What are teams and how are they used in
organizations?
When is a team effective?
What are the stages of team
development?
How can we understand teams at work?
Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Team
 Group of people brought together to use
complementary skills to achieve a common
purpose for which they are collectively
accountable.
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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.
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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.
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Formal teams
 Created and officially designated to serve a
specific organizational purposes.
 May be permanent or temporary and vary in
size and composition.
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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
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Social network analysis – identifies the
informal groups and networks of
relationships that are active in an
organization.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Multiskilling
 Team members are expected to perform
many different jobs – even all the of the
team’s jobs – as needed.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Effective Team
 One that achieves high levels of task
performance, member satisfaction, and
team viability.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Common team challenges
 Social loafing
 Personality conflicts
 Uncertainty over tasks or competing goals
 Poorly defined agendas
 Lack of motivation
 Perceptions that team lacks purpose
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
o Success at complex tasks is a
source of high satisfaction for team.
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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.
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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.
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Team composition
 The mix of abilities, skills, personalities, and
experiences that the members bring to
the team.
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FIRO-B Theory (“fundamental interpersonal orientation”)
 Identifies differences in how people relate to
one another in groups.
 Individual difference determine needs to
express and receive feelings of inclusion,
control, and affection.
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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.
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Diversity and Team Performance
 Team diversity – consists of different values, personalities,
experiences, demographics, and cultures among
members.
 In homogeneous teams, members are very similar to one
another.
 In heterogeneous teams, members are very dissimilar,
teamwork problems are more likely.
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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.
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Group or team dynamics
 Forces operating in teams that affect the
way members relate to and work with one
another.
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