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Building an Effective Team

Building an Effective Team. Reference: B. O’Keefe, TEAMWORKS: Skills for Collaborative Work, University of Illinois, http://www.vta.spcomm.uiuc.edu / (etc). Lecture Overview. Why Work in Teams? Distributing the Workload Reinforcing Individual Capabilities Creating Participation

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Building an Effective Team

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  1. Building an Effective Team Reference: B. O’Keefe, TEAMWORKS: Skills for Collaborative Work, University of Illinois, http://www.vta.spcomm.uiuc.edu/(etc)

  2. Lecture Overview • Why Work in Teams? • Distributing the Workload • Reinforcing Individual Capabilities • Creating Participation • Important Questions for New Teams • Members’ Attitudes • Members’ Interaction Styles • Members’ Motivations

  3. Why Work in Teams? • 1 - Distributing the Workload • Project is too big for one person • Need simple numbers of people • 2 - Reinforcing Individual Capabilities • Project is too complex for one person • Need a wider range of skills than one person has • 3 - Creating Involvement • Project is too important for one person • Need a whole group to be committed to the result

  4. 1 - Distributing the Workload • Project is too big for one person • Assumes the task is divisible into parallel subtasks • Divisible Task: building a car • Indivisible Task: carrying a heavy log • Extreme approach: “Divide and Scatter” • partition the tasks into one subtask per person • work tasks independently • come back together at the end • does not work for most projects • Tend to see sublinear speedup due to dependencies

  5. 1 - Distributing the Workload • Types of dependencies between tasks • Independent (completely parallelizable) • can use divide and scatter • Redundant (must be copied by all members) • e.g. reading the background material • Sequential (single exec. in a specified order) • usually based on input/output sequence • Mutually Exclusive (MUTEX) (single exec. in any order) • resource constraints prevent parallelism

  6. 1 - Distributing the Workload • Precedence Graphs • Independent • Redundant • Sequential • MUTEX • Hierarchical Dependencies

  7. Team Building Activity: Divisible & Independent Tasks

  8. 2 - Reinforcing Individual Capabilities • Task is too complex for one person’s skill set • Requires diversity in abilities • Different members contribute different strengths • True multidisciplinary team = team in which no one person can accomplish the task alone (ABET) • Relevant skills may be personal as well as technical • writing skill • speaking skill • analytical vs. practical skills

  9. 2 - Reinforcing Individual Capabilities • Need to Identify and State Goals • team goals • individual goals • Inventory of Resources • individual strengths & interests • individual weaknesses & disinterests • Comment on diversity • Your best friend may make a lousy team member • The two of you are too much alike

  10. Team Building Exercise :Clarifying Project Expectations

  11. 3. Creating Participation • Sometimes group “ownership” is important • Get group involved in a decision • even though a single person decision may be easier • If choice is obvious, then it will probably be the same • If not obvious, then contributions will be valuable • Either way: • Members all understand the thought behind decision • They are less likely to complain later

  12. Important Questions for New Teams • What is each members’ attitude toward teaming? • Maybe some dislike teams completely? • How do members’ Interaction styles differ? • What is their individual focus? • How do they react to a group? • What motivates each individual? • What does this person really want? • What motivation will he/she respond to?

  13. Attitude Toward Teams • Read The Statements Below • Rate Each item as: • 4 = strongly agree • 3 = agree • 2 = undecided or 50/50 • 1 = disagree • 0 = strongly disagree

  14. Attitude Toward Teams • I enjoy working in teams • I often do work in teams • Group decision making is important to organizations • I prefer to work in a group rather than alone • I am comfortable in leadership roles • When working in a group I usually participate actively • I like being evaluated based on the group’s work • I am good at reading other people • I have important things to say when I am in a group

  15. Interaction Styles • Two different ways of interacting • 1. Is the person more: • task oriented - focused on the job and the results? • People oriented - focused on relationships? • 2. Is the person more of a: • Thinker - always thinking of the big picture • Doer - wants to be given a task to accomplish • Team needs some of each to complement each other

  16. What Motivates an Individual? • Everybody is motivated by different things • some are self-motivated • some need a kick in the pants (figuratively) • It helps to identify what motivates each individual • no one technique works for everyone • need several different carrots • and several different sticks

  17. Summary • Things to know about • Team Goals • Individual facets • Personal goals • Personal strengths and weaknesses • Attitude toward teming in general • Interaction style • Motivation

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