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Newstrom
12/e PPT
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2. Teams and Team Building
Chapter Thirteen
Teams and Team Building
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Chapter Objectives
To understand:
Organizational context for teams
The nature of teams
Life cycle of a team
Teamwork and the characteristics of mature teams
Process consultation and team-building skills
Self-managing teams
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Organization
The skeletal structure that helps create predictable relationships among people, technology, jobs, and resources.
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5. Organizational Context for Teams
Classical Concepts
Division of work
Delegation
Multiple levels of authority
Supports people as well as suppresses them
Strong in task support
Weak in psychological support
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6. Organizational Context for Teams
New Viewpoints
Decline in use of structure
Organic, flexible structures
Multidirectional communication
Joint problem solving
Tasks not defined well enough to become routine
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7. Organizational Context for Teams
Matrix Organization
Overlays one type of organization on another
Two chains of command direct individual employees
Separates activities into projects that compete for allocations of people and resources
When applied across internal organizational boundaries, creates cross-functional teams
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Teamwork
Where work is interdependent, employees act as a task team and seek to develop a cooperative state called teamwork.
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Teamwork
Just calling a group a team does not change its basic character or effectiveness
Contributors to teamwork:
Supportive environment
Skills matched to role requirements
Superordinate goals
Team rewards
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Life Cycle of a Team
Forming
Sharing of personal information, aura of courtesy; cautious interactions
Storming
Members compete for status and control, argue about direction for the group
Norming
Group begins moving in a cooperative fashion, tentative balance among competing forces, norms emerge and guide behavior
Performing
Group matures and learns to handle complex challenges, functional roles performed fluidly, tasks accomplished efficiently
Adjourning
Even the most successful teams disband sooner or later
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11. Ingredients of Effective Teams
Supportive environment
Skills and role clarity
Superordinate goals
Team rewards
Empowered teams
Potency
Meaningfulness
Autonomy
Impact
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12. Ingredients of Effective Teams
James Surowiecki concludes that good group decision making requires:
Diversity of opinion, information, or perspective
Independent choices not influenced by others
Access to decentralized knowledge and the empowerment to make decisions based on that knowledge
An aggressive mechanism for producing collective decisions from private judgments
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13. Potential Team Problems
Changing Composition
Anticipate and accept that turnover will happen
Develop a plan for managing turnover
Decide how to best integrate new members
Recognize a new member as an opportunity for group improvement
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14. Potential Team Problems
Social Loafing
Perception of unfair division of labor
Belief that coworkers are lazy
Feeling that one cannot be singled out for blame
Sucker effect
Impacts
Colleagues feel anger or empathy
Colleagues may complain to management
Coworkers may offer pep talks, training, threats, or expectations for improvement
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Team Building
Encourages team members to:
Examine how they work together
Identify their weaknesses
Develop more effective ways of cooperating
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Team Coaching
Vital to team success
Team leader helps team members make good use of collective resources
Is most effective when it is:
Task-focused
Timely
Recognized as necessary by the team
Oriented toward motivation of members or performance method improvements, or knowledge/skill deficiencies
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17. The Need for Team Building
Not every team needs team building
Clues that team building is necessary:
Interpersonal conflicts
Low team morale or cohesiveness
Confusion or disagreement about team roles
Large influx of new members
Disagreement over the team’s purpose and tasks
Negative climate within the team
Stagnation within the team
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18. Typical Stages in Team Building
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19. Specific Team-Building Issues
Team members are unaware of, or in disagreement about, the purpose of the team
The team is confused about its fit within the larger organizational system
There is confusion about work relationships
Interpersonal conflicts dominate the workplace
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20. Useful Team-Building Skills
Needed by both team leaders and members:
Consultation skills
Research skills
Presentational skills
Process consultation (facilitator)
Feedback
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21. Facilitating Behaviors
Encouraging open communication
Observing team meetings
Probing and questioning
Confronting individuals
Stimulating problem solving
Attending to nonverbal cues
Encouraging learning
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22. Characteristics of Mature Teams
Regularly achieves and even surpasses goals
Exhibits valued attitudes and behaviors
Improved performance/productivity
Lower absenteeism
Diminished turnover
Improved safety record
Increased acts of organizational citizenship
Individual satisfaction
Interpersonal trust
Organizational commitment
Team cohesiveness
Sets progressively higher standards for itself
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23. Individual Territories versus Team Spaces
Territorial Needs
Team interaction versus workers’ need to establish employee territories
Social neighborhoods
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Self-Managing Teams
Have the ability to and power to plan, direct, monitor, and control their own activities
Wide-ranging autonomy and freedom, coupled with the capability to act like managers
Multi-skilling
May move beyond operational topics
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Self-Managing Teams
Advantages
Improved flexibility of staff
More efficient operations through reduced number of job classifications
Lower absenteeism and turnover
Higher levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction
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Self-Managing Teams
Disadvantages
Extended time to implement them
High training investment
Early inefficiencies due to job rotation
Inability of some employees to adapt to a team structure
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Boundary Spanners
Little or no authority; must accomplish tasks through:
Social awareness
Relating to others
Genuine caring for team members
Investigating problems
Obtaining external support
Influencing the team
Persuading
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Virtual Teams
Facilitated through technology
Development process parallel to that of other teams
Potential problems:
Individualistic behavior
Feelings of isolation
Lack of trust
Needs extra coordination
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Virtual Teams
Substitutions for Face-to-Face Interaction
Clarified goal and definition of major issues
Short, face-to-face meetings
Temporary on-location projects
Explicit definition of role expectations
Identification of potential problems
Frequent use of and video-conferencing
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