Managing Teams Work Teams small number of people with complimentary skills who hold themselves mutually accountable for pursuing a common purpose achieving performance goals and improving interdependent work processes LO1 The Good and Bad of Using Teams Teams help to improve customer satisfaction product and service quality employee job satisfaction and decision making Cross training team members are taught how to do all or most of the jobs performed by the other team members o Allows teams to function normally when one team member is absent o Broadens skills increases capabilities varied work o View problems from multiple perspectives Prone to disadvantages initially high turnover social loafing the problems associated with group decision making Social loafing workers withhold their efforts and fail to perform their share of the work Groupthink members of highly cohesive groups feel intense pressure not to disagree with each other so that the group can approve a proposed solution Minority domination one or two people dominate discussion restricting consideration of different problem definitions and alternative solutions Factors that encourage people to withhold effort in teams o The presence of someone with expertise o The presentation of a compelling argument o Lacking confidence in one s ability to contribute o An unimportant or meaningless decision o A dysfunctional decision making climate Teams should be used when o There is a clear engaging reason or purpose for doing so o The job cant be done unless people work together o Rewards can be provided for teamwork and team LO2 Kinds of Teams performance Autonomy the degree to which workers have the discretion freedom and independence to decide how and when to accomplish their jobs o Traditional work groups employee involvement groups semi autonomous work groups self managing teams self designing teams Traditional work groups two or more people work together to achieve a shared goal Employee involvement teams have somewhat more autonomy meet on company time on a weekly or monthy basis to provide advice or make suggestions to management concerning specific issues such as plant safety customer relations or product quality Semi autonomous work groups provide advice and suggestions to management and have the authority to make decisions and solve problems related to the major tasks required to produce a product or service Self managing teams team members manage and control all of the major tasks directly related to production of a product or service without first getting approval from management Self designing teams have all the characteristics of self managing teams but can also control and change the design of the teams themselves the tasks they do and how and when they do them and the membership of the team Cross functional teams intentionally composed of employees from different functional areas of the organization Virtual teams groups of geographically and or organizationally dispersed coworkers who use a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task Project teams created to complete specific one time Norms informally agreed upon standards that regulate team behavior Cohesiveness the extent to which team members are attracted to a team and motivated to remain in it Very small or very large teams may not perform as well as moderately sized teams right size is somewhere between 6 9 people Primary cause of conflict is disagreement over team goals and priorities Others are disagreements over task related issues interpersonal incompatibilities and simple fatigue C type conflict cognitive conflict focuses on problem related differences of opinion A type conflict affective conflict emotional reactions that can occur when disagreements become personal rather than professional Four stages of team development projects or tasks within a limited time LO3 Work team characteristics o Forming the first stage of team development in which team members meet each other form initial impressions and begin to establish team norms o Storming second stage of team development characterized by conflict and disagreement in which team members disagree over what team should do and how it should do it o Norming third stage of team development in which team members begin to settle into their roles group cohesion grows and positive team norms develop o Performing fourth and final stage of team development in which performance improves because the team has matured into an effective fully functioning team LO4 Enhancing work team effectiveness SMART specific measurable attainable realistic timely Specific and challenging goals Four things needed for stretch goals to motivate teams goals effectively o high degree of autonomy or control over how they o Empowered with control over resources budget achieve their goals workspace etc o Structural accommodation giving teams the ability to change organizational structures policies and practices if doing so helps them meet their stretch goals o Bureaucratic immunity teams no longer have to go through the frustratingly slow process of multilevel reviews and sign off to get management approval before making changes A way to measure someone s preference for teamwork is to assess the persons degree of individualism or collectivism Individualism collectivism degree to which a person believes that people should be self sufficient and that loyalty to oneself is more important than loyalty to ones team or company o Individualists put own welfare and interests first prefer independent tasks o Collectivists put group or team interests ahead of self interests prefer to work with teams Team level the average level of ability experience personality or any other factor on a team Team diversity represents the variances or differences in ability experience personal or any other factor of a team Organizations often underestimate the amount of training required to make teams effective Need significant training in interpersonal skills decision making and problem solving skills do a better job of cutting costs and improving quality and customer service conflict resolution skills and technical training Interpersonal skills listening communicating questioning and providing feedback enable people to have effective working relationships with others For team compensation the type of reward individual vs team must match the type of performance individual vs team Employees can be compensated
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