Team Management

This article will focus on the complexities of managing teams in today's contemporary organizations. With organizations shifting from tall hierarchical functional structures to flatter team and network structures, managers are faced with some new challenges. These challenges include how to manage team types, team stages, communication strategies, and team leadership strategies and styles. The manager is faced with juggling between advocating change and controlling/evaluating team performance. It appears that the new manager should emphasize transformation rather than transaction when managing a team environment.

Keywords Cross-Functional Teams; Leading Change; Organizational Structure; Self-Managed Teams; Team Leadership; Team Stages; Team Types

Management > Team Management

Overview

Role of Teams in Contemporary Organizations

Many environmental forces, such as information, technology, and new decision-making strategies, have caused organizations to move towards integrating employee work teams into their structural makeup. One such environmental force has been the shift from the industrial worker to the knowledge worker as a result of the information boom (Drucker, as cited in LaRue, Childs, & Larson, 2004). With the speed, availability, and accessibility of information, a need to share knowledge within organizations has been a prime driving force for creating an atmosphere of teamwork. Technology advancements make it possible for social capital to be as strategically important to organizations as intellectual capital. Never in history has the technological infrastructure made it so easy to implement collaborative strategies such as cross-functional teams, self-managed teams, committees, and virtual work groups. The way decisions are made transformed from a top management activity to a responsibility of all employees (LaRue et al., 2004). These forces, among others, have created a need for employees to work together, formally or informally, in order to share information and employ interdependency as a means for accomplishing organizational objectives. The use of teams, groups, committees, and other collaborative work structures has gained use as organizations attempt to adjust to these environmental changes. As such, leaders and managers must consider their approach to teams (their style, behaviors, strategies, role, and disposition toward the team structure) as part of their leadership and management framework.

Team Formation Decision Factors for Managers

The decision to implement a team within the confines of an organization should not be taken lightly. Creating work teams is an investment in people, time, energy, resources, and workspace. As such, the conditions that favor the creation of organizational teams should be well understood before making the risky leap into team implementation. Steps should be taken to ensure that the conditions are right; the decision to implement a team structure is often considered a crucial strategic decision.

Several conditions should exist before creating a team. First, a clear and concise team vision and mission should be defined and closely aligned with the overall organizational strategy (Caplan et al., 1992). Second, the business needs goals and objectives that are complex and require high-quality decisions (Pitman, 1994). Third, the benefits of pooling knowledge must outweigh the efficiency lost because of group engagement (MacNeil, 2003). Fourth, mutual commitment by those recruited to the team is possible and desired (Pitman, 1994). Fifth, the organization must have a trusting environment that allows for mutually effective collaboration between team members (Politis, 2003). Finally, the team needs to have full support from the management and leaders of the organization (Jones & Schilling, 2000). Organizational managers and leaders need to engage in a research phase to ensure that these conditions exist. Otherwise, the organization may simply be setting the team up for subsequent and unanticipated failure.

Management & Leadership in Teams

In a team environment, an organizational manager/leader should consider two things; the type of team and the stage of development in which the team resides.

Team Type

Different team types include cross-functional teams, self-managed teams, virtual teams, task forces, committees, ad hoc groups, quality circles, and process improvement teams, among others. Managers should consider team type as part of their management style. For example, the management required for a cross-functional product development team, for example, would likely be more directive than the leadership and management required for a virtual self-managed team, where the leadership roles are shared between the members. Using the wrong leadership or management behavior while interacting in a particular team type can be catastrophic — such as the manager recruited to participate in a self-managed team who behaves in a directive and authoritarian manner. Understanding the team stage is also important. Beck and Yeager (1996) described four team stages: team orientation, clarifying roles and responsibilities, doing the actual work or project, and solving problems. Depending on the stage that the team is in, the leader should be directing, delegating, empowering, developing, or some combination thereof.

Team Stage

In addition to leadership/management behaviors and style, a manager's communication strategy should also be based on the team stage. The most widely recognized model for organizational team stages was developed by Tuckman (Kinicki, 2003) and consisted of five stages; forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. The forming stage is the initial break-in stage of the team members. Members try to determine where they fit in, what the team focus is, and what their individual roles will be. In the storming stage, the power within the group is ironed out, and individuals start to understand what their roles and influences on the team will be. In the norming stage, teams begin to come together as a cohesive group. Cooperative group discussions replace bids for power. In the performing stage, the group has matured and is operating in a tight-knit, committed group that holds each other mutually accountable. The project goal becomes the main task at hand, rather than relationships and leadership concerns. These stages are fluid and constantly evolving and changing. It is acceptable for a team to slip back to a previous stage if making revisions is necessary. Changes can be made and the team can resume (Mind Tools, 2023). Once complete, the team adjourns, where an evaluation and "post-mortem" analysis can often lead to the dismantling of the team. Tuckerman’s team stages continued to be applicable in the twenty-first century for use in the remote workplace as well.

Ranney and Deck (1995) developed a useful matrix for a communication strategy when leading teams — a strategy that is dependent on the team stage. Their examples included being a coach and promoter in the forming stage, being a coach, giving frequent feedback, reinforcing vision, and reviewing boundaries in the storming stage, managing team membership and coaching in the performing stage, being encouraging, recognizing achievement, and being supportive in the high-performance stage, and expressing appreciation in the completing stage. Successful management and leadership approaches often emphasize the importance of being conscious of team type and process stage in order to apply the most effective leadership/management methodology.

Leadership Strengths & Weaknesses

A manager's strengths and weaknesses should also be considered when managing teams. For example, a manager's strengths might be his or her ability to be rational, pragmatic, logical, practical, and emotionally stable. His or her weaknesses might be a need for perfection, micromanaging, and a lack of delegation. Strengths and weaknesses such as these take on an entirely new meaning when evaluating management and leadership from a team perspective. As such, there are additional considerations that should be modified and included in this plan.

Team Member Perspective

A manager who is pragmatic and focused on logic can easily conflict with a fellow team member's style on a self-managed team. A team member who is creative, works at a quick pace, and is outgoing may have difficulty with the aforementioned behavior. The manager's need for perfection might be an excellent style to use in a quality circle but it is likely very ineffective in a new product think tank. A manager should create a process in which he or she is always conscious of the team type, team stage, and his or her own leadership strengths and weaknesses and how they match with the team's needs.

Team Leader Perspective

Conger (1999) presented nine leadership styles that portray a convergence of three main leadership theories. The leadership dimensions were: Creating vision, providing inspiration, role modeling, intellectual stimulation, meaning -making, appealing to higher-order needs, empowering, setting high expectations, and fostering collective identity. These particular dimensions of leadership seem even more appropriate for the team environment. In particular, creating vision and fostering collective identity will be extremely beneficial to a team leader. In creating and implementing an organizational team, a clear and concise team vision and mission should be defined and closely aligned with the overall organizational strategy (Caplan et al., 1992). High performance teams require mutual commitment and accountability (Pitman, 1994). This will result in the desired collective identity. In addition, the other dimensions will also help lead a team, especially when creating change or transformation. The nine dimensions identified by Conger help team managers and leaders determine their approach and style. Further research by Conger and Kanungo developed the theory of charismatic leadership which stated that successful leaders showed a likability, high emotional intelligence, and an infectious passion for their work (Miller, 2022)

Leading Change within a Team

Using the wrong leadership style at the wrong time can be a roadblock to team success. Some research suggests that team leadership is one of the major reasons why teams fail within organizations (Katzenbach, as cited in Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Avolio, & Jung, 2002). Some researchers suggest that leaders use a style that was less transactional and more transformational (Kinicki, 2003) based on the leader-follower relationship. In the team context, especially when driving change through a team effort, the leadership style and behaviors should emphasize the transformational leadership style as much as possible. Another word for change is to transform. This is the essence of transformational leadership — to drive continuous change through the organization. In a team environment, once the team has become familiar with their roles and mission, an effective team leader will focus on transformational behavior and only use transactional behavior when an adjustment to the team is required or when the results are not acceptable.

Yukl opened that transformational leaders "formulate a vision, develop a commitment to it among internal and external stakeholders, implement strategies to accomplish the mission, and imbed the new values and assumptions in the culture of the organization" (as cited in Strang, 2005, p.76). Formulating the vision is the first and likely the most important step in driving change through the implementation of teams. Nanus (2003) described what vision is and what vision is not. He defined vision as a perspective that is appropriate for the organization, clarifies purpose and direction, sets standards of excellence, inspires enthusiasm and commitment, is easily articulated and understood, is different, and is ambitious. He opined that vision was not a prophecy, not a mission, not factual, not true or false, not static, and not a constraint. Kouzes and Posner (2003) discussed finding your voice as a key leadership behavior in creating vision and inspiring and motivating others. Other research suggests that employing a transformational leadership style will result in a team that trusts leader judgment, comprehends their mission, supports team values, and has strong emotional ties (Avolio, Waldman, & Einstein, 1988). This certainly appears to be a formula for success in driving organizational change through teams and is the framework that managers and leaders can embrace in creating an effective vision for leading change within a team. Studies published after the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in the popularity of the remote workplace called into question how transformational leadership could work in new workplace configurations. Though methods of transformational leadership needed to be adapted for the remote workplace it was still beneficial in allowing for effective communication, modeling behaviours, meeting employee needs, and recognizing contributions (Meiryan, et al, 2022).

Evaluation & Control

Performance evaluation is often considered a management function rather than a leadership function. One of the major differences between management and leadership in Kotter's (2001) model is that managers control and problem-solve while leaders motivate and inspire. Evaluating performance and making adjustments to improve performance would seem to fall under the management function of controlling. Popular management textbooks continue to emphasize controlling as a managerial function. However, part of the leadership construct in the team environment is to do exactly that — evaluate and control performance.

The element that links evaluation and control to leadership is trust. Bennis (1991) suggested that developing trust is one of the key ingredients for achieving personal growth in others. The team evaluation process builds this trust. Jones and Schilling (2000) stated, "The team-performance measurement process shows management the results of team performance, so management can trust that teams are doing the right things" (p.2). Even in self-managed teams, evaluating performance is critical for maintaining the support of the management team, which is an important component of team success. Mintzberg opined that the leadership and management components of one's job cannot be separated from a behavioral standpoint. The model suggested that leadership is simply a component of the management framework. In this context, there is little difference between team management and team leadership.

Managing Performance in Self-managed Virtual Teams

There are three main areas that relate to leadership performance in a self-managed virtual team. The first evaluation area relates to the type of leadership that the team uses within the virtual team environment. The second area relates to shared accountability for individual contributions and overall team results. The last area relates to the decision-making methods employed by the team to complete work assignments.

Management and leadership in a self-managed, self-directed, virtual learning team are quite different from the traditional management/leadership role in workplace teams. Traditional teams in the workplace had one leader/manager who would act as the director, facilitator, coach, guide, and conduit to the rest of the organization. Self-managed, self-directed, virtual learning teams are a "different animal." In general, leadership is a shared responsibility in a self-managed team. In a shared leadership environment, the first priority of team leadership is the task itself (Bell and Kozlowski, as cited in Carte, Chidambaram, & Becker, 2006). Carte, et al. (2006) posited that there are two primary modes of leadership in a self-managed team environment. The first is expertise leadership, where team members tend to adopt leadership roles in their areas of expertise. The second is collective participatory management. The study indicated that in addition to individual leadership that stems from respective expertise, the team members need to collectively move the team towards the goal in a participatory way.

Mutual Accountability

Part of the shared leadership in a self-managed virtual team is mutual accountability. Team members have the task of holding each other accountable for their role and expected deliverables, and members are expected to manage any resulting conflict effectively within the team. In academia, for example, Hackman (1990) asserted that academic teams have the challenge of managing differing work styles and work paces. This team phenomenon leads to the team having to "fit an indeterminate amount of work into a fixed amount of time" (Hackman, 1990, p.110). One effective way to manage this challenge in a virtual self-managed team is to hold each other accountable for individual tasks and expected content, timely submission of individual contributions, and involvement in the integration of individual ideas into a team product. High expectations of accountability in this team environment lead to each member trying to go above and beyond expectations in order to please and support their fellow team members.

Decision-Making

One of the major challenges that a self-managed team faces is the desire of team members to have an environment of conformity, consensus, and cohesiveness. As such, oftentimes, self-managed teams find themselves engaged in the phenomenon of groupthink (Kinicki, 2003), where team members make decisions that they do not believe in simply to be agreeable and pleasing to others on the team. The team might also engage in making satisfying decisions, where team members agree to decisions that satisfy a problem need without evaluating all the alternatives from which the best solution or decision may evolve. Part of the shared leadership in a self-managed virtual team is to ensure that the team consciously engages in constructive decision-making methods.

Creating an environment for effective decision-making is essential for the success of self-managed virtual teams. Manz and Neck (1995) created a decision-making model that can prevent groupthink and satisfying decision-making called Teamthink. The model presented 8 steps in the decision-making process. These included: "encouragement of divergent views, open expression of concerns/ideas, awareness of limitations/threats, recognition of each member's unique value, recognition of views outside of the group, discussion of collective doubts, adoption/utilization of non-stereotypical views, and recognition of ethical and moral consequences of decisions" (Manz, et al. 1995, p.7). An effective self-managed team will adopt these behaviors and expectations. During the brainstorming, each team member should be encouraged to provide critical input regarding approach, content, and project interpretation. All team members should accept constructive criticism gracefully and should be open to new ideas that conflict with their own beliefs and assumptions. One area that can proactively improve the process is to actually formalize these steps. Such an approach might make sense if the team were to remain together for a long time — more than just a few weeks.

As the remote workplace became commonplace following the COVID-19 pandemic, issues related to remote working gave rise to new issues with groupthink. Instead of encouraging collaboration and creativity, communicating digitally exposed new groupthink workplace issues such as detachment of employees and the issue of one or two employees dominating remote meetings. Still, opportunities exist for leaders to address these issues (Dhawan, 2020).

Application

The discussion concerning team management and leadership revolved around four areas. First, an acute understanding of team type and team stage has a direct impact on the leadership style, behaviors, and communication strategies that one should employ in a team environment, both as a team manager/leader and as a team participant. Second, the manager should consider development areas that relate to his or her strengths and weaknesses and how these fit within an organizational team. Third, it would seem that the mix of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors needs to emphasize transformational leadership in a team environment more so than in a traditional leader/constituent relationship. Finally, a new paradigm emerges, one in which the leadership falls under the management umbrella rather than a separate entity. This paradigm shift was the result of an analysis regarding how evaluation and control of team performance are critical to team success and critical to developing organizational trust.

As organizations have moved from employing a traditional mechanistic form into a more modern and contemporary form, formal organizational hierarchies and centralized decision-making structures have been replaced by hybrid, matrix, and network forms that include the incorporation of high-performance work teams. Modern-day managers and leaders need to be prepared to understand the nature of teams, including when to implement teams, how to set teams up for success, and how to make teams integrated as an organizational cultural norm. The author of this paper presented ideas to facilitate the understanding of managing teams, including organizational context, framework, and processes. Adjustments need to be made for leadership in the remote workplace and research is ongoing into how leadership will evolve as employee teams communicate digitally. Team creation and implementation within an organization is complex, as there are social, behavioral and process dynamics. The discussion helps the reader understand this complexity, making the decision to implement a team less risky.

Terms & Concepts

Cross-functional Teams: An organizational team composed of employees from different functional departments, such as a team that consists of someone from sales, someone from manufacturing, and someone from operations.

Empowering: The act of sharing power or giving subordinates ultimate decision-making authority.

Groupthink: When groups or team members collectively disagree with a decision but decide not to speak out before the decision is made.

Participatory Management: Including employees in the process of making important organizational or departmental decisions.

Process Improvement Teams: An organizational team composed of employees dedicated to improving organizational processes, usually pertaining to manufacturing goods or products.

Quality Circles: An organizational team composed of employees dedicated to correcting problems that lead directly to an improvement in the quality of products or processes.

Self-Managed Teams: An organizational team that does not have a designated leader or manager for the majority of the team activity and decision-making process.

Social Capital: The advantages created by having social networks, such as organizational teams and interpersonal relationships.

Teamthink: A decision-making model that is intended to eliminate groupthink.

Transactional Leadership: A mainstream leadership theory that focuses on rewards for effort in the manager/subordinate exchange relationship.

Transformational Leadership: A mainstream leadership theory that includes intellectual stimulation, individual consideration, inspiration, and idealized influence.

Virtual Work Groups: Work groups or teams that do not meet face-to-face.

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Suggested Reading

Gibson, C., Vermulen, F. (2003). A healthy divide: Subgroups as a stimulus for team learning behavior. Administrative Science Quarterly, 48, 202-239. Retrieved May 1, 2007, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=11542797&site=ehost-live

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Rosen, B., Furst, S., Blackburn, R. (2006). Training for virtual teams: An investigation of current practices and future needs. Human Resource Management, 45, 229–247. Retrieved May 1, 2007, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=20917041&site=ehost-live

Yang, I. (2013). When team members meet in a new team: An exploration of team development. Human Systems Management, 32, 181–197. Retrieved November 19, 2014, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=91895716&site=bsi-live