Chapter 7

The Nature of Teams

Synergy drives a great team

 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
• Team
• Group of people brought together to use complementary
skills to achieve a common purpose for which they are
collectively accountable.
• Teamwork
• Occurs when team members accept and live up to their
collective accountability by actively working together so that
all their respective skills are best used to achieve team goals.
 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
What Teams Do
• Teams that recommend things
• Established to study specific problems and recommend
solutions to them.
• Teams that run things
• Have formal responsibility for leading organizations and their
component parts.
• Teams that make or do things
• Work units that perform ongoing tasks.
 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
• Formal teams
• Created and officially designated to serve a specific organizational
purposes.
• May be permanent or temporary and vary in size and composition.
 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
• Informal groups
• Emerge and coexist as a shadow to the formal structure and without
any assigned purpose or
endorsement.
• Types of informal groups
• Friendship groups
• Interest groups
 What are teams and how are
they used in organizations?
• Cross-Functional and Problem-Solving Teams
• Cross-functional teams or task forces
• Members brought together from different functional departments
or work units to achieve horizontal integration and better lateral
relations.
• Problem-solving teams
• Created temporarily to serve a specific purpose by dealing with a
specific problem or opportunity.
• Employee involvement team
• Meet regularly to collectively examine important workplace issues
• Quality circles meet periodically to discuss and make proposals for
ways to improve quality.
 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?

• Functional silos problem

• Occurs when members of functional units stay focused on matters
internal to their function and minimize their interactions with
members dealing with other functions.
 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
• Employee involvement team
• Teams whose members meet regularly to collectively
examine important workplace issues.
• Quality circle - small team that meets periodically to discuss and
develop solutions relating to quality and productivity.
 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
• Self-managing teams
• Teams are empowered to make the decisions needed to manage
themselves on a day-to-day basis.
• Duties often replace those that were traditionally performed by the
manager.
Figure 7.1: Organizational and Management
Implications of Self-Managing Teams
What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
• Multiskilling
• Team members are expected to perform many different
jobs – even all the of the team’s jobs – as needed.
 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?

• Advantages of self-managing teams

• Productivity and quality improvements.
• Production flexibility and faster response to technological
change.
• Reduced absenteeism and turnover.
• Improved work attitudes and quality of work life.
• Disadvantages of self-managing teams
• May be hard for some team members to adjust to the “self-
managing” responsibilities.
• Higher-level managers may have problems dealing with the loss
of the first-line supervisors.
 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
• Virtual Team
• Members convene and work together through computer
mediation rather than interacting face-to-face .
• Can accomplish same tasks as face-to-face teams, but are
free from geographic barriers.
 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
• Advantages of virtual teams
• Brings together individuals who may be located at great differences
from one another.
• Offers obvious cost and time efficiencies.
• Focuses task accomplishment and decision making by reducing the
emotional considerations that may surface in face-to-face meetings.
 What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
• Disadvantages of virtual teams
• Members of virtual teams can have difficulties establishing good
working relationships.
• The lack of face-to- face interactions limits the role of emotions
and non verbal cues in the communication process.
 When is a team effective?

Effective Team
• One that achieves high levels of task performance, member
satisfaction, and team viability.
Effective teams achieve high levels of:
• Task performance
• Members attain performance goals regarding quantity,
quality, and timeliness of work results.
• Members satisfaction
• Members believe that their participation and experiences
are positive and meet important personal needs.
• Team viability
• Members are sufficiently satisfied to continue working
together on an ongoing basis.
 When is a team effective?

• Synergy
• The creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of
its parts.
• Individual can accomplish more through teamwork than
by working alone.
 When is a team effective?
Why teams are good for organizations
• Teams are beneficial as settings where people learn from one
another and share job skills and knowledge.
• The learning environment and the pool of experience within a team
can be used to solve difficult and unique problems.
• Opportunities for social interaction within a team can provide
individuals with a sense of security through work assistance and
technical advice.
• Team members provide emotional support for one another in
times of special crisis or pressure.
• Many contributions individuals make to teams can help members
experience self-esteem and personal involvement.
 When is a team effective?

Social facilitation theory

• Tendency for one’s behavior to be influenced by the presence of
others in a group or social setting.
• Positive result is extra effort when individual is proficient with
the task at hand.
• Negative result when the task is unfamiliar or a person lacks
the necessary skills.
 When is a team effective?

• Social loafing
• The tendency of people to work less hard in a group than they would
individually.
• Reasons for social loafing
• Individual contributions are less noticeable in the group context.
• Some prefer to see others carry the workload.
 When is a team effective?

Prevent social loafing

• Keep group size small.
• Redefine roles to make free riders more visible and peer pressures
to perform more likely.
• Increase accountability by making individuals performance
expectations clear and specific.
• Make rewards directly contingent on an individual’s performance
contributions.
Figure 7.2:
Five Stages of Team Development
 What are the stages of team
development?
Forming stage
• Initial entry of members to a team.
• Member challenges
• Getting to know each other
• Discovering what is considered acceptable behavior
• Determining the group’s real task
• Defining group rules
 What are the stages of group
development?
• Storming stage
• A period of high emotionality and tension among group members.
• Member challenges
• Hostility and infighting
• Formation of coalitions and cliques
• Clarification of members’ expectations
 What are the stages of team
development?

• Norming stage
• The point at which the members really begin to come together as a
coordinated unit.
• Member challenges
• Holding team together may over supersede task
accomplishment.
• Sense of cohesiveness may discourage minority views.
• Can result in false sense of team maturity.
What are the stages of team
development?
• Performing stage
• Marks the emergence of a mature, organized, and well-
functioning team motivated by group goals.
• Member challenges
• Continuing efforts to improve relationships and
performance.
Figure 7.3 Ten criteria for measuring the
maturity of a team
 What are the stages of team
development?
• Adjourning stage
• A well-integrated team is able to
• Disband when its work is finished.
• Work together in the future.
• Particularly important for temporary teams.
 What are the input foundations for
teamwork?

•Team effectiveness is affected by the

nature of the task
• Different tasks place different demands on teams.
• Well defined tasks contribute to effectiveness.
• Team effectiveness is harder to achieve with complex tasks.
interaction.
• Success at complex tasks is a source of high satisfaction
for team.
 What are the input foundations for
teamwork?
• Nature of task affects outcome
• Technical demands of a task
• The degree to which a task is routine or not, the level of difficulty
involved, and the information requirements.
• Social demands of a task
• Involve the degree to which the issues of interpersonal
relationships, ego, controversies, over ends and means, and the
like that come into play.
 What are the input foundations for
teamwork?
• Team size
• Can have an impact on a team’s effectiveness.
• As team size increases, performance and member satisfaction
increase up to a point.
• Team composition
• The mix of abilities, skills, personalities, and experiences that the
members bring to the team.
What are the input foundations for
teamwork?

• Team composition
• The mix of abilities, skills, personalities, and
experiences that the members bring to the team.
 What are the input foundations for
teamwork?
• Status
• A person’s relative rank, prestige or social standing.
• Status congruence
• Occurs when a person’s position within the team is equivalent in
status to positions the individual holds outside of it.
 What are the input foundations for
teamwork?
• Diversity and Team Performance
• Team diversity – consists of different values,
personalities, experiences, demographics, and cultures
among members.
 What are the input foundations for
teamwork?
• Diversity-Consensus Dilemma
• The tendency for diversity to make it harder for team members to
work together, even though the diversity itself expands the skills and
perspectives available for problem solving.
• Collective Intelligence
• The ability of a group or team to perform well across a range of
tasks.
Figure 7.5 Member Diversity, Stages of Team
Development, and Team Performance
 What are the input foundations for
teamwork?

• Group or team dynamics

• Forces operating in teams that affect the way members
relate to and work with one another.