Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
CHAPTER 14
Teams and -Teamwork
Two Heads Really Can Be Better Than One
Chapter 14 Overview
Each Chapter contains several inset features designed to assist the student reader in applying the
concepts to relevant examples. Management Live illustrates how experiences and activities relate
to work performance. Choices provides students with an opportunity to evaluate various sides of
an issue in order to make an informed decision. Hot Topic explores samples of debated topics in
business and strategy. Facts to Consider introduces research or trends that may be used for class
discussion in the classroom or online for distance learning. Insight profiles the importance of
positive team contributions. Quick Case presents a business related scenario for class analysis
and discussion.
Chapter 14 covers the topic of teams and their importance within organizations. They various
types of teams are explored. The benefits as well as the potential pitfalls of teams are reviewed.
Finally, ways to improve team effectiveness are examined, along with the variables that impact
team performance.
Chapter 14 Takeaways
Takeaway 14.1 Understand the importance of teams and teamwork.
Takeaway 14.2 Identify the building blocks of successful teamwork.
Takeaway 14.3 Understand how managers create and lead high-performance teams.
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Chapter 14 Lecture Outline
Takeaway 14.1 Why Is It Important to Understand Teams and Teamwork?
• Teams offer synergy and other benefits
Takeaway 14.2 What Are the Building Blocks of Successful Teamwork?
• Teams need the right members to be effective.
• Teams need the right setting and size to be effective.
Takeaway 14.3 How Can Managers Create and Lead High-Performance Teams?
• Team building helps members work better work.
Chapter 14 Supporting Materials
Figures
Figure 14.1 What Are the Management Implications of Self-Managing Teams?
Figure 14.2 What Are the Foundations of Team Effectiveness?
Figure 14.3 What Are the Criteria for Assessing the Process Maturity of a Team?
Figure 14.4 How Do Norms and Cohesiveness Influence Team -Performance?
Figure 14.5 What are the distributed leadership roles in teams?
Figure 14.6 What Communication Networks Are Used in Teams?
Figure 14.7 What Are the Five Common Styles of Conflict Management?
What’s Inside
• Management Live: When Teams Stand Up Decisions Speed Up
• Choices: Can Disharmony Build a Better Team?
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Applications
• TestPrep 14 Multiple-Choice Questions
• Skill Building Portfolio
Chapter Outline
Takeaway 14.1: Why Is It Important to Understand Teams and Teamwork?
• Teams offer synergy and other benefits
✓ A team is a collection of people with complementary skills who work together to
DISCUSSION TOPIC
A good way to introduce teamwork pros and cons is to ask students how they feel about
participating in teams. You will usually receive both highly positive and highly negative
• Teams can suffer from performance problems
✓ Social loafing is the presence of “free–riders” who slack off and allow other team
members to do the work
✓ To prevent social loafing:
• Organizations are networks of formal teams and informal groups
✓ A formal team is officially designated for a specific organizational purpose
▪ Department
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
✓ An informal group, an informal structure of an organization, comes from natural
or spontaneous relationships among people.
DISCUSSION TOPIC
To get students involved in discussing various types of organizational teams, ask them to identify
the different types of teams to which they have belonged while working for an organization or
during their educational career or both. These examples can be related to the different types of
teams that are discussed below. This exercise helps students relate to the material and recognize
its relevance to their own experiences.
• Organizations use committees, task forces, and cross-functional teams
✓ A committee brings together people outside of their daily job assignments to work in
• Virtual teams are increasingly common in organizations
✓ The virtual team, also called Distributed team, is a group of people who work
together and solve problems through computer-mediated rather than face to face
interactions
• Tips to Remember: Steps to Successful Virtual Teams:
• Select team members with positive attitudes and capable of self-starting.
• Select members high in initiative and with proven records of hard work.
• Self-managing teams are a form of job enrichment for groups
✓ Self-managing teams – have authority to make decisions about how they share and
complete their work.
✓ Figure 14.1 illustrates the concept of the management implications of self-managing
teams:
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
14.1 Questions for discussion with suggested answers
1) Do committees and task forces work better when they are given short -deadlines?
2) Are there some things that should be done only by face–to-face teams, not virtual ones?
3) Why do people in teams often tolerate social loafers?
14.1 Career Situation: What would you do?
It’s time for the first meeting of the task force that you have been assigned to lead. This is a
big opportunity for you, since it’s the first time your boss has given you this level of
responsibility. There are seven members of the team, all of whom are your peers and co-
workers. The task is to develop a proposal for increased use of flexible work schedules and
telecommuting in the organization. What will your agenda be for the first meeting, and what
opening statement will you make?
Takeaway 14.2: What Are the Building Blocks of Successful Teamwork?
• An effective team should be accomplishing three output goals – task performance,
member satisfaction, and viability for future action
• Inputs that affect team performance
➢ Team size – teams larger than 6-7 members can be difficult to manage
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
✓ See Figure 14.2 for a depiction of the foundations of team effectiveness:
An effective team achieves high levels of task performance and member satisfaction
and remains viable for the future. The foundations of effectiveness begin with
• Teams need the right members to be effective.
✓ Team diversity counts in team membership. It represents the mix of skills,
experiences, backgrounds, and personalities among team members.
• Teams need the right setting and size to be effective
✓ Organizational setting influences team outputs.
• Teams need the right processes to be effective
✓ Team Effectiveness = Quality of Inputs + (Process Gains – Process Losses)
✓ The process of any team is called group dynamics, which include how members get to
know one another, develop expectations and loyalty, communicate, handle conflicts,
• Teams move through different stages of development
✓ Forming stage-initial task orientation and interpersonal testing
✓ Storming stage-period of high emotionality and conflict
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
DISCUSSION TOPIC
Ask students to describe their experiences with different teams within the context of stages of
team development. What happened for them at each stage? How do the students’ experiences
compare to the ideas presented above? Did anyone have an experience wherein the team seemed
to get stuck at one particular stage ⎯ say, the storming stage? What happened, and what insights
does it provide?
✓ Figure 14.3 illustrates criteria for assessing the maturity of a team:
What Are the Criteria for Assessing the Process Maturity of a Team?
Teams vary greatly in the degree of maturity they achieve and demonstrate in day-to–
day behavior. These criteria are helpful for assessing the development and maturity of
• Teams performance is affected by norms
• Norms are behaviors expected of team members; rules or standards that guide
behaviors
DISCUSSION TOPIC
Ask students to provide examples of both positive and negative performance norms that they
have encountered on the different teams where they were members. Discuss how these norms
influenced the members’ behavior.
• Team Performance is Affected by Cohesiveness
✓ Cohesiveness is the degree to which members are attracted to and motivated to
remain on a team
• Figure 14.4 depicts how norms and cohesiveness impact team performance
Group norms are expected behaviors for team members; cohesiveness is the strength
• Team performance is affected by task and maintenance activities
✓ Task activities contribute directly to the team’s purpose.
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
• Maintenance activities support the emotional side of teams as an ongoing social
DISCUSSION TOPIC
Ask students to describe examples of task activities, maintenance activities, and disruptive or
dysfunctional activities that they have encountered in their group experiences.
• Team performance is affected by use of communication networks
• Decentralized communication networks – all members communicate directly with
each other.
• Centralized communication networks – when members divide up the work and then
simply coordinate the final results.
14.2 Questions for d iscussion with suggested answers
1.
What happens if a team can’t get past the storming stage?
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Table 14.1 lists symptoms of groupthink:
✓ Illusions of invulnerability—Members assume that the team is too good for criticism
or is beyond attack.
✓ Rationalizing unpleasant and disconfirming data—Members refuse to accept
contradictory data or to thoroughly consider alternatives.
DISCUSSION TOPIC
Ask the students whether they have ever been in a group that succumbed to groupthink. If so,
have them describe what happened and relate it to the symptoms of groupthink.
• Teams benefit when member conflicts are well managed
✓ Conflicts can occur over substantive or emotional issues
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
The members of the executive compensation committee that you are chairing show a high level
of cohesiveness. It’s obvious that they enjoy being part of the committee and are proud to be on
the organization’s board of directors. But the committee is about to approve extraordinarily high
bonuses for the CEO and five other senior executives. This is occurring at a time when executive
pay is getting lots of criticism from the press, unions, and the public at large. What can you do to
make sure groupthink doesn’t cause this committee to make a bad decision?
Teaching Notes
In this section, ideas, exercises, and assignments are provided to assist you in integrating the
concepts in Exploring Management for your students, especially the special features of the text.
Management Live: When Teams Stand Up, Decisions Speed Up
Did you ever wonder how to move decisions along faster in team meetings? One solution is
simple: Take away the seats. At the software firm Atomic Object, seats are out and speed is in –
the typical meeting lasts less than five minutes. At the team meeting that starts each workday,
every one stands up, shows up on time, and is expected to stay on task. Don’t plan on playing
Angry Birds or chatting. Even tables are frowned upon. A vice president declares: “They make it
too easy to lean or rest laptops.” Stand-up meetings are popular in the tech industry, where some
call them “agile meetings.”
Choices: Can Disharmony Build a Better Team?
Have you ever heard a sports metaphor used at school or in the workplace? In his book, There