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United Flight 173

• Denver to Portland, OR• 181 passengers, 8 crew members• Landing delayed for 1 hour due to landing

gear malfunction• Crashed 6 minutes short of airport due to

insufficient fuel• 10 fatalities• BTW – flight crew properly certified,

aircraft properly certified and maintained

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United Flight 173

• What are the main reasons the cockpit crew allowed the aircraft to run out of fuel?

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Factors Affecting Group Performance

External Context•reward system•organization structure•org. culture and politics•education•phys/fin/info resources

Team Structure•size•diversity•roles •cohesion•norms

Group Process•communication•conflict•decision-making•development•execution

Task

Performance•Task accomplishment•Satisfaction of members•Can work together again

Membership•motivation, effort•skills and knowledge•personalities

Coaching

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Common Pitfalls in Managing Teams

• Assembling a group of smart people, telling them in general terms what needs to be accomplished and let them work out the details

• Calling it a team but managing it as a set of individuals

• Not finding the right balance between assigning and withholding authority

• Believing that agreement is good, and that disagreement and conflict are always bad

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Team Effectiveness Criteria

1. Does the team’s output meet the standards of those who have to use that output?

2. Does the team experience enhance the capability of the members to work together in the future?

3. Does the team experience contribute to the personal well-being and development of the members?

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Organizational context

• Reward system– positive consequences for excellent

performance– focus on group (not individual)

• Education and other resources

• Information system– allows situation assessment– allows evaluation of alternative strategies

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Group design

• Size

• Skills– task-relevant– interpersonal

• Diversity

• Boundaries

• Roles/Norms

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Questions to Ask in Designing a Team

• What type of teamwork is needed?

• What skills do you need represented on the team (both content area skills and teamwork skills)?

• How much and what types of diversity do you want?

• How big should the team be?

• To what extent do you want to define different roles for team members?

• What are the team’s goals and what deliverables are expected (and when)?

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Effects of Team Size

Advantages of Small Size

• Easier coordination• More input from members• High motivation,

commitment, and satisfaction

• Less diffusion of responsibility & social loafing

Advantages of

Large Size• More resources at the

team’s disposal (ideas, perspectives, labor)

• More potential for division of labor

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Task Structure

• Interdependent

• Clear & involving clear objectives

• Requires varied high-level skills

• Identifiable

• Significant

• Opportunities for feedback

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Potential performance: The level of performance that one would expect given the capabilities of the individual members

Process gains: Increases in performance resulting from effective coordination and motivation

Process losses: Performance difficulties that a group experiences due to coordination and motivation problems (e.g. social loafing)

A Group’s Performance Does Not Always Equal its Potential

Performance

= ActualPerformance

PotentialPerformance + - Process

LossesProcessGains

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Common Traps• Leader abdication Leaders withdraw from their team and become less involved. The

result - chaos, confusion, lack of direction.

• Succession-less planning Key people on a team leave / replaced. The result - break in continuity and developmental regression.

• Team arrogance A team becomes so immersed in their task that it doesn't consider the impact its actions may have over others.

• Undefined accountability When ownership of decisions and action items is ill/not defined teams make decisions without subsequent actions. The result - diffused responsibility and consequently lack of progress.

• Disruptive team member It takes only one rotten apple…if a disruptive member is not dealt with directly and effectively the performance of the entire team can be damaged.

• Poor teamwork habits Teams that lack explicit ground rules damage their potential for successful collaboration

• Decision by default Teams that develop a tendency to postpone decisions and or defer to hierarchy when needing to decide make a decision by default rather than by choice.

• Varied team member contributions Teams with uneven distribution of workload have their key members becoming frustrated, resentful and consequently uninterested in delivering high levels of productivity.

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Some Examples of Process Losses

• Process can be time consuming Boredom, fatigue, apathy, reduced effort

• Failure to exert sufficient effort (e.g., laziness, individuals are not prepared).– Diffusion of responsibility less effort.

• Groups may be dominated by one or more members – will pull group’s performance in the direction

of their individual performance level– Personal or political agendas may dominate

• Group experiences dysfunctional levels of conflict –reduces members’ ability to learn from each other

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Some Examples of Process Losses

• Failure to use knowledge and skills of members due to poor process

• Members being unduly influenced by each other (groupthink, the Abilene paradox)

• Poor group process leads to inefficient information sharing (failure to share “unique” information; tendency to share “shared” information; so-called pluralistic ignorance).

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Common Sources of Process Losses

• Lack of common goal

– Personal Agendas

– Political Agendas

• Diffusion of Responsibility

• Conformity Pressures

• Dysfunctional Conflict

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Using Groups to Make Decisions

Advantages• Greater range and

diversity of information and ideas

• Potential for synergistic problem solving

• Better memory and error detection

• Encourages participation and buy-in which facilitates decision implementation

Disadvantages• Process can be time

consuming• Personal or political

agendas • Domination by one or

more members• Diffusion of responsibility• Conformity pressures

and/or Groupthink• Dysfunctional conflict

Improving Team Decision-Making

• Identify the problem or opportunity, clarify objectives & performance criteria

• Analyze the problem• Development of ideas & alternatives (e.g.,

brainstorming, nominal group technique)• Critical evaluation of ideas & alternatives

– Value dissent– Support the minority opinion

• Identify best ideas & alternatives• Implement decisions & assess effectiveness • Emphasize flexibility & adaptability over time

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Task Performance

Time

15 – 20%

HighPerforming

Team

Team Performance Curve

Midpoint 0

100%

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TEAM DEVELOPMENT

Key developmental activities include: Forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning

Period of Inertia Period of Transition Period of Inertia

• Team is created• Team identifies strategy• Norms enacted• No discussion of process

• Drop old patterns• Revise norms• Revise strategies

• Execute new strategies• New norms enacted• No discussion of process

15% work completed Task completed

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Transition points

• Midpoints or transitions are crucial to team outcomes– Opportunity to set goals, alter norms and acquire

key resources– Ineffective management of transition points has

significant opportunity cost• Managing transitions

– Proactively generate midpoint– Anticipate transition work and execute it prior to

the midpoint