Team Characteristics

 A team consists of two or more people who work

interdependently over some time period to
accomplish common goals related to some task-
oriented purpose.
 A special type of “group.”
 The interactions among members within teams revolve
around a deeper dependence on one another than the
interactions within groups.
 The interactions within teams occur with a specific task-
related purpose in mind.

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 Team Types
 Work teams are designed to be relatively
permanent.
 Purpose is to produce goods or provide services, and they
generally require a full-time commitment from their
members.
 Management teams are designed to be relatively
permanent.
 Responsible for coordinating the activities of
organizational subunits—typically departments or
functional areas—to help the organization achieve its long-
term goals.

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 Team Types, Cont’d
 Parallel teams are composed of members from various jobs
who provide recommendations to managers about important
issues that run “parallel” to the organization’s production
process.
 Project teams are formed to take on “one-time” tasks that are
generally complex and require a lot of input from members
with different types of training and expertise.
 Action teams perform tasks that are normally limited in
duration. However, those tasks are quite complex and take
place in contexts that are either highly visible to an audience
or of a highly challenging nature.

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 Variations within Team Types
 Virtual teams are teams in which the
members are geographically dispersed, and
interdependent activity occurs through
electronic communications—primarily e-mail,
instant messaging, and Web conferencing.

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 Stages of Team Development
 Forming - try to understand the boundaries in the
Forming team and get a feel for what is expected of them.
 Storming - remain committed to ideas, triggers
Storming conflict that affects some relationships and harms
the team’s progress.
Time

Norming  Norming - realize that they need to work together

to accomplish team goals.
 Performing - members are comfortable working
Performing within their roles, and the team makes progress
toward goals.
 Adjourning – members experience anxiety and
Adjourning other emotions as they disengage and ultimately
separate from the team. Slide
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 Punctuated Equilibrium
 At the initial team meeting, members make assumptions
and establish a pattern of behavior that lasts for the first
half of its life.

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 Team Interdependence
 Task interdependence refers the degree to which team
members interact with and rely on other team members
for the information, materials, and resources needed to
accomplish work for the team.

 Pooled interdependence
requires lowest degree of
required coordination,
members complete their
work assignments
independently, and then
this work is simply “piled
up” to represent the
group’s output. Slide
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 Team Interdependence, Cont’d
 Sequential interdependence requires different
tasks to be done in a prescribed order, members
interact to carry out their work, the interaction
only occurs between members who perform
tasks that are next to each other in the sequence.

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 Team Interdependence, Cont’d
 Reciprocal interdependence requires members to be
specialized to perform specific tasks. However,
instead of a strict sequence of activities, members
interact with a subset of other members to complete
the team’s work.

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 Team Interdependence, Cont’d
 Comprehensive interdependence requires the highest
level of interaction and coordination among members.
Each member has a great deal of discretion in terms of
what they do and with whom they interact in the course
of the collaboration involved in accomplishing the team’s
work.

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 Goal & Outcome Interdependence
 A high degree of goal interdependence exists
when team members have a shared vision of the
team’s goal and align their individual goals with
that vision as a result.
 A high degree of outcome interdependence
exists when team members share in the rewards
that the team earns.
Pay, bonuses, formal feedback and recognition, pats
on the back, extra time off, and continued team
survival. Slide
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 Team Composition
 Team composition is the mix of people who make up
the team.
 Role is defined as the behaviors a person is expected
to display in a given context.
 Leader–staff teams - the leader makes decisions for the
team and provides direction and control over members
who perform assigned tasks.
 Team task roles refer to behaviors that directly facilitate
the accomplishment of team tasks.
 Team building roles refer to behaviors that influence the
quality of the team’s social climate.
 Individualistic roles reflect behaviors that benefit the
individual at the expense of the team.
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 Team Composition, Cont’d
 Member ability – team members provide a wide
array of abilities, both physical and cognitive.
 Disjunctive tasks are tasks with an objectively verifiable
best solution, and the member who possesses the highest
level of the ability relevant to the task will have the most
influence on the effectiveness of the team.
 Conjunctive tasks are tasks where the team’s performance
depends on the abilities of the “weakest link.”
 Additive tasks are tasks for which the contributions
resulting from the abilities of every member “add up” to
determine team performance.

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 Team Composition, Cont’d
 Member personality - team members possess
a wide variety of personality traits.
Agreeable people tend to be more cooperative and
trusting, tendencies that promote positive
attitudes about the team and smooth interpersonal
interactions.
Conscientious people tend to be dependable and
work hard to achieve goals.
Extraverted people tend to perform more
effectively in interpersonal contexts and are more
positive and optimistic in general.
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 Team Composition, Cont’d
 Team diversity is the degree to which members are
different from one another in terms of any attribute that
might be used by someone as a basis of categorizing
people.
 Value in diversity problem-solving approach says diversity is
beneficial because it provides for a larger pool of knowledge and
perspectives from which a team can draw as it carries out its
work.
 Similarity-attraction approach says people tend to be more
attracted to others who are perceived as more similar.
 Surface-level diversity refers to diversity regarding observable
attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex, and age.
 Deep-level diversity refers to diversity with respect to attributes
that are less easy to observe initially, but that can be inferred after
more direct experience.
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 Team Composition, Cont’d
 Team Size
Having a greater number of members is
beneficial for management and project teams
but not for teams engaged in production tasks.
Research concluded that team members tend
to be most satisfied with their team when the
number of members is between 4 and 5.

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 Application: Team Compensation
Hybrid Outcome Interdependence means that
members receive rewards that are dependent on
both their team’s performance and how well they
perform as individuals.
 To make hybrid interdependence work, organizations
need to ensure that the system makes sense to
employees.

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