Chapter 12

1. Chapter 12 Managing Teams

3. Types of Teams • A functional team, also called a command team or vertical team, consists of a superior and his or her subordinates in the chain of command. • A cross-functional team is made up of members from different functional departments in the organization. • A self-managing team is able to make key decisions about how its work is done.

4. Potential Benefits of Teams • Teams provide many perspectives, skills, and resources. • Participation increases acceptance and understanding of the team’s outcomes. • Participation is empowering. • Working in teams is stimulating. • Teams make more reliable decisions than individuals • Participation in teams is a developmental experience

5. Potential Team Disadvantages • Dominant or stubborn members may control the process. • Some members may be reluctant to participate. • Some members may focus on personal goals. • Time and resources are taken from other activities. • Some members may rely on others to carry the load. • Team members may be afraid to “rock the boat.”

6. Deciding When to Use a Team(Based on Figure 12-1) • Use a Team When: • Many perspectives are needed • Acceptance of the decision is critical • The problem is complex or unstructured • Individuals judgments are unreliable • Individuals are unwilling to take necessary risks • You want to develop team members’ team-related skills

7. Deciding When to Use a Team(Based on Figure 12-1) • Be Cautious About Using a Team When: • The issue is unimportant • Individuals don’t want to participate • Individual risk preferences are too high • Time is of the essence • Group norms are unacceptable

8. Building Team Spirit Understanding Polarization Choosing Team Size and Membership Developing Productive Norms Encouraging Effective Team- Member Roles Planning the Team Effort Defining the Team’s Assignment Building Effective Teams Effective Teams

9. Selecting a Team Size • Choose a five-person or seven-person team unless there are very compelling reasons to do otherwise. • Any team with fewer than five members has its own unique set of problems. • Beyond size seven, team management becomes much more difficult because: • it becomes harder to coordinate the team since the number of members who must interact and whose actions must be synchronized becomes unwieldy. • members may be tempted to engage in social loafing. • we stop treating team members as individuals.

10. Guidelines for Staffing the Team • Vary team membership across tasks. • Ensure availability of key information, skills, and resources. • Ensure participation of affected parties. • If you will not be leading the team, appoint a task-oriented leader with sufficient power to keep the team on track. • Consider varying team membership over the course of the task.

11. Encouraging Effective Team-Member Roles • We wear many “hats” in life, such as students, neighbors, friends, employees, and much more. • These various hats are called roles. • Team members may adopt both positive and negative roles. • Task-oriented and relations-oriented roles are needed to keep the team effective on a continuing basis. • Self-oriented roles are roles members adopt for personal gain. These roles may often hamper team performance and cohesiveness.

12. Task-Oriented • Roles: • Initiators • Information Seekers • Opinion Givers • Energizers • Relations- • Oriented Roles: • Harmonizers • Compromisers • Encouragers • Expediters + + - • Self-Oriented • Roles: • Blockers • Recognition Seekers • Dominators • Avoiders Team Roles (Figure 12-2) Task Performance

13. Guidelines for Considering Team Roles • Encourage and reward members who adopt positive roles. • Recognize that both task-oriented and relations-oriented roles are critical to team performance. • Identify and discourage negative roles. • Understand the roles you play as a team leader -- and those you need not play. • Do all you can to minimize role conflict and role ambiguity.

14. Defining the Team’s Assignment • What is the issue to be dealt with? What is its scope? • What is the team’s responsibility? • To perform a specific task? • To make a decision? • To exchange information? • What are the constraints on the group? • What are its deadlines? • What is its budget? What other resources are available to it? • What should be the format of its final report or the nature of its final product? • Will it have to give progress reports?

15. Developing Productive Norms • Norms are the unwritten rules of the team. They are shared expectations about how team members should behave. • Norms may be prescriptive or proscriptive. • Norms control team member behavior. This is called clan control. • Once a team develops norms, the norms tend to persist. • Norms may: • be imported from other settings • develop because of some critical event in the life of the team • develop gradually in the life of the team

16. Lighten Up: “Norms” • The term “norm” may bring to mind Norm Peterson, the jovial, rotund regular on Cheers. • Cheers, a long-running TV program set in a Boston pub, had a cast of characters who exchanged jokes, stories, and insults in the comfort of “a place where everybody knows your name.” • The characters of Cheers did, in fact, share a variety of norms about where regulars should sit, how regulars entering the bar should be greeted, what subjects were acceptable for discussion, and how Cheers patrons should react to challenges from outsiders.

17. Storming Norming Performing Adjourning Stages of Group Development(Figure 12-3) Forming

18. Stages of Group Development • In the forming stage, team members are getting acquainted and becoming oriented to the task. • In the storming stage, conflict and disagreement among members are likely as members become assertive in their roles and personalities become clearer. • By the norming stage, conflicts have largely been resolved, the team becomes more cohesive, members settle into roles, and norms, values, and expectations develop. • In the performing stage the team is mature and focused on performance, and it can largely manage its own affairs. • In the adjourning stage the team dissolves.

19. Guidelines for Considering Team Norms • Recognize the power of norms. Norms are real and powerful. • Identify team norms; reinforce positive norms. • Communicate expectations concerning performance and other goals. • Recognize that norms develop gradually and are resistant to change. • Recognize that norming takes place relatively late in the team development process. Shape positive norms as early in the life of the team as possible.

20. Understanding Polarization • The risky shift phenomenon is the tendency for groups to make riskier decisions than individuals. • Risky shift may be due to factors such as: • our willingness to accept a larger “risk pie” since in a group we take only a slice of the pie. • the fact that we tend to look up to people who are willing to take at least moderate levels of risk, we tend to overestimate our own relative riskiness, and we shift our risk preferences upward when we interact in a team and see that we’re relatively less risky than we thought. • The risky shift phenomenon is one manifestation of a more general phenomenon, polarization, which is the tendency of groups to make individual group member tendencies more polar, or extreme.

21. Focus on Management: Hot Groups • Extremely high levels of team spirit, excitement, and energy characterize what Jean Lipman-Blumen and Harold Leavitt have called “hot groups.” • According to Lipman-Blumen and Leavitt, “The hot group state of mind is task obsessed and full of passion, coupled with a distinctive way of behaving, a style that is intense, sharply focused, and full bore.” • To encourage hot groups, according to Lipman-Blumen and Leavitt, it is important to make room for spontaneity, break down barriers, encourage intellectual exchange, select talented people and respect their self-motivation and ability, use information technology to build relationships, and value truth and the speaking of it.

22. Building Team Spirit • Some teams “stick together” better than others; there is a sense of team spirit, and members are proud to be associated with each other and with the team. • Teams with high levels of team spirit -- or cohesiveness -- are more effective in achieving their goals. • Members of cohesive teams also communicate relatively better with one another, are more satisfied, and feel less tension and anxiety. • Since cohesive teams are effective in attaining their goals, it is important that those goals be consistent with the best interests of the organization.

23. Poorer Performance Lower Cohesiveness Worse Performance The Low Cohesiveness Death Spiral Low Cohesiveness

24. Guidelines for Building Cohesive Teams • Make it attractive to be a member of the team. Make team membership an honor. • Praise and publicize team accomplishments. Go for some “small wins.” • Keep the team small. • Identify outside threats and pressures and communicate them to the team.

25. Lighten Up: Concrete Canoes and Subsurface Paintball • Some teambuilding approaches move outside the office. • Many companies, for instance, send their employees to “challenge courses” where team members must work together to complete tasks such as climbing walls and weaving their ways through webs of rope. • Other firms send their teams on caving, camping, sailing, or rock climbing outings. • Some activities are more innovative, such as dispatching teams to battle in a subsurface paintball complex, or to have them build and race concrete canoes.

26. Maintain Small Team Size Arrange the Work Environment to Enhance the Physical Proximity of Team Members Build a History of Success for the Team Promote Formal and Informal Interaction Among Team Members Enhance Team Identity and Emphasize External Threats to the Team The Bottom Line: Developing Team Cohesion Implement a Severe Initiation Process to Become a Member of the Team

27. Types of Problem Team Members • Freeloaders: Members who don’t carry their fair shares. They engage in social loafing. • Complainers: Members who constantly complain about the team’s scheduling, activities, progress, or other matters. • Bullies: Members who actively disrupt the team by pushing their opinions on others. • Martyrs: Members who feel they are carrying the load for the team.

28. Guidelines for Dealing with Problem Behaviors • Choose team members carefully. • Offer training. • Provide clear goals. • Clearly define member responsibilities. • Use peer evaluations. • Reward superior performance. • Don’t let social considerations overwhelm concern with the task. • Appeal to the “shadow of the future” • Remove problem team members as a last resort.

29. Give Structure to Meetings Help Team Members Become Acquainted Provide a Facilitating Setting Consider Spatial Arrangements Running Team Meetings Effective Team Meetings

30. Action Forums at General Electric • General Electric is one company that makes heavy use of action forums. • Action forums are broadly inclusive corporate meetings that involve key players from management, the factory floor, and even outside suppliers and customers. • Action forums lead to faster and better decisions, and help ensure the commitment of those who will implement the decisions. • Companies as far away as Japan are now developing action-forum approaches to their organizations.

31. Guidelines for Helping Team Members Become Acquainted • Before the first meeting, distribute members’ biographical sketches, along with the team assignment and other relevant materials. • Before each meeting, give members a chance to socialize. • At the first meeting, introduce each member or have the members introduce themselves. • Use appropriate “icebreaker” exercises.

32. United Technology Automotive’s Idea Center • In 1997 United Technologies Automotive added an idea center to its Dearborn, Michigan headquarters. • The center is a focal point for brainstorming and systems development, incorporating the latest technology and designed to stimulate the free-flow of ideas. • The center allows members from various product teams to meet in a supportive setting. • The center is aimed at reducing costs , improving quality, and speeding up product-development time.

33. Zones of Personal Space(Figure 12-4) Public Social Personal Intimate

34. Zones of Personal Space • Intimate Zone. We let others enter the intimate zone only for purposes such as lovemaking, protecting, and comforting. • Personal Zone. This is the zone used for comfortable interaction with others and connotes closeness and friendship. • Social Zone. This zone is used for interpersonal business. People working together use the inner part of the zone. The outer part is used for more formal interactions. • Public Zone. This zone is beyond the range of comfortable interaction.

35. Zones of Personal Space In “mainstream” U.S. society: • Intimate Zone: Skin to 18” • Personal Zone: 18” to 4’ • Social Zone: 4’ to 12’ • Public Zone: Greater than 12’ The sizes of these zones vary across nations and ethnic groups.

36. Global Perspectives: Interpersonal Distances Across Cultures • Interpersonal distances corresponding to the zones of personal space vary dramatically across cultures. • For instance, in northern Europe, the “bubbles” tend to be quite large and people keep their distance. • In southern France, Italy, Greece, and Spain, the bubbles are smaller. • A distance seen as intimate in northern Europe overlaps normal conversational distance in southern Europe. • As a result, Mediterranean Europeans “get too close” for the comfort of Germans, Scandinavians, English persons, and Americans of northern European ancestry.

37. The Importance of Potential Eye Contact High status individuals tend to choose positions of high potential eye contact, such as: • An elevated position; • A position at the front of the room; • A position at the end of a conference table.

38. The Importance of Potential Eye Contact (Continued) • Individuals who choose positions of high potential eye contact are perceived to have high status. • They are also: • Most likely to be perceived to be the group leaders; • Likely to have the most communications directed to them.

39. ! # X X # ! O O Seating Arrangements for Different Activities (Figure 12-5) ! Competing #Coacting O Cooperating X Casual Conversation

40. Guidelines for Structuring Meetings • Prior to the meeting, distribute an agenda to team members. • At the beginning of the meeting, review progress to date and establish the task of the meeting. • Early in the meeting, get a progress report from each member with a pre-assigned task. • Manage the discussion to ensure fair participation. • At the end of the meeting, summarize what has been accomplished, where the team is on its schedule, and what will be the team’s task at the next meeting. • Make public and clear each member’s assignment for the next meeting.

41. Tips for Encouraging Fair Participation • Establish norms for fair participation. • Provide guiding comments. • Use a round-robin process, asking members to give their comments in turn. • Ask members to write down their ideas.

42. Self-Managing Teams • Self-managing teams are becoming increasingly common; they are one of the fastest-growing forms of employee involvement. • According to one survey, more than two-thirds of Fortune 1000 firms use self-managing teams with at least some employees. • Self-managing teams are common in such companies as Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Motorola, Ford, General Electric, AT&T, Xerox, American Express, and Prudential.

43. Leader Roles in Self-Managing Teams • Becoming a self-leader. The leader must develop behavioral and cognitive self-management skills to achieve the self-motivation and self-direction needed to perform. • Modeling self-leadership. The leader’s own self- leadership behaviors serve as a model from which others can learn. • Encouraging self-set goals. Leaders should encourage team members to set specific and challenging goals. • Creating positive thought patterns. Leaders should transmit positive thought patterns to team members, and encourage positive expectations in them.

44. Leader Roles in Self-Managing Teams(Continued) • Developing self-leadership through reward and constructive reprimand. Leaders of self-managing teams should both use conventional rewards and reprimands to encourage self-leadership behaviors and also encourage team members to reward themselves and build self-rewards into their work. • Promoting self-leadership through teamwork. Team members learn self-leadership through regular and varied experiences in team settings that place them in positions where self-management is necessary. • Facilitating a self-leadership culture which is conducive to high levels of self-management and performance.

45. Devil’s Advocate Brainstorming, Affinity Technique Nominal Group Technique Using Special-PurposeGroup Techniques To Encourage Healthy Dissent To Generate Creative Ideas To Generate a Group Solution

46. To Encourage Healthy Dissent: The Devil’s Advocate • Beginning in the 12th century, the Roman Catholic Church instituted strict procedures to determine who was, or wasn’t worthy of sainthood. • One barrier on the road to sainthood was the devil’s advocate, a church officer whose role was to spot flaws in the arguments on behalf of the candidate for sainthood. • Now the devil’s advocate refers to an individual or group given the responsibility for challenging a proposal. • The idea is to find flaws while they may still be remedied, or to recognize they are fatal, before competitors, customers, and others become aware of them.

47. To Generate Creative Ideas: Group Brainstorming • Group brainstorming seeks to create the right atmosphere for relaxed, spontaneous thinking. • Rules for group brainstorming are: • Don’t criticize any ideas. This creates a climate of psychological safety, reducing inhibitions. • Freewheel. Any idea, no matter how wild, is fine. • Try to come up with as many ideas as possible. The more ideas, the better. • Try to combine and improve. Hitchhiking on others’ ideas may create a chain of inspiration.

48. Variations on Brainstorming • With stop-and-go brainstorming, short periods of brainstorming (10 minutes or so) are interspersed with short periods of evaluation. • Reverse brainstorming brings fresh perspectives by turning the problem around. How could we stifle creativity? How could we decrease morale? • With large groups, the Phillips 66 technique can be used. Once the problem is clearly understood, small groups of six members brainstorm for six minutes. Then a member of each group presents the best ideas or all ideas to the larger group.

49. Web Wise: Ventana Corporation’s GroupSystems • GroupSystems is a suite of team-based, decision-support software tools that can be used for strategic planning, innovative problem solving, business process reengineering, and other purposes. • It includes electronic tools for brainstorming, information gathering, voting, organizing, prioritizing, and consensus building. • GroupSystems is used by such organizations as American Express, IBM, and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. • http://www.ventana.com

50. Goals of the Nominal Group Technique • To encourage all members to make inputs • To prevent dominant members from controlling the process • To ensure that all ideas get a fair hearing • To allow members to evaluate alternatives without fear of retribution