Team
Dynamics
What are Teams?

Groups of two or more
people

Exist to fulfill a purpose

Interdependent -- interact
and influence each other

Mutually accountable for
achieving common goals

Perceive themselves as a
social entity
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Many Types of Teams
•
Departmental teams
•
Task force (project)
teams
•
Production/service/
leadership teams
•
Skunkworks
•
Self-directed teams
•
Virtual teams
•
Advisory teams
•
Communities of practice
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Informal Groups

Groups that exist primarily for the benefit of
their members

Reasons why informal groups exist:
1. Innate drive to bond
2. Social identity -- we define ourselves by group
memberships
3. Goal accomplishment
4. Emotional support
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Advantages and Disadvantages of Teams
Advantages
• Make better decisions, products/services
• Better information sharing
• Higher employee motivation/engagement
- Fulfills drive to bond
- Closer scrutiny by team members
- Team members are benchmarks of comparison
Disadvantages
• Individuals better/faster on some tasks
• Process losses - cost of developing and
maintaining teams
• Social loafing
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How to Minimize Social Loafing

Make individual performance more
visible
• Form smaller teams
• Specialize tasks
• Measure individual performance

Increase employee motivation
• Increase job enrichment
• Select motivated employees
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Team Effectiveness Model
Team Design
•Task characteristics
Team
Effectiveness
•Team size
Organizational
•Team composition
• Satisfy member
needs
and Team
Environment
• Accomplish tasks
Team Processes
• Maintain team
survival
• Team development
• Team norms
• Team cohesiveness
• Team trust
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Organization/Team Environment

Reward systems

Communication systems

Organizational structure

Organizational leadership

Physical space
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Team’s Task Characteristics

Teams work better when tasks are clear, easy
to implement
• learn roles faster, easier to become cohesive
• ill-defined tasks require members with diverse
backgrounds and more time to coordinate

Teams preferred with higher task
interdependence
• Extent that employees need to share materials,
information, or expertise to perform their jobs.
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Levels of Task Interdependence
High
A
Reciprocal
B
Sequential
A
C
B
C
Resource
Pooled
Low
A
B
C
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Team Size

Smaller teams are better because:
• need less time to coordinate roles and resolve
differences
• require less time to develop more member
involvement, thus higher commitment

But team must be large enough to
accomplish task
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8-11
Shell Looks for Team Players
Shell holds the 5-day Gourami
Business Challenge in Europe,
North America, and Asia to
observe how well the
university students work in
teams. One of the greatest
challenges is for students from
different cultures and
educational specializations to
work together.
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Team Composition

Effective team members
must be willing and able
to work on the team

Effective team members
possess specific
competencies (5 C’s)
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Five C’s of Team Member
Competencies
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Team Composition: Diversity


Team members have with diverse knowledge,
skills, perspectives, values, etc.
Advantages
• better for creatively solving complex problems
• broader knowledge base
• better representation of team’s constituents

Disadvantages
• take longer to become a high-performing team
• more susceptible to “faultlines”
• increased risk of dysfunctional conflict
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Stages of Team Development
Performing
Norming
Storming
Forming
Existing teams
might regress
back to an
earlier stage of
development
Adjourning
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Team Development as Membership
and Competence
Two central processes in team development
1. Team membership formation
• Transition from “them” to “us”
• Team becomes part of person’s social identity
2. Team competence development
• Forming routines with others
• Forming shared mental models
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Team Roles

A set of behaviors that people are expected
to perform
 Some formally assigned; others informally
 Informal role assignment occurs during team
development and is related to personal
characteristics
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Team Building
Formal activities intended to improve the team’s
development and functioning
Types of Team Building
• Clarify team’s performance goals
• Improve team’s problem-solving skills
• Improve role definitions
• Improve relations
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Team Norms

Informal rules and shared expectations team
establishes to regulate member behaviors

Norms develop through:
• Initial team experiences
• Critical events in team’s history
• Experience/values members bring to the team
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Preventing/Changing Dysfunctional
Team Norms

State desired norms when forming teams

Select members with preferred values

Discuss counter-productive norms

Reward behaviors representing desired
norms

Disband teams with dysfunctional norms
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Team Cohesion

The degree of attraction people feel toward the team
and their motivation to remain members

Both cognitive and emotional process

Related to the team member’s social identity
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Influences on Team Cohesion
Member
similarity
• Similarity-attraction effect
• Some forms of diversity have less effect
Team
size
• Smaller teams tend to be more cohesive
Member
interaction
• Regular interaction increases cohesion
• Calls for tasks with high interdependence
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Influences on Team Cohesion (con’t)
Somewhat
difficult entry
Team
success
External
challenges
• Team eliteness increases cohesion
• But lower cohesion with severe initiation
• Successful teams fulfillmember needs
• Success increases social identity with team
• Challenges increase cohesion when not
overwhelming
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Team Cohesion Outcomes
1.
Motivated to remain members
2.
Willing to share information
3.
Strong interpersonal bonds
4.
Resolve conflict effectively
5.
Better interpersonal relationships
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Team Cohesion and Performance
Team Norms
Support
Company
Goals
Team Norms
Oppose
Company
Goals
Moderately
high task
performance
High task
performance
Moderately
low task
performance
Low task
performance
Low Team
Cohesiveness
High Team
Cohesiveness
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Trust Defined
Positive expectations one person has of
another person in situations involving
risk
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Three Levels of Trust
High
Identification-based Trust
Knowledge-based Trust
Calculus-based Trust
Low
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Self-Directed Teams Defined
Cross-functional work groups organized around work
processes, that complete an entire piece of work
requiring several interdependent tasks, and that have
substantial autonomy over the execution of those tasks.
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Self-Directed Team Success Factors





Responsible for entire work process
High interdependence within the team
Low interdependence with other teams
Autonomy to organize and coordinate work
Technology supports team
communication/coordination
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Virtual Teams
Teams whose members operate across space,
time, and organizational boundaries and are
linked through information technologies to
achieve organizational tasks
• Increasingly possible because of:
- Information technologies
- Knowledge-based work
• Increasingly necessary because of:
- Organizational learning
- Globalization
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Virtual Team Success Factors

Member characteristics
• Technology savvy
• Self-leadership skills
• Emotional intelligence

Flexible use of communication technologies
 Opportunities to meet face-to-face
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Team Decision Making Constraints

Time constraints
• Time to organize/coordinate
• Production blocking

Evaluation apprehension
• Belief that others are silently evaluating you

Peer pressure to conform
• Suppressing opinions that oppose team norms

Groupthink
• Tendency in highly cohesive teams to value consensus
at the price of decision quality
• Concept losing favor -- consider more specific features
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General Guidelines for Team
Decisions





Team norms should encourage critical
thinking
Sufficient team diversity
Ensure neither leader nor any member
dominates
Maintain optimal team size
Introduce effective team structures
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Constructive Conflict
Courtesy of Johnson Space Center/NASA

People focus their discussion on the issue while
maintaining respectfulness for others having different
points of view.

Problem: constructive conflict easily slides into
personal attacks
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Rules of Brainstorming
1.
Speak freely
2.
Don’t criticize
3.
Provide as many ideas as possible
4.
Build on others’ ideas
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Evaluating Brainstorming

Strengths
• Produces more creative ideas
• Less evaluation apprehension when team supports
a learning orientation
• Strengthens decision acceptance and team
cohesiveness
• Sharing positive emotions encourages creativity

Weaknesses
• Production blocking still exists
• Evaluation apprehension exists in many groups
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Electronic Brainstorming

Relies on networked computers to submit and
share creative ideas
 Strengths -- more creative ideas, minimal
production blocking, evaluation apprehension,
or conformity problems
 Limitations -- too structured and technologybound
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Nominal Group Technique
Describe
problem
Individual
Activity
Team
Activity
Individual
Activity
Write down
possible
solutions
Possible
solutions
described
to others
Vote on
solutions
presented
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