Understanding work teams:

Differences between groups and teams:

Group as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to
achieve particular objectives. A work group is a group that interacts primarily to share
information and make decisions to help each member perform within his or her area of
responsibility.
Work groups have no need or opportunity to engage in collective work that requires joint effort.
So their performance is merely the summation of each group member’s individual contribution.
There is no positive synergy that would create an overall level of performance greater than the
sum of the inputs.
A work team , on the other hand, generates positive synergy through coordinated effort. The
individual efforts result in a level of performance greater than the sum of those individual inputs.

Types of teams:

Teams can make products, provide services, negotiate deals, coordinate projects, offer advice,
and make decisions. In this section, we describe the four most common types of teams in an
organization: problem-solving teams, self- managed work teams, cross-functional teams, and
virtual teams
 Problem-Solving Teams
In the past, teams were typically composed of 5 to 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. These problem-solving teams rarely have the authority to
unilaterally implement any of their suggestions.
Merrill Lynch created a problem-solving team to figure out ways to reduce the number of days it
took to open a new cash management account. By suggesting cutting the number of steps from
46 to 36, the team reduced the average number of days from 15 to 8.
Self-Managed Work Teams
Problem-solving teams only make recommendations. Some organizations have gone further and
created teams that not only solve problems but implement solutions and take responsibility for
outcomes. Self-managed work teams are groups of employees (typically 10 to 15 in number)
who perform highly related or interdependent jobs and take on many of the responsibilities of
their former supervisors. Typically, these tasks are planning and scheduling work, assigning
tasks to members, making operating decisions, taking action on problems, and working with
suppliers and customers.
Fully self-managed work teams even select their own members and evaluate each other’s
performance. Supervisory positions take on decreased importance and are sometimes even
eliminated.

Cross-Functional Teams

Cross-functional teams, made up of employees from about the same hierarchical level but
different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task.
Many organizations have used horizontal, boundary-spanning groups for decades. In the 1960s,
IBM created a large task force of employees from across departments to develop its highly
successful System 360. Today cross-functional teams are so widely used it is hard to imagine a
major organizational undertaking without one. All the major automobile manufacturers—Toyota,
Honda, Nissan, BMW, GM, Ford, and Chrysler—currently use this form of team to coordinate
complex projects.

Virtual Teams:

Virtual teams use computer technology to unite physically dispersed members and achieve a
common goal. They collaborate online—using communication links such as wide-area networks,
videoconferencing, or e-mail—whether they’re a room away or continents apart. Virtual teams
are so pervasive, and technology has advanced so far, that it’s probably a bit of a misnomer to
call them “virtual.” Nearly all teams today do at least some of their work remotely.

What Factors Determine Whether Teams Are Successful

The four contextual factors most significantly related to team performance are adequate
resources, effective leadership, a climate of trust, and a performance evaluation and reward
system that reflects team contributions.
Adequate Resources Teams are part of a larger organization system; every work team relies on
resources outside the group to sustain it. A scarcity of resources directly reduces the ability of a
team to perform its job effectively and achieve its goals.
Leadership and Structure Teams can’t function if they can’t agree on who is to do what and
ensure all members share the workload. Agreeing on the specifics of work and how they fit
together to integrate individual skills requires leadership and structure, either from management
or from the team members themselves. It’s true in self-managed teams that team members absorb
many of the duties typically assumed by managers. However, a manager’s job then becomes
managing outside (rather than inside) the team. Leadership is especially important in multiteam
systems , in which different teams coordinate their efforts to produce a desired outcome.
Climate of Trust Members of effective teams trust each other. They also exhibit trust in their
leaders. Interpersonal trust among team members facilitates cooperation, reduces the need to
monitor each others’ behavior, and bonds members around the belief that others on the team
won’t take advantage of them. Team members are more likely to take risks and expose
vulnerabilities
when they believe they can trust others on their team.

Performance Evaluation and Reward Systems How do you get team members to be both
individually and jointly accountable? Individual performance evaluations and incentives may
interfere with the development of high-performance teams. So, in addition to evaluating and
rewarding employees for their individual contributions, management should modify the
traditional, individually
oriented evaluation and reward system to reflect team performance and focus on hybrid systems
that recognize individual members for their exceptional contributions and reward the entire
group for positive outcomes.
Team Composition
The team composition category includes variables that relate to how teams should be staffed—
the ability and personality of team members, allocation of roles and diversity, size of the team,
and members’ preference for teamwork.
Abilities of Members Part of a team’s performance depends on the knowledge, skills, and
abilities of its individual members. High-ability teams—composed of mostly intelligent members
—do better than lower-ability teams, especially when the workload is distributed evenly. That
way, team performance does not depend on the weakest link. High-ability teams are also more
adaptable to changing situations; they can more effectively apply existing knowledge to new
problems.
Finally, the ability of the team’s leader also matters. Smart team leaders help less-intelligent
team members when they struggle with a task. But a less intelligent leader can neutralize the
effect of a high-ability team
Personality of Members Many of the dimensions identified in the Big Five personality model
are also relevant to team effectiveness; a review of the literature identified three. Specifically,
teams that rate higher on mean levels of conscientiousness and openness to experience tend to
perform better, and the minimum level of team member agreeableness also matters: teams did
worse when they had one or more highly disagreeable members.
Allocation of Roles Teams have different needs, and members should be selected to ensure all
the various roles are filled.

Roles of team:

We can identify nine potential team roles. Successful work teams have selected people to play all
these roles based on their skills and preferences.(On many teams, individuals will play multiple
roles.) To increase the likelihood the team members will work well together, managers need to
understand the individual strengths each person can bring to a team, select members with their
strengths in mind, and allocate work assignments that fit with members’ preferred styles.

Diversity of Members

How does team diversity affect team performance? The degree to which members of a work unit
(group, team, or department) share a common demographic attribute, such as age, sex, race,
educational level, or length of service in the organization, is the subject of organizational
demography. Many of us hold the optimistic view that diversity should be a good thing—
diverse teams should benefit from differing perspectives. Proper leadership can also improve the
performance of diverse teams.

When leaders provide an inspirational common goal for members with varying types of
education and knowledge, teams are very creative. When leaders don’t provide such goals,
diverse teams fail to take advantage of their unique skills and are actually less creative than
teams with homogeneous skills. Even teams with diverse values can perform effectively,
however, if leaders provide a focus on work tasks rather than leading based on personal
relationships.

Size of Teams

Most experts agree, keeping teams small is a key to improving group effectiveness. Generally
speaking, the most effective teams have five to nine members.
Member Preferences
Not every employee is a team player. Given the option, many employees will select themselves
out of team participation. When people who prefer to work alone are required to team up, there is
a direct threat to the team’s morale and to individual member satisfaction.
Turning Individuals into Team Players

Some people already possess the interpersonal skills to be effective team players. When hiring
team members, be sure candidates can fulfill their team roles as well as technical requirements.
When faced with job candidates who lack team skills, managers have three options. First, don’t
hire them. If you have to hire them, assign them to tasks or positions that don’t require
teamwork. If that is not feasible, the candidates can undergo training to make them into team
players. In established organizations that decide to redesign jobs around teams, some employees
will resist being team players and may be untrainable. Unfortunately, they typically become
casualties of the team approach.
Training: Creating Team Players
Training specialists conduct exercises that allow employees to experience the satisfaction
teamwork can provide. Workshops help employees improve their problem-solving,
communication, negotiation, conflict-management, and coaching skills.
Rewarding: Providing Incentives to Be a Good Team Player
An organization’s reward system must be reworked to encourage cooperative
efforts rather than competitive ones.Promotions, pay raises, and other forms of recognition
should be given to individuals who work effectively as team members by training new
colleagues, sharing information, helping resolve team conflicts, and mastering needed new skills.
This doesn’t mean individual contributions should be ignored; rather,they should be balanced
with selfless contributions to the team.