Lecture 7: Chapter 8: Team Dynamics Flashcards
What are 5 characteristics of teams?
- Groups of >2 people
- Exist to fulfill a purpose
- Are interdependent
- Perceive themselves to be a social group
- Work towards achieving common goals
What are 3 reasons why informal groups exist? Why aren’t they a team?
- Innate drive to bond
- Social identity to reinforce own self-concept
- Achieve personal objectives
They aren’t a team because they don’t work towards a common goal
What are the 3 team characteristics?
- Permanence: how long a team exists
- Skill diversity: variety of member skills/knowledge
- Authority dispersion: whether responsibility decision-making is distributed
What does high authority dispersion mean?
High = decision making responsibility is distributed throughout the team
Low = centralized decision making
How do individuals accomplish personal objectives by belonging to informal groups?
People are comforted by presence of others and therefore are more prone to be near others in stressful situations where they can help people
What are the 4 most important types of teams?
- Departmental teams
- Self-directed teams
- Taskforce (project) teams
- Virtual/remote teams
What are 4 characteristics of departmental teams? Give an example
- Complementary/similar skills
- High team permanence
- Low skill diversity
- Often centralized authority
E.g. finances, marketing agency, development centres
What are 6 characteristics of self-directed teams? Give an example
- High team permanence
- High skill diversity
- Complete entire projects
- High autonomy about decisions and execution
- High interdependence
- Worksite and technology support team coordination/communication
E.g. small businesses, aircraft engine manufacturing, home-care nursing services
What are 4 characteristics of task force (project) teams?
- Low team permanence
- Only last until completion of specific project
- High to medium skill diversity
- Medium authority dispersion
What are 5 characteristics of virtual/remote teams?
- Operate through information technologies
- Flexible use of communication technology
- Clear roles
- Meeting face to face at some stage
- Structured tasks
What are 3 advantages of working in teams? What are 2 consequences of that?
- Breadth of knowledge and expertise
- Diversity of perspectives
- Potential for synergy/creativity
Consequences:
1. Better decisions, products, info sharing & coordination
2. Higher employee motivation
What are 3 disadvantages of working in teams?
- Process losses
- Brook’s law
- Social loafing
What is the disadvantage of process losses in team work? How can these processes get amplified?
Resources and time goes into creating and maintaining the team rather than towards completing the project
Amplified by replacing more people in the team, so changing team members
What is Brook’s law?
Adding new people might slow down the project
What is social loafing/the Ringelmann Effect? When is it most likely to occur (4)?
People put less effort in their work when they work in teams, because their effort is less visible.
It’s most likely to occur
- when it’s difficult to recognize individual effort
- when there’s low task significance
- when individuals have particular personality characteristics (low C, low A)
- when team dynamics undermine employee motivation (e.g. low cohesion)
What are 5 solutions for social loafing?
Make individual performance more visible:
1. Form smaller teams
2. Specializing tasks (better personal evaluation)
3. Measure individual performance
Increase employee/team motivation
4. Increase job enrichment
5. Select motivated employees
What is the team effectiveness model?
This model identifies the factors that influence how effectively teams accomplish their tasks and satisfy the needs of the members
Study the figure summary p.11
KEEP GOING YOU’RE AWESOME <3
What are the 4 big things in the team effectiveness model?
Organizational and team environment
–> Team design
–> Team processes
Team effectiveness
What is organizational and team environment and what are 5 aspects of organizational and team environment in the team effectiveness model?
It refers to all the conditions beyond the team that influence its effectiveness
- Team-based rewards
- Frequent communication
- Organizational structure, broad resource pool
- Organizational leadership, inspiration and support
- Physical space, external motivating forces
What are team design elements and which 3 aspects are there? (team effectiveness model)
Characteristics of the team and task to be carried out that can influence the team’s effectiveness
- Task characteristics
- Team size
- Team composition
What are characteristics that make tasks ideal for teamwork? Name 4 aspects
- Clearly defined/unambiguous
- Low variability, high analyzability
- Well-structured
- Complex tasks divisible into specialized roles
What is task interdependence? What are the 3 levels of task interdependence?
The extent to which members of a team must depend on each other to successfully complete the task
Structured into different levels from low to high:
1. Pooled interdependence: sharing workspace/machinery
2. Sequential interdependence: output of one person is for the next
3. Reciprocal interdependence: info and resources are constantly exchanged
Give an example for each level of task interdependence
- Pooled: employees share work unit
- Sequential: assembly of product
- Reciprocal: design of new products/services
What is the best team size? Why? (4)
Smaller teams <6 are better
- Less process loss: less coordination, quick agreement
- Faster team development
- More engaged with team
- Feel more responsible for team’s success
What is team composition? Which model fits with this?
Teams should be composed of member who are motivated, able and understand their roles
5 C’s model
What is the 5 Cs model?
Describes team member’s behavior using 5 concepts:
- Cooperating: share resources
- Coordinating: align work with others, keep on track
- Communicating: share info, listen
- Comforting: show empathy, build confidence
- Conflict handling: diagnose conflict sources, handle them well
What is the difference between task work and team work?
Task: behaviors that complete the assigned tasks
Team: behaviors from 5 C model that support the team
What are advantages and disadvantages of team diversity?
+: different perspectives/broader knowledge/better representation
-: slow team development, susceptible to faultlines
What are faultlines?
Hypothetical dividing lines that split the team into subgroups along dimensions such as gender, race and others
What is the difference between demographic and psychological diversity?
Demographic: surface-level: Age, gender, ethnic/cultural background
Psychological: traits and attitudes: knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes, values, beliefs
What is meta-analytic evidence on the relation between diversity and team performance (Horwitz)?
Correlation between diversity in general and team performance = 0
But the type of diversity is relevant, because psychological diversity matters for the quality/quantity of performance
What are 4 main aspects of team processes?
- Team development
- Team norms
- Team cohesion
- Team trust
What are the stages of the team development model (Tuckman)?
- Forming: get to know each other, evaluate membership, test boundaries of behavior
- Storming: interpersonal conflict, competition for team roles, establish norms
- Norming: established roles, agree on goals, form team mental models, develop cohesion
- Performing: task oriented, efficient coordination/cooperation, quick solving conflicts
5 Adjourning: team is dissolved
How can you accelerate team development?
Team building that includes goal clarification, problem solving skills, role clarification and improving interpersonal relations
What are team norms? How do they develop (3)? Why do they develop (3)?
Informal rules and expectations that help a group regulate behavior
Develop through:
1. Initial team experiences
2. Critical events in team’s history
3. Experience and values members bring to the team
Why:
1. Norms are associated with team well being
2. Improve predictability and avoid conflicts
3. Routinize behavior with less cognitive effort, which improves social order and coordination
What is team cohesion? Which 6 aspects makes team cohesion stronger?
The degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members
Stronger with:
1. high member similarity
2. smaller team size
3. regular member interaction
4. difficult entry into team
5. high team success
6. more external competition and challenges
Why do high-cohesion teams usually perform better? (4) Which 2 things support this good performance even more?
- Motivated to stay in team and achieve goals
- Share info frequently
- Better social support, less stress
- Resolve conflict effectively
Particularly when:
- High task interdependence
- Team norms are consistent with organizational objectives
What are team roles? Give some examples
A set of behaviors that people are expected to perform because they hold a specific position in the organization
E.g. organizer, doer, challenger, innovator, team builder, connector
How can high team cohesion have either positive or negative effects on task performance?
It depends on whether the team norm conflicts with company goals or not
Match with company = high performance
No match with company = low performance
(summary p. 14)
What is team trust? What are the 3 different types?
Positive expectations one person has toward another person in situations involving risk
Types (high-low trust)
1. Identification based trust
2. Knowledge based trust
3. Calculus based trust
What is identification based trust?
Based on knowing that a person shares the same ideas and values and therefore won’t break trust
Increases with person’s social identity with team
What is knowledge-based trust?
Trust based on predictability and competence. It’s fairly robust, because the person will behave in the way we expect them to behave
What is calculus-based trust?
It’s based on being aware of certain deterrence (instilling doubt/fear of the consequences), that makes it unlikely to act in a way that’s against you.
This is quite fragile and has a limited potential, because it’s based on punishment. It’s easily broken by a violation of expectation
What are 3 aspects of high team effectiveness?
- Accomplishing tasks
- Satisfying member needs
- Maintaining team survival
What are mental models? And what are shared and complementary mental models?
Visual and relational images we develop to describe, explain and predict the world around us
Shared = mental models that are similar for all team members (team goals, shared values etc.)
Complementary = cognitive images held by specific team members, but that are compatible with the mental models held by other team members (how the team operates)
What are the consequences of the use of shared and complementary mental models in a team?
They enable team members to establish effective coordinating routines.
Each member develops habitual work that coordinate almost automatically with the behaviors and expectations of other members
They also guide employees to where knowledge is located within the team
What are 3 requirements for successful self-directed teams (SDT)?
- SDT is responsible for entire process
- SDT has autonomy to organize and coordinate their work
- SDT increases job enrichment through communication among team members and a supportive work environment
Why are SDT (self directed teams) so popular?
They increase job satisfaction and productivity
Why are remote teams different from traditional teams (2)?
- One or more employees work vitually some of the time
- No colocation (physical work area) leads members to rely on informational technology
On what does team remoteness depend?
- Geographic distribution of team members
- Percent of members that work apart
- Percent of time these members work apart
Why has remote work become more popular? (3)
- More employees perform knowlegde work, so they can do their job everywhere
- IT technology have made it easier to communicate/coordinate remote work
- Increasing recognition that an organization’s competitive advantage is its human capital and other valued resources employees bring to the organization
Since Covid-19, remote work has become more common
How can you minimize remote team problems? (5)
- Effective team behaviors (5 Cs)
- Require good communication skills, strong self-leadership to motivate their behavior without peers nearby, better EI to decipher feelings of other team members
- Have a toolkit of communication channels (online whiteboards etc)
- Structure the online work
- Remote team members should meet face to face fairly early in the development process
What are 5 difficulties that teams bring in decision making?
- Time constraints: time to organize/coordinate, production blocking
- Evaluation apprehension: belief that others are silently evaluating you, self-presentation (reluctance to mention crazy ideas)
- Peer pressure to conform: suppressing opinions that oppose team norms
- Overconfidence: inflated team efficacy
What is production blocking and why is it a problem?
Only one person can speak at a time in team decision making, so there’s a lot of time lost
What causes overconfidence/inflated team efficacy?
Caused by self-enhancement, cohesion and external threats
It’s the over-exaggeration of the team’s ability to complete the project
What is groupthink? What is the danger of it and how does it emerge?
Tendency in highly cohesive teams to value consensus at the price of decision quality –> irrational or dysfunctional decision making
Danger: avoidance of reevaluating decisions + not taking expert advice into account
Emerges: taking the organizational perspective + demonstrating blind loyalty
Give 7 ways to prevent group think
- Encourage to criticize ideas
- Managers should encourage expression of opinions
- Seek expert advice
- Work in ad-hoc teams
- Invite external evaluation
- Appoint devil’s advocate
- Allow reevaluation after a decision is taken
What are 4 ways a team can improve decision making?
- Brainstorming
- Brainwriting
- Electronic brainstorming
- Nominal group technique
What is brainstorming?
Coming up with new ideas by asking all the team members to list the ideas that come to mind without first evaluating them
What is brainwriting?
Similar to brainstorming, but participants write their ideas down instead of saying them out loud
What is electronic brainstorming?
Brainstorming that uses IT technology to share the ideas with team members
Lower production blocking, evaluation apprehension, conformity
What is the nominal group technique?
Version of brainstorming in which each team member comes up with ideas by themselves and then the ideas are shared with the other team members. Each idea is discussed collectively and they independently vote. Then they collectively decide on the top ranked solutions
This method tends to generate more better-quality ideas
What is some research evidence on brainstorming? Give 2 requirements for effective brainstorming
It’s not effective according to lab studies using students
It tends to be effective according to field studies if:
1. Supportive facilitator
2. Supportive culture
What are 4 brainstorming rules that should help make it more effective?
- Speak freely
- Don’t criticize
- Provide as many ideas as possible
- Build on others’ ideas
What is a better idea than brainstorming and what is that?
Hybrid teams = individuals work independently for some time and then work together
–> more ideas generated, on average higher quality
What is design thinking?
A human centered approach that teams use to:
- empathize
- redefine problems
- challenge assumptions
- create solutions
- make prototype and test
