1. Exploring Management
Chapter 14
Teams and Teamwork

2. Chapter 14 Why is it important to understand teams and teamwork?
What are the building blocks of successful teamwork?
How can managers create and lead high-performance teams?
Teams are an important part of management theory and practice.

3. Teams often suffer from common performance problems
14.1 Teams and Teamwork
Teams offer synergy and other benefits to organizations and their members
Teams often suffer from common performance problems
Organizations are networks of formal teams and informal groups
Much research shows that teamwork skills are highly valued by managers.

4. 14.1 CONTINUED Teams and Teamwork
Organizations use committees, task forces, and cross functional teams
Virtual teams are increasingly common in organizations
Self-managing teams are a form of job enrichment for groups
Employees enjoy working in a high performing, cohesive team.

5. TEAMS AND TEAMWORK Teamwork Benefits
collection of people with complementary skills who work together to accomplish shared goals while holding each other mutually accountable for performance results
Many tasks are beyond the capabilities of one person alone. Team support is increasingly necessary.

6. TEAMS AND TEAMWORK Teamwork Benefits
Synergy
The creation of a whole that exceeds the sum of its parts
Working together helps us to understand the strengths of teammates and creates synergy. Synergy is essential to high performance teams not only in sports, but for hospitals, firefighters, NASCAR teams and other work groups.

7. TEAMS AND TEAMWORK Teamwork Problems
Social loafing
The tendency of some people to avoid responsibility by free-riding in groups
To prevent social loafing
Keep groups small
Make task assignments interesting
Social loafing is evidence of a lack of commitment on the part of a team member.

8. TEAMS AND TEAMWORK Teamwork Problems
More teamwork performance problems
Personality conflicts
Differences in work styles
Competing goal and visions
Overly ambitious agendas
Poorly defined problems
Conflicts with other work deadlines or personal priorities
Bad experiences with teams in the past
Team members won’t often tell you the reason for their lack of commitment.

9. TEAMS AND TEAMWORK Formal and Informal
Formal teams
Officially recognized and supported by the organization
Department
Work units
Teams
Divisions
Members of formal teams usually have assigned roles which are often listed in a job description.

10. TEAMS AND TEAMWORK Formal and Informal
Informal groups
Grow spontaneously from co-worker relationships
Interest groups
Friendship groups
Support groups
There are probably as many informal groups in an organization as there are formal groups.

11. TEAMS AND TEAMWORK Types of Teams
Committee
brings together people outside of their daily job assignments to work in a small team for a specific purpose; the task agenda is specific and ongoing
Project teams or task forces
bring together people from various parts of the organization to work on common problems
Cross-functional team
has members from different functional units
Employee-involvement team
has members who meet on a regular basis to apply their expertise to continuous improvement
Quality circle
is a group of workers that meets regularly to discuss and plan specific ways to improve work quality
Cross functional teams used to be the domain of large companies with large projects. Now they are used extensively in organizations of all sizes.
A project team can be a form of a cross-functional team if the team members come from different functional units as they often do.
Quality circle teams originated in Japan. Interesting enough, in was an American named Deming that introduced the concept to the Japanese

12. TEAMS AND TEAMWORK Types of Teams
Virtual teams
Use technology to work together from different locations
Videoconferencing is becoming increasingly affordable and accessible. It’s a valuable tool as organizations become more global, use more independent contractors and when business travel becomes expensive.

13. TEAMS AND TEAMWORK Types of Teams
Self-managing teams
Have authority to make decisions about how they share and complete work
Self-managing teams can be a way to add job enrichment.

14. Teams need the right members and inputs to be effective
14.2 Successful Teamwork
Teams need the right members and inputs to be effective
Teams need the right processes to be effective
Teams move through different stages of development
Understanding the elements of successful teams helps managers develop high performing teams.

15. 14.2 CONTINUED Successful Teamwork
Team performance is affected by norms and cohesiveness
Team performance is affected by task and maintenance roles
Team performance is affected by communication networks

16. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Effective Teams
Effective teams have three output goals
Task performance
Member satisfaction
Team viability
NASCAR teams are highly trained teams with very specialized task performance.

17. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Effective Teams
Getting a good start by addressing each of the Inputs is very critical to team success. This is very similar to the “open systems” view of organizations.

18. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Effective Teams
Membership composition
Mix of abilities, skills, backgrounds and experiences of the members
Diverse teams
Generally more effective
A manager may have very little input into the membership composition of a team, but it helps to know the strengths and weaknesses of the make up of the group.

19. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Effective Teams
Inputs that affect team performance
Team size
Nature of the task
Organizational setting
Team process
The way members work together
Firefighters are unique groups because of the requirement that they live together at times, their extensive training, the variety of situations under which they must perform and the culture of their organization.

20. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Team Development
Stages of team development
Forming
team development, one of initial task orientation and interpersonal testing.
Storming
conflict over tasks and working as a team
Norming
coordination of task and operating agendas
Performing
Effective teamwork and focused task performance.
Adjourning
Completion of task, team may disband
Not all teams adjourn. In the case of project teams, a good team may pick up another project.

21. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Performance
Performance is affected by norms and cohesiveness
Norms
Expected behaviors
Cohesiveness
How committed team members are
Team norms are likely to established by team leaders or team members depending on the cohesiveness of the team.
Sports teams frequently have many formal norms or expectations.

22. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Performance
Low team cohesiveness will lead to poor performance and high turnover.

23. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Roles
Team performance is affected by task and maintenance roles
Task activities contribute directly to the team’s purpose
Maintenance activities support the emotional aspects of the team as a social system
Training supports task activities and team building supports maintenance activities.
Students may see some similarity to task and people orientation in leadership research.

24. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Roles
Distributed leadership
All members are responsible for recognizing when task or maintenance activities are necessary
Disruptive behaviors cause problems
Excessive joking
Aggressiveness
Non-participation
Distributed leadership results from a strong commitment by team members. Disruptive behaviors result from a lack of commitment, or lack of understanding how important ones’ role is. A little clowning may be good for morale. Too much is just disruptive and attention-seeking.

25. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Communication
Team performance is affected by use of communication networks
Decentralized
All members communicate directly
Centralized
Requires members to communicate through a central hub or center point
Restricted
Subgroups fail to communicate well, become antagonistic and restrict communication
Many organizations are moving toward more decentralized communication networks.
Restricted communication may be the cause or result of an “out-group”

26. SUCCESSFUL TEAMWORK Communication
Communication policies can create any of these situations via the Internet.

27. 14.3 High Performance Teams
Team building helps team members learn to better work together
Team performance is affected by use of decision-making methods
Team performance suffers when groupthink leads to bad decisions
Team performance benefits from good conflict management

28. HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS Team building
Involves activities to gather and analyze data on a team and make changes to increase its effectiveness
Team building activities are helpful in increasing team communication and cohesiveness. It is an example of a maintenance activity.

29. HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS Team Decisions
Decision making
The process of making choices among alternative courses of action
Consensus
After thorough discussion most team members favor one decision and other members agree to support the decision
Consensus requires a great deal of cooperation and trust.

30. HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS Team Decisions
Group think
Tendency of members of highly cohesive teams to lose their critical evaluative capabilities and make poor decisions
Group think is the mistaken assumption that we all agree, so there isn’t any need for critical analysis of the issue. This can result in poor decisions. Historical examples include the “Bay of Pigs” invasion, the Challenger disaster and introduction of “new Coke”.

31. HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS Conflict
Disagreement over issues of a substance and/or an emotional antagonism
Substantive conflict
Disagreements over goals, resources, rewards, policies, procedures, and job assignments
Emotional Conflict
Results from feelings of anger, distrust, dislike, fear, and resentment as well as from personality clashes
Conflict can be either Substantive, Emotional or both.

32. HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS Conflict
Five ways to deal with conflict
Conflict can be either Substantive, Emotional or both.

33. HIGH PERFORMANCE TEAMS Conflict
Conflict resolution
Removing the substantive or emotional reasons for a conflict
Collaboration
Involves working through conflict differences and solving problems so everyone wins
Conflict can be either Substantive, Emotional or both.