Slides in the Tray: How Fire Crews Enable Members to Borrow Experiences

Abstract

Experiential learning is essential for many high-performing teams, yet there are also challenges to its incorporation into team training. Using an interpretivist lens, this study explores how members of wildfire crews are encouraged to appropriate the experiences of their teammates to improve team process. First, we offer a tripartite argument for how experiential learning is inhibited. Then, based on our findings, we argue that a key practice of critical teamwork is the ability of team members to “borrow” experiences or learn from the experiences of others. We examine how firefighters interpret the concept of experience; the delineation between experiences and personal experiences was often blurred, as some firefighters spoke about experience as something that could be gained through activities that are not specifically firefighting. We delineate five training interactions through which firefighters are encouraged to appropriate the experiences of their colleagues. We then discuss how this extends the principles of the Nested Phase Model for critical teams and suggest areas for future research. These findings have implications for all types of critical teams—including military units and medical teams—as well as high-reliability organizations.