Planning Effects on Communication Strategies: A Shared Mental Model Perspective

Teams play an unquestionably vital role in modern society, yet much is still unknown about how teams coordinate their activities to attain adaptive and effective performance. The current effort attempted to gain insight into how team members are able to anticipate and predict each other's needs, enabling coordinated task accomplishment. It did so by integrating the literature across three broad areas related to teamwork and testing two specific hypotheses of how teams function. Results indicated that planning is a critical skill necessary for teams to understand each other's informational requirements and to communicate in an efficient manner. Implications for training this crucial skill are discussed.