Chapter 1 - The Changing Landscape of Leading Teams

Question 1

What are the two primary leadership levers that a team leader can use to maximize team effectiveness?

Answer 1

• Team design: how work is structured, what kind of goals are set, & how rewards can be used to stimulate individual and team performance
• Team coaching: the leadership behaviors associated with maximizing member and team motivation and performance

Question 2

Today’s business world can be expressed by the acronym:

Answer 2

VUCA
o	Volatile
o	Uncertain
o	Complex
o	Ambiguous

Question 3

Describe the 7 differences between yesterday’s teams and today’s teams.

Answer 3

1. Stability of membership: use to be stable and now they are dynamic and changing
2. Number of members and leaders on different teams: use to be a member or lead one at a time and now people are members of multiple teams and leading multiple teams.
3. The team life span: use to be long-term and now it’s short term
4. The level of interdependence: on teams was stable and now it’s dynamic and changing
5. Team boundaries: use to be clear but now they are unclear and fuzzy, you don’t know who’s on what team anymore
6. The mode of interaction: used to be face to face and now its virtual or hybrid.
7. The team composition: use to be all the same culture but now teams are diverse

Question 4

What are the 4 classic tensions of team leadership

Answer 4

o Embracing individual differences while simultaneously emphasizing team identity goals
o Encouraging team members to support one another while simultaneously creating conditions under which members can confront one another and have healthy levels of functional team conflict
o Focusing on successful performance while simultaneously creating learning experiences that come from making mistakes and failing
o Balancing leader authority with team member discretion and authority

Question 5

What are the 3 new tensions of today’s teams

Answer 5

o Simultaneously balancing team leadership roles and responsibilities in some teams with team membership roles and responsibilities in other teams. This can cause Attention residue: makes it hard to shift focus from one task to another
o Balancing the need for belongingness associated with face-to-face teamwork against the requirements for efficient teamwork associated with more technology-based, virtual approaches
o Leverage newcomers’ fresh perspectives with the pressure to get them quickly acclimated to an existing status quo

Question 6

What is the definition of teams?

Answer 6

Team: an interdependent collection of individuals who are mutually accountable and share responsibility for specific outcomes for their organization.

Question 7

List and define the three types of interdependence

Answer 7

o Task Interdependence: concerns how team members work together to carry out their tasks.
o Goal Interdependence: the extent to which members’ goals are compatible and team focused
o Outcome Interdependence: the extent to which rewards and feedback are tied to overall team, not individual, performance

Question 8

group-like

Answer 8

• Group-like:
  o Low interdependence
  o Little shared responsibility or accountability
  o Individuals deliver the product, service, idea, or decision (not entire teams)

Question 9

Team-like

Answer 9

• Team-like:
  o High interdependence (namely task interdependence)
  o Exchange resources with which they work (e.g., information, materials, ideas)
  o High levels of coordination and integration
  o High degrees of collaboration
  o Mutual Accountability in which team members are accountable not only to one another but also as a team to their companies. The entire team delivers a product, not individuals.