Chapter 10

Performing

-In the last stage of team development, performance improves because the team has finally matured into an effective, fully functioning team. -At this point, members should be fully committed to the team and think of themselves as members of a team and not just employees. -Team members often become intensely loyal to one another at this stage and feel mutual accountability for team successes and failures. -Trivial disagreements, which can take time and energy away from the work of the team, should be rare. At this stage, teams get a lot of work done, and it is fun to be a team member. -But the team should not become complacent. -Without effective management, its performance may begin to decline as it passes through the stages of de-norming, de-storming, and de-forming.

Self-managing teams

-Team members manage and control all of the major tasks directly related to production of a product or service without first getting approval from management -This includes managing and controlling the acquisition of materials, making a product or providing a service, and ensuring timely delivery.

4 Things that must occur for stretch goals to effectively motivate teams

-Teams must have a high degree of autonomy -Teams must be empowered with control over resources, such as budgets, workspace or whatever is needed to do their jobs -Structural accommodation -Bureaucratic immunity

Factors that encourage people to withhold efforts in teams

-The presence of someone with expertise. -The presentation of a compelling argument. -Lacking confidence in one's ability to contribute. -An unimportant or meaningless decision. -A dysfunctional decision-making climate.

Team Level

-average level of ability, experience, personality, or any other factor on a team.

Storming

-conflicts and disagreements often characterize this stage -As team members begin working together, different personalities and work styles may clash. Team members become more assertive at this stage and more willing to state opinions. -This is also the stage when team members jockey for position and try to establish a favorable role for themselves on the team. -In addition, team members are likely to disagree about what the group should do and how it should do it. Team performance is still relatively low, given that team cohesion is weak and team members are still reluctant to support each other. -Since teams that get stuck in the storming stage are almost always ineffective, it is important for team leaders to focus the team on team goals and on improving team performance. Team members need to be particularly patient and tolerant with each other in this stage.

Affective conflict

-emotional reactions that can occur when disagreements become personal rather than professional -results in hostility, anger, resentment, distrust, cynicism, apathy -strongly associated with decreases in team performance.

Team norms

-informally agreed on standards that regulate team behavior -associated with positive outcomes such as stronger organizational commitment, trust in mgmt, & stronger job satsifaction -negative team norms can result in negative behavior in team members

Employee Involvement Team

-meet on company time on a weekly or monthly basis to provide advice or make suggestions to management concerning specific issues such as plant safety, customer relations, or product quality -Though they offer advice and suggestions, they do not have the authority to make decisions. -Membership on these teams is often voluntary, but members may be selected because of their expertise. -The idea behind employee involvement teams is that the people closest to the problem or situation are best able to recommend solutions.

Cognitive Conflict

-members disagree because of different experiences and expertise -strongly associated with improvements in team performance

Skill Based Pay

-pay employees for learning additional skills or knowledge -encourage employees to acquire additional skills and share knowledge

Semi-autonomous work groups

-provide advice and suggestions to management and also have the authority to make decisions and solve problems related to the major tasks required to produce a product or service. -Semi-autonomous groups regularly receive information about budgets, work quality and performance, and competitors' products. -members are typically cross-trained in a number of different skills and tasks -give employees the authority to make decisions that are typically made by supervisors and managers. -managers ask good questions, provide resources, and facilitate performance of group goals.

Collectivists

-put group/team interests ahead of self interests -prefer interdependent tasks

Individualists

-put their own welfare and interests first -prefer independent tasks

Nonfinancial Rewards

-range from vacations to t-shirts -effective when coupled with management recognition, such as awards, certificates, praise

Project teams

-teams created to complete one time projects or tasks within a limited time -typically lead by project manager who has overall responsibility for planning, staffing, and managing teams

Forming

-the initial stage of team development. This is the getting-acquainted stage in which team members first meet each other, form initial impressions, and try to get a sense of what it will be like to be part of the team. -Some team norms will be established during this stage as team members begin to find out what behaviors will and won't be accepted by the team. -During this stage, team leaders should allow time for team members to get to know each other, set early ground rules, and begin to set up a preliminary team structure.

Norming

-the third stage of team development, team members begin to settle into their roles as team members. -Positive team norms will have developed by this stage, and teammates should know what to expect from each other. Petty differences should have been resolved, friendships will have developed, and group cohesion will be relatively strong. -At this point, team members will have accepted team goals, be operating as a unit, and, as indicated by the increase in performance, be working together effectively. -This stage can be very short and is often characterized by someone on the team saying, "I think things are finally coming together." -Note, however, that teams may also cycle back and forth between storming and norming several times before finally settling into norming.

Traditional work group

-two or more people work together to achieve a shared goal. -In these groups, workers are responsible for doing the work or executing the task, but they do not have direct responsibility or control over their work. -Workers report to managers who are responsible for their performance and have the authority to hire and fire them, make job assignments, and control resources.

Which of the following is an advantage associated with the use of project teams?

...

Which of the following team sizes usually provides the best performance?

6-9

A leading coatings and paints manufacturer established a team made up of members from various departments to increase plant availability and decrease plant downtime. The plant loses considerable time daily because the assembly line has to be cleaned whenever the production schedule calls for a different color or type of paint to be produced. This cross-functional team needs to avoid ____ conflict if it hopes to be successful.

Cognitive

Which of the following statements about team training is true?

Cross-training is less appropriate for teams of highly skilled workers

Which of the following is a useful guideline for successful management of virtual teams?

Keep team interaction upbeat and action-oriented.

Self-designing teams

Self-designing teams have all the characteristics of self-managing teams, but they can also control and change the design of the teams themselves, the tasks they do and how and when they do them, and the membership of the teams.

An unimportant or meaningless decision.

Team members will withhold effort by mentally withdrawing or adopting a "who cares" attitude if decisions don't affect them or their units, or if they don't see a connection between their efforts and their team's successes or failures.

A dysfunctional decision-making climate.

Team members will withhold effort if other team members are frustrated or indifferent or if a team is floundering or disorganized.

The presentation of a compelling argument.

Team members will withhold effort if the arguments for a course of action are very persuasive or similar to their own thinking.

Lacking confidence in one's ability to contribute.

Team members will withhold effort if they are unsure about their ability to contribute to discussions, activities, or decisions. This is especially so for high-profile decisions.

The presence of someone with expertise.

Team members will withhold effort when another team member is highly qualified to make a decision or comment on an issue.

Team rewards that depend on ____ are the key to rewarding team behaviors and efforts.

Team performance rather than individual performance

Team cohesiveness

The extent to which team members are attracted to a team and motivated to remain in it.

Teams share advantages of group decision making because

a team is able to view problems from multiple perspectives

Bureaucratic immunity

ability to make changes without first having to get approval from managers

Team norms in an organization can create ____.

all of these

Teams improve service and product quality

because they take direct responsibility for the quality of the product or service

Which of the following is a factor that companies should carefully manage in order to increase the likelihood that teams will succeed?

bureaucratic immunity

Gainsharing Programs

companies share the financial value of performance gains with their workers, such as increased productivity, cost savings or quality

Cross functional teams

composed of employees from different functional areas of the organization -good for creative problem solving

Which of the following is NOT necessary for stretch goals to effectively motivate teams?

conflict management training

Teams increase customer satisfaction by

creating work teams that are trained to meet specific customer needs

Teams increase job satisfaction through

cross training, in which team members are taught how to do all or most of the jobs performed by the other team members; allows members to take over another member's job in case of absence

Individualism-collectivism

degree to which a person believes one should be self-sufficient and loyalty to one's self is more important than loyalty to team or company

As a member of a typical traditional work group, Joshua should expect to be responsible for ____.

doing what he is told to do

Which of the following is the only type of responsibility given to traditional work groups?

execute the task

Stretch goals

extremely ambitious goals that workers don't know how to reach

The city of College Station, Texas has implemented a program to reward employees for finding ways to save money for the city through improved operations and innovations. The city government is using ____.

gainsharing

Which of the following is a method used for compensating employees for team participation and accomplishments?

gainsharing

Structural accommodation

giving teams the ability to change organizational structures, policies, and practices if doing so helps them meet their stretch goals.

Virtual teams

groups of geographically and/or organizationally dispersed coworkers who use a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task -rarely meet f2f; use email, videoconferencin -advantage is flexibility

Groupthink

members of highly cohesive groups feel pressure not to disagree with each other

Group cohesion tends to be relatively strong at the ____ stage of team development.

norming

A group in Great Britain has been established to improve the employment, retention, and promotion prospects of black and other ethnic minorities as well as women in the Fire and Rescue Service, which at present has a largely white, male demographic. By the ____ stage of team development, the group members will have resolved petty differences, developed friendships, and established strong group cohesiveness.

performing

Team Conflict

primary conflict is disagreement over team goals and priorities -deal with conflict by making sure team experiences the right kind of conflit

Teams improve

product development speed and efficiency

De-norming

reversal of norming stage; team performance begins to decline as the size, scope, goal or members of the team change

De-storming

reversal of storming stage; team's comfort level decreases, team cohesion weakens, and angry emotions and conflict may flare

De-forming

reversal of the forming stage, in which team members position themselves to control pieces of the team, avoid each other and isolate themselves from team leaders

Team Size

right size is between 6-9 members

The highest level of team autonomy is found in ____.

self designing work groups

Teams are typically required when ____.

tasks require multiple perspectives

A group of workers in a medical examiner's office decided that they would not wear blue jeans to work because such casual wear seemed unprofessional. This informal agreement was made even though the office did not have a dress code. The workers created a(n) ____.

team norm

Teams have a disadvantage of high turner because

teams aren't for everyone and some balk at responsibility

In the autonomy continuum (which shows how five kinds of teams differ in terms of autonomy), the correct sequence, from low team autonomy to high team autonomy, is ____.

traditional work groups, employee involvement teams, semi-autonomous work groups, self-managing teams, and self-designing teams

Affective conflict

typically decreases team cohesiveness

Team Diversity

variances or differences in ability, experience, personality or any other factor on a team

Social loafing

when workers withhold efforts and fail to perform their share of work; disadvantage of teams

Minority domination

where one or two people dominate team discussions, restricting consideration of different solutions