Chapter 8
Team dynamics
Learning Objectives
8.1 Explain why employees join informal groups, and
discuss the benefits and limitations of teams
8.2 Outline the team effectiveness model and discuss how
task characteristics, team size and team composition
influence team effectiveness
8.3 Discuss how the four team processes—team
development, norms, cohesion and trust—influence
team effectiveness
8.4 Discuss the characteristics and factors required for the
success of self-directed teams and virtual teams
8.5 Identify four constraints on team decision making and
discuss the advantages and disadvantages of four
structures aimed at improving team decision making
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Self-Managed Teams at RPG
At RPG Group, the introduction of work teams is based
on the assumption that empowered employees will
contribute to a high-performance work culture. To
support this initiative, team members are trained to work
together, identifying and solving work-related problems
with minimal supervision
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What are Teams?
•
•
•
•
•
Groups of two or more people
Exist to fulfil 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
• Production/service/
leadership teams
• Self-directed teams
• Advisory teams
• Task force (project)
teams
• Skunkworks
• Virtual 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:
– Innate drive to bond
– Social identity—we define ourselves by group
memberships
– Goal accomplishment
– Emotional support
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Advantages/Disadvantages of
Teams
• Advantages
– Make better decisions, products and services
– Better information sharing
– Increase employee motivation and engagement
 Fulfils 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 Minimise Social
Loafing
• Make individual performance more visible
– Form smaller teams
– Specialise tasks
– Measure individual performance
• Increase employee motivation
– Increase job enrichment
– Select motivated employees
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Team Effectiveness Model
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Organisation/Team
Environment
•
•
•
•
•
Reward systems
Communication systems
Organisational structure
Organisational leadership
Physical space
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Team’s Task Characteristics
• Teams work better when tasks are clear and
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
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Team Size
• Smaller teams are better because they:
– Need less time to coordinate roles and resolve
differences
– Require less time to develop more member
involvement, thus higher commitment
• But the team must be large enough to
accomplish the task
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Going Ape for Teams at Flight
Centre
<<Insert
Ape
Image p.
258>>
• Following evolutionary
principles, Flight Centre
and Symantec started
to break up large work
teams, and to reduce
their managers’ direct
reports
• Small Flight Centre
families report to
village-sized clusters of
five teams, which in turn
form a Flight Centre
tribe of up to 25 teams
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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 Cs)
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Five Cs of Team-member
Competencies
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Team Composition: Diversity
• Team members have diverse knowledge,
skills, perspectives, values, etc.
• Advantages
– View problems and possible solutions from
different perspectives
– Broader knowledge base
– Better representation of team’s constituents
• Disadvantages
– Take longer to become a high-performing team
– More susceptible to ‘fault lines’
– Increased risk of dysfunctional conflict
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Stages of Team Development
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Team Development as
Membership and Competence
• Two central processes in team development:
• Team membership formation
– Transition from ‘them’ to ‘us’
– Team becomes part of person’s social identity
• Team competence development
– Forming routines with others
– Forming shared mental models
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Team Roles
• A set of behaviours 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 that
the team establishes to regulate member
behaviours
• Norms develop through:
– Initial team experiences
– Critical events in team’s history
– Experience and 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 behaviours 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 continued
Somewhat
difficult entry
Team
success
External
challenges
• Team eliteness increases cohesion
• But lower cohesion with severe initiation
• Successful teams fulfil member needs
• Success increases social identity with team
• Challenges increase cohesion when not
overwhelming
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Team Cohesion Outcomes
•
•
•
•
•
•
Motivated to remain members
Willing to share information
Strong interpersonal bonds
Resolve conflict effectively
Better interpersonal relationships
Better performance (if norms aligned)
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Team Cohesion and
Performance
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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
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Self-Directed Teams
• SDTs are cross-functional work groups
organised around work processes
• They complete an entire piece of work
requiring several interdependent tasks
• They 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 organise and coordinate work
Work site and technology support team
communication/coordination
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Multicultural teams
• Teams built from employees around the
globe
• Can be affected by cultural differences:
– Norms (about power, communicating and
decision making)
– Values
– Local versus global perspectives
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Managing Multicultural Teams
• Managers of multicultural teams can make
one of three kinds of interventions:
– Encourage adaptation
– Implement a structural intervention
– Direct manager intervention
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Virtual Teams
• Teams whose members operate across
space, time and organisational boundaries
and are linked through information
technologies to achieve organisational tasks
– Increasingly possible because of:
 Information technologies
 Knowledge-based work
– Increasingly necessary because of:
 Organisational learning
 Globalisation
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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 organise/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 favour—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
•
•
•
•
Speak freely
Don’t criticise
Provide as many ideas as possible
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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Summary
• People have a drive to bond. As such, they
join informal groups and work in teams
• A team is effective when able to achieve its
objectives, fulfil the needs of its members
and maintain its survival
• The model of team effectiveness considers
the team and organisational environment,
team design and team processes
• Different team types (SDTs, virtual or
multicultural) have different challenges and
conditions for success
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Chapter 8
Team dynamics