Team Dynamics and Effectiveness Quiz

Chapter Eight: Team Dynamics

• Organizational behavior, ninth edition, by McShane and Von Glinow, is the source for this chapter.
• Learning is the central theme of this text as it changes everything.
• Learning objectives include discussing team benefits/limitations, informal group employee joining reasons, and team effectiveness models.
• Task characteristics, team size, and team composition are key influences on team effectiveness.
• Team processes like development, norms, cohesion, and trust influence team effectiveness.
• Characteristics and factors required for self-directed and remote team success are noted.
• Constraints on team decision-making and advantages/disadvantages of various team decision-making structures are identified.

Types of Teams

• Permanence: How long does the team exist?
• Skill diversity: Measures the variety of member skills and knowledge.
• Authority dispersion: The distribution of decision-making within the team.

What are Teams?

• Teams are groups of two or more people.
• Teams exist to fulfill a purpose.
• Teams are interdependent and have a need for collaboration.
• Team members influence each other and perceive themselves as a team.

Informal Groups

• Informal groups exist primarily for their members' benefit.
• Reasons for informal group existence include innate drive to bond, social identity, goal accomplishment, and emotional support.
• Informal groups can benefit organizations.

Advantages and Challenges of Teams

• Advantages: Better decisions, higher motivation due to shared effort and outcomes, and better information exchange.
• Challenges: Process losses and social loafing (reduced effort by some members).

Social Loafing Causes and Remedies

• Social loafing is more common when individual performances are unidentifiable or motivation is low.
• Team dynamics can affect employee motivation.
• Remedies include forming smaller teams, specializing tasks, measuring individual performance, increasing job enrichment, and raising social loafing awareness.

Team Effectiveness Model

• The model shows the relationship between team design, organizational environment, team processes, and team effectiveness.
• Team design includes task characteristics, team size, and composition.
• The organizational/team environment includes rewards, communication, structure, leadership, and physical space
• Team processes include development, norms, cohesion, and trust.
• Team effectiveness includes accomplishing tasks, satisfying member needs, and maintaining survival

Organization and Team Environment

• Includes factors like reward systems, organizational structure, communication, leadership, and physical space.

Team Design: Best Task Characteristics

• Complex tasks are divisible into specialized roles.
• Well-structured tasks have low variability and high analyzability.
• Higher task interdependence strengthens teams.

Levels of Task Interdependence

• This concept details different degrees of task dependency.
  • Pooled interdependence, sequential interdependence, and reciprocal interdependence are three recognized types.

Team Size

• Smaller teams are generally more effective due to less process loss, higher member engagement, and faster development.
• The optimal team size depends on what needs to be accomplished.

Team Composition

• Team members must participate in task tasks and teamwork.
• Teamwork involves completing assigned task works.
• Effective 5Cs of teamwork support team-working efforts.
• Conflict handling is critical for effective teams; the best approach is appropriate to the situation.
• The effectiveness of team members is influenced by a variety of factors such as empathy, providing emotional comfort, building confidence, communication, coordination, and alignment.
• Team diversity brings advantages (different perspectives) but can also lead to slower development.

Team Process: Stages of Team Development

• Team development follows stages including forming (learning about each other), storming (conflict and competition), norming (roles and consensus), performing (high cooperation), and adjourning (disbanding).

Team Development: Identities and Mental Models

• Team development involves developing team identification and mental models/coordinating routines.

Team Development: Team Roles

• Team roles involve expected behaviors, perceived value to the team and the organization, attachment to other team members, and acquisition (formal or informal).
• Different types of roles like task-work and team-work exist.

Team Development: Team Building

• This concerns formal activities conducted to improve team development and functioning.
• Techniques like goal setting, problem-solving, role clarification, and interpersonal relations are included.
• Effective team building depends on specific circumstances.

Team Process: Team Norms

• Teams develop shared expectations, informal rules to regulate behavior.
• Norms are shaped by initial experiences, critical events, and existing member values and experience.
• Preventing dysfunctional norms involves setting clear, desired norms that are aligned with preferred values, and introducing counter-rewards.

Team Process: Team Cohesion

• Team cohesion is the degree of attraction members feel toward the team.
• Higher cohesion is often seen in smaller teams with high member similarity, frequent interaction, difficult team entry processes, successful teams, and external competition.

Team Cohesion and Performance

• High cohesion is linked to greater motivation, better information sharing, higher coworker satisfaction, better social support, and faster conflict resolution.
• High cohesion increases performance when task interdependence and team norms align with organizational objectives.

Trust in Teams

• Trust is positive expectations one has toward another person or group involving risk.
• Three trust levels exist: calculus-based (low), knowledge-based and identification-based (high).
• Swift trust is often seen when new team members join.

Self-Directed Teams

• Self-directed teams are cross-functional groups focused on specific work processes and responsible for completing tasks.
• Factors crucial for success include autonomy over task choices, team responsibility for the entire work process, high interdependence within the team, limited interaction with other teams, support for work organization, and coordination.

Remote (Virtual/Distributed) Teams

• Team remoteness is related to geographical dispersion, member work locations, and interaction frequency.
• Effective remote teams need strong individual members, diverse communication channels, clear task structure, and face-to-face interaction opportunities.

Team Decision-Making Constraints

• Time constraints (e.g., production blocking, coordination).
• Aversion to evaluation ("evaluation apprehension", reluctance to express unusual ideas).
• Peer pressure, inhibiting differing opinions.
• Overconfidence ("inflated team efficacy").

General Guidelines for Team Decisions

• Checks and balances should limit domination by any one team member.
• Optimal team size should be maintained.
• Team confidence should be encouraged without being excessively overconfident.
• Norms should encourage critical thinking.
• Psychological safety should be cultivated and maintained.
• Structures that promote innovation and creativity should be introduced.

Creative Team Structures: Brainstorming

• Brainstorming rules: individuals speak freely, ideas are not criticized, as many ideas are presented as possible, and ideas are built upon.
• Success in brainstorming is largely related to skilled facilitators, empowered employees, and a psychologically safe environment.
• Brainstorming can be limited by production blocking and the conformity effect.

Other Creative Team Structures

• Brainwriting (brainstorming without conversation) is a similar approach, avoiding production blocking more effectively.
• Electronic brainstorming leverages technology, potentially mitigating evaluation apprehension and conformity concerns.
• The nominal group technique combines brainwriting with a verbal discussion stage. This strategy might also be called "round robin" for its approach.