Chapter 10
Managing Teams
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The Advantages of Teams
Teams improve…
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Customer satisfaction
Product and service quality
Product development speed and efficiency
Employee job satisfaction
– Cross-training
• Decision making
– Multiple perspectives
– More alternate solutions
– Commitment to decisions
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The Disadvantages of Teams
• Initially high turnover
• Social loafing
• Disadvantages of Group Decision Making
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Groupthink
Minority domination
Inefficient meetings
Lack of accountability
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When to Use and When Not to Use Teams
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Autonomy
The degree to which workers have
the discretion, freedom, and
independence to decide how and
when to accomplish their jobs.
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Team Autonomy Continuum
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Teams
• Traditional work groups
– where two or more people work together to
achieve a shared goal.
• Employee involvement teams
– which have somewhat more autonomy, meet on
company time on a weekly or monthly basis to
provide advice or make suggestions to management
concerning specific issues, such as plant safety,
customer relations, or product quality.
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Teams
• Semi-autonomous work groups
– not only provide advice and suggestions to
management, but they also have the authority to make
decisions and solve problems related to the major tasks
required to produce a product or service.
• Self-managing teams
• are different from semi-autonomous work groups in
that team members manage and control all of the
majors tasks directly related to production of a
product or service without first getting approval
from management.
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Teams
• Self-designing teams
– have all the characteristics of self-managing
teams, but they can also control and change
the design of the teams themselves, the tasks
they do and how they do them, and who
belongs to the teams.
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Special Kinds of Teams
• Cross-functional teams
• Virtual teams
• Project teams
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Cross-Functional Teams
• Employees from different
functional areas
• Attack problems from
multiple perspectives
• Generate more ideas and
alternative solutions
• Often used in conjunction
with matrix and product
organizational structures
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Virtual Teams
Tips for Managing
Successful Virtual Teams
• Select self-starters and strong communicators
• Keep the team focused on clear, specific goals
• Provide frequent feedback
• Keep team upbeat and action-oriented
• Periodically bring team members together
• Improve communications
• Ask team members for feedback on how well
team is working
• Empower virtual teams
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Project Teams
• Created to complete specific, one-time
projects within a limited time
• Often used to develop new products,
improve existing products, roll out new
information systems, or build new
factories/offices
• Can reduce or eliminate
communication barriers,
and speed up the
design process
• Promote flexibility
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Work Team Characteristics
• Team norms
• Team cohesiveness
• Team size
• Team conflict
• Stages of team development
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Team Norms
Informally agreed-on standards that
regulate team behavior.
• Regulate the everyday actions that
allow teams to function effectively
• Teams with negative norms influence
team member to engage in negative
behaviors
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Team Cohesiveness
The extent to which team members are attracted to
a team and motivated to remain in it.
•Make sure that all team members are present at
team activities.
•Create additional opportunities for teammates to
work together.
•Engage in nonwork activities.
•Make employees feel they are part of a special
organization.
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Team Size
• In very large teams, members find it
difficult to get to know one another, and
team can splinter into subgroups.
• Very small groups may lack diversity
and knowledge found in large teams.
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Performance
Team Size
Size
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Team Conflict
• Cognitive conflict
– members disagree because of different
experiences and expertise
• Affective conflict
– results in hostility, anger, resentment,
distrust, cynicism, apathy
• Emphasizing c-type conflict is not
enough
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Having a Good Fight
• Work with more, not less, information
• Develop multiple alternatives to enrich
debate
• Establish common goals
• Inject humor into the workplace
• Maintain a balance of power
• Resolve issues without forcing a
consensus
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Stages of Team Development
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Stages of Team Development
• Forming
– Getting acquainted, forming initial impressions,
getting a sense of what it will be like to be a team
member.
• Storming
– Conflict and disagreement arise, personalities
clash, team members jockey for position and
establish favorable roles.
• Norming
– Members settle into their roles, team goals
established, differences resolved, friendship
developed, members begin working together.
• Performing
– Becomes an effective, functioning team.
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Enhancing Work Team
Effectiveness
Setting
Team Goals and
Priorities
Team
Training
Selecting
Team Members
Team
Compensation
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Setting Team Goals and Priorities
• Increasing a team’s performance is
inherently more complex than just
increasing one person’s performance.
• Challenging team goals affect how hard
team members work.
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Stretch Goals
Extremely ambitious goals that workers
don’t know how to reach.
•Teams must have a high degree of autonomy
•Teams must be empowered with control over
resources
•Structural accommodation
•Bureaucratic immunity
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Selecting Team Members
• Individualists
– put their own welfare and interests first
• Collectivists
– put group interests ahead of self
• Team level
– the average level of ability, experience,
personality, or any other factor on a team
• Team diversity
– variances or differences in ability, personality,
or any other factor on a team
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Team Training
• Interpersonal skills
• Decision making skills
• Problem solving skills
• Conflict resolution skills
• Technical training
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Team Compensation and Recognition
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The level of reward must match the level of
performance
•
Three methods of compensating team
participants:
– skill-based pay
– gainsharing
– nonfinancial rewards
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Team Compensation
• Skill-based pay
– pay employees for learning additional skills
or knowledge
• Gainsharing
– companies share the financial value of
performance gains with their workers
• Nonfinancial rewards
– vacations, T-shirts, awards, certificates
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© 2015 Cengage Learning
Team Compensation and Recognition
37%
According to one survey, only
of companies
are satisfied with their team compensation plans.
10%
Only
are extremely positive about their team
compensation plans.
Evidence of the challenge presented by developing
team-based compensation.
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