Military teams - A demand for resilience.

Background: The Royal Norwegian Naval Academy (RNoNA) has an interest in enhancing military teams' knowledge, skills and abilities to deal with complex situations and environments.

Objective: The objective is to document the need for resilience in military teams and to expand the understanding of how such behavior can be meaningfully instilled through team training interventions.

Method: Norwegian military subject matter experts (SMEs) assessed the performance of military teams participating in complex military training exercises. Eight cadet teams at the RNoNA were assessed during two separate 4-hour simulator training exercises and a 48-hour live training exercise.

Results: Positive Spearman rank correlation coefficients between resilience assessments in the simulator training exercises and the live training exercise were strongest when the simulator scenario emphasized resilience factors inherent in the live exercise, and weakest when the simulator scenario did not facilitate the task demands in the live exercise.

Conclusion: The study showed that resilience assessed in teams during simulator training exercises predicted their resilient behavior in a subsequent live training exercise and that the proper design of scenario-based simulator training can realistically and effectively represent resilience stressors found in live operations.