Backing up behaviors in teams: The role of personality and legitimacy of need.

Abstract

Public reporting burden for the collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington VA 22202-4302. Respondents should be aware that notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person shall be subject to a penalty for failing to comply with a collection of information if it does not display a currently valid OMB control number. Backing Up Others 2 REPORT DATE AbstractBacking up behavior has generally been defined as helping other team members perform their roles and is thought to be critical for effective performance in teams. To date, there has been no empirical investigation of backing up in teams, despite its importance. We develop and test an input process output model of backing up behavior in teams, proposing that backing up behavior in teams can be predicted at the team level by two types of team inputs: (1) team composition characteristics in terms of the personality of the members of the team and (2) team task characteristics in terms of the extent to which the nature of the task is one that legitimately calls for backing up behavior by members of the team. Results from a study of 71 teams performing a computerized tactical decision-making task suggest that the legitimacy of the need for back up has an important main effect on the extent to which team members provide assistance to and receive assistance from each other. In addition, legitimacy also has important interactive effects with both the personality of the back up recipient and the personality of the back up providers on backing up behaviors in teams. Backing Up Others 3 Backing Up Behaviors in Teams:The Role of Personality and Legitimacy of Need While researchers and organizational practitioners have long been aware of the criticality of teamwork to effective team performance, to date, many of the specific aspects of teamwork have received little or no empirical attention. McIntyre and Salas (1995) identified four essential aspects of teamwork (performance monitoring, closed-loop communication, feedback, and backing up behaviors). They further suggested that backing up behaviors, the degree to which team members effectively help each other perform their roles, is perhaps the most critical of these four components of teamwork. Specifically, they noted that, "this skill is at the heart of teamwork, for it makes the team truly operate as more than the sum of its parts" (p. 26).The purpose of the present study was to extend the empirical literature on teamwork by focusing on backing up behaviors in work teams. The model tested here is based on an input process out...

Errors in the Heat of Battle: Taking a Closer Look at Shared Cognition Breakdowns Through Teamwork

“…Several team competencies are critical to accomplishing this, and without them teams will derail: knowledge of the task, knowledge of teammates, mutual performance monitoring, backup behavior, and adaptability (Salas, Sims, & Burke, 2005;Xiao & Moss, 2001). Although other team coordination skills are arguably important to teamwork, we feel that these are the most critical to fostering shared cognition (e.g., McIntyre & Salas, 1995;Porter et al, 2003;Rentsch & Hall, 1994).…”

“…Some have argued that backup behavior makes a team a team (McIntyre & Salas, 1995), and empirical research has shown that it does improve performance (Porter et al, 2003) and minimize error (Johnston & Briggs, 1968). Especially critical under periods of high workload, members of successful teams monitor each other's performance and identify deficiencies (e.g., workload has surpassed one's capabilities) so as to provide backup behavior in the form of (a) feedback or coaching or (b) assistance to ensure team goals are achieved (Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2000;McIntyre & Salas, 1995;Porter et al, 2003). Assistance may involve offloading a subset of the task, completely relieving a team member of a task and assigning a portion or portions of it to others, or ensuring that an error is corrected (Marks et al, 2000).…”

“…In addition to knowledge of team members' roles and responsibilities and the ability to monitor performance, team members need to know who should step up, when to step up, or how (Salas et al, 2005). Some have argued that backup behavior makes a team a team (McIntyre & Salas, 1995), and empirical research has shown that it does improve performance (Porter et al, 2003) and minimize error (Johnston & Briggs, 1968). Especially critical under periods of high workload, members of successful teams monitor each other's performance and identify deficiencies (e.g., workload has surpassed one's capabilities) so as to provide backup behavior in the form of (a) feedback or coaching or (b) assistance to ensure team goals are achieved (Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2000;McIntyre & Salas, 1995;Porter et al, 2003).…”

Creating a Team Tutor Using GIFT

“…For example, if Alice said to Bob, BEnemy spotted!^then that action would qualify both as successful enemy identification (a task skill) and communication (a team skill). If Alice took this action even though it was Bob's normal role to spot enemies, but Alice noticed Bob was overtasked, then Alice's action would also qualify as backup behavior, the team skill that allows team members to take over the responsibilities of other team members when necessary (Porter et al 2003;Salas et al 2014). While this one-to-many mapping of learner behaviors to ITS model elements is not unique to team tutors, we suggest that it is dramatically more frequent with team tutors, and adds to the complexity of their design.…”

Adapting to Reductions in Team Size: An Examination of Three Structural Alternatives

“…Overall, conscientiousness, extraversion, and emotional stability have been shown to relate to viability, helping behavior, and decision-making accuracy in teams (e.g., Barrick et al, 1998;English, Griffith & Steelman, 2004;LePine et al, 1997;Porter et al, 2003). Given that downsizing puts into question a team's viability, increases the workload for team members, and forces the team to make decisions about how best to coordinate and perform tasks given a reduced number of members, these three factors of the five-factor model are considered especially important.…”