Testing Three Team Training Strategies in Intact Teams

This article describes the results of a meta-analytic integration of the relative contributions of three different components of team training to the efficacy of team training interventions. The three specific components of team training that have received empirical scrutiny in the past are cross-training, team coordination and adaptation training, and guided team self-correction training. The results of this effort show a significant, small-to-moderate tendency for team training to lead to an increase in team performance. This basic beneficial effect of team training was clearly moderated by the degree to which specific components of team training were involved in team training interventions. The results of two different analytic strategies converge to suggest that, at this time, the most potent contribution to effective team training appears to include a focus on coordination and adaptation. This suggests that the optimal team training intervention appears to be requiring that team members learn how to alter their coordination strategies and to reduce the amount of communication necessary for successful team performance.