Principles of Team Effectiveness

Principles of Effective Teamwork

1. Overview

• Successful teams develop strong relationships and incorporate effective group processes
• Successful teams work together to establish and meet agreed upon goals
• Successful teams have relationships that are based on commitment, cooperation, and trust
• Successful teams foster team members' participation, satisfaction, learning, and growth

2. Successful Task Completion Occurs When…

• The team establishes a common goal/set of goals
• The criteria for team success are clearly established
• The goal(s) take all relevant stakeholders into consideration
• The team is successful in achieving its goal(s)
• Team performance is enhanced because of the team members and teamwork

3. Individual Benefits Occur When…

• Each team member has ample opportunity to express their ideas
• Each team member meets the team's expectations of them
• Each team member is satisfied with the outcome
• Each team member experiences learning/ growth from the team experience

4. Characteristics of Successful Teams

• Successful teams develop strong working relationships by ensuring:
• Defined roles
• Accountability
• Clear and proactive communications
• Successful teams incorporate effective processes by incorporating:
• Shared leadership among team members
• Diversity of skills and personalities
• Frank and frequent critique
  

5. Effective Social Relations Occur When…

• The workload is evenly distributed among team members
• Team members listen to/respect the input of others
• The team leadership style is appropriate for the team's developmental stage and goals
• The decision-making process is fair
• Conflict (if any) is resolved by satisfying the interests of all team members
• All team members met the team's expectations of them
• Relationships among team members are strengthened by working together

Source: Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/c.php?g=365963&p=2473004
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Structural Factors Impacting Team Effectiveness

1. Overview

• Optimum team size is approximately 4-6
• Diversity on a team increases productivity but lengthens the process
• Every team member should have clearly articulated roles
• Norms help establish and control team members’ behaviors

2. Diversity

• Diversity among team members fortifies the team but extends the process of getting work done
• Types of diversity to consider:
  
  

  Age	Language
  Attitudes	Learning styles
  Cognitive aptitude	Motivation
  Critical thinking ability	Opinion
  Communication ability	Problem-solving ability
  Conflict resolution ability	Race
  Education	Religion
  Ethnicity	Socio-economic status
  Experience	Values
  Gender

  
  

3. Team Norms

• Norms are rules that have some amount of agreement and are enforced through social sanctions
• Norms define appropriate behaviors
• Norms establish mutual understanding and team identity
• Areas to consider for establishing team norms include:
• Attendance
• Contribution
• Courteous-conversations
• Decision-making
• Enforcement
• Handling disagreements
• Participation
• Punctuality
• Tasks-assignments
  

4. Team Size

• Small teams are typically more productive than large ones
• Teams that are too small have difficulty accomplishing tasks – not enough people to share the work
• Large teams enable shared responsibility and accountability
• Management problems on very large teams may outweigh the incremental resources additional people provide
• Tasks determine the size of the team
• Student projects teams of between 4-6 members are a good rule of thumb

5. Roles

• Every team member should have a role – this keeps members committed to the work of the team
• Roles need to be clearly defined
• Problems can result from role ambiguity
• Types of roles:
• Behavioral (e.g. contributor, coordinator, critic, evaluator)
• Social (e.g. encourager, expediter, group process observer, follower)
• Meeting (e.g. facilitator, recorder, timekeeper)
  

Assessment of Team Performance and Learning

1. Overview

• Assessment of individual members as well as assessment of the overall team are essential to enhancing teamwork
• Assessing teams improves goal attainment, enriches relationships, and enhances performance
• Both team performance and team learning should be assessed
• Performance assessments measure success, help correct behaviors, and motivate performance improvements
• Learning assessments enable team members to share thoughts and increase control of their learning
• Biases may prevent some team members from providing accurate assessments
  

2. Individual and Collective Evaluations

• Self-evaluations, self-monitoring, and self-regulation enable individuals to identify areas where they can improve their contributions to the team
• Peer evaluations allow team members to assess each others' strengths and weakness and collectively discuss how team performance can be improved
  

Note: If standards are not objective and confidential, team members may have challenges evaluating each other

3. Assessment of Team Learning

• In successful teams members learn from each others' thought processes
• Learning assessments enables identification of effective (or not effective) individual and group learning strategies
• Critical analysis of team members' work enables team members to increase control of their learning
• Strategies for assessing learning:
• Identify learning strategies and processes in relation to team goals
• Use questions to determine what the team members were able to do easily versus with difficulty
• Identify strategies needed to close learning gaps
• Use self-assessments to encouraging each team member to take responsibility of their learning
• Learn from assessments to improve future achievements
  

4. Benefits of Assessing Teams

• Improves goal attainment
• Strengthens commitment to common goals and priorities
• Helps team members scrutinize objectives to identify misunderstandings or thinking gaps
• Encourages leveraging of team members' differences to accomplish goals
• Enriches relationships
• Improves team's cohesiveness and morale
• Enhances communication among team members
• Increases role clarity and utilization of team member's strengths
• Reduce performance barriers and conflicts
• Enhances team performance
• Streamlines team processes
• Increases team members' confidence
• Improves quality of learning output
  

5. Assessment of Team Performance

• Successful teams measure accomplishments, identify issues, and correct internal problems
• Performance assessments ensure equitable contributions and identify areas for individual/ collective improvements
• Strategies for assessing performance:
• Generate clear and understandable team goals
• Identify examples of quality work and successful standards
• Use team discussion and reflection to compare team performance to goals
• Identify strategies needed to close  performance gaps
  

6. Team Assessment Biases

• Team members may provide positive ratings to other team members due to empathy or fear conflict (Inflation bias)
• Team members may feel obligated to return positive assessments because they received positive ratings (Reciprocity bias)
• Successful teams may attribute their success to all members of the team (Halo effect)
• Unsuccessful team may attribute their failure to selective members of the team (Scapegoating)