Developing and Leading Teams

We focused on developing the teams competency—the knowledge, skills, and abilities to develop, support, and lead groups to achieve goals. Groups and teams are classified in numerous ways. In organizations, a basic classification is by the group’s primary purpose, including informal groups and task groups (now commonly called teams). Informal groups develop out of the day-to-day activities, interactions, and sentiments of the members for the purpose of meeting their security or social needs. Informal groups may support, oppose, or be indifferent to formal organizational goals. Effective groups, formal or informal, have similar basic characteristics. We reviewed the core characteristics of effective teams. The degree to which a team lacks in one or more of these characteristics determines whether—and to what extent—it is ineffective. For a team to operate, it must have some degree of empowerment, which is reflected in terms of the teams’ degree of potency, meaningfulness, autonomy, and impact. In our discussion of when to use teams, we noted that teams are not always appropriate. Four factors were identified for understanding when teams are likely to be superior to individuals in performing tasks and solving problems.

The five-stage developmental model for teams focuses on forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. The issues and challenges a team faces change with each stage. Teams do not necessarily develop in the straightforward manner presented in this model, especially when the members possess strong team management and related competencies. Several other models are available to aid in understanding the developmental sequence of teams.

Functional teams include members from the same functional department, such as marketing, production, or finance. Problem-solving teams include individuals from a particular area of responsibility who address specific problems such as cost overruns or a decline in quality. Cross-functional teams include individuals from a number of specialties and departments who deal with problems that cut across areas. Selfmanaged teams include employees who must work together daily to manufacture an entire product (or major identifiable component) or provide an entire service to a set of customers. For maximum effectiveness, self-managed teams need to be empowered; that is, have a strong sense of potency, meaningfulness, autonomy, and impact. A variety of organizational, team, and individual factors must be satisfied for introduction of self-managed teams. Any type of task group could function somewhat or primarily as a virtual team, which collaborates through various information technologies. Global teams have members from a variety of countries and are, therefore, often separated significantly by time, distance, culture, and native language.

Team dynamics and effectiveness are influenced by the interplay of context, leadership, goals, size, member roles, member diversity, norms, and cohesiveness. One type of changing contextual influence on how teams work and network with other teams is that of information technology, especially the rapid developments in collaborative software systems. Other contextual influences are the nature of the organization’s reward system and how it fits the basic value orientations of team members, especially in terms of individualism and collectivism. Team leaders may be appointed or emerge informally. They are often in a position to affect a number of the other influences on team effectiveness. Team members need to clearly understand and accept team goals as outcomes desired by each member of the team as a whole. Team size can substantially affect the dynamics among the members and the ability to create a sense of mutual accountability. Teams of about 16 or more members typically break into smaller task groups. Members may assume task-oriented, relationship-oriented, or self-oriented roles. Member diversity often enhances the effectiveness of teams by bringing more divergent insights into the causes of problems and their potential solutions. Of course, if not handled thoughtfully, member diversity may also be a source of conflict and poor communication among team members through the development of fault lines. Norms differ from rules in important ways and can have a positive or negative impact on performance. The pressures to adhere to norms may result in either compliance conformity or personal acceptance conformity. Another factor having an impact on the effectiveness of teams is cohesiveness. Of course, high cohesiveness is usually helpful to work-related teams if it improves their ability to perform tasks and achieve goals.

The potential team dysfunctions are just that—potential. They are not inevitable as we indicate in this and previous chapters. Team members and leaders need to be mindful of the potential or actual development of team dysfunctions, which include groupthink, free riding, the bad apples effect, absence of trust, and the avoidance of accountability for results.