selves mutually accountable.”^2 Groups become teams when they meet the following
conditions:^3- Team members share leadership.
- Both individuals and the team as a whole share accountabilityfor the work of
the team. - The team develops its own purposeor mission.
- The team works on problem solvingcontinuously, rather than just at scheduled
meeting times. - The team’s measure of effectivenessis the team’s outcomes and goals, not indi-
vidual outcomes and goals.
Thus while not all groups are teams, all teams can be considered groups. Much of what
we discuss in this chapter applies equally well to both. We will offer some suggestions
on creating effective teams later in the chapter. This chapter’s Point/Counterpointon
page 177 discusses whether sports teams are good models for helping us understand how
teams function in the workplace.
WHYHAV E TEAMS BECOMESOPOPULAR?
When Glenforest Secondary School teachers decided that students should enter the Canada
FIRST Robotics Games, they could have asked each of the smartest kids in the science class to
build their own robots. This is not what the teachers and students chose to do, however.
Instead, they created a team. Was this a reasonable way for Glenforest Secondary to proceed?Pick up almost any business newspaper or magazine today and you will read how teams
have become an essential part of the way business is done in companies such as Zellers,
Xerox, Sears Canada, General Electric, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Apple Computer,
DaimlerChrysler AG, 3M, Australian Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, and London Life152 Part 2Striving for Performance
2 Does everyone use
teams?Many employees are asked to
work in teams in order to accom-
plish their tasks. In a self-man-
aged work team, such as the one
from Xerox shown here, members
make decisions about how to
manage and schedule production,
and also monitor the quality of
their output.