In Mixed Company Chapter Six

1. In Mixed Company Chapter Six Developing Effective Teams Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

2. Level of Cooperation: The Working Together Imperative • Teams typically manifest a higher level of cooperation than standard groups. • The essence of all teams is collaborative interdependence. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

3. Diversity of Skills: Looking for Complementary • Teams usually consist of members with more diverse skills than those found in standard groups. • Teams typically have a stronger group identity than standard groups. Team members have a sense of cohesiveness and oneness that exceeds the typical, standard, small group. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

4. Team Members • Assembling the optimum combination of individuals is the starting point for team building. • There is no solid evidence that any specific personality trait such as conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and so forth likely contributes significantly to team success. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

5. Egocentrism • Those who communicate egocentrically reveal the “me-first” attitude that promotes team friction and weakens team cohesiveness. • We-oriented team members typically are more inclined than egocentric members to improve their own performance and to enhance other members’ performance. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

6. Cynicism • Teams are a system, so even a single member can demoralize an entire team. The attitude that most destroys teamwork and team effectiveness is cynicism. • Cynics focus on the negative, predicting failure and looking for someone or something to criticize, sapping the energy from the team with their negativity. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

7. Team Member Removal • The principal candidates for expulsion from a team should be those who persistently display incompetent communication, especially if they show no interest in improving, and those with egocentrical and cynical attitudes that disrupt team relationships. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

8. Experience and Problem-Solving Abilities: Core Competencies • Although the problem-solving potential of technical experience is necessary for team effectiveness, other elements are also required. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

9. Guidelines for Managing Membership Diversity • Accept diversity as an advantage, not a disadvantage for the team. • Choose team members for their complementary skill and knowledge but also for their similarity of attitude. • Choose a superordinate, transcending goal to bridge differences. • Be respectful of all team members and avoid cultural bias. • Keep communication open and solicit feedback. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

10. Communication Training: Developing Members’ Competence • Training must be an integral part of the team equation for success. • Training programs that teach team members specific communication knowledge and skills relevant to the team’s task are effective in enhancing teamwork and team effectiveness. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

11. Clear Goals: Everyone on the Same Page • A few clear goals that each team member can recite from memory are preferable to goals that are too numerous for members to recall. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

12. Cooperative Goals: Interdependent Challenges • Cooperative goals enhance team performance. • Superordinate goals, a specific kind of cooperative goal that overrides differences that members may have because it supersedes less important competitive goals is particularly effective for developing teamwork. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

13. Challenging Goals: Denting the Universe • Teams need challenging goals to spark members’ best efforts. • Members need to feel that they are embarking on a shared mission, with a common vision of how to translate the dream into a team achievement. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

14. Commitment to Goals: A Passion to Succeed • In a study of 1.4 million workers in 66 countries for the Gallup Organization, one key finding was that “trusting that one’s coworkers share a commitment to quality is a key to great team performance.” • Although not always possible, whenever participatory goal setting can be instituted it is advisable to do so. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

15. Symbolic Convergence • Symbolic Convergence theory, focuses on how people communicating with each other develop and share stories that create a “convergence”, a group identity that is larger and more coherent than the isolated experiences of individual group members. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

16. The Language of We • Team accountability means that the team, rather than individual members, assumes responsibility for success and failure. • Team success is also a matter of collective responsibility, and team talk should reflect this. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

17. Appropriate Roles for Team Members: Choosing Wisely • A team must have every group function covered by a qualified member playing a specific role so there is little or no duplication of effort. • Finding the appropriate roles for each team member can be a big challenge. It is vital, however, that each member plays the role suited to his or her abilities. • Finding the appropriate team member for each vital role permits full utilization of the team’s resources. • One of the responsibilities of a team leader is to make determination regarding role designations. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

18. Definition of Empowerment: Four Dimensions • There are four dimensions of empowerment: potency, meaningfulness, autonomy, and impact. • Group potency is the “shared belief among team members that they can be effective as a team.” • Those teams whose members are confident that their team can perform effectively, not just on a single task but across many different tasks typically perform effectively, whereas teams with low group potency do not perform well. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

19. Definition of Empowerment: Four Dimensions • Meaningfulness is a team’s perception that its tasks are important, valuable, and worthwhile. • Autonomy is the degree to which team members experience substantial freedom, independence, and discretion in their work. Autonomy doesn’t mean that teams have no supervision or guidance. • Impact is the degree of significance given by those outside of the team, typically the team’s organization, to the work produced by the team. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

20. Hierarchical Organizations • Traditionally, organizations have been hierarchical, meaning members of the organization are rank ordered in a kind of pyramid of power: CEO’s, presidents, vice president etc. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

21. Self-Managing Work Teams • Self-Managing Work Teams embrace empowerment. After sufficient training and education, team members share responsibility for planning, organizing, setting goals, making decisions, and solving problems. • They have a great deal of autonomy because they are self-managed, and since they control a great deal of their own decision making and problem solving, team results seem meaningful to members and have impact on organizations. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

22. Impediments to Team Empowerment • There are four primary impediments to team empowerment. • Organization can sabotage their own teams. When organizations establish teams but fail to provide sufficient structural support for team empowerment, the organization is merely paying lip service to the concept of empowering teams. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

23. Impediments to Team Empowerment • Not everyone embraces teams. If team leaders are held responsible for team failure when team decisions may contradict the leader’s preference, it is not difficult to understand the reluctance of the leader to embrace self-managing teams. • When participation is decision making is a sham, empowerment is thwarted. If the team is not trusted to make careful, deliberative decisions, and if the team’s choices are not respected, then participative decision making will quickly be perceived as a deceptive game that only creates the illusion of choice. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

24. Impediments to Team Empowerment • Finally, when rewards are distributed based on individual effort or ability, not team success, empowerment is impeded. • There are essentially three ways rewards can be distributed in a group: winner-take-all, equitable distribution (proportional), and equal distribution. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

25. Establishing Individual Accountability: Minimum Standards • Individual accountability, which establishes a minimum standard of effort and performance for each team member to share the fruits to team success. • The focus should be on raising all team members above the minimum standards-way above if possible-not on looking for ways to designate failures. • Individual accountability merely establishes a floor below which no one should drop, not a ceiling that only a very few can reach. Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams

26. Fostering Participative Leadership: Nurturing Empowerment • Team leaders don’t act like bosses or supervisors if they hope to be effective. Team leaders are teachers and facilitators, they are open to input from team members. • An effective team leader is a competent communicator capable of using supportive communication and avoiding defensive communication patterns with team members. • Leaders create an environment in which making a mistake is an expected part of learning. • When mistakes are made, members are encouraged to learn from the errors Speech 140 Chapter 6 Developing Effective Teams