Part 4: Leading
Chapter 9
Understanding
Work Teams
PowerPoint Presentation by Charlie Cook
Copyright © 2004 Prentice Hall, Inc.
All rights reserved.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After reading this chapter, I will be able to:
1. Explain the growing popularity of work teams
in organizations.
2. Describe the five stages of team development.
3. Contrast work groups with work teams.
4. Identify four common types of work teams.
5. Explain what types of teams entrepreneurial
organization use.
6. List the characteristics of high-performing work
teams.
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9–2
L E A R N I N G O U T C O M E S (cont’d)
After reading this chapter, I will be able to:
7. Discuss how organizations can create team
players.
8. Explain how managers can keep teams from
becoming stagnant.
9. Describe the role of teams in continuous
process improvement programs.
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9–3
The Popularity Of Teams
• Teams typically outperform individuals when
tasks require multiple skills, judgment, and
experience.
• Teams are a better way to utilize individual
employee talents.
• The flexibility and responsiveness of teams is
essential in a changing environment
• Empowered teams increase job satisfaction and
morale, enhance employee involvement, and
promote workforce diversity.
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9–4
Stages of Team Development
EXHIBIT 9.1
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9–5
The Stages Of Team Development
• Stage 1: Forming
 The team experiences
uncertainty about its
purpose, structure, and
leadership.
• Stage 2: Storming
 Intragroup conflict
predominates within the
group
• Stage 4: Performing
 The team develops a
structure that is fully
functional and accepted by
team members.
• Stage 5: Adjourning
 The team prepares for its
disbandment.
• Stage 3: Norming
 Close relationships develop
and group members begin to
demonstrate cohesiveness.
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9–6
Work Groups And Work Teams
• Work group
 A group that interacts primarily to share information
and to make decisions that will help each member
perform within his or her area of responsibility
• Work team
 A group that engages in collective work that requires
joint effort and generates a positive synergy.
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9–7
Comparing Work Teams and Work Groups
EXHIBIT 9.2
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9–8
Types of Work Teams
EXHIBIT 9.3
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9–9
Types Of Work Teams
• Functional team
 A work team composed of a manager and the
employees in his or her unit and involved in efforts to
improve work activities or to solve specific problems
within particular functional unit
• Problem-solving team
 5 to 12 hourly employees from the same department
who meet each week to discuss ways of improving
quality, efficiency, and the work environment
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9–10
Types Of Work Teams (cont’d)
• Quality circle
 8 to 10 employees and supervisors who share an
area of responsibility and who meet regularly to
discuss quality problems, investigate the causes of
the problem, recommend solutions, and take
corrective actions but who have no authority
• Self-managed work team
 A formal group of employees that operates without a
manager and is responsible for a complete work
process or segment that delivers a product or service
to an external or internal customer
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9–11
Types Of Work Teams (cont’d)
• Cross-functional work team
 A team composed of employees from about the same
hierarchical level but form different work areas in an
organization who are brought together to accomplish
a particular task
• Virtual team
 A team that meets electronically; allows groups to
meet without concern for space or time
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9–12
ENTREPRENEURS’ USE TEAMS
• Empowered functional teams
 Teams that have authority to plan and implement
process improvements
• Self-directed teams
 Teams that are nearly autonomous and responsible
for many activities that were once the jurisdiction of
managers
• Cross-functional teams
 Teams that include a hybrid grouping of individuals
who are experts in various specialties and who work
together on various tasks
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9–13
Why Entrepreneurs Use Teams
• Teams facilitate the technology and market
demands the organization is facing.
• Teams help the organization to make products
faster, cheaper, and better.
• Teams permit entrepreneurs to tap into the
collective wisdom of the venture’s employees.
• Teams empower employees to make decisions.
• Team culture can improve the overall workplace
environment and worker morale.
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9–14
Characteristics of High-performing
Work Teams
EXHIBIT 9.4
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9–15
Challenges to Creating Team Players
• Managers attempting to introduce teams into
organization face the most difficulty when:
 When individual employee resistance to teams is
strong.
 Where the national culture is individualistic rather
than collectivist.
 When an established organization places high values
on and significantly rewards individual achievement.
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9–16
Team Member Roles
Source: Based on C. Margerison and D. McCann,
Team Management: Practical New Approaches
(London: Mercury Books, 1990).
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EXHIBIT 9.5
9–17
Shaping Team Behavior
• Proper selection
 Hire employees who have both the technical skills
and the interpersonal skills required to fulfill team
roles.
• Employee training
 Provide training that involves employees in learning
the behaviors required to become team players.
• Rewarding the appropriate team behaviors
 Create a reward system that encourages cooperative
efforts rather than competitive ones.
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9–18
How to Reinvigorate Mature Teams
EXHIBIT 9.6
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9–19
Teams And Continuous Process
Improvement Programs
• Teams provide the natural vehicle for employees
to share ideas and implement improvements.
• Teams are well suited to the high levels of
communication and contact, response,
adaptation, and coordination and sequencing in
work environments where continuous process
improvement programs are in place.
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9–20
Workforce Diversity’s Effects on Teams
• Fresh and multiple perspectives on issues help
the team identify creative or unique solutions
and avoid weak alternatives.
• The difficulty of working together may make it
harder to unify a diverse team and reach
agreements.
• Although diversity’s advantages dissipate with
time, the added-value of diverse teams
increases as the team becomes more cohesive.
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9–21