MNO Ch.9 Managing Groups and Teams

During what stage of Tuckman's 5 stages of Group Development: Group leaders can finally move into coaching roles and help members grow in skill and leadership?

Performing

During what stage of Tuckman's 5 stages of Group Development do participants think questions such as: "Do our operating procedures best support productivity and quality assurance? Do we have suitable means for addressing differences that arise so we can preempt destructive conflicts? Are we relating to and communicating with each other in ways that enhance group dynamics and help us achieve our goals? How can I further develop as a person to become more effective?"

Performing Stage

What kind of task interdependence is this? In football were each player has a unique "assignment" he is responsible for during a specific play.

Pooled interdependence

Team leadership is a major determinant of?

how autonomous a team can be.

As the team's task requires communication, collaboration, and coordination, team performance will be highly dependent on?

how cohesive the team is

In addition, matrix organizations have Cross-Functional Teams in which?

individuals from different parts of the organization staff the team, which may be temporary or long-standing in nature.

Virtual teams are teams in which?

members are not located in the same physical place

Referred to as after-action review, retrospective meeting, de-brief meeting, or even post mortem, these meetings help?

members discuss what went right, what went wrong, and what could have been done differently.

Top teams make decisions on?

new markets, expansions, acquisitions, or divestitures

Teams also tend to be defined by their?

relatively smaller size.

the top team is most effective when?

team composition is diverse—functionally and demographically—and when it can truly operate as a team, not just as a group of individual executives

Keys to address in a team contract are?

team values and goals, team roles and leadership, team decision making, team communication expectations, and how team performance is characterized.

Many groups or teams formed in a business context are project oriented and therefore are?

temporary

Self-managed teams are empowered teams, which means?

that they have the responsibility as well as the authority to achieve their goals.

Task interdependence refers to?

the degree that team members are dependent on one another to get information, support, or materials from other team members to be effective.

The performance of a group consists of?

the inputs of the group minus any process losses, such as: -the quality of a product -ramp-up time to production -or the sales for a given month

Traditional manager-led teams are teams in which?

the manager serves as the team leader *These types of teams are the most natural to form

Groups with high cohesion and high task commitment tend to be?

the most effective

The ideal size for a team depends on?

the task

Teams differ in terms of?

the tasks they are trying to accomplish

The purpose of assembling a team is?

to accomplish larger, more complex goals

In what mild ways can cohesive groups go awry?

-Group members can value their social interactions so much that they have fun together but spend little time on accomplishing their assigned task -a group's goal may begin to diverge from the larger organization's goal and those trying to uphold the organization's goal may be ostracized (e.g., teasing the class "brain" for doing well in school).

What are the challenges virtual teams face?

-Management Challenges -Building Trust: Companies often invest in bringing a virtual team together at least once so members can get to know each other and build trust. In manager-led virtual teams, managers should be held accountable for their team's results and evaluated on their ability as a team leader.

What are steps to take to avoid getting stuck in the storming phase of group development?

-Normalize conflict -Be inclusive -Make sure everyone is heard -Support all group members -Remain positive -Don't rush the group's development

Early research found that teams tend to have 2 categories of roles:

1. Those related to the tasks at hand 2. Those related to the team's functioning

Denial increases as problems are ignored and failures are blamed on external factors. With limited, often biased, information and no internal or external opposition, groups like these can make disastrous decisions. This is an example of what kind of group?

A group with too much cohesion

Other teams may be temporary or ongoing, such as: Product Development Teams that is?

A team in charge of designing a new product.

Groupthink (definition):

A tendency to avoid a critical evaluation of ideas the group favors.

The US Army is an organization that utilizes what extensively and consistently?

After-action reviews

What results in performance gains, higher levels of team confidence, a greater openness of communication, and has beneficial effects on team cohesiveness?

After-action reviews

What kind of task is where a team is charged with coming up with a new marketing slogan?

An Idea-generation task

Top management teams are?

Appointed by the chief executive officer (CEO) and, reflect the skills and areas that the CEO considers vital for the company

What is more strongly related to performance behaviors rather than outcomes?

Cohesion

In what kind of environment, can groups easily adopt extreme ideas that will not be challenged?

Environment where there is too much cohesion

True or False: A collection of people is a team.

False A collection of people is a group

Social loafing also known as the Ringelmann effect, was first noted by?

French agricultural engineer Max Ringelmann

What happens to groups that take the time to get to know each other socially in the forming stage?

Groups tend to handle future challenges better because the individuals have an understanding of each other's needs.

What is a group pressure phenomenon that increases the risk of the group making flawed decisions by allowing reductions in mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment?

Groupthink

Many organizations and teams are realizing that what can make a difference for future performance?

How you adjourn

What kind of task interdependence is this? In baseball where the ball is fielded and then relayed from player to player until it reaches its ultimate destination

Sequential interdependence

What is more a matter of perceiving that one will receive neither one's fair share of rewards if the group is successful nor blame if the group fails?

Social Loafing

When what role is filled do team members feel more cohesive, and the group is less prone to suffer process losses or biases such as social loafing, groupthink, or a lack of participation from all members?

Social roles

During what stage of Tuckman's 5 stages of Group Development do groups get stuck?

Storming

During what chaotic stage, a great deal of creative energy that was previously buried is released and available for use, but it takes skill to move the group from _____ stage to _____ stage?

Storming to Norming stage

According to Tuckman's 5 stages of Group Development model, what is required in order to successfully facilitate a group?

The leader needs to move through various leadership styles over time

Little seems to get accomplished during what stage of Tuckman's 5 stages of Group Development?

The storming phase

One advantage of cohesive groups is?

Their tendency to share information and knowledge, which often is a key component of innovativeness and creativity.

Team members better share information and perform better when?

They perceive that outcomes are interdependent

What happens to groups that do not go through the storming phase early on?

They will often return to this stage toward the end of the group process to address unresolved issues

True or False: Effective teams give companies a significant competitive advantage.

True

True or False: Teams also do well when their members have different cognitive styles.

True

True or False: Teams can, but do not always, provide improved performance.

True

Research shows that cohesion leads to?

acceptance of group norms

Production tasks include?

actually making something, such as a building, product, or a marketing plan.

A working group may dissolve due to?

an organizational restructuring

Process loss is?

any aspect of group interaction that inhibits group functioning.

An example of a temporary team is a: Task Force that is?

asked to address a specific issue or problem until it is resolved

Cohesive groups are those in which members are?

attached to each other and act as one unit

Cohesion:

can be thought of as a kind of social glue. It refers to the degree of trust/friendship within the group.

Groups that are similar, stable, small, supportive, and satisfied tend to be more?

cohesive than groups that are not

Problem-solving tasks refer to?

coming up with plans for actions and making decisions.

Idea-generation tasks deal with?

creative tasks, such as brainstorming a new direction or creating a new process.

Groupthink is most common in?

highly cohesive groups

Social roles serve to?

keep the team operating effectively

Overall, team-based organizations have more?

motivation and involvement, can often accomplish more than individuals.

Ineffective leaders might always engage in the same task role behaviors, when what they really need is to focus on?

social roles, put disagreements aside, and get back to work.

Cohesion can help support group performance if the group values?

task completion

Teams that engage in a greater level of boundary-spanning behaviors increase?

team effectiveness

What are some of the benefits in creating a cohesive group?

-Members are generally more personally satisfied and feel greater self-confidence and self-esteem -Can be a buffer against stress, which can improve mental and physical well-being -More likely to regularly attend and actively participate in the group, taking more responsibility for the group's functioning -Draw on the strength of the group to persevere through challenging situations

What happens to members of groups where there is too much cohesion?

-Members can began to overvalue belonging, leading to internal pressure to conform -Become conflict avoidant -Members might censor themselves -Superficial sense of harmony and less diversity of thought -Members attempting to make a change may even be criticized or undermined by other members -Excommunicate members who dare to disagree -The more strongly members identify with the group, the easier it is to see outsiders as inferior -Not getting corrective feedback from within its own confines -Closing itself off from input and a cross-fertilization of ideas from the outside

What are the 3 Major Classes of Tasks identified by Richard Hackman:

-Production tasks -Idea-generation tasks -Problem-solving tasks

Why are virtual teams formed?

-Some are are formed by necessity, such as to take advantage of lower labor costs in different countries. -To take advantage of distributed expertise or time—the needed experts may be living in different cities.

Members of cohesive groups tend to have the following characteristics:

-They have a collective identity -They experience a moral bond and a desire to remain part of the group -They share a sense of purpose, working together on a meaningful task or cause -They establish a structured pattern of communication

To determine whether a team is needed, organizations should consider:

-Whether a variety of knowledge, skills, and abilities are needed -Whether ideas and feedback are needed from different groups within the organization -How interdependent the tasks are -If wide cooperation is needed to get things done -Whether the organization would benefit from shared goals

Team leadership is effective when leaders are?

-able to adapt the roles they are contributing -or asking others to contribute to fit what the team needs given its stage and the tasks at hand

What are the benefits of self-managed teams?

-higher job satisfaction, increased self-esteem, and grow more on the job. -increased productivity, increased flexibility, and lower turnover

Steps to Creating and Maintaining a Cohesive Team:

1. Align the group with the greater organization. 2. Let members have choices in setting their own goals. 3. Define clear roles. 4. Situate group members in close proximity to each other. 5. Give frequent praise. 6. Treat all members with dignity and respect. 7. Celebrate differences. 8. Establish common rituals.

Tips for Preventing Social Loafing in Groups:

1. Carefully choose the number of individuals you need to get the task done. 2. Clearly define each member's tasks in front of the entire group 3. Design and communicate to the entire group a system for evaluating each person's contribution. 4. Build a cohesive group. 5. Assign tasks that are highly engaging and inherently rewarding. 6. Make sure individuals feel that they are needed.

When efficiency, or completing a task quickly and using fewer resources is the goal what is an advantage?

Cohesion

The more ___________ a group is, the more productive it will be and the more rewarding the experience will be for the group's members.

Cohesive

What is especially important in virtual teams?

Communication -Tools to schedule meeting times, such as Doodle; -Meeting tools such as Gotomeetings or Webex, which allows desktop sharing; -Document sharing tools, such as Dropbox or Google docs, which are tools that allow joint and simultaneous creation of presentations such as Prezi, enable virtual teams to coordinate and communicate more effectively.

What must be based primarily on a shared outcome, not individual performance?

Compensation of individuals

The top team is also important for its symbolic role:

How the top team behaves dictates the organization's culture and priorities by allocating resources and by modeling behaviors that will likely be emulated lower down in the organization.

Does cohesion result in a higher performing team?

It depends. There are certainly conditions in which cohesion is an advantage for team effectiveness

Another key to understanding how tasks are related to teams is to understand their?

Level of task interdependence

Cohesion doesn't make a difference in teams with what level of task interdependence?

Low levels of task interdependence

What happens to teams characterized by extreme levels of conflict or hostilit?

May demoralize members of the workforce

Once group members discover that they can be authentic and that the group is capable of handling differences without dissolving what stage are they ready to enter?

Norming

During what stage does the group tends to make big decisions, while subgroups or individuals handle the smaller decisions?

Norming stage

What kind of task interdependence is this? In basketball where players must be constantly alert to receive a pass, rebound, or transition between offense and defense.

Reciprocal interdependence

Self-managed teams are?

Teams that manage themselves and do not report directly to a supervisor. Instead, team members select their own leader, and they may even take turns in the leadership role.

What is needed in cases in which multiple skills are tapped or where buy-in is required from several individuals?

Teamwork

The use of teams also began to increase because of advances in what?

Technology. -more complex systems required contributions from multiple people across organizations.

The punctuated-equilibrium model of group development argues?

That groups often move forward during bursts of change after long periods without change

During what stage of Tuckman's 5 stages of Group Development do participants think questions such as: "Will I be accepted? What will my role be? Who has the power in this group?"

The Forming stage

During what phase of Tuckman's 5 stages of Group Development, when the group's energy is running high, is an ideal time to host a social or team-building event?

The Norming Phase

During what stage of Tuckman's 5 stages of Group Development should the leader should become more of a facilitator by stepping back and letting the group assume more responsibility for its goal?

The Norming phase

During what stage of Tuckman's 5 stages of Group Development do participants think questions such as: "Why should I have to do this? Who designed this project in the first place? Why do I have to listen to you?"

The Storming phase

In Tuckman's 5 stages of Group Development, once group members feel sufficiently safe and included what stage do they enter?

The Storming phase

What has served countless companies over the years through both quantifiable improvements and more subtle individual worker-related benefits?

The Team Method

Teams around the globe vary in terms of?

collectivism and power distance -These differences can affect how teams operate in countries around the world.

Self-managing teams shift the role of?

control from management to the team itself