience for everybody.
So, we do some of the larger group things, the 
system of teams, but we do it around things 
that are relevant to all the groups.
So, you're not simply fodder.
You know?
Let's wait our 45 minutes until we can talk 
about us.
We might split off and have some conversations 
about the small things and then we might talk 
collectively about things like, you know, where 
were the bottlenecks in this case?
It's important to everybody under the big tent.
So, if you can use that as an analogy, if you 
will, for other sorts of settings.
I think that same mindset can be applicable.
So, this-- this now is about the question of size, 
too. You know?
I mean there is some research that shows, you 
know, when teams get very large that it's 
difficult to be very effective.
Having said that, the team size has to be as 
large as it needs to be.
There is some instances where I can't have a 
quote ideal team size from the research.
We need 30, 40 people.
The problem is trying to do a debrief discussion 
with 30, 40, 50 people is quite difficult.
What we have done in one environment is we 
get data from everybody and then we take 
representatives from the team.
They engage in the discussion and there is 
feedback back to the group.
They say we agreed to these sorts of things, is 
everybody comfortable with it?
Another way of doing that at times is to get the 
leaders together.
And really it depends on the situation.
So, if the shared mental model that needs to be 
in place is a shared mental model among the 
leaders of the various stations,
then they're the perfect group to do the debrief 
together and then they can choose what needs 
to be disseminated to their teams because 
everybody on the team doesn't need to know 
this.
Sometimes that's appropriate, too.
But, part of the message is it's not one size fits 
all.
It's about sort of fit for purpose based on 
interdependency and the requirements of the 
team.
And the second question was about timing.
So, I can only debrief about experiences if my 
team has experiences.
So, it's hard for me to do-- I can do a pre-brief.
We could talk about how we might want to do 
things.
We can do a pre-brief where we talk about if 
certain things happen, what do we want to do.
I can establish a team charter.
There is research that shows that team charters 
actually are pretty effective.
Helpful tool in some ways.
But, to do a debrief on how we're working 
together, we have had to at least spent some 
time working together.
So, that's why I say kind of a rule of thumb for 
me for project teams is I want to get them 
together once before they calcify.
You know, they've got to be together long 
enough so that we have something to discuss, 
but not so long that we're set in our ways.
And for a team that works daily, that might be 
two or three days into a project.
For a team that meets weekly, it might be at 
the end of week two or week three where we 
have that initial conversation.
But, before the team every works, I would call 
that more of a pre-brief, which can be an 
effective intervention, too.
Yeah.
So, you're right.
So, first of all, you know, beyond maybe a 
dozen people, it's hard.
And many of you have had that experience.
It's hard.
And there are circumstances where we have no 
choice, we need to be larger, but I also-- I want 
to think creatively here, which is that there is 
teams that are like this is my core team and 
then there is other people on the team. And 
most of you are on more than one team as well.
So, think about a solution in which we have our 
core team and it's eight people, it's ten people, 
but we have times in which we invite other 
people in.
And they're like the cousins in our family, you 
know?
You know?
They're not nuclear family, they're cousins, you 
know?
And the cousins add creativity and we bring 
them in and it may just be one person has a 
sort of a point of view that's different
than anybody on our team has, but I don't need 
to necessarily anoint them an official team 
member each time, because that's when you 
sort of get that creep occurring.
You know?
It's like bigger and bigger and bigger and at 
some point it becomes unwieldy.
My email address is 
scott.tannenbaum@groupoe.com.
You can reach out to me.
I have a blog that also has some information on 
things, what I
write about the seven C's.
Ed Salas and I are starting to write a book.
That'll be source of resources as well.
But, you know, I will-- I'm happy to take 
questions or
follow up from people if you want to send me a 
note.
As you can tell, I like talking about this stuff.
Fantastic.
Alright.
One more round of applause.
[ Applause ]
