Why High Functioning Teams Fail

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In this week's podcast episode, we are joined by one of our Advisory Board members, Dr. Joan Johnston, to talk about why high functioning teams fail. With over 30 years of experience working with the Department of Defense, Dr. Johnston is an expert on decision making and simulation training. Throughout her career she has made a significant impact on advancing the science of Learning, Team Training, Decision Making under Stress, Performance Measurement, and Organizational Development.

For this episode, we use the tragic incident involving the USS Vincennes where the guided missile destroyer accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger plane after mistaking it for an F-14 fighter jet, as a focal point of the discussion. Dr. Johnston walked us through the critical errors that were made during that incident, the role that stress plays on communication and decision-making, and she shares her insights on what it takes to build more resilient, high-performing teams.

This episode is a powerful reminder of the human factors that influence decision-making and how easily things can go wrong—even with the best of teams. But it also provides a hopeful message: with effective training, strong leadership, and a commitment to learning from past mistakes, we can build teams that are more resilient, adaptable, and prepared to handle the challenges they face.

Thank you so much for tuning in, we hope you enjoy the episode and please check out our Patreon channel where we have a lot more content, as well as subscriber only episodes of the show. If you enjoy the podcast, I will kindly ask that you leave us a review and more importantly, please share it with a friend. Thank you for your time and don’t forget that Training Changes Behavior!

Episode Links
https://www.ahrq.gov/teamstepps-program/index.html

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01480/full

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Human
Behavior Podcast.
In this week's episode, we arejoined by one of our advisory
board members, dr Joan Johnston,to talk about why
high-functioning teams fail.
With over 30 years ofexperience working with the
Department of Defense, drJohnston is an expert on
decision-making and simulationtraining.
Throughout her career, she hasmade a significant impact on
advancing the science oflearning, team training,

(00:21):
decision-making under stress,performance measurement and
organizational development.
This episode we use the tragicincident involving the USS
Vincennes, where the guidedmissile destroyer accidentally
shot down an Iranian passengerplane after mistaking it for an
F-14 fighter jet, as a focalpoint for the discussion.
Dr Johnson walked us throughthe critical errors that were
made during that incident, therole that stress plays on

(00:42):
communication anddecision-making, and she shares
her insights on what it takes tobuild more resilient,
high-performing teams.
This episode is a powerfulreminder of the human factors
that influence decision-makingand how easily things can go
wrong, even with the best ofteams, but it also provides a
hopeful message.
With effective training, strongleadership and a commitment to
learning from past mistakes, wecan build teams that are more

(01:02):
resilient, adaptable andprepared to handle the
challenges they face.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
We hope you enjoy the episodeand please check out our Patreon
channel, where we have a lotmore content as well as
subscriber-only episodes of theshow.
If you enjoyed the podcast,I'll kindly ask that you leave
us a review and, moreimportantly, please share it
with a friend.
Thank you for your time anddon't forget that training
changes behavior.
All right, hello everyone, andthanks for tuning in this week

(01:26):
and welcome to our guest, drJoan Johnson.
Joan, thank you so much forcoming on the show today.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
You're welcome.
I'm really excited about this.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, we're excited to have you on here, greg and I
both are so today obviously thetopic is sort of why
high-functioning teams fail,what occurs in different
situations.
So you can have really highlytrained folks who have a lot of
experience and then you put themtogether and they're in a real
situation and things can gocatastrophically wrong.

(01:59):
So that's kind of the big bigpicture of what we're going to
get into and I'm going to giveeveryone sort of a background on
the actual incident we're goingto talk about.
But I'd like you, joan, first,can you kind of give all of our
listeners and Greg's fans, as Icall them, give us a little

(02:20):
background about yourself andyour work background about
yourself and your work.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Sure, I received my master's and a PhD from the
University of South Florida inTampa and after that I started
my career immediately with theUS Navy at the Naval Air Warfare
Center Training SystemsDivision, as it's called today,
naval Air Warfare CenterTraining Systems Division, as
it's called today.
I was always interested instress research and I based my

(02:52):
dissertation on the study ofstress.
And when I got to the Navy, itturns out that there was this
incident that occurred in theArabian Gulf what we'll describe
a little bit later, we call theVincennes incident.

(03:14):
That was really the reason forhiring me, and the problem that
we studied was to address stressand training.
But you know, up until thatpoint I hadn't, you know, I
hadn't really thought aboutworking for the military or
having a military researchpsychologist job.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
But many of my friends had come to work at
NAVAIR at NOCTSD, we call it nowand had really exciting
opportunities for doing appliedresearch, which is really what

(03:57):
the focus of my education wasabout is being a scientist,
practitioner, doing science butalso doing things that I talk
about with a lot of folks is is,you know, a lot of people don't
realize just how much researchthe department of defense does
and how much money it spends onit.
And and it's like you said,there, there's sort of when you
get into the science of all thisstuff, right, there's sort of

(04:18):
the academic side and there'sthe application side, and and
and both are needed in a sense,right, but.
But what happens in a lab andin theory and on a university is
one thing, and what you'retalking about here is like okay,
this is an actual applicationof this stuff.
How does this play out in thereal world, in real situations?
Because that's the mostimportant part, right.

(04:38):
So we'll kind of jump in andI'll give the background on the
incident that you're talkingabout, because it really led to.
It seems like you were kind ofcoming in at the right time,
right place with your backgroundand talking about stress to go
into these big programs thatsort of came out of this.
But for those who don't know,back in 1988, an Iran Air Flight

(05:00):
655 was mistakenly shot down bya United States Navy guided
missile cruiser, the USSVincennes.
So this is late 80s, it'smiddle of, you know, iran-iraq
war was going on.
There's a lot of disrupted airtravel in the region, so there's
increased military presence bya bunch of nations, including us
, so not unlike whatconsistently happens in that

(05:21):
area.
So the Vincennes was thisguided missile cruiser, right?
And so it's part of the Navysurface fleet operating that
area.
And so what happened on thisday was this Iran Air Flight 655
.
It was scheduled commercialflight from Tehran to Dubai via
this place called Bandar Abbas,which is, like, right in the

(05:43):
Strait of Hormuz.
It's sort of like this isgeographically significant area,
so it links the Strait ofHormuz, you know, links the
Persian Gulf with the ArabianSea and it kind of comes out at
this point of Dubai and it'sright by Iran, and so it's this,
this area where it's like,prone to potential situations,
right.

(06:03):
So basically, this flight is is, you know it's approaching the
airspace by the USS Vincennes.
They detected the aircraft onits radar.
There's a lot of this,heightened tensions in the area,
and so the crew mistook thecivilian airliner for, you know,
an attacking Iranian F-14.
So they think it was, you know,they believed it was engaged in

(06:24):
some sort of hostile activity.
So they think they're underthreat.
They issue their warnings, theaircraft under what they're
supposed to do, and then theircommunication attempts
unsuccessful.
So they concluded all right,this is a hostile target, let's
shoot it down.
They launched two surface toair missiles and they struck the
airliner.
So all 290 people, innocentpeople, on board, died,

(06:44):
passengers and crew.
So this is obviously a hugeinternational incident, a huge
embarrassment, you know, hidingtensions at the time in the area
, all that stuff.
But we're not getting into thesort of geopolitical aspect of
this and what that led to.
What I want to get into is whatthis led to within the Navy and

(07:06):
the DOD as a whole, becausethat's kind of what you're
talking about.
There's a whole bunch ofprograms stood up from there
that kind of set out to sort ofdefine and determine and look at
it just like any incident wherethere's going to be a major
investigation.
It's not just about whathappened, it's okay, let's
identify everything and let'sfigure out how to mitigate this
from ever happening again.

(07:26):
And so I'll pass to you, joan,and kind of give the background
and understanding of what wasthe research that sort of
evolved from that incident.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Right, sure.
So I was working with somereally outstanding scientists at
the time who wanted to reallydo right by Office of Naval
Research to fund a six-yearprogram of research that would

(08:10):
focus on improving the humanfactors design of combat systems
for these kinds of ships, aswell as improve on the training
and human performance of thesailors that were involved in
the shoot down.
In the Combat InformationCenter in these combat ships

(08:34):
there are at least 40 personnelwho are working extremely hard
to manage the day-to-dayunderstanding, the common
operational picture of what'shappening outside in their,
around their battle group.
And you know, even today youcan see that these, these

(08:54):
battleships are extremelyimportant to defending freedom
around the world.
And so it took a lot of workbetween the human factor
scientists and the trainingresearch scientists on our end,
uh, in a collaborative effort toidentify what the research

(09:16):
questions were, because at thetime, in 1990, I mean today, you
know we built on all of thatresearch and have some really
great programs today, but backthen we really didn't have much
to go on.
I mean, there was somesignificant work that the Army
had done on decision-makingunder stress and teamwork, but
in terms of studying it in asituation where you have all

(09:39):
these technology interfaces thatthe warfighters were using in
the ship.
There really weren't any studiesof that and so we embarked as a
very large program of researchthat ONR oversaw, and our
specific piece of it was fortraining and decision-making and

(10:00):
developing performance understress, specifically focused on
team performance.
So we had Dr Jane Cannon Bowersand Dr Eduardo Salas who were
the architects of this researchprogram, and so we had many
academic scientists and smallbusinesses who had been working

(10:24):
on these problems for a numberof years and it coalesced into a
program and research designwhere we worked eventually to
have combat teams that were intraining facilities, like at
Surface Warfare Officers Schoolin Rhode Island, to help us run

(10:47):
scenarios similar to the kindsthat were encountered in the
Vincennes incident with shootingdown a potential airliner or
possibly a threat and studytheir performance, develop
training strategies to improveperformance, to prove leadership
and really focus ondecision-making under stress for

(11:10):
teams and improving teamperformance.
So there was a very huge effortgoing on in the 1990s to
establish principles andguidelines for understanding
human behavior at the time andmaking changes to that.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, and this is like you said.
I mean, there was some researchthere, but nothing
comprehensive.
This became a multi-year Ithink you said six-year study
and trying to figure all thisstuff out and I want you to kind
of jump into some of the stuffthat was found with this
incident, what you guys found.
But before that, can youquickly sort of define what you,

(11:50):
what you mean when you saystress, like you're studying
stress, but what does that meanin the context of what we're
talking about?
Because that's a term you know,I feel stressed or this is
stressful, then there's decisionmaking under stress.
So like, let's, let's get aclear operational definition, if
you can, of what you mean bystress.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah so.
So stress is is a combinationof information, overload, time
pressure, the demand to you knowperform at a very high level.
In this particular instance,you know we focused on the time

(12:29):
pressure that the warfightersare under the sailors because
when you detect a threat outsideyou know an air threat, a
surface threat, an air threatit's only a matter of like, less
than a minute to respond if itbecomes a threat to your battle
group.
And so we had to really focuson that kind of a problem and we

(12:54):
talked to subject matterexperts about their experiences
with it, how they reacted to it.
The reaction to stress istypically, you know, a very you
know become sort of funnel yourattention, you become overly
focused on what you're doing.
You kind of lose track of timeand what other people are doing.

(13:15):
And in particular, when you'reworking as a team, it's one of
the really a number of reallyimportant team activities is
monitoring your team is reallydoing, so you can anticipate

(13:48):
what they need, provide backup,correct errors and do those
really good teamwork behaviors.
If you're not able to do thatbecause you're under stress,
you're distracted and you're notfocused.
That breaks down.
Your good teamwork breaks down.
Good decision-making breaksdown.
It kind of freezes and peopledon't know what to do.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
So there's yeah, that's what it is yeah, no, and
so you're talking about a lot ofinfluences and contributing
factors.
So, like there's, I mean you'rebringing in everything.
Obviously, one time is alwayshuge.
When you say 60 seconds, Idon't care what it is If you
only have 60 seconds to make adecision, it's just not a lot of
time, especially when thestakes are this high.

(14:32):
But then you know you've gotlike what your level of
experience is, you know whatyour roles and responsibilities
are.
You've got the communicationissues just generally, within
that humans, all humans have.
Then you've got all these thingsand what I see happen because
you guys obviously you didn'tcome into this saying, hey,
we're the scientists, this ishow things work you went to the

(14:52):
SMEs, the subject matter experts, the people with the actual
knowledge who've been doing this, and try to unpack it.
And I see that done well,sometimes, sometimes done poorly
where it's, and sort of try tounpack it.
And I see that done well,sometimes, sometimes done poorly
, right, where it's like we gotto unpack this expertise.
Because what happens is becausepart of what you're talking
about is like my cognitive loadwhen I'm in that situation,

(15:15):
right, how much I can process ata time, how much I can attend
to.
It's actually a lot more finiteand smaller than most humans
think it is.
But because, like you know,driving is a perfect example.
We've all been driving ourwhole life, but you know.
So we think that we'reoperating at a level that of we
know what's going on, because wekind of do, the more experience
we have right, the more time Ihave to understand things.

(15:36):
But if I'm doing that andtalking on the phone or sending
a text message or something likethat, it's like all that goes
out the window, even in acompletely sunny day.
I'm driving the speed limit, I'mactually now outrunning my
headlights, I'm outrunning whatthe human brain technically can
process in its environment, andI don't even recognize that part

(15:57):
.
So one of the things I noticeis like we're already starting
at a point because people golike, yeah, well, this is my job
, I was trained to do it.
I was like, yeah, well, this ismy job, I was trained to do it.
I was like, yes, you weretrained to do this and apply
this skill set and whatever youhave to do.
However, you are alreadyoperating, even under normal
circumstances, kind of past thepoint of like human cognition a

(16:18):
little bit.
Does that make sense or is?

Speaker 2 (16:21):
that kind of accurate ?
Yeah, they, yeah.
One of the things that I, youknow, I had firsthand experience
with is when the CIC operatorsare sitting at their consoles
and doing their work.
They, you know, they haveheadsets and they communicate
through those and they also usechat and other forms of
communication at this point, Ithink.
But there's channels ofcommunications that are

(16:45):
different in your right ear thanin your left ear, but you have
to monitor them becauseimportant people are talking to
you and you have to communicateto other people through your
different channels.
This channel switching and thisrequirement to listen to two
things at the same timeEverybody knows that you cannot
really pay attention to twovoices at the same time and what

(17:10):
they're saying different to you.
So you either hear one thing oryou're going to hear the other.
But these guys and women havedeveloped a skill to be able to
manage that.
But with more time, pressureand stress it becomes even more
difficult to monitor thosechannels.
So just that one thing alone.

(17:32):
I mean I put those headsets onand I would listen to the voice
traffic on board the real shipsand I could only take it for
maybe five or 10 minutes.
It's just overwhelming.
So you have to kind of build upthis skill over time.
So that can be.
That can be a real challengeand quite stressful.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
So so, with this overarching kind of theme of
today of of why, why do highfunctioning teams fail?
Like what, what are the sort ofbehavioral problems that are
typical, like coming out of thisresearch and everything you've
done?
Like what, what are the?
What are the typical thingsthat you saw in this specific
incident?
And then, over time, just kindof like what, what always seems
to be top of the the you know,you know, going into something,

(18:15):
it's going to be a few of thesethings.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah Well, we kind of divided our study into looking
at decision-making and teamworkand then stress management.
Those are like the three legsof the stool that we eventually
focused.
Those are the categories ofcompetency areas, and when I

(18:40):
talk about decision-making, thatinvolves the team.
You've got the.
The leaders can makingdecisions and that a really good
teams will have a tempo to them.
They understand the task, howthey have to perform it, the
information that they require todo their job and the

(19:01):
information they have to pass.
They call it thedetect-to-engage sequence in
combat.
And so there's this process ofidentifying a threat,
prioritizing your threat,determining what you're going to
do, making a plan and thenexecuting a plan.
Poor performance winds up beinga lot of just kind of chatter.

(19:28):
You know people really aren'ttalking about the problem,
they're just sort ofchit-chatting or not really
focused on it and they're notpassing the right information or
not even detecting thatsomething is wrong.
And that's this part that youguys really focus on, which is
this advanced situational, whereyou have to have an awareness

(19:48):
among your team members or wecall it, you know, team essay,
situational awareness, where youare observing your environment,
you're looking for problems,you're identifying anomalies,
you're passing that informationon to the proper chain of
command so they can build abetter operational picture.
If you don't do that, I meanthe very first thing is people

(20:10):
actually they might over-chatter, but sometimes nothing is being
said and sometimes I'll belistening to maybe a more novice
team and I'll think to myselfoh, where's where they're not
talking to each other?
If you don't talk to each other, you know nothing's going to
happen.
So that's a really big problem.
Is passing if you don't passinformation at the right time to

(20:35):
the proper people, it's, it'sthe information is going to get
lost and and you only have your.
You know your time windowcontinues to shrink.
So that's a really big one.
Is the communications around thedecision-making process.
There's also a planning processwhere you know you prioritize

(20:58):
what you're going to do and thenyou're planning what you're
going to do.
If there's this advanced likeplanning process that teams can
that really good teams can doand it means anticipating what
might happen and making theright assumptions about what

(21:19):
could happen.
And there are a lot ofalternative explanations for why
there might be a threat orwhether it's even a threat.
And this is where it came inwith the Vincennes.
There were people who just hadthis bias toward saying it was,
you know that was a threat,because there are certain pieces
of information they werelooking at but they weren't
putting the picture together.

(21:39):
The leadership on the ship, onthe Vincennes, was wasn't really
in a position to really take itin and build the operational
picture.
Ships outside that were in thebattle group were communicating
with the Vincennes and they weresaying, hey, that's just an

(22:02):
airliner, that's not a threat,that's not a fighter plane that
you think it is, so shut thisdown.
And so this process of makingthe wrong assumptions that can
really create a problem fordecision making, assuming that
this is this is the way, this isit.

(22:23):
People see the picture acertain way and they're not
taking in the information fromother team.
You know knowledgeable teammembers, expert team members and
questioning whether you knowthey should really be doing
something that could belife-threatening to you know,
just civilians.
So that's another piece of theproblem.
And finally, just making adecision and actually taking

(22:48):
action and not giving yourselfenough time to be able to make
the right decision, priorities,giving orders and making
recommendations.
Those kinds of things don'thappen in a poor team.

(23:12):
They simply sort of let thingspass by and they don't think
it's important.
So those are some of the ones.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
And you're bringing up.
These are things that happen inall kinds of different
situations, like that one'spowerful, right, so so, meaning
the someone had the right answerin this, this bigger
overarching team of no, hey,this is a passenger jet, like no
right, that's kind of nodifferent than, like you know,
two or three police officers ona kind of intense scene where

(23:40):
something's happening, whensomeone's going like, oh, this
guy is fine, he doesn't have aweapon or something.
But then from my perspective,I'm already, I'm already down
and in thinking this right, andso that can play out in a number
of different ways and you know,the there's certain there's,
because you're talking aboutthis sort of well, the sorry,

(24:00):
the military uses like ooda loopa lot, right for the john
boyd's ooda loop, observe orientto side act, and it's kind of
like this oversimplified it.
It's just kind of become like atagline, but there's that.
Well, first of all, john Boydis a genius and he was like he
was thinking on levels that Idon't think most humans can
think at.
But it's sort of become thislike oversimplified thing

(24:20):
because you're talking aboutthere's individual performance
restrictions that I have,there's cognitive barriers
there's whether that's theinformation or my level of
training or experience, but thenthat sort of can become
exponentially worse as there's ateam involved, because now
there's everyone suffering fromthose same things individually
and now, if we're notcommunicating across from each

(24:42):
other, there's a big one.
Like you said, like you've seensome novice teams where there's
like no comms, and then there'ssome higher function teams where
they've got really good commsand then, like I've seen, even
some of the tier one, likemilitary units doing specific
things where they almost nevertalk because they've trained and

(25:02):
rehearsed so much together thatthey can look at the other
teammate and know what he'sthinking right.
So so that's like an elitelevel, but it's only sort of
you're you're.
They're still, um, limited bywhat they can and cannot do.
They're still limited byinformation processing.
They're still limited by theirchannel capacity and what they
do they just for this specificthing.

(25:22):
They've done it so many timesand been worked together and and
that they can.
They don't.
They don't need as much of thatcommunication.
They don't.
There's less noise in theenvironment because there's only
a few things that they need tofocus on.
So it's not really like they're,they're superpower brains.
It's like they've just reducedall this cognitive load and
gotten rid of so much noise overtime that, like they're allowed

(25:46):
to focus on those things.
But that's that's reallydifficult to do.
It takes a lot of time and alot of resources and energy to
get there.
And so you know, cause causethis, this sort of stress and
these different cognitivefactors and these behavioral
based factors like this thenaffects my coordination and
communication across those teams.
Right, it affects how I'm notjust individually operating but

(26:07):
operating as a team, and youkind of said something right
there like it's going to lead tolike a wrong assumption, and
that's the biggest thing thatI've seen.
Can you sort of elaborate onyour experience in that or what
you've seen, like what happens,like how does it get to the
point of failure, like what aretypical things I see and how
people make those wrongassumptions?

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Well, people are really pre-programmed to see
things a certain way.
That's kind of how our brainswork.
There's different kinds ofbiases that people adhere to.
You know sort of there's theconfirmation bias, where you

(26:52):
think that if it's somethingyou're thinking that it is and
you see something that confirmsyour bias, then you're likely to
, you know, sort of move in thatdirection and think that's how
you would explain something ormake a decision.
And in some cases you couldblame confirmation bias on what
happened with the Vincennes thatthere were threats in the

(27:15):
vicinity of the ship every dayand they were coming from a
certain country, thought, youknow, it was just very easy to
fall into this assumption thatwhen they looked at the
information on their radarscreens that they mistook it for
being, you know, a fighter jetinstead of an airliner.

(27:37):
And it was as simple as well.
The actual aircraft isascending, it's leaving an
airport and it's going up to ahigh altitude, just like any you
know jetliner would.
But in this case they hadaccidentally honed in on an
aircraft that looked like it wasat an Iranian, you know,

(28:01):
military base and they thoughtthis aircraft was descending and
coming toward them and that waskind of old information.
They hadn't really updated it,so that.
But the thing is it wasn't thatinformation kind of just sort
of spread and became the focus.

(28:21):
So there's the bias.
And even it was immune to peoplewho were saying that's not what
it is.
That's not what it is.
We're telling you that'ssomething completely different.
You know, don't do what you'redoing, and that information was
ignored.
So that's a really problematicand I mean it happens to all of

(28:43):
us.
Sometimes you'll be looking atsomething and you think you see
something and it's not reallythat thing, and you know later
you're like what was I?
You know what was I thinking?
So it's very hard to break that, especially when you're in a
group of people who are, youknow, confirming that bias.
You know providing information.
You look for information toconfirm the bias.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, yeah, and and then, like you said, that that
spreads throughout um, um, the,the team, and it spreads
throughout the, the operation.
And I'm thinking of so manydifferent like law enforcement
type examples in this, whereit's so prevalent, where even
what you're saying it's likewell, we ended up, you know,
shooting and killing this guybecause he was gonna attack us,
and it's like, but, but he wasrunning from you for the last

(29:28):
half an hour, like it's like hewas trying to get away, and then
the situation changed and thenwe've sort of created this
inevitability and forced it intothis binary situation and
sometimes, and it's all becauseeverything you're talking about
is like these are thecontributing factors, um, that
that led to this incident, right, so you can talk about the

(29:49):
geopolitical climate and whatwas going on in the threat
environment and how things workthere.
That that's complex enough, butthese are the ones, in a sense,
that we're adding to it andsometimes needlessly
complicating a situation, butthey're also I look at it as
like these are also the thingsthat we can control in some ways
, right, and I think that was abig part of this research, if

(30:09):
I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yes, we, we had a very large program focused what
we on, what we were callingcritical thinking, that, that
the you know, to counter thesecognitive biases, uh, which were
kind of some way forced on the,the sailors.
Sailors, because you're lookingat equipment, you're looking at

(30:31):
radar displays and you have tomake inferences about that
information.
They're not perfectly clearwhat it is, but when we watched
really talented and skilledteams, listen to them talk.
It's a common practice forreally good teams to speak the
critical thinking.
They see a problem.

(30:54):
There would be an aircraft onradar and immediately it would
be reported and the potentiallevel of threat would be
reported.
Another team member would pickthat up and confirm that
information, or they would comeback and say there's not enough
information about it.
What do you think it is?
And all the other team memberswould contribute to building a

(31:17):
clear picture of what thatpotential threat or non-threat
might be, because everybody canbring information to the table

(31:51):
that's valid, that is drawn fromtheir own radar systems, from
their own experience, becausethey've got the right
information about it, and thenmaking sure that information
gets sent up the chain ofcommand.
So it's really wonderfulhearing the best teams simply
being you know team members haveto be assertive, that you have
to be assertive with theinformation that you have.
It has to be heard.
You have to know that it's beenheard.
So there's a lot ofacknowledgement among the team

(32:12):
members that they've heard it.
They agree or maybe theydisagree, but it's a very fluid
and easy process to do once youallow that to happen in a high
performing team in ahigh-performing team.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, and she reminded me of an experience
working with, when I was a youngLance Corporal Marin in the
Marine Corps, first deploymentand then working with a
specialized unit in the militaryand we're working together on
this raid.
That was happening and weobviously had sort of a smaller
element and responsibility levelabout security and stuff like
this and you know they're goingover the plan.

(32:50):
And then I'm like hey, well,what about this?
Uh, and they kind of hear metalking to someone and they
stopped like wait what?
And I was like, oh well, well,I know this about that area and
because they knew they had thebest stuff, the best training,
the best assets, but they knewthat, like that, there was the
sort of like the mutual respect,like you know the ground truth
better than we do.

(33:10):
We don't, we're not walkingthese streets every single day.
And it was like really powerfulto me to see that as a young
Marine, because normally it'slike hey, shut up, do what
you're that?
That cause they're looking for,they're actively looking for
that little piece of pocket lintor piece of information that

(33:32):
could complete cause theyunderstand it could completely
change the outcome of thesituation or the trajectory, and
and it's, the information'sthere, they just didn't know it,
and so I see that a lot.
And now you're talking aboutdifferent team dynamics, about
you know, am I creating thisculture where we can talk about
this stuff and open it?
But you know there's so manydifferent, like we said,

(33:54):
contributing factors to this.
Can you sort of?
Because you just talked aboutcritical thinking, that's term
is used a lot, right, and youkind of gave some examples of
what that meant.
But what does it mean in thesesituations where it's decision
making in extremis, lives are onthe line.
You know there's minutes orseconds to make decisions.
Like, what is critical thinkingin that moment?

(34:16):
Because I've heard that all thetime hey, you got to think
critically.
Like people just say, hey, yougot to think critically, and I'm
like what do I?
Just like curl my brow andthink harder.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Like what does that mean?
So what does it mean bycritical thinking in these
situations?
It's interesting that it'sreally there's a scientist that
we had on our team, dr MarvinCohen, who is just so brilliant,
and he and his colleagues setabout doing what they called a
cognitive task analysis tounderstand what expert decision
makers in these kinds ofsituations do in terms of their
critical thinking.
And, like you know, in otherwords, you have it's time

(34:54):
critical.
You have maybe a minute to makea decision.
How does your critical thinkingprocess work?
I mean, they studied airlinepilots and they studied, you
know, battle commanders in thearmy.
They studied battle commandersin the army.
And there's these people.
Human beings have to useshortcuts.
There's no way you can make adecision without having some

(35:16):
kind of shortcut from yourexperience.
But it's various decisionmakers.
Actually, if they have a littlebit of time and they know they
have a little bit of time theycan extract more information
about the problem to make a moreaccurate, get a more accurate
understanding of what the whatthe conditions are, what the

(35:37):
context is that would be drivinga threat towards them, and so
that they look at, you know, thegeopolitical situation.
You know that they take good,you know, validated information
from their environment, fromtheir teams, from what they're
looking at, to build an accuratepicture of what would be

(36:01):
driving a threat and if anythingcomes up, that's like it's it's
.
It's what they call a basis forassessment.
The basis for assessment is allof this information.
Versus this information, youknow, there's things that would,
would run against an assumptionthat maybe it's a threat.
And so what?

(36:21):
What are those things?
And the weaker, weaker theargument is against the threat
and the stronger the argument isfor a threat is how they sort
of weigh or use that informationto make their decision.
And certainly if you're doingthis under pressure, you have to
be pretty quick at it, andthese experts do get pretty

(36:43):
quick at it.
So that's a really importantfactor.
Is they actually in their minds?
You know, this isn't somethingthey have on a computer screen
and we worked on designingcomputer interfaces for the
basis for assessment and I thinkthe Navy has adopted some of
those ideas.
But it's really you know, theinner workings of your brain,

(37:06):
trying to be more balanced andand have a balanced perspective,
as opposed to just jumping toone of those biases that would
make it just so much easier tomake a decision.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
And that's the biggest, you know, the easier to
make a decision.
That's that's kind of it rightthere, because that's kind of,
in a sense, the the easier tomake a decision.
That's that's kind of it rightthere, because that's kind of,
in a sense, to how we're wired,like our brain is constantly
anticipating, like it wants toanticipate, it doesn't want to
be surprised, right, so it'santicipating likely outcomes.
That I'm in as I'm goingthrough my environment,
especially in these situationsand you brought up this like you

(37:41):
know what, what, what I I lookat it as is is, if I'm trying to
make sort of a decision on thisstuff, I have to be able to
like conceptualize everythingthat I know, given this context
that I'm in right now.
Right, I have to say, givenwhat I know right now and you
even said it a basis forassessment, like we call that

(38:01):
like a baseline, right.
What are we starting with?
And I, we had a great um, we, wehad, uh, it was a law
enforcement officer in one ofour courses and he um, you know
he does a lot of interdictionwork and so he's out there.
There's a very specific role ofwhat he's looking for right and
what he's doing.
And he came up and he was likeI I it was like the second day

(38:23):
training or something like thatand he had this great comment
he's like I've been training mynewer folks, all wrong, and I'm
like what do you mean?
He goes, he goes.
I've been teaching themeverything that I know and and
what to look for and all ofthese indicators that I've seen
before in my past, and I'mreally trying to get these
different examples, just likeyou guys give examples and tell

(38:43):
stories, and this is what I sawand this is what it keyed me
into and he goes.
I'm realizing now I think that'sthe exact wrong way to do it.
What I should be doing isteaching them to get really,
really good at identifyingwhat's normal, what's typical,
what should I expect to see in anumber of different

(39:04):
environments, in a number ofdifferent domains, in a number
of different domains, in anumber of different situations?
Like, how do I get reallyreally good at normal?
Because then once I likeperfect that, that baseline,
that basis for comparison, the,the incongruent signals, those
anomalies, like those indicators, whatever it is, they'll almost
pop out automatically, like Iwon't have to look for them.

(39:25):
It is, they'll almost pop outautomatically, like I won't have
to look for them.
They will.
They will appear to me becauseit's it's going to be different
than what you know, I was taughtor trained.
Now it's going to be similar ina lot of ways, but I can't take
a photo and memorize a photoand then say go find that out
there, right, because it's goingto be different no-transcript.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
It's really nearly impossible to do anything like
that by yourself.
You really have to surroundyourself with people who are
providing you with accurateinformation.
You can't see everythingyourself.
You know, and you can't alwaysparse out what the right
information is and what's wrong.
I mean, sometimes you're onyour own, like if you're a

(41:12):
police officer.
Yes, you could be on your own.
I'm talking about a militarysituation where a lot of you
know combat is going on aroundyou and you really do need, you
know, more people to help youfigure out what's going on.
So, yeah, you can really getlost in the minutia and not
really bring yourself outlooking at the big picture

(41:34):
because of the level of stressthat you're under.
Unfortunately, I think I'veseen more examples of poor team
performance than I have seen areally good team performance.
But when you see really goodteam performance, it's
impossible to not recognize it.

(41:56):
And so, yeah, the thing aboutcritical thinking, the basis for
assessment, is that with timepressure, there's good decision
makers will be able to, as Isaid before, you know, take a
little bit of time, you know,and if you can free up enough

(42:20):
time to make a better decision,you know everything's going to
work out a lot better all along,and that taking your time
actually means having teammembers anticipate what
information is needed to makethe poor information, and they
filter that for you as adecision maker.
They send that up to you in thechain of command and that

(42:53):
information has been filtered ina way that is not going to
throw you off or put you on thewrong on the back foot.
What can really mess up thatcommunication, that flow from
the lower level up to the higherlevel, is if the decision maker
, the leader, is basicallytrying to drag information out

(43:16):
of people, like tell me whatyou're seeing, what does that
look like?
You've got to let your team dotheir job and you have to
provide them with priorities andguidance job, and you have to
provide them with priorities andguidance.
But the worst thing that youcan do as a team leader is to
just push information out, topull information from your team

(43:36):
members and prevent them fromdoing their work in getting
information up to you.
So the flow needs to be fromthe lower to the higher levels
and team leaders can't really bethe bottleneck preventing that
information from getting to them.
You have to trust your team.
That's the whole issue of trust.
Trust means I trust that you'regoing to give me good

(43:58):
information because I've beentraining you how to do that, and
you can trust me because I'mnot going to push that
information away.
You know you can trust mebecause I'm not going to like
push that information away.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
You know I'm going to let you give that information
to me.
Yeah, and that's a big one.
You know what we like to callyou know high functioning teams
that you know operate at thespeed of trust, right, it's just
.
I know I'm taking you at yourword that that what you're
saying is true and what youbelieve, and I can listen to you
and I still have to put my ownfilters on things, but, but I'm
not going to sit here.
Well, yeah, well, why, why isthat?
And what you're kind of seemslike you're getting into?

(44:34):
And, greg, I do want to throw toyou, because this is, I think,
the longest we've gone on apodcast without you talking and
I know that's only because it'sJoan and so but, but, like
you're, what you're reallytalking about is almost like
it's.
It's it's, um, not focusing onwhat I need to look for or what
are these certain things.
It's like asking the rightquestions, because when it gets

(44:58):
to taking this from you knowwe'll get into it a little bit
minute here is like taking whatwe've learned right, taking what
we know, and and putting thatinto some sort of training,
right, what's the takeaways andhow do I get better at those
things.
But it's it's like, you know,everyone wants to know what the
answers are.
Everyone wants to know thechecklist or what I need to do,
and it's kind of like we alwaysapproach it as you got to know

(45:20):
what questions to ask.
You have to know what.
What are the right questions toget you to a more reasonable
kind of assumption or conclusionso that you can make a better
decision.
Because if I ask the rightquestions, then I get a better
feel for what the actual problemis, which may be different than
how humans communicate, becausethis communication issue we

(45:41):
talk forever just on that, abouthow humans communicate and
maybe even especially in this,what they say and how they say
it and the language you use, itall frames, um, how we process
that.
You know it's, it's so there'sa, a bunch of complexity in
there that we haven't evenreally addressed, but is is
extremely powerful.

(46:02):
But I do want to throw to you,greg, because, because you've
been, you've been quiet and sothat I get I get nervous when
Greg gets quiet, so I don't know.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
The reason I'm quiet is if I had a microphone, I
would body slam it and drop themic, because you guys have
epitomized exactly what mycomments would have been.
Everybody that knows me knowsthat I'm fascinated with Joan's
brain and the way that shethinks and the research that
she's done.
So when you have an expert onyou, let the expert talk.
So I'll limit my remarks.
I'll make them real fast.

(46:32):
Joan, you know I love you.
Uh, the reason you were hearingsimilarities is because of in
the late seventies and earlyeighties I was inspired in my
work by Dr Marty Seligman, andSeligman led me into the world
of uh, uh, you know EduardoSalas, who led me to Bowers and
Barab, and Lance Hannon andCohen, and so all of these were

(46:54):
at the forefront of theirdecision-making under stress
research and the problem wasthere was nobody in comp work
that was doing that.
And I say, tie this directlyback to the podcast we just
finished on the 21 foot rule,because you'll say, oh my gosh,
that's what he meant by that.
That's exactly what it is.
It takes a catastrophicincident for us all to look down
and in and then to conduct theresearch.

(47:14):
So you're talking about stressin extremis ambiguity and I'm
saying for the street levelpeople that are still listening
and I know you are, becauseJoan's fascinating to listen to
we're talking about aboutplaying jeopardy with the timer
counting down loud and inaddition to that, instead of
having two other opponents, youhave 40, and in addition to that
, you're riding a unicycle in aminefield and in addition to

(47:36):
that, you're trying to sing rowthe boat with the audience.
Okay, now that's the level ofcomplexity.
That's in police work, that'sbeing a school resource officer,
that's's being on a hostagescenario, that's you know
whether you're HR or whetheryou're a copper on the scene.
These things happen and spacetime is different.
You train for those situations,but now you're in the situation

(48:00):
and it's just not exactly thesame.
And what happens is I wantpeople to remember on the
Vincennes why it's such animportant study and why Joan's
such an important guest is theVincennes, why it's such an
important study and why Jones issuch an important guest.
The Vincennes is no differentthan what happened in Oxford.
It's no different than whathappened at Robb Elementary.
You had high-functioning people.
There was nobody on theVincennes that didn't give a
shit.
There was nobody on theVincennes that was drunk at

(48:22):
their duty station.
There was nobody.
That just said you know, todayI'm going to make an arbitrary
rule and stick by it.
What happened is you had highfunctioning, experienced
veterans that were put into asituation and one or two of them
saw it slightly differently andstood down and didn't comment.
And then what happened is thatstarts adding.
That's like a carburetor icing,it's like the thing that brings

(48:45):
down an airplane.
A little bit of frozen area nowmanifests itself, greater and
greater, and now you don't havelift and thrust anymore and you
know what it did.
That in a minute.
And when you see policeshootings, when you see a school
shooting, when you see thesesituations that we have the
highest level of risk in this isthe type of critical decision

(49:06):
that needs to be had.
So going backwards, taking thisgiant step backwards to take a
look at this situation, I thinkis uniquely important.
And if I could just say one morething, brian and I'll shut up
and get back to Joan, because Iabsolutely love listening to her
I was in a situation I sent youa video of Joan you might not
have seen the video and I was ina Southern airport.
It's a huge airport, there wasmany people around and the fire

(49:28):
alarm went off.
I started videoing as I washeading for the fire exit.
Okay, I was the only oneheading for a fire exit and what
happened is right in front ofme, that I got on the video.
The jet bridge, because of thefire alarm, locked where the
people get into the jet bridgeand it stopped all the people
from getting on the plane.
So you had a dozen peopletrapped in the jet bridge with

(49:49):
this fire alarm that was goingand who was trapped there?
The first people to get on theplane, which are those that need
more time with the global entryfrequent flyers.
So you had the highest leveltrained people that fly all the
time that were jammed in withthe wheelchair person and the
old person and everything else,and all I saw was fear and
indecision.

(50:09):
Why?
Because nobody had anticipatedthis is a likely outcome.
Nobody looked at that and hadplanned for it.
Well, what types of things maywe encounter?
And it's exactly like theVincennes too.
Stakes were different, not asmany people died right, but by
the same token, the lessonslearned are cogent and as
important then as they areimportant today.

(50:31):
Would you agree with that?

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, there's just thetranslation of this.
The findings from all of thisresearch are tremendous.
They are generalizable to manyother situations that we see
today, and I just think thereare really good training

(50:53):
solutions for dealing with this.
One of the things that wefocused on was something we
called event-based approach totraining, where we created
realistic scenarios to trainwith, and those scenarios made
sure that they had events inthem that would elicit the

(51:13):
behaviors that we wanted peopleto practice and train to.
And we created these scenariosso they addressed these what
they call black swan problems,or situations that don't occur
very often, but when they doit's, you know it's do or die.
So we didn't pick scenariosthat would like only happen in a

(51:38):
hundred years, but but theVincennes was never anticipated
to be something, whateverhappened.
But we you know we it wasimportant to focus on those
kinds of problems and we learnedthat those kinds of encounters
were a lot more common.
Actually, there were otherincidents in the Persian Gulf

(51:59):
that occurred, with an Americanship getting hit with a mine
that had been set.
There was the Stark incident Ithink that one had been fired on
, and we see that today theships are being fired on in the
Red Sea.
So there's really opportunities.

(52:23):
There's really good solutionsfor training that can be used,
that there are existing trainingstrategies that can be used to
improve teamwork, to improvedecision-making.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
So so that that's sort of like this, this, the
kind of so what I kind of wantto get out of all of this and
and you know I mean there's alot you would cover in your,
your career, but you know it'ssort of the what can we do with
this information?
And I mean you just talkedabout like this event based
approach, because I want youknow how can I use this stuff in
training, stuff in training,these limits of cognitive

(52:58):
performance have been studiedand been shown, like the DOD has
, I mean, how much research onin all of these different areas,
whether it's individual andteam performance and in
different domains, like so what,what can I do?
How do I use it?
How can I mitigate barriers?
Like what are some of theindicators I need to look out
for?
I mean, these are, you know,knowing, with, with, with from
your experience, like what arethose things?

(53:19):
How do I use this?

Speaker 2 (53:22):
So one of the most important or the most important
thing about training formitigating these problems is to
have a really effective afteraction review, and it's a
diagnostic process that teamsuse to go through what they did
during a particular trainingscenario, whether it's a

(53:42):
simulation on a computer systemor if it's a live exercise.
That after action review has tohave.
A number of things happen forpeople to learn how to improve
their performance.
One of them is when you havethis event-based approach to
training, you use that as yourafter-action review baseline.

(54:03):
You work your team through whathappened, what they remembered
happened and how, set goals toimprove their performance on
those specific types ofbehaviors.

(54:25):
So for training teams, ifyou're really focusing on team
training, there's fourdimensions of teamwork there's
information exchange, supportingbehavior communication and what
we call initiative slashleadership, and each of those
dimensions have specific teambehaviors that are critical to

(54:46):
good performance and in thecontext of a scenario, whether
it's a military scenario or aschool shooting scenario, those
critical incidents that occurredin those scenarios become the
center of discussion among theteam members to talk about what
they thought happened, what didhappen that went well, what

(55:09):
didn't go well and what theycould improve on in terms of
those four dimensions ofteamwork and that
instantaneously improves yourtactical performance.
We know from research thatteamwork processes improve,
tactical performance improvesand at the end of the AAR, the

(55:32):
idea is to set goals andcontinue running through
critical incident scenarios.
With these event-basedsituations, it's important to be
able to observe what the teamsare doing during their training
exercises.
It's important to observe thekinds of behaviors that you're

(55:53):
looking for, and those behaviorsare collected by trainers, who
can run through the after actionreview and provide feedback to
the team members while they'rehaving these important
discussions about what they wantto improve on.
So it's a nice back and forthdialogue between instructors,
trainees, all because you knowthey're really focused on

(56:16):
learning to do a better job, andit's a proven process and I
would like to see it implementedmore often.
The military does use thisapproach and they have, for many
years, improved on theirapproaches based on research.
So there's research-basedscience that informs the way the

(56:40):
military does training and Ithink it's just something that
should be leveraged in otherplaces.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
Yeah, I agree with that.
A lot of times the process forthat isn't as formalized as it
should be.
In a lot of situations it'sjust okay, let's sit around and
talk what happened.
And a lot of times we focus onthe wrong things in those aars.
Uh, especially when you'retalking about law enforcement
work or any investigations toany of these big major incidents

(57:07):
like the school shootings, it'sbasically like all right, who's
who's to blame?
And you know what it's likethat.
This is not helpful.
Like this is.
This is not help going forward.
We're just assigning blamebecause that makes us feel
better and we can point to thisperson and say they screwed it
all up.
It's like no, no, no, no.
There is a lot.
There's organizational issues,there's policy issues, there's

(57:29):
legal issues, there'scommunication issues, there's an
issue of resources and resourcemanagement.
I mean there's so much and wedon't want to get into the
complexity of it because it'sit's hard and it's really hard.
But but everything you justtalked about, especially with
that sort of AR model and andhaving those discussions, like

(57:50):
that's actually very easy to doat a very low level, like it's
not, you know, I mean I do thatwith my family, okay, like
here's why you freaked out overthis to the insurgent, like all
right, and then you can be mad,that's fine, but you're not
allowed to be mean to mommy,like you know, like that.
That part was where you wentwrong.
Being upset I don't care ifyou're upset, that's fine.

(58:11):
Like you're not in control ofyour emotions, so that's going
to happen to you, uh, but thisis this part's acceptable.
This part isn't and it's likeit seems that it's informal, but
it's.
It's really not, and that'swhere the learning occurs.
And and so I and you're talkingabout things that any team
anywhere can control and getbetter at this.

(58:34):
You don't need to have, um, youknow, a million dollar training
budget to have and ask theright questions and modify your
policies and procedures and yourtactics and doing those and
asking the questions, like youjust said, it's proven that
you're actually going to getbetter tactically.
You're going to make betterdecisions.
You're going to utilize thetraining that you already have

(58:57):
at a higher level than you didbefore, because you're getting
rid of a lot of the potentialbarriers to success.
You're addressing thefoundational issues that affect
all humans in every situation,whether it's something as
extreme as I have 60 seconds todecide whether or not this is an
aircraft that's going to blowup my ship or it's.

(59:19):
You know, I got to figure outwhich kid is I need to focus my
resources on in the school,because he's having the most
difficulty it's.
It doesn't matter what thosesituations are.
And you know, I'm kind ofwondering, like if you're in all
of your experience, like arethere certain things, are there
certain times when you, like,you've walked in or you've seen

(59:39):
something and, like you, youalready know, like right off the
bat, like here's what likelyhappened or here's what the
breakdowns were, because thoseare the consistent breakdowns
and then, like, what are thosesort of key takeaways out of
this?
Like what, what are thosetopical things if you can think
of, like those top three?
You know I hate doing thateveryone's like give me the one
thing or give me the threethings, and it's really

(01:00:00):
difficult to do.
But I know I'll give you anexample.
When I go into work with a team,a unit, whatever law
enforcement agency, privatesector, whatever I have a
feeling right off the bat,sometimes even before we get
there, just how they communicatewhether or not this is going to
be a tough one.
Or hey, this is ahigh-functioning, functioning
team.
They're on the same page.
Like I have my own umindicators, sort of.

(01:00:23):
But like I'm curious, what,what yours are, what you've seen
well, one thing is um, you know, we this was.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
This was discovered in the study of pilots and
co-pilots, uh, which kind ofpredated the vincennes incident
but pretty much has been aparallel area of research for
many years too.
And that is really good teams,whether they're just two people
or more, they take advantage ofthe downtime to plan and to

(01:00:58):
provide a guidance for whatthey're expecting to do.
So plan, plan, plan.
There's a lot of communicationfor good teams they're always
talking about what needs to bedone and how they're going to
manage that, what roles andresponsibilities are going to be
.
So that's really critical tosee that.

(01:01:21):
If you don't see them talkingto each other, if they just kind
of hang out and not do anything, look at their cell phones or
something and they're not reallydoing any kind of critical
planning, then that's a sign.
You know.
It could just be a sign of, youknow, being a novice team, but
sometimes, you know, there's theproblem of leaders thinking

(01:01:44):
that they're all knowing and allseeing and not really
encouraging the people whoreport to them to be more open
and honest and assertive andreinforcing assertiveness in
their team members, becausethat's where you build trust and

(01:02:05):
you're willing to trust whatpeople are saying to you.
So that's part of it too isbuilding that trust.
So leaders are always good,really good.
Leaders are great at providingguidance and setting priorities
and whether they're going into ascenario or even, you know, of

(01:02:29):
course, during training, is thatsometimes they'll be like all
right, stop, stop, stop, stop.
You know this is what I needyou to do.
I want you to do this.
I want you to do that, even ifit's like positioning yourself
in a certain place, like when wewere working with infantry
squads.
They would be making their waythrough a training village and

(01:02:51):
you'd be seeing and hearing thesquad leader say, okay, I want
you right over there, or I wantyou to go around that building,
you know, like physicalplacement, to get the best
picture of what's going on.
So guidance is really importantin that.
Another really important one isteams to look for is that

(01:03:13):
supporting behavior is peoplewho are willing to take over
doing something when it's notnecessarily their primary job
because another team membercan't do it.
So even in the planning phases,good teams will say well, if I
can't get to this place by thistime, you know, I know that you
can, you know.

(01:03:34):
So if you get there before me,that's okay.
So so this planning processmeans being able to, um, you
know, figure out where teammembers agree that I can help
you doing this, you can help medoing that.
And accepting support,accepting backup from somebody,

(01:03:55):
without um getting upset aboutit, that's another one.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
And then just using really good, yeah, yeah, joan,
you know it goes right to whatwe talk about all the time,
about educating for certaintyand training for the uncertainty
.
I mean that speaks volumes andI want to interject.
Only I have to step out.
Brian and Joan, it waswonderful being on the call with
you.
Please don't slow down becauseof me, joan.

(01:04:22):
One more thing about what youare talking about is research,
and I make an admonition again.
Out there I hear evidence-basedall the time, but
evidence-based can be anecdotalevidence and then we all are led
to believe it.
That's a form of bias.
Research is the tool, becausethen you sometimes uncover stuff
you didn't expect or didn'twant to know, and then you can

(01:04:46):
truly like to Brian's point askand write questions.
Then you conduct the research.
Now you have a clear path, orat least a way ahead.
It might not be the most clearpath, but at least it's a way
ahead to confirm your suspicions.
So thanks, joan, I'll see youagain.
Thanks, brian, for allowing meto jump out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
Yeah, I know you're going to jump out, but but yeah,
I got a couple more uh things.
I want to run past you, joan,but thank you, greg Um so be on
the show, you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Thanks, greg.
Um, you know, we have, uh, this.
You know, if I'm I always tryto put myself too for for those
folks that really enjoy learningabout this stuff and and
wanting to implement some ofthese things.
Um, you know, I'm listening tothis podcast episode.
Um, we're listening to thisconversation.
It's how, how do how do Ireally do this at at my level,

(01:05:35):
like, what are, what are some ofthose important things I mean
you're, you're giving, you know,planning and prioritizing tasks
and and roles andresponsibilities, and and
obviously there's a hugeleadership component.
Um, you know, are there, arethere other, any other sort of
like general takeaways that thatyou try to get across to any of
the folks that you've workedwith or or done research on

(01:05:57):
before, that you continue to popup every single time in these
situations that are like theselow calorie things that don't
take a lot to fix.
I'm trying to get some more,because this has been incredible
.
I've got a page of notes hereand I want to get some of this
stuff into our Patreonsubscribers.
I'll have some of this kind ofsummarized as well as some of

(01:06:19):
the takeaways, but you know, thecomplexity of decision making
is is huge.
There's there's so much there,and then you've got different
ways of looking at, especiallynow with this rapid adoption of
technology and differenttechnological solutions.
You know everyone wants themathematical formula for for

(01:06:41):
arriving at really goodconclusions and getting the best
answer by inputting andanalyzing all of this data.
Right community, that kind ofdiffer on this, which is one of

(01:07:04):
the things where I like a lot ofwhat Gary Klein does, because
he's a big proponent ofexpertise, meaning you got to go
to the experts in these fields.
In a sense they build up thisintuitive decision-making
process over time and you got tounpack that and you're never
going to get build some sort ofstatistical model on what the
best answer is just by puttingin all this information, because

(01:07:26):
it's just that it's a model.
It's not the real thing and andand unless you're at the real
thing, it's kind of hard to doso because of all that
technological stuff and and thenewest, like you know, data
science that's trying to come upwith these things.
I see it a lot in health caretoo, where they're trying to
just take all the informationand have the computer go hey,

(01:07:47):
test for this, it might be this,it might be that, and, like the
really good doctors are stillbeating those machines because,
but sometimes they can go wrong.
Right, the the expert can gowrong.
So it's like I have this, thislevel of expertise, but you're,
but I can still get it wrongsometimes.
But it's still really importantto unpack what I have.

(01:08:08):
I see it as almost it getsconfusing for someone at the
user end to go hey, like bigbrain scientists, just tell me
what I need to do and I'll do it, like I have no problem
adopting some new strategy ifyou're telling me.
But it's like it's kind of notthat simple.
So what?
What can I do, listening tothis sort of this, this episode,

(01:08:28):
to operationalize thisinformation, contextualize it?
In my domain?
That is a really hard question.
There's a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
Well, I mean, it's really.
I know Garyary, you know hetalks about you have to go to
the experts, the the top expertsunpack it.
But, um, I I don't think youhave to go to.
You know those people are arerare, uh, but I think that
people my, my experience is yougo to people who do the training

(01:09:00):
, who been in the job for awhile, and we call it it's a
critical incident assessmentyears.

(01:09:23):
You know what problems have youencountered that you know are
hard.
You know it's hard to make adecision and you're working in a
team and you've got, you know,a lot of different things going
on that are, you know, creatingproblems.
It's a stressful situation andyou know, tell me like the top
most important problems that youhave to address with this kind

(01:09:44):
of a job.
And you really you get thecritical incidents and then you
start to unpack the criticalincident.
Well, you know what conditionsmake it really difficult for you
to make a decision and thepicture pretty much pops out for

(01:10:06):
you to make a decision and thepicture pretty much pops out.
The reason why I focus onteamwork behavior so much is
that what you can do with thefour teamwork dimensions is ask
people, people you know tell meincidents or situations that are
important to you, like so, forexample, with with leadership,

(01:10:27):
and do you have, can you give meexamples that are situations
that are difficult to maintainleadership and you can build
some training around that so youcan say, well, like if we had
give me a scenario, you can usea tabletop situation.
You can just create a tabletopscenario where people sit around

(01:10:50):
the table and you have thatscenario set up so you can work
through it and say, okay, atthis point in time, this is
what's happening.
This is where people are.
They're you know they're notcommunicating with each other or
they're not providing backup orsupport.
People aren't prioritizing orproviding guidance from a

(01:11:11):
leadership perspective.
What can we do with this kind ofan incident or critical
situation to improve on that?
And it really just means peoplesitting around a table and
discussing the pros and cons andthe problems that they
encounter in ways in which thatcan get them back on track.

(01:11:31):
So I don't think you have to.
You have people, have to beopen to each other and be
willing to take criticism,because there's you know,
opportunities to.
You know people fail at whatthey're doing and they have to
look, you know, open up.
A really easy thing for aleader to do is to start by
saying hey, here's where I madea mistake.

(01:11:52):
And we found that with the Navyteams and with our Army and
Marine Corps teams when we setup the discussion to where the
leader kicks off by saying, hey,you know, I feel like I made a
mistake by not providinginformation or not providing
guidance at this particularpoint in time, and this is what

(01:12:13):
I should have done or this iswhat I can do.
Even that kicks it off, andpeople are so much more willing
to join in the discussion thanif the team leader just points
at people and says well, whatdid you think went wrong?
What did you think?

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
went wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
It just creates this barrier to discussion.
So breaking down the barriersand being more open to admitting
mistakes is a really big deal.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
Yeah, and that alone is a whole podcast episode on
how to do that.
But I mean there's so many, youknow.
It just instantly reminded meof this.
It was a training event out at29 Palms when I was in the
Marine Corps and so I had mysniper team and it was a big
company size infantry companysize maneuver exercise with

(01:13:07):
indirect fire.
So there's mortars and thenthere's heavy machine guns and
we're up in this position and weprovide some with the Barrett
50 cal.
So you get some long distancestuff.
We don't really have a big rolein it, but we're a part of the
observation to help call in.
But what happens is you have toplan all of that stuff out right
.
So they had this, the companyyou know, xo, this first
lieutenant had put all this timeand effort into creating this

(01:13:29):
very complex, highly organized,you know fires plan.
And I had to go in there andsit on the brief and he'd make
sure, walk me through everything, everything what they're doing
right.
Here's all the plan, right,just your normal preoperational
stuff.
And so it gives me the packetof information, everything that
I need.
I'm like cool, got it.
And so he did a ton of work.
All that planning, all thatpreparation, the briefing,

(01:13:55):
everything's phenomenal right.
But then he decides that hedidn't want to carry, you know,
a full size radio on his bag andonly brought the smaller one.
And the problem was where he wasat during that operation, where
he was going to be calling allthat stuff in.
Well, he couldn't talk toanyone.
He couldn't talk to the peoplehe needed to, because of our
elevated position where we wereat, I was the only one who could
coordinate all that stuff.

(01:14:16):
So I'm sitting there with myteam and I'm getting my guys
their practice.
I'm like, all right, here'swhere the set is.
You see, this call it in,because they knew how to do it.
They just hadn't done it before.
So I was like go for it.
And so we're calling in all thestuff that he's supposed to be
doing, listening.
But but, and we're, we're atsuch an advantage because we
kind of aren't, we're not in thesituation, we're not walking
through this field where theyjust, you know, blew up this

(01:14:37):
massive bangalore, you know,blew up this massive Bangalore,
you know mine to clear it, andthey're coming through like
we're not down in there, we'reup to like literally chilling,
you know, like, so we have thisbird's eye view.
And so you know, obviously itwas successful and it went well,
but you know that Marine wasdefeated.
After that, right, he felt sostupid.
The company commander was superpissed about it.

(01:14:58):
The battalion commander's upset, like's upset, like hey, you
know, you did all this and youcouldn't even get this because
of comms like this is like heshould have known better, right.
So, like I ended up like goingduring this debrief beforehand
talking to the, because theywere like talking me up and
being like hey, that wasincredible.
You know, sergeant marin, youwere able to do this and blah,
blah, blah, you could coordinatethe fires and if we hadn't been

(01:15:19):
able to done this, this wholemassive exercise would have been
a waste.
Blah, blah, blah.
So they're like kind of likegiving me the attaboy, which
naturally I want to take, but Iwas like hey, look, if it hadn't
been for the planning and thepreparation and the briefing
that that person did and whatthey give me, I never this I
wouldn't have been able to dothat.
Like I I'm happy to take creditfor it, but like I deserve zero

(01:15:43):
credit.
I was sitting up there likeleaned up against my pack,
comfortable, getting some sunand having my guys call this in
over the radio, like I had theeasiest job out of anyone here
and because they had planned andbriefed me so well on it, like
I literally just had to follow ascript, you could have put
anyone there.
You know what I'm saying.
And so it goes to show you whatall that stuff that went into

(01:16:07):
that one.
It was a great example of likehow you can have this sort of
single point of failure whereyou can have the greatest plan
ever and it goes wrong becauseyou choose the wrong radio to
use or something.
But it's also an example of howeverything goes right with the
right planning, preparation.
Not everything is going to goright, but with the right
planning and preparation andrehearsal and absolutely, and

(01:16:31):
that's the key is being able toadapt, because you've done that
planning and and that was thatwas a huge takeaway for me where
I was like, oh man, like thisis how stupid mistakes can
really come and get you.
So I know he still got hammeredfor that, but he was hopefully
able to resurrect some of thedamage that he had to take off
some of that hate and discontentthey had for that guy for doing

(01:16:52):
that.
But it was just an example.
So I really appreciate you youcoming on and talking about this
stuff.
Um, you do you have any likefavorite resources or favorite
things that people can check outor read up on or look into

(01:17:15):
other than you know?
Because I'll put links to likesome of the theadmus and the
tactical decision making understress and the small unit
decision making, you know, butthose are, those are, you know,
scientific papers and theirresearch stuff, and so sometimes
it gets a little, it getspretty dry.
But do you have any other sortof resources that you recommend
for trainers, for people thatare folks that are like, hey, I

(01:17:35):
love this stuff, I want to learnmore, I want to learn how to
implement this stuff.
I want to learn more.
I want to learn how toimplement this stuff.
What, what can I do?
What where?

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
else can I go for something like this?
So, um, I think one of the bestonline websites uh, that the
agencies that has a lot of thisinformation.
It's actually in the medicaltraining domain.
It's um, yep, the um.
Let me see if I can think ofthe name of it.

(01:18:03):
It's, I think it's the UnitedStates Health Research Agency.
I'll have to give you moreinformation about it, but
there's a program of trainingit's called TeamSTEPPS, which is
really a version of what I wastalking about today, and it's
not just, it's a generic kind ofa team training program, but

(01:18:27):
everything that I've talkedabout is really encapsulated on
this website.
It's T-E-A-M-S-T-E-P-P-S.
I think that's it Team.

Speaker 3 (01:18:40):
Steps.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
I think you can Google it and the website has
videos.
They have uh checklist tools,they have uh information,
powerpoint slides, a lot ofbackground material on how to
conduct this team type of teamtraining, and it's not just you
don't have to just focus on uh,you know, uh medical teams, it's

(01:19:04):
.
It's basically something thatyou can use on any kind of uh
domain.
So I would.
That's one.
It's easy to get to, it's easyto understand and get to the
right links for that.
But I'll have to share anyother written materials.
I'll have to look them up andgive you the links to those as
well.

Speaker 1 (01:19:23):
Yeah, please, and for those listening, I'll include
those links just in the episodedetails, so so folks have it.
If you're listening to this nowand then I'll also have like
sort of a summary and some ofthe breakdown of what we talked
about in printed form as wellfor for our Patreon subscribers
to to get on and take a look at.
But you know, these are allgreat resources and I really,

(01:19:44):
you know, appreciate you comingon and sharing the knowledge and
experience.
I just I always want people toknow that, look, it's sort of
like the science and theresearch is out there, like it's
we know what goes wrong.
It's it's, it's the using it toyour advantage to train for
that.
So train for those things thatwe know are going to hit.
In every situation in life thatyou're in, whether it's an

(01:20:04):
argument, you know, with yourfamily or a high stakes, you
know, hostage rescue situation,a pursuit like there are things
that are going to affect youthat you don't really even
recognize that it's happeningand it's influencing the
environment so much.
So if I really get better evenat the recognition of it, even

(01:20:24):
at understanding how this stuffaffects me, I can plan and train
for it to mitigate some of it.
You can't mitigate everything.
There's never going to be aperfect thing where everything
goes exactly to plan, but youcan certainly strive towards
that and get better at it.
So I really, really appreciateit.
Joan, do you have any finalwords for our listeners?

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
Oh well, thanks for having me on.
It's been a real pleasure and Ihope maybe to do it again
sometime soon.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
Yeah, we'll get some feedback from everyone and if
there's some specific stuff wewant to talk to you about, we'd
love to have you have you backon.
But we thank you for coming on.
Everyone for listening.
Again.
There's more on the Patreonsite.
Reach out to us with any otherquestions and don't forget that
training changes behavior.

Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
OK, yes.