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Chapter 10: Managing Teams
Pedagogy Map
This chapter begins with the learning outcome summaries and terms covered in the chapter,
followed by a set of lesson plans for you to use to deliver the content in Chapter 10.
• Lesson Plan for Lecture (for large sections)
• Lesson Plan for Group Work (for smaller sections)
• Assignments with Teaching Tips and Solutions
What Would You Do Case Assignment – Cessna
Self-Assessment – Working in Groups
Highlighted Assignments
Key Points
What Would You Do?
The airplane manufacturer Cessna faces several challenges as
it tries to implement teams at its new production facility.
Self-Assessment
Students use the inventory to determine if they tend to be
more individualist or collectivist.
ordinary folk? What are the benefits and drawbacks to
assembling a team of stars?
Management Team Decision
The management team must decide how to improve
relationships in a dysfunctional team.
Practice Being a Manager
In this exercise, students work with each other to brainstorm
the creation of a high-performing team.
Develop Your Career Potential
Students use an inventory to check their team skills.
Reel to Real Video Assignment – Biz
Flix
Reel to Real Video Assignment –
Mikey LeBlanc, the founder of Holden Outerwear, believes
In this scene from Failure to Launch, friends of a confirmed
bachelor living at home try to get rid of a bird that has been
Supplemental Resources
Where to Find Them
Course Pre-Assessment
IRCD
Course Post-Assessment
IRCD
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Learning Outcomes
1 Explain the good and bad of using teams.
In many industries, teams are growing in importance because they help organizations respond to specific
problems and challenges. Teams have been shown to increase customer satisfaction (specific customer
2 Recognize and understand the different kinds of teams.
Companies use different kinds of teams to make themselves more competitive. Autonomy is the key
dimension that makes teams different. Traditional work groups (which execute tasks) and employee
3 Understand the general characteristics of work teams.
The most important characteristics of work teams are team norms, cohesiveness, size, conflict, and
development. Norms let team members know what is expected of them and can influence team behavior
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4 Explain how to enhance work team effectiveness.
Companies can make teams more effective by setting team goals and managing how team members are
selected, trained, and compensated. Team goals provide a clear focus and purpose, reduce the incidence
Terms
bureaucratic immunity
cohesiveness
cross-functional team
cross-training
employee involvement team
performing
project team
self-designing team
self-managing team
semi-autonomous work group
Lesson Plan for Lecture
Pre-Class Prep for You:
Pre-Class Prep for Your Students:
• Review chapter and determine what points to
cover.
• Bring PPT slides.
Bring book.
Warm Up
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Content
Delivery
Topics
PowerPoint Slides
Activities
Why Work Teams?
1 The Good and Bad of
Using Teams
1: Managing Teams
2 What Would You Do?
3: Why Work Teams?
“Who can tell me a
disadvantage to using
teams?” When a student
2 Kinds of Teams
2.1 Autonomy
9: Kinds of Teams
10: Autonomy
11: Special Kinds of
Managing Work Teams
3 Work Team
Characteristics
3.1 Team Norms
3.2 Team
15: Managing Work
Teams
16: Work Team
Characteristics
17: Team Norms
4 Enhancing Work
Team Effectiveness
4.1 Setting Team
24: Enhancing Work
Team Effectiveness
25: Setting Team Goals
and Priorities
Describe to students “Steve
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30: Compensation and
Recognition
31: Team Compensation
and Recognition
32: Biz Flix – Failure to
Launch
33: Management
Workplace – Holden
Outerwear
Conclusion
and
Lesson Plan for Group Work
Pre-Class Prep for You:
Pre-Class Prep for Students:
• Review material to cover and modify the lesson plan to meet
your needs.
• Bring enough 2’ x 2’ squares of fabric to have one for every
Bring book.
Warm Up
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Content
Delivery
“All Aboard”
Divide students into teams of 6-8 students and lay a piece of fabric 2 feet by 2 feet on
the floor by each group. Tell students that the object is to get their whole group to fit
For the second round, put different students together and assign each new group
to represent a different kind of team from the team autonomy continuum. Traditional
work groups (TWGs), employee involvement groups (EIGs), Semi-autonomous work
groups (SAWGs) and self-managing teams (SMTs) must pick one student to be the
“Too Many Cooks”
Divide students into groups of 6 to 8. Give each member of each group one part of one
“Steve Kerr’s Orange”
This exercise is derived from a description of an exercise Steve Kerr in a Fortune
article some years back. Divide the class into groups of 8–10 students. Give each
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time and post results from 2nd round. Then tell your groups that “many groups do this
activity in less than a second, and for some it’s possible to do it in less than half a
Conclusion
Assignment with Teaching Tips and Solutions
Case Assignment – What Would You Do?
What Really Happened? Solution
CESSNA
In the opening case, you learned that the new vice-president of Cessna’s “new” single-engine business
had the chance to rebuild the business from scratch by building a new production facility from the ground
up to hiring new workers and finding new suppliers. But instead of using a standard production line
University of Southern California professor Edward Lawler said, “People are very naive about how easy
it is to create a team. Teams are the Ferraris of work design. They’re high performance but high
maintenance and expensive.” It’s almost impossible to make effective work teams without carefully
selecting people who are suited for teamwork or for working on a particular team. When selecting team
members, companies should select people who have a preference for teamwork (collectivism versus
individualism) and should consider the importance of team level (average ability on a team) and team
diversity (different abilities on a team).
In selecting workers for its team-based approach to manufacturing single-engine planes like the Skyhawk,
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So Cessna dealt with the problem by increasing tam diversity, the variances or differences in ability,
experience, personality, or any other factor on a team. For example, teams with strong team diversity on
job experience would have a mix of team members, ranging from seasoned veterans to people with three
or four years of experience to rookies with little or no experience. And since Cessna’s single-engine
If you decide to take the plunge and use teams, just how much authority and responsibility should you
give them? Should they be limited to just advising management or should you make them totally
responsible for quality, costs, and productivity?
Autonomy is the key dimension that makes teams different. Traditional work groups (that execute tasks)
and employee involvement groups (that make suggestions) have the lowest levels of autonomy. Semi–
So when Cessna chose a team approach at its Independence, Kansas single-engine plane factory, its goal
was to change from a “people–blaming” culture to a “process–oriented” culture, in which teams would
have much more authority, and would own and control their work. It did that by creating semi-
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Finally, while you’re considering using teams on the assembly line, are there other places in which you
might use teams? Not all teams are alike. Maybe there’s someplace else in which teams could contribute
to the success of Cessna’s “new” single-engine plane manufacturing facility?
Besides traditional, employee involvement, semi-autonomous, self-managing teams, and self-designing
teams, which vary in degrees of autonomy (that control membership and how tasks are done), companies
also use cross-functional teams, which combine employees from different functional areas to help teams
attack problems from multiple perspectives and generate more ideas and solutions, virtual teams, which
use telecommunication and information technologies to bring coworkers together regardless of physical
location or time zone, and project teams, which are used for specific, one-time projects or tasks that must
be completed within a limited time. So, in addition to production teams, where else might Cessna use
teams?
Other than manufacturing, Cessna has used more teams in purchasing than any place else. In particular, it
created cross-functional commodity teams with workers from seven different areas, purchasing,
How well have the cross-functional commodities teams worked? Since their inception, quality is up 86%,
on-time delivery performance has risen 28%, and inventories are down 52%, saving Cessna tens of
millions of dollars in inventory costs each year.
Self-Assessment
WORKING IN GROUPS
Today’s students tend to have a great deal of experience working in groups. But that doesn’t mean that
they all like to do so. The assessment in this chapter measures the extent to which they are more collective
or individualistic.
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In-Class Use
Have students open their books to page 392 of the text and give them 5 to 7 minutes to complete the
inventory. Use the Self-Assessment PowerPoint slides and have students raise their hands as you read off
Scoring
Your score indicates your level of individualism-collectivism. As you read in the chapter, individualism-
collectivism is the degree to which a person believes that people should be self-sufficient, and that loyalty
Management Decision
SHOULD I HIT THE RECRUITING TRAIL?
Purpose
The idea behind this exercise is to force students to think about what makes a team successful––star
Setting It Up
your class session.
Questions
1. What are advantages and disadvantages of each type of team?
a. Star players can offer many advantages to a team, depending on their capabilities. Primarily,
star players offer talent. They do their jobs exceptionally well. A player like Roger Clemens
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2. If you were to decide on the superstar-player approach, how would you deal with the instability
within your organization?
There are a number of things that managers can do to reduce the instability of a team and enhance its
effectiveness. One of the most effective means for improving team performance is to set S.M.A.R.T.
team goals, goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.
3. If you were to take the team/role-player approach, what steps would you take to help the team, its
members, and outsiders deal with the perceived lack of talent?
The coach can reassure the team, and outsiders, of the team’s effectiveness by highlighting a number
of positive elements of effective teams.
Individualism-collectivism is the degree to which a person believes that people should be self–
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on a team Not only do strong teams have talented members (that is, a high team level), but those
talented members are also different in terms of ability, experience, or personality. Team diversity is
often used to guide the selection of team members when teams must complete a wide range of
different tasks or when tasks are particularly complex.
Management Team Decision
Getting Along
Purpose
The purpose of this exercise is for students to think about the challenges facing organizations as they try
to implement teams in the workplace.
Setting It Up
Ask students “What would it take to work with someone that you don’t get along with?”
Questions
1. In your opinion, do the interpersonal conflicts in this group make it impossible for team members to
work together?
Student responses will vary. Some may argue that the interpersonal conflicts between team members
2. What are some ways that this group can decrease their interpersonal conflicts and increase its
cohesiveness?
To create cohesion in a team, for example, managers can make sure that all team members are present
all meetings. They can also create additional opportunities for teammates to work together by