Chapter 2 : "Defining Team Success"

Traditional models of team success:

- Focus on task performance. - Social relations and individual development are support factors.

Problems of Teamwork

- Mixed results of success - Implemented with little consideration for applicability. - Improved performance in short run only. - Norms and cohesiveness. - Implementing work teams can be difficult.

Teams as a Fad

- Overemphasis of the value of teams due to psychological benefits. - Use of teams beyond where appropriate. - What is needed? ---->Understanding of where/when teams should be used. ---->Understanding how to use teams effectively.

Conditions for Team Success

1) The work contains at least some skilled activities. 2) The team can form a meaningful unit with the organization, with clearly defined input and output and stable boundaries. 3) Turnover in the team in minimal. 4) Valid performance evaluation systems exist for both the team and its members. 5) Timely feedback is possible. 6) The team is capable of measuring and controlling the important variances in the workflow. 7) The tasks are highly interdependent so members must work together. 8) Cross training is supported by management. 9) Jobs can be designed to balance team and individual tasks.

Characteristics of Successful Teams

SEE PICTURE

Developing Social Relations

Social relations, group maintenance, viability: - A successful team performs its task and then is better able to perform the next assigned task Cohesion and communication necessary! Example: Computer development team (Kidder)

______________ (1972) created a system that explains the different ways team members' efforts can be combined.

Steiner **A group's work can be added together, limited by the last member, averaged, selected, or combined in any way the group desires. Steiner's system has been useful in explaining the benefits of and problems with different ways of combining tasks. For some types of tasks, organizing work into teams can create synergies that improve performance over that of individuals. However, using teams may also reduce performance because of coordination and motivation problems. Tasks should be: - Motivating - Identifiable - Meaningful

_________________ tasks combine group member contributions together, such as when a group paints a house.

Additive

A successful team performs the task _________ than other ways of organizing people to perform the task.

Better

Teamwork programs such as quality _____________ provide only limited power to teams.

Circles

Cohen & Bailey

Cohen and Bailey (1997) conducted a meta-analysis of work teams during the 1990s. Their review of 54 studies of work teams shows that the factors important for success are different for production, professional, and managerial teams. For example, for self-managing production teams, the amount of organizational support is very important, but the quality of leadership is relatively unimportant. On the other hand, professional project teams often are dependent on high-quality leadership because of the nonroutine nature of their tasks.

Groups with high levels of group _______________ and good social relations are the most effective groups.

Cohesion

Collective Intelligence

Collective intelligence was not correlated with intelligence of the team members but with THREE other factors: 1) social sensitivity, 2) equality of communication, and 3) proportion of females. The MOST IMPORTANT factor predicting team success was social sensitivity, which was a measure of the average level of emotional intelligence of the team members. Equality of communication showed that when team members took turns communicating or when a few people did not dominate the team's communications, they performed better. Increasing the proportion of females on the teams improved performance, although this factor overlapped with the social sensitivity of the groups

A _________________________ task averages the input of group members to create a single solution, while in a disjunctive task the group must generate a single solution that represents the group's product.

Compensatory

__________________ engineering teams were developed to deal with the problems created by bureaucratic divisions within an organization.

Concurrent

________________________ tasks are not completed until all group members have completed their parts.

Conjunctive

A good team task is one that is motivating to the team and requires a _________________effort to perform.

Coordinated

______________ of knowledge & skills is beneficial when members are highly skilled and committed to team's goals.

Diversity

Measuring the results of a team's task performance does/does not completely capture the definition of team success.

Does NOT

Working in ______________ teams may teach members only how to avoid working in teams in the future.

Dysfunctional

_________________ teams organize themselves to perform tasks, develop social relations to support their operations, and assign leaders who can provide direction and facilitate team operations.

Effective

Group Process:

Effective teams: - Organize themselves to perform tasks. - Develop social relations to support their operations. - Assign leaders to provide direction and facilitate team operations. Typically engage in two types of activities: - Making decisions - Performing tasks

Work teams are an important way of improving organizational _____________________ .

Effectiveness

One of the most important aspects of the organizational context is the willingness of the organization to provide ___________________ on a team's performance and to reward successful performance.

Feedback

To improve on the way team members operate, a team needs __________________ on its performance and an incentive to change.

Feedback

Teams help make the organization more productive and _________________ , while improving employees' job satisfaction. However, teams are not the solution to every organizational problem.

Flexible

Working in teams helps satisfy people's social and ___________ needs.

Growth

Hackman's FIVE factors necessary for successful team development:

Hackman (1987) is an organizational psychologist whose specialty is job design. His research has examined a wide variety of teams both at work and in the laboratory. He lists five factors as necessary for the successful development of teams: 1. Clear direction and goals. Teams need goals to focus efforts and evaluate performance. 2. Good leadership. Leaders are needed to help manage the internal and external relations of teams and orient teams toward their goals. 3. Tasks suited for teamwork. Tasks should be complex, important, and challenging, requiring the integrated efforts of team members, and the tasks should not be capable of being performed by individuals. 4. Necessary resources to perform tasks. These include material, training, and personnel resources. 5. Supportive organizational environment. Organizations must allocate sufficient power and authority to allow team members to make and implement decisions.

__________________effective groups have task-oriented goals and norms.

Highly **These groups outperform collections of individuals, but things may go wrong. A group might have unclear goals or norms that do not encourage performance of its task. Working in a group may lead to reduced effort by individual members rather than encouraging performance.

The definition of team success relates to team tasks, social relations, and ____________ on team members.

Impact

_____________________________ research teams are more productive than teams whose members have similar backgrounds.

Interdisciplinary

_______________ skills are communication techniques such as interviewing, active listening, providing feedback, and negotiating.

Interpersonal

Katzenbach and Smith

Katzenbach and Smith (1993) are management experts who studied upper-level management teams, primarily in large organizations. They found that clear performance goals, common approaches and methods for completing tasks, and a sense of mutual accountability were factors related to success. In addition, they found that a team performs best when there are a small number of team members, members have adequate levels of complementary skills, and there is commitment to a common purpose.

Larson & LaFasto

Larson and LaFasto (1989) are experts in group communication. They studied a variety of teams from business, sports, and government. As in the studies mentioned above, they found clear goals with standards of excellence, principled leadership, and external support and recognition to be important factors in successful teams. In addition, their research indicated that a esults oriented structure, competent team members, a unified commitment, and a collaborative climate were important.

It is the _________________ responsibility to provide direction for the group and facilitate its internal processes.

Leader's

Levi & Slem

Levi and Slem (1995) are psychologists who examined teamwork in hightech companies. They studied factory production teams and engineering research and development teams to determine factors related to team success. These are the factors they found: 1. Evaluation and rewards. Teams need fair and objective criteria for evaluation, team member performance evaluations should relate to their team contributions, and members should be rewarded when their teams are successful. 2. Social relations. Teams need training in social skills so they can resolve internal conflicts and function smoothly. 3. Organizational support. Management, the organizational system, and the organizational culture must support the use of teams. 4. Task characteristics. Teams need clear direction and goals, tasks that are appropriate for teamwork, and work that is challenging and important. 5. Leadership. Leaders need to facilitate team interactions and provide assistance to teams when problems occur.

Group Maintenance

Maintaining harmony among group members while achieving group goals/tasks.

____________ focus on the team's impact on the organization; they are concerned with results, not with how the team operates.

Managers

Nature of Team Success

Managers and team members may see success differently. Hackman's (1987) THREE primary definitions of success relate to: 1) The TASK - what is it that we are supposed to be doing? Why are we a team? 2) SOCIAL RELATIONS - Do people grow and develop? Are they learning from each other? 3) The INDIVIDUAL - Accomplish personal objectives while participating in your function as a team member to help the team reach their goals as well.

___________________ (1984) developed a system to describe the different types of tasks teams perform, based on four group goals—generate, choose, negotiate, and execute.

McGrath

Effective work teams have ______________ that support high-quality performance and a level of group cohesiveness that provides social support for members.

Norms

The ____________________ context relates to the culture of the organization, the support it provides for teams, and its evaluation and reward systems.

Organizational

For professional tasks requiring creativity or value judgments, there may be no clear ways to determine which solutions are best, however, one approach to such measurement problems is to determine whether the products or _____________ of the team are acceptable to the owners, customers, and team members

Outputs

Teamwork is increasing because teams are an effective way to improve ___________________ and job satisfaction.

Performance

Characteristics of the Task: McGrath (1984)

Playing off of McGrath's FOUR group goals: GENERATE - includes tasks that focus on the creative generation of new ideas and tasks that develop plans for behavioral action. CHOOSING - deals with the intellective tasks, such as problem solving, when there are correct answers and decision making tasks when there are no correct answers. NEGOTIATION - includes tasks aimed at resolving conflicting viewpoints and mixed-motive tasks aimed at resolving conflicts of interest. EXECUTION - refers to competitive tasks that help resolve conflicts of power and performance tasks designed to make things or provide services.

Positive psychology

Positive psychology starts with team member well-being: - Teamwork should fulfill members' emotional and social needs. - Successful performance follows when members are engaged and supported.

The benefits of teamwork are _______________ only when teams are working on tasks that are suited for teamwork and organizations are willing to support them

Realized **Benefits of Teamwork: - Improve efficiency and performance. - Improvement in job satisfaction and quality of work life. - Teamwork training improves employee's technical and interpersonal skills.

Bennis and Biederman (1997) determined that much of the success of these groups was due to the leaders' ability to _____________ highly competent team members.

Recruit

A team needs ____________ and trustworthy feedback about its performance so it can learn how to improve its operation.

Regular

A successful __________ completes its task, maintains good social relations, and promotes its members' personal and professional development.

Team

___________ members focus on the internal operations of the team; they look at the contributions that each member brings to the team and how well members work together.

Team

Completing the Task

Team completes its task or reaches its goals Measuring performance may be difficult because: - There are no alternatives to teamwork - Unclear which solutions are best - how do we measure performance? Project success does NOT mean team success!!!!! The project can go well, but the team may have never succeeded in becoming cohesive or producing creative work. To determine if the team was successful: - Was a team necessary or beneficial for the task? - Many benefits of a team occur in the long run.

Successful ___________ have clear goals, good leadership, organizational support, appropriate task characteristics, and mutual accountability with rewards.

Teams

A number of organizational supports should be provided to help make teams function more effectively (Hackman, 1990b):

Teams perform better when they have CLEAR GOALS and well-defined tasks. They must be provided with adequate resources, including financial, staffing, and training support. RELIABLE INFORMATION from the organization is required for teams to make decisions, coordinate their efforts with other parts of the organization, and plan for future changes. Finally, teams should have available to them technical and group process ASSISTANCE. They need technical help to solve their problems and facilitation or coaching to deal with interpersonal difficulties.

_____________________ skills promote an understanding of group processes and provide skills to manage the group processes effectively.

Teamwork

Benefiting the Individual

Teamwork can be personally rewarding with: - Social support - Learning new skills - Rewards from organization. **Sometimes these benefits are more important to some than others. People vary in social needs; those low in social needs will be less reqarded by teamwork. In addition to personal benefits, participating in a team should help an employee's career in the organization. Unfortunately, this often is not the case. Most organizations focus on managing individuals rather than on managing teams. Even when most of an employee's time is spent collaborating in a team, the typical performance evaluation system focuses on what an individual produces rather than on the success of the team. Being a good team player may go unrecognized, while people who distinguish themselves and stand out are rewarded.

Collaboration

The most successful way of achieving goals within the group.

Good communication depends on understanding and ____________ .

Trust

The implementation of work teams has been one of the most common organizational changes of the past __________ years

20

Group Composition

A group's performance depends on the qualities of the individuals performing the task. These qualities can be viewed in THREE different ways. FIRST, the group must contain people with knowledge, skills, and abilities that match the task requirements. SECOND, the group must have members with the authority to represent the relevant parts of the organization and the power to implement the group's decisions. THIRD, the group's members must have the necessary group process skills to operate effectively.