Team Process

8 Key excerpts on "Team Process"

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  Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior

  Evidence-based Lessons for Creating Sustainable Organizations

  • Steve M. Jex, Thomas W. Britt, Cynthia A. Thompson, Cynthia A Thompson(Authors)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Now that we have discussed how teams develop, the next section of the chapter addresses how to assess the effectiveness of teams, followed by Team Processes that con- tribute to team effectiveness. DEFINING TEAM EFFECTIVENESS To say that teams now represent an impor- tant part of organizational life is certainly an understatement. Nearly all organizations use small teams to accomplish at least some tasks, and it has become increasingly popular for small teams to be the basic foundations on which organizations are built (Guzzo & Shea, 1992; Kozlowski & Bell, 2013). Despite the importance of team effective- ness, it is not necessarily easy to define what is meant by an effective team. Steiner (1972) proposed one of the earliest theoretical propositions bearing on team effectiveness: Actual productivity = Potential productivity − Process losses The potential productivity of a team rep- resents the highest level of performance that is attainable by a team. Consider the follow- ing example. If each of the five starting play- ers on a basketball team is capable of scoring 20 points per game, those players collec- tively should be able to score at least 100 points per game. The term process losses represents less-than-optimal ways of com- bining the inputs of team members into a team product. Process losses generally occur because of a lack of coordination among team members or because the motivation of individuals may change when they are performing in a team setting (Latane et al., 1979). The team previously described may not reach its scoring potential because the styles of the individual players do not mesh well or because individual players may not feel a great deal of personal respon- sibility for the team’s performance and, as a result, may reduce their effort. Steiner’s (1972) model is certainly useful in helping us to understand, in a very gen- eral sense, what determines team perfor- mance, but it also has some serious limitations.

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  The Blackwell Handbook of Global Management

  A Guide to Managing Complexity

  • Henry W. Lane, Martha L. Maznevski, Mark E. Mendenhall, Jeanne McNett, Henry W. Lane, Martha L. Maznevski, Mark E. Mendenhall, Jeanne McNett(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  228 sue canney davison and bjørn z. ekelund B asic E lements of T eam D ynamics We begin with a look at three fundamental aspects of teams: their task and social pro-cesses, their emergent states, and their team coordinating mechanisms. Task and social processes Healthy Team Processes usually involve multiple modes of exchange and high levels of internal and external responsiveness. This means maintaining fast feedback loops where the energy remains positive and aligned with the team’s task despite changes, arguments, and difficulties. Team Processes describe how the team interacts. They are the inter-dependent acts that convert inputs to outcomes. 1 Task processes are those intellectual and physical processes that directly assist the team to achieve its tasks, and social processes are those that govern the pattern of interaction among the team members and between the team and the organization. These two types of processes are closely linked and in fact usually happen simultaneously. Task processes influence performance directly and quickly, while social processes influence outcomes indirectly, through their influence on task pro-cesses and, in the long term, through their influence on the team’s ability to work together. The task processes may lead to completion of the task and the social processes to a sense of community, to team members seeing themselves as integral parts of a whole team consciousness. If an organization is to capture all the learning from a team, the organiza-tion needs to be able to identify and measure the quality of both the task work and the social processes. It may be the case that there is valuable learning in the social processes even when the task itself is not successful. For example, clinical trials may reveal serious side effects to a certain drug. The drug is shelved, but the team responsible for its development may have much to teach other teams about effective international coordina-tion and cross-cultural interaction.

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  Organizational Psychology

  A Scientist-Practitioner Approach

  • Steve M. Jex, Thomas W. Britt(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 12 Team Dynamics and Processes Within Organizations

  The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the voluminous amount of recent work, primarily by organizational psychologists, on the factors that contribute to team development and effectiveness. We purposefully use the term team rather than group because so much of the work done by organizational psychologists uses teams within organizations performing their normal work or being placed in realistic simulations to provide a more controlled assessment of team dynamics and performance. Kozlowski and Bell (2003) provide a detailed definition of what constitutes a team. They define work teams as “composed of two or more individuals who (a) exist to perform organizationally relevant tasks, (b) share one or more common goals, (c) interact socially, (d) exhibit task interdependencies, (e) maintain and manage boundaries, and (f) are embedded in an organizational context that sets boundaries, constrains the team, and influences exchanges with other units in the broader entity” (p. 334).

  We begin the chapter by examining models of how teams develop from being newly formed to being capable of solving problems and completing tasks. We then address the question of what constitutes team effectiveness, followed by an examination of several influential models of team effectiveness. These models have helped to guide much of the organizational research on team effectiveness and have served as a foundation for many organizational efforts to improve the performance of teams.

  Across these models, several variables repeatedly surface as determinants of team effectiveness. These include team composition, task design, organizational resources, organizational rewards, team goals, and Team Processes (e.g., shared mental models, transactive memory). Each of these are examined individually, and some of the most common methods organizations use to improve the performance of teams are described. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the role that teams are likely to play in organizations in the future.

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  A Team of Leaders

  Empowering Every Member to Take Ownership, Demonstrate Initiative, and Deliver Results

  • Paul GUSTAVSON, Stewart Liff(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • AMACOM

    (Publisher)

  Teams Have Processes, Too

   

  Key principle: All your processes must support the goal of making everyone a leader.

  TEAMS ARE GENERALLY PART of a larger organization and at least one of its processes (e.g., product development, demand creation, supply chain); by the same token, teams have their own processes, which are essential to carrying out the team's purpose and objectives. These processes include performing the core work of the team, managing team performance, selecting and on-boarding new members, building capability of the team and its members, and managing the disengagement or deselecting of team members.

  This chapter will help you think about how to identify your team's processes. It will also walk you through the aforementioned processes and offer examples of how to think about and design your own processes.

  PERFORMING THE CORE WORK

  Every team has its core work to perform. However, for everyone to ultimately become a leader, the team as a whole needs to understand how that work actually flows so that it can make sure that work is being performed as effectively and efficiently as possible.

  An excellent way to examine how core work is performed is through the process analysis process, which we introduced in the last chapter . The best way to get started is through process mapping, which is a tool that helps you visualize the flow of work and identify the points within a process where value is created. It is an essential tool for grasping and communicating your team's work. Let's look at this issue in a bit more depth.

  Subsets of activities where value is created in distinct and measurable ways are called state changes. A state change is a collection of work activities where the characteristics of the product or service are essentially changed or converted. For example, an information request may be changed to an accepted request that may then be changed to an answer. State changes are the building blocks by which an organization/team creates a product or service that is valuable to its buyers.

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  Spanning Boundaries and Disciplines

  University Technology Commercialization in the Idea Age

  • Gary D. Libecap, Marie Thursby, Sherry Hoskinson, Gary D. Libecap(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Furthermore, both satisfaction and commitment have been linked to objective performance. Performance generally refers to a team’s ability to effectively complete a task ( Mullen & Cooper, 1994 ; Chang & Bordia, 2001 ). For this study, team performance is defined as the extent to which a team is able to develop a comprehensive commercialization strategy for their technology. This is a global measure of performance at the team level. In this case, performance does not refer to the market performance of the technology because the strategies have not been implemented, and it is not possible to access market performance. These technologies are at such an early stage that even being able to formulate a commercialization strategy is a significant performance milestone. Team ProcessES I focus on two broad categories of Team Processes that are important to team functioning in multidisciplinary teams ( Perry-Smith & Vincent, 2009 ). The first group of Team Processes are those that team members establish to manage the completion of the task . These factors relating to the task are Social • Cohesiveness • Identification • Trust Objective • Team Performance Affective • Satisfaction • Commitment Task • Task-focused Interaction • Conflict • Team Citizenship Behavior Team Processes Team Outcomes Fig. 1 . Proposed Theoretical Model of Team Performance. Evolution of Team Processes in Commercializing High-Tech Products 91 critical to the team’s ability to complete the work required. These processes include communication relating to the task , functional conflict , and team citizenship behaviors . The second category of Team Processes considered vital to effective team functioning are social in nature. Teams must develop an identification to the team beyond their professional identities, group cohesion , and trust in order for communication to occur among team members so that the true performance potential of multidisciplinary teams can be achieved.

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  Person-Centred Thinking with Older People

  6 Essential Practices

  • Helen Bown, Gill Bailey, Helen Sanderson(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Jessica Kingsley Publishers

    (Publisher)

  Employees at the Tri-Counties Regional Center are encouraged to participate in an agency-wide operations committee to share information, discuss issues and ideas and contribute to decision making. They’re also supported with a performance review process that encourages staff to identify annual and other job-related goals.

  Employee development is supported through training, coaching and conversations about what is/isn’t working for the employees. These processes are enactments of a shared value of empowerment.

  Accountability: Clear and compelling processes that deliver the purpose and reflect performance standards are imperative, and need to be aligned at organisational, team and individual levels. When a team focuses on its purpose it is doing good. But doing good does not guarantee that the team is doing good well . An organisation cannot survive on mission-driven passion alone. Clear processes that reflect person-centred values contribute to doing things well. That consistency of practice gives employees a sense of comfort in knowing what to expect and what they can rely on. Team members can ‘trust the process’, allowing them to focus on work activities that contribute to excellent individual and team outcomes.

  PROCESSES TO DELIVER SUCCESS

  Now that you’re clear about purpose, the people in your team and what performance is expected, it’s time to help your team think about how it will work together. This ranges from establishing team guidelines, to thinking about meetings and decision making.

  Process question 1: how will we work together?

  One-page profiles and one-page team profiles serve an important function in helping to determine processes that will work well for the team. Look at what is important to individuals and the team as a whole. Here are some ways to embed processes in your team-work to reflect the information shared in one-page profiles.

  GUIDELINES Different teams use different labels such as values and principles, detailed guidelines or ground rules. All are summaries of how a team works together.

  You do not want this to become the team rulebook. Principles work better than rules because a rule has to be obeyed, and to do that, you are expected to suspend your judgement.37

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  Groupwork Practice in Social Work

  • Trevor Lindsay, Sue Orton, Author(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Learning Matters

    (Publisher)

  Many social work students have difficulty in understanding the concept of ‘process’ and how it differs from ‘content’. It is also quite difficult to explain what we mean by process but, as a phenomenon in groupwork, an understanding and awareness of process is critical. It may be useful to use the example of baking a loaf. If we want to bake bread we need ingredients – flour, yeast, water, salt, at least, and perhaps some fat, milk or flavouring. These ingredients are the content but they do not come together to form bread until they have gone through the processes of mixing, kneading, proving and baking. So these processes that take place change the ingredients so that at the end we have something different – bread. Likewise with groupwork, you should expect process to work in a way that changes the group in some way. Process can work either in favour of the desired outcome for the group or against it. However, just as the baker can alter the processes involved, for example the length of proving, the baking temperature and so forth, the group facilitator can work with the group processes to ensure that a favourable outcome is more likely, as we shall see shortly.

  In groupwork, Douglas (2000, p36) explains that all ‘process’ means:  

  is that there are discernible patterns of behaviour which tend to emerge in groups over time and appear to focus around certain aspects of the group’s behaviour .

  The most fundamental process of all, he asserts, is interaction. Douglas (1995) says that the term ‘process’ is used to mean all the things, which happen in communication between individuals . . . but not the actual words (p47) (our emphasis). Process concerns what occurs as a result of the words.

  Benson (2001) explains that process is about the how of individual and group experience –how people react to certain circumstances or are behaving towards each other, or how the group acts together. It is reflected in the quality of the group experience. We need to understand that there is a difference between content and process. Content refers to the what

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  The Emerald Handbook of Group and Team Communication Research

  • Stephenson J. Beck, Joann Keyton, Marshall Scott Poole, Stephenson J. Beck, Joann Keyton, Marshall Scott Poole(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Keywords : Group decision making; communication; group decision making performance; process; episodic models; sequential models Group decision making is a pervasive and ubiquitous aspect of everyday life in contemporary American society. Across business, government, education, legal, and health-care settings, groups and teams are used to solve problems and make consequential decisions. This reliance on group decision making is based on the assumption that collective decisions are superior to those made by individual decision makers ( Mukherjee et al., 2016 ). Given the importance of decision making groups, a considerable amount of research has focused on identifying the in fl uences on group decision making performance and success ( Hackman, 1983 ). Among the many in fl uences that have been identi fi ed by researchers ( Hirokawa & Johnston, 1989 ), the process that a group follows in arriving at a decision is widely regarded as one of the most important (e.g., Gladstein, 1984 ; Gouran & Hirokawa, 1996 ; Hackman & Morris, 1975 ; McGrath, 1984 ). The Emerald Handbook of Group and Team Communication Research, 191 – 208 Copyright © 2022 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi: 10.1108/978-1-80043-500-120211013 De fi nition of Group Process What is group process ? Simply put, group process refers to everything that group members do – individually and interactively – to arrive at a collective decision ( Marks et al., 2001 , p. 357). Process is multidimensional in that it has both cognitive and behavioral components. Cognitive aspects of processes include mental activities such as analyzing, interpreting, or evaluating data and infor-mation. In contrast, the behavioral components of process include symbolic actions such as the verbal and nonverbal communicative actions of group members. In short, group process includes both the thinking and communication that group members must engage in to reach a collective group decision.

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