When teams fail despite our best efforts, we often look in the wrong places for answers.
We restructure roles, refine processes, and run team-building exercises, all while overlooking something more fundamental: how team members think about their work together.
Druskat and Pescosolido's research cuts through this confusion by examining what truly drives effective teams, particularly in self-managing environments where traditional leadership is more absent.
Their findings reveal something both profound and practical: the mental models teams develop about their work matter more than the structures we impose on them. In their research, they tracked real teams over time, watching how these shared understandings shaped performance in tangible ways.
The research identifies three specific mental models that distinguish high-performing teams. Each represents a different way teams think about their work that directly shapes how they behave.
Psychological ownership: "This team belongs to us"
Psychological ownership goes deeper than conventional engagement. It's the shared belief that "team actions and outcomes were under the team's authority and responsibility" – that the team genuinely belongs to its members.
At the Rushton Mining Company studied in the research, teams initially showed remarkable initiative in solving production problems without waiting for management direction. This wasn't because they had unusually motivated personalities, it was because they shared a mental model of ownership. When organizational changes later reduced their autonomy, this proactive behavior declined rapidly.
Findings like this challenge fundamental assumptions about people’s motivation. If we want teams to take initiative, traditional incentives might matter less than fostering a shared understanding of collective responsibility. Teams that believe "this is our work" approach problems differently than those who see themselves as simply following directions.
Continuous learning: "We're never finished growing"
The second mental model reflects a shared understanding that knowledge remains perpetually incomplete. This isn't just about skills training; it's about how teams think about knowledge itself.
The research identifies a critical obstacle this model must overcome: "the difficulty of admitting to a knowledge deficit." This isn't merely reluctance to appear uninformed, it's a rational response in organizations that reward demonstrated expertise over curiosity.
In the confectionery plant case study, teams initially established strong learning practices but abandoned them when production pressures intensified. They reverted to approaches that demonstrated competence rather than exploring new possibilities. This change wasn't about capability but about how they understood their fundamental purpose.
I think this reveals a tension many of us experience: organizations often claim to value learning while rewarding those who never admit uncertainty.
For continuous learning to flourish, teams need environments where seeking knowledge genuinely takes precedence over appearing knowledgeable.
Heedful interrelating: "We're parts of a larger system"
The third model – heedful interrelating – reflects a sophisticated understanding of interdependence. It involves interactions that are "attentive, purposeful, conscientious and considerate" of how individual actions affect the whole.
At the minerals processing plant mentioned in the study, maintenance teams developed ways to coordinate with production schedules without formal systems. This wasn't just efficiency, it represented a fundamentally different understanding of how their work connected to others.
What makes this particularly valuable is that it can't be reduced to procedures. Organizations often try to document and systematize emergent coordination, but the research shows such efforts frequently undermine the very collaboration they attempt to capture.
The cognitive foundation, that is, understanding one's work as fundamentally connected to others, must come first.
The research reveals that these mental models both shape and are shaped by organizational context. The authors note that organizational culture communicates "appropriate behavior, processes and outcomes...through both formal and informal channels."
This creates a challenge many organizations miss. All four case studies showed strong initial development of these models followed by gradual erosion when organizational support diminished. Teams didn't suddenly decide to think differently, their mental models adapted to changing environmental signals.
This explains why so many team interventions produce temporary results. If mental models respond continuously to environmental cues, one-time training programs have limited impact regardless of their initial effectiveness. When the minerals processing plant shifted management attention elsewhere, even well-established mental models began to deteriorate.
This extends beyond teams to how we design organizations. If team effectiveness depends on mental models that remain responsive to environmental signals, we need to consider how all organizational systems (from performance reviews to resource allocation) continuously communicate priorities that either reinforce or undermine the thinking patterns we hope to foster.
Rather than seeking perfectly stable mental models, the research suggests we focus on building resilient ones. Four approaches emerge:
1. Make models explicit
Teams that openly discuss not just what they do but how they think about their work together show greater resilience when support diminishes. This isn't abstract “theorizing,” it's acknowledging that shared understanding matters and deserves your attention.
2. Align your words with your systems
The case studies reveal how quickly contradictions between stated values and organizational systems undermine mental models. When organizations implemented self-management but maintained traditional control mechanisms, teams received mixed messages that eventually weakened their mental models. Alignment matters, not just in what we say but in how we design systems.
3. Intentionally (!) integrate new members
The Gaines Dog Food Plant study shows how turnover threatens mental model continuity. Effective teams deliberately bring new members into their existing ways of thinking rather than assuming these understandings will develop naturally through experience.
4. Monitor environmental changes
Teams that stay aware of shifting organizational priorities show greater ability to preserve their mental models through changing contexts. Obviously it's not about resisting change but consciously deciding which mental models to protect even as circumstances evolve.
This research fundamentally changes how we should think about leadership. If team effectiveness emerges from shared mental models, leadership becomes less about directing action and more about cultivating specific ways of understanding collective work.
This requires leaders to develop capabilities rarely emphasized in traditional management:
The findings also resist reduction to simple implementation steps. Mental models emerge through complex social processes that cannot be engineered through direct intervention. They develop through sustained interaction within specific contexts.
This should suggest we move beyond seeking universal "best practices" toward creating conditions where productive mental models can naturally emerge and evolve.
The question becomes not how to install these models but how to create environments where they develop organically.
What becomes clear from this research is that the cognitive dimension of teamwork (how team members collectively understand their work together) shapes collaboration in ways that structural elements alone cannot address.
This isn't about adding another team-building exercise to the calendar. It's about fundamentally reconsidering how we approach team effectiveness.
The mental models teams develop about ownership, learning, and interdependence ultimately matter more than the processes we design for them or the structures we impose.
The organizations that thrive will be those that recognize these mental models as both powerful determinants of effectiveness and vulnerable to contextual changes. Building and sustaining these ways of thinking represents the next frontier in creating truly exceptional teams.
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