Chapter 6
Groups and Teams
Purpose and Overview
• Purpose
– To understand effective management through
motivation, leadership, and conflict
management
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Purpose and Overview
• Overview
– The Importance of Groups and Teams in
Health Services Organizations
– Understanding and Improving Team
Performance
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3
Purpose and Overview
• Overview
– Team Processes
– Team Characteristics
– Nature of the Task
– The Environmental Context
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The Importance of Groups and
Teams
• Types of Groups
• Two or more persons interacting to
influence each other
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The Importance of Groups and
Teams
• Types of Groups
– Informal
– Formal
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The Importance of Groups and
Teams
• Types of Teams
– Interdependent
– Share responsibility for outcomes
– Intact social entity embedded in larger social
systems
– Manage relationships across organizational
boundaries
– Formal group
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The Importance of Groups and
Teams
• Types of Teams
– Work Teams
– Parallel Teams
– Project Teams
– Management Teams
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Understanding and Improving Team
Performance
• Effective Teams
– Drive to improve
– Mechanisms to facilitate improvement
– Flexible and adaptive
– Improves their performance
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Understanding and Improving Team
Performance
• A Model of Team Effectiveness
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Team Processes
• Leadership
– Ability to influence others toward achieving
team's goals
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Team Processes
• Communication Network and Patterns:
– A team cannot function effectively unless
members can share information
• Ambassador activities
• Task-coordinator activities
• Scout activities
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Team Processes
• Decision Making
– Exchanging information and making decisions
is critical
• Free-riding
• Groupthink
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Team Processes
• Decision Making
– Groupthink Symptoms:
• Illusion of invulnerability
• Collective rationalization
• Belief in inherent morality of the team
• Stereotyping others
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Team Processes
• Decision Making
– Groupthink Symptoms:
• Pressures to conform
• Use of mind guards
• Self-censorship
• Illusion of unanimity
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Team Processes
• Learning
– Team's ability to learn is essential to
effectiveness
– Process enabled by climate of psychological
safety
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Team Processes
• Stages of Team Development
– Forming
– Storming
– Norming
– Performing
– Adjourning
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Team Processes
• Team Process as an Intermediary
– Team processes can be improved by team
members and leaders
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Team Characteristics
• Every team influences and determines
members’ interaction with each other
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Team Characteristics
• Team Composition and Size Dimensions
– Age and gender
– Occupation
– Tenure
– Abilities
– Personality
– Nationality, Race, Ethnicity or Culture
– Experience
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Team Characteristics
• Team Composition and Size
– Affects team process and effectiveness
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Team Characteristics
• Status Differences
– Worth conferred on individual by group
– Motivates people
– Provides means of identification
– Stabilizing force
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Team Characteristics
• Psychological Safety
– Individuals’ perceptions about consequences
of risks
– “If I make a mistake…won’t be penalized”
– Confidence to experiment
– Confidence to discuss mistakes and problems
– Confidence to ask others for help
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Team Characteristics
• Team Norms
– Standard to regulate member behavior
• Behavior norms
• Performance norms
– Powerful influence
– Necessary for effective group functioning
– Group members socialize other members
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Team Characteristics
• Team Cohesiveness
– Attraction to other members
– Motivated to stay
– Committed to group task
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Team Characteristics
• Highly Cohesive
– May have higher performance
– Improved satisfaction
– Lower levels of turnover
• Conflict
– May be beneficial to group performance
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Nature of the Task
• Group Behaviors Critical to Success
– Individual effort
– Collaboration
– Interdependent effort
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Nature of the Task
• Team Goals
– Categorized according to goal clarity,
complexity, and diversity
• Predictable, understandable
• Ambiguous or ill-structured goals
• Task Complexity
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Nature of the Task
• Task Interdependence
– Degree to which team members rely on one
another
– Interdependence increases uncertainty
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Nature of the Task
• Task Interdependence
– Pooled
– Sequential
– Reciprocal
– Team
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Environmental Context
• Effects of External Pressures
– Organizational factors
– Factors in external environment
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Environmental Context
• Intergroup Relationships and Conflict
– Team effectiveness depends on ability to
interact with other teams in a positive and
productive manner
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Environmental Context
• Conflict
– Inevitable
– Often emerges from factors related to
interdependence among work groups
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Environmental Context
• Common Causes of Conflict
– Competition for limited resources
– Ambiguity about teams’ respective task
responsibilities and roles
– Emerges from factors related to
interdependence among work groups
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Environmental Context
• Conflict
– Strategies to reduce intergroup conflict
• Intergroup training using team-building
techniques
• Structuring relationships between teams
• Examining interfaces between teams
• Establishing self-contained teams
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Environmental Context
• Organizational Culture
• Top management’s goal
• Organizational reward system
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Environmental Context
• External Environment
– Areas of low resource availability vs. areas of
high resource availability
– Local collaborative history
– Rural and urban differences
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