Jeff Bezos and Teamwork

CASE STUDY: MICROECONOMIC ANALYSIS: SUPPLY AND DEMAND 5

10 Understanding Work Teams

At SmugMug, an online photo sharing company, every day is a photo opportunity. If you’re hired there, you might be expected to enjoy photography, have extensive Web knowledge, and be willing to work in teams. You might even be expected to become a subject in photos the organization posts. But would you anticipate having to crawl through muddy trenches under barbed wire with your team as these employees have? They’ve just finished the hard-core 10–12-mile obstacle course experience provided by Tough Mudder, an organization that creates physical challenges for organizational teams like those at SmugMug.

The mission of Tough Mudder is simple: solidify teams through a shared experience. Co-founder Chris MacAskill said, “You get muddy and tired and beat up. It is like the Marines and boot camp. The more athletic help the less athletic because you want to finish together as a team. At the end, you are arm in arm, and there are big smiles and high-fives.” Tough Mudder events like the one pictured here teach values like mental grit by providing fun, success, and thrills. It seems to work, according to Lynn Gruber of Fortune, who remarked, “The teamwork and camaraderie out there was amazing.” To date, the organization boasts a track record of over 100 events, 1.5 million participants, 4,000 Tough Mudder tattoos, and a 95 percent participation rate.

Is Tough Mudding not your cup of tea? Then perhaps you should consider employment at Grid Connect Inc., a software firm in Illinois. The game there is ping pong, and “Everybody plays, nobody can opt out. You can take your frustrations out playing ping pong. When you aren’t playing, you can root for the underdogs,” said founder and CEO Mike Justice. He is the trophy holder and his father is the official scorekeeper, but still, he says, the organization’s tournaments enhance team building for his employees. “It’s a real confidence booster. It was one of the best things we ever did for morale.”

Perhaps old-fashioned athletic leagues are more your thing? Most companies have leagues for organized sports, which may or may not enhance their work teams. At Offerpop, a social-marketing firm, “The sports teams help to make everyone more comfortable with each other,” said CEO Wendell Landsford, although he says the real team building happens during postgame drinks. Jerry Schranz of public-relations agency Beckerman personally learned an important job skill while captain of the softball team. He observed, “It is very difficult to give up the ball as a starting pitcher, where you think that no one can pitch as well as you. It was something I had to learn to do: delegate to others and let it unfold.”

For all the good that intentional team-building recreation can do, note that programs such as Tough Mudder’s may be more successful than off-hours sports leagues. John Pinkham of PAN Communications Inc. was in charge of the Boston PR firm’s casual soccer team. He said, “Turns out the fun league we signed up for was super competitive, with ex-college players and Europeans who kicked the ball faster than I thought was possible.” In response, losers either tried to out-strategize the perpetual winners or quit. Those that stayed tried to have fun no matter the score. Pinkham said, “I think everyone was glad they played, and it brought us more together as colleagues and friends—just maybe not as teammates.”

Sources: B. Haislip, “Play Ball!” The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2014, R4; M. L. Shuffler, D. DiazGranados, and E. Salas, “There’s a Science for That: Team Development Interventions in Organizations,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 20, no. 6 (2011): 365–72; and Tough Mudder website,  www.toughmudder.com , accessed June 23, 2015.

Do teams that play together stay together, as the opening discussion suggests? There is definitely an upside to shared experiences, as we will find in this chapter. There may also be something about unique, unexpected challenges that bring teams together, as Tough Mudder claims. We are, however, cautioned to consider the effects of these “play” exercises, including possible discrimination against employees who are disabled or physically unfit. We will consider more types of team-building strategies, and teams in general, in this chapter.

Why Have Teams Become So Popular?

1. 1 Analyze the continued popularity of teams in organizations.

Why are teams popular? In short, because we believe they are effective. “A team of people happily committed to the project and to one another will outperform a brilliant individual every time,” writes Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard. 1  In some ways, he’s right. Teams can sometimes achieve feats an individual could never accomplish. 2  Teams are more flexible and responsive to changing events than traditional departments or other forms of permanent groupings. They can quickly assemble, deploy, refocus, and disband. They are an effective means to democratize organizations and increase employee involvement. And finally, research indicates that our involvement in teams positively shapes the way we think as individuals, introducing a collaborative mindset about even our personal decision making. 3

The fact that organizations have embraced teamwork doesn’t necessarily mean teams are always effective. Team members, as humans, can be swayed by fads and herd mentality that can lead them astray from the best decisions. What conditions affect their potential? How do members work together? Do we even like teams? Maybe not, according to the OB Poll. To answer these questions, let’s first distinguish between groups and teams.

OB Poll Is Teamwork a Good Thing?

Source: “University of Phoenix Survey Reveals Nearly Seven-in-Ten Workers Have Been Part of Dysfunctional Teams,” downloaded on June 9, 2013, from

Differences Between Groups and Teams

1. 2 Contrast groups and teams.

Groups and teams are not the same thing. In  Chapter 9 , we defined a group as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who work together to achieve particular objectives. A  workgroup  is a group that interacts primarily to share information and make decisions to help each member perform within his or her area of responsibility.

Workgroups have no need or opportunity to engage in collective work with joint effort, so the group’s performance is merely the summation of each member’s individual contribution. There is no positive synergy that would create an overall level of performance greater than the sum of the inputs. A workgroup is a collection of individuals doing their work, albeit with interaction and/or dependency.

A  work team , on the other hand, generates positive synergy through coordination. The individual efforts result in a level of performance greater than the sum of the individual inputs.

In both workgroups and work teams, there are often behavioral expectations of members, collective normalization efforts, active group dynamics, and some level of decision making (even if just informally about the scope of membership). Both may generate ideas, pool resources, or coordinate logistics such as work schedules; for the workgroup, however, this effort will be limited to information-gathering for decision makers outside the group.

Whereas we can think of a work team as a subset of a workgroup, the team is constructed to be purposeful (symbiotic) in its member interaction. The distinction between a workgroup and a work team should be kept even when the terms are mentioned interchangeably in differing contexts.  Exhibit 10-1  highlights the differences between them.

The definitions help clarify why organizations structure work processes by teams. Management is looking for positive synergy that will create increased performance. The extensive use of teams creates the potential for an organization to generate greater outputs with no increase in employee headcount. Notice, however, that we said potential. There is nothing magical that ensures the achievement of positive synergy in the creation of teams. Merely calling a group a team doesn’t automatically improve its performance. As we show later, effective teams have certain common characteristics. If management hopes to gain increases in organizational performance through the use of teams, their teams must possess these characteristics.

Types of Teams

1. 3 Contrast the five types of team arrangements.

Teams can make products, provide services, negotiate deals, coordinate projects, offer advice, and make decisions. 4  In this section, first we describe four common types of teams in organizations: problem-solving teams, self-managed work teams, cross-functional teams, and virtual teams (see  Exhibit 10-2 ). Then we will discuss multiteam systems, which utilize a “team of teams” and are becoming increasingly widespread as work increases in complexity.

Exhibit 2

Four Types of Teams

Problem-Solving Teams

Quality-control teams have been in use for many years. Originally seen most often in manufacturing plants, these were permanent teams that generally met at a regular time, sometimes weekly or daily, to address quality standards and any problems with the products made. Also, the medical field in particular has recently implemented quality teams to improve their services in patient care.  Problem-solving teams  like these rarely have the authority to unilaterally implement their suggestions, but if their recommendations are paired with implementation processes, some significant improvements can be realized.

Self-Managed Work Teams

As we discussed, problem-solving teams only make recommendations. Some organizations have gone further and created teams that also implement solutions and take responsibility for outcomes.

Self-managed work teams  are groups of employees (typically 10 to 15 in number) who perform highly related or interdependent jobs; these teams take on some supervisory responsibilities. 5  Typically, the responsibilities include planning and scheduling work, assigning tasks to members, making operating decisions, taking action on problems, and working with suppliers and customers. Fully self-managed work teams even select their own members who evaluate each other’s performance. When these teams are established, former supervisory positions take on decreased importance and are sometimes eliminated.

Research results on the effectiveness of self-managed work teams have not been uniformly positive. Some research indicates that self-managed teams may be more or less effective based on the degree to which team-promoting behaviors are rewarded. For example, one study of 45 self-managing teams found that when team members perceived that economic rewards such as pay were dependent on input from their teammates, performance improved for both individuals and the team as a whole. 6

A second area of research focus has been the impact of conflict on self-managed work team effectiveness. Some research indicates that self-managed teams are not effective when there is conflict. When disputes arise, members often stop cooperating and power struggles ensue, which lead to lower group performance. 7  However, other research indicates that when members feel confident they can speak up without being embarrassed, rejected, or punished by other team members—in other words, when they feel psychologically safe—conflict can be beneficial and boost team performance. 8

Thirdly, research has explored the effect of self-managed work teams on member behavior. Here again the findings are mixed. Although individuals on teams report higher levels of job satisfaction than other individuals, studies indicate they sometimes have higher absenteeism and turnover rates. One large-scale study of labor productivity in British establishments found that although using teams improved individual (and overall) labor productivity, no evidence supported the claim that self-managed teams performed better than traditional teams with less decision-making authority. 9  On the whole, it appears that for self-managing teams to be advantageous, a number of facilitating factors must be in place.

Cross-Functional Teams

Starbucks created a team of individuals from production, global PR, global communications, and U.S. marketing to develop the Via brand of instant coffee. The team’s suggestions resulted in a product that would be cost-effective to produce and distribute, and that was marketed with a tightly integrated, multifaceted strategy. 10  This example illustrates the use of  cross-functional teams , made up of employees from about the same hierarchical level but different work areas who come together to accomplish a task.

Harley-Davidson Motor Company uses cross-functional teams at all levels of its organization in creating new products, such as its first electric motorcycle, shown here. From product conception to launch, cross-functional teams include Harley employees from product planning, engineering, design, marketing, manufacturing, and purchasing.

Cross-functional teams are an effective means of allowing people from diverse areas within or even between organizations to exchange information, develop new ideas, solve problems, and coordinate complex projects. However, due to the high need for coordination, cross-functional teams are not simple to manage. First, it makes sense for power shifts to occur as different expertise is needed because the members are at roughly the same level in the organization, which creates leadership ambiguity. A climate of trust thus needs to be developed before shifts can happen without undue conflict. 11  Second, the early stages of development are often long, since members need to learn to work with higher levels of diversity and complexity. Third, it takes time to build trust and teamwork, especially among people with different experiences and perspectives.

Organizations have used horizontal, boundary-spanning teams for decades, and we would be hard-pressed to find a large organization or product launch that did not use them. Major automobile manufacturers—Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW, GM, Ford, and Chrysler—currently use this form of team to coordinate complex projects, as do other industries. For example, Cisco relies on specific cross-functional teams to identify and capitalize on new trends in several areas of the software market. Its teams are the equivalent of social-networking groups that collaborate in real time to identify new business opportunities in the field and then implement them from the bottom up. 12

In sum, the strength of traditional cross-functional teams is the collaborative effort of individuals with diverse skills from a variety of disciplines. When the unique perspectives of these members are considered, these teams can be very effective.

Virtual Teams

The teams described in the preceding section do their work face-to-face, whereas  virtual teams  use computer technology to unite physically dispersed members and achieve a common goal. 13  They collaborate online—using communication links such as wide-area networks, corporate social media, videoconferencing, and e-mail—whether members are nearby or continents apart. Nearly all teams do at least some of their work remotely.

Virtual teams should be managed differently than face-to-face teams in an office, partially because virtual team members may not interact along traditional hierarchical patterns. Because of the complexity of interactions, research indicates that shared leadership of virtual teams may significantly enhance team performance, although the concept is still in development. 14  For virtual teams to be effective, management should ensure that (1) trust is established among members (one inflammatory remark in an e-mail can severely undermine team trust), (2) progress is monitored closely (so the team doesn’t lose sight of its goals and no team member “disappears”), and (3) the efforts and products of the team are publicized throughout the organization (so the team does not become invisible). 15

It would be a mistake to think virtual teams are an easy substitute for face-to-face teams. While the geographical reach and immediacy of online communication make virtual teams a natural development, managers must make certain this type of team is the optimal choice for the desired outcome and then maintain an oversight role throughout the collaboration.

Multiteam Systems

The types of teams we’ve described so far are typically smaller, standalone teams, though their activities relate to the broader objectives of the organization. As tasks become more complex, teams often grow in size. Increases in team size are accompanied by higher coordination demands, creating a tipping point at which the addition of another member does more harm than good. To solve this problem, organizations use  multiteam systems , collections of two or more interdependent teams that share a superordinate goal. In other words, multiteam systems are a “team of teams.” 16

To picture a multiteam system, imagine the coordination of response needed after a major car accident. There is the emergency medical services team, which responds first and transports the injured to the hospital. An emergency room team then takes over, providing medical care, followed by a recovery team. Although the emergency services team, emergency room team, and recovery team are technically independent, their activities are interdependent, and the success of one depends on the success of the others. Why? Because they all share the higher goal of saving lives.

An Ethical Choice

The Size of Your Meeting’s Carbon Footprint

Despite being in different countries, or even on different continents, many teams in geographically dispersed locations communicate without regularly meeting face-to-face, and may never meet each other in person. Although the merits of face-to-face versus electronic communication have been debated, there may be a strong ethical argument for virtual teams.

Keeping team members where they are, as opposed to having them travel every time they need to meet, may be in line with corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. A very large proportion of airline, rail, and car transport is for business purposes and contributes greatly to global carbon dioxide emissions. When teams are able to meet virtually rather than face-to-face, they dramatically reduce their carbon footprint.

In a globally connected world, how might you minimize your organization’s environmental impact from business travel? Several tips might get you started thinking about ways that virtual teams can be harnessed for greater sustainability:

1. Encourage all team members to think about whether a face-to-face meeting is really necessary. Try to utilize alternative communication methods whenever possible.

2. Communicate as much as possible through virtual means. This includes e-mail, telephone calls, and videoconferencing.

3. When traveling to team meetings, choose the most environmentally responsible travel methods possible. Also, check the environmental profile of hotels before booking rooms.

4. If the environmental savings are not enough motivation to reduce travel, consider the financial savings. According to one survey, businesses spend about 8 to 12 percent of their entire budget on travel. Communicating electronically can therefore result in two benefits: (1) it’s cheaper and (2) it’s good for the environment.

Sources: P. Tilstone, “Cut Carbon . . . and Bills,” Director, May 2009, 54; L. C. Latimer, “6 Strategies for Sustainable Business Travel,” Greenbiz, February 11, 2011,  www.greenbiz.com ; and F. Gebhart, “Travel Takes a Big Bite out of Corporate Expenses,” Travel Market Report, May 30, 2013, downloaded June 9, 2013, from  www.travelmarketreport.com .

Some factors that make smaller, more traditional teams effective do not necessarily apply to multiteam systems and can even hinder their performance. One study showed that multiteam systems performed better when they had “boundary spanners” whose jobs were to coordinate with members of the other subteams. This reduced the need for some team member communication, which was helpful because it reduced coordination demands. 17  Leadership of multiteam systems is also much different than for standalone teams. While leadership of all teams affects team performance, a multiteam leader must both facilitate coordination between teams and lead each team. Research indicated teams that received more attention and engagement from the organization’s leaders felt more empowered, which made them more effective as they sought to solve their own problems. 18

In general, a multiteam system is the best choice either when a team has become too large to be effective, or when teams with distinct functions need to be highly coordinated.

Creating Effective Teams

1. 4 Identify the characteristics of effective teams.

Teams are often created deliberately but sometimes evolve organically. Take the rise of team “hives” over the past 5 years, for an organic example. Freelancing is typically the solo work of people who are highly specialized in their fields and can provide expertise to organizations on a short-term basis. The difficulty is for the freelancers to effectively market themselves to organizations, and for organizations to find freelancers who fit their needs. To bridge this gap, freelancers form teams with other freelancers from complementary specialties to present a cohesive working unit—a hive—to clients. This team-based approach has proven very successful. 19

Many people have tried to identify factors related to team effectiveness. To help, some studies have organized what was once a large list of characteristics into a relatively focused model. 20   Exhibit 10-3  summarizes what we currently know about what makes teams effective. As you’ll see, it builds on many of the group concepts introduced in  Chapter 9 .

Exhibit 3

Team Effectiveness Model

In considering the team effectiveness model, keep in mind two points. First, teams differ in form and structure. The model attempts to generalize across all varieties of teams but avoids rigidly applying its predictions to all teams. 21  Use it as a guide. Second, the model assumes teamwork is preferable to individual work. Creating “effective” teams when individuals can do the job better is like perfectly solving the wrong problem. Third, let’s consider what team effectiveness means in this model. Typically, team effectiveness includes objective measures of the team’s productivity, managers’ ratings of the team’s performance, and aggregate measures of member satisfaction.

We can organize the key components of effective teams into three general categories. First are the resources and other contextual influences that make teams effective. The second relates to the team’s composition. Finally, process variables are events within the team that influence effectiveness. We will explore each of these components next.

Team Context: What Factors Determine Whether Teams Are Successful?

The four contextual factors most significantly related to team performance are adequate resources, effective leadership, a climate of trust, and a performance evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions.

ADEQUATE RESOURCES Teams are part of a larger organization system; every work team relies on resources outside the group to sustain it. A scarcity of resources directly reduces the ability of a team to perform its job effectively and achieve its goals. As one study concluded after looking at 13 factors related to group performance, “perhaps one of the most important characteristics of an effective work group is the support the group receives from the organization.” 22  This support includes timely information, proper equipment, adequate staffing, encouragement, and administrative assistance.

LEADERSHIP AND STRUCTURE Teams can’t function if they can’t agree on who is to do what and ensure all members share the workload. Agreeing on the specifics of work and how they fit together to integrate individual skills requires leadership and structure, either from management or from team members themselves. In self-managed teams, members absorb many of the duties typically assumed by managers. A manager’s job then becomes managing outside (rather than inside) the team.

As we mentioned before, leadership is especially important in multiteam systems. Here, leaders need to delegate responsibility to teams and play the role of facilitator, making sure the teams work together rather than against one another. 23

CLIMATE OF TRUST Trust is the foundation of leadership; it allows a team to accept and commit to the leader’s goals and decisions. Members of effective teams exhibit trust in their leaders. 24  They also trust each other. Interpersonal trust among team members facilitates cooperation, reduces the need to monitor each other’s behavior, and bonds individuals through the belief that members won’t take advantage of them. Members are more likely to take risks and expose vulnerabilities when they can trust others on their team. The overall level of trust in a team is important, but the way trust is dispersed among team members also matters. Trust levels that are asymmetric and imbalanced between team members can mitigate the performance advantages of a high overall level of trust—in such cases, coalitions form that often undermine the team as a whole. 25

Trust is a perception that can be vulnerable to shifting conditions in a team environment. Also, trust is not unequivocally desirable. For instance, recent research in Singapore found that, in high-trust teams, individuals are less likely to claim and defend personal ownership of their ideas, but individuals who do still claim personal ownership are rated as lower contributors by team members. 26  This “punishment” by the team may reflect resentments that create negative relationships, increased conflicts, and reduced performance.

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION AND REWARD SYSTEM Individual performance evaluations and incentives may interfere with the development of high-performance teams. So, in addition to evaluating and rewarding employees for their individual contributions, management should utilize hybrid performance systems that incorporate an individual member component to recognize individual contributions and a group reward to recognize positive team outcomes. 27  Group-based appraisals, profit-sharing, small-group incentives, and other system modifications can reinforce team effort and commitment.

Team Composition

Maria Contreras-Sweet, head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, said, “When I’m building a team, I’m looking for people who are resourceful. I need people who are flexible, and I really need people who are discreet. . . . Discreetness also speaks to integrity.” 28  These are good qualities, but not all that we should consider when staffing teams. The team composition category includes variables that relate to how teams should be staffed: the abilities and personalities of team members, allocation of roles, diversity, cultural differences, size of the team, and members’ preferences for teamwork. As you can expect, opinions vary widely about the type of members leaders want on their teams.

ABILITIES OF MEMBERS It’s true we occasionally read about an athletic team of mediocre players who, because of excellent coaching, determination, and precision teamwork, beat a far more talented group. But such cases make the news precisely because they are unusual. A team’s performance depends in part on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of individual members. 29  Abilities set limits on what members can do and how effectively they will perform on a team.Members of a research team at the innovation lab of Swiss bank UBS are testing digital, virtual reality, and other new technologies to attract a young generation of investors and to help current clients visualize complex investment portfolios. Team members have the technical expertise and skills needed to function as a high-ability team.

Source: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

Research reveals insights into team composition and performance. First, when solving a complex problem such as reengineering an assembly line, high-ability teams—composed of mostly intelligent members—do better than lower-ability teams. High-ability teams are also more adaptable to changing situations; they can more effectively apply existing knowledge to new problems.

MYTH OR SCIENCE?

Team Members Who Are “Hot” Should Make the Play

Before we tell you whether this statement is true or false, we need to take a step back and ask: “Can individuals go on ‘hot’ streaks?” In teams, and especially in sports, we often hear about players who are on a streak and have the “hot hand.” Basketball player LeBron James scores five baskets in a row, golfer Rory McIlroy makes three birdies in a row for the European Ryder Cup team, and tennis player Serena Williams hits four aces in a row during a doubles match with her sister Venus. Most people (around 90 percent) believe LeBron, Rory, and Serena score well because they are on a hot streak, performing above their average.

Although people believe in the hot hand, the scores tell the story. About half the relevant studies have shown that the hot hand is possible, while the remaining half show it is not. But perception can influence reality, so perhaps the more important question is whether belief in the hot hand affects teams’ strategies. One study of volleyball players showed that coaches and players allocate more balls to players who are believed to have the hot hand. Is this a good strategy? If the hot player’s performance is actually lower than her teammates’, then giving her more balls to hit will hurt the team because the better players aren’t getting enough chances to hit, while she gets more chances to perform.

Considering the research to date, then, the opening statement appears to be false.

Sources: M. Raab, B. Gula, and G. Gigerenzer, “The Hot Hand Exists in Volleyball and Is Used for Allocation Decisions,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 18, no. 1 (2012): 81–94; T Gilovich, R. Vallone, and A. Tversky, “The Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences,” Cognitive Psychology 17 (1985): 295–314; and M. Bar-Eli, S. Avugos, and M. Raab, “Twenty Years of ‘Hot Hand’ Research: The Hot Hand Phenomenon: Review and Critique,” Psychology, Sport, and Exercise 7 (2006): 525–53.

Finally, the ability of the team’s leader matters. Smart team leaders help less intelligent team members when they struggle with a task. A less intelligent leader can, conversely, neutralize the effect of a high-ability team. 30

PERSONALITY OF MEMBERS We demonstrated in  Chapter 5  that personality significantly influences individual behavior. Some dimensions identified in the Big Five personality model are particularly relevant to team effectiveness. 31  Conscientiousness is especially important to teams. Conscientious people are good at backing up other team members and sensing when their support is truly needed. Conscientious teams also have other advantages—one study found that behavioral tendencies such as organization, achievement orientation, and endurance were all related to higher levels of team performance. 32

Team composition can be based on individual personalities to good effect. Suppose an organization needs to create 20 teams of 4 people each and has 40 highly conscientious people and 40 who score low on conscientiousness. Would the organization be better off (1) forming 10 teams of highly conscientious people and 10 teams of members low on conscientiousness, or (2) “seeding” each team with 2 people who scored high and 2 who scored low on conscientiousness? Perhaps surprisingly, evidence suggests option 1 is the best choice; performance across the teams will be higher if the organization forms 10 highly conscientious teams and 10 teams low in conscientiousness. The reason is that a team with varying conscientiousness levels will not work to the peak performance of its highly conscientious members. Instead, a group normalization dynamic (or simple resentment) will complicate interactions and force the highly conscientious members to lower their expectations, thus reducing the group’s performance. 33

What about the other traits? Teams with a high level of openness to experience tend to perform better, and research indicates that constructive task conflict enhances the effect. Open team members communicate better with one another and throw out more ideas, which makes teams composed of open people more creative and innovative. 34  Task conflict also enhances performance for teams with high levels of emotional stability. 35  It’s not so much that the conflict itself improves performance for these teams, but that teams characterized by openness and emotional stability are able to handle conflict and leverage it to improve performance. The minimum level of team member agreeableness matters, too: teams do worse when they have one or more highly disagreeable members, and a wide span in individual levels of agreeableness can lower productivity. Research is not clear on the outcomes of extraversion, but a recent study indicated that a high mean level of extraversion in a team can increase the level of helping behaviors, particularly in a climate of cooperation. 36  Thus the personality traits of individuals are as important to teams as the overall personality characteristics of the team.

ALLOCATION OF ROLES Teams have different needs, and members should be selected to ensure all the various roles are filled. A study of 778 major league baseball teams over a 21-year period highlights the importance of assigning roles appropriately. 37  As you might expect, teams with more experienced and skilled members performed better. However, the experience and skill of those in core roles who handled more of the workflow of the team, and were central to all work processes (in this case, pitchers and catchers), were especially vital. In other words, put your most able, experienced, and conscientious workers in the most central roles in a team.

We can identify nine potential team roles (see  Exhibit 10-4 ). Successful work teams have selected people to play all these roles based on their skills and preferences. 38  (On many teams, individuals will play multiple roles.) To increase the likelihood team members will work well together, managers need to understand the individual strengths each person can bring to a team, select members with their strengths in mind, and allocate work assignments that fit with members’ preferred styles.

DIVERSITY OF MEMBERS In  Chapter 9 , we discussed the effect of diversity on groups. How does team diversity affect team performance? The degree to which members of a work unit (group, team, or department) share a common demographic attribute, such as age, sex, race, educational level, or length of service in the organization, is the subject of  organizational demography . Organizational demography suggests that attributes such as age or the date of joining should help predict turnover. The logic goes like this: Turnover will be greater among those with dissimilar experiences because communication is more difficult and conflict is more likely. Increased conflict makes membership less attractive, so employees are more likely to quit. Similarly, the losers of a conflict are more apt to leave voluntarily or be forced out. 39  The conclusion is that diversity negatively affects team performance.

Many of us hold the optimistic view that diversity should be a good thing—diverse teams should benefit from differing perspectives. Two meta-analytic reviews show, however, that demographic diversity is essentially unrelated to team performance, while a third review suggests that race and gender diversity are actually negatively related to team performance. 40  Other research findings are mixed. One qualifier is that gender and ethnic diversity have more negative effects in occupations dominated by white or male employees, but in more demographically balanced occupations, diversity is less of a problem. Diversity in function, education, and expertise are positively related to team performance, but these effects are small and depend on the situation.

Proper leadership can improve the performance of diverse teams. 41  For example, one study of 68 teams in China found that teams diverse in knowledge, skills, and ways of approaching problems were more creative, but only when their leaders were transformational (see  Chapter 12  for definition) and inspiring. 42

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES We have discussed research on team diversity regarding a number of differences. But what about cultural differences? Evidence indicates cultural diversity interferes with team processes, at least in the short term, 43  but let’s dig a little deeper: what about differences in cultural status? Though it’s debatable, people with higher cultural status are usually in the majority or ruling race group of their nations. Researchers in the United Kingdom found that cultural status differences affected team performance, whereby individuals in teams with more high cultural-status members than low cultural-status members realized improved performance . . . for every member. 44  This suggests not that diverse teams should be filled with individuals who have high cultural status in their countries, but that we should be aware of how people identify with their cultural status even in diverse group settings.

In general, cultural diversity seems to be an asset for tasks that call for a variety of viewpoints. But culturally heterogeneous teams have more difficulty learning to work with each other and solving problems. The good news is that these difficulties seem to dissipate with time.

SIZE OF TEAMS Most experts agree that keeping teams small is key to improving group effectiveness. 45  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos uses the “two-pizza” rule, saying, “If it takes more than two pizzas to feed the team, the team is too big.” 46  Psychologist George Miller claimed “the magical number [is] seven, plus or minus two,” as the ideal team size. 47  Author and Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard writes, “Bigger teams almost never correlate with a greater chance of success” because the potential connections between people grow exponentially as team size increases, complicating communications. 48

Career OBjectives

Is it wrong that I’d rather have guys on my team?

Please don’t call me sexist; women are great colleagues and equally effective managers, but I’d rather have men on my team. It’s more relaxing for me, and for the other guys I think, because we naturally understand each other and can talk freely. The teams with all men that I’ve been in have all been very productive.

— Jorge

Dear Jorge,

With all the talk currently focused on gender diversity in organizations, your viewpoint is refreshingly honest. And your preferences are not uncommon. Researchers who studied 8 years of employee surveys from a large U.S. organization found that individuals were happier on teams mainly of their own gender, whereas those on diverse teams reported less happiness, trust, and cooperation. Researcher Sara Fisher Ellison noted, “People are more comfortable around other people who are like them.”

In some ways, the preference for our own gender in teams is an ugly truth. After all, if there hadn’t been gender diversity initiatives and protections, a majority of professional positions may still be closed to women in masculine cultures like Japan, Austria, and Venezuela (see Hofstede’s cultural values in  Chapter 5 ). The value system in many countries has fortunately changed, with increased recognition of team diversity’s potential for higher morale, trust, and satisfaction. Notice that these are values, as opposed to the reported reality from the paragraph above. Ellison concluded that there is a “mismatch between the kind of workplace people think they would like and the actual workplace that would make them happier.”

Don’t think this is your ticket to male-only teams, though. Happiness aside, this study found that diverse teams realized significantly greater revenues, productivity, and performance. Other research in Spain indicated that gender-diverse teams realize novel solutions and radical innovation at a greater rate. Still other research suggested that gender-diverse teams perform better than male-dominated ones in sales and profits. The contextual climate is key, though. One meta-analysis found that gender equality and collectivism were important conditions for task performance in diverse teams; a Danish study indicated that diverse top management teams realized higher financial performance only when the structure supported cross-functional team work; and a study in South Korea indicated that cooperative group norms can lower the negative effects of gender diversity.

What all this means for you is that, while you may naturally prefer to work with men, it’s not good for business. You would be better off putting your efforts into creating an egalitarian atmosphere and choosing your teammates based on what they can contribute to your team.

Sources: C. Diaz-Garcia, A. Gonzalez-Moreno, and F. Jose Saez-Martinez, “Gender Diversity within R&D Teams: Its Impact on Radicalness of Innovation,” Innovation-Management Policy & Practice 15, no. 2 (2013): 149–60; S. Hoogedoorn, H. Oosterbeek, and M. van Praag, “The Impact of Gender Diversity on the Performance of Business Teams: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” Management Science 59, no. 7 (2013): 1514–28; N. Opstrup and A. R. Villadsen, “The Right Mix? Gender Diversity in Top Management Teams and Financial Performance,” Public Administration Review, 2015, 291–301; M. Schneid, R. Isidor, C. Li, et al., “The Influence of Cultural Context on the Relationship between Gender Diversity and Team Performance: A Meta-Analysis,” International Journal of Human Resource Management 26, no. 6 (2015): 733–56; J. Y. Seong and D.-S. Hong, “Gender Diversity: How Can We Facilitate Its Positive Effects on Teams?” Social Behavior and Personality 41, no. 3 (2013): 497–508; and R. E. Silverman, “Do Men and Women Like Working Together?” The Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2014, D2.

The opinions provided here are of the managers and authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of their organizations. The authors or managers are not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. In no event will the authors or managers, or their related partnerships or corporations thereof, be liable to you or anyone else for any decision made or action taken in reliance on the opinions provided here.

Generally speaking, the most effective teams have five to nine members. Experts suggest using the smallest number of people who can do the task. Unfortunately, managers often err by making teams too large. It may require only four or five members to develop an array of views and skills, while coordination problems can increase as team members are added. When teams have excess members, cohesiveness and mutual accountability decline, social loafing increases, and people communicate less. Members of large teams have trouble coordinating with one another, especially under time pressure. When a natural working unit is larger and you want a team effort, consider breaking the group into subteams. 49

A Japanese nurse (left) served on a seven-member medical team formed by the International Committee of the Red Cross and deployed to the Philippines after a typhoon hit Mindanoa Island. The small team of health care workers had the capacity to respond quickly and effectively in providing patients with emergency medical care.

Source: Kyodo/AP Images

MEMBER PREFERENCES Not every employee is a team player. Given the option, many employees will select themselves out of team participation. When people who prefer to work alone are required to team up, there is a direct threat to the team’s morale and to individual member satisfaction. 50  This suggests that, when selecting team members, managers should consider individual preferences along with abilities, personalities, and skills. High-performing teams are likely to be composed of people who prefer working as part of a group.

Team Processes

The final category related to team effectiveness includes process variables such as member commitment to a common purpose, establishment of specific team goals, team efficacy, team identity, team cohesion, mental models, a managed level of conflict, and minimized social loafing. These will be especially important in larger teams and in teams that are highly interdependent. 51

Why are processes important to team effectiveness? Teams should create outputs greater than the sum of their inputs.  Exhibit 10-5  illustrates how group processes can have an impact on a group’s actual effectiveness. 52  Teams are often used in research laboratories because they can draw on the diverse skills of various individuals to produce more meaningful research than researchers working independently—that is, they produce positive synergy, and their process gains exceed their process losses.

Exhibit 5

Effects of Group Processes

COMMON PLAN AND PURPOSE Effective teams begin by analyzing the team’s mission, developing goals to achieve that mission, and creating strategies for achieving the goals. Teams that consistently perform better have a clear sense of what needs to be done and how. 53  This sounds obvious, but many teams ignore this fundamental process.

Members of successful teams put a tremendous amount of time and effort into discussing, shaping, and agreeing on a purpose that belongs to them collectively and individually. This common purpose, when accepted by the team, becomes what GPS is to a ship captain: It provides direction and guidance under any conditions. Like a ship following the wrong course, teams that don’t have good planning skills are doomed, executing the wrong plan. 54  Teams should agree on whether their purpose is to learn about and master a task or simply to perform the task; evidence suggests that differing perspectives on learning versus performance lead to lower levels of team performance overall. 55

Effective teams show  reflexivity , meaning they reflect on and adjust their purpose when necessary. A team must have a good plan, but it needs to be willing and able to adapt when conditions call for it. 56  Interestingly, some evidence suggests that teams high in reflexivity are better able to adapt to conflicting plans and goals among team members. 57

SPECIFIC GOALS Successful teams translate their common purpose into specific, measurable, and realistic performance goals. Specific goals facilitate clear communication. They help teams maintain their focus on getting results.

Consistent with the research on individual goals, team goals should be challenging. Difficult but achievable goals raise team performance on those criteria for which they’re set. So, for instance, goals for quantity tend to increase quantity, goals for accuracy increase accuracy, and so on. 58

TEAM EFFICACY Effective teams have confidence in themselves; they believe they can succeed. We call this  team efficacy . 59  Teams that have been successful raise their beliefs about future success, which, in turn, motivates them to work harder. In addition, teams that have a shared knowledge of individual capabilities can strengthen the link between team members’ self-efficacy and their individual creativity because members can more effectively solicit informed opinions from their teammates. 60  What can management do to increase team efficacy? Two options are helping the team achieve small successes that build confidence, and providing training to improve members’ technical and interpersonal skills. The greater the abilities of team members, the more likely the team will develop confidence and the ability to deliver on that confidence.

TEAM IDENTITY In  Chapter 9 , we discussed the important role of social identity in people’s lives. When people connect emotionally with the groups they’re in, they are more likely to invest in their relationship with those groups. It’s the same with teams. For example, research with soldiers in the Netherlands indicated that individuals who felt included and respected by team members became more willing to work hard for their teams, even though as soldiers they were already called upon to be dedicated to their units. Therefore, by recognizing individuals’ specific skills and abilities, as well as creating a climate of respect and inclusion, leaders and members can foster positive  team identity  and improved team outcomes. 61

Organizational identity is important, too. Rarely do teams operate in a vacuum—more often teams interact with other teams, requiring interteam coordination. Individuals with a positive team identity but without a positive organizational identity can become fixed to their teams and unwilling to coordinate with other teams within the organization. 62

TEAM COHESION Have you ever been a member of a team that really “gelled,” one in which team members felt connected? The term  team cohesion  means members are emotionally attached to one another and motivated toward the team because of their attachment. Team cohesion is a useful tool to predict team outcomes. For example, a large study in China recently indicated that if team cohesion is high and tasks are complex, costly investments in promotions, rewards, training, and so forth yield greater profitable team creativity. Teams with low cohesion and simple tasks, on the other hand, are not likely to respond to incentives with greater creativity. 63

Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover (on computer) and his entrepreneurial team are highly cohesive. The company describes itself as a “tight-knit team” whose members share a love of new tech products, care about people, and are passionate about building communities that celebrate tech creations.

Source: LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group/TNS/Landov

Team cohesion is a strong predictor of team performance such that when cohesion is harmed, performance may be, too. Negative relationships are one driver of reduced cohesion. To mitigate this effect, teams can foster high levels of interdependence and high-quality interpersonal interactions.

MENTAL MODELS Effective teams share accurate  mental models —organized mental representations of the key elements within a team’s environment that team members share. 64  (If team mission and goals pertain to what a team needs to be effective, mental models pertain to how a team does its work.) If team members have the wrong mental models, which is particularly likely in teams under acute stress, their performance suffers. 65  One review of 65 independent studies found that teams with shared mental models engaged in more frequent interactions with one another, were more motivated, had more positive attitudes toward their work, and had higher levels of objectively-rated performance. 66  If team members have different ideas about how to do things, however, the team will fight over methods rather than focus on what needs to be done. 67

Individuals who normally function in action teams—teams with specialists engaged in intense, interdependent, and unpredictable tasks—are likely to share mental models. Even though they are often under acute stress, their performance levels can be high because the stress has been normalized through the expected context. These action teams have learned that the best way to share mental models is to voice them. An anesthetic team in a hospital is one example of an action team with shared mental models. For example, research in Switzerland found that anesthetic teams communicated two distinct types of messages while in an operation: vocally monitoring each others’ performance (not to criticize but to keep a vocal record of events), and “talking to the room” (announcements to everyone such as “Patient’s blood pressure is dropping”). The study found that high- and low-performing teams communicated in these ways equally often; what mattered to performance was the sequencing of the communication to maintain a shared mental model. High-performing teams followed up monitoring dialogue with assistance and instructions, and talking-to-the-room dialogue with further team dialogue. 68  The message seems simple: to maintain shared mental models, share conversation about what is happening while the team is in operation!

CONFLICT LEVELS Conflict has a complex relationship with team performance, and it’s not necessarily bad. Relationship conflicts—those based on interpersonal incompatibility, tension, and animosity toward others—are almost always dysfunctional. However, when teams are performing nonroutine activities, disagreements about task content—called task conflicts—stimulate discussion, promote critical assessment of problems and options, and can lead to better team decisions. According to one study conducted in China, moderate levels of task conflict during the initial phases of team performance were positively related to team creativity, but both very low and very high levels of task conflict were negatively related to team performance. 69  In other words, both too much and too little disagreement about how a team should initially perform a creative task can inhibit performance.

The way conflicts are resolved can make the difference between effective and ineffective teams. A study of ongoing comments made by 37 autonomous work groups showed that effective teams resolved conflicts by explicitly discussing the issues, whereas ineffective teams had unresolved conflicts that were focused more on personalities and the way things were said. 70

Which teams are more likely to have conflicts than others? It’s not a simple answer. While we may presume that diversity increases conflicts, the answer is likely to be much more subtle than that. For example, recent research in Spain found that when individual team members varied greatly in their perceptions of organizational support, task conflict increased, communication decreased, and ultimately team performance suffered. 71  If the researchers had instead compared only the average level of organizational support given to the team, rather than how members perceived the support, they would have missed the correct causal links. Thus we need to be careful not to overgeneralize.

SOCIAL LOAFING As we noted earlier, individuals can engage in social loafing and coast on the group’s effort when their particular contributions (or lack thereof) can’t be identified. Effective teams undermine this tendency by making members individually and jointly accountable for the team’s purpose, goals, and approach. 72  Therefore, members should be clear on what they are individually and jointly responsible for on the team.

 Personal Inventory Assessments 

Team Development Behaviors

Take this assessment to learn more about behavior in teams.

Turning Individuals into Team Players

1. 5 Explain how organizations can create team players.

We’ve made a case for the value and growing popularity of teams. But many people are not inherently team players, and many organizations have historically nurtured individual accomplishments. Teams often fit well in countries that score high on collectivism, but what if an organization wants to introduce teams into a work population of individuals born and raised in an individualistic society?

Here are options for managers trying to turn individuals into team players.

Selecting: Hiring Team Players

Some people already possess the interpersonal skills to be effective team players. When hiring team members, be sure candidates can fulfill their team roles as well as technical requirements. 73

Creating teams often means resisting the urge to hire the best talent no matter what. For example, the New York Knicks professional basketball team pays Carmelo Anthony well because he scores a lot of points for his team; but statistics show he takes more shots than other highly paid players in the league, which means fewer shots for his teammates. 74

As a final consideration, personal traits appear to make some people better candidates for working in diverse teams. Teams made of members who like to work through difficult mental puzzles also seem more effective and able to capitalize on the multiple points of view that arise from diversity in age and education. 75

Training: Creating Team Players

Training specialists conduct exercises that allow employees to experience the satisfaction teamwork can provide. Workshops help employees improve their problem-solving, communication, negotiation, conflict-management, and coaching skills. L’Oréal, for example, found that successful sales teams required much more than a staff of high-ability salespeople. “What we didn’t account for was that many members of our top team in sales had been promoted because they had excellent technical and executional skills,” said L’Oréal’s senior VP David Waldock. As a result of introducing purposeful team training, Waldock says, “We are no longer a team just on paper, working independently. We have a real group dynamic now, and it’s a good one.” 76  An effective team doesn’t develop overnight—it takes time.

New engineering employees of India’s Tata Consultancy Services work in teams to construct paper boats during a team-building exercise at the firm’s training center. Creating team players is essential to the success of TCS as employees must collaborate and work cohesively in providing IT consulting services and business solutions for global clients.

Source: Namas Bhojani/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Rewarding: Providing Incentives to Be a Good Team Player

A traditional organization’s reward system must be reworked to encourage cooperative efforts rather than competitive ones. 77  Hallmark Cards Inc. added to its basic individual-incentive system an annual bonus based on the achievement of team goals. Whole Foods directs most of its performance-based rewards toward team performance. As a result, teams select new members carefully so they will contribute to team effectiveness (and, thus, team bonuses). 78  It is usually best to set a cooperative tone as soon as possible in the life of a team. As we already noted, teams that switch from competitive to cooperative do not immediately share information, and they still tend to make rushed, poor-quality decisions. 79  Apparently, the low trust typical of the competitive group will not be readily replaced by high trust with a quick change in reward systems.

Promotions, pay raises, and other forms of recognition should be given to individuals who work effectively as team members by training new colleagues, sharing information, helping resolve team conflicts, and mastering needed new skills. This doesn’t mean individual contributions should be ignored; rather, they should be balanced with selfless contributions to the team.

Finally, don’t forget the intrinsic rewards, such as camaraderie, that employees can receive from teamwork. It’s exciting to be part of a successful team. The opportunity for personal development of self and teammates can be a very satisfying and rewarding experience.

Beware! Teams Aren’t Always the Answer

1. 6 Decide when to use individuals instead of teams.

Teamwork takes more time and often more resources than individual work. Teams have increased communication demands, conflicts to manage, and meetings to run. So, the benefits of using teams have to exceed the costs, and that’s not always possible. 80

How do you know whether the work of your group would be better done in teams? You can apply three tests. 81  First, can the work be done better by more than one person? Good indicators are the complexity of the work and the need for different perspectives. Simple tasks that don’t require diverse input are probably better left to individuals. Second, does the work create a common purpose or set of goals for the people in the group that is more than the aggregate of individual goals? Many service departments of new-vehicle dealers have introduced teams that link customer-service people, mechanics, parts specialists, and sales representatives. Such teams can better manage collective responsibility for ensuring customer needs are properly met.

The final test is to determine whether the members of the group are interdependent. Using teams makes sense when there is interdependence among tasks—the success of the whole depends on the success of each one, and the success of each one depends on the success of the others. Soccer, for instance, is an obvious team sport. Success requires a great deal of coordination among interdependent players. Conversely, except possibly for relays, swim teams are not really teams. They’re groups of individuals performing individually, whose total performance is merely the aggregate summation of their individual performances.

Summary

Few trends have influenced jobs as much as the massive movement of teams into the workplace. Working on teams requires employees to cooperate with others, share information, confront differences, and sublimate personal interests for the greater good of the team. Understanding the distinctions between problem-solving, self-managed, cross-functional, and virtual teams as well as multiteam systems helps determine the appropriate applications for team-based work. Concepts such as reflexivity, team efficacy, team identity, team cohesion, and mental models bring to light important issues relating to team context, composition, and processes. For teams to function optimally, careful attention must be given to hiring, creating, and rewarding team players. Still, effective organizations recognize that teams are not always the best method for getting the work done efficiently. Careful discernment and an understanding of organizational behavior are needed.