Making the Team

by Thompson, Leigh L.

• ISBN13: 9780131416581
• ISBN10: 0131416588
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-01
• Publisher: Prentice Hall

Summary

About the Book Making the Team is for leaders, managers, and executives-anyone who has to work with people and teams. Making the Team gives leaders answers to hard questions and provides proven solutions to some of management's greatest challenges: bull; bull;Dealing with conflict productively bull;Increasing creativity bull;Managing diversity bull;Evaluating and rewarding team performance bull;Leveraging the team within the organization bull;Managing global teamwork bull;Motivating and leading people The Kellogg Culture The Kellogg School of Management is known throughout the world for its culture of teamwork. Kellogg students are exceptional in their simultaneous ability to lead as well as be team players. Student input is essential to the faculty's teaching methods at Kellogg. The faculty of the Management and Organizations Department at Kellogg brings their world-class research on teamwork into the classroom to create a powerful and interactive group learning experience. The strong Kellogg culture of teamwork inspired the writing of this book, whose key purpose is to expose some of the winning strategies of a teamwork culture.

Author Biography

Leigh L. Thompson is the J. Jay Gerber Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.

Table of Contents

Preface to the New Edition	p. xvii
Preface to the First Edition	p. xix
The Basics of Teamwork	p. 1
Teams in Organizations: Facts and Myths	p. 3
What Is a Team?	p. 4
Why Should Organizations Have Teams?	p. 5
Customer service focus	p. 5
Competition	p. 6
Information age	p. 6
Globalization	p. 7
Types of Teams in Organizations	p. 7
Manager-led teams	p. 7
Self-managing teams	p. 8
Self-directing teams	p. 9
Self-governing teams	p. 10
Some Observations about Teams and Teamwork	p. 11
Teams are not always the answer	p. 11
Managers fault the wrong causes for team failure	p. 11
Managers fail to recognize their team-building responsibilities	p. 12
Experimenting with failures leads to better teams	p. 12
Conflict among team members is not always a bad thing	p. 12
Strong leadership is not always necessary for strong teams	p. 13
Good teams can still fail under the wrong circumstances	p. 14
Retreats will not fix all the conflicts between team members	p. 14
What Leaders Tell Us about Their Teams	p. 15
Most common type of team	p. 15
Team size	p. 15
Team autonomy versus manager control	p. 15
Team longevity	p. 16
The most frustrating aspect of teamwork	p. 16
Developing Your Team-Building Skills	p. 17
Accurate diagnosis of team problems	p. 17
Theory-based intervention	p. 18
Expert learning	p. 18
A Warning	p. 19
Conclusions	p. 20
Performance and Productivity: Team Performance Criteria and Threats to Productivity	p. 21
An Integrated Model of Successful Team Performance	p. 22
Team context	p. 23
Essential conditions for successful team performance	p. 24
Performance criteria	p. 36
The Team Performance Equation	p. 40
Conclusions	p. 41
Rewarding Teamwork: Compensation and Performance Appraisals	p. 42
Types of Team Pay	p. 44
Incentive pay	p. 45
Recognition	p. 47
Profit sharing	p. 50
Gainsharing	p. 50
Teams and Pay for Performance	p. 51
Team Performance Appraisal	p. 52
What is measured?	p. 53
Who does the measuring?	p. 54
Developing a 360-degree program	p. 56
Rater Bias	p. 59
Inflation bias	p. 59
Extrinsic incentives bias	p. 59
Homogeneity bias	p. 60
Halo bias	p. 61
Fundamental attribution error	p. 61
Communication medium	p. 61
Experience effect	p. 61
Reciprocity bias	p. 61
Bandwagon bias	p. 61
Primacy and recency bias	p. 62
Ratee Bias	p. 62
Egocentric bias	p. 62
Intrinsic interest	p. 62
Social comparison	p. 63
Fairness	p. 63
Guiding Principles	p. 64
Goals should cover areas that team members can directly affect	p. 64
Balance the mix of individual and team-based pay	p. 64
Consult with the team members who will be affected	p. 64
Avoid organizational myopia	p. 65
Determine eligibility (who qualifies for the plan)	p. 65
Determine equity method	p. 65
Quantify the criteria used to determine payout	p. 65
Determine how target levels of performance are established and updated	p. 65
Develop a budget for the plan	p. 67
Determine timing of measurements and payments	p. 67
Communicate with those involved	p. 67
Plan for the future	p. 67
Conclusions	p. 67
Internal Dynamics	p. 69
Building the Team: Tasks, People, and Relationships	p. 71
Building the Team	p. 72
The Task: What Work Needs to Be Done?	p. 73
How much authority does the team have to manage its own work?	p. 74
What is the focus of the work the team will do?	p. 74
What is the degree of task interdependence among team members?	p. 75
Is there a correct solution that can be readily demonstrated and communicated to members?	p. 77
Are team members' interests perfectly aligned (cooperative), opposing (competitive), or mixed in nature?	p. 77
How big should the team be?	p. 77
The People: Who Is Ideally Suited to Do the Work?	p. 78
Diversity	p. 80
Relationships: How Do Team Members Socialize Each Other?	p. 85
Group socialization	p. 86
Role negotiation	p. 88
Team norms: Development and enforcement	p. 90
Cohesion: Team bonding	p. 91
Trust	p. 93
Turnover and reorganizations	p. 96
Conclusions	p. 97
Sharpening the Team Mind: Communication and Collective Intelligence	p. 98
Team Communication	p. 99
Message tuning	p. 100
Message distortion	p. 100
Biased interpretation	p. 101
Perspective-taking failures	p. 101
Transparency illusion	p. 102
Indirect speech acts	p. 102
Uneven communication	p. 103
Intellectual Bandwidth	p. 103
The Information Dependence Problem	p. 104
The common information effect	p. 105
Hidden profile	p. 107
Practices to put in place	p. 110
Collective Intelligence	p. 113
Team mental models	p. 113
The team mind: Transactive memory systems	p. 115
Team Longevity: Routinization versus Innovation Trade-offs	p. 122
Conclusions	p. 125
Team Decision Making: Pitfalls and Solutions	p. 126
Decision Making in Teams	p. 127
Individual versus Group Decision Making	p. 128
Decision-Making Pitfall 1: Groupthink	p. 130
Learning from history	p. 132
How to avoid groupthink	p. 134
Decision-Making Pitfall 2: Escalation of Commitment	p. 137
Project determinants	p. 139
Psychological determinants	p. 139
Social determinants	p. 141
Structural determinants	p. 141
Avoiding the escalation of commitment problem	p. 142
Decision-Making Pitfall 3: The Abilene Paradox	p. 143
How to avoid the Abilene paradox	p. 145
Decision-Making Pitfall 4: Group Polarization	p. 147
The need to be right	p. 148
The need to be liked	p. 149
Conformity pressures	p. 149
Decision-Making Pitfall 5: Unethical Decision Making	p. 151
Rational man model	p. 151
Pluralistic ignorance	p. 152
Desensitization	p. 152
Accountability for behavior	p. 152
Reward model	p. 153
Appropriate role models	p. 153
Eliminate conflicts of interest	p. 154
Create cultures of integrity	p. 154
Conclusions	p. 155
Conflict in Teams: Leveraging Differences to Create Opportunity	p. 156
Types of Conflict	p. 157
Types of conflict and work team effectiveness	p. 158
Proportional and perpetual conflict	p. 160
Transforming relationship into task conflict	p. 161
Team Dilemma: Group versus Individual Interests	p. 164
Strategies to enhance cooperation and minimize competition	p. 164
Perils and Pitfalls of Democracy	p. 166
Voting rules	p. 166
Drawbacks to voting	p. 168
Coalitions	p. 169
Team Negotiations	p. 169
The BATNA principle	p. 170
Avoid the fixed-pie fallacy	p. 170
Build trust and share information	p. 170
Understand underlying interests	p. 171
Share information	p. 171
Make multiple proposals simultaneously	p. 171
Avoid sequential discussion of issues	p. 172
Construct contingency contracts and leverage differences	p. 172
Search for postsettlement settlements	p. 173
Invoke norms of justice	p. 173
What to Do When Conflict Escalates?	p. 174
Conclusions	p. 176
Creativity: Mastering Strategies for High Performance	p. 177
Creative Realism	p. 178
Measuring Creativity	p. 180
Convergent and divergent thinking	p. 181
Exploration and exploitation	p. 183
Creativity and context dependence	p. 183
Creative People or Creative Teams?	p. 184
Brainstorming	p. 184
Brainstorming on trial	p. 186
Major Threats to Team Creativity	p. 187
Social loafing	p. 187
Conformity	p. 187
Production blocking	p. 188
Downward norm setting	p. 188
What goes on during a typical group brainstorming session?	p. 189
Enhancing Team Creativity	p. 189
Trained facilitators	p. 190
High benchmarks	p. 190
Brainwriting	p. 190
Nominal group technique	p. 191
Diversify the team	p. 193
Analogical reasoning	p. 193
Creating an organizational memory	p. 197
Membership change	p. 198
Build a playground	p. 199
Electronic Brainstorming	p. 200
Advantages of electronic brainstorming	p. 201
Disadvantages of electronic brainstorming	p. 203
Capstone on brainstorming	p. 204
Conclusions	p. 205
External Dynamics	p. 207
Networking, Social Capital, and Integrating across Teams	p. 209
Team Boundaries	p. 210
Insulating teams	p. 211
Broadcasting teams	p. 212
Marketing teams	p. 212
Surveying teams	p. 212
External Roles of Team Members	p. 214
Knowledge Valuation	p. 214
Networking: A Key to Successful Teamwork	p. 216
Communication	p. 216
Human capital and social capital	p. 217
The importance of boundary spanning	p. 219
Cliques versus boundary-spanning networks: Advantages and disadvantages	p. 220
Advice for the manager	p. 222
Structural positioning	p. 223
Relationships Outside the Team	p. 228
Distance	p. 228
Time	p. 230
Conclusions	p. 230
Leadership: Managing the Paradox	p. 232
Leaders and the Nature-Nurture Debate: Great Person versus Great Opportunity	p. 234
Leadership Styles	p. 236
Task versus person leadership	p. 237
Transactional versus Transformational Leadership	p. 237
Active versus passive leadership	p. 240
Autocratic versus democratic leadership	p. 241
Team Coaching	p. 241
Types of coaching	p. 241
Leadership and Power	p. 242
Sources of power	p. 243
Using power	p. 243
Decision Analysis Model: How Participative Do You Want to Be?	p. 245
Decision styles	p. 245
Problem identification	p. 245
Decision tree model	p. 247
Strategies for Encouraging Participative Management	p. 247
Task delegation	p. 250
Parallel suggestion involvement	p. 250
Job involvement	p. 252
Organizational involvement	p. 252
Conclusions	p. 257
Interteam Relations: Competition and Cooperation	p. 258
Personal and Team Identity	p. 258
Intrateam and interteam respect	p. 259
Independence versus interdependence	p. 260
Self-interest versus group-interest	p. 260
Ingroups and outgroups	p. 261
Balancing the need to belong and the need to be distinct	p. 262
Interteam Relationships	p. 262
Social comparison processes	p. 263
Post-merger behavior	p. 263
Intergroup conflict	p. 265
When and Why Conflict Is Good	p. 267
Cohesion	p. 267
How and why organizations benefit from minority viewpoints	p. 267
Biases Associated with Intergroup Conflict	p. 268
Categorization: Us versus them	p. 268
Ingroup bias (or "We are better than them")	p. 269
Racism and racial discrimination	p. 270
Denial	p. 270
"They all look alike": The outgroup homogeneity bias	p. 271
Strategies for Reducing Negative Effects of Intergroup Conflict	p. 272
Contact	p. 272
Cross-cut role assignments	p. 273
Conclusions	p. 273
Teamwork via Information Technology: Challenges and Opportunities	p. 275
Place-Time Model of Social Interaction	p. 276
Face-to-face communication	p. 277
Same time, different place	p. 279
Different time, same place	p. 281
Different place, different time	p. 282
Information Technology and Social Behavior	p. 284
Reduced status differences: The "weak get strong" effect	p. 285
Equalization of team members' participation	p. 285
Technology can lead to face-to-face meetings	p. 286
Increased time to make decisions	p. 286
Communication	p. 286
Risk taking	p. 287
Social norms	p. 287
Task performance and quality of group decisions	p. 288
Enhancing Local Teamwork: Redesigning the Workplace	p. 288
Virtual or flexible space	p. 289
Flexible furniture	p. 290
Hoteling	p. 290
Virtual Teams	p. 292
Strategies for Enhancing the Virtual Team	p. 293
Collaboratory	p. 293
Virtual team technology	p. 293
Initial face-to-face experience	p. 294
Temporary engagement	p. 294
One-day videoconference	p. 295
Touching base	p. 295
Schmoozing	p. 296
Transnational Teams	p. 296
Conclusions	p. 298
Managing Meetings: A Toolkit	p. 301
Tips for Consultants and Facilitators	p. 308
A Guide for Creating Effective Study Groups	p. 312
Example Items from Peer Evaluations and 360-Degree Performance Evaluations	p. 315
References	p. 322
Author Index	p. 361
Subject Index	p. 369
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

When I wroteMaking the Teamin 2000, my intent was to introduce leaders, managers, and executives to practical research on groups and teams. This enterprise required an integration of theory, research, and application. Five professors--Dave Messick, Keith Murnighan, Mark Rittenberg, Brian Uzzi, and I--offer a three-day course for executives in team leadership at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Moreover, Kellogg offers a full-term course on teamwork to our MBA students. This book is dedicated to the students of Kellogg's executive program and MBA program. The title of the book,Making the Team,has two audiences: leaders and team members. For the leader, the book directs itself toward how teams can be designed to function optimally; for those people who are members of teams, the book focuses on the skills necessary to be a productive team member. Since the publication of the first version, many advances have occurred in team and group research. Every chapter has been updated with new information, new research, updated examples, and more. Specifically, I have made three major changes to the revised version ofMaking the Team: New, updated research:True to the book's defining characteristic--providing managers with the most up-to-date research in a digestible fashion--I have included the latest research on teamwork and group behavior, thus keeping the book up-to-date and true to its strong research focus and theory-driven approach. The updated research also reports on the survey of executives that we have conducted at Kellogg for the past five years. The survey in the first edition reported the responses of 149 managers and executives; the database of this survey has more than tripled, with a current total of 512 responses. In addition, more than 275 new research studies have been cited. More case studies:I have included more examples and illustrations of effective (as well as ineffective) teamwork. More than 130 new case studies and examples of actual company teams have been added. As before, each chapter opens with an example of a real team. Many of the concepts and techniques in the chapters are supplemented with illustrations and examples from real teams, both contemporary and historical. I do not use these examples to prove a theory; rather, I use them to illustrate how many of the concepts in the book are borne out in real-world situations. Learning and development:Mostly due to my strong research interests in learning, I have put learning front-and-center in the new edition, with a special focus on how leaders should be in a continuous learning mode. For example, in Chapter 1, I have expanded the team-building skills from two in the 2000 edition (accurate diagnosis and theory-based intervention) to three in the current edition (accurate diagnosis, theory-based intervention, and expert learning). In addition to the changes discussed, which affect all chapters and sections of the book, several chapters have undergone updates as new theory and research has broken ground and as our world has been shaped by events such as September 11, 2001, and the rash of corporate fraud. For example, Chapter 6 ("Team Decision Making") now has a new section on decision making and ethics. In addition, all of the chapters have undergone a serious facelift. The revision was sparked not only by advances--as well as calamities--in the corporate world, but also even more so by the great scientific research on teamwork that my colleagues have relentlessly contributed to the field of management science in the past three years, since the first edition went to press. One of the reasons why I love this field is because there are so many wonderful people with whom to collaborate. The following people have had a major impact on my thinking and have brought joy and meaning to the word