Class 1

Question 1

This course is designed to help you learn

Answer 1

Principles associated with designing and managing teams

Common errors that are typically unconscious and often lead to unethical behavior

Practical skills

Question 2

A group is?

Answer 2

two or more people interacting with each other

Question 3

A team is?

Answer 3

two or more people who are interdependent in terms of information, resources, and skills and who together work towards a common goal

Question 4

What makes a good team?

Answer 4

Compelling direction: do we have a common goal that is clear, challenging but not impossible, and consequential?

Strong Structure: Do we have the right number and mix of members? Are people responsible? Do we have clear norms for acceptable conduct?

Supportive Context: do we have the resources, information, and training we need? Are these appropriate rewards for success?

Shared Mindset: do the team members have a strong common identity? Do we readily share information with one another

*The secrets of great teamwork

Question 5

Team performance measurement criteria

Answer 5

• team results (productivity, efficiency, quality, innovation)
• Team member satisfaction and well-being

Question 6

Advantages of Teams

Answer 6

• Potential to increase performance, innovation, and motivation
• brings complementary skills, experiences, information
• diversity
• social benefits

Question 7

Disadvantages of Teams

Answer 7

• time consuming
• coordination problems
• conflict and disagreement
• diffusion of responsibility (free-riders and social loafing)

Question 8

Group Productivity:

Answer 8

Actual productivity = Potential productivity - *process losses + synergistic gain

Question 9

process losses

Answer 9

= effort & motivation, ability, coordination

Question 10

Effort and motivation losses - Causes?

Answer 10

• social loafing
• sucker effects
• diffusion of responsibility and bystander effect
• reduced sense of self efficacy

Question 11

Effort and motivation losses - Solutions?

Answer 11

• clarify expectations early; develop written contract
• assign interesting, challenging, meaningful tasks
• Make member contributions identifiable
• build trust among members
• offer frequent feedback
• reward members’ performance
• keep group size small
• have an action plan

Question 12

Bystander apythy/diffusion of responsibility

Answer 12

• Video example - less likely to intervene when others are present

Question 13

Ability Losses -Causes?

Answer 13

• dominant response set (dominant response is “the reaction elicited most quickly and easily by a given stimulus)
• evaluation apprehension (choking)
• Social impairment (fear, shyness)

Question 14

Ability Losses - Solutions?

Answer 14

• Establish a climate of psychological safety
• build trust among members
• share expertise; improve individual members’ capabilities
• practice as a team -> build muscle memory/correct dominant response

Question 15

Coordination Losses - Causes?

Answer 15

• Failure to discuss the coordination approach explicitly beforehand and during
• poor work process design (redundancy, omissions, inappropriate assignments to members)
• insufficient information sharing
• conceptual blocking

Question 16

Coordination Losses - Solutions?

Answer 16

• Discuss coordination strategies at the beginning and reassess them during the task
• encourage members to share information
• train members as a team
• practice as a team
• keep group size small

Question 17

Six basic dimensions of real teams?

Answer 17

• small number
• complementary skills (technical, task management, interpersonal)
• committed to common purpose
• committed to performance goals
• committed to common approach
• mutually accountable

Question 18

• high-performing teams

Answer 18

• high commitment, intensity, and mutual concern for one another

Question 19

Team performance cycle:

Answer 19

Transition phase: Planning
* identify goals
* develop plans to achieve goals 
* Identify process losses and ways to reduce them
Action Phase: Doing
* carry out plans
* monitor performance

Question 20

What Google learned from it’s quest to build a perfect team (Class 1)

Answer 20

The researchers eventually concluded that what distinguished the ‘‘good’’ teams from the dysfunctional groups was how teammates treated one another. The right norms, in other words, could raise a group’s collective intelligence, whereas the wrong norms could hobble a team, even if, individually, all the members were exceptionally bright.

First, on the good teams, members spoke in roughly the same proportion, a phenomenon the researchers referred to as ‘‘equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.’

Second, the good teams all had high ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ — a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues. One of the easiest ways to gauge social sensitivity is to show someone photos of people’s eyes and ask him or her to describe what the people are thinking or feeling — an exam known as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. People on the more successful teams in Woolley’s experiment scored above average on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. They seemed to know when someone was feeling upset or left out. People on the ineffective teams, in contrast, scored below average. They seemed, as a group, to have less sensitivity toward their colleagues.

Psychological Safety
To have Matt stand there and tell us that he’s sick and he’s not going to get better and, you know, what that means,’’ Laurent said. ‘‘It was a really hard, really special moment.’’
The team grew and was better because of psychological safety

Question 21

Why Teams Don’t Work (Class 1)

Answer 21

Teams must be real - people need to know who is on the team and who is not.
Teams need a compelling direction- Members need to know and agree upon what they are supposed to be doing together.

Teams need enabling structures - Teams that have poorly designed tasks, the wrong number or mix of members get in trouble
Teams need supportive organization - The organizational context - reward system, human resource system and the information system
Teams need expert coaching - Teams need coaching as a group in team processes

Example: Gives the example of the CFO not being on the executive committee because he didn’t work well in a team environment. There were bruised feelings at first but in the end the committee could become a real team and the CFO was much happier not having to go to meetings.

The things that happen the first time a group meets strongly affect how a group will operate throughout it’s existence.
Compares Commercial pilots and their teams being new all the time to that of the SAC and how their team was together and was a well oiled machine working in harmony.

Question 22

A working Definition and Discipline (Class 1)

Answer 22

Small Number
Complementary skills - technical or functional expertise, Problem solving and decision making skills, interpersonal skills
Committed to a common purpose and performance goals
Specific goal or goals
Committed to a common approach
Mutual accountability

Question 23

We are all Bystanders (Class 1)

Answer 23

In one of their studies, college students sat in a cubicle and were instructed to talk with fellow students through an intercom. They were told that they would be speaking with one, two, or five other students, and only one person could use the intercom at a time.
Eighty-five percent of the participants who were in the two-person situation, and hence believed they were the only witness to the victim’s seizure, left their cubicles to help. In contrast, only 62 percent of the participants who were in the three-person situation and 31 percent of the participants in the six-person situation tried to help.

Diffusion of Responsibility
Darley and Latané also suspected that bystanders don’t intervene in an emergency because they’re misled by the reactions of the people around them. To test this hypothesis, they ran an experiment in which they asked participants to fill out questionnaires in a laboratory room. After the participants had gotten to work, smoke filtered into the room—a clear signal of danger.
When participants were alone, 75 percent of them left the room and reported the smoke to the experimenter. With three participants in the room, only 38 percent left to report the smoke. And quite remarkably, when a participant was joined by two confederates instructed not to show any concern, only 10 percent of the participants reported the smoke to the experimenter.

Question 24

Differing Work Styles Can help team Performance (Class 2)

Answer 24

In any office you will find four basic types of people:
Logical, analytical, and data-oriented
Organized, plan-focused, and detail-oriented
Supportive, expressive, and emotionally oriented
Strategic, integrative, and idea-oriented

Observe you team members - look for their ‘tells’
Ex. does she complete work early, send emails too long or too short, gestures while speaking… etc.

Leverage everyone’s strengths
Coach according to style

Question 25

Speeding up team learning (Class 2)

Answer 25

Become a learning leader
Be accessible
Ask for input
Serve as a ‘fallibility model.’ Team leaders can further foster a learning environment by admitting their mistakes to the team.

Question 26

Building and Leading High-performing Teams (Class 2)

Answer 26

First, decide if teams are the best approach. Once you decide, you need to figure out how:

Establish the teamwork process and goals in a kickoff meeting.
Create a team charter
Project purpose/goals
Team member roles/responsibilities
Ground rules
Communication protocol

Question 27

Trust Makes the Team Go ‘Round (Class 2)

Answer 27

Virtual teams are becoming a way of life due to outsourcing and globalization. This has increased cultural and language barriers, misunderstandings, erroneous assumptions, and other problems that arise with diverse virtual teams.

“You can have all the procedures and processes in the world, but without trust, your virtual team or operation is going nowhere.”

Ways to create trust in virtual teams:

Create Face Time
Set Clear Goals and Expectations
Make the Work Visible
Provide Ongoing Feedback
Showcase Team Members’ Competence
Foster Cultural Understanding

Question 28

American Airlines changes its business operation to move on workers’ ideas (Class 2)

Answer 28

Early 2000’s, airlines were struggling. US Airways was filing for 2 bankruptcy. American Airlines wasn’t doing much better. After replacing the CEO, the new leader changed things around by looking to the workers.
“Management is now asking its workers for their ideas on how to make the airline more efficient. And then management takes the best suggestions and makes them happen–right away.”
Improved efficiency with engine placement on Jets
Saved money on gas (refueled in different locations)

Question 29

The best teams have these five things – does yours? (Class 2)

Answer 29

Great teams have:

Clear and compelling goals. Lower performing teams lack clear goals, don’t talk about them, or have conflicting goals.

Clear and agreed upon roles. Responsibilities are clear, everyone accepts everyone else’s roles.

Simple, effective processes. Consistent, clear communications. Simple and clear definitions. This nirvana is rare. Unless leader (e.g. CEO) sees importance of these things, they are unlikely to be changed.

Agreed upon measures of success. What is being measured and why - key metrics. Poor teams often lack measures of success, even when they have goals.

High trust. This is the lubricant and could be the most important of the five. “Speed of trust” model - Trust their character and their competence. If you dismiss colleagues’ character or competence, it’s hard to have honest conversations that build trust. Assume positive intent, and resolve misunderstandings.