Building%20an%20Effective%20Team

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Building an Effective Team

• Reference
• B. OKeefe, TEAMWORKS Skills for Collaborative
  Work, University of Illinois, http//www.vta.spco
  mm.uiuc.edu/ (etc)

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Lecture Overview

• Why Work in Teams?
• Distributing the Workload
• Reinforcing Individual Capabilities
• Creating Participation
• Important Questions for New Teams
• Members Attitudes
• Members Interaction Styles
• Members Motivations

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Why Work in Teams?

• 1 - Distributing the Workload
• Project is too big for one person
• Need simple numbers of people
• 2 - Reinforcing Individual Capabilities
• Project is too complex for one person
• Need a wider range of skills than one person has
• 3 - Creating Involvement
• Project is too important for one person
• Need a whole group to be committed to the result

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1 - Distributing the Workload

• Project is too big for one person
• Assumes the task is divisible into parallel
  subtasks
• Divisible Task building a car
• Indivisible Task carrying a heavy log
• Extreme approach Divide and Scatter
• partition the tasks into one subtask per person
• work tasks independently
• come back together at the end
• does not work for most projects
• Tend to see sublinear speedup due to dependencies

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1 - Distributing the Workload

• Types of dependencies between tasks
• Independent (completely parallelizable)
• can use divide and scatter
• Redundant (must be copied by all members)
• e.g. reading the background material
• Sequential (single exec. in a specified order)
• usually based on input/output sequence
• Mutually Exclusive (MUTEX) (single exec. in any
  order)
• resource constraints prevent parallelism

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1 - Distributing the Workload

• Precedence Graphs
• Independent
• Redundant
• Sequential
• MUTEX
• Hierarchical Dependencies

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Team Building Activity Divisible Independent
Tasks
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Your Example Precedence Graph
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2 - Reinforcing Individual Capabilities

• Task is too complex for one persons skill set
• Requires diversity in abilities
• Different members contribute different strengths
• True multidisciplinary team team in which no
  one person can accomplish the task alone (ABET)
• Relevant skills may be personal as well as
  technical
• writing skill
• speaking skill
• analytical vs. practical skills

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2 - Reinforcing Individual Capabilities

• Need to Identify and State Goals
• team goals
• individual goals
• Inventory of Resources
• individual strengths interests
• individual weaknesses disinterests
• Comment on diversity
• Your best friend may make a lousy team member
• The two of you are too much alike

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Your Example Project Goals

• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• 5.
• 6.
• 7.

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Team Building Exercise Clarifying Project
Expectations
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Your Example Personal Strengths

• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• 5.
• 6.
• 7.

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Your Example Personal Weaknesses

• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• 5.
• 6.
• 7.

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3. Creating Participation

• Sometimes group ownership is important
• Get group involved in a decision
• even though a single person decision may be
  easier
• If choice is obvious, then it will probably be
  the same
• If not obvious, then contributions will be
  valuable
• Either way
• Members all understand the thought behind
  decision
• They are less likely to complain later

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Important Questions for New Teams

• What is each members attitude toward teaming?
• Maybe some dislike teams completely?
• How do members Interaction styles differ?
• What is their individual focus?
• How do they react to a group?
• What motivates each individual?
• What does this person really want?
• What motivation will he/she respond to?

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Attitude Toward Teams

• Read The Statements Below
• Rate Each item as
• 4 strongly agree
• 3 agree
• 2 undecided or 50/50
• 1 disagree
• 0 strongly disagree

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Attitude Toward Teams

• I enjoy working in teams
• I often do work in teams
• Group decision making is important to
  organizations
• I prefer to work in a group rather than alone
• I am comfortable in leadership roles
• When working in a group I usually participate
  actively
• I like being evaluated based on the groups work
• I am good at reading other people
• I have important things to say when I am in a
  group

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Interaction Styles

• Two different ways of interacting
• 1. Is the person more
• task oriented - focused on the job and the
  results?
• People oriented - focused on relationships?
• 2. Is the person more of a
• Thinker - always thinking of the big picture
• Doer - wants to be given a task to accomplish
• Team needs some of each to complement each other

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What Motivates an Individual?

• Everybody is motivated by different things
• some are self-motivated
• some need a kick in the pants (figuratively)
• It helps to identify what motivates each
  individual
• no one technique works for everyone
• need several different carrots
• and several different sticks

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Summary

• Things to know about
• Team Goals
• Individual facets
• Personal goals
• Personal strengths and weaknesses
• Attitude toward teming in general
• Interaction style
• Motivation

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