Chapter Thirteen: Groups & Teams

Chapter Thirteen
Groups & Teams

Increasing Cooperation, Reducing
Conflict
McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, All Rights Reserved.

Major Questions You Should Be
Able to Answer
13.1 How is one collection of workers
different from any other?
13.2 How does a group evolve into a
team?
13.3 How can I as a manager build an
effective team?
13.4 What should a manager know about
conflict in order to deal effectively with
it?
13 - 2
Managing Virtual Workers
• Take baby steps and manage by results

• State expectations
• Write it down
• Communicate, but be considerate
• Be aware of cultural differences
• Meet regularly
13 - 3
Why Teamwork is Important
• Increased productivity
• Increased speed
• Reduced costs
• Improved quality
• Reduced destructive internal
competition
• Improved workplace cohesiveness
13 - 4
Groups & Teams
• Group
 two or more freely acting individuals who
share collective norms, collective goals,
and have a common identity
13 - 5
Groups & Teams
• Team
 small group of people with complementary
skills who are committed to a common
purpose, performance goals, and
approach for which they hold themselves
mutually accountable
13 - 6
Formal versus Informal Groups
• Formal group
 established to do something productive for
the organization
 headed by a leader
• Informal group
 formed by people seeking friendship
 has no officially appointed leader, although
a leader may emerge
13 - 7
Work Teams for Four Purposes
• Advice teams
 created to broaden the information base
for managerial decisions
 Committees, review panels
• Production teams
 responsible for performing day-to-day
operations
 Assembly teams, maintenance crews
13 - 8
• Project teams
 work to do creative problem solving, often
by applying the specialized knowledge of
members of a cross-functional team
 Task forces, research groups
13 - 9
• Action teams
 work to accomplish tasks that require
people with specialized training and a high
degree of coordination
 Hospital surgery teams, airline cockpit
crews, police SWAT teams
13 - 10
Self-Managed Teams
• Self-Managed teams
 groups of workers who are given
administrative oversight for their task
domains
13 - 11
Stages of Group and Team
Development
Figure 13.1
13 - 12
Stage I: Forming
• Forming
 process of getting oriented and getting
acquainted
• Leaders should allow time for people to
become acquainted and socialize
13 - 13
Stage 2: Storming
• Storming
 characterized by the emergence of
individual personalities and roles and
conflicts within the group
• Leaders should encourage members to
suggest ideas, voice disagreements,
and work through their conflicts about
tasks and goals
13 - 14
Stage 3: Norming
• Norming
 conflicts are resolved, close relationships
develop, and unity and harmony emerge
 Group cohesiveness
• Leaders should emphasize unity and
help identify team goals and values
13 - 15
Stage 4: Performing
• Performing
 members concentrate on solving problems
and completing the assigned tasks
• Leaders should allow members the
empowerment they need to work on
tasks
13 - 16
Stage 5: Adjourning
• Adjourning
 members prepare for disbandment
• Leaders can help ease the transition by
rituals celebrating “the end” and “new
beginnings”
13 - 17
Building Effective Teams
1. Performance goals and feedback

2. Motivation through mutual
accountability
3. Size
4. Roles
5. Norms
6. Cohesiveness
7. Groupthink
13 - 18
Size: Small Teams or Large Teams?
• Small teams: 2-9 members

 better interaction
 better morale
• Disadvantages
 Fewer resources
 Possibly less innovation
 Unfair work distribution
13 - 19
Size: Small Teams or Large Teams?
• Large Teams: 10-16 members

 More resources
 Division of labor
• Disadvantages
 Less interaction
 Lower morale
 Social loafing
13 - 20
Example: Team Size
• At Amazon.com, there is a “two pizza”

rule – if a team can’t be fed by two
pizzas it’s too large
• Harvard professor thinks there should
be no more than six
• Many companies have their own ideal
sizes
13 - 21
Roles & Norms
• Roles
 a socially determined expectation of how
an individual should behave in a specific
position
• Task roles, maintenance roles
• Norms
 general guidelines that most group or team
members follow
13 - 22
Why Norms are Enforced
• To help the group survive

• To clarify role expectations
• To help individuals avoid embarrassing
situations
• To emphasize the group’s important
values and identity
13 - 23
Cohesiveness & Groupthink
• Cohesiveness
 tendency of a group or team to stick
together
• Groupthink
 a cohesive group’s blind unwillingness to
consider alternatives
13 - 24
Ways to Build Collaborative Teams
• Investing in signature relationship practices
• Modeling collaborative practices
• Creating a “gift culture”
• Ensuring the requisite skills
• Supporting a strong sense of community
• Assigning team leaders that are both task
and relationship oriented
• Building on heritage relationships
• Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity
13 - 25
Symptoms of Groupthink
• Invulnerability, inherent morality, and

stereotyping of opposition
• Rationalization and self-censorship
• Illusion of unanimity, peer pressure, and
mindguards
• Groupthink versus “the wisdom of the
crowds”
13 - 26
Results of Groupthink
• Reduction in alternative ideas

• Limiting of other information
13 - 27
Preventing Groupthink
• Allow criticism
• Allow other
perspectives
• Allow for reality
checks
• Mix team
members
13 - 28
The Nature of Conflict
• Conflict
 process in which one party perceives that
its interests are being opposed or
negatively affected by another party
13 - 29
The Nature of Conflict
• Negative conflict
 conflict that hinders the organization’s
performance or threatens its interest
• Constructive conflict
 conflict that benefits the main purposes of
the organization and serves its interests
13 - 30
Relationship Between Level of
Conflict and Level of Performance
Figure 13.2
13 - 31
Seven Causes of Conflict
1. Competition for scarce resources

2. Time pressure
3. Inconsistent goals or reward systems
4. Ambiguous jurisdictions
5. Status differences
6. Personality clashes
7. Communication failures
13 - 32
Five Conflict-Handling Styles
• Avoiding - “Maybe the problem will go away”

• Accommodating – “Let’s do it your way”
• Forcing – “You have to do it my way”
• Compromising – “Let’s split the difference”
• Collaborating – “Let’s cooperate to reach a
win-win solution that benefits both of us”
13 - 33
Devices to Stimulate Constructive
Conflict
1. Spur competition among employees
2. Change the organization’s culture &
procedures
3. Bring in outsiders for new perspectives
4. Use programmed conflict
13 - 34
Programmed Conflict
• Devil’s advocacy
 role-playing criticism to test whether a
proposal is workable
• Dialectic method
 role-playing two sides of a proposal to test
whether it is workable
13 - 35
Teams
• Why are teams becoming

so critical?
• Will self directed teams
be effective?
 If so why?
 If not why not?
13 - 36

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Chapter Thirteen

Groups & Teams

McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, All Rights Reserved.

• Take baby steps and manage by results

1. Performance goals and feedback

• Small teams: 2-9 members

• Large Teams: 10-16 members

• At Amazon.com, there is a “two pizza”

• To help the group survive

• Invulnerability, inherent morality, and

• Reduction in alternative ideas

1. Competition for scarce resources

• Avoiding - “Maybe the problem will go away”

• Why are teams becoming

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