Chapter 5 - Teams and Team Effectiveness in Health Services Organizations

Stages of team development

1. Forming 2. Storming 3. Norming 4. Performing 5. Adjourning

Team

A collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, who share responsibility for outcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact social entity embedded in one or more larger social systems, and who manage their relationships across organizational boundaries.

Decisional authority

A continuum of roles that teams may play in decision making

Cohesion

A key determinant of team effectiveness among team members.

Status differences

A measure of worth conferred on an individual by a group

Social loafing

A phenomenon in which a team member benefits from the work of a team without making a commensurate contribution to the work of the team.

Skill-based pay

A reward for employees for acquiring specific skills needed by an employee's team.

Pooled interdependence

A situation in which each member makes a contribution to the group output without the need to interaction among members.

Sequential interdependence

A situation in which one group member must act before another on can.

Team interdependence

A situation in which team members must actively coordinate to diagnose and solve problems, or otherwise carry out work or work-related activities.

Reciprocal interdependence

A situation in which the outputs of each member become inputs for the others, such that each member poses a contingency for the other.

Team norms

A standard that is shared by team members and regulates member behavior

Team-based rewards

A variety of mechanisms may be employed to reward team and team member performance.

Team Processes

Accommodate the speed that is sometimes required of temporary teams.

CQI-Continuous Quality Improvement

Activities such as process improvement, community health needs assessments, and staff search committees.

Boundary-spanning roles

All members are responsible for representing and communicating with their external function while also working interdependently with other members of the team.

Cohesion

An important component in understanding group process and effectiveness.

Intergroup relationships

An important part of a team's external environment is the presence of other teams.

Team Cohesiveness

As defined by Goodman, Ravlin, and Schminke, the extent that members are committed to the group task.

Team cohesivness

Can reduce willingness to disagree and challenge others' views, creating a groupthink.

Management Teams

Coordinate and provide direction to the subunits under their jurisdiction.

Team Learning

Defined as an iterative process of reflection and action through which teams may discover and correct problems and errors in their work processes.

Group

Defined as two or more persons who are interacting with one another in such a manner that each person influences and is influenced by each other person

Psychological Safety

Describes a climate in which the focus is productive discussion that enables early prevention of problems and the accomplishment of shared goals, because people feel less of a need to focus on self protection.

Psychological safety

Describes individuals' perceptions about the consequences of interpersonal risks in their work environment

Authority gradient

Differences in status and authority. Have been identified in the airline industry as one of the causes of aviation accidents.

Forming

During first stage, members become acquainted with each other and with the team purpose.

Support teams

Enable others to do their work, and serve many function such

Joint Commission

Federal department that instituted requirements for staff diversity and cultural competence.

Adjourning

For temporary teams, this stage characterized by a sense of task accomplishment, regret, and increased emotionality.

Work Teams

Groups of people responsible for producing goods or providing services.

Team size

Has an inverted U-shaped relationship to effectiveness so that too few or too many members may reduce performance.

Teams

Have a defined purpose, membership or composition, structure, specific purpose, and leadership.

Teams

Have the potential to improve organizational effectiveness while having a positive impact on morale, job satisfaction, and commitment to the organization.

Virtual teams

Implies that much or all communication among team members takes place outside of traditional face to face meetings through such mechanisms as email, fax, and video teleconferencing.

Works Teams

Include treatment teams, research teams, home care teams, community based teams.

Informal leadership

Individuals who assume leadership roles based on some personal characteristics.

Team Leadership

Individuals within an organization must have these skills for conflict resolution, overcoming communication obstacles, and effective structure techniques facing teams.

Formal leadership

Legitimate authority given to a team member.

Major diversity challenge

Managing multiple viewpoints and worldviews and the conflicts that may result from interactions among diverse teams members.

Team Composition

May require people from different levels in the organization as well as different departments to be part of a team.

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)/New England Journal of Medicine

Medical journals that show advances in medicine are made and reported by teams.

Scout activities

Members carrying out these activities are involved in general scanning for ideas and information about the external environment.

Task coordinator activities

Members carrying out these activities communicate frequently with other groups and persons at lateral levels in the organization. These activities include discussing problems with others, obtaining feedback, and coordinating and negotiating with outsiders.

Ambassador activities

Members carrying out these activities communicate frequently with those above them in the hierarchy. This set of activities is used to protect the team from outside pressures, to persuade others to support the team, and to lobby for resources.

Young Turks

Members who are perceived as seeking to change the way things are done.

Performing

Once team members agree on the purpose and norms of group, they can move forward to the task of defining separate roles and establishing work plans.

Groupthink

Poor advice may be generated and acted up on by a team of highly talented and skilled individuals.

Groups

Posses some characteristics of teams, but lack one or more key elements.

Norms

Powerful influences in organizations and teams and is necessary for effective group functioning.

Environmental context

Pressures and events from outside of the immediate team

Diversity

Provides both opportunities and challenges for teamwork.

Free rider

Referred to also as social loafing refers to a member of a team who obtains the benefits of group membership but does not accept a proportional share of the costs of membership.

Task interdependence

Refers to the interconnections between tasks, or more specifically, the degree to which team members must rely on one another to perform work effectively.

Boundary Permeability

Related to membership fluidity.

Task Complexity

Related to team interaction. The more complex the task, the greater the need for interaction.

Teams

Represent the dominant way that work gets done in organizations.

Performance norms

Rules that standardize employee output.

Behavior norms

Rules that standardize how people act at work on a day to day basis

Microsystems

Small groups of people who work together on a regular basis to provide care to patient sub-populations.

Team norms

Standard shared by team members that regulate team members' behavior

Membership Fluidity

Team membership will change quit frequently as members leave and new ones arrive

Communication Technology

Teams can use this to communicate and work efficiently over any distance.

Formal Groups

Teams that are formally recognized, organizationally based, social systems.

Overstaffed

Teams that may perform work in a perfunctory, lackadaisical manner.

Parallel Teams

Teams typically composed of people from different work units or jobs who carry out functions not regularly performed in the organization.

Team Cohesiveness

The degree to which members of a group are attracted to other members and are motivated to stay in the group.

Team

The entity that makes any kind of productivity possible.

Norming

The team grows more cohesive and aligned in purpose and actions

Storming

The team is faced with disagreement, counter-independence, and the need to manage conflict.

Social capital

The web of cooperative relationships between providers in a service system that involve interpersonal trust, norms of reciprocity, and mutual aid.

Highly cohesive teams

These teams may exhibit higher levels of performance, greater member satisfaction, and lower levels of turnover.

Informal Groups

Those that are not formally established or sanctioned by the organization, but often form naturally by individuals in the organization to fill a personal or social interest or need.

Project Teams

Usually time limited, producing one-time outputs such as a new product or service or a new information system.

Accountabilities

When an organization moves to cross-functional teams, employees may have multiple _______.

Tenure diversity

the length of time members have been on the team

Temporal nature

the permanence of a team