Team Dynamics Flashcards
What is a team?
Teams are groups of two or more people who interact and influence each other, are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational objectives, and perceive themselves as a social entity within an organization (McShane et al., 2018).
What is the Five-Stage Model of Team Development (by Tuckman and Jensen)?
Over their lifespan, teams proceed through the following five stages:
- Forming: Team members meet and greet.
- Storming: Team members argue (e.g. about leadership, objectives, process).
- Norming: Team members establish rules (i.e. norms) to function effectively.
- Performing: Team members perform their work.
- Adjourning: Team members say goodbye to each other and disband.
What is the Punctuated Equilibrium Model of Team Development (by Gersick)?
Over their lifespan, teams proceed through two phases of inertia punctuated by a transition:
Phase 1: Spans from the first meeting to the transition. A team decides on a first course of action and pursues it. E.g. A team has six weeks, decides to sell hotdogs, and works on its hotdog plan during weeks one to three.
Transition: Occurs at the midpoint of a team’s lifespan. A team reevaluates its first course of action and decides upon a new or different (i.e. second) course of action. E.g. At the end of week three, the team decides to sell hamburgers instead of hotdogs.
Phase 2: Spans from the midpoint to completion. A team pursues its second course of action. E.g. The team works on its hamburger plan during weeks four to six.
What are the 6 roles (by Mathieu et al.)?
Organizer: Someone who acts to structure what the team is doing. An organizer also keeps track of accomplishments and how the team is progressing relative to goals and timelines.
Doer: Someone who willingly takes on work and gets things done. A doer can be counted on to complete work, meet deadlines, and take on tasks to ensure the team’s success.
Challenger: Someone who will push the team to explore all aspects of a situation and to consider alternative assumptions, explanations, and solutions. A challenger often asks why and is comfortable debating and critiquing.
Innovator: Someone who regularly generates new and creative ideas, strategies, and approaches for how the team can handle various situations and challenges. An innovator often offers original and imaginative suggestions.
Team builder: Someone who helps establish norms, supports decisions and maintains a positive work atmosphere within the team. A team builder calms members when they are stressed, and motivates them when they are down.
Connector: Someone who helps bridge and connect the team with people, groups, or other stakeholders outside of the team. Connectors ensure good working relationships between the team and outsiders, whereas team builders work to ensure a good relationship within the team.
What is Social Loafing?
Social loafing is the tendency of a person to exert less effort when working with others (e.g. in a team) than when working alone (e.g. a person working in a team of seven will exert less effort than a person working alone).
The decrease in a person’s effort increases as the size of the team increases (e.g. a person working in a team of 14 will exert even less effort than a person working in a team of seven).
Discovered by Ringelmann, an agricultural engineer, who was studying people’s ability to pull agricultural equipment. He conducted rope-pulling experiments in the late 1800s using a dynameter and published his findings in the early 1900s. Ringelmann found that the more people he added to the rope, the less hard each person pulled.
One explanation for social loafing is diffusion of responsibility (Karau and Williams, 1993). When people work in a team, they feel less personally responsibility for the outcome.
How can social loafing be reduced or prevented?
- Identify and/or reward each person’s efforts and/or outcomes.
- Reduce team size / Use smaller teams.
- Make the work interesting/motivating so people will want to work hard.
What is conformity?
Conformity is the tendency of a person to adjust his/her behaviour to align with the norms of a group.
Two common answers given by subjects in the post-experimental interviews were (1) they actually thought they were wrong and (2) they didn’t want to disrupt group.
How can you reduce conformity?
Some suggestions to prevent/reduce conformity:
Have each person submit their ideas separately.
Create a safe environment in which people feel comfortable sharing their honest opinions.
Have the leader / most influential person speak last.
What are norms?
Norms are informal rules that teams adopt to regulate and regularize team members’ behaviour. Although they are infrequently written down or openly discussed (see the comic on the next slide), they often have a powerful and consistent influence on team members’ behaviour.” Feldman, 1984)
What are the 2 types of norms?
Two major types of norms (Feldman, 1984):•Prescriptive norms: Norms regarding behaviour in teams that is encouraged (e.g. bring a snack to share to team meetings).•Proscriptive group norms: Norms regarding behaviour in teams that is discouraged (e.g. do not use cell phones during team meetings).
Why are norms important?
For example: A norm to turn off cell phones in client meetings.
They facilitate team SURVIVAL (e.g. with cell phones turned off there are less distractions and we can get down to business).
They simplify or make PREDICTABLE what behaviour is expected of team members (e.g. we don’t have to wonder, discuss, or debate if cell phones should be turned off).
They help the team avoid embarrassing INTERPERSONAL problems (e.g. funny ring tones, so and so has a flip phone).
They express the CENTRAL VALUES of the team and clarify what is distinctive about the teams’ identity (e.g. by turning off our phones we show respect and demonstrate tech for good).
How do norms develop?
For example: A norm to turn off cell phones in client meetings.
EXPLICIT statements by supervisors or coworkers (e.g. “let’s turn off our cell phones in client meetings”).
CRITICAL events in the teams’ history (e.g. we once upset and almost lost a major client because someone used a cell phone in a meeting so we now turn them off).
PRIMACY (e.g. at the first client meeting we turned off our cell phones so we now continue).
CARRY-OVER behaviours from past situations (e.g. in staff meetings we turn off our cell phones so in client meetings we do too).
What is cohesiveness?
Team cohesiveness is the strength of team members’ desire to remain a part of their team.
What are the 6 influences on cohesiveness?
- Member similarity
- Team size
- Member interaction
- Somewhat difficult entry
- Team size
- External competition and challenges
