Management Chapter 14 "Teams and Teamwork"
Self Managing Teams "Autonomous work groups" Advantages-better performance, higher morale, and decreased costs ***Key feature is multitasking
Have the authority to make decisions about how they share and complete their work Responsibilities of Self Managing Teams often include: -planning and scheduling work -training members in various tasks -meeting performance goals -ensuring high quality -solving day-to-day operating problems
Virtual Teams "Distributed Teams" ****Constant Improvement in technology makes this easier and more common today
Members work together to solve problems by communicating through computer-based interactions instead of face-to-face
Team Diversity ***Diversity needs to be effectively managed
Mix of skills, experiences, backgrounds, and personalities of team members
Project Teams "Task Forces" EX. Might be formed to address employee retention problems
Put together people to work on a common problem, but on a temporary rather than a continuing basis. Group is disbanded after completing its task.
Disruptive Behaviors Examples-Excessive joking, non-participation, and aggressiveness
Self Serving and cause problems for team effectiveness
Task Activity and Maintenance Activity -Essential activities for helping team members work well together over time Distributed Leadership
TA- Contribute directly towards team performance purposes MA-Support the emotional life of a team as an ongoing social system DL-Concept that focuses on every member of a team being continually responsible for both recognizing when task or maintenance activities are needed and taking action to provide them.
Team size and organizational settings are two major drivers behind team outputs/performance. ***Best agreed upon team size is generally 5-7 people for creative tasks ***Want to have an odd number of members so there is not potential for a tie in team voting
Teams are more likely when they are given the right support. The more members a team has the harder it becomes to engage in the interactions needed for good problem solving.
Team Process Team IQ ***Best teams excel because their members know how to use their talents in cooperation with others
The way team members work together to accomplish tasks Ability of a team to perform well by using talent and emotional intelligence
Informal Teams/Groups EXAMPLES: Interest Groups Friendship Groups Support Groups
Unofficial team or group of people that emerges from relationships and shared interests among members Interest Groups=members pursue a common cause Friendship Groups= develop for a variety of personal reasons, shared hobbies. Support Groups=Members help one another out in work and personal affairs
Formal Team ***Headed by supervisors, managers, department heads, team leaders.
-A team of people officially recognized and supported by the organization -Can be described as departments, work units, teams, or divisions
Decentralized communication networks -Creates a more interactive team which can boost morale Centralized communication networks -Creates a coacting team, hub member often experiences most of the satisfaction Restricted communication networks -Creates counteracting team environment where subgroups can have outwardly antagonistic relationships
-Allows all members to communicate directly with one another. -Communication flows only between individual members and a hub or center point. -Members work individually and pass completed tasks to the hub member -Communication network made up of subgroups where each contest one another's positions and restrict interactions with one another
Employee Involvement Team ***Quality Circle is an Example
-Group that meets together on a regular basis with the goal of using their expertise and experience for continuous improvement. Quality Circle-Team of employees that meets periodically to discuss and plan ways to improve work quality
Team building Ex. Ropes Course Decision Making
-Involves activities to gather and analyze data on a team and make changes to increase its effectiveness -Process of making decisions among alternative course of action
Cross-Functional Teams
-Operates with members who come from different functional units of an organization
Social Loafing (Common Performance Problem in Teams) ****Being a social loafer can hurt your reputation in the long run
-Presence of one or more "free riders" who slack off and allow other team members to be responsible for most of the work.
Groupthink *Danger of group decision making
-Tendency for highly cohesive teams to lose their evaluative capabilities -Occurs when teams strive so hard to reach agreements and avoid disagreement that they make bad decisions
***4 Ways to Combat Social Loafing
1. Reward individuals for contributions 2. Make individuals visible by keeping team sizes small 3. Encourage peer pressure to perform 4. Make task assignments more interesting
Effective Team
Achieves high levels of Task Performance, Membership Satisfaction, and Future viability
Advantages of Virtual Teams Disadvantages of Virtual Teams
Advantages -Allows people who may be located far away from one another offering cost and time efficiencies -Makes it easy to widely share lots of information, keep records of team activities, and maintain databases -Helps reduce interpersonal problems that might otherwise occur when team members are dealing face-to-face with controversial issues Disadvantages -Goals may be more unclear and meeting requests may be too frequent -May be more difficult to establish strong working relationships without face-to-face interaction -Limits the role of emotion and nonverbal cues in conversation, which depersonalizes member relations
Norm-guides overall team behaviors Performance Norm Cohesiveness
Behavior, rule, or standard expected to be followed by team members Defines the effort and performance contributions expected of team members The degree to which members are attracted to and motivated to remain part of a team
Heterogenous teams **More difficult to manage relationships amongst these teams than homogenous teams
Have members with diverse personal characteristics When well managed these teams can be strong problem solvers of complex and creative tasks.
Homogeneous teams ***At risk of underperforming on complex or creative tasks because of how similar members are in background, training, and experience
Have members with similar personal characteristics
Committee EX. Committees are often in place to deal with issues like diversity, quality, and compensation
Brings together people outside of their daily job assignments to work in a small team for a specific purpose.
Conflict Substantive Conflict -CAN BE productive Emotional Conflict -Is NEVER productive
C-Disagreement over issues of substance and or emotional antagonism SC-Involves disagreements over goals, resources, rewards, policies, procedures, and job assignments EC-Results from feelings of anger, distrust, dislike, fear, resentment, as well as personality clashes.
Team Teamwork (People working together to accomplish a shared goal) is a major performance asset.
Collection of people who regularly interact to pursue common goals. -Hold each other mutually accountable for performance results
Synergy
Creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.
Stages of Team Development 1. Forming (More difficult in culturally diverse teams) 2. Storming (period of high emotionality) 3. Norming (Cooperation becomes key in this stage) 4. Performing(mature/well functioning at this point) 5. Adjourning (Prepare to achieve closure and disband)
Forming Stage-A stage of initial orientation and interpersonal testing Storming Stage-A stage of conflict over tasks and working as a team Norming Stage-Stage of consolidation around task and operating agendas Performing Stage- A stage of teamwork and focused task performance Adjourning Stage- A stage of task completion and disengagement