Chapter 2 Defining Team

Success

3hrs
Learning Objectives
• What are the three criteria used to define team success?
• Why is team success more than just completing the task?
• What factors determine whether a group has the right set of
people?
• In what types of tasks are groups better than individuals? Why?
• What are the important parts of the group process?
• How does an organization provide a supportive context for
teams?
• What are the characteristics of successful teams?
I. Nature of Team Success
i. Completing the Task:
1.Management sees success as defined as performance of the
task.
2.There are measurement problems; one approach to these
problems is to determine whether the products or outputs of the
team are acceptable to the owners, customers, and team
members.
3.Advantages and Disadvantages:
a. Sometimes there are disadvantages because time is wasted in
developing the team instead of focusing on the task.
b. Sometimes there are advantages, which show up when
unforeseen problems arise and when the team will work together
on future tasks.
I. Nature of Team Success
ii. Maintaining Social Relations
1.A successful team performs its task and then is better able to perform the
next task assigned to it. This is the social relations, group maintenance, or
viability aspect of teamwork. A team must have good internal social relations,
in order to help encourage participants to want to work in the team in the
future.
2.Team needs social relations:
a. Cohesion comes from the emotional ties that team members have with
each other.
b. Good communication depends on understanding and trust.
c. The capabilities of the team were lost at the end of the project because of
the exclusive focus on the task. The org got what it wanted, but it did not
improve its ability to use teams to successfully design new computers in the
future. (computer development team)
I. Nature of Team Success
iii. Individual Benefit
1.Team should be good for the individual.
2.It should help to improve an individual’s social or interpersonal skills.
3.Should help to broaden an employee’s skills and knowledge and make him or her better
aware of the perspectives of other disciplines.
4.Help an employee’s career in the organization.
5.Teamwork should be reflected in the employee’s performance evaluations.
6.Increases the amount of social and emotional support they receive.
7.Great learning experience.
8.Team members share their knowledge and expertise, as they learn how to be good team
members, they also develop communication, organizational, and management skills.
9.People in low social needs will be less rewarded by teamwork.
10.The learning benefits from teamwork primarily come from successful teams.
11.If the team is dysfunctional, it may teach members to avoid working on teams in the future.
12.The conflict between individual and team success is one of the major unresolved
problems with teamwork in many organizations.
 II. Conditions For Team Success
i. Group Composition
1.The qualities that influence performance:
a. The group must contain people with the knowledge, skills and abilities that match the
requirements of the task.
b. The group must have members with the authority to represent the relevant parts of the
organization and the power to implement the group’s decision.
c. The group’s members must have the necessary group process skills to operate
effectively.
ii. Characteristics of The Task
1.McGrath (1984)-system that explains the different types of tasks that teams perform.
Based on four group goals— generate, choose, negotiate, and execute— with each goal
having two related tasks. The eight tasks vary along two dimensions:
cognitive-behavioral and cooperation-conflict.
2.Steiner (1972)-system that explains the different ways in which team members’ efforts
can be combined. Task demands along three dimensions divisible/unitary, high rate of
production (maximization)/high quality solutions (optimization), combine efforts of
group members in different ways. Added together, limited by the last member, averaged,
selected, or combined in any way the group desires. There are different combinations of
the demands of the group tasks. (See Table 2.2 in the book).
See Table 2.2 in the book
 II. Conditions For Team Success
iii. Group Process
1.Team members must be able to combine their efforts successfully.
2.The internal processes can interfere with success.
3.Effective teams must organize themselves to perform their tasks, develop social relations to support their
operations, and have leaders who provide direction and facilitate the teams’ operations.
4.Rather than encouraging performance, working in a group might lead to reduced effort by individual
members (This problem is called social loafing).
iv. Organizational Context
1.The organizational context has a significant effect on whether teams operate successfully (Guzzo &
Dickson, 1996).
2.Teams are more likely to be successful in organizations that have supportive organizational cultures.
3.There are a number of organizational supports that should be provided to teams so as to help make them
function more effectively (Hackman, 1990b).
4.Teams perform better when they have clear goals and well-defined tasks.
5.Teams must have adequate resources including financial, staffing, and training support. Reliable
information is required to make decisions, to coordinate their efforts with other parts of the organizations,
and to plan for future changes. They also need technical and group process assistance.
6.Requires efforts of both team members and their organizations.
7.A team needs feedback on its performance and an incentive to change.
8.An effective teams requires feedback and rewards from the organization for good performance.
III. Characteristics Of Successful Teams
i. Hackman (1987)- five factors as necessary for the successful development
and use of teams:
1.Clear direction and goals: Teams need goals to focus their efforts and
evaluate their performance.
2.Good leadership: Leaders are needed to help manage the internal and
external relations of teams and to orient teams toward their goals.
3.Tasks that are suited for teamwork: Tasks should be complex, important,
and challenging so that they require the integrated efforts of team members
and are not capable of being performed by individuals.
4.Necessary resources to perform the jobs: The resources that teams need
include both material resources and training and personnel resources.
5.Supportive organizational environment: Organizations must give sufficient
power and authority to allow team members to make and implement their
direction.
III. Characteristics Of Successful Teams
ii.Levi and Slem (1995)-five factors:
1.Evaluation and rewards: Teams need fair and objective criteria for
evaluation, team members’ performance evaluations should relate to
their contributions to their teams, and members should be rewarded
when their teams are successful.
2.Social relations: Teams need training social skills so that they can
resolve internal conflicts and function smoothly.
3.Organizational support: Management, the organizational system, and
the organizational culture must support the use of teams.
4.Task characteristics: Teams need clear direction and goals, tasks that
are appropriate for teamwork, and work that is challenging and
important.
5.Leadership: Leaders need to facilitate teams’ interactions and provide
assistance to teams when problems occur.
III. Characteristics Of Successful Teams
iii. Larson and La Fasto (1989) are experts in group communication. Found that the following
are important success factors:
1.Clear goals with standards of excellence
2.Principled leadership
3.External support and recognition
4.Results-oriented structure
5.Competent team members
6.Unified commitment
7.Collaborative climate
iv. Katzenbach and Smith (1993) are management experts who studied upper level
management teams primarily in large organizations.
v. Cohen and Bailey (1997) conducted a meta-analysis of work teams during the 1990s.They
found that factors of success are different for production, professional, and managerial
teams.
III. Characteristics Of Successful Teams
 Benefits of Teamwork
• Teamwork is increasing because teams are an effective way to improve
performance and job satisfaction.
• Large-scale studies on the use of production work teams show their effectiveness
(Guzzo & Dickson, 1996).
• Teams improve both the efficiency and the quality of organizational performance.
• Using teams provides the flexibility needed to operate in today’s rapidly changing
business world.
• When work teams are widespread in an organization, the organization tends to show
improvement in other performance areas, such as employee relations.
• However, teams may develop performance problems that limit their effectiveness,
and the initial transition to teamwork may be a difficult process for organizations.
• In addition to increasing organizational effectiveness, the implementation of work
teams often leads to improvements in job satisfaction and quality of work life
(Sundstrom et al., 1990).
• Teams have these beneficial characteristics because they provide social support to
employees, encourage cooperation, and make jobs more interesting and challenging.
• Furthermore, the transition to teamwork requires training that improves employees’
technical and interpersonal skills. Employees view this additional training as a
personal benefit.
 Problems of Teamwork
• Although there are benefits to both organizations and employees, some problems are created by
the use of teams and the transition to teamwork. Research on teamwork in work settings
provides mixed results. Many of the studies on quality circles (i.e., temporary teams that provide
suggestions about how to improve quality) show that these teams are not effective, whereas
studies of factory work teams have widely variable results (Guzzo & Dickson, 1996).
• One of the problems is that teamwork programs are implemented with little consideration for
their applicability. Rather than attempting to make existing programs work better, new programs
are introduced.
• Teamwork programs like quality circles provide only limited power to teams. Such programs
often lead to small short-run improvements in performance, but not to long-term improvements
(Guzzo & Dickson, 1996). The shift to self-managing work teams often results in significant
long-term performance improvements. However, the transition to self-managing teams can be
difficult in organizations with traditional management control systems.
• Effective work teams have norms that support high-quality performance and a level of group
cohesiveness that provides social support for members.
• Nevertheless, work teams may have problems with norms and cohesiveness. Teams with poor
performance norms may not be effective and may be highly resistant to change. Low levels of
group cohesion may limit team members’ ability to work together, whereas high levels of group
cohesion may lower members’ performance orientation and impair decision making (Nemeth &
Staw, 1989).
• Implementing work teams often creates problems. Conflicts exist between team development
and the traditional management systems in many organizations (Hackman, 1990a). Teams
suffer from implementation problems because of resistance to change. Teamwork requires a
supportive organizational context to foster team growth and development.
Conclusion
• What is needed is a better understanding of where and when
teams should be deployed and what actions are required to
deploy them effectively. Teams are not the solution to every
organizational problem, and they are not automatically
successful. They need a purpose, an outcome that requires joint
efforts, complementary skills, and mutual responsibility
(Katzenbach & Smith, 2001). Organizations get in trouble when
the goal of a team is promoting teamwork (a process goal) rather
than an identified performance outcome.
 Summary
• Motivation is a problem for many teams. Working in a team can encourage social loafing, which is the reduction
in individual effort that occurs when the individual is performing in a group. Free riders and the sucker effect are
related motivational problems. These motivation problems may be caused by tasks that do not require
coordinated efforts, inability to identify individual contributions to the team’s work, and the false belief that
individual members are doing their fair share.
• Improving group motivation requires countering the negative effects of social loafing. The team’s task should
be involving and challenging and should require coordinated effort to complete. The team evaluation and
reward system must recognize and reward both individual and team performance. The team’s goals should
create the belief that motivated effort leads to success. Finally, strengthening commitment to the team by
increasing cohesion helps increase group motivation.
• Group cohesion is the interpersonal bond that forms within a team. It can emerge from feelings of belonging,
social identification, interpersonal attraction, or commitment to the team’s task. In most cases, a cohesive team
performs better than a noncohesive team because of improved coordination and mutual support. However, high
levels of group cohesion may sometimes encourage conformity and impair decision making. One of the main
ways to develop group cohesion is to improve communication within the team.
• Roles are sets of behaviors that people perform in teams. They may be deliberately created and filled, or they
may operate on a more informal basis. Ill-defined roles (i.e., role ambiguity) and conflicts among roles may
create stress for team members. Formal team roles (e.g., leader, recorder, or timekeeper) help a team operate
more efficiently.
• Team members perform task behaviors and social behaviors. Task behaviors help the team perform its task,
whereas social behaviors maintain the team’s interpersonal relationships. Work teams often ignore the
importance of social behaviors, leading to reduction in interpersonal support and an increase in stress. Team
interactions may be improved by better balancing the types of behaviors performed.
• Teams have the ability to adapt and change how they operate to deal with changes in their environment. Team
learning occurs when teams reflect on these changes and develop new action models. These models include a
shared understanding of how to perform as a team and an awareness of the knowledge and skills within the
team. Both positive and negative feedback are important for team learning. Also, team members must learn
how to act as process observers to improve the team’s interactions.