Chapter
TEN
Chapter
TEN
ams
Understanding Work
Teams
© 2007 Prentice Hall Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2007 Prentice Hall Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
 Explain the growing popularity of teams in
organizations.
 Contrast teams with groups.
 Identify four types of teams.
 Specify the characteristics of effective teams.
 Explain how organizations can create team
players.
 Describe conditions when teams are preferred
over individuals.
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Why Have Teams Become So Popular?
 Teams typically outperform individuals.
 Teams use employee talents better.
 Teams are more flexible and responsive to
changes in the environment.
 Teams facilitate employee involvement.
 Teams are an effective way to democratize an
organization and increase motivation.
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Team Versus Group: What’s the Difference?
Work Group
A group that interacts primarily
to share information and to
make decisions to help each
group member perform within
his or her area of responsibility.
Work groups have no need or opportunity to engage in collective
work that requires joint effort. So their performance is merely the
summation of each group member’s individual contribution.
There is no positive synergy that would create an overall level of
performance that is greater than the sum of the inputs.
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Team Versus Group: What’s the Difference?
Work Team
A group whose individual efforts result in a performance
that is greater than the sum of the individual inputs.
 A work team generates +ve synergy through
coordinated effort.
 Their individual efforts results in a level of
performance that is greater than the sum of those
individual inputs.
 The use of teams creates the
potential for an org. to generate
Greater outputs with no increase
In inputs.
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Comparing Work Groups and Work Teams
E X H I B I T 10–1
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Types of Teams
Problem-Solving Teams
Groups of 5 to 12 employees from the
same department who meet for a few
hours each week to discuss ways of
improving quality, efficiency, and the
work environment.
In problem-solving teams, members share ideas or offer suggestions on
how work processes & methods can be improved; although they rarely
have the authority to unilaterally implement any of their suggested
actions.
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Self-Managed Work Teams
Groups of 10 to 15 people who take on the
responsibilities of their former supervisors.
S-M work teams are groups of employees who
perform highly related or interdependent jobs &
take on many of the responsibilities of their
former supervisors.
Typically, this includes planning & scheduling of
work, assigning tasks to members, collective
control over the pace of work, making operating
decisions, taking action on problems, and
working with suppliers & customers.
Fully self-managed work teams even select their
own members & have the members evaluate
each other’s performance. As a result,
supervisory positions take on decreased
importance & may even be eliminated.
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Types of Teams (cont’d)
Cross-Functional Teams
Employees from about the same hierarchical level,
but from different work areas, who come together to
accomplish a task.
• Task forces: is nothing other than a temporary
cross-functional team.
• Committees: composed of members from across
dept. lines are another example of
cross-functional teams.
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Types of Teams (cont’d)
Virtual Teams
Teams that use computer
technology to tie together
physically dispersed
members in order to
achieve a common goal.
Characteristics of Virtual Teams
1. The absence of paraverbal and nonverbal cues
2. A limited social context
3. The ability to overcome time and space constraints
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Para verbal Messages……..1
 Paraverbal communication refers to the
messages that we transmit through the tone,
pitch, and pacing of our voices. It is how we say
something, not what we say. Professor Mehrabian
states that the paraverbal message accounts for
approximately 38% of what is communicated to
someone. A sentence can convey entirely
different meanings depending on the emphasis
on words and the tone of voice. For example, the
statement, "I didn't say you were stupid" has six
different meanings, depending on which word is
emphasized.
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Para verbal Messages……..2
Some points to remember about our “paraverbal” communication:
When we are angry or excited, our speech tends to become more rapid and
higher pitched.
When we are bored or feeling down, our speech tends to slow and take on a
monotone quality.
When we are feeling defensive, our speech is often abrupt.
Paraverbal Messages:
1. Account for about 38% of what is perceived and understood by others.
2. Include the tone, pitch, and pacing of our voice
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A TeamEffectiveness
Model
E X H I B I T 10–3
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Creating Effective Teams
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Creating Effective Teams (cont’d)
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Key Roles
of Teams
E X H I B I T 10–4
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Creating Effective Teams (cont’d)
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Creating Effective Teams (cont’d)
Why are processes important to team
effectiveness?
1+1+1 doesn’t necessarily add up to
3.
In team tasks for which each
member's contribution is not clearly
visible, there is a tendency for
individuals to decrease their effort.
Social loafing – a process loss as a
result of using teams.
Teams should create outputs greater
than the sum of their inputs
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Effects of Group Processes
=
+
MINUS
Goal: Maximize Process Gains
While Minimizing Process Losses!
E X H I B I T 10–5
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Team Processes
 Common Plan & Purpose: an effective team has a
common plan & purpose that provides direction,
momentum, & commitment for members. This
purpose is a vision, or master plan. It is broader
than specific goals.
 Team Efficacy: Effective teams have confidence
in themselves. They believe they can succeed.
This is called “team efficacy”. Success breeds
success. Teams that have been successful raise
their belief about future success, which in turn,
motivates them to work hard.
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Creating Effective Teams: Diversity
Group Demography
The degree to which members of a group share a
common demographic attribute, such as age, sex,
race, educational level, or length of service in the
organization.
Cohorts
Individuals who, as part of
a group, hold a common
attribute.
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Turning Individuals Into Team Players…1
 To this point, we’ve made a strong case for the
value & growing popularity of teams.
 But many people are not inherently team players.
 They are loners or people who want to be
recognized for their individual achievements.
 There are also many orgs. that have historically
fostered individual accomplishments. They have
created competitive work environments in which
only the strong survive.
 If these orgs. adopt teams, what do they do
about the selfish, “ I’ve-got-to-look-out-for-me”
employees that they’ve created?
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Turning Individuals Into Team Players…2
 Also, countries differ in terms of how they rate on
individualism & collectivism.
 Teams fit well with countries that score high on
collectivism.
 But what if an org. wants to introduce teams into
a work population that is made up largely of
individuals born & raised in an individualistic
society?
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Turning Individuals Into Team Players…..1
The Challenges
–
Overcoming individual resistance to team membership.
–
Countering the influence of individualistic cultures.
–
Introducing teams in an organization that has historically valued individual
achievement.
 The previous points were meant to dramatize that one big barrier to
using work teams is individual resistance.
 An employee’s success is no longer defined in terms of individual
performance.
 To perform well as team members, individuals must be able to
communicate openly & honestly, to confront differences & resolve
conflicts, & to sublimate personal goals for the good of the team.
 For many employees, this is a difficult- sometimes impossible-task.
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Turning Individuals Into Team Players…..1
The Challenges

1)
2)




The challenge of creating team players will be greatest when
The national culture is highly individualistic and
The teams are being introduced into an established org. that has
historically valued individual achievement.
This describes, for instance, what faced managers at AT&T, Ford,
Motorola, & other large US-based companies.
These orgs. prospered by hiring & rewarding corporate stars, and they
bred a competitive climate that encouraged individual achievement &
recognition.
Employees in these types of firms can be jolted by this sudden shift to
the importance of team play.
A veteran employee of a large company, who had done well working
alone, described the experience of joining a team: “ I am learning my
lesson. I just had my first –ve performance appraisal in 20 years.”
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Turning Individuals Into Team Players…..2
 Shaping Team Players
– Selecting employees who can fulfill their team roles.
– Training employees to become team players.
– Reworking the reward system to encourage cooperative efforts
while continuing to recognize individual contributions.
 Selection:
 some people already possess the interpersonal skills to be effective team
player.
 When hiring team members, in addition to the technical skills required to
fill the job, care should be taken to ensure that candidates can fulfill their
team roles as well as the technical requirements.
 Candidate can go under training / transferred to another unit within the
org. without teams /don’t hire the candidate.
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Shaping Team Players
 Training
 People raised on individual accomplishments can be trained to become
team players.
 Training specialist conduct exercises that allow employees to experience
the satisfaction that teamwork can provide.
 They help employees to improve their problem-solving, communication,
negotiation, conflict-management, & coaching skills.
 Rewards
 The reward system needs to be reworked to encourage cooperative efforts
rather competitive ones.
 Promotions, pay raises & other forms of recognition should be given to
individuals for how effective they are as a collaborative team member.
 This doesn’t mean individual contributions are ignored; rather, they are
balanced with selfless contributions to the team.
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Teams and Quality Management

“Improving Quality” has garnered increased attention towards
team play in quality management (QM) programs.

The essence of QM is process improvement, & employee
involvement is the linchpin ( number one) of process
improvement.

QM requires management to give employees the encouragement
to share ideas & act on what they suggest.

All such techniques & processes require high levels of
communication & contact, response & adaptation, &
coordination.

Ford began its QM efforts as the primary organizing mechanism.

“ because this business is so complex, you can’t make an impact
on it without a team approach,” noted one Ford manager.
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 Ford’s management identified five goals in designing its
quality problem-solving teams.
 The teams should:
1. be small enough to be efficient and effective.
2. be properly trained in skills their members will need.
3. be allocated enough time to work on problems they
plan to address.
4. be given the authority to resolve problems and take
corrective action.
5. have a designated “champion” whose job is to help the
team get around roadblocks that arise.
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Beware: Teams Aren’t Always the Answer
 Teamwork takes more time & often more resources than
individual work.
 So the benefits of using teams have to exceed the costs.
 How do you know if the work of your group would be better
done in teams?
 Three tests to see if a team fits the situation:
– Is the work complex and is there a need for different
perspectives?
– Does the work create a common purpose or set of
goals for the group that is larger than the aggregate of
the goals for individuals?
– Are members of the group involved in interdependent
tasks?
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Chapter Check-Up: Teams
What kinds of things have you
experienced in a team setting that
could be considered as process
loss? Choose two and write them
down.
Possibilities include: Too much socializing,
coordinating work flow, lag time in
responses to emails, personality conflicts,
attendance and timeliness problems, etc.
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Chapter Check-Up: Teams
If you were asked to choose
people from your class right now
to make up a team for a class
project, list five individuals you
would choose.
Now that you have your list, consider what the
composition of your team would look like. How much
diversity would there be? Given what we learned in
this chapter, what would the pros and cons of your
composition be?
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Chapter Check-Up: Teams
Is conflict in a team good or
bad? Discuss.
Conflict can be both good and bad. Task conflict is
beneficial for a team because it helps protect against
groupthink. Relationship conflict is bad for a team’s
morale.
What, specifically, can you do to create task conflict in
a group? Think about the reality of trying to “stir the
pot”… and write down a phrase you could say (e.g.,
you would feel comfortable saying to your peers) to
create task conflict.
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