Understanding the team derailment process: A look at team skill and attitude deficiencies

There have been many attempts to enhance team effectiveness. However, even the most effective teams have the potential to go off track, or derail. This chapter describes an attempt to understand why top performing teams venture down the road to team derailment. Specifically, we describe four instances in which real world teams have derailed. Guided by the team competency framework offered by Cannon-Bowers, Tannenbaum, Salas and Volpe (1995), we identify a set of deficient team skills and attitudes associated with each team's declined performance. Lessons learned about how to prevent other teams from derailing are also shared.