Chapter 10 Teamwork and High Performance Teams Study questions. – What is a high performance team…and what is teamwork? – What is team building? – What can be done to improve team processes? – How do teams contribute to the high performance workplace?
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What is a high performance team…and what is teamwork? A team is a small group of people with complementary skills, who work actively together to achieve a common purpose for which they hold themselves collectively accountable. Teams are one of the major forces behind revolutionary changes in contemporary organizations. Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 4 What is a high performance team…and what is teamwork? Types of teams. – Teams that recommend things. • Established to study specific problems and recommend solutions to them. – Teams that run things. • Have formal responsibility for leading other groups. – Teams that make or do things. • Functional groups that perform ongoing tasks.
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What is a high performance team…and what is teamwork?
The nature of teamwork.
– Team members actively work together in such a way that all of their respective skills are utilized to achieve a common purpose. – Teamwork is the central foundation of any high performance team.
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What is a high performance team…and what is teamwork?
Characteristics of high performance teams.
– High performance teams: • Have strong core values. • Turn a general sense of purpose into specific performance objectives. • Have the right mix of skills. • Possess creativity.
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What is a high performance team…and what is teamwork? Diversity and team performance. – To create and maintain high performance teams, the elements of group effectiveness (Chapter 9) must be addressed and successfully managed. – Diverse teams: • Improve problem solving and increase creativity. • May struggle in the short term. • Have strong long-term performance potential.
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What is team building?
Team members and leaders must work hard to
achieve teamwork. Team building helps in achieving teamwork. Team building. – A sequence of planned activities designed to gather and analyze data on the functioning of a group and to initiate changes designed to improve teamwork and increase group effectiveness.
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What is team building?
How team building works.
– Five step process. • Problem or opportunity in team effectiveness. • Data gathering and analysis. • Planning for team improvements. • Actions to improve team functioning. • Evaluation of results.
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What is team building?
Approaches to team building.
– Formal retreat approach. • Team building occurs during an offsite retreat. – Continuous improvement approach. • The manager, team leader, or members take responsibility for ongoing team building. – Outdoor experience approach. • Members engage in physically challenging situations that require teamwork.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Increased emphasis on teams and teamwork: – Presents challenges to people accustomed to more traditional ways of working. – Creates complications due to multiple and shifting memberships. – Requires team leaders and members to deal positively with group dynamics issues. – Requires ongoing team building. Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 12 What can be done to improve team processes?
New member problems.
– New members are concerned about issues of: • Participation.
• Goals.
• Control.
• Relationships.
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What can be done to improve team processes? New member problems — cont. – Behavior profiles of coping with individual entry problems. • Tough battler. • Friendly helper. • Objective thinker.
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What can be done to improve team processes?
Behavior profiles for coping.
– Tough battler. • Is frustrated by a lack of identity in the new group.
• May act aggressively or reject authority.
• Seeks to determine his or her role in the group.
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What can be done to improve team processes?
Behavior profiles for coping — cont.
– Friendly helper. • Is insecure, suffering uncertainties of intimacy and control. • May show extraordinary support for others, behave in a dependent way, and seek alliances. • Needs to know whether she or he will be liked.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Behavior profiles for coping — cont. – Objective thinker. • Is anxious about how personal needs will be met. • Acts in a passive, reflective, and even single- minded manner. • Concerned with fit between individual and group goals.
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What can be done to improve team processes?
Task and maintenance leadership.
– High performance teams require distributed leadership. • The team leader and team members share in the responsibility of meeting task needs and maintenance needs.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Task activities. – The various things members do that contribute directly to the performance of important group tasks. – Task activities include: • Initiating discussion. • Sharing information. • Asking information of others. • Clarifying what has been said. • Summarizing the status of a deliberation.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Maintenance activities. – Support the group’s social and interpersonal relationships. – Maintenance activities include: • Encouraging the participation of others. • Trying to harmonize differences of opinion. • Praising the contributions of others. • Agreeing to go along with a popular course of action.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Groups members should avoid the following disruptive behaviors: – Being overly aggressive toward other members. – Withdrawing and refusing to cooperate with others. – Horsing around when there is work to be done. – Using the group as a forum for self-confession. – Talking too much about irrelevant matters. – Trying to compete for attention and recognition.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Roles and role dynamics. – A role is a set of expectations associated with a job or position on a team. – Performance problems occur when roles are unclear or conflictive.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Roles and role dynamics — cont. – Role ambiguity — occurs when a person is uncertain about his/her role. – Role overload — occurs when too much is expected and the person feels overwhelmed with work. – Role underload — occurs when too little is expected and the person feels underutilized.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Roles and role dynamics — cont. – Role conflict — occurs when a person is unable to meet the expectations of others. – Forms of role conflict. • Intrasender role conflict. • Intersender role conflict. • Person-role conflict. • Interrole conflict.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Norms: – Represent beliefs about how group or team members are expected to behave. – Are rules or standards of conduct. – Clarify role expectations. – Help members to structure their behavior – Help members to gain a common sense of direction. – Help to reinforce group or team culture.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Key norms that can have positive or negative implications. – Performance norms. – Organizational and personal pride norms. – High-achievement norms. – Support and helpfulness norms. – Improvement and change norms.
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What can be done to improve team processes?
Team cohesiveness.
– The degree to which members are attached to
and motivated to remain a part of the team.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Members of highly cohesive groups: – Value their membership. – Try to maintain positive relationships with other members. – Are energetic when working on team activities. – Are not prone to absenteeism or turnover. – Are genuinely concerned about team performance. – Tend to satisfy a broad range of individual needs.
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What can be done to improve team processes? High team cohesiveness occurs when: – Members are similar in age, attitudes, needs, and backgrounds. – Group size is small. – Members respect each others’ competencies. – Members agree on common goals. – Members work on interdependent tasks. – Groups are physically isolated from others. – Groups experience performance success or crisis.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Rule of conformity in group dynamics. – The more cohesive the group, the greater the conformity of members to group norms. – Positive performance norms in a highly cohesive group have a positive effect on task performance. – Negative performance norms in a highly cohesive group have a negative effect on task performance.
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What can be done to improve team processes? Cohesiveness can be increased or decreased by making changes in: – Group goals. – Membership composition. – Member interactions. – Group size. – Competition within and between teams. – Rewards. – Location. – Duration. Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 31 How do teams contribute to the high performance workplace? Problem-solving teams. – Employee involvements teams include a wide variety of teams whose members meet regularly to collectively examine important workplace issues. – Quality circle. • A special type of employee involvement team. • Team meets periodically to address problems relating to quality, productivity, or cost.
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How do teams contribute to the high performance workplace? Cross-functional teams. – Consist of members representing different functional departments or work units. – Used to overcome functional silos problem. – Used to solve problems with a positive combination of functional expertise and integrative systems thinking.
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How do teams contribute to the high performance workplace? Virtual teams. – Members meet at least part of the time electronically and with computer support. – Groupware facilitates virtual meetings and group decision making.
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How do teams contribute to the high performance workplace? Key advantages of virtual teams. – Brings cost effectiveness and speed to teamwork. – Brings computer power to information processing and decision making. Key disadvantage of virtual teams. – Direct personal contact among members suffers. Organizational Behavior: Chapter 10 35 How do teams contribute to the high performance workplace? Self-managing teams. – Small groups are empowered to make the decisions needed to manage themselves on a daily basis. – Teams make decisions on: • Scheduling work. • Allocating tasks. • Training in job skills. • Evaluating performance. • Selecting new team members. • Controlling quality of work.
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How do teams contribute to the high performance workplace? How self-managing teams work. – Are permanent and formal elements of the organizational structure. – Team members assume duties otherwise performed by the manager or first-line supervisor. – The team should include between 5 and 15 members. – Members rely on multiskilling.
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How do teams contribute to the high performance workplace? Benefits of self-managing teams. – Productivity and quality improvements. – Production flexibility. – Faster response to technological change. – Reduced absenteeism and turnover. – Improved work attitudes. – Improved quality of work life.
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How do teams contribute to the high performance workplace?
Operational difficulties for self-managing
teams. – Impact on supervisors and others accustomed to a more traditional way of working. – Self-managing teams are not appropriate for all organizations.