Team Use, Design, and Effectiveness
Introduction
Teams are widely recognized and used to solve complex
problems in organizations. This module
introduces the elements of team effectiveness and the design factors that “make a
difference.” Gender differences that
produce different assumptions about the nature of teamwork are examined.
1. To Team or Not to Team
When we are thinking
about using teams, there are essentially three major questions to ask. The first is “Do we need a team?” The answer is yes, if the problem you need to
solve or the tasks you need to perform are complex.
The answer is “No” if the task is not interdependent, that is if a
collection of individuals working separately could perform the task. In this module we go into more detail about when a
team is appropriate.
The second question
is, “How do we increase the probability that
the team will be successful?” The
answer is to design it well, manage process in the service of getting the team task done,
and intervene to get team members back on track at the times when the group is most open.
The third question
is, “How do we decide whether or not a team is
effective?” The answer: By
paying attention to three criteria.
1.
Output:
Did the team get the assigned job done according to acceptable standards?
2.
Satisfaction: Did the team members enjoy
working together and would they do so again?
3.
Learning: Did the team members increase
their task competency and interpersonal skills in ways that will serve them in the future
as individuals, team members and/or members of the organization.
If and when the
answers to all three criteria are “Yes” the team has been effective. The specifics of how to measure team performance
according to each of these criteria must be developed for each team.
A widely accepted
definition of groups is the one put forth by organizational researcher Clay Alderfer. Real groups must meet five standards:
·
Have
significant interdependent relations with each other
·
Perceive
themselves as a group
·
Be
recognized as a group by non-members
·
Have
interdependent relations, as group members alone or in concert, with other groups
·
Have
group roles that are a function of expectations from themselves as group members, from
other group members, and from non-group members.
Collections of people
who work for the same project/programme purpose unit, or do similar tasks, but who do not meet all five of
the criteria, are called co-acting individuals or nominal groups. Nominal groups are ‘groups in name only’. Nominal groups are common in our organizations. Teams and groups as terms will be used synonymously
throughout this module. In discussing them
here we will be talking about ‘real’ teams and groups, not co-acting
individuals.
Ruth Wageman
researched high performing self-managed teams and found that designing a team well not
only increased the probability of success for that team, but also protected the team from
poor leadership and dysfunctional intra-team dynamics.
The best performing groups were those that were well designed AND had
effective group dynamics. But if you have to
choose, go for high quality design.
There are many
design factors that make a positive difference in team effectiveness. Clear engaging direction is the first and most
important factor. It is important when
convening a team to let the members know why they are being brought together, what the
mission of the team is, and what the final result is that they are to accomplish. It is important to discuss the direction with the
team members. They may be told what they are
to do, but not HOW to do it. The second word
is ‘engaging’. This means that
the task has to be seen as worth team members’ time and effort. In order to gain commitment from team members
for the task it is helpful to communicate why this mission is important and allow team
members to ask questions. The clear, engaging
direction orients team members and allows them to make intelligent trade-offs and manage
conflict when necessary during the actual execution of the tasks. Remember, the end is given, the team members need
to be allowed to develop the means.
4. Design Factors that Motivate the Team as a Team
Task
Interdependence. Task interdependence is one of the definitional
criteria for forming a team in the first place. It
also helps if the team members are cross-trained and thus able to help each other as
needed. If you provide feedback about the group’s task
performance, it is better to give only group-level feedback thereby acknowledging the task
interdependence. Hybrid tasks, tasks that are
partly individual and partly interdependent, pull the team in conflicting directions.
Authority to Manage the Project, Their Work and Their
Tasks. Team members together should have the decision rights over their basic work
strategies. They decide which actions to take, who will do
them, and when they will be done. It is
important that team leaders do not tell team members what to do. Coaching the team as a team is an appropriate
intervention from team leaders.
Performance
Goals. The team needs to
come up with Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Reachable, Timed (SMART) goals for achieving
the team mission. There should also be ways to
measure the team’s effectiveness vis a vis learning and member satisfaction. Every team member should be able to articulate the
mission – because it is clear and simple – and understand how each goal supports
the attainment of that mission.
Group
Rewards. This is one of the
most challenging research findings to implement from the Wageman research. One of the reasons people do not like to work in
teams is that it is difficult to determine whether every one is doing their fair share of
the work, and if someone is not, it is hard to do anything about their free loading. So we avoid rewarding the team and give individual
rewards instead. When the group is rewarded as
a group, many people think that means that everyone in the group will receive exactly the
same reward or compensation for completing the task. This
is not the case. It is important to
motivate the team as a team by giving the entire reward to the team and then allowing team
members to decide on a fair distribution of the
rewards. The team-based reward reinforces the purpose for having a team and team
interdependence.
5. Structural Design Factors that Influence Team Norms
Team Size.
Effective self-managed teams have 4-8 members. Each member in the group adds exponentially to the
communication complexity within the group. The
tendency when groups get larger than 8 is for members to form subgroups. Fewer than four team members usually limits
perspective diversity, and team effectiveness.
Stable
Membership. Every time someone
joins or leaves the team, the team starts the group development process again. In the beginning of this process very little output
is generated because members are getting to know each other.
If you have put a team together, design the task so that it is doable within
a time frame where all members can stay together until completion. In practice, this means setting up several smaller
projects towards a big, hairy, audacious goal – rather than a 2-year project where
you know team members will be rotating in and out of the group.
Diversity. Relevant task and demographic diversity
help teams that need to find creative solutions to problems, generate new ideas, or solve
problems that affect a wide range of people. Under
those conditions diversity of perspective contributes to team effectiveness. In some cases, diversity can be a distraction --
when people attribute poor interpersonal communication and conflict management skills to
the existence of diversity within the group.
Training: Groups need training to do any new
tasks required by the project as well as group-process training to handle conflict and
keep communications smooth.
Sufficient
Resources. Asking a group of
people to perform a task without enough time, an appropriate budget, the right people, or
sufficient resources is demoralizing. High
performing teams do not waste their energy trying to do tasks that the organization is not
willing to support in a tangible way.
Many organizations
have talked about empowering people in their organizations.
In an action research project at a large organization, Johnson and the
members of that organization came up with a definition of empowerment that, when combined
with choices for organizing collections of individuals, clarifies team design strategy.
Empowerment was
defined as a combination of
·
Authority
– appropriate decision rights for the tasks to be completed
·
Competence
– task specific knowledge and skills
·
Trust
– credibility, openness, fairness and interpersonal respect
Johnson
then combined the definitional factors for empowerment-disempowerment with the
definitional factors for teams-co-actors. The
result is an empowerment strategy grid.
|
On
the vertical axis of the grid we have empowered at the top – that is people who have
the authority to complete their tasks, are capable of doing the work well, and who have
open, respectful relationships with their colleagues / team members. At the bottom of the vertical axis are people who
are not empowered for one of more reasons – they do not trust each other, are not yet
capable of executing their task competently (new employees for instance), or they must do
what they are told. On the horizontal axis we
go from co-acting individuals or individuals in nominal groups on the left to teams which
meet all five definitional criteria on the right.
7. The
Empowerment Strategy Grid Quadrants
In
the first quadrant we have a situation where we either have or need automatons. This quadrant describes people who are not
empowered nor are they a team. The automaton
quadrant is appropriate for people who are learning a new skill, or working in a place
such as a nuclear power plant where there is no need for a team to perform a task and it
is very helpful for each individual to do exactly what they are told to do.
In
quadrant two we are still describing individuals, but this time they ACT (have Authority,
Competence and Trust). This quadrant is
appropriate when you do not need a team of people working together because their tasks are
independent and/or you want them to compete with each other for some reason. This
might be an appropriate design strategy for university faculty from different academic
disciplines, sales people or stockbrokers.
In
quadrant three we describe the empowered or self-managed work team. Empowered self-managed teams have the authority
needed to accomplish their interdependent task, the skills necessary to do a good job and
they trust each other / management trusts them to meet the team mission. This is appropriate for new product
development teams, for instance.
And
the final quadrant, the platoon, describes a situation where there is a team but they are
usually must follow orders. The military
term is used because this is an appropriate design in many cases for military teams.
Not
only does the grid describe various ways to organize groups, the grid can be used to have
people in an organization assess where they are and where they would like to be on the
grid. It is then easier to set up programs
to move towards the desired quadrant.
Dr.
Pat Heim has published research about difference in team assumptions and team style based
on cultural differences between men and women. Whether
you agree with a particular way of thinking about teams and team leadership as typically
male or female, it is helpful to notice that we sometimes use the same words -- “team”
or “group” -- and we are speaking
about radically different things. For many
boys who grow up learning appropriate adult behavior by playing win-lose oriented sports,
a team is a place where:
·
Boys
have command and control and learn to take and give orders.
·
Boys
relate through competition and conflict – even playing with people they do not like.
·
Where
boys can be aggressive.
·
Where
boys mask how they truly feel.
·
Where
there is a hierarchical structure – coach, captain, star players, or benchwarmers.
·
Where
there is a linear focus on winning by reaching the goal.
·
Where the game is
over when it is over and boys can go be pals after trying to destroy each other on the
playing field.
·
Where
the team meetings do not happen at the meeting, but rather through lining up support for
positions and ideas before the meeting.
·
Where
it is appropriate to show support for ideas by interrupting others and taking up a large
percentage of the team talk time.
For
many girls who grow up learning appropriate adult behavior by playing with dolls with
their friends, a team is a place:
·
Where
girls involve others in the process of decision making.
·
Where
girls build and maintain quality relationship and avoid conflict.
·
Where
girls share – ideas, air time, resources.
·
Where
the power structure is dead even and every one is free to ask questions.
·
Where
girls negotiate differences by looking for win-win solutions.
·
Where
the focus is on the process and every one can multitask.
·
Where
trust and friendship are very important and must be demonstrated before, during and after
the meeting.
·
Where
the team meeting is at the meeting because that is the fair thing to do to make sure
everyone is included.
·
Where
girls present their ideas using only their fair share of the air time.
10. Team Work Together – Men and Women
What
this means is that when men and women are working on teams together with different
assumptions about how to do things ‘right’ on the team, there may be conflict
due to these different assumptions that neither group acknowledges. Look through the list of assumptions and behaviors
for boys and girls. Note which of those that are most comfortable for you. Know that both sets of behaviors work, some
better in some situations than in others. Girl’s
lessons of team work are appropriate and effective in the female culture. Boy’s lessons of team work are appropriate and
effective in the male culture.
Conflicts
arise when women are working on teams that are mostly male with expectations that the team
should work as women’s team’s work. Or there may be conflict when men are
judging women’s contribution to the team by the rules of male culture. The rules of gender culture are often invisible
to the person who is a part of a particular culture, and feel weird to people who are not
a part of the culture. Effective team work
in mixed gender teams can occur when men and women understand that they have assumptions
about how teams work, based in part on their gender culture.
If
you find yourself judging the behavior of other members of your team by your set of
standards, start a conversation about these differences, try to understand the other
person’s intent through the lens of their culture, and/or flex your style.
Assignment
and Test Questions
Module 8: Team Use, Design
and Effectiveness
True False:
True
False
True
False
True
False
True
False
True
False
True
False
True
False
True
False
True
False
10. Teams are widely recognized and used to solve
complex problems in organizations. T
True
False
11. The answer to “Do we need a team?” is “No” when the tasks are interdependent, and you have complex tasks to perform. F
True
False
12. Collections of people who work for the same project/programme purpose unit, or do similar tasks, but who do not meet all five of the criteria, are called co-acting individuals or nominal groups. T
True
False
13. It is best when convening a team to tell them exactly what they have to do, how to do it, and when it needs to be done. F
True
False
14. If you provide feedback about the group’s task performance, it is better to give only group-level feedback thereby acknowledging the task interdependence. True
True
False
15. Diversity makes team work more complex and the team less effective. False
True
False
16. People find the challenge of trying to perform a task without enough time, an appropriate budget, the right people, or sufficient resources motivating.
True
False
Multiple-Choice:
Matching
the Columns:
Please
match the following behaviors with female or male working styles according to Dr. Heim.
Male/Female
______M_____ Mask
how you really feel.
______F_____ Share
ideas, time and resources.
______F_____
Build
and maintain quality relationships.
______M____
Be aggressive.
______F_____
Meetings
happen at the meetings.
______M____
Relate through
competition and conflict.
When
we have complex tasks that require coordinated effort and we are willing to design them
well, teams are an effective means for getting tasks done in organizations. Long- term effective teams are productive, learning
new skills, and enjoying the work together. The
early design factors are stronger predictors of team success than group process. Perspective diversity in teams is very important
for creative problem solving but that same diversity, especially demographic diversity,
can distract the team when interpersonal conflicts are not managed by reference to the
teams clear and engaging direction. Men and women sometimes have different expectations
about teamwork. Yet when the differences are
understood and adjustments made – gender as well as task relevant diversity
contribute to team creativity and effectiveness.
Bibliography
Alderfer, Clayton P.
-“Studying
intergroup relations embedded in organizations.” Administrative
Science Quarterly. Administrative Science
Quarterly: US, 1982 Mar. 27
(1): p. 35-65
Hackman, J.R. (ed.), Groups
that Work (and Those that Don’t):
Heim, P.
-Hardball
for women : winning at the game of project/programme purpose (Lowell House ;
Heim, P.
-In
the organization of women: turning workplace conflict into powerful
alliances (
Johnson, R.D. and Thurston,
E.K.
- Achieving empowerment using the empowerment strategy
grid in Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 18/2 (1997)
Wageman, R.
-“Critical
success factors for creating superb self-managing teams,”
Organizational Dynamics, Summer
1997, 26(1): 49-61.
Wageman, R.
-“How
leaders foster self-managing team effectiveness: Design choices
versus
hands-on coaching,” Organization Science,
Sep/Oct 2001, 12(5):
559-577.
Clear, engaging
direction. The most important team design factor; a team mission that orients team members
and allows them to make intelligent tradeoffs, manage conflicts, and execute their team
tasks effectively.
Design factors: Ways
to put a team together that increases the probability of success and protects the team
from poor group process-leadership if necessary.
Empowerment: A combination of authority (appropriate decision
rights for the tasks to be completed), competence (task-specific knowledge and skills),
and trust (credibility, openness, fairness, and interpersonal respect).
Empowerment
Strategy Grid. A
model with empowerment-disempowerment on the vertical axis and coactors-teams on the
horizontal axis – resulting in four quadrants (automatons, empowering managers,
empowered-self-managed teams, and squadrons). The
grid is used to assess where a collection of people is vis a vis teamness and empowerment
and to guide their strategy for becoming more empowered and/or more effective as a team
when organizationally appropriate.
Groups:
A collection of people who (1) has
significant interdependent relations with each other, (2) a perception of themselves as a
group, (3) are recognized as a group by non-members, (4) has interdependent relations, as
group members alone or in concert, with other groups, and (5) has group roles that are a
function of expectations from themselves as group members, from other group members, and
from non-group members.
Learning Objectives:
·
Gaining an overview of the optimum conditions for
utilizing teams
·
Identifying underlying beliefs and assumptions about teams
Questions and Answers
Question
1. Why do you have three criteria for
effectiveness? Our organization only cares
about productivity.
Answer
1: Many organizations
prioritize or focus on output-productivity. Most
of us can think of times when we’ve gotten the job done but we would never want to
work with those people again. If we ignore the
low satisfaction in the team, especially if it is a continuing team, team members will
eventually sabotage output. Even if that team
disbands, when people who have had an unsatisfactory experience on old teams go to new
teams, they will take the negative attitude-expectations with them and affect team morale
on future teams. Learning is included as a
criterion because we know of times when we produce something and enjoy working with each
other but we are not producing a service-product that stretches us to gain new skills. New skill development is motivating. Teams can be good and fun but they will lose their
effective edge without some learning challenge. So
the three criteria are put forth to encourage teams to consider whey they need to do, feel
and think in order to be effective today AND tomorrow.
Question 2. My boss,
Susanna, and my colleague, Jack, both have told me that I need to be a good team player. But they seem to have very different views of what
that means. I’m confused. Can gender differences be working here?
Answer
2: They could be
– although we want to be careful not to over-generalize or stereotype – there
are some differences in what it means to be a team player associated with gender. These differences vary by culture and from
individual to individual. But they do point
out that we may have different assumptions about team playing and guide us to ask some
questions in order to gain clarity about what actions to take. In the US-Based research men tend to see being a
team player as knowing our skill level and slot on the hierarchy, doing your best to do
what you are told to do, keeping your eye on the goal, and being loyal to whatever team
you are on. If you have a great idea it is
fine to jump in and verbally spar, dominating discussion to demonstrate your enthusiasm
for that idea (unless the coach-leader says no more talking). Women tend to see being a good team player as
asking questions and challenging ideas, staying loyal to that team and its members as
friends, playing fair, sharing air time, and demonstrating your commitment to the team’s
process by participating and encouraging participation from others. The best thing to do is to ask Susanna and Jack
exactly what behaviors they expect of ‘good team players’. You can then identify whether their assumptions
line up in a particular way like those from the research.
You should also notice where your assumptions and preferences lie. Then discuss specific behaviors you are willing to
use to be effective with Susanna and Jack.
Question 3: Our organization has a team of 50 people who rotate in and out of our project and will do so for the next 3 years until the project is complete. We don’t seem to be able to get much done at our meetings. How could we be more effective?
Answer 3: First of all 50 people are not a team; it’s an
organization. So you will need to set up teams
of 4-8 people. My guess is there are already
many subgroups in this so-called team. Second,
you want to break the 3 year project into smaller manageable tasks that move you toward
completion in 3 years, but where each task takes only a month or 2 to complete. You can
also increase the time to do the interdependent tasks if you can keep all the members
together for a longer time period, and you need that much more time to get a specific
sub-task done. If there are some things that can be done by individuals (because they are
not interdependent tasks) assign them to individuals and select someone to manage them as
individuals. Third, you want to put people on
each task team with the skill diversity to complete that specific task. Have the team
members define their specific objectives, set their time line, and gain a commitment from
all members to stay with the team until the task is complete. Tell them what to do and when it needs to be done,
but not how to do it. Fourth, at the end of
each task have the team assess its effectiveness and celebrate. Each member should make a commitment to continue an
effective behavior and change an ineffective behavior.
(Effective and ineffective are defined by the impact that person’s
behavior had on team output, satisfaction, or learning).
Reassign people to the next task team.
Guidelines: