Cooperative Teams

Essential Elements of Cooperative Teams-1

• Positive interdependence• Promotive interaction• Individual accountability• Learning and practicing interpersonal and group

skills• Group processing

Positive interdependence

Promotive interaction

Individual accountability

• hold group accountable for achieving its goals• hold each member accountable for contributing

his/her share

Learning and practicing interpersonal and group skills

• need to learn and practice skills– effective leadership– decision-making– trust-building– communication– conflict-resolution

• know how to do it, reflect and refine use, and use automatically

Group processing

• reflect on how group is functioning

• improve continuously

Stages of Team Growth

• Forming• Storming• Norming• Performing

Forming• Explore the boundaries of acceptable group

behavior; test the leader’s guidance. • Feelings: excitement, optimism, tentative

attachment to the team, suspicion, fear, and anxiety.

• Behaviors: complaints about the organization and barriers to the task, discussion of problems not relevant to the task, impatience with discussions, decisions on what information needs to be gathered.

Storming• Most difficult stage; team members realize that the task

is different and more difficult than realized; members become testy, blameful, or overzealous.

• Feelings: resistance to task and quality improvement approaches; sharp fluctuations in attitude about team and project’s chance of success.

• Behaviors: arguing among members even when they agree on real issues; defensiveness and competition, questioning of wisdom of guidance team, leaders; establishing unrealistic goals; concern about excessive work; some disunity, tension and jealousy.

Norming• Members reconcile competing responsibilities; they

accept the team and the individuality of team members. • Feelings: a new ability to express criticism

constructively, acceptance of membership in the team, and relief that everything is going to work out.

• Behaviors: attempt to achieve harmony by avoiding conflict, more friendliness, confiding in each other and sharing of personal problems; team cohesion, common spirit and goals, establishing and maintaining team ground rules and boundaries (norms).

Performing• Team has settled its relationships and expectations. They

can begin performing--diagnosing and solving problems-and choosing and implementing changes. All members have discovered and accepted each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and learned what their roles are.

• Feelings: members having insights into personal and group processes, and better understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

• Behaviors: constructive self-change, ability to prevent or work through group problems and close attachment to team.

Guidance Team• Guidance Team

– Oversee and support activities of project teams– Guide efforts– Evaluates Individual Efforts– Before the project

• identify the project goals• prepare a mission statement• determine needed resources• select team and team leaders• assign quality advisor

– During the project• meet regularly with project team• develop and improve teams• insure changes are made

Role of Team Leader• Team Leader

– calls and facilitates meeting– handles and assigns administrative details– orchestrates all team activities, and– oversees preparations for reports and

presentations

“Best Practice”

• Rotate task assignments for meetings• Recorder writes task assignments, each

person signs, and task assignments are emailed within 24 hours of meeting

• Each task is assigned to 2 people: a primary (who does the task) and a “nagger” who checks on primary to ensure progress is being made

Team Notebooks• One for each team: Graded. • There is no predefined format for the notebook.

o Meeting recordso Emailo Individual contributions o Draftso Task assignmentso Team processing documentation

• to protect you: describes your contribution to the team.

Discussion Skills

•  Necessary for effective team meetings• Every meeting should include actions that

facilitate discussion. • Need to practice these. 

Guidelines for Constructive Feedback

• Acknowledge the need for feedback• Give positive and negative feedback

Common Discussion Problems• One or two people dominate the

conversation and ignore contributions• One or two people contribute and the others

do not participate

Common Discussion Problems• “I say something at a meeting and everyone

agrees, but later, no one remembers or they say they didn’t agree.”

• “My teammate says something at the meeting, but later claims (s)he said something different.”

• “My teammates don’t listen to what I’m saying: they hear what they want to hear.”

Discussion, More Do’s• Listen - This is the hard part. Try to understand what

is being said before making any comments about it. Don't interrupt or complete sentences. Before commenting on an idea, rephrase it and ensure you understand. 

• Summarize - Occasionally compile what’s been said and restate it to the group in summary form. Follow a summary with a question to check for agreement.

• Contain digression - Do not permit overlong examples or irrelevant discussion.

Discussion Skills• Manage time • End the discussion • Test for consensus• Constantly evaluate the meeting process.