Team Dynamics (Chapter 7)

Question 1

Identify the key components of organizational and team environment, team design, team processes, and team effectiveness.

Answer 1

Organizational and Team Environment - Rewards, communication, organizational structure and leadership, physical space.
Team design - Task characteristics, team size, team composition.
Team processes - Team development, team norms, team cohesion, team trust.
Team effectiveness - Accomplish tasks, satisfy member needs, maintain team survival.

Question 2

What are the components of team design?

Answer 2

Task Characteristics, Team Size and Team Composition.

Question 3

Explain Task Characteristics.

Answer 3

Task Characteristics - Suited for work too complex for an individual and better for groups with specialized roles. Pooled, sequential, reciprocal independence; higher this is great need to organize into teams.

Question 4

Explain Team Size.

Answer 4

Team Size - Large enough to provide necessary abilities and perspectives to perform work but small enough to have efficient coordination and meaningful involvement. Small group improves engagement and trust. Team exists when people are mutually accountable for goal.

Question 5

Explain Team Composition.

Answer 5

Team Composition - 5 Cs (Cooperating, coordinating, communicating, comforting, conflict handling.

Question 6

Describe the strengths and weaknesses of heterogeneous (diverse) teams and the conditions that support effective use of diverse teams.

Answer 6

People from backgrounds tend to see a problem from different angles, so they make better decisions than heterogenous groups in some situations. Broader pool of technical abilities (stocks, bonds, etc.). Often provide better representation, make stakeholders feel that they have a voice. Believe decisions more if surface or deep-level diversity of team reflects them. Take longer to become high-performing, susceptible to faultlines (splitting along race, gender, etc.)

Question 7

What are the 3 types of team performance?

Answer 7

Team applies ample effort to its work.
Team uses a performance strategy that is well-aligned with the task and situation.
Team appropriately uses members’ KSAs.

Question 8

How do managers develop teams?

Answer 8

Launch, consulting at midpoint, endpoint.

Question 9

Launching The Team

Answer 9

Emphasis is on motivating collective effort towards task. Highlight core capabilities of each member, articulate team purpose, create a sense of shared identity and accountability, identifying main resources needed, putting values, norms and expectations of team members up for discussion.

Question 10

Consulting at Midpoint

Answer 10

Emphasis is on improving performance strategies. At midpoint, team members are most open to and ready for interventions to improve strategies. Diagnosis by manager and team members. Reflection, discussion, conceptualization of new ways of working. Manager should avoid being too directive or intervening too soon.

Question 11

The Endpoint

Answer 11

Emphasis is on learning. Manager helps team correctly identify causes of good/bad performance, provides feedback that aids learning. Experiential process useful for deriving lessons learned. Coaching and peer-learning to improve KSAs, learn new behaviors. Emphasis placed on using new skills in future.

Question 12

Describe team building.

Answer 12

Formal activities intended to improve development and functioning of a work team. Speed up development process. More common for teams experiencing dysfunction than new teams. Activities are task-focused (improve performance), problem-soling related, improving role definition, helping members build trust (interpersonal processes).

Question 13

What are the 4 recommendations regarding team building?

Answer 13

Target team building to a specific problem, make it ongoing and not a one-shot treatment, make it job-related, have it at the time when the team is ready.

Question 14

How do group norms influence team members?

Answer 14

Group norms often conform to prevailing norms without direct reinforcement or punishment because they identify with the group and want to align their behavior with the team’s expectations. The closer the person’s social identity is connected to the group, the more the individual is motivated to avoid negative sanctions for that group. (Also look over slides 23-24).

Question 15

Describe cohesiveness.

Answer 15

The degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members. Extent to which members are attracted to the team, are committed to its goals or tasks and feel a collective sense of team pride. Emotional, not just a calculation of whether to stay or leave. Exists when people make team part of social identity.

Question 16

Explain the relationship between cohesion and team performance.

Answer 16

Team cohesion has less of an effect on team performance when team has low task interdependence. High motivates employees to coordinate and cooperate with members, but they don’t need to do this as much when work is less dependent on other members. Motivational effect of high cohesion is less relevant in teams with low interdependence.

Question 17

Explain the relationship between cohesion and team norms.

Answer 17

Cohesion motivates employees to perform at a level more consistent with team norms. A team’s performance will likely affect cohesion but the vice-versa is less so.

Question 18

Explain the relationship between cohesion and organizational objectives.

Answer 18

Effect of cohesion on team performance depends on whether team’s norms are compatible with or opposed to organizational objectives. Teams with high cohesion perform better when norms are aligned with organizational objectives.

Question 19

Describe the 3 levels of trust.

Answer 19

Identification-based - Based on common mental models and values, increases with person’s social identity with team. Mutual understanding, emotional bond. (high)
Knowledge-based - Based on predictability and competence, fairly robust. (mid)
Calculus-based - Based on deterrence, fragile and limited potential because dependent on punishment. (low)

Question 20

How is each level of trust developed?

Answer 20

Identification-based - Members think, feel, act like one another. Higher-performing teams. Individual self-concept based on membership in team, members’ values highly overlap, transgressions quickly forgiven.
Knowledge-based - Positive expectation trust states. Confidence in others’ abilities. Stable, develops over time.
Calculus-based - Low potential trust, easily broken by violation of expectations. Trust in system rather than members. Cannot sustain this relationship.

Question 21

Describe process losses in teams.

Answer 21

Resources expended towards team development rather than the task. (Resolve disagreements, develop understanding, differing viewpoints, coordination problems). Amplified when people are added or replace others on team. Larger teams require more coordination. (Brook’s law - Adding more people to a late project only makes it later).

Question 22

Identify ways to reduce social loafing.

Answer 22

Make each members’ contribution more visible/identifiable.
Redesign work so it is more interesting (more job enrichment).
Assign team objectives that are important or valued by team members.
Increase extent to which team members value membership to team.

Question 23

What are the motivational forces behind social loafing?

Answer 23

Individual performance hidden, difficult to distinguish. Large teams, uninteresting work. Apathy, not valuing team membership.