VCU MGMT 310 - Chapter 17 Assignment

Team Stages: Norming

- Create standards for expected team behavior

If a team leader wanted to help a team such as Maria's get through the storming stage of team development, he or she should take which of the following actions?

- Encourage participation by all team members. - Watch for blocking, or disruptive, behaviors and help prevent them.

Team Stages: Storming

-Interpersonal and perspective differences cause conflict

Team Stages: Adjourning

-Team finishes working together

To ensure the team has organizational support, the leader of a geographically distributed team should take which of these actions?

Build an alliance with a highly placed sponsor.

Decision Making Process: Raquelle wants the team's project—revamping the performance appraisal system for hourly employees—to succeed. However, she feels that all of her ideas were overlooked or dismissed by the team. Now they're supposed to be writing performance standards for every job in the company, and she's supposed to write standards for five jobs, but she's pretty busy. She may not get around to it.

Complete the task and review the process.

Teams often deal with uncertainty, so an effective team leader_______team members by providing them with advice, assistance, and positive comments as needed.

Encourages and coaches

According to Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith, which of the following characteristics would indicate that you are working on a team rather than in a group?

- Creating one collective product - Sharing leadership roles

When a team is __________ there is less face-to-face interaction between team members. Instead, team members interact with each other using tools such as e-mail and videoconferencing.

Geographically distributed

Team Types: Informing

Members have high confidence in their ability and knowledge that are relevant to tasks. Therefore, they rely on group knowledge to complete tasks quickly. Managerial interaction? None or minimal

Jack was concerned that ______ was occurring on the website development team. Discussions focused on information everyone already knew, and when someone raised a new point, it was ignored or dismissed.

The common information effect

Team Types: Probing

These teams maintain an interactive relationship with outsiders, constantly revising their information to best suit the needs of their stakeholders. Managerial interaction? Active

Decision Making Process: A school district is trying to improve how children with learning disabilities are taught to read. Joclyn, a third-grade teacher on the team, suggests adding self-paced options for kids. The team members agree this will probably reduce students' frustration, so they decide to pursue this approach.

Identify and explore the problem

In a hospital's emergency department ________ exists because health care providers with different skills must work closely together to achieve the best outcome for the patient.

Task interdependence

Task interdependence

is the extent to which group members need to work with and rely on each other to produce the collective work of the group.

Which of the following actions represent elements of effective team processes at Meggox?

- During team meetings, every team member is given 3 minutes to state his or her opinion on the problem being solved. - When making decisions, team members will often generate possible solutions before deciding how to evaluate their options.

Which of the following statements about a team's composition is true?

Team members should expect to balance conflict and consensus as they make decisions.

"When we host an event, we put together a team that includes people on the ground at the event site and in different departments at our headquarters, all under a manager. What do I need to know about these teams?" Check all that apply.

- Because the teams are horizontal, they bring a multiperspective approach to problem solving. -While all team members will be responsible for leadership in varying capacities, each team's manager is ultimately responsible for the team's performance . -Team members should be chosen on the basis of their task-related expertise as well as their ability to engage and motivate other people.

Suppose that you were hired as the manager of the Eat Right supermarket. You know that Eat Right uses teams to run each department in the store, from seafood to produce. Your store is small, but expanding. Up until this year, you have not had a pet food department, but now you are adding one and want to make sure that its team has the best environment possible. Which of the following actions would help your new team perform more effectively?

- Have all team members work in the same location to improve their communication skills. - Make sure that everyone on the team wants to accomplish the same thing.

If you were a team leader, and you wanted to be sure that your team was learning and improving as well as executing tasks, which of the following actions should you take? Check all that apply.

- If you get angry or frustrated with the team, tell the group about your concerns, but don't blame the group for causing your concerns. - Ask team members why they are proposing a particular solution rather than telling them that the solution will not work.

Which of the following actions are typically taken primarily by boundary managers? Check all that apply.

- Negotiating with other groups on the team's deadlines - Identifying people who will be impacted by the work of the group

Team Stages: Forming

-Team comes together -Learn about team member skills and competencies

Team Stages: Performing

-Team comes together to complete a task

Establishing _______ the team will communicate will reduce misunderstandings.

Explicit guidelines governing howTo ensure the team has organizational support, the leader of a geographically distributed team should take which of these actions?

Decision Making Process: Althea has years of experience with logistics management, but she never talks in meetings. Today is no exception, and no one on the team asks her what she thinks as they come up with ideas to improve the business's just-in-time inventory process.

Generate Possible Solutions

Decision Making Process: The employees of a small nonprofit work as a team. Their most pressing problem is how to raise more money from individual donors and foundation grants. The team members have a wide range of good ideas, which the executive director puts up on a whiteboard, but some ideas would raise more money overall, others would improve month-to-month cash flow, and still others would not raise much money this year but would increase community involvement over the long term. Now the team isn't sure which direction to go.

Prioritize evaluation criteria

Decision Making Process: At Class Act Manufacturing, which makes furniture for classrooms, a team is charged with reducing total cycle time, or the time it takes inputs to become a finished product. Natalia says, "Outsourcing steps of the manufacturing process always results in shoddy work, which we end up having to redo." No one wants to contradict Natalia, who tends to take criticism personally, so the team tacitly agrees not to consider outsourcing.

Review possible solutions

At Johnsonville Sausage, employees form _____ that decide what work should be done and how it should be done. The teams evaluate their own work, and they select new team members and fire people who are not working well with the team.

Self directed teams

anjav shouted, "No! We can't do that! If we put the buttons on the bunnies first, we won't be able to get their eyes on properly!" Xian growled back, "Oh, stop acting like a child! We can get the eyes on just fine, even if we put the buttons on first." Sanjav and Xian are on a team that is going through the _______ stage of development.

Storming

"A new team we just formed to explore expanding into the Mediterranean and Middle East seems to have split into three factions around what kinds of events to host and what kinds of customers to target, and communication is sometimes not respectful. How can the team move beyond this?"

Team members should share and accept their personal opinions and adopt standards that promote collaborative behavior.

The tradition of the entire team going to a local bar after each game appears to be what?

Team norm

When you work with other students on a project, you expect them to come to meetings prepared and to spend almost all of your group time talking about class-related issues. Such ______ will help the group perform better.

Team norms

Team Types: Parading

These teams do not solicit input. They rely on group knowledge to complete tasks. But they interact with external groups by promoting their activities. Managerial interaction? Passive