Chapter 10: Understanding Work Teams

Understanding Work Teams

• Chapter reviews groups and teams.
• Contrasts different team arrangements.
• Identifies what makes teams tick
• Explains how organizations can get the best out of effective teams.
• Decides when teams are a bad idea

Resilient Teams

• In 2018, twelve boys and their soccer coach were trapped in a cave in Thailand after flash floods took them by surprise.
• A rescue team formed to help the boys.
• The team considered drilling down through the caves, using an industrial pump to lower water levels, and diving down to rescue the boys.
• The rescue team decided to assemble a dive team to reach them.
• The boys were heavily sedated as there was no way they could make it through the flooded tunnels.
• The multinational team was able to execute the incredible rescue.

Differences Between Groups and Teams

• Groups and teams are often used to refer to the same thing.
• A group has individuals that interact and are interdependent, who work together to achieve objectives.
• A work group interacts primarily to share information and make decisions so each member can perform within their role.
• A work group doesn't engage in collective work with joint efforts, so performance is the sum of each member’s work.
• A work team generates positive synergy through coordination.
• Team’s efforts mean performance is greater than the sum of the inputs.
• Teams are more likely to be constantly changing and adapting rather than static entities

Comparing Work Groups and Work Teams

• Work groups share information with a goal.
• Synergy in a work group is neutral.
• There is individual accountability and random skills.
• Work teams look for collective performance, are positive, and have individual and mutual accountability and complementary skills.

Types of Teams

• Teams can make products, provide services, negotiate deals, coordinate projects, offer advice, and make decisions.
• Organizations have problem-solving teams, self-managed work teams, cross-functional teams, and virtual teams.
• Multiteam systems mean a "team of teams" interacts within and across organizations.

Problem-Solving Teams

• Quality-control teams are problem-solving teams that have been in use for many years.
• Problem-solving teams met to address quality standards and any problems with the products made.
• Problem-solving teams rarely have the authority to implement their suggestions unilaterally.

Self-Managed Work Teams

• Self-managed work teams implement solutions and take responsibility for outcomes.
• These teams are composed of employees who perform related jobs and who take on supervisory responsibilities.
• Responsibilities include planning and scheduling work, assigning tasks, making operating decisions, taking action to solve problems, and working with suppliers and customers.
• Research findings say the effectiveness of self-managed teams relies on the degree to which team-promoting behaviors are rewarded and disputes do not arise.

Cross-Functional Teams

• ExtraHop and Ixia implemented teams that bring IT and security operations (SecOps) employees to work together.
• Cross-functional teams are made up of employees from the same hierarchical level but from different work areas, coming together to accomplish a task.
• These teams allow people from diverse areas to exchange information, develop new ideas, solve problems, and coordinate complex projects.
• Organizations may derive the least benefit from these teams in environments with dispersed power.
• A portfolio governance team (PGT) uses team leaders from different functions and who govern different teams working together to accomplish tasks, which improves results.

Virtual Teams

• Virtual teams use technology to unite members to achieve a common goal.
• Members collaborate online using networks, corporate social media, videoconferencing, e-mail, and messenger applications.
• Virtual teams should be managed differently because their members may not interact in the same way.
• Management should ensure trust is established, progress is monitored closely, and team efforts and products are publicized.

Multiteam Systems

• Multiteam systems are composed of collections of interdependent teams sharing a superordinate goal.
• NASA plans to send a team of astronauts to Mars, and countless teams will be needed to make the mission a success.
• Multiteam systems performed better when needing to coordinate with all constituents was reduced.
• Strong identification to one's own team can lead to conflicts between teams.
• Leadership of multiteam systems requires a leader to both facilitate coordination between teams and lead them.

An Ethical Choice: The Size of Your Meeting's Carbon Footprint

• Teams in geographically dispersed locations may communicate without person to person meetings, saving on carbon emissions.
• Communicate as much as possible through virtual means, including e-mail, telephone calls, and videoconferencing.
• When traveling to team meetings, choose the most environmentally responsible travel methods.
• Communicating electronically has 2 benefits, it is cheaper and good for the environment

Creating Effective Teams

• Teams are often created deliberately but sometimes evolve organically.
• Noam Wasserman's research of over ten thousand tech startups notes nearly 40 percent of founders were friends before going into business.
• Being friends increases the likelihood of failure.
• Contextual influences, team composition, and process and state variables determine effective teams.
• Team effectiveness includes measurements such as: the team's productivity, managers' ratings, and member satisfaction.

Team Context

• The contextual factors that relate to team performance are: adequate resources, leadership and structure, culture and climate, a performance evaluation and reward system, and crises and extreme contexts.

Adequate Resources

• Every work team relies on resources outside the group to sustain it.
• A scarcity of resources directly reduces the ability of a team to perform its job effectively.

Leadership and Structure

• Teams must not disagree on who is to do what and to ensure that all members share the workload and requires leadership.
• Well-performing teams tend to have leaders who are transformational and empowering.

Culture and Climate

• A team's culture and climate influence its effectiveness.
• Team climates that enable collaboration lead teams to become more motivated and creative.

Performance Evaluation and Reward System

• Performance evaluations and incentives may interfere with the development of high-performance teams.

Crises and Extreme Contexts

• These contexts can unlock the potential of team members who do great things under stress.
• In the Mann Gulch fire of 1949, dozens of smokejumpers led by foreman “Wag” Dodge were dispatched to an area south of the Mann Gulch valley in Montana.
• The leader initiated structure and planning, delegated and coordinated as well as helped team members make sense of the situation.

Team Composition

• Team composition includes variables that relate to how teams should be staffed. These variables are: the abilities and personalities of team members, allocation of roles, diversity and cultural differences, size of the team, and members' preferences for teamwork.

Abilities of Members

• A team's performance depends on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of individual members.
• A number of groups of abilities are helpful to be an effective team member, namely conflict resolution, collaborative problem solving, communication, goal setting, and planning abilities/skills.

Personality of Members

• Conscientiousness is important to teams because conscientious people are good at backing up other team members and sensing when their support is truly needed
• Teams that are more agreeable tend to perform better.
• The level of team member agreeableness matters, too, and open team members are willing to share more ideas.

Allocation of Roles

• Teams have different needs, and members should be selected to ensure that all the various roles are filled.
• Successful work teams put people in the best roles for their skills and preferences.

Key Roles of Teams

• Detractor
• Shirker
• Critic
• Dominator
• Producer
• Leader
• Innovator
• Motivator
• Socializer
• Coordinator
• Cooperator
• Shepherd
• Evaluator

Diversity of Members

• The degree to which members of a work unit share a common demographic attribute, such as age, gender identity, race, educational level, or organizational tenure, is the subject of demography.
• Conflict will be greater among those with dissimilar experiences because communication is more difficult

Creating Diverse, Equitable, & Inclusive Teams

• Diversity initially impacts teams negatively but that eventually can be overcome over time with good outcomes.
• Some researchers have found that the team benefits of cultural diversity depend upon the team's cultural composition

Team Size

• Many experts believe that keeping teams small is key to improving group effectiveness.
• Amazon Chair Jeff Bezos uses the “two-pizza" rule, claiming, "If it takes more than two pizzas to feed the team, the team is too big."
• Experts suggest using the smallest number of people who can do the task.

Team Processes and States

• These include procedures, activities, and behaviors as well as states such as commitment to a common plan, motivation, team efficacy, team identity, team cohesion, mental models, conflict, social loafing, and trust.
• Exhibit 10-5 illustrates how group processes impact a group's effectiveness

Common Plan and Purpose

• Effective teams begin by analyzing the team's mission, developing goals to achieve that mission, and creating strategies for achieving the goals.

Reflexivity

• Effective teams show reflexivity, meaning they reflect on and adjust their purpose when necessary.

Mental Models

• The members of an effective team share accurate mental models, helping their firefighters act better in situations that require fast action to survive.

Teams Should Practice Collective Mindfulness

• Individual mindfulness can reduce stress and anxiety and improve focus and leadership flexibility, but team culture may be more influential than individuals' practices.
• Collective mindfulness is a shared practice among team members in which they interact with one another with focus on the present experiences.

Team Conflict

• Relationship conflict, task conflict, ethical conflict are varieties within teams.
• Disagreements about task content stimulate discussion, promote critical assessment of problems and options, and can lead to better team decisions.

Team Efficacy

• Team's collective belief that they can succeed at their tasks.
• Effective teams have confidence in themselves and they believe they can succeed.
• Teams have small successes that build confidence and provide training, this will improve members' skills.

Virtual Leadership

• Lindsay Kaplan, co-founder and CEO of Chief, recounts life as a virtual manager during COVID. In a text to her team that she would be late, she puts trust in her team. Teams have reliability, dependability, and care about welfare

Turning Groups of Employees into Teams

• Organizations want to hire people “who think team first”, instead of those focused on self-centered behavior.

Selection

• Managers, when hiring team members, try to be certain that candidates can fulfill their team roles as well as technical requirements.

Training

• Training specialists conduct exercises that enable teams to perform more effectively by learning relevant team skills and practices, and develop shared mental models.

Incentives

• As Ashira Prossack notes, rewarding teams has the benefit of providing a common goal that every team member can work together.

Don't Rely on Teams

• Teams take more time and more resources than individual, and have increased communication demands, and more conflict so that means that the benefits of the team needs to be more than the costs.

Test Whether to Use Teams

• Can the work be done better by more than one person?
• Simple tasks that do not need input are left to individuals.
• Does the work create a common goal for people that is more than aggregate? Are the members of the group interdependent?