Team Dynamics

It may seem obvious to say so, but teams are made of humans, and humans express behaviors that are both beneficial and detrimental to the function of their teams. People who feel they are part of a team are often mutually supportive and report greater job satisfaction. However, not all teams are successful. In one survey, only 14 percent of companies rated their teams as highly effective^[1], around 50 percent rated them as somewhat effective, and 15 percent rated them as not effective at all. In this module, we look at common behaviors that can help or hurt efforts to meet organizational goals.

Advantages of Working in Teams

Better Motivation and Communication

Teams bring together people with diverse skills to create something that no one person could do alone. A well-planned team improves motivation. Communication is higher in teams, and the diverse skill set means teams can discover new approaches. Because teams have specific shared goals, team members usually enjoy greater autonomy, variety, task identity, task significance, and feedback. Teams often enjoy social support for difficult tasks, improving morale and motivation.

Each Whole Foods grocery store operates with an average of ten “self-managed” teams, including produce, prepared foods, groceries, etc. Each store also has a team made up of just the leaders from each team to facilitate communication and sharing. Each team takes responsibility for the quality of the products and services in its area.

Improved Efficiency

Efficiency is another advantage to building teams within the traditional hierarchy. Teams can analyze and identify dependent tasks in a nonlinear process, sometimes realizing startling improvements.

Better Job Satisfaction

Employees also benefit from participating in teams. They develop relationships with people from other areas of the business and learn more about what is happening across functional department lines (cross-training). Additionally, 69% of people who have personal relationships or friendships with their coworkers report job satisfaction and that they are engaged at work, compared to less than one-third of people who do not.^[2] Strong camaraderie among teammates fosters loyalty, making employees more likely to remain with the organization.^[3]

Developing Relationships at Work

According to LaFasto and Larson in “When Teams Work Best,”^[4] there are four aspects of a good relationship: constructive, productive, mutual understanding, and self-corrective. These four aspects are the basis for LaFasto and Larson’s Connect model, which can be used to develop good relationships.

• A constructive relationship can also be between a person and the team. To have a constructive relationship, there must be trust and mutual understanding between both parties. Constructive relationships do not happen overnight, it takes time to develop trust and to be open with others.
• Productive relationships are important because if the relationship between two individuals on a team is not productive, the team may not be productive. Productive relationships also, “allow us to focus on real issues—the ones that matter—and to do so in a way that makes a difference.”^[5]
• Mutual understanding is critical because, “[it encourages] us to focus on and understand the other person’s perspective, and [it offers] us the satisfaction of being understood.”^[6] Not only is it important to validate another person’s point of view, it is important for us to be validated. It goes back to trust and building a constructive relationship.
• Good relationships are self-corrective, characterized by the ability of individuals or parties involved to recognize and address issues within the relationship independently, leading to continual improvement and the maintenance of a healthy dynamic over time. By continuing to work on improving a relationship, you are developing trust and mutual understanding among the parties.

Team Cohesion

Social cohesion refers to the degree of harmony, unity, and solidarity within a group, characterized by shared values, norms, and mutual support among its members, leading to a sense of belonging and collective well-being. In work teams, social cohesiveness means the members want to be part of the team and want to contribute to its success. Members of cohesive teams have social and emotional bonds to each other and to the overall team, which motivates higher commitment and performance.

Southwest Airlines, for instance, works hard to develop cohesiveness in its organization. As a result, everyone is willing to work toward the success of the organization. That is why it is not unusual to see people help on a task even when it is not part of their job. For example, pilots may help to load luggage if it helps maintain on-time performance.

The main factors influencing cohesion are the size of the group, similarities among its members, and team success.

• Small groups tend to be more cohesive than larger ones because people can interact with each other more.
• Similarity among group members contributes to team cohesiveness because people with similar backgrounds are more likely to have fewer communication barriers and share views on what constitutes appropriate behaviors. People are generally more trusting of others when they share some important background experiences.
• When a team experiences success early in its development, members get reinforcement that their efforts can produce results. They are more likely to be motivated to continue to contribute. Success also creates a sense of pride that fosters feelings of belonging and mutual attraction in the team.

Working Towards a Goal

Collective efficacy is the team’s belief that its members are capable of organizing and working together to reach its goals. Creating collective efficacy is a bit of a balancing act. If goals are perceived as being too easy to reach, members may not feel they have to put in their full effort. On the other hand, if goals are perceived to be too difficult, members may feel their effort doesn’t matter because the goal cannot be reached regardless of how hard they work. In either case, social loafing may result. Social loafing refers to the tendency for individuals to exert less effort when working collectively in a group compared to when working alone. But when the goal is “just right,” difficult but not impossible, the team will believe it can reach it only if they work hard together.

Psychologist Albert Bandura researched the relationship between efficacy and job performance and found that each affects the other. When a team achieves some success, it can build self-confidence and the belief that it can achieve more. The resulting collective efficacy, in turn, makes it more likely that the team will be successful. However, a downward spiral can occur when both performance and collective efficacy are low. Poor performance makes team members question their ability, and the decrease in collective efficacy leads to more poor performance.^[7]

Good planning and good leadership can both improve collective efficacy. When the tasks needed to reach the team’s goals are being planned, initial activities should lead to demonstrating team achievements. When teams experience success early in their development, they are more likely to build collective efficacy. Good leadership provides a clear vision for the team and articulates why the goals are important. The leader provides guidance, feedback, and encouragement. When teams receive timely feedback, they are more likely to understand the relationship between their effort and their performance.

Roles within the Team

As you work on developing good relationships, another way to foster good group dynamics is to identify strengths and weaknesses and assign group roles. For a new team that has not worked together, assigning roles can also help surface individual strengths and weaknesses. By simply assigning roles at the beginning of the project, a team can quickly focus on specific tasks. Everyone should be responsible for brainstorming, problem-solving, and offering their experience and knowledge, but some roles are more generic and may or may not vary by task. Here are four roles that no team should be without:

1. A Leader: In the event there is no clear chain of command, a team must be prepared to assign the role of leader. A leader can keep the team focused, mediate conflicts, and ensure that individuals are held accountable.
2. A note taker or scribe: Again, a simple idea, but documenting every meeting is an important step in developing a productive team. A scribe can quickly get a team up to date with past notes, so little time is wasted remembering where the conversation left off. By documenting and distributing notes from each meeting, the scribe can keep all members of the team equally informed.
3. Lessons-learned tracker: Identify one person to track both positive and negative outcomes of meetings and projects. This individual can solicit input from other members. Documenting what everyone thinks went well and why, and what did not go well and why, can keep a team productive by not repeating past mistakes.
4. Devil’s advocate: Teams need to embrace conflict and different points of view. A devil’s advocate is a person who brings up alternatives or objections to other’s ideas. Assigning such a role can make the team more objective and reduce problems like Groupthink. Because this person’s role can stir up conflict, it can be helpful to rotate who plays the devil’s advocate for the team.

Think of cohesion as morale. It makes sense that a group that enjoys each other’s company is more likely to come together to work toward a common goal. Once everyone is working toward success, little successes occur along the way. This success helps the team’s morale spiral upward. Teams move past being solely task- or work-focused. They become work friends, maybe even social friends. This closeness of relationship adds to the productivity of the team as members are more likely to speak directly even as difficult issues arise.

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