A common notion in definitions of teams emphasizes that teams consist of interacting individuals. Understanding how teammates collaborate to yield a team outcome presents a critical problem for teams. Utilizing team research in organizational and sports psychology, and the work by physicists modeling human dynamics, the present work develops a computational study to investigate how individuals in a team collaborate to yield team performance. Collaboration may depend on factors such as team member preferences to work together, what teammates work together, and how teammates define the rules of interaction. These elements combine to affect the extent to which teammates work on their own (i.e., act) or work together (i.e., interact). Some configurations of collaboration provide greater opportunities to utilize the individual competencies of teammates, whereas other configurations provide greater opportunities to utilize teamwork competencies. The present work provides a nuanced understanding of how team collaboration leads to team members utilizing their most effective skills to impact team performance.
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