Team Composition

7 Key excerpts on "Team Composition"

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  eBook - ePub

  Team Dynamics Over Time

  • Eduardo Salas, William B. Vessey, Lauren B. Landon, Eduardo Salas, William B. Vessey(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  In many circumstances, individual and team-based composition models both contribute to the prediction of valued outcomes. As an example, a new product development team may be best positioned for success when team members prefer to work in teams rather than individually, the team is diverse in terms of functional background, and members in key positions (e.g., boundary spanning roles) have the necessary levels on the attributes needed for the role (e.g., self-monitoring). The different models can be combined via an algorithm such as the one provided by Mathieu et al. (2014b). This algorithm can include a temporal vector to account for changing Team Composition and outcome relationships over time (Mathieu et al., 2014b). Further, because Team Composition itself may be dynamic because of membership change, fluid boundaries and multiple team membership, the question becomes to what extent the team has the best combination of member attributes for a particular task or circumstance (Mathieu et al., 2014b).

  There are a large number of possible Team Composition attributes and configurations to consider. In most cases, researchers and practitioners should focus on identifying a few key composition considerations that are important for effectiveness in the specific circumstance. Some Team Composition considerations are likely to be important for most teams. For example, a highly disagreeable team member may be disruptive to team performance in most organizational circumstances (Bell, 2007 ). Other key Team Composition considerations will be highly dependent on the context. For example, self-managing teams with ambiguous leadership structures can thrive when shared leadership emerges (Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007 ). Shared leadership is more likely to emerge in teams composed of members that are high on both psychological collectivism and extraversion, or both psychological collectivism and motivation to lead (Chen, 2014 ).

  Analysis of the context within which teams operate and an understanding of the theoretical path through which Team Composition is expected to relate to valued outcomes can be used to identify important attributes and configurations (Bell & Brown, 2015 ; Bell, Fisher, Brown, & Mann, 2016 ). The context can be used to identify important emergent properties (e.g., team cohesion) that contribute to a team’s human capital. The context also informs how Team Composition may be most effectively managed (e.g., through staffing, specific leadership behaviors). Team Composition is shaped by the context beyond the temporal aspects discussed here (Johns, 2006

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  The Problems with Teamwork, and How to Solve Them

  • Annika Lantz Friedrich, Daniela Ulber, Peter Friedrich(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  It depends on the number of persons in a team, if team goals can be achieved. On the one hand there should be enough people to accomplish the task (see Wageman et al., 2005, earlier). On the other hand, too many team members are not economically sensible. Wheelan (2009) found in a study with 329 teams that teams with three to eight team members were more productive than larger teams. Bell (2004) reports several studies that show that teams consisting of too many members have negative effects on team processes, such as participation and coordination. The more persons there are in a team, the more there is a need for collective coordination of communication and regulation of team processes.

  3.3.2 Team structure and task

  Team Composition needs to be suitable for the specific team structure and task. There are several classifications to differentiate team types. Hollenbeck, Beersma, and Schouten (2012) have extracted three main dimensions to describe different teams – we will use them to show exemplarily what demand structural conditions put to Team Composition, and how these are related to the definition of the team task.

  1. Skill differentiation : The role structure of a team (how is work divided among team members?) has an impact on Team Composition. The team task (especially its knowledge characteristics: complexity, skill variety and specialization, see Chapter 3 ) determines the different expertise and specialized competencies that team members need to bring. This again sets the scope for different ways of work division: In a team with a functional work division, team members have different expertise and take over different tasks based on their dissimilar competencies. The more similar the qualifications of team members, the more interchangeable their roles can be. (Wildman et al., 2012)
  2. Authority differentiation : What about authority and responsibility – do all team members equally participate in decision-making or are there differences? We will see later in Chapter 8 that leadership tasks can be shared within the team. For this purpose, team members with specific competencies are needed. This is another aspect for Team Composition. Again, these competencies are related to the team task – the more complex, autonomous and complete it is (see Chapter 3

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  When Bad Teams Happen to Good People

  Your Complete Repair Guide for Successful Teamwork

  • Valerie Patrick(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Career Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 4

  Troubleshooting Team Composition

  The composition of a workplace team is an important factor in team performance independent of other factors such as who the team leader is and how that team operates. Researchers have found that the mere act of forming a team has performance benefits regardless of how different or similar the team members are in appearance and thinking.1 For example, we like people we perceive to be on our team more than those we perceive to be outside our team. Further, we empathize more with people we perceive to be on our team than with those we perceive to be outside our team. Finally, we are better at inferring the goals, thoughts, and feelings behind the faces of those we consider on our team versus those we consider outside our team. A correlation exists between team performance and the ability of members to infer the thoughts and feelings of one another.2

  The performance benefits from the mere act of forming a team can be destroyed by incentives for team members to protect self-interest over team interest. For example, a boss who rewards the individual accomplishments of one subordinate with a higher raise than the team contributions of another subordinate is placing more value on self-interest than team interest. I knew individuals with high self-interest at work who took credit for teamwork after the team disbanded. For example, one boss asked me to lead a team to commercialize a new technology. Once the technology was commercialized under my leadership, my boss filed a patent application including all the members except for me. I met with him to inquire about the exclusion, and he explained that I had not contributed to the original idea. My boss did not value my contribution of leading the team that converted the idea to an invention even though converting an idea to an invention is a prerequisite to file a patent application and receive a patent.

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  Project: Communication

  • Haukur Ingi Jonasson, Helgi Thor Ingason(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Figure 9.5 ). As well as having people fill the various roles, it is also important to have a harmonious environment. Most projects require teamwork and teamwork can be complicated at times with a wide range of potential conflict points. Good teamwork can appear so natural and smooth it is often unnoticed, while poor teamwork can make even the simplest of tasks seemingly impossible.

  Figure 9.5 The composition of a team can be vital to its success.

  The American psychologist Thomas North Whitehead (1938) observed employees who worked on making electrical components. He showed, quantitatively, how much of a difference to productivity there is when individual team members disrupt teamwork. The efficiency of a team of five increased from making 50 items on average per hour to 70 items on average per hour when two team members that caused communication problems were exchanged for two new team members who did not cause communication problems. The American social psychologist Ivan Steiner (1972, 1976) compared achievements of teams in projects with the baking of a cake. It is important to follow a recipe and have the right ingredients. Having good ingredients, however, does not ensure that the cake will be a success if the proportions are wrong. In the same way, having talented group members does not guarantee the performance of a group, as the group also needs to be properly composed.

  Communication skills and the abilities necessary to solve disputes are important qualities that members of successful teams possess. In teams where diverse abilities and skills are present, there is naturally a potential for higher performance, especially when those team members that are less productive may be influenced by the stimulation and ambition of others in the group. They may aspire to be like the most prolific team members and plough their own productive furrow, or, more modestly, provide important background support work, both resulting in better results. Mixed teams often find it easier to cope with changes related to work conditions, as there is more width in the talents and qualities present, and flexibility is greater. Greater diversity can also increase the chances of a group finding more varied solutions to problems and increase creativity and innovation. In mixed teams there can, however, also be a lack of cohesion, as each group member perceives others as different from themselves. In this case, diversity can naturally increase disputes within groups (Jackson et al

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  Leading Teams

  • Elearn(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The shape of teams

  Teams are made up of individuals – each unique in their values, attitudes, personality, talent, motivation, perception and abilities. An essential role of the team leader is to recognise and harness the talents of each individual and enable them to contribute to their full potential. This is managing individual difference – something you will consider later in this theme.

  But a team is more than a group of people who are working together. Katzenbach and Smith define a team as: . . .a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach, for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

  Source: Katzenbach and Smith (1994)

  In other words, to be a team, the members must pursue a common goal and must agree that the only way to achieve that goal is to work together. Success depends on how effectively the individuals are able to collaborate. In a team, this is more important than any one individual's skills. Of course you'll have people who are brighter or more gifted than others, but from your point of view, there is a fine balance between recognising these contributions and ensuring everyone puts their efforts into working for the team.

  Teams are not a new concept, but as organisations have flattened out their hierarchies over the past decade the demands on them have altered. New types of teams have emerged that make it possible for an organisation to be more flexible in the way it responds to its environment. These teams pose new challenges for managers, particularly when they need to be put together quickly or when the members are operating virtually.

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  Organizational Behaviour

  • Paul Smith, Marilyn Farmer, Wendy Yellowley(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The CIPD (2011) defines a team as a ‘limited number of people who have shared objectives at work and who co-operate, on a permanent or temporary basis, to achieve those objectives in a way that allows each individual to make a distinctive contribution. From this definition we can see that key aspects of team-working are:

  •   shared objectives, which assumes that everyone has had a say in and a chance to create agreed goals

  •   cooperation, which is necessary for effective team-working

  •   making a distinctive contribution – utilizing the diverse set of skills and experience of team members

  •   a limited number of people – the ideal number of people to make up an effective team has been the focus of much research.

  Clegg, Kornberger and Pitsis (2005) also introduced the concept of collective responsibility, and suggest that a team differs from a group in that individuals are more ‘psychologically’ aware of each other and become interdependent. This is an important point, as the key aspect of being a member of a team is the emotional link and commitment to common goals. So while a group of people waiting in a queue to see the latest rock band all have a common purpose, they would be classified as a group of individuals and not a team. In contrast, a football team has a fixed number of players, everyone has a role and a contribution to make, and co-operation is critical to achieving the shared objective.

  Other authors introduce additional perspectives of a ‘team’. Kozlowski and Bell (2003), for example, refer to the organizational context in which the team operates, which will influence, constrain and impact on the way the team-members work together. Factors such as location, resources and technology will all play a part in how the team operates.

  KEY TERM

  Team: a group of people who work together and have shared goals, cooperating and working towards achieving their goals.

    5.3 Why are teams important?

  In Chapter 10

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  The Management of Small and Medium Enterprises

  • Matthias Fink, Sascha Kraus(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The term ‘team’ has largely replaced the term ‘group’ in the literature, but the word ‘group’ predominates in many studies because they use ‘group’ as their root word (e.g., group dynamics, intergroup relations and so on) (Guzzo and Dickson 1996). Sometimes teams and groups have been separated by the definition and purpose; sometimes they are used interchangeably in the group dynamics literature out of convenience. However, not all groups can be considered teams. Katzenbach and Smith (1993) believe that the concept of a team should be limited to a fairly small number of people with complementary skills who interact directly. This helps to distinguish teams from work groups, whose members jointly do the same tasks but who do not require integration and coordination to perform the tasks. Perhaps the most critical element in this distinction is interdependence (Levi 2001), which exists when an individual cannot perform a given task or a set of responsibilities alone, without the assistance of other’s.

  Cohen and Bailey (1997) define a team as a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, who share the responsibility of the outcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact social entity embedded in one or more larger social systems (e.g., the firm) and who manage their relationships across organizational boundaries. They distinguish four types of teams that can be identified in organizations today: (a) work teams, (b) parallel teams, (c) project teams and (d) management teams. In addition, the recent entrepreneurship literature has introduced the term ‘entrepreneurial team’.

  Management Team

  A management team is a small group of managers, including the managing director and managers from different functional areas (such as manufacturing, marketing and finance), and other key persons who give a firm its general direction and who specialize in running the business. In a management team the managers with complementary skills are at the same organizational level, report to the same person, hold a leadership position in the firm and share information that helps them perform their individual jobs more effectively (McIntyre 1998; Longenecker et al. 1994; Van Egeren 1994; Keck 1998; Finkelstein 1992; Keck and Tushman 1993). Thus, the team members are not only responsible for their own functions, but also ‘wear another hat’ in firm leadership (Nadler 1992). The team members meet regularly to make CEO-conducted key decisions that affect the entire organization or department and to help the firm to achieve its goals (McIntyre 1998; Nadler 1997; Nadler and Spencer 1997). Although members of a management team may hold some equity in the firm (i.e., a small ownership position), this is not always the case (Stumpf et al

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