Chapter 14

Question 1

What is a team?

Answer 1

• A _team _is a unit of two or more people who interact and coordinate their work to accomplish a common goal to which they are committed and hold themselves mutually accountable.

Question 2

What is the difference between a group and a team?

Answer 2

• Group
  
  • Has a designated strong leader
  • Holds individuals accountable
  • Sets identical purpose for group and organization
  • Has individual work products
  • Runs efficient meetings
  • Measures effectiveness indirectly by influence on business (such as financial performance)
  • Discusses, decides, and delegates work to individuals
• Team
  
  • Shares or rotates leadership roles
  • Holds team members accountable to each other
  • Sets specific team vision or purpose
  • Has collective work products
  • Runs meetings that encourage open-ended discussion and problem solving
  • Measures effectiveness directly by assessing collective work
  • Discusses, decides, and shares work

Question 3

What are five contributions teams make to organizations?

Answer 3

• creativity and innovation
• improved quality
• speed of response
• higher productivity and lower cosst
• enhanced motivation and satisfaction

Question 4

What is social facilitation?

Answer 4

• Social facilitation is the tendency for the presence of other people to influence an individual’s motivation and performance.

Question 5

What is the difference between a functional team and a cross-functional team?

Answer 5

• A functional team is composed of a manager and his or her subordinates in the formal chain of command.
• A cross-functional team is composed of employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from different areas of expertise.

Question 6

What is a special-purpose team? Provide an example.

Answer 6

• A special-purpose team, is created outside the formal organization structure to undertake a project of special importance or creativity.
• Special-purpose teams are often created for developing a new product or service. I

Question 7

What is a self-managed team?

Answer 7

• Self-managed teams typically consist of five to twenty multi-skilled workers who rotate jobs to produce an entire product or service or at least one complete aspect or portion of a product or service (e.g., engine assembly or insurance claim processing).

Question 8

What is a task force?

Answer 8

• A task force is a group of employees from different departments who deal with a specific activity and exist as a team only until the task is completed.

Question 9

What are the three primary reasons teams present a dilemma for many people?

Answer 9

• We have to give up our independence.
• We have to put up with free riders.
• Teams are sometimes dysfunctional.

Question 10

What are free riders?

Answer 10

• The term free rider refers to a team member who attains benefits from team membership but does not actively participate in and contribute to the team’s work.

Question 11

What are five common dysfunctions of teams?

Answer 11

• Lack of trust—People don’t feel safe to reveal mistakes, share concerns, or express ideas.
• Fear of conflict—People go along with others for the sake of harmony; don’t express conflicting opinions.
• Lack of commitment—If people are afraid to express their true opinions, it’s difficult to gain their true commitment to decisions.
• Avoidance of accountability—People don’t accept responsibility for outcomes; engage in finger-pointing when things go wrong.
• Inattention to results—Members put personal ambition or the needs of their individual departments ahead of collective results.

Question 12

What are five characteristics of effective teams?

Answer 12

• Trust—Members trust one another on a deep emotional level; feel comfortable being vulnerable with one another.
• Healthy conflict—Members feel comfortable disagreeing and challenging one another in the interest of finding the best solution.
• Commitment—Because all ideas are put on the table, people can achieve genuine buy-in around important goals and decisions.
• Accountability—Members hold one another accountable rather than relying on managers as the source of accountability.
• Results orientation—Individual members set aside personal agendas; focus on what’s best for the team. Collective results define success.

Question 13

Work team effectiveness is based upon what three outcomes?

Answer 13

• _Satisfaction _pertains to the team’s ability to meet the personal needs of its members and hence maintain their membership and commitment.
• Productive output pertains to performance and the quality and quantity of task outputs as defined by team goals.
• Capacity to adapt and learn refers to the ability of teams to bring greater knowledge and skills to job tasks and enhance the potential of the organization to respond to new threats or opportunities in the environment.

Question 14

What are four specific ways in which leaders contribute to team success?

Answer 14

• Rally people around a compelling purpose.
• Share control to spur commitment and motivation.
• Clarify norms and expectations.
• Admit ignorance.

Question 15

What is a virtual team?

Answer 15

• A virtual team is a group made up of geographically or organizationally dispersed members who are linked primarily through advanced information and telecommunications technologies.

Question 16

What is a global team?

Answer 16

• A global team is a cross-border team made up of members of different nationalities whose activities span multiple countries.

Question 17

What is the best size (number of members) for a team?

Answer 17

• One investigation of team size based on data from fifty-eight software development teams found that the best-performing teams ranged in size from three to six members.

Question 18

What is the relationship between diversity and team performance?

Answer 18

• In general, research supports this idea, showing that diverse teams produce more innovative solutions to problems.
• Research studies have confirmed that both functional diversity and demographic diversity can have a positiveimpact on work team performance.
• For example, recent research suggests that gender diversity, particularly with more women on a team, leads to better performance.
• Ethnic, national, and racial diversity sometimes can hinder team interaction and performance in the short term, but with effective leadership, the problems fade over time.

Question 19

In successful teams, the requirements for task performance and social satisfaction are met by the emergence of which two types of roles?

Answer 19

• The task specialist role is a team role in which an individual devotes personal time and energy to helping the team accomplish its activities and reach its goal.
• The socioemotional role is a team role in which an individual provides support for team members’ emotional needs and helps strengthen social unity.

Question 20

What are the five stages of team development?

Answer 20

• The forming stage of development is a period of orientation and getting acquainted. Members break the ice and test one another for friendship possibilities and task orientation.
• During the storming stage, individual personalities emerge. People become more assertive in clarifying their roles and what is expected of them. This stage is marked by conflict and disagreement.
• During the norming stage, conflict is resolved, and team harmony and unity emerge.
• During the performing stage, the major emphasis is on problem solving and accomplishing the assigned task. Members are committed to the team’s mission.
• The adjourning stage occurs in committees and teams that have a limited task to perform and are disbanded afterward. During this stage, the emphasis is on wrapping up and gearing down.

Question 21

What is team cohesiveness?

Answer 21

• Team cohesiveness is defined as the extent to which members are attracted to the team and motivated to remain in it.

Question 22

What are three ways to increase team cohesiveness?

Answer 22

• First is team interaction. When team members have frequent contact, they get to know one another, consider themselves a unit, and become more committed to the team.
• Second is the concept of shared goals. If team members agree on purpose and direction, they will be more cohesive.
• Third is personal attraction to the team, meaning that members have similar attitudes and values and enjoy being together.

Question 23

What are team norms?

Answer 23

• A team norm is an informal standard of conduct that is shared by team members and guides their behavior.

Question 24

What are four ways in which team norms develop?

Answer 24

• Primacy: first behavior precedents
• Carryover from other experiences
• Explicit statements from leader or members
• Critical events in team’s history

Question 25

What is conflict? What are two types of conflict that occur in teams?

Answer 25

• _Conflict _refers to antagonistic interaction in which one party attempts to block the intentions or goals of another.
• _Task conflict _refers to disagreements among people about the goals to be achieved or the content of the tasks to be performed.
• Relationship conflict refers to interpersonal incompatibility that creates tension and personal animosity among people.

Question 26

What is the relationship between conflict and team performance?

Answer 26

• Too little conflict can decrease team performance because the team doesn’t benefit from a mix of opinions and ideas—even disagreements—that might lead to better solutions or prevent the team from making mistakes.
• At the other end of the spectrum, too much conflict outweighs the team’s cooperative efforts and leads to a decrease in employee satisfaction and commitment, hurting team performance.
• A moderate amount of conflict that is managed appropriately typically results in the highest levels of team performance.

Question 27

What are the five styles for handling conflict?

Answer 27

• The dominating style (my way) reflects assertiveness to get one’s own way and should be used when quick, decisive action is vital on important issues or unpopular actions, such as during emergencies or urgent cost cutting.
• The avoiding style (no way) reflects neither assertiveness nor cooperativeness. It is appropriate when an issue is trivial, when there is no chance of winning, when a delay to gather more information is needed, or when a disruption would be costly.
• The compromising style (halfway) reflects a moderate amount of both assertiveness and cooperativeness. It is appropriate when the goals on both sides are equally important, when opponents have equal power and both sides want to split the difference, or when people need to arrive at temporary or expedient solutions under time pressure.
• The accommodating style (your way) reflects a high degree of cooperativeness, which works best when people realize that they are wrong, when an issue is more important to others than to oneself, when building social credits for use in later discussions, and when maintaining harmony is especially important.
• The collaborating style (our way) reflects a high degree of both assertiveness and cooperativeness. The collaborating style enables both parties to win, although it may require substantial bargaining and negotiation. The collaborating style is important when both sets of concerns are too important to be compromised, when insights from different people need to be merged into an overall solution, and when the commitment of both sides is needed for a consensus.

Question 28

What is negotiation? What are two types of negotiations?

Answer 28

• One distinctive type of conflict management is negotiation, whereby people engage in give-and-take discussions and consider various alternatives to reach a joint decision that is acceptable to both parties.
• Integrative negotiation is based on a win-win assumption, in that all parties want to come up with a creative solution that can benefit both sides.
• Distributive negotiation, on the other hand, assumes that the size of the “pie” is fixed, and each party attempts to get as much of it as they can.

Question 29

What are the “rules” for reaching a win-win solution in negotiations?

Answer 29

• Separate the people from the problem.
• Focus on interests, not current demands.
• Listen and ask questions.
• Insist that results be based on objective standards.

Question 30

What is the punctuated equilibrium model? How can you manage time-based projects better?

Answer 30

• When groups have a specific deadline by which to complete some problem-solving task, we often observe a very different development sequence .
• The punctuated equilibrium model is a model of group development that describes how groups with deadlines are affected by their first meetings and crucial midpoint transitions.
• Phase 1. Phase 1 begins with the first meeting and continues until the midpoint in the group’s existence. Although it gathers information and holds meetings, the group makes little visible progress toward the goal.
• Midpoint Transition. The midpoint transition occurs at almost exactly the halfway point in time toward the group’s deadline. The transition marks a change in the group’s approach, and how the group manages it is critical for the group to show progress.
• Phase 2. Decisions and approaches adopted at the midpoint get played out in Phase 2. It concludes with a final meeting that reveals a burst of activity and a concern for how outsiders will evaluate the product.
• A series of smaller, but significant milestones enables project teams to maintain a more elevated performance level over the course of the project than if they are just aiming for the big delivery day at the end of the project.