Honesty In Team Debriefs

Team debriefs are a way for teams to reflect on and learn about their past performance and improve in the future (Eddy et al., 2013; Tannenbaum & Cerasoli, 2013). For a debrief to improve performance, teams must make sense of their past processes and interactions, identifying both what went well and what they can do better in the future, making truthful communication important. Accordingly, we argue that candid disclosure—honest disclosure of information, feedback, and/or perspectives—increases team performance improvement both instrumentally through learning processes and socially through the social connections developed in the team. Furthermore, we argue our manipulation of honesty can address team member concerns that their honesty will lead to harm and/or conflict. To test these arguments, we collected data from 100 three-person teams in an online lab experiment. While we are still coding data, preliminary results show support for the role of social connection in improvement.