Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
Lecture Notes
Chapter 10: Group Processes and Teams
Learning Objectives
10.1: Explain the difference between a working group and a team.
10.2: Illustrate the relationship between team purpose and performance by using a team
charter.
10.3: Compare and contrast the five-stage and team performance curve models of team
development.
Chapter Summary
Chapter summary here.
Annotated Chapter Outline
I. Does Trust Impact Team Performance?
A. Degree to which team members trust one another increases team performance.
i. High trust reduces feelings of vulnerability.
B. Trust among team members is perhaps even more important than trust in the team
leader or past success.
C. Most modern organizations employ teams to make significant decisions and
develop new ideas.
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
i. Time spent in collaborative teamwork has increased by more than 50%
over the last 2 decades.
D. See Figure 10.1 How Might Trust Impact Team Performance?
II. What is a Team?
A. Work teams: According to the influential book, The Wisdom of Teams, a team is
“a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a
common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold
themselves mutually accountable.”
B. Another often-cited research definition of a team has several criteria:
i. Two or more individuals
ii. Individuals involved interact face-to-face or virtually.
C. Evidence-based research shows that teams:
i. Engage in social interaction
ii. Consist of interdependent members
iii. Are part of larger systems or organizations
iv. The most effective teams also:
a. Accept relevant team goals
b. Commit to being accountable for team goals
D. Should all work be done by teams?
i. Generally no; teams may become dysfunctional when assigned a task better
suited to an individual.
E. Work Group Versus Team
i. Work groups:
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
a. Interact primarily to share information with other members
b. Not responsible for a collective work effort, or individual
contributions are added up to create something
ii. Work teams:
a. Synergy: Team can produce something beyond the sum of
individual member contributions.
III. Team Purpose
A. Remember that team goals should be SMART:
i. Specific
ii. Measurable
iii. Actionable
iv. Relevant
v. Time-based
B. Effective teams have a sense of shared purpose.
C. Team Norms
i. Team norms: Informal and interpersonal rules that team members are
expected to follow.
a. May be explicit (formally stated) or implicit
ii. Strongly influential on team behavior and difficult to change
iii. Project Aristotle, by Google’s People Operations department, set out to
determine the qualities of a perfect team:
a. Composition of the teams, whether demographics or personality
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
e. Empathy: high-performing team members had high social sensitivity
when interpreting their teammates’ feelings through tone and
expressions.
f. The team advised Google employees to make these implicit norms
more explicitly.
D. The Team Charter
i. Team charter: A document which clarifies team purpose and sets
expectations for behavior.
ii. The influences of a team charter on 32 teams of MBAs participating in a
business strategy simulation:
a. Teams with high-quality charters and strategies outperformed others
with poor-quality charters and strategies.
E. Team Mental Models
i. Team mental models (TMMs): Team members’ shared, organized
understanding and mental representation of knowledge about key elements
of the team’s relevant environment.
ii. TMMs serve a number of functions:
iii. Teams with highly developed TMMs are more efficient decision-makers
and have higher performance. These teams:
a. Interact with each other more frequently
b. Have more motivation
c. Express higher job satisfaction
d. Rate as more productive
IV. Team Development
A. Teams go through a process of development over time.
i. Success is not guaranteed.
B. Five-Stage Model
i. Forming: Team members are uncertain of other team members and their
roles and expectations for the team.
a. Team leader should clarify team purpose and establish ground rules
with a team charter.
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
b. As the team interacts, conflicts may begin to emerge, moving the
group into the next stage.
ii. Storming: A time of conflict in which the leader of a group may be
challenged and a pecking order may be established.
iii. Norming: The stage at which team members form a cohesive unit and
close relationships with each other
a. Group will likely also establish additional implicit norms
b. Once norms are established, group should be performing by
producing collective work products
iv. Performing: The final stage for permanent work groups or task forces, in
which team leaders should celebrate success along the way to achieving the
team goal.
v. Adjourning: Temporary and goal-oriented teams will finalize their work
and disband.
a. Team leader should arrange a celebration activity.
vi. Teams are less likely to run through the stages smoothly and linearly; at
any point they may regress to a previous stage or suddenly adjourn due to
repeated norm violation.
vii. Student project teams (and similar work teams) are temporary and have a
clear deadline. These groups typically don’t follow the Five-Stage Model.
a. Punctuated equilibrium: A quality of temporary projects in which
an early phase of inactivity is followed by a second phase of
significant acceleration towards task completion.
C. Team Performance Curve
i. There may be a performance decrease as a team goes through the storming
phase.
ii. See Figure 10.3 The Stages of Group Development
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
iii. A team leader may attempt to transform a working group into a team by
introducing a common goal, particularly a challenging one.
a. As team members organize to attain the goal, storming occurs.
b. Groups may remain at this point as a pseudo team.
c. Once the group gets past storming and establishes productive norms,
they can be considered a potential team.
iv. A high-performing team is enabled by six key factors:
a. Team member competencies
b. Skills, processes, tools, and techniques
c. Interpersonal skills, communication, understanding personality
differences
V. Team Effectiveness
A. Some dimensions of team effectiveness are described by the input-process-output
model:
i. Input: the individual characteristics of team members—like skills,
personality, and abilities—as well as the resources they have at their
disposal
ii. Process: how the team interacts, including team development and patterns
of participation
iii. Output: the collective work product generated from the team, or team
performance. Output itself has three components:
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
a. “Extra milers” engage in more helping behaviors outside of their
roles, and as a result they influence both team processes and team
effectiveness more than other members do.
iii. Attitudes: team members’ reports on their experience in the team, such as
team satisfaction
C. Team Metrics
i. Metrics (or measures) assess how a team is performing over time and can
be used to provide feedback to team members.
a. Important to assess team effectiveness
iv. Individual development metrics: Metrics that relate to how much
individuals are developing new skills and learning though teamwork
a. For example, how well one team member is developing leadership
abilities from working on the team
v. Team affect: A collective affect, mood, or emotion which affects team
members and their performance
D. Team Learning
i. Individual development is an important metric for teams and is essential to
defining a high-performance team.
ii. Team learning: an ongoing process through which teams acquire,
combine, and apply knowledge
a. Originates in individual intuitions
b. Amplified through interpretation
c. Emerges at the team level as collective thoughts and actions
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
a. Psychological safety: A degree of security team members feel in
taking risks
E. Team Creativity and Innovation
i. Involves both processes and outcomes of developing new ideas for
innovation
ii. Encompasses team members’ behavior, cognitions, and emotions as they:
a. Define problems
b. Generate ideas
c. Attempt new ways of doing work
iii. Expressing positive affect supports being a transformational leader and
stimulates creativity both in the team context and individually.
iv. More creative teams also spend more time socializing in and out of work.
F. Cohesion
i. Cohesion: The resultant of all the forces acting on the members to remain
part of the group
a. The “team spirit” experienced in high-performing teams
b. A state in which a group tends to stick together and unite in the
pursuit of team goals
ii. Depend on the attractiveness (or unattractiveness) of the prestige of the:
a. Group as a whole
b. Group members
c. Group activities
iii. Behavioral indicators of cohesiveness:
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
iv. Cohesion and performance are strongly interrelated, and studies suggest
that cohesion causes performance—an effect that becomes even stronger
over time.
v. Questions to assess team cohesion:
a. How well do members of your group get along with each other?
G. Social Identity
i. Social identity: An individual’s knowledge that they belong to certain
social groups together with some emotional and value significance to him
of this group membership
ii. Groups exist in relation to other groups, which gives group-members a
sense of belonging to a group and even rivalry with other groups.
H. Groupthink
i. Groupthink: The conformity-seeking tendency of the group, which results
in compromised decision-making
a. A team decision-making challenge that arises due to a high degree
of cohesiveness and group norms that result in conformity.
b. Expressions of views that go against the majority of team members
are suppressed with direct pressure from team members.
ii. Symptoms of groupthink:
a. Group rationalization: Team members generate explanations that
support their preferred course of action.
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
d. Illusion of unanimity: The team members believe they are in
agreement, but in fact, they are not. Not speaking is interpreted as
support for the team decision.
iii. Teams with directive leaders propose and discuss fewer alternatives than
groups with leaders who encourage member participation.
iv. To minimize groupthink:
a. Avoid being too directive
VI. Team Decision-Making
A. Participation in Team Decisions
i. Normative decision-making model: A model which shows that team
decision fall on a continuum ranging from leaders making a decision
themselves to delegating a decision to the team
a. Delegating: Handing off tasks to followers to achieve a goal as a
team
b. Consultative: Modes of decision-making which fall in between
delegation and a leader making a decision alone
c. Facilitator: One who oversees a group decision and guides the
conversation towards a solution
ii. Key elements to consider:
a. How significant is the decision?
b. How likely is it that your team members will disagree?
c. Do you (or your team) have the knowledge necessary to make the
decision?
d. Do you need commitment from your team?
e. How likely is it that you will have commitment from your team?
iii. Involving employees in group decisions increases satisfaction and
chances of success.
B. Brainstorming
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
i. Brainstorming: Enhances creative process by separating idea generation
from idea evaluation; members do not critique an idea but write them down
as the group generates solutions to a problem.
a. Idea generation: The creation of novel ideas
b. Idea evaluation: The critiquing and assessment of generated ideas
ii. IDEO’s rules for brainstorming:
a. Defer judgment
b. Encourage wild ideas
C. Consensus
i. Consensus: A decision-making technique in which everyone can say they
have been heard and will support the final decision.
ii. Steps for reaching consensus:
a. Introduction
b. Clarifying questions
c. Discussion
d. Establish basic direction
e. Synthesize or modify proposal (as needed)
f. Call for consensus
g. Record
iii. Options for calling for consensus:
a. Agreement: Individual supports a proposal and is willing to help
implement.
b. Stand aside: Individual has major concerns but will stand aside to
let the group proceed.
D. Multivoting
i. Steps of multivoting:
a. Display the list of options
b. Number (or letter) all items
c. Decide how many items must be on the final reduced list
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
d. Working individually, each member selects the five items (or
whatever number of choices is allowed) he or she thinks most
important.
E. Nominal Group Technique
i. Nominal group technique (NGT): A structured decision-making process
that is effective when there are status differences in the team or a number
of dominating participants
ii. Participants write their ideas down and surrender them to the facilitator,
who oversees that all ideas are read aloud anonymously.
iii. Steps for NGT:
a. Each team member independently writes their ideas on a slip of
paper.
b. Each member presents one idea to the team.
F. Stepladder
i. Stepladder: A newer decision-making technique which uses five basic
steps and can also combat the challenge of team participants dominating
the conversation
a. Present the task
b. Two-member discussion
ii. Stepladder groups produce significantly higher-quality decision than
conventional groups in which all members work on a problem
simultaneously.
VII. Team Challenges
A. Social Loafing
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
i. Social loafing: The reduction in motivation and effort when individuals
work collectively compared with when they work individually or
coactively
ii. Team members who do not agree with or see a stated goal as valuable are
less likely to contribute.
iii. Men and those from individualistic cultures are more likely to social loaf.
iv. Preventing social loafing:
a. Keep teams small (4-6 members)
b. Set meaningful team goals
B. Virtual Teams
i. Virtual teams: Functioning teams that rely on technology-mediated
communication while crossing several different boundaries
ii. Virtual teams have more challenges in developing the TMMs needed to be
effective.
iii. Virtual team members are geographically dispersed.
v. Computer-based groups may generate more ideas but also:
a. Have more limited interactions
b. Take longer to complete their work
c. Have trouble building trust
vi. Building trust in virtual teams:
a. Select team members based not only on their knowledge, skills, and
abilities, but also on their openness and propensity to trust
vii. Leader qualities valuable in virtual team functioning:
a. Focus on task and monitoring of performance
b. Established trust
c. Careful monitoring of email
d. Attending to team progress
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
e. Sharing the team
C. Team Diversity
i. Research has high relevance for team leaders as teams have become
increasingly diverse.
D. Challenges of Team Diversity
i. Self-managed work teams (SMWTs): Teams which have no central
authority and instead manage themselves and each other
ii. Resistance to SMWTs was associated with strong beliefs of:
a. Collectivism: Group orientation
b. Power distance: Respect for authority
c. Determinism: The belief that people should not try to change the
paths their lives are destined to take
iii. Employees in the Philippines (a collectivist culture) were much more
likely to reject self-management than United States employees.
iv. Managers should check cultural assumptions before offering participation
to multicultural teams.
E. Benefits of Team Diversity
i. Multicultural teams perform better when members:
a. Have more tolerance for uncertainty
b. Are more relationship-oriented
ii. Diversity may enhance team creativity
iii. Different abilities are related to different cultures:
a. British inventiveness
b. Japanese pragmatism
iv. Deep-level (value-based) diversity is related to team creativity and
innovation.
v. Diversity in teams increases:
a. Flexibility
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
vi. Differences in functional expertise, education, and organizational tenure
are most related to team performance.
vii. Diversity training itself may enhance creativity.
VIII. Leadership Implications: Empowering the Team
A. Focus of team leadership has shifted from the leader to the team, which is known
as team-centric leadership.
B. Leadership climate: The type of environment a leader creates, which affects
employee empowerment
C. Effective leadership climate is created when the leader:
i. Gives the team many responsibilities
D. More empowered teams are more productive and proactive.
i. Higher levels of task-related competence
E. Shared leadership is most strongly related to team performance when team
members have high levels of task-related competence.
F. Empowerment lowers employee cynicism and “time theft.”
H. Empowering leaders act more like coaches than command-and-control formal
leaders, which increases team empowerment.
I. Sometimes there is no official authority, and teams are SMWTs.
i. Common in the workplace
ii. Related to higher job satisfaction and commitment
J. Leadership matters for team performance in a number of ways.
Instructor Resource
Scandura, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 3e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
i. Moving team through the team development process by:
a. Establishing SMART goals
b. Having the team create a team charter to foster cohesion and
therefore effectiveness
ii. Paying attention to the metrics the team uses to evaluate performance:
a. Includes task, process, and individual development measures to
assess the team