Organizational

Behaviour

Module No. 009

Understanding Work Teams

By
Muhammad Shahid Iqbal
 Why Have Teams Become So Popular?
 As organizations have restructured themselves to compete more
effectively and efficiently, they have turned to teams as a better
way to use employee talents. There are a number of reasons why
this is true.
 Teams can enhance the use of employee talents. Teams are more
flexible and responsive to change in the environment.
 Teams can quickly assemble, deploy, refocus, and disband
 Teams can help to keep employees engaged in their work
 Teams increase their participation in decision making.
 Democratize an organization and increase motivation
 However, teams are not always effective and so it is important to
take a look at how to deploy teams effectively.
 Differences Between Groups and
Teams
 Groups and teams are not the same thing. A group is primarily
there to share information and make decisions, no real joint
effort is required. A team works in a more coordinated effort to
achieve a goal.
 Group: a group as two or more individuals, interacting and
interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular
objectives.
 Work Group: A group that interacts primarily to share
information and to make decisions to help each group member
perform within his or her area of responsibility
 No joint effort required
 Work Team: Generates positive synergy through coordinated
effort. The individual efforts result in a performance that is
greater than the sum of the individual inputs
Comparing Work Groups and Work
Teams
 Types of Teams
 Teams can make products, provide services,
negotiate deals, coordinate projects, offer
advice, and make decisions. There are a
number of different types of teams.
 Problem-Solving Teams: are a very
popular method used in many organizations
 Groups of 5 to 12 employees from the
same department who meet for a few
hours each week to discuss ways of
improving quality, efficiency, and the
work environment
 Self-Managed Work: Teams are comprised
of a group of 10 to 15 people who do not
have a manager and the group takes on the
responsibilities of the former supervisor.
 More Types of Teams
o Cross-Functional Teams: gather workers from about the same
hierarchical level but from many different work areas, who
come together to accomplish a task that needs to utilize multiple
perspectives.
 Cross-functional teams are an effective means of allowing
people from diverse areas within or even between organizations
to exchange information, develop new ideas, solve problems,
and coordinate complex projects.
 A Final Type of Team
 Virtual Teams: use computer technology to unite physically
dispersed members and achieve a common goal. They
collaborate online—using communication links such as wide-
area networks, videoconferencing, or e-mail—whether they’re a
room away or continents apart.
 Characteristics
 Typically these types of teams get right to work with little
socializing
 The ability to overcome time and space constraints to
accomplish the task.
 To be effective, needs:
 need to find ways to establish trust
among the members,
 have close monitoring
 results need to be publicized.
 Creating Effective Teams: Context
In order for team
to be effective a
Caveat 1: This is a
combination of
general guide only.
conduct,
compositions,
work design, and
process must be
brought together
to assist
effectiveness in Caveat 2: The model
the team. assumes that teamwork is
preferable to individual
work.

.
The model displayed here depicts team effectiveness
 Creating Effective Teams: Context
 Context: What Factors Determine Whether Teams are
Successful.
 Adequate Resources: needs the right resources to do the job well.
 Effective Leadership and Structure: Teams can’t function if
they can’t agree on who is to do what and ensure all members
share the workload. Agreeing on the specifics of work and how
they fit together to integrate individual skills requires leadership
and structure.
 Climate of Trust: Members of effective teams trust each other
and in their leaders. Interpersonal trust among team members
facilitates cooperation, reduces the need to monitor each others’
behavior.
 Performance and Rewards Systems that Reflect Team
Contributions Cannot just be based on individual effort
 Creating Effective Teams: Composition
 A manager must pay close attention to how they put a team
together to assure group cohesiveness and effectiveness.
 Abilities of Members: team’s performance depends on the
knowledge, skills, and abilities of its individual members. Need
technical expertise, problem-solving, decision-making, and
good interpersonal skills
 Personality of Members: Conscientiousness, Openness to
Experience, and Agreeableness all relate to team performance
 Allocating Roles and Diversity: assigns the right people to fill
the roles needed and maintain adequate diversity so that idea
generation still occurs.
 Size of Team: keeping teams small is a key to
improving group effectiveness.
 The smaller the better: 5-9 is optimal
Key Roles on Teams
 Creating Effective Teams: Work Design
 Work design is a way to help increase the effectiveness of
teams. The work of teams should have certain characteristics to
help the team accomplish their assigned task.
 Freedom and Autonomy: The team should have freedom and
autonomy over their work so that they can work independently
and control how the work is done.
 Skill Variety: The team should be required to utilize a variety
of skills and talents to complete the task.
 Task Identity: The task should be definable and easy to
identify so that group knows when they have accomplished it.
 Task Significance: the task should be significant and impactful
to the organization.
 Creating Effective Teams: Process
 Group’s processes can have a big impact on their effectiveness.
 Commitment to a Common Purpose: that provides direction
but yet incorporates reflexivity where it can adjust plan if needed.
willing to adjust plan if necessary
 Establishment of Specific Team Goals: The goals must be
specific, measurable, realistic yet challenging in order to keep the
team members engaged. Specific goals facilitate clear
communication and help teams maintain focus on getting results.
 Team Efficacy: Effective teams have confidence in themselves;
they believe they can succeed.
 Mental Models: organized mental representations of the key
elements within a team’s environment that team members share.
Teams have an accurate and common mental map of how the
work gets done
 Creating Effective Teams: Process
 A Managed Level of Conflict: Task conflicts are helpful;
stimulate discussion, promote critical assessment of problems
and options, and can lead to better team decisions. interpersonal
conflicts are not
 Minimized Social Loafing: individuals can engage in social
loafing and coast on the group’s effort because their particular
contributions can’t be identified. Effective teams undermine this
tendency by making members individually and jointly
accountable for the team’s purpose, goals, and approach.
Therefore, members should be clear on what they are
individually responsible for and what they are jointly
responsible for on the team.
Turning Individuals into Team Players
 What can organizations do to enhance team effectiveness to turn
individual contributors into team members.
 Selection: When formulating teams it is important to carefully
select the right employees who are more attuned to teamwork.
Make team skills one of the interpersonal skills in the hiring
process.
 Training: Training specialists conduct exercises that allow
employees to experience the satisfaction teamwork can provide.
Workshops help employees improve their problem-solving,
communication, negotiation, conflict-management skills.
 Rewards: Rework the reward system to encourage cooperative
efforts rather than competitive (individual) ones
 Continue to recognize individual contributions while still
emphasizing the importance of teamwork