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4.7 Teamwork Functions and Strategies
Teams usually function in environments where task complexity exceeds individual capacity, decisions have dilemmas to be traded off, information uncertainty prevails, errors may have critical
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consequences, and people’s lives depend on collective insights (Salas et al. 2008). Problems in teamwork have been implicated in a num-ber of high profile aviation accidents (e.g., midair collisions at Tenerife and at Ueberlingen). Emergencies present controllers with many challenging issues, such as synchronization of interconnected activities, information exchange within a short time window, bal-ancing of workload, and changing of task priorities. In addition, safety-critical situations are not tolerant of errors, hence control-lers should create their own opportunities for error detection and correction.
Traditionally, the focus of controller training has been on fulfilling regulatory requirements. Effective handling of emergencies was con-sidered a natural byproduct of technical skills training. Fundamental elements of formal team training are provided routinely in most air navigation service providers (ANSPs) even though teams are expected to function to a high standard. In the past, research addressing team performance in ATM focused on separate behaviors in isolation from other teamwork processes (Cardosi 1993; Morrow et al. 1993). This approach cannot capture all teamwork functions and interactions, and this requires the development of a comprehensive model of teamwork in ATC.
More recently, a growing body of research in teamwork has emerged in the domain of aviation, military, and acute medicine. The challenges for developing a teamwork model include: (1) how to arrive at precise definitions that are not open to interpretation, (2) how to assist analysts in achieving an acceptable level of reliability in their ratings, and (3) how to tailor team functions to the characteristics of the situation and the culture of practitioners. In our effort to develop a model of teamwork performance for ATM operations, a literature review was undertaken which considered three earlier frameworks of nontechnical skills (NTS):
NOTECHS: nontechnical skills (van Avermaete and Kruijsen 1998; Flin et al. 2003).
ANTS: anesthetists’ nontechnical skills (Fletcher et al. 2004;
Patey et al. 2005).
The Big Five: Theoretical model applied by Salas et al. (2005).
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It should be noted that the dyadic teams of ATCOs differ from flight crews where the captain is vested with the legal responsibilities of the flight leader. The T2EAM model uses the following teamwork functions: team orientation, coordination, information exchange (communication), error management, and change management. In order to help raters recognize the types of behavior associated with a particular scenario, several behavioral markers were specified in the form of “exemplar behaviors” as shown in Table 4.3.
Table 4.3 Teamwork Functions and Strategies (T2EAM) COGNITIVE
FUNCTIONS
COGNITIVE
STRATEGIES BEHAVIORAL MARKERS
Team orientation and shared understanding
Shared situation understanding
• Achieving a shared understanding of the situation with the least effort (e.g., working toward the same planning direction from the onset of the situation)
Communication of intent
• Providing concise explanations and articulating the intent behind the instructions and/or clearances (e.g., stating the reason behind the selection of a particular diversion route and/or altitude) Team coordination Managing
dependencies and adopting an assertive stance
• Advocating and defending one’s own position as required
• Assertiveness in coordination with adjacent sectors (e.g., avoiding the “nice guy” policy and saying “no” to certain requests from other sectors)
• Adapting to capabilities of other team members (e.g., defensive vectoring from EC when CC is falling behind the traffic)
Avoiding information garbling and interruptions
• Using structured formats for recording information
• Keeping the size and duration of communication to the required minimum
• Selecting low tempo periods to communicate non urgent information (e.g., entry level conflicts in the next 15 minutes, nonurgent altitude, and/or route coordination)
Information exchange (communication)
Unsolicited dissemination of information
• Providing information regarding restrictions or nonstandard patterns (e.g., military activity, route/
altitude restrictions, and deviations from letter of agreement (LoA)
• Reading the “signs” behind suspicious information that may imply the onset of an emergency (e.g., coordinating with the nearest airport the possibility of a diversion after receiving suspicious cues)
Updates on situation status
• Providing timely and adequate updates on situation status and actions taken
(Continued)
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4.7.1 Team Orientation and Shared Understanding
Team orientation and shared understanding is very important for the development of a common stance toward the direction of problem handling. It involves bottom–up communication and integration of information from divergent sources as well as top–down communi-cation and clarificommuni-cation of intent (that is, concept of operation). This function involves sharing information about the situation and the intention to act:
• Shared situation understanding refers to the extent that team members reach a congruent assessment of the situation in a limited time period (Rentsch and Woehr 2004). Any mis-interpretations of the situation have the potential to hinder subsequent orientation and planning. Shared understanding
COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS
COGNITIVE
STRATEGIES BEHAVIORAL MARKERS
Error management Error detection • Using CNS resources to enable augmented situation monitoring (e.g., removing altitude filters, zooming out radar screen)
• Altering between augmented and normal monitoring in regular intervals.
Feedback for error correction
• Providing information regarding threats (e.g., military traffic, impending conflicts) that were unnoticed by other team members
• Correcting minor coordination communication and human–machine interaction (HMI) errors made by other people
Task distribution (Change
management)
Problem detection in task distribution
• Detecting high tempo periods of other team members
• Detecting subtle cues about teammates falling behind the traffic (e.g., when unable to locate the aircraft track that is calling or when missing initial radio telephony (RTF) calls)
Changes in task allocation
• Using nonstandard coordination to relieve the workload of others (e.g., sterilizing the sector to reduce workload)
• Changing the sequence of tasks and the allocation of roles (e.g., requesting the watch supervisor to notify other units)
• Performing tasks that the accountable controller is unable to perform due to system malfunctions (e.g., the CC may input a level change when the mouse device failed in the EC position) Table 4.3 (Continued)
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is based on shared models that enable team members to make accurate predictions, generate similar explanations, and engage in less overt communication in handling the situation (Entin and Entin 2000).
• Communication of intent refers to the extent that control-lers communicate regularly and clarify their intentions. In a request for information, there is always the possibility for misinterpretation. Team members trying to follow a request have to figure out what the other team member really wants and to handle several issues that are not explicitly specified or explained (Klein 1998). Clarification of intent increases adap-tation of people at the sharp end without any requirements for further authorization from the team leader.
4.7.2 Team Coordination
The nature of team tasks and the allocation of responsibilities can gen-erate many dependencies that require orchestrated action to converge them all toward the master plan (Entin and Serfaty 1999). Keeping the size and duration of communication to the practical minimum is an essential feature of effective teamwork because the structure and length of communication can affect the effectiveness of information exchanges.
The team coordination functions can be achieved using several strategies, such as managing dependencies, adopting an assertive stance, and avoiding interruptions:
• Managing dependencies and adopting an assertive stance are very important for team coordination. ATC teams usually com-prise two controllers who may function as leaders or follow-ers, depending on the situation requirements. Consequently, each controller could advocate and defend his position in han-dling the traffic situation. For this reason, assertiveness is an important aspect of coordination especially with adjacent sec-tors. The role of assertiveness has long been recognized in the aviation sector and several training courses in crew resource management (CRM) have been used in commercial airlines (Helmreich et al. 1999).
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• Avoiding information garbling and interruptions refers to the extent that controllers manage to exchange information with-out disruptions or garbling. The structure and length of com-munications can affect the quality of information exchanges.
Keeping the size and duration of communication to the prac-tical minimum is an important feature of effective teams.
Garbling information with unnecessary and/or redundant elements may serve only to prolong communications and dis-rupt teamwork. Mature teams communicate with the least possible overt patterns, using concise operational language at appropriate periods. In mature teams, the CC is able to judge accurately the interruptibility status of the EC and pass him/
her with nonurgent information in relatively low workload periods. In addition, this is done with the most concise man-ner, avoiding ambiguities and follow up explanations. Expert shuttle mission controllers (Patterson et al. 1999) were found to listen in on relevant information exchanges with adjacent sectors and judge the interruptibility of others before com-municating with them. By listening to voice loops, mission controllers were able to time their coordination, either by speeding up or postponing their communications.
4.7.3 Information Exchange—Communication
This cognitive function refers to proactive information disseminated between controllers as well as regular updates on situation status.
Communication is depended mainly on information exchanges among team members and requires sufficient time and cognitive resources.
Critical situations increase the need for dissemination of informa-tion about current activities (i.e., what is needed now) and anticipated activities (i.e., what will be needed next). Kanki and Palmer (1993) found that communication patterns may change as a result of changes in the criticality or the workload of the situation.
The most essential strategies of information exchange are provid-ing unsolicited information and regular updates on the situation:
• Providing unsolicited information refers to the extent that controllers provide information in advance, without any
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prior requests. The handling of a critical situation increases the need for information dissemination between team members. Unsolicited information refers to proactive infor-mation that facilitates near-future activities and planning.
Anticipating information for future activities is an impor-tant proactive strategy. The ability to disseminate proactive information before it is requested—and preferable during low tempo periods—reduces the number of communica-tion acts and facilitates planning by broadening the time horizon. Stout et al. (1999) found that providing unsolicited and proactive information increased team performance in a complex military flight task. More importantly, there seems to be a skill associated with shifting between explicit and implicit communication modes which was found to improve team performance in naval surveillance teams (Entin and Serfaty 1999).
• Providing updates on situation status and its management is very important in managing abnormal situations. The handling of critical situations can rarely be accomplished in a single stroke of planning and acting, irrespective of the level of maturity of the teams involved. In dynamic work, the requirements of the situation may change as critical information becomes avail-able, missing, or obsolete. In order to achieve a continuum of coordinated action, teams must meet the emerging need for regular updates on situation status and management.
Effective teams are able to articulate a concise update on the situation status in certain critical periods and thus establish a continuum of coordinated action.
4.7.4 Error Management
Error management refers to certain self-monitoring functions that enable controllers to detect errors and provide feedback for error correction. Analyses of incidents and simulated emergencies have shown that teamwork can be a major source of detection in errone-ous diagnosis and planning (Sarter and Alexander 2000). During the handling of critical situations, some errors may be committed that reduce significantly the safety margins. Errors can be detected and
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corrected, not only at the individual level but also more effectively through team communications. The error detection process is based on self-monitoring strategies that ran parallel to the normal tasks and this imposes on cognitive resources. In mature teams, people employ efficient monitoring strategies that have been crafted during many years of experience in operating the system. Self-monitoring strate-gies enable people not only to catch errors but also to correct them and/or provide feedback for error correction without hindering the work of other controllers.
The error management function can be served with several error detection and correction strategies:
• Error detection is commonly done by other members who manage to detect errors of others before it is too late. Error detection is facilitated by monitoring information on displays, by listening to voice communication patterns and so on.
Normally, the coordinating controller is in a better position to catch errors committed by the executive controller (e.g., inserting a wrong flight level in the computer) who experi-ences a higher workload in handling traffic.
• Feedback for error correction refers to important information that may assist controllers in recovering errors. Correction can be made either by the controller who detected the error or by the same controller who committed the error in the first place.
A thorough discussion of error detection and correction strategies is made in Chapter 6.
4.7.5 Task Distribution or Change Management
Workload is not a constant parameter but follows the changing pat-tern of work as it escalates; hence the sequence and priorities of tasks can be altered as new tasks are added in the task backlog. Controllers have to manage not only the normal traffic in their sector but also their interactions with other colleagues. Therefore, a critical need arises for developing strategies that keep the workload below the sat-uration point of controllers. Again, the CC is in a better position to off-load the EC who demonstrates a steeper escalation of workload.
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The ability to balance workload problems at the early stages of a criti-cal situation can lead to timely and effective interventions.
Controllers should also demonstrate the ability to sense and antici-pate critical fluctuations in the workload of other team members (e.g., falling behind the curve). Several pilots have argued that they can read the body language of their colleagues and understand that oth-ers are not in the loop or are not aware that something is coming up (Thomas and Petrilli 2004). Noticing cues about a degrading mental state of others can make controllers more alert to potential errors that may creep in, hence they can increase their scanning patterns of oth-ers. A field study of en-route controllers found that “controllers may not ask for help too early because they may be chastised for doing so, but waiting too long makes it harder for them to get help” (D’ Arcy and Della Rocco 2001, 50). Reading signs of performance degrada-tion and knowing when to ask for help are critical strategies in detect-ing workload problems.
The task distribution or change management function can be achieved by strategies in problem detection and task allocation:
• Problem detection in task distribution refers to the extent that controllers have detected any taskload problems of other members. Remaining sensitive to workload changes of others is a central feature of mature teams. Expert controllers dem-onstrate an ability to sense and anticipate critical fluctuations in the workload of others. The ability to detect workload distribution problems, at the early stages of a critical situ-ation, can lead to timely interventions. Detection of work-load problems is supported by accrued operational experience and cohesive mental models. In ATM, controllers refer to a workload problem known as “falling behind the traffic” illus-trated by several events (e.g., missing the initial calls of a flight crew or being late in issuing instructions to a crew that called earlier).
• Changes in task allocation refer to the extent that controllers adjust the delegation of tasks to enable a better balancing of taskload. When workload problems are observed, controllers may employ task balancing strategies in order to counteract any safety repercussions. Examples may include the utilization
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of nonstandard coordination patterns from the CC to off-load the sector or the writing of notes about essential information for an emergency.
4.7.6 The Teamwork Model
In an effort to understand how the five teamwork functions interact, a flow chart has been presented in Figure 4.7. Team orientation and shared understanding can guide coordination in order to plan traffic and resolve conflicts displayed on the radar screens. In turn, feedback of team actions enables controllers to update their models and judge their degree of success, identify errors and change their allocation of tasks to improve team performance. The two teamwork loops are regulated by a shared mental model of the situation and a common team orientation.
4.8 Applications of T2EAM in Training, Debriefing, and Investigation