Chapter 10 – Team Effectiveness
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Chapter 10
Team Effectiveness
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Teams are a paradox in that they have enormous potential but frequently flounder. Team
members are often faced with difficult issues such as how to deal with free riders and how to
energize a team that has high cohesion but low performance. The models in this chapter are
designed to help students understand the fundamental disciplines of high performance teams,
apply team-building interventions, and understand the advantages and disadvantage of virtual
teams.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
KNOWING OBJECTIVES
1. Describe the potential of teams to exceed the performance of individuals.
2. Recognize the disciplines of effective teams and dysfunctions of ineffective teams.
3. Identify the key behaviors displayed by good team members.
4. Describe team-building interventions that have been shown to stimulate team
performance.
5. Describe the key differences between virtual and face-to-face teams.
DOING OBJECTIVES
1. Apply rules for determining the appropriateness of using a team.
2. Solve common team problems.
3. Lead an effective team meeting.
4. Apply evidence-based tactics to improve a team’s creativity.
5. Lead an effective virtual team to overcome a given problem.
KEY STUDENT QUESTIONS
The questions students wrestle with about teamwork tend to come from their own experiences as
team members and team leaders. More and more, students are required to work on teams for
school assignments – some with as few as three or four members, and some with as many as
eight or ten members. Students need to know:
1. “How can I make sure that team members carry their own weight? (How do I deal with
social loafing?)”
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2. “What should I do when one member of the team is dominating the rest of the group?”
3. “How can I get my ideas heard by the team?”
Answers to the questions above might include:
1. Social loafing can be avoided by clarifying team goals in advance, establishing clear
2. If one member of the team is dominating the conversation, act as a facilitator to help other
3. The first step in getting your ideas heard is to speak up, but that typically is not the reason
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction
A. Effective teams help organizations meet challenges
1. Effective teams make better decisions than individuals
2. Can generate higher productivity, rapid innovation and creativity
3. Can create more satisfying work environments
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B. Southwest Airlines is an example of adaptive, creative teamwork
1. Most consistently profitable, productive and cost-efficient carrier in industry
2. CEO Herb Kelleher: “If you create a team environment…you don’t need control.”
C. Teams also frequently fail
D. Myths of Teamwork
1. Teams are always the answer
Highest performing teams have complementary members
II. When Do Teams Make Sense?
A. Teams are better when no individual expert exists.
B. Teams are often superior in stimulating innovation and creativity
C. Teams can help create a context where people feel connected and valued
D. If you cannot point to the existence of one or more of the above three conditions, do not
create a team
III. Different Teams – Different Challenges
A. Teams that recommend things
1. Need to get off to a fast and constructive start
2. Need to have a clear charter and include members with the necessary skills and
influence
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B. Teams that make or do things
1. Most effective when they deal with “critical delivery points”
C. Teams that run things
1. Often these are not “teams” but people grouped together
2. The challenge is recognizing when and where a team is better than individuals
IV. High-Performing Teams
B. High Performance Team Scorecard
1. Production output
a. Products or outcomes meet or exceed standards
b. Example: A sales team exceeding their quota
2. Member satisfaction
a. Provides team members with satisfaction
b. Good experience both professionally and personally
3. Capacity for continued cooperation
a. Team accomplishes tasks in a way that maintains or enhances its ability to work
together in the future
b. Get better at working together and strive to learn from mistakes
C. Five Disciplines of High Performance (consistent high scores on all five disciplines will
deliver high performance)
1. Small size
a. People work harder, engage in wider variety of tasks, assume more responsibility
for team’s performance and feel more involved
b. Jeff Bezos’s “two pizza” group: High performing groups are rarely more than 10
and ideally between five and eight
2. Capable and complementary members
a. Teamwork is not for everyone
b. A typical team selection trap is neglecting specific skills and opting for those who
are readily available or have right functional background
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c. Research has identified skills and competencies that characterize effective team
members
agreeableness
d. Successful teams need a mix of skills and talent
3. Shared purpose and performance objectives
a. High performance teams know explicitly what is expected and how they will be
4. Productive norms and a working approach help to effectively manage (not eliminate)
conflict
a. Facilitate team effectiveness through recognition, dealing with problems and
helping accelerate each stage of team development
i. Forming Stage
a.) New group members are concerned with acceptable behavior.
c.) Attention shifts toward obstacles and outside demands may create conflict
d.) Competition over leadership and authority and member status
iii. Norming Stage
a.) Group begins to come together as a coordinated unit
b.) Needs to be carefully managed as a stepping-stone to higher group
development, not treated as an end in itself
iv. Performing Stage
a.) Emergence of a mature, organized and well-functioning team
b.) Group structure is stable, team is motivated and satisfied
v. Adjourning Stage
a.) Completing the task and breaking up the team
b. Productive norms help members gain a common sense of direction and reinforce a
team culture
iii. The difference between high performance teams and other teams is very often
the productive norms that are established and enforced
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5. Mutual Accountability
a. High performance team members pull their own weight and are rewarded for
contributing
b. Two different types of team rewards
i. Cooperative team rewards are distributed equally among members
a.) Does not recognize individual differences in effort or performance
b.) Inequity can de-motivate team members who are high performers
ii. Competitive team rewards recognize individual performance
a.) Equitable rewards that vary according to individual performance
b.) Provides strong incentive for individual effort, but can pit members
against each other
iii. Degree of task interdependence determines which type of team reward is
appropriate
iv. Many organizations structure rewards so some portion of team members’ pay
is contingent on the performance of the team
a.) How well individual and/or team performance be tracked helps determine
b.) Several forms of appraisal makes sense to use with teams
i.) Customer evaluations
ii.) Peer evaluations
V. Managing Threats to Team Performance
A. Risky Shift
1. Groups tend to make more extreme decisions
2. Can be riskier can be more cautious (cautious-shift)
B. Innocent Bystander
1. Diffusion of responsibility among team members
2. Members feel personal responsibility is limited
C. Choking
1. Performance can be hindered by the pressure and anxiety caused by presence of other
group members
2. Choking is likely when people are not experts at the task at hand
3. Social facilitation = when individual motivation and performance is enhanced by the
group
D. Escalation of Commitment. Persistence with a losing course of action.
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E. Conformity and Obedience
1. Stanley Milgram experiments showed it is easy to carry out the wishes of an authority
F. Information Processing Biases
1. People are remarkably poor at taking perspective of others
a. Studies show we overestimate overlap between knowledge bases
b. People wrongly assume that others share same underlying assumptions
2. If left unmanaged, a handful of team members will do the majority of talking
a. Those talking may not be most informed on subject
b. Power of group decision-making is lost if only a few dominate discussion
3. Groups often discuss shared information rather than unique information
4. Effective teams muster the discipline to efficiently process information that resides
within the team
a. Direct discussion toward unique information
e. Direct solicitations of those with known expertise
G. Social Loafing and Self-Limiting Behaviors
1. “Ringlemann effect” describes situations in which team members do not work as hard
as they do individually
a. Caused by a lack of actual or perceived individual accountability
b. “Sucker aversion” is a concern that others will free ride, so you wait to see what
other team members will do
2. Reducing the problem:
a. Identifiability
b. Team contract and peer evaluations can help avert
c. Make task involving, attractive or intrinsically interesting
3. Self-limiting behavior
a. Occurs when team members choose to limit their involvement in the team’s work
b. Unlike loafing, self-limiters overtly reduce their involvement
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H. Social Conformity
1. Team members strive so hard to maintain harmony they avoid discomfort of
disagreement resulting in poor decisions.
2. Groupthink is the tendency of teams to lose critical evaluative capabilities.
3. Abilene Paradox is another form of social conformity
a. Family drives on hot, uncomfortable trip even though none of them really wanted
to go
b. Team members’ desire to go along and do what others want (or perceived to
want) is a formula for poor group decisions
VI. Effective Team Interventions
A. Holding Effective Meetings
1. Get in the habit of starting meetings by asking:
a. What are the 2 or 3 most important things we need to get done?
b. How much time does everyone have?
B. Understanding Member Profiles
1. Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): A tool that assesses personality preferences
a. Reveals individual preferences of extraversion, gathering of information, order
discussion and make decisions
2. Benefits of reviewing different team member profiles
a. Identify sources of conflict
C. Building Team Cohesion
1. The more difficult to get into a group, the more cohesive the group typically becomes
2. Cohesive groups do not always result in high performance
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D. Conducting After-Action Reviews and Process Checks
1. Ability to learn from experience is an essential element of high team performance
2. High performing teams do not repeat mistakes—they learn from them
E. Dealing With a Free Rider
1. State issue in terms of behaviors the person is demonstrating
2. Ask yourself if it is legitimate for you to give feedback about perceived problem
a. Does their behavior affect results?
b. Is their behavior damaging a working team relationship?
3. Have you collected a balanced set of facts about the situation?
VII. Creativity in Teams
A. Creativity = brining into existence a new or novel idea
B. Two critical factors for promoting creativity in teams:
1. A climate of trust and risk taking
a. Use idea growers
i. How could we improve ….?
ii. What have we missed?
iii. What would happen if ….?
b. Avoid idea killers
iii. What we have is good enough
C. Disciplined use of Creative Problem-Solving Techniques
(correct) answer
2. Divergent thinking – produces multiple alternatives
3. Subdivision or breaking things into smallest components
a. Greatest number of alternatives and creativity
b. Use question checklist to push creative buttons
i. What else could this be used for?
ii. What if it were smaller, thinner?
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iii. How might it be rearranged or reversed?
4. Use analogies to help make the strange familiar or the familiar strange
a. Use questions when forming analogies
i. What does this remind me of?
ii. What is this similar to?
5. Reverse the problem in order to understand the alternatives considered and enhance
creativity
1. Began interactions with a series of social messages
2. Set clear goals and roles for each team member
3. Consistently displayed eagerness, enthusiasm and action orientation in their messages
C. Electronic Meetings
1. Advantages are anonymity, honesty and speed
2. Not good for establishing relationships, dealing with sensitive issues or persuading a
team to fully commit to a course of action
CASES
Team Concepts
1. A common trap that people fall into when selecting team members is to focus too much on
2. Good team members have knowledge, skills, and abilities that pertain specifically to teamwork
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seems likely that while the varsity team had more talented individual rowers, the junior varsity
team had better team members who are able to work together and build on each others’
individual talents.
3. Objective measurements of individuals’ skills are often good tools for selecting top
team.
5. Herb Brooks’ comment emphasizes the importance of having team members who complement
6. There are several variables that are important to a team’s success. One is having a small team
size (usually between 5-8 members). However, depending on the sport, many more people may
Case Concluded:
1. We must pay attention to more than just task-specific skills and knowledge. Personality tests
could be used to assess traits like agreeableness and conscientiousness that have been associated