Imagine that you, as a mid-level manager in your company, have been assigned to a six-person team asked to complete a top-priority project on a very short deadline. As it turns out, some of the people have never worked together before, members of the team change every hour or so, leadership constantly shifts between three different individuals, and any mistake by even one person could have disastrous, even fatal, consequences for the project’s outcome. Wharton management professor Katherine J. Klein spent 10 months studying such teams in action at the Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, Md., a world-renowned urban facility that treats more than 7,000 patients each year, most of whom arrive with severe, often life-threatening injuries. The project and research were funded by the U.S. Army Research Institute as part of its efforts to gather information about leadership strategies for teams working in highly dynamic and stressful situations.…