Chapter 12 Teams

Monitoring Progress Toward Goals

-Teams that pay attention to goal-related information -perhaps by charting the team's performance relative to team goals- are typically in a good position to realize when they are "off track" and need to make changes

Brainstorming is a process used to generate creative ideas:

1.Express all ideas that come to mind (no matter how strange). 2.Go for quantity of ideas over quality 3.Don't criticize or evaluate the ideas of others. 4.Build on the ideas of others.

Groupthink

A possible negative outcome of high cohesion is groupthink: members try to maintain harmony by striving toward consensus without ever offering, seeking, or seriously considering alternative viewpoints. associated with feelings of overconfidence about the teams capabilities

What are all of the communication Network Structures

All Channel Circle Y Wheel

What are the team states?

Cohesion Potency Mental Models Transactive Memory

What are the type of taskwork processes?

Creative Behavior Decision Making Boundary Spanning

What are the factors that affect team decision making

Decision Informity Staff Validity Hierarchical Sensitivity

Decision Making

Different processes are used by teams to make accurate and effective decisions. •Consensus is a general agreement among members in regards to a solution (for example, a jury).

__________________________ affects whether there will be process gain or process loss

Effectiveness of Communication

Team Building

Fun activities that facilitate team problem solving, trust, relationship building, and the clarification of role responsibilities •Normally conducted by a consultant •Examples include rope courses, scavenger hunts •Difficult to judge the effectiveness of team building activities on team performance

Noise

Interferes with the message being transmitted Can take on several different forms: •Distance •Obstructions •Physical noise Requires both parties to communication to put in extra effort

Low Potency

Members are unfocused, lack confidence

What are the three components of transition processes

Mission Analysis Strategy Formulation Goal Specification

Teamwork processes have a __________ ___________ relationship with team performance.

Moderate Positive •This relationship holds true for transition processes, action processes, or interpersonal processes.

What are the 4 components of action processes

Monitoring progress toward goals Systems monitoring Helping Behavior Coordination

What the the three components on Interpersonal Processes?

Motivating and confidence building Affect management Conflict Management

Team States

Refer to specific types of feelings and thoughts that coalesce in the minds of team members as a consequence of their experience working together •Supportive leadership and positive member interactions can lead to feelings of psychological safety, the sense that it is OK to do things that are interpersonally risky, or that expressing opinions and challenging the status quo won't be met with rejection. •Ostracism can have negative consequences for both the individual and the team.

Is the group more creative than the individual members?

Researchers have also found that creativity in teams may be affected by characteristics such as conformity and attention to detail. The team environment is also uniquely suited to fostering creative behavior

Teamwork processes have a ______ _____________ relationship with team commitment.

Strong positive

Nominal group technique

Team members individually write ideas and then take turns sharing them with the group. 1.Gather a group a 5-6 people. 2.State an open-ended question (" What are some ways we could encourage employees to car pool?"). 3.Each person, in silence, jots down ideas. 4.Share the ideas with the group (one response per person each time) 5.No criticism is allowed, but clarification in response to questions is encouraged. 6.Have each person evaluate the ideas and individually and anonymously rank order the ideas. 7.A representative tabulates the scores and announces the results. 8.Allow time for brief group presentations on their solutions.

Communication

The process by which information and meaning get transferred from a sender to a receiver •Much of the work done in a team is done interdependently and involved communication among members.

Interpersonal Processes

These are important before, during, or between periods of taskwork, and they relate to the way in which team members manage their relationships.

Some processes and communication are observable, and others

are less visible For example, a "feeling a cohesion" experienced by team members is not visible

The best-known activity that teams use to foster creative behavior is

brainstorming

Communication network patterns can be described in terms of

centralization

Low Information Richness

computer-generated reports filled with numbers

Causes of process loss

coordination loss, production blocking, motivational loss, social loafing

People tend to be satisfied in teams in which there are

effective interpersonal interactions

Cohesion

exists when members of teams develop strong emotional bonds to other members of their team and to the team itself Fosters high levels of motivation and commitment to the team, promotes higher levels of team performance

High Information Richness

face-to-face conversation

Creative Behavior

generating novel and useful ideas and solutions

Process Loss

getting less from the team than you would expect based on the capabilities of its individual members

Process Gain

getting more from the team than you would expect according to the capabilities of its individual members Also called synergy Results in resources and capabilities that did not exist before the team created them

Team confidence can be too ________, especially early in its existence

high

Wheel

highly centralized; all communication flows through a central figure

All-Channel network

highly decentralized; all members can communicate directly with each other

Action Processes

important as the taskwork is being accomplished

Task Coordinator Activities

involve communications that are intended to coordinate task-related issues with people or groups in other functional areas ie: a member of the team might meet with someone from manufacturing to work out how a coupon might be integrated into the product packaging materials

Affect Management

involves activities that foster a sense of emotional balance and unity

Conflict Management

involves activities that the team uses to manage conflicts that arise in the course of its work Relationship Conflict Task Conflict

Systems Monitoring

involves keeping track of things that the team needs to accomplish its work

Helping Behavior

involves members going out of their way to help or back up other team members Indirect: feedback, coaching Direct: form of assistance with members' tasks and responsibilities

Goal Specification

involves the development and prioritization of goals related to the team's mission and strategy

Boundary Spanning

links to and coordinates the organization with key elements in the external environment Links internal networks with external sources of information.

High Potency

members are confident, focused

Team Process Training

occurs in the context of a team experience that facilitates the team being able to function and perform more effectively as an intact unit

Emotions and Emotional Intelligence

of team members affect how they express themselves and interpret the messages of others

Moderate Information Richness

personal written note

Motivational Loss

process loss due to team members' tendency to put forth less effort on team tasks than they could

Coordination Loss

process loss due to the time and energy it takes to coordinate work activities with other team members

Ambassador Activities

refer to communications that are intended to protect the team, persuade others to support the team, or obtain important resources for the team ie: a member of a marketing team might meet with senior management to request an increase in the budget for an expanded telvision ad campaigh

Transportable Teamwork Competencies

refer to knowledge, skills, and abilities. Team training that involves helping people develop general teamwork competencies that they can transport from one team context to another.

Teamwork processes

refer to the interpersonal activities that facilitate the accomplishment of the team's work but do not directly involve task accomplishment itself •Create the setting or context in which taskwork takes place •Involve a combination of types of behaviors

Mental Model

refer to the level of common understanding among team members with regard to important aspects of the team and its task •Important for team members to share an understanding of one another's capabilities •Important to anticipate when another member might need help •Important to have shared understanding of how to resolve team conflicts

Scout Activities

refer to things team members do to obtain information about technology, competitors, or the broader marketplace ie: marketing team who meets with an engineer to seek information about new materials is engaging in scout activities

Task Conflict

refers to disagreements among members about the team's task

relationship conflict

refers to disagreements among team members in terms of interpersonal relationships or incompatibilities with respect to personal values or preferences

Transactive Memory

refers to how specialized knowledge is distributed among members in a manner that results in an effective system of memory for the team Team members should possess both specialized knowledge that is useful to the team and meta-knowledge regarding who knows what. (so everyone focuses on their specialty)

Coordination

refers to synchronizing team members' activities in a way that makes them mesh effectively and seamlessly

Staff validity

refers to the degree to which members make good recommendations to the leader Team members can possess all the information needed to make a good recommendation but then fail to do so because of lack of ability. insight, or good judgement

Strategy Formulation

refers to the development of courses of action and contingency plans, and then adapting those plans in light of changes that occur in the team's environment

Team Process

refers to the different types of communication, activities, and interactions that occur within teams that contribute to their ultimate end goals •Team characteristics, such as member diversity, task interdependence, and team size, affect team processes and communication.

Communicator Competence

refers to the skills involved in encoding, transmitting, and receiving messages

motivating and confidence building

refers to things team members do or say that affect the degree to which members are motivated to work hard on the team's task ie: Expression that create a sense of urgency

hierarchical sensitivity

reflects the degree to which the leader effectively weighs the recommendations of the members Teams that make good decisions tend to have leaders that do a good job giving recommendations the weight they deserve

decision informity

reflects whether members possess adequate information about their own task responsibilities ie: Project teams can fail because the team member in charge of marketing doesn't gather information necessary to help the team understand the desires and needs of the client

Drawbacks to brainstorming include

social loafing - member may not work as hard thinking up ideas as they would if they had to turn in an individually generated list with their name on it Hesitancy to express in a group setting Production blocking as members wait their turn to express ideas

Team processes have a _________ impact on team effectiveness

strong

Potency has a ______ _____ impact on team performance

strong positive

Cross Training

team members can develop shared mental models of what's involved in each of the roles in the team and how the roles fit together to form a system Training team members in the duties and responsibilities of their teammates

Action Learning

team process training in which a team has the opportunity to work on an actual problem within the organization

Transition Process

teamwork activities that focus on preparation for future work

taskwork processes

the activities of team members that relate directly to the accomplishment of team tasks •Occurs any time that team members interact with the tools or technologies used to complete their work •Relates to task performance aspect of job performance

Information Richness

the amount and depth of information that gets transmitted in a message Includes both language and nonverbal information such as body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice

centralization

the degree to which decision making is concentrated at upper levels of the organization the more communication flows through fewer members of the team, the higher the degree of centralization

Potency

the degree to which members believe that the team can be effective across a variety of situations and tasks

Network Structure

the pattern of communication that occurs regularly among each member of the team

Personal Clarification

training in which members simply receive information regarding the roles of the other team members

Positional Rotation

training that gives members actual experience carrying out the responsibilities of their teammates

Positional Modeling

training that involves observations of how other team members perform their roles

Groupthink can be avoided by

•Acknowledge detrimental aspects of cohesion. •Assess group's level of cohesion. •Appoint a devil's advocate.

Why is it so widely adopted?

•Benefits include morale boosting, buy-in and idea sharing that may not have happened . Brainstorming is well known and common sense leads people to believe that it works as advertised

Second Type

•Involves experience in a team context when there are task demands that highlight the importance of effective teamwork processes

Social Loafing

•Social loafing results from members feeling less accountable for team outcomes compared with their independent work outside the team.

Mission Analysis

•involves an analysis of the team's task, the challenges that face the team, and the resources available for completing the team's work.

Production Blocking

•results from team members waiting on each other before completing their own team tasks.