Working with Teams Addressing Task Complexity with Team Diversity
Few members, 5 – 10 Complementary skills, abilities, personalities Appropriate roles, leadership, structure Commitment to a shared vision Specific, measurable, challenging goals Accountable Appropriate performance evaluation and reward system Mutual trust Adequate resources Keys to High-Performance Teams - Dr. Randall Sleeth
Team Pros and Cons Advantages Advantages Broader information, knowledge Diverse initial views Higher overall quality Greater acceptance Disadvantages A few may suppress thoughts of others Potential for too much conformity Unclear responsibility Greater acceptance
Team Composition Diversity in Small Teams
Team Composition Team design needs to reflect the objective task and available people: Scale of the task Scope or complexity of the task Skills and abilities of available people
Team Composition Ideal Team Size RAND Corporation says 12 is pretty much the limit, counting people to whom your leader reports. In practice, more than half that is often more trouble than it’s worth. Here is a small NASA team, with its product, the Autonomous Rotorcraft.
Team Composition Scaling to Match One-Dimensional Difficulty If your task is simple, you may only need to scale up with one kind of person. Here we need big, strong people who can pull on a rope. (There are many other things they can do, but today they’re having fun.)
Team Composition Scaling to Match Complexity
Team Life Cycle The First Two Stages Forming –Uncertainty –Hesitation Storming –Confusion –Conflict If the group is not yet fully formed into a team before attempting its task …
Team Perceptions The Blind Men and the Elephant Here’s a fair model of a newly formed, inexperienced team. The story doesn’t tell what happened after they thought about each other’s perspective.
Team Pitfall Too Inexperienced with Each Other Too Large for the Task TTTToo much of a good thing (willing people), too soon UUUUnclear or nonexistent assignments CCCConfused, inefficient communication LLLLeading to …
Team Pitfall Inefficiencies of Scale Duplicated efforts Missed connections Discouraged workers Social Loafing Blaming diversity Group exercise: deliver indictment, based on evidence
Team Life Cycle Stage Three: Norming How will the team interact? How will the team approach its task? How will the team handle ambiguity? How will the team handle conflict? How will the team handle change?
Team Life Cycle, Stage Four: Performing Team dynamics - cohesion exists in tension with conflict: Group cohesion increases conformity to helpful norms Conflict decreases group-think
Team Life Cycle, Stage Four: Performing Team Norms and Productivity Productivity depends on whether the norms previously established are positive or negative. Positive norms develop: –When management knows what is achievable –When everyone has incentives to do more
Team Pitfall Group Think A form of concurrence thinking. A mode of thinking in which (cohesive) group members strive for unanimity and override their realistic appraisal of alternative actions. – Dr. Randy Sleeth, VCU professor Avoid (bad) group think by maintaining creative tension between cohesion and conflict.
Team Pitfall Numbers Without Diversity No original diversity where it counts Loss of diversity to dysfunctional norms Further loss of diversity to group-think
Johari Window Lisa Loopner doesn’t know about herself Arthur Dent knows about himself Lisa Loopner knows about herself Arthur Dent doesn’t know about himself … but Lisa does … but Arthur does Instead, we can team up on each other’s blind spots.
Johari Window Team of Four unknown known
Expanding the team in the wrong dimension … either in diversity either in diversity or in numbers … tends to expand mistakes, and a larger group … has greater inertia has a bigger stake in covering up unwelcome information Avoid through carefully planned growth – or non-growth. Team Pitfalls … that May Arise with Expansion
Team Pitfalls Difficulties in Achieving Useful Diversity Cross-functional teams cost more to set up, so organizations may resist them. Resistance may only be overcome after a crisis where end costs were far greater (NASA learned this the hard way, after losing satellites.).
Team Composition Team of Teams Some tasks require a team larger than the most efficient size. Here is the NASA Mars Rover team.
Team Mars Rover Succeeds And here is their product at work. NASA has learned the hard way that they need up to 100 people on a team. They need to be as different from each other as possible, in the perspective each brings.
Conclusion Maintaining true diversity is difficult and expensive. The alternative is too easy and way more expensive. Support for diversity depends on experience and memory. We are all individuals, so supporting diversity is ultimately in the best interest of each of us.