Teams and Teamwork

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Chapter 16

• Teams and Teamwork

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Planning Ahead Chapter 16

• How do teams contribute to organizations?
• What are the current trends in the use of teams?
• How do teams work?
• How do teams make decisions?

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Teams in Organizations

• Team
• A small group of people with complementary
  skills, who work together to achieve a shared
  purpose and hold themselves mutually accountable
  for performance results.
• Teamwork
• The process of people actively
• working together to accomplish
• common goals

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Team Teamwork Roles for Managers

• Supervisor serving as the appointed head of a
  formal work unit.
• Network facilitator serving as a peer leader an
  network hub for a special task force.
• Participant serving as a helpful contributing
  member of a project team.
• External coach serving as the external convenor
  or sponsor of a problem-solving team staffed by
  others.

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Figure 16.1 Team and teamwork roles for managers.
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How do Teams contribute to Organizations?

• Common problems in teams
• Personality conflicts.
• Individual differences in work styles.
• Ambiguous agendas.
• Ill-defined problems.
• Poor readiness to work.
• Lack of motivation.
• Conflicts with other deadlines or priorities.
• Lack of team organization or progress.
• Meetings that lack purpose or structure.
• Members coming to meetings unprepared.

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How do Teams contribute to Organizations?

• Seven sins of deadly meetings
• People arrive late, leave early, and dont take
  things seriously.
• The meeting is too long.
• People dont stay on topic.
• The discussion lacks candor.
• The right information isnt available, so
  decisions are postponed.
• No one puts decisions into action.
• The same mistakes are made meeting after meeting.

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How do Teams contribute to Organizations?

• Synergy
• The creation of a whole that is greater than the
  sum of its parts.
• A team uses its membership resources to the
  fullest and thereby achieves through collective
  action far more than could be achieved otherwise.

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Usefulness of Teams

• More resources for problem solving.
• Improved creativity and innovation.
• Improved quality of decision making.
• Greater commitments to tasks.
• Higher motivation through collective action.
• Better control and work discipline.
• More individual need satisfaction.

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Formal Groups

• Teams that are officially recognized and
  supported by the organization for specific
  purposes.
• Specifically created to perform
• essential tasks.
• Managers and leaders serve linking pin roles.

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Informal Groups

• Not recognized on organization charts.
• Not officially created for an organizational
  purpose.
• Emerge as part of the informal structure and from
  natural or spontaneous relationships among
  people.
• Include interest, friendship, and support groups.
• Can have positive performance impact.
• Can help satisfy social needs.

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What are the Current Trends in the Use of Teams?

• Committees, project teams, and task forces
• Committees.
• People outside their daily job assignments work
  together in a small team for a specific purpose.
• Task agenda is narrow, focused, and ongoing.
• Projects teams or task forces.
• People from various parts of an organization work
  together on common problems, but on a temporary
  basis.
• Official tasks are very specific and time
  defined.
• Disbands after task is completed.

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Guidelines for Managing Projects and Task Forces

• Select appropriate team members.
• Clearly define the purpose of the team.
• Carefully select a team leader.
• Periodically review progress.

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What are the Current Trends in the Use of Teams?

• Cross-functional teams
• Members come from different functional units of
  an organization.
• Team works on a specific problem or task with the
  needs of the whole organization in mind.
• Teams are created to knock down walls
  separating departments.

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What are the Current Trends in the Use of Teams?

• Employee involvement teams
• Groups of workers who meet on a regular basis
  outside of their formal assignments.
• Have the goal of applying their expertise and
  attention to continuous improvement.
• Quality circles represent a common form of
  employee involvement teams.

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What are the Current Trends in the Use of Teams?

• Virtual teams
• Teams of people who work together and solve
  problems through largely computer-mediated rather
  than face-to-face interactions.
• Sometimes called
• Computer-mediated groups
• Electronic group networks

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What are the Current Trends in the Use of Teams?

• Potential advantages of virtual teams
• Savings in time and travel expenses.
• Minimization or elimination of interpersonal
  difficulties.
• Ease of expansion.

• Potential problems of virtual teams
• Difficulty in establishing good working
  relationships.
• Depersonalization of working relationships.

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What are the Current Trends in the Use of Teams?

• Guidelines for managing virtual teams
• Virtual teams should begin with social messaging.
• Team members should be assigned clear roles.
• Team members must have positive attitudes that
  support team goals

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What are the Current Trends in the Use of Teams?

• Self-managing work teams
• Teams of workers whose jobs have been redesigned
  to create a high degree of task interdependence
  and who have been given authority to make many
  decisions about how to do the required work.
• Also known as autonomous work groups.

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Self-Managing Teams

• Typical self-management responsibilities
• Planning and scheduling work.
• Training members in various tasks.
• Sharing tasks.
• Meeting performance goals.
• Ensuring high quality.
• Solving day-to-day operating problems.
• In some cases, hiring and firing team members.

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Self-Managing Teams

• In self-managing work teams, members
• Are held collectively accountable for performance
  results.
• Have discretion in distributing tasks within the
  team.
• Have discretion in scheduling work within the
  team.
• Are able to perform more than one job on the
  team.
• Evaluate one anothers performance contributions.
• Are responsible for the total quality of team
  products.

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Figure 16.2 Organizational and management
implications of self-managing work teams.
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How do Teams work?

• Effective teams
• achieve and maintain high levels of task
  performance.
• achieve and maintain high levels of member
  satisfaction.
• retain viability for the future.

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How do Teams work?

• Resource input factors that influence group
  process in the pursuit of team effectiveness
• Nature of the task.
• Organizational setting.
• Team size.
• Membership characteristics.

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How do Teams work?

• Group process
• The way the members of any team work together as
  they transform inputs into outputs
• Also known as group dynamics.
• Includes communications, decision making, norms,
  cohesion, and conflict, among others.

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How do Teams work?

• Team diversity
• A variety of values, personalities, experiences,
  demographics, and cultures among members.
• Greater variety of available ideas, perspectives,
  and experiences.
• As team diversity increases, complexity of
  interpersonal relationships also increases

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Figure 16.3 An open-systems model of work team
effectiveness.
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Stages of Team Development

• Forming initial orientation and interpersonal
  testing.
• Storming conflict over tasks and ways of
  working as a team.
• Norming consolidation around task and operating
  agendas.
• Performing teamwork and focused task
  performance.
• Adjourning task accomplishment and eventual
  disengagement.

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How do Teams Work?

• Norms
• Behavior expected of team members.
• Rules or standards that guide behavior.
• May result in team sanctions.
• Performance norms
• Define the level of work effort and performance
  that team members are expected to contribute to
  the team task.

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Guidelines for Building Positive Norms

• Act as a positive role model.
• Reinforce the desired behaviors with rewards.
• Control results by performance reviews and
  regular feedback.
• Orient and train new members to adopt desired
  behaviors.
• Recruit and select new members who exhibit
  desired behaviors.
• Hold regular meetings to discuss progress and
  ways of improving.
• Use team decision-making methods to reach
  agreement.

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How do Teams Work?

• Cohesiveness
• The degree to which members are attracted to and
  motivated to remain part of a team.
• Can be beneficial if paired with positive
  performance norms.

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Guidelines for Increasing Team Cohesion

• Induce agreement on team goals.
• Increase membership homogeneity.
• Increase interaction among members.
• Decrease team size.
• Introduce competition with other teams.
• Reward team rather than individual results.
• Provide physical isolation from other teams.

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How do Teams Work?

• Dysfunctional activities that detract from team
  effectiveness
• Being aggressive
• Blocking
• Self-confessing
• Seeking sympathy
• Competing
• Withdrawal
• Horsing around
• Seeking recognition

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The Team Building Process

• Team building
• A sequence of planned
• activities used to gather
• and analyze data on the
• functioning of a team and
• to implement constructive
• changes to increase its operating effectiveness.

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The Team Building Process

• Steps in a cyclical team-building process
• Step 1 problem awareness.
• Step 2 data gathering.
• Step 3 data analysis and diagnosis.
• Step 4 action planning.
• Step 5 action implementation.
• Step 6 evaluation.

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Team Decision Making

• Assets of team decision making
• Greater amounts of information, knowledge, and
  expertise.
• Expands number of action alternatives considered.
• Increases understanding and acceptance.
• Increases commitment to follow through.

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Team Decision Making

• Potential disadvantages of team decision making
• Social pressure to conform.
• Individual or minority group domination.
• Time requirements.

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Team Decision Making

• Creativity in team decision making guidelines
  for brainstorming
• All criticism is ruled out.
• Freewheeling is welcomed.
• Quantity is important.
• Building on one anothers ideas is encouraged.

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Getting to Team Effectiveness


INPUTS SUPPORT
INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS
NORMS PROCESSES
ROLES CONTRIBUTIONS
GOALS
VISION
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Getting to Team Effectiveness

• What do we have to work with?
• What do we need to get the job done?

INPUTS SUPPORT
GOALS
VISION

• What do we want to achieve?
• How will we know when we get there?

• Why are we doing this?

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Getting to Team Effectiveness

• How well do we and can we get along?

INPUTS SUPPORT
INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS
GOALS
VISION
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Getting to Team Effectiveness


INPUTS SUPPORT
INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS
NORMS PROCESSES
VISION
GOALS

• What rules govern the team?
• How do we communicate, make decisions, etc.?

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Getting to Team Effectiveness


INPUTS SUPPORT
NORMS PROCESSES
INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS
ROLES CONTRIBUTIONS
GOALS
VISION

• Who is best at what?
• Who leads, and when?
• Who does what, when and why?

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Getting to Team Effectiveness


INPUTS SUPPORT
INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS
NORMS PROCESSES
ROLES CONTRIBUTIONS
VISION
GOALS

• Purpose
• served

• Specific
• Challenging
• Measurable

• Diversity
• Values
• Styles

• Meetings
• Decisions
• Rules

• Doing
• Helping
• Leading

• Talents
• Resources
• Task

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Chapter 16 Review

• How do teams contribute to organizations?
• What are the current trends in the use of teams?
• How do teams work?
• How do teams make decisions?