1. Team Dynamics McGraw-Hill/Irwin McShane/Von Glinow OB 5e
Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. What Are Teams?
Formal groups of two or more people with complimentary skills
Exist to fulfill a specific purpose or goal
Interdependent – they interact with and influence each other
Mutually accountable for achieving common goals
Perceive themselves as a social entity
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3. Many Types of Teams Production/ Service/ Leadership Teams
Virtual Teams
Departmental teams
Self-Directed Teams
Skunkworks
Advisory Teams
Task Force (Project) Teams
Communities of Practice
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4. Advantages of Teams Make better decisions, products, and/or services
Better information sharing
Higher employee motivation and engagement
Fulfills drive to bond
Closer scrutiny by team members
Team members are benchmarks of comparison
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5. Disadvantages of Teams
Individual effort may be better and/or faster on some tasks
Process losses – Costs associated with developing and maintaining teams
Social loafing
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6. Social Loafing
When individuals “hold back” in contributing to the team’s effort and performance
As team size increases, social loafing tends to increase
Interestingly enough, social loafing may actually improve performance on complex tasks!
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7. How to Minimize Social Loafing
Usually not an issue in highly cohesive teams (because of peer pressure)
Make individual performance more visible
Form smaller teams
Specialize tasks
Measure individual performance
Increase employee motivation
Increase job enrichment
Select highly motivated employees
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8. Team Effectiveness Model
Task characteristics
Team size
Team composition
Team Design
Organizational and Team Environments
Accomplish tasks
Satisfy member needs
Maintain team survival
Team
Effectiveness
Reward systems
Communication
Structure
Leadership
Physical space
Team development
Team norms
Team cohesiveness
Team trust
Team Processes
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9. Task Characteristics
Teams work better when tasks are clear and easy to implement
Learn their roles faster
Easier to become cohesive
Ill-defined tasks require members with more diverse backgrounds and more time to coordinate
Teams work better when task interdependence is higher
That is, the extent to which employees need to share materials, information, and/or expertise to perform their jobs
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10. Levels of Task Interdependence
Reciprocal A B C
High
Sequential A B C
Pooled
Resource A B C
Low
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11. Team Size Smaller teams are often better because:
They need less time to coordinate their roles and resolve differences or conflicts
They require less time to develop more member involvement (and thus, higher commitment)
But…a team must be large enough to accomplish a given task!
Eddie Feigner
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12. Team Composition
Effective team members must be willing and able to work on the team, share information and resources, trust each other, and take risks
Effective team members possess specific competencies (the 5 C’s)
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13. Five Competencies of Team Members
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14. Tuckman’s Stage Theory
1. Forming – Team comes together; some ambivalence; team look to leader for direction 2. Storming – Roles and responsibilities are defined and tested; conflicts and resistance may occur; leader guides, defines, and clarifies 3. Norming – Team understands task and each other’s roles; norms are established and energy and enthusiasm is displayed; sense of cohesiveness 4. Performing – Productive stage; team sees significant payoffs from communication, cooperation, and work norms 5. Adjourning – Transition from small team to larger network; share knowledge and experience with others
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15. Group Decay
Occurs when the team suddenly “shifts into reverse” and regresses back to an earlier stage of development
This occurs through:
De-norming (erosion of standards)
De-storming (growing discontent and loss of cohesiveness)
De-forming (fragmentation and break-up of the team)
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16. Tuckman’s Stage Theory
Existing teams might regress back to an earlier stage of development
(group decay)
Performing
Adjourning
Norming
Storming
Forming
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17. Team Roles
A set of specific, organized behaviors that team members are expected to perform
Some are formally assigned; others are informally assigned
Informal role assignment occurs during the process of team development and is often related to personal characteristics
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18. Team Norms
Informal rules and shared expectations a team establishes to regulate team member behaviors
Norms develop through:
Initial team experiences (primacy effect)
Agreement upon those things deemed “important” to the team
Critical events in team’s history
Experience or values members bring to the team
They may be spoken, written, or implicit
They may not apply to all team members
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19. Preventing Dysfunctional Team Norms
Clarify and reiterate desired norms when initially forming teams
Select team members with preferred values
Discuss counterproductive norms
Reward behaviors that are reflective of desired norms
Remove team members with dysfunctional norms
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20. Team Building
Formal activities intended to improve the team’s development and functioning
Why use team building?
Clarify team’s performance goals
Improve team’s problem-solving skills
Clarify role definitions
Improve relationships
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21. Team Cohesion
A “force” or degree of attraction or closeness people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members
It’s both cognitive and emotional
Related closely to one’s social identity
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22. Influences on Team Cohesion
Member similarity
• Similarity-attraction effect
• But...some forms of diversity have less effect
Team size
• Smaller teams tend to be more cohesive
Member interaction
• Regular interaction increases cohesion
• But...calls for tasks with high interdependence
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23. Influences on Team Cohesion (con’t)
Somewhat difficult entry
• Team “eliteness” increases cohesion
• But...lower cohesion with severe initiation
Team success
• Successful teams fulfill member needs
• Success increases social identity with team
External challenges
• Challenges increase cohesion (when not overwhelming); that is, an “us vs. them” mindset
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24. Trust Defined
Positive expectations one person has of another person in situations involving some degree of risk (physical, emotional, legal, financial, etc.)
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25. Three Levels of Trust Identification-Based Trust Knowledge-Based Trust
High
Knowledge-Based Trust
Calculus-Based Trust
Low
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26. Self-Directed Teams
Cross-functional work teams, organized around work processes, that complete an entire piece of work requiring several interdependent tasks, and that have substantial autonomy over the execution of those tasks
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27. Virtual Teams
Teams whose members operate across space, time, and organizational boundaries, being linked through information technologies, to complete organizational tasks
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28. Decision Making Constraints on Teams
Time limits
Evaluation apprehension
Belief that others are silently evaluating you
Peer pressure to conform
Suppressing opinions that oppose team norms
Groupthink
A tendency in highly cohesive teams to value consensus at the price of decision quality
Group polarization
Diffusion of responsibility
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29. A Minority of One?
Asch (1951, 1956) tested whether individuals would conform in those situations in which the larger group’s judgments were obviously incorrect
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30. Asch’s Conformity Study
Which line matches the standard line?
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31. Conformity
Most individuals conformed to the (obviously) wrong answer initially given by the group!
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32. Groupthink
The deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment in the interest of group solidarity; a “subtle” conformity
In a groupthink situation, each member of the group attempts to conform his or her opinions to what they believe to be the consensus of the group – even though each member might individually consider such action to be unwise
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33. Examples of Groupthink
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Challenger explosion
Thalidomide
Watergate
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34. Group Polarization Also called “risky shift”
In some cases, groups tend to make riskier or more extreme decisions that those made by individuals acting alone (a “mob mentality”)
Used to explain the decision-making of a jury, particularly when considering punitive damages in a civil trial – after deliberating together, mock jury members often decided on punitive damage awards that were much larger or much smaller than the amount any individual juror had favored prior to deliberation!
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35. Diffusion of Responsibility
When individuals know that many others are present, they feel less compelled to bear the full burden of responsibility, making the assumption that someone else must be taking care of the situation or that someone must have already done something about it!
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36. Diffusion of Responsibility
Kitty Genovese was attacked repeatedly just outside her New York home in No one came to her aid, despite her cries for help. Her murder took a full half hour, while at least 38 neighbors saw or heard the crime!
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37. Stimulating Team Creativity
Brainstorming
Delphi Technique
Nominal Group Technique (NGT)
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38. Brainstorming
Promotes creativity by encouraging idea generation through non-critical discussion
Basic rules:
Seniority is ignored – a status-free environment is created
Speak freely – no idea is too ridiculous; no idea can be criticized
Initially, quantity is more important than quality
Each idea presented belongs to the team – not to the person stating it
One idea can build on another
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39. Delphi Technique
A team-based process that anonymously generates ideas or judgments – often from physically dispersed experts who never meet:
Leader identifies an issue to investigate
Sequential questionnaires are sent to others and returned to the leader
Leader summarizes responses and sends feedback to participants
Participants then send their feedback and comments
Cycle repeats until issue is resolved or all relevant information is gathered
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40. Nominal Group Technique (NGT)
Assists teams to both to generate ideas and to evaluate and select solutions:
Approx. 7 to 10 people meet in person to discuss a problem
Individuals generate ideas independently and in writing
After about 5 minutes, each person shares an idea from his or her list and they are recorded on a chalkboard or flipchart – but not discussed
This process continues until all ideas are listed
Optional: There may be some discussion at this point
Each person then ranks ideas in order of preference
The final decision is the mathematically pooled outcome of all votes
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41. Nominal Group Technique (NGT)
Individual Activity
Team Activity
Individual Activity
Describe
problem
Write down
possible
solutions
Possible
solutions
presented
to others
Vote on
solutions
presented
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42. Why Do Teams Fail?
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