MANAGING: A COMPETENCY

BASED APPROACH
11th Edition

Chapter 17: Working in Teams

Don Hellriegel
Susan E. Jackson
John W. Slocum, Jr. Prepared by
Argie Butler
Texas A&M University
 Learning Goals

1. Explain the importance of work teams

2. Identify five types of work teams
3. State the meaning and determinants of
team effectiveness
4. Describe the internal team processes that
can affect team performance
5. Explain how to diagnose and remove
barriers to poor team performance
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.1
  Group: two or more individuals who come into
personal and meaningful contact on a continuing basis
 Informal group: a small number of individuals who
frequently participate together in activities and share
feelings for the purpose of meeting their mutual needs
 May support, oppose, or have no interest in
organizational goals, rules, or higher authority

 Work team: a small number of employees with

complementary skills who collaborate on a project,
are committed to a common purpose, and are jointly
accountable for performing tasks that contribute to
achieving an organization’s goals
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.2
 Empowered Autonomous Crews
Teams work groups

Self-managing Cross-functional Quality

teams teams circles

Project Task High-performance

teams forces teams

Emergency Committees Councils

response teams

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.3 (Adapted from Figure 17.1)

 Increase innovation Improve speed of
and creativity product development
and other tasks

Increase quality of Reduce costs

goods and services

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.4

 In its Hutchinson, Minnesota facility,
3M was able to increase its production
gains by 300 percent after organizing
its workforce into self-directed teams
that were empowered to take corrective
actions to resolve day-to-day problems.

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.5

  Problem-solving work team: employees from
different areas of an organization whose goal is
to consider how something can be done better
 Quality circle: (also called a TQM team)
employees who meet regularly to identify,
analyze, and propose solutions to various
types of workplace problems

 Task force: a team formed to accomplish

a specific, highly important goal for an
organization

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.6 (continued)

  Functional work team: members from a single
department who have the common goal of
considering issues and solving problems within
their area of responsibility and expertise

 Multidisciplinary work team: employees from

various functional areas and sometimes several
organizational levels who collectively work on
specific tasks
 Also called cross-functional teams

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.7 (continued)

 Examples of decision areas for a self-
managing team
 Self-managing Participates in Trains new members
work team: selection of new
employees who members
have nearly
complete Evaluates own team Communicates
responsibility and performance directly with
authority for customers
working together Sets own operational Schedules own work
to make an entire goals and monitors and members’
product or deliver progress within broader vacations
an entire service organizational goals
Designs work Decides on team
processes leadership (which may
rotate among members)
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.8 (continued)
  Virtual work team: meets and does its tasks
without everyone being physically present in
the same place or even at the same time
 May have occasional face-to-face meetings

 Communicate through e-mail, electronically

mediated groupware, voice mail,
videoconferencing, and other technologies

 May be functional, problem solving,

multidisciplinary, or self-managing

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.9

 “As we attract, retain, and develop the best
talent, we have to assess employees on a
continuing basis for flexibility and
adaptability to work in a virtual environment
—that is the 21st-century workplace.”

Joy Gaetano, Senior Vice President, USFilter, Palm

Desert, California
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.10
 Team Satisfaction of
Team Team Preparedness Individual
Processes Performance For Future Members
 Cohesiveness  Innovation  Trust in  With team
team process
 Trust  Quality
 Ability to  With team
 Managing  Speed
adapt to members
conflict
 Cost change
 With own
 Decision
development
making

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.11 (Adapted from Figure 17.3)

 External Support
 Culture
 Member Selection
 Team Training
 Rewards Internal
Processes and Team
Development Effectiveness
Team Design
 Size
 Location
 Technology

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.12 (Adapted from Figure 17.4)

 Internal Team Processes
 Development of the work team over time, personal
feelings, and behavioral norms

 Work teams may develop along:

 a continuum of maturity, which ranges from low
or immature (e.g., inefficient and ineffective) to
high or mature (e.g., efficient and effective) AND

 a continuum of time together, which ranges from

start (e.g., the first team encounter) to end (e.g.,
the point at which the team adjourns)

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.13

 Internal Team Processes: Development
of Work Teams
High End or
recycle

End or Performing
Degree of Maturity

recycle
Adjourning
End or Norming
recycle

End or Storming
recycle

Forming
Low
Start Time Together End
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.14 (Adapted from Figure 17.5)
 “My advice for any new team: Don’t short-
change your startup. Take time to understand
what you’re going to do and how you’re going
to deal with the possible bumps along the
way.”

Jeanie Duck, Senior Vice President, The Boston

Consulting Group
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.15
 Forming stage: work team focuses on orientation to
its goals and procedures
?
 Members may be anxious about the team and
what they are supposed to do

Storming stage: begins when competitive or strained

behaviors emerge
 May involve resistance and impatience with
the lack of progress
 Frustration, anger, and defensive behavior
may appear
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.16 (continued)
 Norming stage: members become increasingly positive
about the team as a whole, the other members as
individuals, and what the team is doing
 Sometimes too much “we-ness”, harmony, and
conformity occurs

Performing stage: members usually have come to trust

and accept each other and are focused on
accomplishing their goals
 Diversity of viewpoints supported and
encouraged
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.17 (continued)
 Performing stage (cont’d):
 Members willing to risk presenting wild
ideas without fear
 Careful listening and accurate feedback
occurs
 Clear and shared goals

 Consensus, but not conformity, sought

 Minimal internal politics

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.18 (continued)
 Adjourning stage: terminating task behaviors
and disengaging from relationships
 Isn’t always planned and may be
abrupt
 Planned adjourning recognition for
participation and achievement

Some teams are ongoing

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.19

 Trust: members have Openness: members
confidence in each interested in what
other others have to say

Freedom: members Interdependence:

act out of a sense of members feel obligation
responsibility to the to coordinate and work
team together to achieve
common goals

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.20

  Rules of behavior that are widely shared and
enforced by members of a work team
 Norms may specify:

How much work to do

How customers should be treated
Importance of high quality
What members should wear
What kinds of jokes are acceptable
How members should feel about the organization
How they should deal with their managers, and so on
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.21
  Exists When Three Criteria Have Been Met
 There is a performance standard of
appropriate behavior for team members

 Members must generally agree on the

standard

 Members must be aware that the team

supports the particular standard through
a system of rewards and punishments

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.22

  Free rider: a team member who isn’t contributing fully
to team performance but still shares in
team rewards

 Groupthink: an agreement-at-any-cost mentality that

results in ineffective work team decision making and
may lead to poor solutions; Likelihood increases when:
 Peer pressure to conform is great
 A highly directive leader presses for a particular
interpretation of the problem and course of action
 Need exists to process a complex and unstructured
issue under crisis conditions
 Group is isolated
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.23
  Productive controversy: when team members
value different points of view and seek to draw
them out to facilitate creative problem solving

 Focus on issues rather than people

 Defer decisions until issues and ideas are
explored
 Follow procedures that equalize sharing
of power and responsibility

 Managers can help shape norms

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.24

  Internal Processes
 External System:

Team design Culture

Reward
system
Member Team
selection training

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.25

 Causes of Poor Team Performance:
Team Design
 Team Size

 For innovative decision making, ideal work

team is probably between five and nine
members

 If large teams required, consider use

of subteams

 With large teams be aware of backlash

through clique lobbies

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.26 (continued)

  Team size—large team size tends to have the
following effects

 Demands on leader time and attention are greater;

leader becomes more psychologically distant from the
team members
 Team’s tolerance of direction from the leader is greater
and team’s decision making becomes more centralized
 Team atmosphere is less friendly, communications are
less personal, more cliques form within the team
 Team’s rules and procedures become more formalized
 Likelihood of some members being free riders increases

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.27

  Team proximity
 Proximity to other work teams and members
of the organization
 Team members’ proximity to each other
 Ideal proximity among teams depends on
work being done
 Virtual teams often create special challenges

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.28

  Differences in societal cultures

 Language differences

 Weak or poor organizational culture

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.29

  Incompatible personality traits among
members

 Traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness

needed

 Communication and teamwork

competencies needed

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.30

 Causes of Poor Team Performance:
Team Training

 Poor or no team training

 Leadership development for managers
or team leaders needed
 Team training needed for:
 how to manage meetings
 how to support disagreement
 how to commit to a decision
 how to use group-based technologies

Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.31

  Choices in Designing Reward Systems for Work
Teams
 How can nonmonetary rewards be used to recognize
excellent team performance?
 What portion of a person’s total monetary rewards
should be linked to performance of the team
(versus the performance of the individual or the
business unit)?
 If rewards are to be linked to results, which
effectiveness criteria should be used to evaluate
team results? Individual results?
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.32 (Adapted from Table 17.2) (continued)
  Choices in Designing Reward Systems for Work
Teams (cont’d)
 How should rewards be distributed among the
members of a team? Should they all receive
equal rewards? If not, on what basis should
people receive differential rewards?
 Who should be responsible for the allocation of
rewards among team members: team members,
a team leader, someone outside the team?
 For global teams, how should cultural differences
among members of the team and the pay systems
used in different countries be addressed?
Chapter 17: PowerPoint 17.33