Resilience is of great importance to teams operating in complex environments, such as command and control teams. Team resilience is the ability of teams to respond to sudden, unanticipated demands for performance quickly and with minimum decrement of performance. The objective of this study was to design and test a training intervention to make teams more resilient. In a between-subjects design utilizing a sample of 35 three-person teams, two training manipulations were compared to each other and a control group. Higher levels of team resilience were found when shared leadership was enforced through brief training of transformational-leadership behaviors. This study demonstrated the effectiveness of a relatively small training intervention in boosting resilience.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AvolioB. (1999). Full leadership development: Building the vital forces in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2.
AvolioB. J.SosikJ. J.JungD. I.BersonY. (2003). Leadership models, methods, and applications. In BormanW. C.IlgenD. R.KlimoskiR. J. (Eds.), Handbook of psychology: Vol. 12. Industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 277-307). New York: Wiley.
3.
BartoneP. T. (2006). Resilience under military operational stress: Can leaders influence hardiness?Military Psychology, 18, 131-148.
4.
BassB. M.AvolioB. J. (2000). Mulitfactor Leadership Questionnaire: Sampler set, 2nd Ed.Redwood City, CA: Mind Garden.
5.
BurkeC. S.HessK. P.SalasE. (2006). Building the adaptive capacity to lead multi-cultural teams. In BurkeC. S.PierceL. G.SalasE. (Eds.), Understanding adaptability: A prerequisite for effective performance within complex environments (pp. 175-211). Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
6.
BurkeC. S.StaglK. C.SalasE.PierceL.KendallD. (2006). Understanding team adaptation: A conceptual analysis and model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 1189-1207.
7.
ChenG.PloyhartR. E. (2004). Time for a change: Towards a theory of performance change. Paper presented at the 19th annual meeting for the society for industrial organizational psychology, Chicago, IL.
8.
CookR. I.NemethC. (2006). Taking things in one’s stride: Cognitive features of two resilient performances, In HollnagelE.WoodsD. D.LevesonN. (Eds), Resilience Engineering - Concepts and Precepts (pp. 205-221). Hampshire, UK: Ahsgate.
9.
DeChurchL. A.MarksM. A. (2006). Leadership in multiteam systems. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 311-329.
10.
FairM.ConnaughtonS.DalyJ. (2004). Leading from afar – Leadership training challenges for network centric warfare. Paper No. 1652 presented at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC).
11.
HackmanJ. R.OldhamG. R. (1980). Work redesign. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
12.
HardyL.ArthurC. A.JonesG.ShariffA.MunnochK.IsaacsI.AllsoppA. J. (2010). The relationship between transformational leadership behaviors, psychological, and training outcomes in elite military recruits. The Leadership Quarterly, 21, 20-32.
13.
HarlandL.HarrisonW.JonesJ. R.Reiter-PalmonR. (2005). Leadership Behaviors and Subordinate Resilience. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 11(2), 2-14.
14.
HollenbeckJ. R.IlgenD. R.SegoD.HedlundJ.MajorD. A.PhillipsJ. (1995). The multilevel theory of team decision making: Decision performance in teams incorporating distributed expertise. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 292-316.
15.
JudgeT. A.PiccoloR. F. (2004). Transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analytic test of their relative validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 755-768.
16.
KozlowskiS. W. J. (1998). Developing adaptive teams. In Cannon-BowersJ. A.SalasE. (Eds.), Making decisions under stress: Implications for individual and team training (pp. 115-153). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
17.
KozlowskiS. W. J.IlgenD. R. (2006). Enhancing the effectiveness of work groups and teams. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 7, 77-124.
18.
LePineJ. A. (2005). Adaptation of teams in response to unforeseen change: Effects of goal difficulty and team composition in terms of members’ cognitive ability and personality. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 1153-1167.
19.
LePineJ. A.ColquittJ. A.ErezA. (2000). Adaptability to changing task contexts: Effects of general cognitive ability, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Personnel Psychology, 53, 563-593.
20.
LimB. C.PloyhartR. E. (2004). Transformational leadership: Relations to the five-factor model and team performance in typical and maximum contexts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 610-621.
21.
MorelG.AmalbertiR.ChauvinC. (2008). Articulating the differences between safety and resilience: The decision-making process of professional sea-fishing skippers. Human Factors, 50, 1-16.
22.
SerfatyD.EntinE. E.VolpeC. (1993). Adaptation to stress in team decision-making and coordination. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 37th Annual Meeting (pp. 1228-1232). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
23.
StaglK. C.BurkeC. S.SalasE.PierceL. (2006). Team adaptation: Realizing team synergy. In BurkeC. S.PierceL. G.SalasE. (Eds.), Understanding adaptability: A prerequisite for effective performance within complex environments (pp. 117-141). Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
24.
WestB. J.PateraJ. L.CarstenM. K. (2009). Team level positivity: investigating positive psychological capacities and team level outcomes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30 (2), 249–267. DOI: 10.1002/job.59310.1002/job.593
25.
WoodsD. (2006). Essential characteristics of resilience. In HollnagelE.WoodsD.LevesonN. (Eds.), Resilience engineering: Concept and precepts. (pp. 21-40). Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
