Team Intervention

"The effective functioning of groups and teams is central to the effective functioning of organizations"

"Teams not only play a central role in an organization's effectiveness, but they also play a central role in the accomplishtment and implementation of organizational change."

(Anderson, 2019, p. 253).

Teams

Defining a Team

A team:
1. Has two or more people
2. Has a specific performance objective or recognizable goal to be attained
3. Coordination of activity among the members of the team is required for the attainment of the team goal or objective
Commonly held characteristics of teams include:
1. Members participate in decision making and setting goals
2. Members communicate frequently with one another in the accomplishment of team tasks
3. The team has a defined and recognized identity by others in the organization, outside the team
4. Members have defined roles and they recognize how these roles interrelate

(Anderson, 2019)

What Makes a Successful Team?

A clear, elevating goal - goal is understood and challenging
A results-driven structure - members have clear roles, effective communication, and use available data to evaluate progress and take corrective action
Competent members - team comprises members with technical knowledge and interpersonal skills needed to meet team's goal
Unified commitment - team members have a willingness to dedicate effort and energy to the team
A collaborative climate - team members develop trust in each other
Standards of excellence - high standards for individuals on the team
External support and recognition - teams need external rewards as well as support in form of resources that help team accomplish their goal
Principle leadership - leaders help provide necessary motivation and alignment in order to complete team's work

(Anderson, 2019)

Self-Directed Work Teams

Frequently referred to as self-managed work teams
Highly trained employees who are responsible for managing themselves and the work they do
Team sets their own goals and plans how to achieve these goals
These teams have a wide variety of responsibilities to include"
1. Goal setting
2. Organizing work processes and schedules
3. Sorting out roles and responsibilities
4. Monitoring results
5. Taking action when results do not each requirements
6. Hire team members and conduct performance evaluations
The team members will have to take ownership of team processes and be motivated to manage them as a group
Managers move from "paternalitic" behaviors of monitoring and supervision to acting as a coach or member to the team
These teams require:
1. Significant leadership commitment
2. Mutual trust
3. Acceptance of new/ambiguous roles
4. Willingness to invest time and money for training and development
Self-directed teams face challenges of:
1. Resistance from leadership
2. The need to manage conflict within the team
3. Power and control
4. Team decision making
5. Giving and receiving feedback

(Anderson, 2019)

Virtual Teams

A clear, elevating goal - goal is understood and challenging
Teams where the members "work together through electronic means with minimal face-to-face interaction" (Anderson, 2019, p.256).
A central challenge can occur when members are not collocated
- Coordination of work across physical and time-zone boundaries becomes an issue
It can also be challenging for team members to build trust or get to know each other on a more personal level
Issues that virtual teams are more likely to face than face-to-face teams:
- Lack of trust and mutual understanding
- Violated expectations
- Lack of training and effective use of communication technologies
- Lack of effective team leadership
Addressing these issues may include:
- Creating opportunities to meet face-to-face in order to build relationships
- Creating opportunities for dialogue so team members can get to know one another
- Hold team session to agree on team norms about the frequency and type of communications
- Scheduling discussions or training session on cultural differences

Cross-Functional Teams

"A small collection of individuals from diverse functional specializations within the organization" (Anderson, 2019, p. 257).
Team members typically are not part of the same department, however they represet a variety of departments/units and are brought together for a specific project or problem
Benefits (and drawbacks)
- Functional Diversity
  1. Brings mulitple perspectives together to enhance knowledge and problem-solving ability amongst the team
  2. Teams may also have trouble communicating and finidng common ground
- Benefit of cross-functional teams is they include members who are brought together for a short period of time to complete a project - then they disband
  1. Dedications of time can vary among members, which may lead to team conflicts and non-mutual understand of commitment to the team
- Single leader can bring the team together, and can provide a single point of leadership
  1. Can also create confusion and frustration for members as they now have two managers - these two managers may have conflicting demands
  2. Can create ambiguity regarding decision making
To help reduce ambiguity and confusion wihtin the team, it is recommended that there are clear and overarching team goals.
Team managers should be working with functional managers early on to negotiate time expectations of those working on the team
- They should also work to agree on a performance appraisal as well as a rewards process.

Team Development

Forming
- Dependency and Inclusion
- Team members will explore initial interaction with one another in an "orientation" period as they begin to build relationships.
Storming
- Counterdependency and Fight
- Members begin to express disagreements with one another and with the leader as members begin to feel more comfortable and safe with the team.
Norming
- Trust and Structure
- The group will attempt to manage some of its conflicts by coming to agreement on group norms, roles, goals, and more.
Performing
- Work
- Team members find synergy and begin to find repeated and successful ways of interacting to achieve group goals
Adjourning
- The group will disband or members will leave as the teams work has been completed

(Anderson, 2019, p. 259)

Team Development vs. Team Interventions

Team Development Programs vs. Team Interventions
- Team Development programs are proactive and they encourage teams to develop as healthier groups.
  1. A development intervention can be useful even when the team is not dysfunctional.
- Team Interventions "employ a problem-solving approach to team-building that helps established work groups identify and address obstacles and constraints to high performance" (Anderson, 2019, p. 260).
  1. Likely to be more reactive than proactive
  2. Designed to address a problem that the team is experiencing.
  3. The team is often stuck and needs the assistance of a change agent.

Team Building

"The activity of attempting to improve a work group's effectiveness at doing its work, maintaining the relationships of its memebrs and the team's contributions to the wider organizational system" (Anderson, 2019, p. 260).
Team-building can mean something different to different people
- From my observation, individual's perceptions of team-building come from their experience with this.
Team-building can have a negative connotation because observations have pointed out that team-building activities often do not achieve their objectives.
- Observations have pointed out that there tends to be a pattern of regression after team-building interventions and teams revert back to old traditions.
  - Specifically when there is little follow-up after the intervention, no support structure for continuing change, no leadership support, and no associated changes in policies/processes.

Team Interventions

Team Start-Up and Transition Meetings
- Can help create team characters, determine clarity of direction, and shape team working practices
- A well-structured team start-up and transition intervention can:
  1. Quickly establish agreements and norms so that the team can begin to function more quickly
  2. Provide opportunities to surface team member disagreements and misunderstandings earlier rather than later
  3. Clarify basic team functions such as goals and operating methods
  4. Allow team members to begin to develop interpersonal relationships
  5. Provide team members with clear and well-defined roles
Confrontation Meetings
- Most effective with intact teams that have worked together for some period. The team examines its own effectiveness and health, and develops action plans to address major areas of ineffectiveness and dissatisfaction
- Structures in seven phases:

1. Climate setting 2. Information collecting 3. Information sharing 4. Priority setting & group action planning 5. Organization action planning 6. Immediate follow-up by top team 7. Progress Review

Role Negotiation and Role Analysis
- Role-related challenges can be categorized into seven types of role problems that often occur in teams:
  1. Role conflict (one team member): occurs when one team member holds two mutually incompatible roles
  2. Role conflict (multiple team members): occurs when team members hold the same role, and these conflict with one another
  3. Role incompatability: occurs when there are incompatible expectations about a given role
  4. Role overload: a person has too many roles to fulfill
  5. Role underload: a role is not fully developed with enough significant work/responsibilities
  6. Role ambiguity: occurs when the role owner or team members are unclear about the responsibilities of a given role
Role Negotiation Exercise
- Puts team members in the position of negotiating responsibilites with each other without needing a leader to make the decisions
- Four steps:
  1. Each team member writes down activities/responsibilities of their role (privately) on paper
  2. Each team member reads each paper
  3. Each team member writes down what he or she wants any other team members to do more of, do less of, or keep doing the same. Each team member commetns on each other's role.
  4. Lists are sorted and the team members meet (either in pairs or as a whole) to discuss.
- Requires an environment of openness and safety, comfort in expressing disagreement and getting beyond disagreement, ability to express wants/needs, and mutual commitment to each other and the group.
Responsibility Charting
- Can help a team with its decision-making process so team members understand who is responsible and involved with what actions and decisions
- Can reduce conflict by specifying up from what involvement is necessary in what ways by which team members
Work Redesign
- When jobs are designed well, people will find them more motivating and contribute more effectively to the outcomes that the team desires
- Work redesign can be noth an individual intervention as well as an intervention into the effectiveness of a team
- Criteria to look for in an effective work group
  1. Level of effort brought to bear on the group task (well-designed tasks have skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback)
  2. Amount of knowledge and skill applied to task work
  3. Appropriateness of group norms about performance processes
- Principles that can help change agents work with teams to design tasks more effectively:
  1. Combining tasks 2. Forming natural work units 3. Establishing client relationships 4. Vertically loading the job 5. Opening feedback channels
Workout
- A problem-solving methodology
- Process is for use by single teams, cross-functional teams, or multiple functions
- Can be a powerful intervention to encourage participation and willingness to initiate an organizational change
- Purpose is to identify and eliminate unnecessary work, work that might be taking up extensive time or resources but that is adding little value, work that is bureaucratic in nature, or work not meeting expectations because of process errors or other deficiencies
- Five step process: introduction, brainstorming, gallery of ideas, action planning, town meeting

(Anderson, 2019)

Intergroup Interventions

Sources of intergroup conflict especially relevant to organizational environments:
- Economic differences
- Beliefs
- Past injustice
- Egocentrism
- Communication
Minor intergroup conflict is natural and likely
- Interventions may be recommended when extreme symptoms are noticeable
Overarching objective is to reduce the interteam conflict by breaking down barriers between teams, encouraging the development of a shared identity and purpose, and improving cooperative processes
Reduction in interteam conflict through the following means:
- Increase intergroup contact
- Implement a superordiante goal
- Recategorize
- Find a common enemy, or an external threat to the well-being of both groups
- Exchange team members
An Intervention to Resolve Intergroup Conflict:
- With support of leaders of both groups, an outside consultant explains the purpose of the session
- Each group meets separately to develop two lists
- The lists are exchanged
- Groups can ask clarifying questions of the other group
- Groups return to separate meeting rooms for a period of self-diagnosis and discovery
- Each group exchanges its diagnostic lists with the other
- Groups develop a list of remaining key issues in the relationship to be resolved
- Groups agree on plan for next steps

(Anderson, 2019)

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