Chapter 8 - Team Dynamics ADMN2220

Chapter 8 - Team Dynamics

• Teams are groups of two or more people who exist to fulfill a purpose.
• Team members are interdependent, interacting and collaborating to achieve common goals.
• Team members perceive themselves as a team.

Learning Objectives

• Understand what teams are
• Recognize various types of teams
• Learn about team effectiveness models
• Examine models of team development
• Identify team decision-making constraints

What are Teams?

• Teams consist of two or more people.
• They exist to accomplish a specific purpose.
• Members are interdependent, interacting and collaborating.
• Teams are mutually accountable for achieving their common goals influencing each other.
• Members perceive themselves as a team.

Team Advantages/Challenges

• Advantages:
  • Improved decision-making regarding products/services.
  • Enhanced information sharing.
  • Increased employee motivation and engagement.
• Challenges:
  • Process losses due to the resources needed for team maintenance.
  • Social loafing, where team members exert less effort than if working alone.
  • Brooks's Law: adding more people to a late project does not necessarily speed up completion, but instead likely makes it later.

Informal Groups

• These groups exist primarily for the benefit of their members.
• Reasons for their existence include:
  • Innate drive to bond.
  • Social identity (defining oneself through group affiliation).
  • Goal accomplishment.
  • Emotional support.

Self-Directed Teams

• These are cross-functional groups organized around work processes.
• Teams complete a complete piece of work needing multiple interdependent tasks.
• Members have substantial autonomy over task decisions.
• Success Factors:
  • Responsibility for the entire work process.
  • High interdependence within the team.
  • Low interdependence with other teams.
  • Autonomy to organize and coordinate work.
  • Support for communication and coordination.

Virtual Teams

• Members operate across space, time, and organizational boundaries.
• Teams utilize information technologies to achieve organizational tasks.
• Success Factors:
  • Virtual team member characteristics.
  • Toolkit of communication channels and freedom to choose channels.
  • Fairly high task structure.
  • Opportunities to meet face-to-face.

Many Different Teams

• Task forces
• Self-managing teams
• Crews
• Platoons
• Cross-functional teams
• Top management teams
• Quality circles
• Project teams
• Emergency response committees

Team Effectiveness Model

• Team effectiveness depends on the organization and team environment, team design, team processes, and team effectiveness.
• Organization and team environment includes communication, organizational leadership, structure, physical space, and rewards.
• Team design considers factors like task characteristics, team size, and team composition.
• Team processes cover team development, norms, roles, cohesion, trust, and mental models.
• Team effectiveness includes accomplishing tasks, satisfying team member needs, and maintaining team survival.

Best Tasks for Teams

• Complex tasks are divisible into specialized roles.
• Well-structured tasks are easier to coordinate.
• Higher task interdependence requires team members to share information and expertise.

Levels of Task Interdependence

• High: Reciprocal (tasks are dependent in a cyclical way), sequential (task completed in order).
• Low: Pooled (tasks are independent and combined at the end).

Team Size

• Smaller teams are often more effective because of:
  • Reduced process losses.
  • Faster development time.
  • Higher team engagement and member influence.
• However, the team needs to be large enough to accomplish the assigned task.

Team Composition

• Effective teams are comprised of members who are willing and able to work on the team.
• Members possess specific competencies (competencies are often summarized as the 5 Cs) which include coordinating, cooperating, communicating, comforting (showing empathy, providing psychological comfort, and building confidence), and conflict resolving.
• Diverse teams can view problems/alternatives from different perspectives, have a broader knowledge base, and better represent the team's constituents.
• However, diverse teams may take longer to become high-performing.

Team Processes

• Internal team processes involve teamwork behaviors (improving interactions, cooperation, and coordination of team efforts) and taskwork behaviors (understanding task requirements, exchanging information, and developing solutions).
• External team processes involve team boundary spanning (establishing and maintaining interactions with external parties).

Team Roles and Transactive Memory

• A set of behaviors expected of people in certain positions in an organization.
• Describing how task-relevant knowledge is distributed within a team and collective awareness of who knows what.
• Having clearly defined and complementary strengths improves team effectiveness.

Team Roles

• Expected behaviors of people in positions within a social unit.
• Role expectations are how others perceive behaviors within a role.
• Role conflict occurs when one role requirement conflicts with another.
• Role ambiguity occurs when a person is unclear about their role.
• Role overload arises from receiving too much responsibility.

Team Norms

• Informal rules and shared expectations that guide member behaviors.
• Norms develop through initial team experiences, critical events, and members' values and experiences.
• Preventing/changing dysfunctional norms includes defining desired ones when forming teams, choosing members with preferred values, and encouraging team-based rewards.

Team Cohesion

• The degree of attraction members feel toward the team and their motivation to remain.
• Cohesion is stronger with higher member similarity, smaller team size, frequent interaction, somewhat challenging entry, high team success, and external competition.

Team Cohesion and Performance

• High cohesion typically leads to better performance because members are more motivated to achieve team objectives; and they frequently share information and experience increased satisfaction and support.
• This is particularly true in tasks with high interdependence.

Team Efficacy

• The collective belief among team members in their capabilities to achieve goals.
• High team efficacy is associated with higher performance.
• Individuals in highly efficacious teams tend to engage in coordination and cooperation.

Three Levels of Trust

• Calculus-based, knowledge-based, identification-based (from low to high levels).

Stages of Team Development

• Forming: Learning about each other, evaluating memberships.
• Storming: Conflict, members proactively compete for roles.
• Norming: Roles established, consensus around objectives.
• Performing: Efficient coordination, high trust, commitment, identify with the team.
• Adjourning: Disbanding, shifts from task to relationship focus.

Team Development: Forming Identities and Mental Models

• Developing team identity (viewing team as "us" vs "them") becoming part of personal social identity.
• Developing team mental models and coordinating routines (forming shared and complementary mental models, forming habitual routines).

Team Building

• Formal activities aimed at improving team development and functioning through clarifying performance goals, enhancing problem-solving skills, defining roles, and strengthening relationships.

Team Decision-Making Constraints

• Time: Coordinating, organizing, and blocking production.
• Evaluation apprehension: Reluctance to share ideas perceived as silly due to the fear of criticism from other members.
• Peer pressure: Suppressing opposing opinions to align with team norms.
• Overconfidence/inflated team efficacy: leads to less vigilent decisions.
• Information sharing problem: Majority view outweighs the minority view.

General Guidelines for Team Decisions

• Encouraging critical thinking through team norms.
• Ensuring sufficient diversity in teams.
• Creating checks and balances to avoid dominant participants.
• Maintaining appropriate team size.
• Implementing effective team structures.