Stress and Teams: How Stress Affects Decision Making at the Team Level
2018
The operating theaters that soldiers face today are characterized by greater complexity than ever
before. Changes in the global environment have led to an increase in asymmetric threats, growth
in joint and coalition based military activities, and a shift to effects based operations. To succeed
in these environments, not only do missions require the coordination between different branches
of the military, the missions often require coordination and collaboration with military units and
non-governmental organizations of various countries. These missions while combining elevated
levels of interoperability and jointness that rely on a shared situational awareness (Warne et al.,
2004) are also characterized by dynamism, ambiguity, and time pressure which serve to challenge
team decision making as military teams face an enemy who is extremely adaptive in its use of
unconventional warfare. Despite the increased complexity which characterizes such environments,
leadership and decision-making activities are being pushed down to increasing lower levels than
ever before in attempts to adaptively and flexibly respond to an unconventional enemy. The
complexity of such environments is illustrated by the following blog from a soldier in Iraq (see
Burden, 2006):While the situation above illustrates the complexity present in many military environments,
complexity within operating environments is not limited to the military, but appears in many public
and private organizations (e.g., development teams, mission control teams, medical teams, SWAT
teams). In today’s operating environment teams often operate in situations where cognitive demands
can be overwhelming, leading to stress and corresponding catastrophic errors (see below).
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
0
References
3
Citations
NaN
KQI