Title: Reading: (CU2 M3) The Team and Its Members (Continued)
Course: SkillsCom BA 101 16.0

From Exploring Business, v. 2.0 by Karen Collins

Task-Facilitating Roles

Task-facilitating roles address challenge number one—accomplishing the team goals. As you can see from Table 8.2 "Roles that Team Members Play", such roles include not only providing information when someone else needs it but also asking for it when you need it. In addition, it includes monitoring (checking on progress) and enforcing (making sure that team decisions are carried out). Task facilitators are especially valuable when assignments aren’t clear or when progress is too slow. Moreover, every team needs people who recognize when a little task facilitation is called for.

Relationship-Building Roles

When you challenge unmotivated behavior or help other team members understand their roles, you’re performing a relationship-building role and addressing challenge number two—maintaining or improving group cohesiveness. This type of role includes just about every activity that improves team “chemistry,” from confronting to empathizing.

Bear in mind three points about this model of team-membership roles: (1) Teams are most effective when there’s a good balance between task facilitation and relationship building; (2) it’s hard for any given member to perform both types of roles, as some people are better at focusing on tasks and others on relationships; and (3) overplaying any facet of any role can easily become counterproductive. For example, elaborating on something may not be the best strategy when the team needs to make a quick decision; and consensus building may cause the team to overlook an important difference of opinion.

Blocking Roles

Finally, review Table 8.3 "How to Block Teamwork", which summarizes a few characteristics of another kind of team-membership role. So-called blocking roles consist of behavior that inhibits either team performance or that of individual members. Every member of the team should know how to recognize blocking behavior. If teams don’t confront dysfunctional members, they can destroy morale, hamper consensus building, create conflict, and hinder progress.

Table 8.3 How to Block Teamwork

Blocking Strategy | Tactics
Dominate | Talk as much as possible; interrupt and interject
Overanalyze | Split hairs and belabor every detail
Stall | Frustrate efforts to come to conclusions: decline to agree, sidetrack the discussion, rehash old ideas
Remain passive | Stay on the fringe; keep interaction to a minimum; wait for others to take on work
Overgeneralize | Blow things out of proportion; float unfounded conclusions
Find fault | Criticize and withhold credit whenever possible
Make premature decisions | Rush to conclusions before goals are set, information is shared, or problems are clarified
Present opinions as facts | Refuse to seek factual support for ideas that you personally favor
Reject | Object to ideas offered by people who tend to disagree with you
Pull rank | Use status or title to push through ideas, rather than seek consensus on their value
Resist | Throw up roadblocks to progress; look on the negative side
Deflect | Refuse to stay on topic; focus on minor points rather than main points

Source: Adapted from David A. Whetten and Kim S. Cameron, Developing Management Skills, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007), 519–20.

Class Team Projects

As we highlighted earlier, throughout your academic career you’ll likely participate in a number of team projects. Not only will you make lasting friends by being a member of a team, but in addition you’ll produce a better product. To get insider advice on how to survive team projects in college (and perhaps really enjoy yourself in the process), let’s look at some suggestions offered by two students who have gone through this experience. ^[9]

- Draw up a team charter. At the beginning of the project, draw up a team charter (or contract) that includes the goals of the group; ways to ensure that each team member’s ideas are considered and respected; when and where your group will meet; what happens if a team member skips meetings or doesn’t do his or her share of the work; how conflicts will be resolved.
- Contribute your ideas. Share your ideas with your group; they might be valuable to the group. The worst that could happen is that they won’t be used (which is what would happen if you kept quiet).
- Never miss a meeting. Pick a weekly meeting time and write it into your schedule as if it were a class. Never skip it. And make your meetings productive.
- Be considerate of each other. Be patient, listen to everyone, communicate frequently, involve everyone in decision making, don’t think you’re always right, be positive, avoid infighting, build trust.
- Create a process for resolving conflict. Do this before conflict arises. Set up rules to help the group decide whether the conflict is constructive, whether it’s personal, or whether it arises because someone won’t pull his or her weight. Decide, as a group, how conflict will be handled.
- Use the strengths of each team member. Some students are good researchers, others are good writers, others have strong problem-solving or computer skills, while others are good at generating ideas. Don’t have your writer do the research and your researcher do the writing. Not only would the team not be using its resources wisely, but two team members will be frustrated because they’re not using their strengths.
- Don’t do all the work yourself. Work with your team to get the work done. The project output is not as important as the experience of working in a team.
- Set deadlines. Don’t leave everything to the end; divide up tasks, hold team members accountable, and set intermediary deadlines for each team member to get his or her work done. Work together to be sure the project is in on time and in good shape.

What Does It Take to Lead a Team?

“Some people are born leaders, some achieve leadership, and some have leadership thrust upon them.” Or so Shakespeare might have said if he were managing a twenty-first-century work team instead of a sixteenth-century theater troupe. At some point in a successful career, whether in business, school, or any other form of organizational work, you may be asked (or assigned) to lead a team. The more successful you are, the more likely you are to receive such an invitation. So, what will you have to do as a leader? What skills will you need?

Like so many of the questions that we ask in this book, these questions don’t have any simple answers. As for the first question—what does a leader have to do?—we can provide one broad answer: A leader must help members develop the attitudes and behavior that contribute to team success: interdependence, collective responsibility, shared commitment, and so forth.

Influence Team Members and Gain their Trust

Team leaders must be able to influence their team members. And notice that we say influence: except in unusual circumstances, giving commands and controlling everything directly doesn’t work very well. ^[10] As one team of researchers puts it, team leaders are more effective when they work with members rather than on them. ^[11] Hand in hand with the ability to influence is the ability to gain and keep the trust of team members. People aren’t likely to be influenced by a leader whom they perceive as dishonest or selfishly motivated.

Figure 8.4

© 2010 Jupiterimages CorporationTeam leaders are most effective when they can not only influence members but also gain their trust.

Assuming you were asked to lead a team, there are certain leadership skills and behaviors that would help you influence your team members and build trust. Let’s look at seven of these:

- Demonstrate integrity. Do what you say you’ll do, and act in accordance with your stated values. Be honest in communicating with members, and follow through on promises.
- Be clear and consistent. Let members know that you’re certain about what you want, and remember that being clear and consistent reinforces your credibility.
- Generate positive energy. Be optimistic and compliment team members. Recognize their progress and success.
- Acknowledge common points of view. Even if you’re about to propose some kind of change, before embarking on a new stage of a project recognize the value of the views that members already hold in common.
- Manage agreement and disagreement. When members agree with you, focus on your point of view and present it reasonably. When they disagree with you, acknowledge both sides of the issue and support your own with strong, clearly presented evidence.
- Encourage and coach. Buoy up members when they run into new and uncertain situations and when success depends on their performing at a high level. Give them the information they need and otherwise help them to perform tasks.
- Share information. Let members know that you’re knowledgeable about team tasks and individual talents. Check with team members regularly to find out what they’re doing and how the job is progressing. Collect information from outside sources, and make sure that it gets to the team members who need it.

[8] David A. Whetten and Kim S. Cameron, Developing Management Skills, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007), 516–17.

[9] Hannah Nichols, “Teamwork in School, Work and Life,” iamnext.com 2003,http://www.iamnext.com/academics/groupwork.html (accessed August 10, 2008); and Kristin Feenstra, “Study Skills: Team Work Skills for Group Projects,” iamnext.com, 2002, http://www.iamnext.com/academics/grouproject.html (accessed October 11, 2011).

[10] This section is based on David A. Whetten and Kim S. Cameron, Developing Management Skills, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007), 510–13.

[11] David A. Whetten and Kim S. Cameron, Developing Management Skills, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2007), 511.

[12] Kristen Feenstra, “Study Skills: Teamwork Skills for Group Projects,” iamnext.com, 2002,http://www.iamnext.com/academics/grouproject.html (accessed October 11, 2011).