Shared Mental Models are the foundation for highly functioning teams.
When people learn about a subject area, they initially accumulate facts. As their expertise in the area grows, they create mental models to help them understand relationships.
We use this understanding of relationships in decision making to determine what information is relevant to the decision and how it should affect the decision.
When teams have different mental models representing the same information, they require more communication and are likely to come to different conclusions.
When teams have shared mental models, they require less communication, can anticipate what their teammates will do, and understand how their work can impact their teammates.