Experience feedback as an enabler of coordination: An aerobatic military team case

• We investigate the influence of experience feedback on coordination within teams when they operate under extreme circumstances.
• We rely on the case of an aerobatic military team named the French Air Force Aerobatic Team (AFAT).
• We demonstrate that experience feedback improves coordination in promoting the articulation of communication, socialization and reflexive practices of coordination.
• We finally address the conditions for teams to take advantage of experience feedback.

Although significant contributions have already opened the “black box” of coordination practices, the question of how these practices are articulated and interplay with coordination remains understudied. Our article investigates the effects of experience feedback on team coordination. We examine the way that members of the French Air Force Aerobatic Team (AFAT) exploit prior experiences to coordinate their knowledge and expertise in an extreme environment. Our findings demonstrate that experience feedback enables coordination. This feedback improves team coordination by promoting the articulation of communication, socialisation and reflexive practices and provides teammates with knowledge integration and a collective understanding of the extreme circumstances they manage.