March 4, 2022
Team Cognition: What is it, why does it matter, and how can we promote it?
by Dr. Kent Alipour
Teamwork has become increasingly common in modern-day organizations. In many cases, this is because there is a belief that when individuals combine their knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics, they’ll be able to accomplish more than they would be able to do otherwise.
However, what if I told you that, in many cases, this doesn’t happen?
In other words, we’ve seen teams comprised of individuals with a plethora of task-relevant knowledge and complementary expertise, yet their potential to develop innovative solutions goes unrealized.
To clarify, teams may indeed have the necessary motivation, abilities, and resources to succeed, but they still fail anyway.
Unfortunately, it happens a lot, and the consequences can be dire. For example, space mission breakdowns, airline crashes, and various homicides have all been blamed on what we can refer to as team cognition failures.
With team cognition, we’re just referring to the way teammates collectively develop and share pieces of knowledge.
Understanding each other
As mentioned previously, when considering all members, teams can have access to a vast pool of information and expertise. For example, imagine that an individual with a Ph.D. in engineering, a second individual with a Ph.D. in chemistry, and a third individual with a Ph.D. in psychology are collectively working on an interdependent task.
Notably, because this team has a vast pool of experience and information to draw from, one might assume they could collectively solve problems that require expertise in the three disciplines mentioned.
Unfortunately, research has shown us that they may have difficulties working together because members are often unable to share relevant expertise in a manner in which it is understood by the entire team.
In short, to achieve success, cross-functional teams must collectively build and share knowledge.
Unfortunately, we see that in many cases, they are unable to bridge the knowledge and expertise gap, and these difficulties may be readily apparent. In other words, having access to a pool of applicable knowledge and expertise is only useful if the team can find a way to make sense of how they differently conceptualize, label, and communicate task-relevant issues.
Furthermore, after communicating, members may think they are on the same page, but in actuality have different mental pictures of the core problem and its solutions. Regrettably, because they are unable to identify that these differences exist, coordination breakdowns and/or failures may occur.
Pursuing this idea further, we might say that a team’s success with respect to team cognition boils down to the following:
Can we accurately get each teammate to understand our relevant knowledge and mentally share our roadmap to the solution? Further, can we make sure that we accurately understand our teammates’ relevant knowledge, in addition to grasping their mental illustration of the solution?
Ways to achieve successful teamwork
So now that we understand the problem, and what’s generally required for success, what are some actionable steps teams can take to increase their chances of success?
Well, simply put, teams can take advantage of their broader pool of information, expertise, and resources by making sure to regularly devote blocks of time for collectively recognizing, sharing, and communicating task-related information.
Relatedly, getting on the same page may require time spent learning how to “speak the language” of others who have a different functional background (e.g., engineering vs. psychology). That is, the same word may have different meanings, depending on one’s discipline. This can create serious problems, as common words are often not expected to hold divergent meanings to teammates. Thus, a team may not suspect that communication problems exist until subsequent errors have been made, and team performance suffers. Even worse, because inaccurately perceived language may tie into additional concepts and information based on ones’ existing knowledge and experiences, the magnitude of these mistakes may be particularly costly.
Thus, it may be beneficial for each member to carefully define any terminology that is used and practice redundant communication. In other words, a team member can communicate the same message presented earlier, but this time he/she can utilize alternative words and examples. Also, if the message was initially communicated in person, a follow-up email could be sent to the team later, conveying the same information through a visual aid or alternative method.
Ideally, teammates will share the same interpretation, regardless of which member presents the information, or how it is presented. This suggests that everyone is on the same page with respect to their mental illustration of the problem and/or viable solutions.
Further, teammates should get used to asking questions to increase clarity, and make sure to proactively provide their own examples to assess whether they picture the problems and present solutions in a manner similar to their teammates.
Taken together, intense levels of communication and clarification may be needed to leverage the potential benefits of cross-functional teams. However, given that many organizational problems cannot be effectively solved by members of a single discipline, these types of teams will and absolutely should continue to be utilized.
As the saying goes, “teamwork makes the dream work”…but only sometimes.
Dr. Kent K. Alipour is an assistant professor of management in ECU’s College of Business. He earned his doctorate in industrial-organizational psychology, with a specialization in organizational behavior and organizational research methods, from Penn State University.
He currently teaches negotiation and leadership courses at both the undergraduate and MBA level. His areas of expertise include leadership, teams, negotiation and HR analytics.
The above commentary is based on both his ongoing and recently published (see below) research:
Mohammed, S., Rico, R., & Alipour, K. (2021). Team cognition at a crossroad: Toward conceptual integration and network configurations. Academy of Management Annals.
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