Chapter 3: A Breakdown in Team Leadership

In 2001, a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine surfaced into a Japanese fishing boat during a routine training mission off the Hawaiian Islands, severing the boat, killing nine people, and creating an international incident. The submarine was known as one of the best in the fleet, expertly operated by a hand-selected crew and led by a talented and charismatic captain—what went wrong? This chapter uses a Team Resource Management (TRM) model of analysis as a means to find better ways in which to keep high-risk performance teams from breaking down under psychological stress, charisma, and time pressure. This chapter adds to a growing body of research about the influence of intra-team leadership alliances, the role of team protocols in organizational errors and their prevention, and the impact of the context on team performance during the critical period during which a disaster unfolds.