Team Dynamics

Course Framework
Input Process Output

Job Satisfaction

Personality Emotions Job

Performance
Individual Motivation
Values
Perception & Decision Making
Commitment
Stress

Communication Group
Group
Effectiveness
Group Structure Leadership

Roles & Power & Politics

Group Cohesion
Norms
Conflict & Negotiation
 What are Teams?
• Groups of two or more
people
• Exist to fulfill a purpose
• Interdependent -- interact
and influence each other
• Mutually accountable for
achieving common goals
• Perceive themselves as a
social entity
Stages of Team Development
 Punctuated Equilibrium Model:
The Mid-Point Transition Model (Gersick)
 Punctuated Equilibrium Model:
Implications
• Advice for managing teams:
• Prepare carefully for the first meeting.
• As long as people are working, do not look for radical
progress during Phase 1.
• Manage the midpoint transition carefully.
• Be sure that adequate resources are available to actually
execute the Phase 2 plan.
• Resist deadline changes.
 Task Type

Disjunctive tasks: objectively verifiable best solution, and the

member with the highest competence 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.
 Team Composition

Team Size
Member Roles
Member Status
Team Diversity
 Team Composition: Size
• Large groups are good for gaining diverse
input.
• Smaller groups are better doing something
with input.
• Rule of thumb? 5-7 people
 Team Composition: Roles
A set of expected behavior patterns attributed to
someone occupying a given position in a social unit.

• Assigned vs. Emergent roles

• People can have multiple roles
within a group
• Roles may not be recognized, and
may not be productive (ex: class
clown)
 Role Conflict
• Role conflict exists when an individual is faced with
incompatible role expectations.
• There are four types of role conflict:
• Intrasender : A single role sender provides incompatible
role expectations to a role occupant.
• Intersender: Two or more role senders provide a role
occupant with incompatible expectations. (department
chair)
• Interrole: Several roles held by a role occupant involve
incompatible expectations. (CEO o a company,
shareholder of another)
• Person-role conflict: Role demands call for behaviour
that is incompatible with the personality or skills of a
role occupant. (whistle blower)
 Role Conflict: Consequences
• The most consistent consequences of role conflict are job
dissatisfaction, stress reactions, lowered organizational
commitment, and turnover intentions.
• Managers can help prevent employee role conflict by:
• Avoiding self-contradictory messages
• Conferring with other role senders
• Being sensitive to multiple role demands
• Fitting the right person to the right role
 Team Composition: Status
• Status: a socially defined position or rank
given to groups or group members by others.
• Status characteristics theory: status is
derived from one of three sources:
• The power a person wields over others.
• A person’s ability to contribute to a
group’s goals.
• An individual’s personal characteristics.
 Status in Groups
• Status and Norms: high status individuals often
have more freedom to deviate from norms.
• Status and Group Interaction: high status people
are often more assertive.
• Status Inequity: perceived inequity creates
disequilibrium and can lead to resentment and
corrective behavior.
• Status and Stigmatization: stigma by association.
 Team Composition: Diversity
Surface Level Diversity (social categories: race, gender, age, etc.)
Deep Level Diversity (attitudes, information, opinions, and values)

Benefits / Drawbacks?
 Team Diversity
Advantages
Better for creatively solving complex problems
Broader knowledge base
Better representation of team’s constituents

Disadvantages
Take longer to develop
More susceptible to “faultlines”
Increased risk of dysfunctional conflict
Team Development: Norms
Acceptable standards of behavior within a group
that are shared by the group’s members.

Types of Norms:
• Performance norms
• Dress norms
• Reward allocation norms
 Norms & Behaviors

• Norms and Culture

• Do people in collectivist cultures have different
norms than people in individualist cultures? Of
course they do.
• But did you know that our orientation may be
changed, even after years of living in one society.
 Team States: Cohesiveness
Degree to which group members are attracted to the
group and are motivated to stay in the group.

Increasing group cohesiveness:

1. Threat and competition
2. Success
3. Increase group status and admission difficultly.
4. Small groups
 Team Cohesiveness Outcomes
• More Participation in Group Activities
• More Conformity
• More Success
• Resolve conflict effectively
• Better interpersonal relationships
 Cohesion

Negative Side
•Too high Cohesion may become
negative by generating:
• Pressure to Conform
• Groupthink
• Group polarization
 Social Loafing
• The tendency to withhold physical or intellectual effort when
performing a group task.
• Social loafing is a motivation problem.
• The tendency for social loafing is probably more pronounced
in individualistic North America than in more collective and
group-oriented cultures.
• Social loafing has two different forms.
 The Free Rider Effect
• In the free rider effect, people lower their effort to get a free
ride at the expense of their fellow group members.
 The Sucker Effect
• In the sucker effect, people lower their effort because of the
feeling that others are free riding.
• They are trying to restore equity in the group.
• What are some ways to counteract social loafing?
 Team Effectiveness
Team Performance: performance judged by relevant others external
to the team
Team Commitment (viability): the willingness of members to remain
in the team
Meeting of team-member needs
 Why Are some teams more than
the sum of their parts?

Process gain (synergy) is when the team

performs greater than the sum of
individual contributions.
Process loss is when the team performs
less than the sum of the individual
contributions.
Group Process
Actual performance =
Potential performance – Process losses
Types of Teams
 Self-Managed Work Teams (SMWTs)

• Work groups that have the opportunity to do challenging work

under reduced supervision.
• The groups regulate much of their own members’ behaviour.
• Based on Japanese industry
• Critical success factors of self-managed teams include:
• The nature of the task.
• The composition of the group.
• Various support mechanisms.
 Composition of Self-Managed Teams

• Stability
• Group membership should be fairly stable.
• Team needs trust, rotating members prevents trust formation.
• Size
• Self-managed teams should be as small as feasible.
• Coordination and social loafing
• Expertise
• Group members should have a high level of expertise about the
task at hand as well as social skills.
• Diversity
• Group members should be similar enough to work well together
and diverse enough to bring a variety of perspectives and skills
to the task at hand.

One way of maintaining appropriate group composition is to let the

group choose its own members.
 Cross-Functional Teams
Work groups that bring people with different functional
specialties together to better invent, design, or deliver a
product or service.
Members have to be experts in their own area but able to
cooperate with others.
Best known for their success in product development.
Used for: innovation, speed, and quality
 Shared Mental Models
• Shared mental models mean that team members share
identical information about how they should interact and
what their task is.
• They contribute greatly to effective team performance, at
least when the shared knowledge is an accurate reflection of
reality.
• They are a particular challenge to instill in cross-functional
teams.
 Virtual Teams
• Virtual teams are work groups that use
technology to communicate and collaborate
across time, space, and organizational
boundaries.
• Along with the reliance on computer and
electronic technology, the primary feature of
virtual teams is the lack of face-to-face contact
between team members due to geographic
dispersion.
• Virtual teams are often cross-functional in
nature.
• Advantages/ disadvantages?
 Lessons Concerning Virtual Teams
• Recruitment
• Choose team members carefully in terms of attitude and
personality, and find people with good interpersonal skills, not
just technical expertise.
• Training
• Invest in training for both technical and interpersonal skills.
• Personalization
• Encourage team members to get to know each other and reduce
feelings of isolation.
• Goals and ground rules
• Virtual team leaders should define goals clearly, set rules for
communication standards and responses, and provide feedback.
 Next Class
• Team Decision Making