1. Teamwork
CHAPTER 14
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2. Chapter Introduction Quote
“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it.” Halford Luccock

3. Learning Objectives
1 Discuss how teams can contribute to an organization’s effectiveness. 2 Describe different types of teams. 3 Summarize how groups become teams. 4 Explain why groups sometimes fail. 5 Describe how to build an effective team. 6 List methods for managing a team’s relationships with other teams. 7 Identify ways to manage conflict.

4. The Contributions of Teams
Teams may be the building blocks for organizational structure. Teams can increase quality and productivity and reduce costs. Teams enhance speed and promote innovation and change. Teams promote member development.
More companies are increasingly turning to teams to keep their organizations competitive. Used properly, teams can be powerfully effective as a building block for organization structure.
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5. Types of Teams (1 of 2) Work Parallel Project Management
Teams that make or do things like manufacture, assemble, sell, or provide service
Teams that operate separately from the regular work structure, and exist temporarily
Project
Management
Teams that work on long-term projects but disband once the work is completed
Teams that coordinate and provide direction to the subunits under their jurisdiction and integrate work among subunits
Your organization may have hundreds of groups and teams, and the variety of different types is vast. This slide and the next give a few of the best-known examples. Team descriptions continue on the following slide.

6. Types of Teams (2 of 2) Transnational Virtual
Work groups composed of multinational members whose activities span multiple countries
Physically dispersed that communicate electronically more than face-to-face
Teaming
A strategy of teamwork on the fly. In teaming, organizations create many temporary, changing teams.
Transnational teams are work teams composed of multinational members whose activities span multiple countries. Such teams differ from other work teams by being multicultural and by often being geographically dispersed, being psychologically distant, and working on highly complex projects having considerable impact on company objectives.
Transnational teams tend to be virtual teams, communicating electronically more than face-to-face. Although other types of teams may operate virtually as well. Virtual teams face difficult challenges: building trust, cohesion, and team identity, and overcoming the isolation of virtual team members.

7. Best Practices of Virtual Team Leaders
Establish and maintain trust through the use of communication technology.
Ensure diversity in the team is understood, appreciated, and leveraged.
Manage virtual work cycle and meetings.
Monitor team progress through the use of technology.
Enhance external visibility of the team and its members.
Ensure individuals benefit from participating in virtual teams.
Transnational teams tend to be virtual teams. Virtual teams face difficult challenges: building trust, cohesion, and team identity, and overcoming the isolation of virtual team members. Exhibit 14.1 (recreated on this slide) suggests ways that managers can improve the effectiveness of virtual teams.
SOURCE: Adapted from Malhotra, A., Majchrzak, A., and Rosen, B., “Leading Virtual Teams,” Academy of Management Perspectives, February 2007, pp. 60–70.

8. Self-Managed Teams Groups that have no managerial responsibilities
Traditional work groups
Self-managed teams
Groups that have no managerial responsibilities
Groups in which workers do all or most of the jobs previously made by frontline supervisors
Autonomous work groups
Self-designing teams
Groups that control decisions about and execution of a complete range of tasks
Autonomous work groups, plus control over hiring, firing, and deciding what tasks members perform
Today many types of work teams exist, with different labels.

9. Work Groups and Real Teams
Group and team should not be interchangeably.
A working group is a collection of people who work in the same area or have been drawn together to undertake a task but do not necessarily come together as a unit and achieve significant performance improvements.
A real team is formed of people with complementary skills who trust one another and are committed to a common purpose, common performance goals, and a common approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.
The words group and team often are used interchangeably. Making a distinction between groups and teams can be useful. A working group is a collection of people who work in the same area or have been drawn together to undertake a task but do not necessarily come together as a unit and achieve significant performance improvements. A real team is formed of people (usually a small number) with complementary skills who trust one another and are committed to a common purpose, common performance goals, and a common approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

10. Stages of Team Development
Description
Forming
Group members agree on their shared goals, and norms and closer relationships develop.
Storming
Hostilities and conflict arise, and people jockey for positions of power and status.
Norming
Performing
The group channels its energies into performing its tasks.
Assume you are the leader of a newly formed group—actually a bunch of people. What will you face as you attempt to develop your group into a high-performing team? If groups are to develop successfully, they will engage in various processes, including the broad categories detailed in Exhibit 14.2, recreated on this slide.
SOURCE: Adapted from Tuckman, B. W., “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups,” Psychological Bulletin 63, 1965, pp. 384–99.

11. Teaming Challenges Helpful practices: Emphasizing the team’s purpose
Embracing failure
Building psychological safety
Putting conflict to work
Practices that are particularly helpful in the team context include:
(1) emphasizing the team’s purpose, including why we exists, what’s at stake, and what its shared values are;
(2) building psychological safety, making clear that people need to and can freely speak up, be honest, disagree, offer ideas, raise issues, share their knowledge, ask questions, or show fallibility without fear that others will think less of them or criticize them;
(3) embracing failure, understanding that mistakes are inevitable, errors should be acknowledged, and learning as we go is a way to create new knowledge while we execute;
and
(4) putting conflict to work by explaining how we arrive at our views, expressing interest in one another’s thinking and analyses, and attempting fully to understand and capitalize on others’ diverse perspectives.
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12. Building Effective Teams
Team effectiveness is defined by three criteria.
Productive output of the team meets or exceeds standards of quantity and quality.
Team members realize satisfaction of their personal needs.
Team members remain committed to working together again.
What does it really mean for a team to be effective? Team effectiveness is defined by three criteria.
Team productivity. The output of the team meets or exceeds the standards of quantity and quality expected by the customers, inside and outside the organization, who receive the team’s goods or services.
Member satisfaction. Team members realize satisfaction of their personal needs.
Member commitment. Team members remain committed to working together again; that is, the group doesn’t burn out and disintegrate after a grueling project. Looking back, the members are glad they were involved. In other words, effective teams remain viable and have good prospects for repeated success in the future.

13. Motivating Teamwork Social loafing
Working less hard and being less productive when in a group
Social facilitation effect
Working harder when in a group than when working alone
Accountability to one another, rather than just to the boss, is an essential aspect of good teamwork.
Sometimes individuals work less hard and are less productive when they are members of a group. Such social loafing occurs when a person believes that their contributions are not important, others will do the work for them, their lack of effort will go undetected, or they will be the lone sucker if they work hard but others don’t. Conversely, sometimes individuals work harder when they are members of a group than when they are working alone. This social facilitation effect occurs because individuals usually are more motivated when others are present, they are concerned with what others think of them, and they want to maintain a positive self-image.

14. Norms and Roles
Norms
Shared beliefs about how people should think and behave
Roles
Different sets of expectations for how different individuals should behave
Task specialist role
Team maintenance specialist role
Norms are shared beliefs about how people should think and behave.
Roles are different sets of expectations for how different individuals should behave.
Two important sets of roles must be performed.
Task specialist roles are filled by individuals who have particular job-related skills and abilities. These employees keep the team moving toward accomplishment of the objectives.
Team maintenance roles develop and maintain harmony within the team. They boost morale, give support, provide humor, soothe hurt feelings, and generally exhibit a concern with members’ well-being.

15. Social Enterprise Co-Working Reaches a New Level
Co-working offers space on a temporary basis in which to work and connect with other people. Such interactions can lead to the exchange of business or project ideas, providing strategic advice, or acquiring new projects.
Do you think co-working can help entrepreneurs or remote workers feel like part of a team?
What do you think the owners of co-working spaces can do to promote collaboration and information sharing among their clients?
Do you think co-working can help entrepreneurs or remote workers feel like part of a team?
The model may work in the United States, but it is important to keep in mind that Americans like to have more personal space when working on projects, as compared to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Overall, there is nothing really stopping this model form working in the United States. There is also UberOffices that is exhibiting this concept in the United States.
What do you think the owners of co-working spaces can do to promote collaboration and information sharing among their clients?
Student answers will vary, but in general, are expected to focus on facilitating the exchange of information or project ideas through collaboration and networking. These activities can lead to great strategic advice and the ability to network and acquire new projects.

16. Exhibit 14.3 Cohesiveness, Performance Norms, and Group Performance
One of the most important properties of a team is cohesiveness. Expanding the Chapter 13 description, cohesiveness refers to how attractive the team is to its members, how motivated members are to remain in the team, and the degree to which team members influence one another. In general, it refers to how tightly knit the team is.
Jump to Appendix 2 for long description of image.

17. Building Cohesiveness and High-Performance Norms
Recruit members with similar attitudes, values, and backgrounds.
Maintain high entrance and socialization standards.
Keep the team small.
Help the team succeed, and publicize its successes.
Be a participative leader.
Present a challenge from outside the team.
Tie rewards to team performance.
Managers should build teams that are cohesive and have high-performance norms. The actions listed on the slide can help create such teams.

18. Managing Outward
Gatekeeper. A team member who keeps abreast of current developments and provides the team with relevant information.
Informing. A strategy that entails making decisions with the team and then informing outsiders.
Parading. A strategy that entails simultaneously emphasizing team building and external visibility.
Several vital roles link teams to their external environments—that is, to other individuals and groups both inside and outside the organization.
Probing. A strategy that requires team members to interact frequently with outsiders, diagnose their needs, and experiment with solutions

19. Lateral Role Relationships
Workflow relationships emerge as materials are passed from one group to another.
Service relationships exist when top management centralizes an activity to which a large number of other units must gain access.
Advisory relationships are created when teams with problems call on centralized sources of expert knowledge.
Audit relationships develop when people not directly in the chain of command evaluate the methods and performances of other teams.
Teams do not function in a vacuum; they are interdependent with other teams. These interdependencies require coordination and leadership. To understand the process and make it more productive, it helps to know the different types of lateral role relationships .Different teams, like different individuals, have roles to perform.
Stabilization relationships involve auditing before the fact.
Liaison relationships involve intermediaries between teams.

20. Exhibit 14.5 Conflict Management Strategies
The complex maze of interdependencies provides many opportunities for conflict to arise among groups and teams. Some conflict is constructive for the organization. Typically, conflict can foster creativity when it is about ideas rather than personalities. In contrast, team members can work to maintain harmony during meetings, but unresolved differences can spill over into nasty remarks outside the office.
Jump to Appendix 2 for long description of image.
SOURCE: Thomas, K., “Conflict and Conflict Management,” Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, ed. M. D. Dunnette. Skokie, IL: Rand McNally, 1976.

21. Managing Conflict with Superordinate Goals
Higher-level goals taking priority over specific individual or group goals
Collaboration is an open-minded discussion aimed at making the conflict constructive rather than destructive, and includes airing feelings and opinions, addressing all concerns, and not letting personal attacks interfere with problem solving. An important technique is to invoke superordinate goals—higher-level organizational goals toward which everyone should be striving and that ultimately need to take precedence over personal or unit preferences. Collaboration offers the best chance of reaching mutually satisfactory solutions based on the ideas and interests of all parties and of maintaining and strengthening work relationships.
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22. Being a Mediator Mediator
A third party who intervenes to help others manage their conflict
Four-stage model of dispute resolution
Investigate
Review findings
Apply solutions
Follow-up
You already may have served as a mediator, a third party intervening to help settle a conflict between other people. Third-party intervention, done well, can improve working relationships and help the parties improve their own conflict management, communication, and problem-solving skills.
Mediators may wish to follow a four-stage strategy, summarized in Exhibit 14.6 (recreated in text form on this slide.)
They investigate by interviewing the disputants and others and gathering more information.
They review the findings to determine how best to resolve the dispute, often in conjunction with the disputants’ bosses. They do not assign blame prematurely; at this point they explore solutions.
They take action by applying solutions and explaining their decisions and the reasoning, and advise or train the disputants to avoid future incidents.
And they follow up by making sure everyone understands the solution, documenting the conflict and the resolution, and monitoring the results by checking back with the disputants and their bosses.
SOURCE: Adapted from Blum, M., and Wall Jr., J. A., “HRM: Managing Conflicts in the Firm,” Business Horizons, May–June 1997, pp. 84–87.

23. Electronic and Virtual Conflict
When teams are geographically dispersed, as is often the case for virtual teams, team members tend to experience more conflict and less trust.
To limit issues:
Monitor and reduce or eliminate problems as soon as possible.
When problems arise, express willingness to cooperate, and then actually be cooperative.
When teams are geographically dispersed, as is often the case for virtual teams, team members tend to experience more conflict and less trust. Conflict management affects the success of virtual teams. Try to prevent conflicts before they arise; for example, make sure your information system is running smoothly before linking with others. Monitor and reduce or eliminate problems as soon as possible. When problems arise, express your willingness to cooperate, and then actually be cooperative. Even technical problems require the social skills of good management.

24. Management in Action Cohesiveness and Conflict at Whole Foods
A sense of mission and shared values unifies employees at Whole Foods Market.
Serving on a team fulfilling a mission gives each team member a sense of purpose.
The company’s appreciation of diversity may be a challenge to cohesiveness.
Employees at Whole Foods Market are unified by the company’s sense of mission and shared values. However, in its appreciation of diversity, Whole Foods also creates an environment in which cohesiveness requires some extra effort. Shoppers at Whole Foods may notice that its employees represent many different backgrounds and have wide latitude for dressing in self-expressive ways. Though appearances differ, employees focus on achieving team goals (sometimes in competition with other teams). In spite of this, conflicts do erupt, such as an episode over two employees’ use of Spanish during a team meeting in Albuquerque.

25. Management in Action - Questions Cohesiveness and Conflict at Whole Foods
How does Whole Foods promote team cohesiveness? What else can it do?
How should Whole Foods manage the conflict in its Albuquerque store? What should it do to minimize similar conflicts in the future?
If you were in this situation, would your conflict management styles involve avoidance, accommodation, compromise, competition, or collaboration?
How does Whole Foods promote team cohesiveness? What else should it do?
Whole Foods recruits team members who share its corporate values, despite coming from different backgrounds. Its hiring process, which includes team interviews and a probationary period followed by a vote, establishes fairly high entrance and socialization standards. It encourages team member participation in decisions and sets up competitions among teams. It also ties incentive pay to team performance. Whole Foods could consider using other measures associated with cohesiveness: keeping teams small, facilitating team success, publicizing team successes, and competing against threats outside the company.
How should Whole Foods manage the conflict in its Albuquerque store? What should it do to minimize similar conflicts in the future?
Answers will vary. It is important to note that only limited information about the situation is available, and without speaking directly to everyone involved, it is impossible to assess fairly whether the workers’ anger was justified and whether they expressed their anger appropriately.
If you were in this situation, would your conflict management styles involve avoidance, accommodation, compromise, competition, or collaboration? Why?
Answers will vary depending on students’ responses to the previous question. However, they should reflect a correct understanding of the five conflict styles, including the appropriateness of each in different situations.

26. In Review
1 Discuss how teams can contribute to an organization’s effectiveness. 2 Describe different types of teams. 3 Summarize how groups become teams. 4 Explain why groups sometimes fail. 5 Describe how to build an effective team. 6 List methods for managing a team’s relationships with other teams. 7 Identify ways to manage conflict.