The Problems with Teamwork, and How to Solve Them

Annika Lantz Friedrich,Daniela Ulber,Peter Friedrich

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429508967
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Business General

This book offers practical, evidence-based solutions to help professionals implement and support effective teamwork. Lantz, Ulber and Friedrich draw on their considerable professional experience to present common problems in team-based organizations, what empirical research tells us the causes are and which solutions are more effective in overcoming team-based obstacles.

In The Problems with Teamwork, and How to Solve Them, nine common problems are identified, ranging from lack of leadership and adaptability to conflict and cohesiveness, accompanied by clear instructions on how to approach and resolve the individual issues. Detailed case studies are presented throughout the book, demonstrating how theory can be applied to real-life situations to produce optimal results for both the team and the larger organisation. By combining theory and practice, and using state-of-the-art research, the book constructs a cognitive map for identifying problem causes and effect, and step-by-step instructions on how to solve problems.

This is essential reading for anyone working in team-based organizations, as well as students and academics in related areas such as organizational psychology and organizational behaviour.

Chapter 1

Why work in teams, and for what are teams effective?

It is often said: “The whole is more than the sum of its parts.” But does teamwork create outcomes for the organization, the team and the employees that are greater than what the individuals by themselves accomplish? This is a central issue as this book is based on the assumption that investing in teams is worthwhile. The book’s general aim is that the reader should learn more about how to implement and support effective teamwork. We first describe the motives for working in teams and the outcomes of teamwork. Second, the concept of team effectiveness is discussed to distinguish between more effective and less effective teams. No two teams are alike, and teamwork is a dynamic process of social interactions that occur in an organizational context. We present a model of effective teamwork that takes into account the context. We have identified nine core problems with teamwork. The model is used throughout the book to understand, and find solutions to these common problems in teamwork.

1 Why work in teams?

1.1 The social brain and our social nature

Throughout evolution people have lived and worked in families and groups. Doing things together, whether it is hunting, building shelter or bringing up children, has been shown to be more rewarding and effective than doing things in isolation. Maslow (1943) identified our basic love and esteem needs as motivational forces. In the well-known pyramid of needs, Maslow put physiological and safety needs, such as physical shelter and food at the base. Higher up the pyramid, social and esteem needs are found. These are not essential for survival. Maslow put self-actualization on the top. The prominent psychologist and neuroscientist Liebermann argues that this is wrong. “Our biology is built to thirst for connection because it is linked to our most basic survival needs” Lieberman (2013, p. 43). He explains how three major adaptations in the brain lead us to be connected to the social world, to take advantage of social connections and to form and work in groups. Throughout evolutionary steps mammals evolved to feel social pains and pleasures, and our well-being is linked to the desire to be socially connected. Primates have developed the ability to mindread, and this capacity allows us to interact strategically and anticipate the needs of others. This is one component of what some call emotional intelligence. Neural adaptations throughout evolutionary history have allowed us to be influenced by others and be socialized by those around us, and harmonizing is essential for group interaction.

1.2 Working more effectively

Many organizations structure their work around teams based on the belief that team-work can be beneficial to organizational effectiveness. Why is that so? We summarize the many motives for implementing teamwork into three main categories:

• Working harder. Group dynamics can result in employees naturally working harder, stimulated and motivated by working together towards a common goal. Seeing and monitoring what others do motivates many to show the better sides of themselves. It is important to note that there may be a negative outcome to peer pressure. Working tightly together may result in team members watching each other closely and exerting strong pressure to achieve high levels of team performance.
• Working more smartly. Salas, Burke, and Cannon-Bowers (2000) argue that teamwork may also lead employees to work more efficiently. In traditional working systems, production problems can often only be solved by functional specialists, whereas self-managing teams are capable of solving problems as soon as they occur, thus reducing interruptions to the production process. Teams can take on more complex tasks than individuals. Team members combine different and complementary competences and skills, support one another, provide backup behaviour, monitor work progress and balance individual’s workload. Team members can monitor and assess the situation and scan the environment to identify cues indicating that they need to adapt work routines (Goodwin, Blacksmith, & Coats, 2018). West (2012) advocates that quality management is increased, and innovations and changes are eased – as team members have different points of views, experiences, knowledge and skills; so they challenge and discuss decisions, proposals and processes from these perspectives and can find new approaches and procedures.
• Organizational change and development. In the last decades, environments have become more turbulent and dynamic. There is increasing global competition and increasing demands for individualized and specialized products and services. This means that organizations require flexibility to adapt to novel demands. A team structure is a good answer to such requirements, as teams can be connected and involved when needed. For example, different teams can communicate about good practice and can cooperate to meet special demands. Furthermore, teams may identify imminent changes in the external surrounding, and adapt to proactively ensure that these changes are met. Teamwork simplifies organizational structure and reduces the need for coordination. Decentralizing decision-making to teams can reduce the number of supervisors and middle managers. A flatter hierarchy has positive implications for faster reactions to external changes, to the implementation of organizational strategies and to intra-organizational coordination. A team-based organization can lead to improvements of efficiency (e.g. lower costs and process times). Many lean-based organizations are based on the idea that “teamwork is the pillar for process innovation” (Netland & Aspelund, 2013).

2 Many groupings are called teams – the outcomes depend on if it is a team or not

In some cases, loosely connected employees are called a team even though team members hardly communicate while working. If the question “do you work as a team?” is asked in workplaces, the answer would often be yes despite work tasks being carried out individually, possibly coordinated, but team members are not dependent upon each other for doing their jobs. In such cases, it is often the aggregation of individual tasks that is meant by “being a team,” or that there is a positive climate and people help each other. It is important to distinguish work teams from other groupings, as loose groupings of individuals with little need to interact do not develop interaction patterns that enable the group to accomplish the positive outcomes described earlier.

2.1 A team definition

In the literature, most researchers rely on a definition of a team in line with how Kozlowski and Bell (2013) define a work group:

Groups are composed of two or more individuals, share one or more common goals, exist to perform organizationally relevant tasks, exhibit task interdependencies, interact socially, maintain and manage boundaries, and are embedded in an organizational context that sets boundaries, constrains the team, and influences exchanges with other units in the broader entity.

(p. 415)

The general team definition gives guidance in what a team is, but others have tried to characterize the team interaction, in order to distinguish between all those groupings that are called teams, and those that work as teams. West and Lyubovnikova (2012) identified four characteristics that distinguish teams from “pseudo-teams.” These “pseudo-teams” are groups whose members mainly carry out their work individually. Teams are characterized by a specific way of interacting:

• Reflexivity: Teams discuss, reflect upon and evaluate their ongoing work and cooperation. They review their performance systematically, while pseudo-teams’ communication is rather restricted to e.g. the sharing of information for coordination of individual tasks. Teams reflect on habitual routines, such as how to coordinate work, and how these habitual routines might impede effectiveness and satisfaction – an opportunity to develop a shared understanding of the tasks and how to perform.
• Task interdependence: Tasks vary a lot in how closely team members need to work together to fulfil the task, as will be shown in Chapter 3. Task interdependence is the degree to which members of the team are mutually dependent on the others. High task interdependence means that the main task requires that the team members work in close collaboration to fulfil subtasks that are coordinated and aligned with overall goals. Task interdependence puts demand on collective regulation processes, and a shared understanding about what to do and how. Low interdependence puts higher demand on coordination mechanisms as team members have little to do with one another, and less of a shared understanding of how to carry out the work.
• Shared objectives: In pseudo-teams there is a lack of a shared understanding of what the goal is, and what the team should strive for. A team has a shared understanding of a common goal that regulates what different team members do and how.
• Boundedness: In a team, members (more or less) identify with their specific team. Pseudo-teams are permeable to a degree that creates uncertainty about who the team players are, and the cohesion is low. If team members do not have a sense of belonging to the team, they will be less motivated to contribute to the team and invest less in creating relationships with the others. Teams may be geographically dispersed and, in an emergency, teams can form quickly and comprise team members who do not know each other, but still share a sense of boundedness at that specific time. Furthermore, team members may work in different teams, which may affect the sense of belonging. With fluid boundaries and multiple memberships, team members are bounded in varying degrees to different teams. Bonding to several teams, and to several people, forming special relationships with each may be possible.

2.2. No two teams are the same

Some consultants sell products off the shelves, such as interventions, that are marketed as enhancing team effectiveness in any team. The rationale would be that all teams somehow are the same, and the context does not matter. But we all know that teams are not created equal. Salas, Reyes, and McDaniel (2018) write, “[T]here are countless factors that affect the makeup of the team and subsequently influence the team’s interactions” (p. 595). Teams differ in a number of aspects that impact interaction and outcomes. This cannot be stressed enough, as it has vast consequences for how to solve problems in teamwork and the design of interventions. Teams differ in many ways: temporal stability, life span, virtuality, team composition, skill differentiation, task interdependence and the decision-making process. Each team is uniquely composed to serve a specific purpose within a specific context. It is not possible to address problems with teamwork by making a list of all sorts of different teams, describing each teams’ prerequisites and challenges. Instead we should look into what is known about the transportable mechanisms that make smooth teamwork possible.

• To summarize: It is not enough for employees grouped together to be called a team. No two teams are alike. Team members are interdependent and engage in both work task, and interpersonal related processes.

3 What is teamwork?

Teamwork is the means by which the team carries out the task by doing it together. Individual task work is the component of team member performance that does not demand interdependent interactions with other team members, while teamwork is defined as the interdependent component of performance by the team members. “Teamwork is about cooperative actions that facilitate dealing with task objectives and realizing coordinated, adapted performance” (Haar, Segers, & Jehn, 2013, p. 2).¹ It is a description of all kinds of team processes that stem from the individuals’ interrelated thoughts, feelings and actions that are needed for them to function as a team. These psychosocial processes are combined to “facilitate coordinated, adaptive performance and task objectives resulting in value-added outcomes” (Salas, Sims, & Burke, 2005, p. 562). Key aspects are coordination and adaptation. The team needs to carry out the task in a coordinated manner, and the team needs to change its habitual routines to adapt to changes and new demands.

3.1 Teamwork is to engage in...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Case study
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Why work in teams, and for what are teams effective?
• 2 The problem with problem-solving
• 3 We have teams but little teamwork
• 4 Team composition: “We have a team, but team members do not benefit from each other”
• 5 The team does not carry out the tasks in a coordinated manner
• 6 The team does not cooperate adequately due to conflicts and a lack of a positive and amicable climate
• 7 The problem with lack of adaptability
• 8 The teams do not perform well because of a lack of good leadership
• 9 Teamwork and team learning do not result in organizational learning
• 10 Requirement specification of systematic team interventions
• 11 Effective teams over time
• Index