Team Dynamics

What underlies the importance of groups?

• Information Age: No one person can have technical expertise in all areas of knowledge. The team approach, representing a pool of mental resources, becomes more tenable
• More educated and trained workers: They are more qualified and willing to serve in the types of roles called for in work teams
• Rate of Change in Work Activities: Pressures to make new products, modify services, alter processes to improve quality, and in general be in a continual state of transformation. These pressures drive a need for diverse skills, expertise, and experience.

Group Defined

• 4 Criteria that Need to be Met (Gordon, 2001)
  • The members of the group must see themselves as a ^^unit^^
  • The group must provide rewards to its ^^members^^
  • Anything that happens to one member of the group ^^affects every other member^^
  • The members of the group must share a ^^common goal^^

Reasons for Joining Groups

• Assignment: Members are assigned to groups
• Physical Proximity: People tend to form groups with people who live or work nearby
• Affiliation: People have a strong need to be with other people
• Identification: The desire for some identification with some group or cause
• Emotional Support: Groups provide emotional support for their members
• Assistance or Help
• Common Interests

5 Social Skills

• Gain the group acceptance
• Increase solidarity
• Be aware of the group consciousness
• Share the group identification
• Manage other’s impression of him or her

Factors Affecting Group Performance

• Group Homogeneity
  • ^^The extent to which members are similar^^
  • Homogeneous Group: contains members who are similar in some or most ways
  • Heterogeneous Group: contains members who are more different than alike
  • Homogeneous groups result in ^^higher member satisfaction, higher levels of communication and interaction, and lower turnover^^
  • Slightly heterogeneous groups performed somewhat better than did homogeneous and heterogeneous groups
  • Group members who are most different in terms of race, sex, or age may have ^^lower satisfaction^^ and are ^^likelier to leave organization^^
• Group Cohesiveness
  • The extent to which members like and trust one another, are committed to accomplishing a team goal, and share a feeling of group pride
  • The more cohesive the group, the greater its productivity and efficiency, member interaction and satisfaction
  • Can lower group performance: When employees become too cohesive, they often lose sight of organizational goals
  • Rule of Conformity: The greater the cohesiveness of a team, the greater the conformity of members to team norms
  • Employees in cohesive work groups will conform to a norm of lower production even though they are capable of higher performance
  • Stability: Groups in which members remain for long periods of time and have previously worked together perform better
  • Isolation: Groups that are isolated or located away from other groups tend to be highly cohesive
  • Outside Pressure: Groups pressured by outside forces also tend to become highly cohesive
  • Group Status: A group can be made more cohesive by increasing group status, for example, by increasing perception that the group is difficult to join
  • Group Ability and Confidence: Groups consisting of high ability members outperform those with low-ability members
• How to Influence Group Cohesiveness

Informal Groups

• Groups that exist primarily for the benefit of their ^^members without being officially designated by the organization^^
• They form spontaneously through personal relationships and special interests
  • Friendship Groups: ^^consists of persons with natural affinities for one another^^. They tend to work together, sit together, take breaks together, etc.
  • Interest Groups: ^^consists of persons who share common interests^^, such as to learn about new computers (work) or community service, sports, or religion (non-work)

Social Network Analysis

• A tool used to identify the ^^informal groups^^ and networks of relationships that are active in an organization
• Informal groups can speed up workflow as people assist each other in ways that cut across the formal structures
• The social network analysis typically asks people to identify co-workers who help them most often, who communicate with them regularly, and who energize and de-energize them

Formal Groups

• ^^Groups that are official and designated to serve specific organizational purposes^^
• Some formal groups are ^^permanent and ongoing^^ and appear on organizational charts as departments, divisions, or teams
• Some formal groups are ^^temporary and short-lived^^, i.e., created to solve specific problems or perform defined tasks and are disbanded once the purpose has been accomplished

1. Cross-Functional (Parallel) Teams
   • Consists of members representing different functional departments or work units
   • Designed to beat functional silos problem
     • Functional Silos Problem: occurs when members of functional units focus only on their internal functional matters and minimize their interactions with members dealing with other functions
   • Problem-Solving Teams: are set up to deal with specific problems or opportunities (e.g., committees, task forces, and special project teams)
   • Employee Involvement Teams: are those whose members meet regularly to collectively examine important workplace issues (e.g., ways to enhance quality, better satisfy customers, etc.)
   • Quality Circles: a small team of persons who meet periodically to discuss and develop solutions for problems relating to quality and productivity
2. Virtual Teams
   • Members convene and work together electronically via computers; can accomplish same tasks as face-to-face teams, but are free from geographic barriers
   • Advantages: cost-effectiveness and speed; focuses task accomplishment and decision-making by reducing the emotional considerations that may suffice in face-to-face meetings
   • Disadvantages: lack of personal contact between team members may impair development of work relationships and productivity
3. Self-Managing Teams
   • Small teams empowered to make the decisions needed to manage themselves on a day-to-day basis; a form of job enrichment for teams
   • Duties often replace those that were traditionally done by the manager as members can make decisions about scheduling work, allocating tasks, etc.
   • ^^Multitasking^^ is important, where team members are each capable of performing many different jobs
   • Advantages
     • Productivity and quality improvements
     • Production flexibility and faster response to technological change
     • Reduced absenteeism and turnover
     • Improved work attitudes and quality of work life

Teams

• Groups of people with ^^complementary skills^^, brought together to achieve a ^^common purpose^^ for which they hold themselves ^^collectively accountable^^.
• Groups of 2 or more people
• Exist to fulfill a purpose
• Interdependent - interact and influence each other
• Mutually accountable for achieving common goals
• Perceive themselves as a social entity
• Advantages
  • ^^Under the right conditions^^, teams make better decisions, develop better products or services
  • Better information sharing
  • Higher employee motivation or engagement
  • Fulfills drive to bond
  • Closer scrutiny by team members
  • Team members are benchmarks of comparison
• Disadvantages:
  • Individuals better or faster on some tasks when they have all the necessary knowledge and skills
  • Process Losses: resources (including time and energy) expended toward team development and maintenance rather than the task
  • Brook’s Law: Team performance suffers when a team adds members because those employees need to learn how the team operates and how to coordinate efficiently with other team members
  • Social Loafing: The problem occurs when people exert less effort when working in teams than when working alone

Team Effectiveness

• A team is effective when it achieves high levels of ^^task performance, member satisfaction, and team viability^^
  • Task Performance: Members attain performance goals regarding quantity, quality, and timeliness of work results
  • Member Satisfaction: Members believe that their participation and experiences are positive and meet important personal needs
  • Team Viability: Members are sufficiently satisfied to continue working together on an ongoing basis
  • Viability: team has the ability to survive

Teamwork

• occurs when team members accept their collective responsibility to best use their skills by actively working together to achieve goals

Synergy

• The creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts
• Individual can accomplish more through teamwork than by working alone

Social Facilitation Theory

• Individual behavior is influenced by the presence of others in a group or social setting
• Positive Result: extra effort when individual has the skills required for the task
• Negative Result: an increase in social loafing and withdrawal from the group

Common Team Challenges

• Social loafing
• Personality conflicts
• Uncertain or competing goals
• Poorly defined agenda
• Perceptions that team lacks progress

Social Loafing

• The tendency of people to work less hard in a group than they would individually
• German psychologist Max Ringleman pinpointed the phenomenon by asking people to pull a rope as hard as they would, first alone, and then as part of a team
• Reasons for Social Loafing
  • Individual contributions are less noticeable in the group context
  • Some prefer others to carry the workload
• 3 Reasons for Social Loafing
  • Free Riding: desire to benefit or free ride from the efforts of others; likely to occur when team members believe their ^^own contributions cannot be identified^^
  • The “Sucker” Effect: people reduce their effort to ^^match the low level^^ they expect from others
  • Felt Dispensability: Team members may feel dispensable when ^^more able team members are available^^ to accomplish the task or when they believe their ^^efforts are redundant^^ because they duplicate the contributions of others
• How to Minimize Social Loafing
  • Make individual performance more visible
  • Form smaller teams
  • Define roles and tasks
  • Specialize tasks
  • Make performance expectations clear
  • Measure individual performance
  • Tie individual rewards to performance contributions to the group

Team Size

• Smaller teams are better because:
  • Need less time to coordinate roles and resolve differences
  • Require less time to develop more member involvement, thus higher commitment
• BUT team must be large enough to accomplish task

Team Composition

• Effective team members must be willing and able to work on the team
• Effective team members possess specific competencies (5 C’s)

5 Competencies of Effective Team Members

• Cooperating
  • Share resources
  • Accommodate others
  • Effective team members are ^^willing and able to work together rather than alone^^
  • Includes sharing resources and accommodating the needs and preference of others
• Coordinating
  • Align work with others
  • Keep team on track
  • Effective team members actively ^^manage the team’s work so that it is performed efficiently and harmoniously^^
  • Requires knowing the work of others
• Communicating
  • Share information freely, efficiently, respectfully
  • Listen actively
  • Effective team members ^^transmit into freely^^ (rather than hoarding), ^^efficiently^^ (using the between channel and language), and ^^respectfully^^ (minimizing arousal of negative emotions).
• Comforting
  • Show empathy
  • Provide psychological comfort
  • Build confidence
  • Effective team members help co-workers to maintain a positive and healthy psychological state
  • They ^^show empathy, provide psychological support, and build co-worker feelings of confidence and self-worth^^
• Conflict Resolving
  • Diagnose conflict sources
  • Use best conflict handling style
  • Effective team members have the skills and motivation to ^^resolve dysfunctional disagreements among team members^^
  • This requires effective use of various conflict-handling styles as well as diagnostic skills to identify and resolve the structural sources of conflict.