each year, which helps motivate employees to work with their
teams, rather than as individuals.
Adequate Resources
All work teams rely on resources outside the team to sustain
them. A scarcity of resources directly reduces the ability of a
team to perform its job effectively. As one set of researchers
concluded, after looking at 13 factors potentially related to
team performance, “perhaps one of the most important char-
acteristics of an effective work group is the support the group
receives from the organization.”^22 This includes technology,
adequate staffing, administrative assistance, encouragement,
and timely information.
Teams must receive the necessary support from manage-
ment and the larger organization if they are going to succeed in
achieving their goals. You may recall from the opening vignette
that one of the reasons for the Glenforest Secondary School
team’s failure in 2001 was that it didn’t have the kind of coach-
ing it needed to build a great robot. For the 2002 competition,
the team found a mentor and also created a workshop at one
of the team member’s homes.
Leadership and Structure
Leadership plays a crucial role in the development and success
of teams. Professor Richard Hackman of Harvard University,
who is the leading expert on teams, suggests that the role of
team leader involves the following:^23
- Creating a real team rather than a team in name only
- Setting a clear and meaningful direction for the team’s work
- Making sure that the team structure will support its working effectively
- Ensuring that the team operates within a supportive organizational context
- Providing expert coaching
There are some practical problems that must be resolved when a team first starts
working together. Team members must agree on who is to do what and ensure that all
members contribute equally in sharing the workload. The team also needs to deter-
mine how schedules will be set, what skills need to be developed, how the team will
resolve conflicts, and how the team will make and modify decisions. Agreeing on the
specifics of work and how they fit together to integrate individual skills requires team
leadership and structure. This, incidentally, can be provided directly by management
or by the team members themselves. In the case of the Glenforest Secondary School
students in this chapter’s vignette, the team was led by two student co-captains. The
adult advisers did not try to tell the students what to do.
On traditionally managed teams, we find that two factors seem to be important in
influencing team performance—the leader’s expectations and his or her mood. Leaders
who expect good things from their team are more likely to get them! For instance, mil-
itary platoons under leaders who held high expectations performed significantly better
in training than platoons whose leaders did not set expectations.^24 Additionally, stud-
ies have found that leaders who exhibit positive moods get better team performance
and lower turnover.^25 The Learning About Yourself Exerciseon pages 178–179 will help you
evaluate how suited you are to building and leading a team.
Chapter 5Working in Teams 161OB IN ACTION
Harming Your Team
➔Refuse to shareissues and concerns. Team mem-
bers refuse to share information and engage in
silence, avoidance, and meetings behind closed
doors where not all members are included.
➔Dependtoo much on the leader. Members rely
too much on the leader and do not carry out their
responsibilities.
➔Fail to follow throughon decisions. Teams do not
take action after decision making, showing that the
needs of the team have low priority, or members are
not committed to the decisions that were made.
➔Hide conflict. Team members do not reveal that
they have a difference of opinion and this causes
tension.
➔Fail at conflict resolution. Infighting, put-downs,
and attempts to hurt other members damage the
team.
➔Form subgroups. The team breaks up into smaller
groups that put their needs ahead of the team as a
whole.Source:Based on W. G. Dyer, R. H. Daines, and W. C.
Giauque, The Challenge of Management(New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990), p. 343.