Lecture 24: High-Performing Teams (11/18)

Reading: H&M Chapter 10

Collaboration has increased over the past 2 decades. How much has it increased by?

50% or more

When people work together to finish a job, such as building a house, the job will probably:

A. Get finished faster

B. Take longer to finish

C. Not get done

This is a question from a fourth grade standardized test in Ohio. The “correct” answer if you are fourth grader in Ohio is A. But, Richard Hackman uses this example in the beginning of his book Leading Teams to make the point that research evidence would suggest that B or C is actually just as, if not more, likely)

What are the common causes of team failure

Underutilization of information & expertise:

• perceived obstacles to voicing dissenting opinions

• Failure to discover “who knows what” within the team

Corrosive Dynamics

• Inadequate trust, cohesion, and shared identity that undermines communication and collaboration

Team Stagnation

• Tendency to persist with existing, outdated routines rather than to learn and adapt over time

What are the levers of high performing teams?

Team performance depends on:

• organizational context

• group design

• group strategy

• process criteria of effectiveness

• material resources

• → group effectiveness

What is a work team? Describe the diagram from Kozlowski & Bell (2003)

Work teams:

• Are composed of 2 or more individuals

• Who exist to perform organizationally relevant tasks

• Share one or more common goals

• Exhibit task interdependencies

Diagram:

The diagram places different kinds of teams on three key dimensions:

1. Authority differentiation (vertical axis)

2. Skill differentiation (diagonal axis from left to right)

3. Temporal stability (horizontal axis) → length of teams

What are the key enabling conditions for high-performing teams

Compelling Direction

• High performing teams have explicit goals, which are clear, challenging, and consequential

Strong Structure

• High performing teams have the right mix and number of members, perform meaningful tasks, and establish clear norms

Supportive Context

• High performing teams have a reward system that reinforces good performance, an information system that provides access to necessary data, an educational system that offers training and development, and access to the material resources (e.g., funding, technological assistance) required to do the job

Shared Mindset

• In high performing teams, members have a strong common identity and a shared understanding of the task and one another

What are the 5 factors that Google’s Project Aristotle found to have the biggest impact on team success?

1. Psychological Safety – team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of one another

2. Dependability – team members get things done on time and meet Google’s high bar for excellence

3. Structure & Clarity – team members have clear roles, plans, and goals

4. Meaning – work is personally important to team members

5. Impact – team members think their work matters and creates change

In the case of hospital teams the Edmondson (1996) studied, what did he hypothesize about the teams where adverse drug events (ADEs) would be lower

• Better nurse managers

• Higher quality interpersonal processes

• Greater perceived performance

Which of the following do you think might best explain these counterintuitive findings (for the case of hospital teams)

A. Teams that perceived themselves as high performers became complacent

B. Teams with strong nurse managers failed to take personal responsibility

C. Teams with a poor manager and interpersonal processes covered up their mistakes

D. Teams with strong interpersonal processes engaged in groupthink

C. Teams with a poor manager and interpersonal processes covered up their mistakes

What is psychological safety?

A team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect where people feel comfortable speaking up and being themselves

What are ways leadership can foster psychological safety?

Demonstrate engagement

• Model curiosity and ask lots of questions

• Offer input, be interactive, and show you’re listening

Be inclusive in decision making

• Frame work as a learning problem, not an execution problem

• Encourage others to speak up and offer their input, opinions, and feedback

• Don’t interrupt or allow interruptions

Show confidence without appearing inflexible

• Acknowledge your own fallibility

• Invite the team to challenge your perspective and push back

What is Tuckman’s Stage Model for team development?

Forming:

• Unclear objectives, roles and responsibilities

• Confusion

Storming

• Members vie for influence
• Conflict

Norming

• Members reconcile differences and develop norms to guide subsequent interaction
• Consensus

Performing

• Group energy is channeled into the task
• Confidence

Adjourning

• Task termination, disengagement, and disbanding of the team
• Closure

What are various team training approaches?

Task simulations

Team building

Team Coordination Training (Crew Resource Management)

Transportable Teamwork Skills Training

• Task specific team training focuses on developing skills that are related to specific tasks

• Task generic team training focuses on developing skills that generalize across different tasks

• Team specific team training focuses on developing an intact team

• Team generic team training focuses on developing individuals to work across different teams