TRADOC Pam 525-3-7-01 - TRADOC - U.S. Army

TRADOC Pam 525-3-7-01all levels of the professional military education system. Selecting and pairing of leader teams forcompatibility not in terms of similar attitudes or complimentary leadership styles, but in terms oftheir ability to work together and respect each other’s views, requires more emphasis.Subordinates quickly sense friction between leaders, undermining vertical cohesion, and theSoldier views of the organization and the Army. 185The importance of cohesion in building ad hoc teams in highly fluid or ambiguous situationsis less understood. In preparation for and performance in the anticipated operating environment,the Army will regularly team with joint, coalition, interagency, nongovernmental organizations,and other non-military actors in order to achieve success. In many cases Army units will be partof a system or network of interdependent teams. Army forces can expect to operate in the highlydispersed, networked environment characterized by virtual teaming described within thenetwork-centric warfare or network enabled operations concepts.Ad hoc teams often have specific non-overlapping roles for each team member. Theyfrequently have specific, highly detailed roles and responsibilities. Without effective training orextended periods of experience working together, ad hoc teams often do not perform as well asrequired. Leadership becomes the critical enabler of team effectiveness.Task CohesionThe critical element unifying ad hoc teams is a shared understanding of their immediateenvironment, major goals, and strategic framework of how and why they are performing theirassigned tasks. This form of cohesion is task cohesion and refers to the shared commitmentamong members to achieving a goal that requires the collective efforts of the group. A groupwith high task cohesion is composed of members who share a common goal and who aremotivated to coordinate their efforts as a team to achieve that goal. This shared understandingallows them to adapt more rapidly to changing circumstances with less degradation ineffectiveness. Like the other forms of cohesion, training, and effective leadership are the criticalelements in developing this shared understanding. As with members of a single team, there arecritical processes that enable systems of teams to work effectively together to accomplish a largermission. Two of the critical processes are the two-way transfer of information (in and out) to theteam and the hand-off of performance responsibilities to other teams or team memberreplacements.It is also becoming more common for teams to disperse across several locations and linkelectronically via various means. This is particularly true of teams in military contexts. It will bemore common in future OEs, as indicated by the emphasis on network-centric warfare or networkenabled operations concepts. These teams face additional challenges in executing fundamentalteam processes such as communication and coordination. Much of the non-verbal component ofcommunication is lost—gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice—when communicatingvia distributed systems. However, distributed or dispersed teams do have advantages includingthe ability to interact directly and rapidly with relevant outside personnel and agencies.Leadership of distributed teams is a significant issue, particularly with respect to identifying bestmethods for conveying leader presence across electronic media.190