Week 7: Teamwork and Team Building Flashcards
Teams vs individuals
Research shows that teams consistently outperform individuals or random groups, especially when diverse skills, judgments and experiences can improve results
What are Teams?
- Small groups of people with complementary skills, who work together as a unit to achieve a common purpose for which they hold themselves collectively accountable
- All teams are groups but not all groups are teams
The difference between groups and teams
Teams operate at three levels:
- Team task level: teams are organised to carry out a specific task or goal
- Individual needs level: each group member’s individual needs impinge upon the team and its task
- Team maintenance level: to accomplish tasks teams need to recognise and maintain relationships
Effective teams
Effective teams vs individuals
Organisational barriers to team performance
Effective teams are teams that ‘do things’ vs. teams that ‘run things’
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Effective teams:
- require organisational direction, purpose and clarity of task
- understand the value of working jointly, and are able to disagree without resentment
- have a blend of technical, task, leadership abilities
- take pride in benefits they have/will deliver
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Effective teams compared to individuals tend to have:
- Higher morale
- Higher productivity
- Greater pride in the job
- Greater pride in the company
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Frequent organisational barriers to team performance:
- Inadequate rewards and compensation systems
- Inadequate personnel and human resources development systems
- A lack of appropriate information systems
- A lack of top management commitment
- An ambiguous organisational alignment
- Difficulties in personal mind shift (or lateral thinking)
- Inadequate individual abilities or characteristics
- An inadequate team size and other membership factors
Team IQ
the ability of a group of individuals to tackle and manage complex and non-routine situations together
Team effectiveness model
Team Building and Teamwork
- Team building is a sequence of planned action steps designed to gather and analyse data on the functioning of a group, and to implement changes to increase its operational effectiveness
- Teamwork is when members of a team work together in a way that represents certain core values that promote the use of skills to accomplish certain goals
Teambuilding fosters TEAMWORK
Team Building Goals
- The team building process should aim to:
- Clarify core values and direct behaviour
- Transform general to specific performance objectives
- Develop skill mix to give high performance results
- Enhance creativity in task performance
Effective Team Leadership
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Skilled team leaders need to:
- build trust and inspire teamwork
- create a team identity
- facilitate and support team decisions
- expand team capabilities
- make the most of team differences
- foresee and influence change
Effective Team Facilitators Interventions
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Facilitators’ interventions should aim to:
- gain appreciation of complexity and dynamics
- identify team needs
- create a safe and open forum
- foster interdependence, creativity and open communication
- encourage necessary choices
- adress both “light” and “dark” (conflict) sides of teambuilding
How team members work together in a typical team-building activity
- problem or opportunity awareness
- data gathering and analysis
- action planning
- action implementation
- evaluation of results
Teamwork training activities
- Range of development activities:
- Experiential activities
- Designed to encourage participants to process information actively, rather than receiving it passively
- Intended to build on the motivational qualities of cooperation and competition among team members, as well as trust
- Challenging viewpoints
- Consensual decision making (through brainstorming)
- Experiential activities
- Timing and location
- Formal retreats
- Continual improvement
- Outdoor experiences
Brainstorming rules:
- All ideas are acceptable
- Freewheeling is welcomed (emphasis is on creativity and imagination)
- Quantity is wanted
- Piggy-backing is good (everyone encouraged to develop others ideas)
Team Performance and Cohesiveness
Team performance and cohesiveness are strongly influenced by team norms and team roles:
- Norms are rules or standards of behaviour that group members are expected to display
- A role is a set of expectations for the behaviour of a person holding a particular office or position
Team Norms
Norms are essentially determined by the collective will of team members, so it is difficult for organisation and their managers to dictate which norms a given team will possess. The concerned manager must try to help team member adopt norms supportive of the organisational goals
Team Roles
Two types of problems related to role expectations:
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Role ambiguity
- Occurs when a member is unsure of what other members expect of them
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Role conflict
- Occurs when a member is unable to respond to group expectations
Team building techniques are designed to address these types of problems
Team Cohesiveness
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Team Cohesiveness: degree to which members are attracted to and motivated to remain part of team
- Influenced by shared experiences and commitment
- High cohesiveness is:
- good for members
- may be good or bad for organisation
The more cohesive the team, the greater the conformity of its members to team norms
Team Performance and Cohesiveness
How to increase and decrease cohesiveness in a work team
- Team cohesiveness is influenced by trust and conflict management
- High trust levels drive high cohesiveness, satisfaction, and effectiveness
- Conflict is inevitable in teams; successful conflict management can prevent low cohesiveness
Types of Workplace Teams
- Effective use of teams in organisations is characterised by empowerment, participation and involvement
- Four typical types of teams:
- Employee involvement teams
- Problem-solving teams
- Self-managing teams
- Virtual teams
Employee Involvement Teams
- Employee involvement teams meet regularly outside of their normal work units for the purpose of collectively addressing workplace issues
- 5-10 team members
- A mechanism for employee participation; seek to foster TQM concepts or continuous improvement
- Success requires genuine managerial commitment to employee participation and empowerment
Problem-Solving Teams
- Problem-solving teams are created for the specific purpose of generating solutions to problems
- Quality circles: groups of workers who meet periodically to discuss and develop solutions for problems relating to quality, productivity or cost
- Task forces: temporary teams created to fulfil a well-defined task within a fairly short period of time
- Autonomous work teams: teams given significant authority and responsibility over their work in contexts of highly related or interdependent jobs (a precursor to the SMT)
Self-Managing Teams (SMTs)
Self-managing teams are small groups of people empowered to manage themselves and the work they do on a daily basis
- SMTs need members with these strengths:
- technical or functional expertise
- problem-solving and decision-making skills
- interpersonal skills
Organisational and management implications of self-managing work teams
Virtual Teams
- Virtual teams are those whose members work inter-dependently towards the achievement of a common goal across space and time
- Distinguished by:
- Dependence on technology
- Absence of non-verbal cues
- Place and timing of interaction
- Degree of public and private communication
- Group process recording
Future Challenges for Work Teams
- Ongoing challenges for managers:
- Empowerment through new technology
- Trust
- Accountability
- Diversity
- Self-leadership
