Lecture 13 – Team development

1. Why gather in groups

 Sense of belonging: Gathering in groups has always been a characteristic of
human behavior.
 Security and protection
• Employees who feel their jobs are under threat from new technology may well join
together to reduce their levels of insecurity and fear.
• In a new product design team, the responsibility for a bad decision is shared with,
and spread among, others
• Regular interactions with a set of people with whom we are familiar can act to fulfil
the needs for affiliation and social contact
• Groups can also give us prestige, recognition and status among our peers
• informal groups
• Networks can also provide a mechanism for people to exercise power
 2. Groups and team definitions

Group definition
 a group can be simply defined as a number of people who consider
themselves to be part of a group
 a group is any number of people:
• who interact with one another,
• who are psychologically aware of one another, and
• who perceive themselves to be a group
 When we use the words ‘groups’ or ‘group relationship’, we are, more than
likely, referring to the existence of a psychological relationship.
 2. Groups and team definitions

Team definition
• From a Taylorism view of employees as costs, to a more dynamic
approach of viewing people as an investment
• Emphasis on flexibility, empowerment and innovation, most
organizations in the twenty-first century attempt to foster
collaborative teamworking cultures
• A team is a small number of people with complementary skills
who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals,
and approach for which they hold themselves mutually
accountable
 3. Self-directed team

3.1. Self-directed team

• Successful self-directed groups or teams are a group of people who usually
have different but compatible skills and enjoy considerable discretion over
how they achieve their objectives.
 3. Self-directed team

 Successful self-directed groups or teams are a group of

people who usually have different but compatible skills and
enjoy considerable discretion over how they achieve their
objectives.
 Benefits of self-directed team
• fewer layers of managers and supervisors;
• reward systems are often skill- or team-based, rather than
seniority-based;
• leaders may be elected by the team;
• the leader is more of a coach and facilitate or than a director
or authority figure;
• information is shared with all employees; and
• employees learn all the jobs and tasks required of the team
 3. Self-directed team

Potential barriers
• The willingness of management
• Resistance from managers and even lower-level employees;
• Not all managers have the requisite skills to ensure the role of facilitator and
coach
• Potential breach of the psychological contract
• Impacting managers’ and leaders’ position and authority.
 3. Self-directed team

3.2. Problem-Solving Teams

• Members often from the same department
• Share ideas or suggest improvements
• Rarely given authority to unilaterally implement any of their
suggested actions

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 3. Self-directed team

3.3. Self-Managed Work Teams

 10-15 employees in highly-related jobs
 Team takes on supervisory responsibilities:
• Work planning and scheduling
• Assigning tasks
• Operating decisions/actions
• Working with customers
 May select and evaluate members
 Effectiveness is situationally dependent

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 3. Self-directed team

3.4. Cross-Functional Teams

• Members from same level, but diverse areas within and between
organizations
• Exchange information
• Develop new ideas and solve problems
• Coordinate complex projects
• Development may be time-consuming due to complexity and diversity

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 3. Self-directed team

3.5. Virtual Teams

 Computer technology ties dispersed team together
 Special challenges:
• Less social rapport
• More task-oriented
• Members less satisfied

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 4. Communities of practice

 The growing importance of knowledge management and attempts to achieve

organizational learning
Þ Developing the notion of communities of practice (CoPs)
Þ shared experience and a passion for joint endeavor
Þ sharing their learning, experience and knowledge in free-flowing ways that
foster and encourage new approaches to problems and transfer this learning
from one part of the organization to another
 Increasing virtual or mobile community of practice where members ‘converse’
using modern communication technologies.
 Remote working using modern communications technology, virtual teams lead
to the necessity for capturing and facilitating this transfer of experience and
learning
 4. Groups within groups

• The outer circle defines all groups and includes

psychological groups and teams.
• The middle circle, in turn, includes all teams.
Not all groups are teams, but all teams are
psychological groups.
• In order to be effective, a team must possess
all of the criteria for being a psychological
group and a group.
• Teams differ from groups in the extent to which
their members are interdependent
 5. Formal and informal groups and teams

5.1. Formal groups

 Formal groups are
• consciously created to accomplish organizational and departmental
objectives.
• primarily concerned with the coordination of work activities and are task-
orientated.
• embedded in the fabric, hierarchy and structure of the organization: people
are brought together on the basis of defined roles.
 5. Formal and informal groups and teams

5.2. Informal groups

 Examples
• the office quiz team;
• the Friday lunchtime people;
• the Monday morning ‘let’s talk about the weekend’ group or the folk who
regularly swap the latest gossip; and
• the ‘let’s moan about the organization’ people.
 5. Formal and informal groups and teams

5.2. Informal groups

 Definition
• a collection of individuals who become a group when members develop
certain interdependencies, influence one another’s behavior and contribute to
mutual need satisfaction
 Informal groups are based more on personal relationships and agreement of
group members than on any defined role relationships
 5. Formal and informal groups and teams

 Benefits of informal groups

• Reducing feelings of insecurity and anxiety

• Providing social support;
• Fulfilling affiliation needs for friendship, love and support;
• Sense of identity and maintain our self-esteem;
• a means of entertainment, alleviating boredom and fatigue, boosting morale
and personal satisfaction;
• provide guidelines on generally acceptable behavior
5. Formal and informal groups and teams
6. Stages of group and team development
 6.1. Forming Stage

Definition
• Challenge: Balancing Individual and Group Goals
• Members are socially cautious and polite.
• Members learn about their tasks and test personal relationships.
Primary Tension
• The social unease that accompanies the getting-acquainted process in
groups
Resolving primary tension
• Be positive and energetic.
• Be patient and open-minded.
• Be prepared and informed.
 6.2. Storming Stage

 Challenge: Balancing Conflict and Cohesion

 Members compete for status and roles.
 Members openly disagree on issues.
 Groups experience Secondary Tension
• The frustration and personality conflicts experienced by group members as
they compete for acceptance and achievement
 6.3. Norming Stage
 Challenge: Balancing Conformity and Nonconformity
 Groups resolve primary and secondary tensions.
 Groups develop norms or ground rules.
 6.4. Performing Stage

• Challenge: Balancing Task and Maintenance Dimensions

• Group focuses on productivity and member satisfaction.
• Groups adapt and change if necessary.
 6.5. Adjourning Stage

 Challenge: Balancing Engagement and Disengagement

 Upon completing the group task:
 The group may disband.
 Members may leave the group for personal or professional reasons.
 Some members may take on a new group task.
 7. Roles and routines

7.1. Group norms

• Groups develop habits and rituals, the origins of which they cannot explain.
• Developing rituals and routines spelled out and made explicit in the form of
procedures, laid down rules and regulations and well-accepted and
documented working practices.
• Evolving unwritten and more ‘informal’ rules of behavior or ‘norms’.
• Norms can give a group its identity and can help to differentiate it from
others.
 7. Roles and routines

7.2. Group roles

• Task/ content activities are aimed at problem solving and achieving the
team’s concrete goals, such as developing a new product.
• Maintenance/process activities involve managing how the team works
together, its emotional life and the quality of members’ interactions.
 7. Roles and routines

7.2. Group roles

• Developed by Meredith Belbin in 1981
• The team roles were designed to define and predict potential success of
management teams, recognizing that the strongest teams have a diversity of
characters and personality types.
• This theory has been criticized due to it's potential oversimplification and
'pigeon-holing' of individuals.
 7. Roles and routines

7.2. Group roles

 Belbin describes a team role as "a tendency to behave, contribute and
interrelate with others in a particular way."
 There are
 3 action oriented roles - Shaper, Implementer and Completer/Finisher;
 3 people oriented roles - Coordinator, Team-worker and Resource
Investigator and;
 3 cerebral roles - Plant, Monitor Evaluator and Specialist.
 Team role Strengths Allowable weakness
Action orientated roles

- Challenging, dynamic, thrives on pressure - Prone to provocation

Shaper
- The drive and courage to overcome obstacles - Offends people's feelings

Implementer - Disciplined, reliable, conservative and efficient - Somewhat inflexible

(company worker) - Turns ideas into practical actions - Slow to response to new possibilities

- Painstaking, conscientious, anxious

- Inclined to worry unduly
Completer/Finisher - Searches out errors and omissions
- Reluctant to delegate
- Delivers on time

Coordinator - Mature, confident, a good chairperson - Can often be seen as manipulative

(Chairman) - Clarifies goals, promotes decision-making, delegates well - Offloads personal work
People oriented

- Cooperative, mild, perceptive and diplomatic

roles

Teamworker - Indecisive in crunch situations

- Listens, builds, averts friction

- Extrovert, enthusiastic, communicative

- Over - optimistic
Resource investigator - Explores opportunities
- Loses interest once initial enthusiasm has passed
- Develops contacts
Cerebral oriented roles

- Creative, imaginative, unorthodox - Ignores incidentals

Plant
- Solves difficult problems - Too pre-occupied to communicate effectively

- Sober, strategic and discerning

Monitor evaluator - Sees all options - Lacks drive and ability to inspire others
- Judges accurately

- Single-minded, self-starting, dedicated - Contributes only on a narrow front

Specialist
- Provides knowledge and skills in rare supply - Dwells on technicalities
 8. Group cohesion

 Group cohesion is defined as the strength of the bonds that link group
members, the attractiveness of the group to its members and the desire to
remain part of the group.
 Characteristics of a cohesive group
• Group identity is clear, interpersonal relations are good and people place
value upon being a member of the group
• Fewer work-related anxieties
• Higher rates of job satisfaction and lower rates of tension, absenteeism and
labor turnover
• Greater levels of cooperation among their members
 8. Group cohesion - Components

social relations
between task relations
members

emotions felt
group
by members
members’
vis-à-vis the
perceived unity
group
 9. Team Composition Components

 Abilities of members
• Technical expertise
• Problem-solving
• Interpersonal
 Personality
• Conscientious and open-minded
 Diversity
 Size of teams
 Member preferences

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 10. Conformity and groupthink

• Pressure is placed on members to fall into line and conform to the group
norms
• Groupthink is “a mode of thinking in which people engage when they are
deeply involved in a cohesive group, in which strivings for unanimity override
motivations to realistically appraise alterative courses of action”
 11. Intra-group behavior and conflict

 Cohesiveness can be of great benefit to a group, but it can also result in tension and conflict
between groups
 Intra-group conflict refers to conflicts within a group or team between two or more if its
members.
 Possible causes:
• Group diversity
• Infighting over limited resources,
• Situations where goals or tasks are not clear or certain and cross over between members
• Situations where a group changes its membership and where members do not share
information readily
 Turning Individuals Into Team Players

Selection –
Need employees who have the interpersonal as well as technical
skills

Training –
Workshops on problem-solving, communications, negotiation,
conflict-management and coaching skills

Rewards –
Encourage cooperative efforts rather than individual ones

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 MINI-CASE 5.2 (P.160)
Intra-group Conflict at Wrapit
 12. Inter-group behavior and conflict

 Inter-group conflict is conflict between two or more groups, normally operating within
the same organization, creating discontinuity.
 Groups can become highly dependent upon each other, and the effectiveness of an
organization often relies upon smooth relationships between different teams.
Þ tension between the need to focus on its own concerns and the requirement to
cooperate with other groups, in order that they might perform effectively
For example: conflict between sales and accounts, where the former may aim to
maximize sales and has a good grasp of market realities, while the latter may wish to
rise prices believing that this will increase revenue.
 12. Inter-group behavior and conflict

 The consequence of conflict

• The system may well develop a destructive climate of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’
• This inter-group conflict can operate to the detriment of organizational productivity
 …conclusion

Groups that cooperate can coordinate their activities better, have a fuller
exchange of ideas and information, and share both expenses and rewards.
Lecture 13 – The end