MGMT 310 Ch. 12

Ambassador activities

communications that are intended to protect the team, persuade others to support the team or obtain important resources for the team

Helping behavior

involves members going out of their way to help other team members; indirect help can be given through coaching or feedback; direct help in the form of assistance on tasks

Taskwork Processes

The activities of team members that relate directly to the accomplishment of team tasks

Team Processes

The different types of communication, activities, and interactions that occur within teams that contribute to their ultimate end goals; interactions among team members and hard to see feelings, thoughts that occur in team interactions

Cohesion

occurs when members of the team develop strong emotional bonds; tends to foster high levels of motivation and commitment to the team, and cohesiveness tends to promote higher levels of team performance

Network Structure

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

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

Transition Processes

teamwork activities that focus on prep for future work and readjustments; occur before and between periods of taskwork; Mission Analysis, Strategy Formulation, Goal Specification

Staff Validity

the degree to which members make good recommendations to the team leader

Teamwork Processes

the interpersonal activities that facilitate the accomplishment of the team's work but do not directly involve task accomplishment itself

Motivational Loss

which is the loss in team productivity that occurs when team members don't work as hard as they could; due to social loafing

Groupthink

behaviors that support conformity and team harmony at the expense of other team priorities

Coordination Loss

consumes time and energy that could otherwise be devoted to task activity, which could be driven by production blocking, which occurs when members have to wait on another before they can do their part of the team task

Decision Making

decisions result from the interaction among team members and decision informity; staff validity

Task Coordinator activities

involve communications that are intended to coordinate task-related issues with people in other functional areas

Boundary spanning

involves activities with individuals and groups other than those who are considered part of the team. ambassador activities; task coordinator activities; scout activities

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

Types of Team States

Cohesion, Potency, Mental Models, Transactive Memory

Factors influencing the communication process in teams

Communicators, noise, information richness, network structure

Causes of Process Loss

Coordination loss, Motivational loss

Types of Taskwork Processes

Creative Behavior, Decision Making, Boundary Spanning

Process Gain

Getting more from the team that you would expect according to the capabilities of its individual members; synonymous with "synergy" and most critical in situations in which the complexity of the work is high or when tasks require members to combine their knowledge, skills and efforts; results in useful resources and capabilities that did not exist before the team created them

Interpersonal Processes

Relates to the manner in which team members manage their relationships; important before, during or between periods of taskwork; Motivating and confidence building; conflict management

Action Processes

Systems Monitoring, Helping Behavior, Coordination; important during taskwork

Communication Process

The process by which info and meaning gets transferred from a sender to a receiver, effectiveness of communication plays a crucial role in determining whether there is process gain or loss; info > sender > encoding > message (there can be noise affecting the message) > decoding > receiver > understanding

How to improve team processes

Training teams, cross-training (personal clarification, positional modeling, positional rotation), team process training/action learning through experience, team building

Types of Teamwork Processes

Transition processes, Action processes, Interpersonal processes

Creative Behavior

When teams engage in creative behavior, their activities are focused on generative novel and useful ideas and solutions, openness to experiences; brainstorming fosters creative behavior with face-to-face meetings used to generate ideas/solutions, as many as possible

Information richness

amount of depth of info that gets transmitted; face-to-face communication has highest level

Process Loss

getting less from the team than you would expect based on the capabilities of its individual members, but didn't achieve the level of success you expected

Systems Monitoring

helps keep the team on track to achieve goals

Conflict Management

involves the activities that the team uses to manage conflicts that arise in the course of its work; conflict tends to have a negative impact on a team, but the nature of this effect depends on the focus of the conflict as well as the manner in which it is managed; Relationship Conflict, Task Conflict

Goal Specification

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

Social loafing

members feel reduced accountability for team outcomes

Mental Models

refer to the level of common understanding among team members with regard to important aspects of the team and its task; awareness of "who knows what" and how situations should typically be handled; develop over time

Scout activities

refer to things team members do to obtain info about technology, competitors or the broader marketplace

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; not everyone on the team has to have the same level/type of knowledge; understanding of how one's memory fits with the other team members'

Potency

refers to the degree to which members believe that the team can be effective across a variety of situations and tasks. When a team has high potency, members are confident that their team can perform well, and they will focus more of their energy on team tasks and teamwork in hopes of achieving team goals

Strategy Formulation

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

Coordination

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

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

Hierarchical Sensitivity

reflects the degree to which the leader effectively weighs the recommendations of the members

Decision Informity

reflects whether members possess adequate information about their own task responsibilities