Shared Mental Models: The Invisible Architecture of High-Performance Teams

Introduction

Ever been on a team where everything just clicks? communication is effortless, everyone knows their role, and the team anticipates each other’s moves, achieving goals with remarkable efficiency. This seamless collaboration is not a magic. It is often the result of something called a shared mental model, the invisible architecture that supports high-performance teamwork.

This post explores what shared mental models are, why they are a critical predictor of team effectiveness, and how leaders can consciously cultivate them, especially in the complex environments of virtual and hybrid teams.

What is a Shared Mental Model?

Team effectiveness and coordination are critical aspects of a high-performance team. Team members who share a similar and organized understanding of team tasks and goals — and who understand each other’s working environments — are more likely to perform well.

This shared understanding and knowledge about the mission, goals, and other relevant environments among team members are called mental models. The shared mental model is one of the most frequently used concepts in team cognition (Schelble et al. 2022). (2022) further identify the shared mental model as a critical predictor of team effectiveness.

Lungeanu, DeChurch, and Contractor (2022) define shared mental models as team properties reflecting how team members organize knowledge and understanding about the team’s purpose, the nature of the work, and how they work together. Thus, team mental models are a collective mental representation among team members of how they interact in performing task-work (Larson and DeChurch 2020).

They represent the organized mental representations of the various component pieces relevant to a team’s overall task (Schelble et al. 2022). As (Schelble et al. 2022) point out, shared mental models measure whether or not team members share a common understanding of their shared tasks, roles, interdependencies, and strategies.

Schelble et al. (2022) break shared mental models into two types:

• Task mental model — covers aspects specific to understanding and completing a shared task.
  
• Team mental model — focuses on factors related to cooperation and communication within a team.

The Impact on Team Success

Shared mental models can continually develop over time, becoming more effective and influencing various team outcomes, such as objective performance, team viability, member well-being, and strategic alignment (Lungeanu, DeChurch, and Contractor 2022).

Teams with shared mental models can recognize one another’s needs and information requirements (Lungeanu, DeChurch, and Contractor 2022; Schelble et al. 2022), which enhances coordination and mutual support.

While this may be more intuitive in physical teams, virtual teams — now an integral part of modern work — require special attention in developing and maintaining shared mental models among members.

Unlike face-to-face teams, creating and sustaining mental models is harder in virtual environments. Leaders must therefore compensate for challenges such as communication barriers and cultural differences. These issues can impact relationship building, which is essential for developing and sustaining shared mental models.

As underlined in (Larson and DeChurch 2020), face-to-face teams tend to have stronger shared mental models than virtual ones.

To improve team effectiveness and performance in virtual settings, leaders should aim to create a conducive environment for shared mental models. This can be achieved by:

• Cultivating high-quality, interpersonal communication.
  
• Creating psychological safety.
  
• Adopting a leadership style that aligns well with virtual collaboration (Larson and DeChurch 2020).

Leadership’s Role in Building a Shared Mind

Lungeanu, DeChurch, and Contractor (2022) highlight that leadership particularly shared leadership plays a crucial role in creating and shaping shared mental models in teams. This applies to both face-to-face and virtual teams.

For instance, (Lungeanu, DeChurch, and Contractor 2022) note that when leadership responsibilities are shared among members, the team tends to show greater commitment and information sharing. This dynamic fosters trust and enhances performance.

Teams that embrace shared leadership and have diverse skills, experiences, and perspectives are more likely to develop and maintain strong shared mental models.

Furthermore, connected leadership as opposed to fragmented leadership offers several advantages for improving similarity in team mental models. It promotes accuracy, synchronization of effort, and cohesion or trust.

For example, (Lungeanu, DeChurch, and Contractor 2022) argue that hierarchical and coordinated leadership are better at promoting shared mental models than factional or isolated forms of leadership. They also emphasize that boundaries among members of shared leadership groups are permeable, allowing reciprocal leadership processes that reduce conflict and tension.

Conclusion

Ultimately, a shared mental model is not just a nice-to-have; it’s the cognitive foundation upon which effective teams are built. It serves as the shared “map” that enables a group of individuals to navigate complex tasks together with clarity and confidence.

While the rise of virtual work presents new challenges, the core principle remains: effective leadership is the catalyst. By fostering open communication, psychological safety, and a connected leadership structure, leaders can intentionally design the conditions for these powerful shared understandings to emerge and thrive.

References

Larson, Lindsay, and Leslie A. DeChurch. 2020. “Leading Teams in the Digital Age: Four Perspectives on Technology and What They Mean for Leading Teams.” The Leadership Quarterly 31 (1): 101377. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.101377.

Lungeanu, Alina, Leslie A. DeChurch, and Noshir S. Contractor. 2022. “Leading Teams over Time Through Space: Computational Experiments on Leadership Network Archetypes.” The Leadership Quarterly, January, 101595. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2021.101595.

Schelble, Beau G., Christopher Flathmann, Nathan J. McNeese, Guo Freeman, and Rohit Mallick. 2022. “Lets Think Together! Assessing Shared Mental Models, Performance, and Trust in Human-Agent Teams.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6 (GROUP): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/3492832.