Instructor Resources
Denhardt, Managing Human Behavior in Public and Nonprofit Organizations 4th edition
SAGE Publications 2016
Chapter 10 – Working in Groups and Teams
Slide 1 – Opening
Slide 2 – Chapter Objectives
•Recognize the difference between groups and teams
•Define the different types of teams
•Measure team effectiveness
•Identify team styles and understand their role in the stages of team development
•Identify areas where conflict can occur
Slide 3 – Team Approach
•No matter where you are (e.g., on the athletic field, in a classroom, in other settings), and no
matter who you are (e.g., a public manager, a nonprofit employee, a student), it is almost
impossible to avoid being part of a team. Increasingly, and for various reasons, organizations are
moving to team-based operations.
Slide 4 – Defined
•It is becoming clear that, with the increasing influence of technology, the importance of
innovation, and the new focus on the stakeholders, teams are becoming more and more popular.
Slide 5 – Effectiveness
•Teams are used in public organizations for a variety of reasons.
•Teams represent the simplest change process an organization can make to improve its
productivity, reduce duplication, and raise performance.
Slide 6 – Characteristics
•Not all groups should be considered teams. Hackman, for example, studied a variety of teams—
top management teams, task forces, professional support groups, performing groups, human
service teams, customer service teams, and production teams—to specify the notion of teams.
He concluded that teams could be defined through the following three characteristics.
Slide 7 – Types of Teams
•In organizations that emphasize the team concept, we might find up to six different types of
teams: (1) top management teams, (2) project teams, (3) cross-functional teams, (4)
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Instructor Resources
Denhardt, Managing Human Behavior in Public and Nonprofit Organizations 4th edition
SAGE Publications 2016
Slide 8 – Types of Teams
Slide 9 – Types of Teams
Slide 10 – Types of Teams
Slide 11 – Types of Teams
Slide 12 – Types of Teams
•Kennedy, Vozdolska, and McComb compared virtual teams to face-to-face teams and found that,
over time, processes and outputs of virtual teams lag behind face-to-face. Pure virtual teams
develop lower levels of participative decision making and higher levels of conflict than their
face-to-face counterparts. While virtual teams evolved better processes over time, teams reported
Slide 13 – Implementing Teams
•Implementing a team concept in a public organization requires careful advance planning, starting
with a clear commitment to the team concept on the part of senior management. In considering
the implementation of work teams, managers should consider the long-term needs and goals that
they wish to achieve through the use of teams and carefully determine the role and importance of
the teams within the larger organization.
Slide 14 – Virtual Teams
•Virtual teams skills are often the exact opposite.
Slide 15 – Eight Dimensions
•Evaluating team performance.
Slide 16 – Team Effectiveness
•Successfully implementing a team requires keeping the focus on the larger organization,
obtaining buy-in at all levels, developing a solid team structure, establishing ground rules, and
fostering team bonding.
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Instructor Resources
Denhardt, Managing Human Behavior in Public and Nonprofit Organizations 4th edition
SAGE Publications 2016
Slide 17 – Team Effectiveness
•A team can be too small or too large. A small team does not have sufficient breadth and variety to
see all sides of an issue. A large team often is unwieldy and ineffective.
•A team can vary along a continuum, from permanent to temporary. A permanent team will have
sufficient time to work out its own leadership patterns. But during the early stages of team
implementation, short-duration teams might need more formal leadership.
•Diversity in teams has “the potential to increase the creative power of teams, one of their most
valuable features, as well as ensure adequate representation and fairness.”
Slide 18 – Team Effectiveness
•Emotional intelligence has also been found to be an important factor in predicting team
performance.
Slide 19 – Superior Teams
•Team results—Superior teams are productive and achievement oriented.
•Informal process—Superior teams are successful in communication and contacting, responding
and adapting, influencing and improving, and appreciating and celebrating.
•Positive team feelings—Members of superior teams share feelings of inclusion, commitment,
loyalty, pride, and trust.
Slide 20 – Optimizing Performance
•Levasseur has found the following seven steps most helpful in optimizing team performance.
Slide 21 – Measuring Effectiveness
•In implementing a team concept in a public organization, it is helpful to have some idea of how to
measure the effectiveness of the various teams.
Slide 22 – Styles
•Each style contributes in different ways to the success of the team, and the unique contributions
that each type makes to the development of the team should be acknowledged. But the
orientation and behavior of each type will vary by the different stages of team development. We
can examine what happens in each of the different stages.
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Instructor Resources
Denhardt, Managing Human Behavior in Public and Nonprofit Organizations 4th edition
SAGE Publications 2016
Slide 23 – Stages of Development
•Our first questions on forming a team have to do with establishing a sense of security and
direction, getting oriented, and becoming comfortable with the new situation. Sometimes team
members articulate these questions, and other times team members fail to articulate these
feelings but still experience them as a vague sense of discomfort and disconnectedness.
•Once the issues of the forming stage have been resolved, team members enter a new stage of
development, the conforming stage. When a team begins to function as a unit and team members
become comfortable in their setting, team members experience pressure to conform to the
emerging norms. The concern of team members shifts from overcoming uncertainty and
increasing clarity during the forming stage to becoming unified and identifying roles that can be
Slide 24 – Team Conflict
•The type of conflict team’s encounter is partly determined by their stage of development. In the
very early stages, conflict may be low and build up as roles and norms are developed. Jehn and
Mannix found that high-performing teams have a low level of task conflict at the beginning and
end, with a moderate level of conflict in the middle. The creativity and performance of teams
depends on some level of healthy conflict. Teams composed of high-performing individuals are
naturally subject to contradictory tensions, like cooperation and rivalry, trust and vigilance.
Slide 25 – Collaborative Community
•As we increase the use of teams in work environments, we must create an ethical culture of trust
and teamwork or what Adler, Heckscher, and Prusak have referred to as a “collaborative
Slide 26 – Ways of Acting
•The success of the team will depend on skills, practice, and management commitment. The U.S.
Department of Labor has identified these attributes to improving a team’s effectiveness.
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