|
|
|
|
TEAM DYNAMICS
Team: A team is a formal work group in which there is a high level of
interaction and interdependence
among group members who work intensely together to achieve a common goal.
Teamwork: is the process of people actively working together to
accomplish common goals.
Advantages and disadvantages of having team.
Advantages Disadvantages
o Wider range of knowledge,
expertise and
ideas
o Effective way to build consensus
o Effective way to communicate complex
information
o Blocking
o Dominant people
o Status differential
o Groupthink
Why Rely on Teams: Compared with individuals working alone, teams tend to
make better decisions
and make better products and services due to more knowledge and expertise.
Organizations have turned
to teams to better utilize employee talents.
Management is looking for that positive synergy that will allow their
organizations to increase
performance. The extensive use of teams creates the potential for an
organization to generate greater
outputs with no increase in inputs. Merely calling a group a team doesn’t
automatically increase its
performance. We need to convert those groups into team.
How Do We Measure Team Effectiveness? Effective teams have confidence in
themselves and
believe they can succeed—this is team efficacy. Success breeds success.
Management can increase
team efficacy by helping the team to achieve small successes and skill training.
Small successes build team confidence. The greater the abilities of team
members, more the likelihood
that the team will develop confidence and the capability to deliver that
confidence. We can measure the
team effectiveness by measuring their…
o Productivity
o Cohesion
o Learning/ growth & development
o Integration with the rest of the
organization.
Stages of Group Development:
o Forming—group members
gather and try to get to know each other and establish a common
understanding as they struggle to clarify group goals and determine appropriate
behavior within the
group. Initial entry of members to a group/team.
Members concern does include:
_ Getting to know each other.
_ Discovering what is considered
acceptable behavior.
_ Determining the group’s real
task.
_ Defining group rules.
_ Questions about purpose
_ Approach - avoidance behavior
_ High drop out possibility
_ Members seek leadership
_ Non-intimate relations
o Storming—characterized by
considerable conflict—group members resist being controlled by the
group and disagrees about who should lead the group and how to achieve the
objectives or how
113
much power the leader should have. This is the startup stage after group is
formed. Every body
gives his or her suggestion. A period of high emotionality and tension among
group members.
Members concern’s include:
• Dealing with outside demands.
• Clarifying membership expectations.
• Dealing with obstacles to group goals.
• Understanding members’ interpersonal styles.
• Members test others strength
• Authority in group tested
• Fluid status structure
• Member ejection may occur
o Norming—group members really
start to feel that they belong to the group, and they develop close
ties with one another and start coming to points where most of the member agree
and they feel of
wiliness to move forward. The point at which the group really begins to come
together as a
coordinated unit. Members concern’s include:
• Holding the group together.
• Dealing with divergent views and criticisms.
• Dealing with a premature sense of accomplishment.
• Intensified, interpersonal involvement
• Desire for group attention
• Member interdependence
• Dependence on the leader
• Increased trust
• Well established norms
• Rules, roles, standards
• Growing capacity to plan
o Performing—the group is ready
to tackle group tasks and work toward achieving group goals, they
actually start performing—the real work gets accomplished in this stage. Marks
the emergence of a
mature, organized, and well-functioning team. Members deal with complex tasks
and handle
internal disagreements in creative ways.
Primary challenge is to continue to improve relationships and performance.
• Sense that “our” group is special
• Acceptance of individual differences
• People can be themselves
• Disagreement/conflict is OK
• Structure, roles, norms established and accepted
• Teamwork utilizes the diverse strength of the members
o Adjourning: For temporary
committees, teams, task forces, and similar groups that have a limited
task to perform. After completing the task and they reach adjourning stage. In
this stage, the group
prepares for its disbandment. Attention is directed toward wrapping up
activities. Responses of
group members vary in this stage. Some are upbeat, basking in the group’s
accomplishments.
Others may be depressed over the loss of camaraderie and friendships.
Particularly important for
temporary groups/teams.
_ A well-integrated group/team
is:
_ Able to disband when its work
is finished.
_ Willing to work together in
the future.
_ Celebrate individual/
collective accomplishments
Similarly others also describe these group formation stages in different ways
but the basis were almost
the similar.
Like in one classification they describe them as bellow.
o Orientation (Forming)
o Dissatisfaction (Storming)
114
o Resolution (Norming)
o Production (Performing)
o Termination (in the case of temporary
groups)
How individual and group behave and issue during these development stages is
summarized as bellow.
Types of Teams:
Project Team:
o Is convened for a specific
purpose and disbands after completing its task.
Problem-Solving Teams
o Twenty years ago, teams were just
beginning to grow in popularity and most took similar form.
They are typically composed of 5–12 hourly employees from the same department
who met for
a few hours each week to discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency, and the
work
environment.
o Members share ideas or offer
suggestions on how work processes and methods can be
improved. Rarely are they given the authority to unilaterally implement their
suggested actions.
o One of the most widely practiced
applications during the 1980s was quality circles.
Self-Managed Work Teams
o Problem-solving teams did not go
far enough in getting employees involved in work-related
decisions and processes. This led to experimentation with truly autonomous
teams.
o These groups of employees (typically
10–15 in number) perform highly related or
interdependent jobs and take on many of the responsibilities of their former
supervisors.
o This includes planning and scheduling
of work, assigning tasks to members, collective control
over the pace of work, making operating decisions, and taking action on
problems.
o Fully self-managed work teams even
select their own members and have the members evaluate
each other’s performance. As a result supervisory roles become less important.
o Business periodicals documented
successful applications of self-managed teams. In spite of
these impressive stories, a word of caution:
Some organizations have been
disappointed with the results from self-managed teams.
Teams do not seem to work well
during organizational downsizing.
The overall research on the
effectiveness of self-managed work teams has not been
uniformly positive.
Moreover, while individuals on
teams do tend to report higher levels of job satisfaction,
they also sometimes have higher absenteeism and turnover rates.
The effectiveness of
self-managed teams is situationally dependent.
Care needs to be taken when
introducing self-managed teams globally.
Cross-Functional Teams
o These are teams made up of
employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from
different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task.
Many organizations have used
horizontal, boundary-spanning groups for years.
IBM created a large task force
in the 1960s—made up of employees from across
departments in the company—to develop the highly successful System 360.
o A task force is really nothing other
than a temporary cross-functional team.
o The popularity of cross-discipline
work teams exploded in the late 1980s.
o Cross-functional teams are
challenging to manage.
Virtual Teams
o The previous types of teams do
their work face to face. Virtual teams use computer
technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a
common
goal.
They allow people to
collaborate online.
Virtual teams can do all the
things that other teams do.
They can include members from
the same organization or link an organization’s
members with employees from other organizations.
115
They can convene for a few
days to solve a problem, a few months to complete a
project, or exist permanently.
o The three primary factors that
differentiate virtual teams:
The absence of verbal and
nonverbal cues. These help clarify communication by
providing increased meaning, but aren’t available in online interactions.
Limited social context.
Virtual teams often suffer from less social rapport and less
direct interaction among members.
The ability to overcome time
and space constraints. Virtual teams allow people to work
together who might otherwise never be able to collaborate.
We can summarize this as shown in slides during our lecture as bellow.
Project Team: is convened for a specific purpose and disbands after
completing its task.
Cross-functional Team: operates with members who come from different
functional units
of an organization
Quality Circle Team: employees who meet periodically to discuss ways of
improving
work quality. - a group of workers from the same functional area who meet
regularly to
uncover and solve work-related problems and seek work improvement opportunities.
Self-Managing Teams: work team having the authority to make decisions
about how they
share and complete their work.
Virtual Teams: Work together and solve problems through computer based
interactions
We cam also divide teams into permanent or Temporary Teams.
Permanent teams:
o Team-based departments
o Team-based organization
o Quality circles
Temporary teams:
o A task force is a
collection of people who come together to accomplish a specific goal.
Once the goal has been accomplished, the task force is usually disbanded.
Temporary teams are to solve problem. A standing committee or task groups are
task forces that may be
enduring (though members may change) or permanent in nature.
Benefits of Teams:
o Synergy (a type of process
gain) occurs when members of a group/teams working / acting
together are able to produce more or better output than would have been produced
by the
combined efforts of each person acting alone.
Why Teams Are Good for Organizations
o More resources for problem
solving
o Improved creativity and innovation
o Improved quality of decision making
o Greater commitments to tasks
o Increased motivation of members
o Better control and work discipline
o More individual need satisfaction
Characteristics of High Performance Teams:
o Clear goals
o Results-driven structure
o Competent team members
o Unified commitments
o Collaborative climate
o Standards of excellence
o Leadership |
|
|
|
|