Any changes in team rules require substantial time and often cause team members toget upset.
The team leader plays an important part in the setting of rules; what the leader doesn'tdo can be as important as what the leader does do.
Commitment to behavior boundaries is strongest in small teams.
Teams usually judge their members by how closely they conform to the rules;members who most closely conform to the rules earn the greatest respect.
The more team members work together to develop team rules, the more they willagree with each other.
A team willing to create rules is a team willing to be self-disciplined and to assumeresponsibility for its behavior.
When a team is not clear about its rules, it often lacks control over its members.
Rules help to equalize the power of all members.Many organizations are creating teams. When the team building is done poorly, the teamsare viewed as an end in and of themselves, and little money or effort is invested to help thembe successful. Such teams usually last about six months. They make little difference to thecompany other than to allow it to use the word "team" to describe their internal structure, andthe team members are actually more frustrated than they were before the teams werecreated.Successful teams, on the other hand, are viewed as a strategy—a synergistic blending ofhuman resources—for achieving an organization's goals. Money, effort, and, most important,patience and support are invested eagerly. There is strong recognition that operating as ateam is different from what we are used to from our experiences at school and at home andthat, in order to be successful, we need to learn how to play by new rules.
A Brief History of Team Building
18th and 19th century.
Before the industrial movement began, work was conducted in smallgroups consisting of a master craftsman and a group of apprentices. The master functionedas the teacher, carefully instructing the apprentices in a trade. After many years of training,apprentices were able to determine and improve their own work.
1924.
Elton Mayo, founder of the human relations movement, conducted research at theHawthorne works of Western Electric Company. His study confirmed the relationshipbetween human factors, such as self-respect, recognition, and self-direction, and productivity(Mayo, 1933).
1930s
. Kurt Lewin researched the aspect of team behavior known as group dynamics anddeveloped a tool called Force Field Analysis to improve team effectiveness (Lewin, 1951).
1940s.
Britain's Tavistock Institute documented that productivity increases when workers areorganized into teams.Abraham Maslow defined his hierarchy of needs, linking motivation and performance(Maslow, 1943).
1950s.
General Foods experimented with self-directed work teams in its Topeka, Kansas,plant. The experiment was successful but was not regarded favorably by traditionalorganizations (Lawler, 1986).Sensitivity groups (also known as T-groups) were studied; these were highly unstructuredgroups in which members shared feelings and offered feedback to one another. The groupsrequired supervision to ensure that they did not drift off into unproductive activities (Lewin,1951).
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