During an emergency and/or crisis incident key people will be called upon to work as part of a high functioning team tasked with implementing an efficient and effective response and recovery plan. The success or failure of that team will depend on the performance of each of its members, and key to this performance will be the ability to for each of the members to gather, maintain and share situational awareness (SA). If any one of the team members has poor SA, it will likely undermine the success of the entire team. Likewise, poor individual SA is likely to lead to reduced team SA, nor is it sufficient for one member of the team to be aware of critical information if the team member who needs that information is not aware.
The SA of the entire team is dependent upon both a high level of individual SA (for the member’s particular aspects of the incident reaction), and a high level of shared SA (between team members and used to provide an accurate common operating picture of those aspects of the incident that are common to the needs of the group).
With that in mind there are two key definitions that must be considered:
- Team SA – the degree to which every team member possesses the SA required for their responsibilities
- Shared SA – the degree to which team members possess the same SA on shared requirements.
In a poorly functioning team, two or more members may have different assessments on these shared requirements and may respond in an uncoordinated manner. However, in an efficient team, each team member shares a common understanding of what is happening on those common elements.
