Does team training improve team performance? A meta-analysis.

Objective: This research effort leveraged the science of training to guide a taxonomic integration and a series of meta-analyses to gauge the effectiveness and boundary conditions of team training interventions for enhancing team outcomes.

Background: Disparate effect sizes across primary studies have made it difficult to determine the true strength of the relationships between team training techniques and team outcomes.

Method: Several meta-analytic integrations were conducted to examine the relationships between team training interventions and team functioning. Specifically, we assessed the relative effectiveness of these interventions on team cognitive, affective, process, and performance outcomes. Training content, team membership stability, and team size were investigated as potential moderators of the relationship between team training and outcomes. In total, the database consisted of 93 effect sizes representing 2650 teams.

Results: The results suggested that moderate, positive relationships exist between team training interventions and each of the outcome types. The findings of moderator analyses indicated that training content, team membership stability, and team size moderate the effectiveness of these interventions.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that team training interventions are a viable approach organizations can take in order to enhance team outcomes. They are useful for improving cognitive outcomes, affective outcomes, teamwork processes, and performance outcomes. Moreover, results suggest that training content, team membership stability, and team size moderate the effectiveness of team training interventions.

Application: Applications of the results from this research are numerous. Those who design and administer training can benefit from these findings in order to improve the effectiveness of their team training interventions.