How to empower a team? - Chapter 10

Research has shown that effective teams have a shared purpose. It is of key importance to set proper team goals. In addition, team members need to feel connected to the team. They should feel a sense of cohesion. Nowadays, the focus of team leadership has shifted from the leader to the team. This is called team-centric leadership. A team-centric leader creates a tight climate for a team, which in turn increases followers' empowerment. Leadership climate is effective when a team leader gives its team many responsibilities, asks the team for advice when making decisions, is not too controlling, allows the team to set goals, stays out of the way when the team works on its performance problems, tells the team to expects a lot from itself and trusts the team. 

What is the difference between a working group and a team?

A team is defined as 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. 

Another definition of team is two or more individuals who socially interact, possess one or more common goals, are brought together to perform organizationally relevant tasks, exhibit interdependencies with respect to workflow, goals and outcomes, have different roles and responsibilities and are embedded in an encompassing organizational system, with boundaries and links to the broader system context and task environment.

A work group interacts primarily to share information with other members. For example, members of a work group attend a monthly staff meeting and share what they are working on. They are not responsible for a collective work effort, or their individual contributions can be added up to create something.

In a work team, on the other hand, members depend on each other. They must interact to create something that they couldn't create as individuals. There is synergy in the team, meaning that the mean can produce something beyond the sum of individual member contributions.

What is the relationship between team purpose and performance?

Setting goals is just as important for a team as for an individual. Effective teams have a sense of a shared purpose. In addition, it is one of the components of the definition of a team. Once a team has set its goals, team norms emerge and have a powerful effect on the attitudes and behavior of the team members. Team norms are informal and interpersonal rules that the team members are expected to follow. Norms are not written down. Communication of norms depends on the ability of the leader (or team members) to effectively convey the expected behavior.

The relationship between team purpose and performance can be illustrated using a team charter. In creating a team charter, not only is the team purpose clarified but the expectations for behavior are set forth (for example, required on-time attendance at meetings). In addition, norms provide an important regulatory function. Strong team norms yield shared understandings within teams, also known as team mental models (MTT). These models are related to effective team process and performance, because they serve a number of functions, including:

• Allowing team members to interpret information similarly.
• Sharing expectations concerning the future.
• Developing similar reasoning as to why something happens.

What are the differences and similarities of the five-stage and team performance curve models?

The five-stage model is a classic model of team development, including the following five stages: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. Although the model proposes that teams move through these phases smoothly, in reality many teams may regress to a previous stage be at risk of adjourning at any stage. In many project teams, teams are temporary and have a clear deadline. Such teams do not follow the typical stages of development. In fact, there is a transition between an early phase of interactivity followed by a second phase of significant acceleration toward task completion. This process is also known as punctuated equilibrium. There is an initial meeting in which the group goals are discussed. Following this meeting, little gets done until about halfway to the deadline. This transition occurs regardless of the total time that is allowed for the project. 

Similar to the punctuated equilibrium model, the team performance curve recognizes that team performance is not always linear. Performance does not always increase over time. 

These two models can be combined. Teams go through the five stages, but do not do so in a linear trend. There may, for example, be a performance decrease as the team goes through the storming phase. 

A high-performance team is enabled by six key factors:

1. Team member competencies.
2. Skills, processes, tools and techniques.
3. Interpersonal skills, communication, understanding personality differences.
4. A shared value system.
5. Shared vision, purpose, goals, direction.
6. Supporting organizational values, including openness.

What are the three main aspects of team effectiveness?

How to know if a team is effective? Team effectiveness has three dimension:

1. Input: the individual characteristics of team members (such as skills and abilities) and the resources they have at their disposal.
2. Process: how the team interacts.
3. Output: three components:
   • Performance as rated by people outside the team.
   • How well team member individual needs are met.
   • the willingness of team members to stay on the team.

To measure team performance, team metrics can be used. There are different types of metrics for teamwork, related to the above mentioned three phases: task metrics, process metrics, individual development metrics.

How is team creativity good for innovation?

Creativity in teams is essential to the innovation process. Communication of new ideas and sharing information with diverse others leads to higher creativity. Leaders can promote creativity by being supportive and expressing positive behaviors. Also, shared team goals result in higher creativity and creative teams spent more time socializing with each other.

To measure team effectiveness, team performance is the most commonly studies outcome, but team viability must also be considered. Team viability is a collective sense of belonging, similar to cohesion.

How to assess the cohesion of a team?

Cohesion is the resultant of all the forces acting on the members to remain part of the group. Cohesion becomes a state in which a group tends to stick together and unite in the pursuit of team goals. To measure the extent to which your team is cohesive, you can ask the following questions:

• How well do members of your group get along with each other?
• How well do members of you group stick together?
• Would you socialize with the members of your group outside of class?
• How well do members of your group help each other on the project?
• Would you want to remain a member of this group for future projects or in future classes?

The feeling of cohesion may also be due to a person's allegiance to the social groups they belong to. Social identity refers to the individual's knowledge that he or she belongs to certain social groups together with some emotional and value significance to him or her of this group membership. 

Groupthink is a result of high cohesiveness and group norms. It is defined as the conformity-seeking tendency of the group, which results in compromised decision making. The four symptoms of groupthink are:

1. Group rationalization
2. Direct pressure
3. Suppression
4. Illusion of unanimity

What are the differences and similarities between consensus decision making and the nominal group technique (NGT)?

According to the normative decision-making model, team decisions fall on a continuum ranging from leaders making the decision themselves to delegating the decision to the team. In the middle of the continuum, there are consultative models of decision making. Here, the manager consults followers one-on-one or as a group. The normative decision-making model consists of the following dimensions:

• Decide
• Consult (individually)
• Consult (group)
• Facilitate
• Delegate

One of the most common forms of team decision making is brainstorming. This should be used when the team needs to produce a creative solution. It enhances the creative process because idea generation is separated from idea evaluation. 

Another technique for decision making is consensus. Often, consensus is preferred over voting, although voting is more common. Voting yields winners and losers. In contrast, in a consensus decision-making process, everyone can say they have been heard and will support the final decision. To reach consensus, the following steps are suggested:

1. Introduction
2. Clarifying questions
3. Discussion
4. Establish basic direction
5. Synthesize or modify proposal (if needed)
6. Call for consensus
7. Record

The following responses can be recorded:

• Agreement: "I support this proposal and am willing to abide by and help implement it".
• Stand aside: "I have major concerns with the proposal and agree to stand aside and let the group proceed with it".
• Blocking: "I believe this proposal would be majorly detrimental to our group, since either it goes against our fundamental principles or it would lead to a disastrous outcome".
• Abstain: "I choose not to participate in the making of this decision".

Another decision-making technique is multivoting, which consists of the following seven steps:

1. Display the list of options.
2. Number (or letter) all items.
3. Decide how many items must be on the final reduced list.
4. Working individually, each member selects the five items (or whatever number of choices is agreed on) he or she considers to be most important.
5. Tally votes.
6. If a decision is clear, stop here. Otherwise, continue with a brief discussion of the vote.
7. Repeat the voting process in step 4 and 5. 

The nominal group-theory (NGT) is a more structured process that may be effective if there are status differences in the team or if the team has one or more dominating participants. Here, the group meets face-to-face, but the discussion is more restricted than with brainstorming or consensus decision making. The steps for NGT are as follows:

1. Each team member independently writes their ideas on the problem on 3x5 cards or slips of paper.
2. Each member presents one idea to the team. The cards are collected by the facilitator who can either read them or redistribute them randomly to the team members who then read the ideas on the card. Using this, no one is identified with a particular idea.
3. The discussion continues until all ideas are heard and recorded.
4. The team discusses the ideas and asks questions to clarify them.
5. Each team member then silently tanks the ideas independently. The idea with the highest total ranking is the final decision.

A newer technique is the stepladder, which may also be effective countering the challenge of dominating participants. It consists of the following five steps:

1. Present the task.
2. Two-member discussion.
3. Add one member to the group.
4. Repeat, adding one member at a time.
5. Final discussion.

How can a team leader reduce social loafing?

Social loafing is defined as the reduction in motivation and effort when individuals work collectively compared with when they work individually or coactively. In other words, they work with others but do not combine inputs into a group product. You will recognize this if you have ever been in a team where you (or a subgroup of team members) did all the work but others got the credit while they did barely contribute. Social loafing occurs more in large teams where individuals can easily hide themselves.

Leaders can prevent social loafing by doing the following:

• Keep teams small (four to six people).
• Set meaningful team goals.
• Set clear roles for team members.
• Eliminate redundancy.
• Select members with high motivation and affinity for teamwork.
• Provide feedback and coaching to members who social loaf.

More and more work is being conducted through the internet in virtual teams. This also has challenges for team effectiveness.

What are the challenges and benefits of team diversity?

Nowadays, work is more and more conducted online in virtual teams. Virtual teams are functioning teams that rely on technology to communicate One advantage of virtual teams is that team members can be geographically dispersed. They can be from anywhere in the world. Often, virtual teams are diverse and comprised of members from different cultures. A study found that the relationship between technology and performance depended on experience with technology. Also, communication apprehension and poor typing ability negatively influenced the quality and quantity of communication in virtual teams. Trust is essential to teams and for leaders to build trust in virtual teams, they can follow these strategies:

• Select team members based not only on their knowledge, skills, and abilities but also on their openness and propensity to trust.
• Select team members who have been on virtual teams before.
• Select team members who are self-starters.
• Provide training in team collaboration.
• Making sure new team members understand the culture, policies, team roles, and characteristics of their virtual team members.

Next to being virtual, cultural differences affect teams. Team diversity is a challenge for teams, but it also offers opportunities to increase team performance. Team diversity is challenging, as people may have cultural different values and working attitudes. The leader plays a key role here. 

What should leaders do to enhance effective virtual teams?

• Establish and maintain trust through the use of communication technology.
• Ensure diversity in the team is understood, appreciated, and leveraged.
• Manage virtual work-cycle and meetings.
• Monitor team progress through the use of technology.
• Enhance external visibility of the team and its members.
• Ensure individuals benefit from participating in virtual teams.

The benefits of team diversity are:

• Diverse teams can accomplish great things.
• Diversity may enhance team creativity.
• Diversity can increase flexibility, creativity, and problem solving.