Teamwork Midterm
Terms
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- What are the 5 Key defining characteristics of a team?
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1. Shared goal
2. members are interdependent
3. bounded and remain stable
4. members have the authority to manage their own work
5. operate in a larger social system context - Why have teams?
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- customer service focus
- competition
- emergence of the information age
- globalization - What are the four different types of teams?
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1. manager-led
2. self-managing
3. self-directing
4. self-governing (ex. board of directors) - what is a team?
- a work team is an interdependent collection of individuals who share responsibility for specific outcomes for their organizations; they also seek to combine their efforts to achieve a common goal.
- Manager-Led Teams
- most traditional type; the manager acts as the team leader and is responsible for defining the goals, methods and functioning of the team. They provide the greatest amount of control ovre team members and the work they perform.
- Self-Managing Team
- a manager determines the overall purpose or goal of the team, but the team is at liberty to manage the methods by which to achieve that goal. They build committment, offer increased autonomy, and often enhance morale.
- Self-Directing
- determine their own objectives and the methods by which to achieve them. They offer the most potential for innovation, enhance goal commitment and motivation, and provide opportunity for learning and change.
- Self-Governing
- usually responsible for executing a task, managing their own performance processes, designing the group, and designing the organizational context. (ex. board of directors)
- How to develop your team-building skills
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- Being able to accurately diagnose problems within teams
- being able to deal effectively with those problems once they've identified it
- learn from your mistakes and realize that you've made them - Prescriptive vs. Proscriptive
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Prescriptive- what should be done
Proscriptive- what should not be done - Team Context
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the larger organizational setting within which the team does its work, the design of the team in terms of its internal functioning and the culture of the team
- the team context influences the likelihood of success - Organizational Context
- the basic structure of the organization, the information system, the education system, and the reward system
- Team design
- observable structure of the team (manager-led, self-managing, etc.)
- Team Culture
- the set of shared meanings held by team members that make teamwork possible, the team feeling
- Essential conditions for successful team performance
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- Knowledge and Skill (technical, interpersonal, being comfortable in the group)
- Effort and Motivation (don't want to be a social loafer or a free rider)
- good communication! - What are some ways to enhance team performance???
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- Increase identifiability
- Promote involvement
- Rewards
- Strengthen team cohesion
- Increase personal responsibility
- Use team contracts
- Provide team performance reviews
- Maintain the "right" staffing level - Social Facilitation
- the predictable enhancement in performance that occurs when people are in the presence of others
- Social Inhibition
- occurs when people are the center of attention and they are concerned with discrepancies between their performance and the standards of excellence
- 3 Causes of Free-Riding
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- Diffusion of Responsibility
- Dispensability of Effort, reduced sense of self value
- "sucker effect", someone getting stuck doing all the work - Ensure better coordination by doing this....
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- keep team size small
- have an angenda for meetings
- train team members together
- practice makes perfect
- minimize links in communication
- set clear performance standards - Criteria for Judging Performance of Teams
- Productivity, Cohesion, Learning and growth, Integration with the larger organization
- 3 Key aspects to building a team
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1. The Task facing the team
2. The People on the team
3. The Relationships among team members - What the team will do
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1. Tactical Teams: key objective is to execute a well-defined plan
2. Problem-Solving: attempt to resolve problems
3. Creative Teams: key objective is to create something - Pooled interdependence
- group members work interdependently and then pool their work together
- Sequential Interdependence
- assembly line, one part depends on the person before it, members are much more interdependent
- Reciprocal Interdependence
- everyone is dependent on each other at all times, highest form of interdependence
- The more you know about the task, the better you can suit people to the task
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1. Technical or functional expertise - you dont want a chemist doing open heart surgery
2. Task-management skills - being able to plan the work and get it done
3. Interpersonal skills - how well do you get along with others - TASK MANAGEMENT SKILLS
- Initiating, information seeking, opinion seeking, elaborating, energizing, coordinating, orienting, detailing, recording, challenging
- INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
- encouraging, harmonizing, compromising, gatekeeping, reflecting, following, standard setting
- Importance of Diversity
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- expanded talent pool
- multiple view points
- better decision making
- competitive advantage - Challenges of Diversity
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what do you diversify on?
how much diversity do you want?
higher possibility of conflict
solo status - people feel like they're alone - Group socialization
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the process by which a person becomes a member of a group
process includes:
- evaluation, commitment, and role transition - Integrating new team members
- explain why they're needed, describe strengths and weaknesses of the existing team, make sure the new member learns about the team's goals and how they work together
- Importance of Team Norms
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-critical for better performance
-creating consequences for violating those norms
-creates cohesion and bonding
-make sure everyone knows, understands and accepts them - How do you get TRUST?
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- incentive based to minimize breaches of trust
- familiarity with one another
- similarities among one another
- social networks
- sometimes w/o rational reason or similarity - Turnover and Reorganization
- represents a change in team composition that can have profound consequences for team performance, because it alters the tehcnical knowledge of the team, as well as the interpersonal dynamics.
- 4P Meeting Management Model
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1. PURPOSE of the meeting
2. PEOPLE invited
3. PLAN the content and format
4. PROCESS of meeting
*How LONG it will last? - Key Meeting questions ???
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Why are we meeting?
Who is included?
What do we need to discuss?
How are we keeping track?
Where are we meeting?
How long do we need? - Some advice when you're in a meeting!
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- make sure you need to be there
- ask for clarification
- be prepared
- be on time
- listen
- be supportive of others
- ensure equal participation - What are some Common Meeting Problems?
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- overcommitment
- calls for more informaton rather than making a decision
- failed memory and reinventing the wheel - Team Communication Issues:
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-Message Tuning
-Message Distortion
-Biased interpretation
-Perspective taking failures
-transparency illusion
-indirect speech acts
-uneven communication - Information Dependence Problems:
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-common informaton effect
-hidden profile
-people focus on the common issues rather than bring up the different information the can provide - Things that wont help the common information problem:
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-increasing discussion
-separating review and decisions
-increasing the team size
-giving them more information
-increasing accountability
-polling the group - By having the team leader also be the information manager you can ...
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1. stay focused on specific information
2. focus on problem resolution, not opinion
3. ranking instead of choosing
4. consider your alternatives
5. suspend your initial judgement
6. builds trust among team members
7. communicates confidence in the team
8. minimizes status differences - What are Mental Models?
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mental representations of the world that allow people to understand, predict, and solve problems
team mental model: common understanding that members of a group or team share about how something works - Transactive Memory System (TMS)
- the idea that the collective memory of the group is better than that of the individual