Chapter 9: Teams

Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Teams

• A team consists of two or more people who work interdependently over some time period to accomplish common goals related to some task-oriented purpose.» Teams are used in the majority of

organizations in the United States, regardless of whether the organization is large or small.

» Some researchers have suggested that almost all major U.S. companies are currently using teams or planning to implement them and that up to 50 percent of all employees in the United States work in a team as part of their job.

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Team Characteristics

• Team Types» Work teams are designed to be relatively permanent.

– Purpose is to produce goods or provide services, and they generally require a full-time commitment from their members.

» Management teams are designed to be relatively permanent.

– Responsible for coordinating the activities of organizational subunits—typically departments or functional areas—to help the organization achieve its long-term goals.

» Parallel teams are composed of members from various jobs who provide recommendations to managers about important issues that run “parallel” to the organization’s production process.

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Types of Teams, Cont’d

• Team Types, Cont’d» Project teams are formed to take on “one-time” tasks that

are generally complex and require a lot of input from members with different types of training and expertise.

» Action teams perform tasks that are normally limited in duration. However, those tasks are quite complex and take place in contexts that are either highly visible to an audience or of a highly challenging nature.

• Variations within Team Types» Virtual teams are teams in which the members are

geographically dispersed, and interdependent activity occurs through electronic communications—primarily e-mail, instant messaging, and Web conferencing.

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Stages of Team Development

• Forming - try to understand the boundaries in the team and get a feel for what is expected of them.

• Storming - remain committed to ideas, triggers conflict that affects some relationships and harms the team’s progress.

• Norming - realize that they need to work together to accomplish team goals.

• Performing - members are comfortable working within their roles, and the team makes progress toward goals.

Forming

Storming

Norming

Performing

Tim

e

Adapted from Figure 9-2

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Punctuated Equilibrium

• At the initial team meeting, members make assumptions and establish a pattern of behavior that lasts for the first half of its life.

Adapted from Figure 9-2

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Team Interdependence

• Task interdependence refers the degree to which team members interact with and rely on other team members for the information, materials, and resources needed to accomplish work for the team.» Pooled interdependence requires lowest degree of

required coordination, members complete their work assignments independently, and then this work is simply “piled up” to represent the group’s output.

» Sequential interdependence requires different tasks to be done in a prescribed order, interact to carry out their work, the interaction only occurs between members who perform tasks that are next to each other in the sequence.

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Team Interdependence, Cont’d

» Reciprocal interdependence requires members are specialized to perform specific tasks. However, instead of a strict sequence of activities, members interact with a subset of other members to complete the team’s work.

» Comprehensive interdependence requires the highest level of interaction and coordination among members. Each member has a great deal of discretion in terms of what they do and with whom they interact in the course of the collaboration involved in accomplishing the team’s work.

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Goal and Outcome Interdependence

• A high degree of goal interdependence exists when team members have a shared vision of the team’s goal and align their individual goals with that vision as a result.» Develop a formalized mission statement that team

members buy into.• A high degree of outcome interdependence

exists when team members share in the rewards that the team earns.» Pay, bonuses, formal feedback and recognition, pats

on the back, extra time off, and continued team survival.

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Team Composition

• Team composition is the mix of people who make up the team.» Role is defined as the behaviors a person is expected

to display in a given context.– Team task roles refer to behaviors that directly facilitate the

accomplishment of team tasks.– Team building roles refer to behaviors that influence the

quality of the team’s social climate.– Individualistic roles reflect behaviors that benefit the

individual at the expense of the team.» Teams with members who possess higher

levels of cognitive ability perform better because teamwork tends to be quite complex.

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Team Composition, Cont’d

• Team diversity is the degree to which members are different from one another in terms of any attribute that might be used by someone as a basis of categorizing people. » Value in diversity problem-solving approach says

diversity is beneficial because it provides for a larger pool of knowledge and perspectives from which a team can draw as it carries out its work.

» Similarity-attraction approach says people tend to be more attracted to others who are perceived as more similar.

» Surface-level diversity refers to diversity regarding observable attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex, and age.

» Deep-level diversity refers to diversity with respect to attributes that are less easy to observe initially, but that can be inferred after more direct experience.

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Team Composition, Cont’d

• Member personality traits affect how teams function and perform.» Conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraverted

• Team Size» Having a greater number of members is beneficial for

management and project teams but not for teams engaged in production tasks.

» Research concluded that team members tend to be most satisfied with their team when the number of members is between 4 and 5.

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Team Processes

• Team process is a term that reflects the different types of activities and interactions that occur within teams and contribute to their ultimate end goals. » Team processes include interactions among

members that occur behaviorally, as well as the hard to-see feelings and thoughts that coalesce as a consequence of member interactions.

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Team Value

• Process gain is getting more from the team than you would expect according to the capabilities of its individual members.» Synonymous with synergy.» Results in useful resources and capabilities that did

not exist before the team created them.• Process loss is getting less from the team than

you would expect based on the capabilities of its individual members.

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Process Loss

• Coordination loss consumes time and energy that could otherwise be devoted to task activity. » Production blocking occurs when members have

to wait on one another before they can do their part of the team task.

• Motivational loss is the loss in team productivity that occurs when team members do not work as hard as they could.

• Social loafing happens when members exert less effort when working on team tasks than they would if they worked alone on those same tasks.

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Taskwork Processes

• Taskwork processes are the activities of team members that relate directly to the accomplishment of team tasks.» When teams engage in creative behavior, their

activities are focused on generating novel and useful ideas and solutions.

– Brainstorming involves a face-to-face meeting of team members in which each offers as many ideas as possible about some focal problem or issue.

– Nominal group technique is similar to a traditional brainstorming session, but it makes people write down ideas on their own, thereby decreasing social loafing and production blocking.

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Taskwork Processes, Cont’d

• Decision Making» Decision informity reflects whether members

possess adequate information about their own task responsibilities.

» Staff validity refers to the degree to which members make good recommendations to the leader.

» Hierarchical sensitivity reflects the degree to which the leader effectively weighs the recommendations of the members.

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Teamwork Processes

• Teamwork processes refer to the interpersonal activities that facilitate the accomplishment of the team’s work but do not directly involve task accomplishment itself.» Behaviors that create the setting or context in

which taskwork can be carried out.» Transition processes, action processes,

interpersonal processes9-18

Teamwork Processes, Cont’d

• Transition processes are teamwork activities that focus on preparation for future work.» Mission analysis involves an analysis of the team’s task,

the challenges that face the team, and the resources available for completing the team’s work.

» Strategy formulation refers to the development of courses of action and contingency plans, and then adapting those plans in light of changes that occur in the team’s environment.

» Goal specification involves the development and prioritization of goals related to the team’s mission and strategy.

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Teamwork Processes, Cont’d

• Action processes are important as the taskwork is being accomplished.» Systems monitoring involves keeping track of things

that the team needs to accomplish its work.» Helping behavior involves members going out of

their way to help or back up other team members.» Coordination refers to synchronizing team members’

activities in a way that makes them mesh effectively and seamlessly.

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Teamwork Processes, Cont’d

• Interpersonal processes are important before, during, or in between periods of taskwork.» Motivating and confidence building refers to things

team members do or say that affect the degree to which members are motivated to work hard on the task.

» Conflict management involves activities that the team uses to manage conflicts that arise in the course of its work.

– Relationship conflict refers to disagreements among team members in terms of interpersonal relationships or incompatibilities with respect to personal values or preferences.

– Task conflict refers to disagreements among members about the team’s task. 9-21

Team States

• Team states refer to specific types of feelings and thoughts that coalesce in the minds of team members as a consequence of their experience working together.» Cohesion happens when members of teams develop

strong emotional bonds to other members of their team and to the team itself.

– Groupthink is the drive toward conformity at the expense of other team priorities.

– Avoid too much cohesion by assessing the team’s cohesion, and appointing a devil’s advocate.

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Team States, Cont’d

• Potency refers to the degree to which members believe that the team can be effective across a variety of situations and tasks.» When a team has high potency, members are

confident that their team can perform well, and as a consequence, they focus more of their energy on achieving team goals.

» Potency has a strong positive impact on team performance.

• Mental models refer to the level of common understanding among team members with regard to important aspects of the team and its task.

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Importance of Team Processes

• Teamwork processes have a moderate positive relationship with team performance.

• Teamwork processes have a strong positive relationship with team commitment.» Teams that engage in effective teamwork processes

tend to continue to exist together into the future.» People tend to be satisfied in teams in which there are

effective interpersonal interactions.

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