Navigating Team Dynamics with the BOAT Model
The BOAT Model materialized one day in 2014 when two colleagues and I (Molly Cox and Nicole Reudy Cohen) were in our team room on the UW campus noodling on the best way to frame a comprehensive set of Team Emergent States (TES). We'd done an extensive review of workplace team research literature to curate a list of these dynamic feelings, thoughts, and motivations that are collectively experienced (in other words, shared) by team members and emerge from their joint interactions as teammates.
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This was for a gamification project inspired by the book Boys in the Boat. We aimed for players to explore the context, inputs, and processes that create and impact important shared states that are precursors to high performance in teams. Our game, set in a boathouse like the Pocock Rowing Center, featured rowers joining a crew, and used a few rowing terms like "catching a crab" for when things go wrong or "flow" for when everything goes right and the team is in perfect synch and harmony.
Our effort was part of a gamification project inspired by the biographical book Boys in the Boat. Our game design aimed for players to discover (and even reveal to us) the context, inputs, and processes that create, sustain, amplify or diminish these important shared states that are precursors to high performance in teams. Our proposed game would feature rowers coming together as a crew in a boathouse modeled on the Pocock Rowing Center and use a few rowing terms like "catching a crab" for whe