SENG2021

Teamwork 🏈

Team Dynamics &

Team Theory

In this lecture

 

  • Theory of Team Needs - Task, Team Maintenance and Individual
  • Team Roles
  • Culture
  • Stages of group development

 

 

Theory of Team Needs

 

  • Three components
  • Interconnected + tightly coupled
  • Managing a team - a balancing act

 

 

Task Needs

  • Team works towards a vision
  • Vision is achieved through strategy
  • Strategy is achieved through tactics
  • How does a team manage task needs?
    • Planning
    • Organising
    • Directing
    • Reviewing
    • Revising

Team Maintenance Needs

  • Communicate and build trust
  • Keeping the team informed and involved in decision making
    • Collaboration and saturation
    • Make people aware and feeling involved
  • Organising the team
  • Training the team
  • Establishing and maintaining team standards
  • Foster morale and esprit de corps

Individual Needs

  • People are unique ❤️
    • Values
    • Attitudes
    • Personality
    • Capability - strengths and weaknesses
  • Important to recognise and accomodate for this
  • Motivation of an individual

Team Roles

  • Personality and capability influence the roles people play in a team - unofficially as well as officially

Types of Groups

  • Formal - created by an organisation for a specific purpose
    • Organisation of talent
    • Means to achieving a vision/strategy
  • Informal - result from areas of shared interest
    • Informal groups can form a 'shadow' organisation
    • Can exert a powerful force on the formal organisation
    • Can influence culture

Culture

  • Personality at the scale of a group
  • Traditions + norms
  • Codes of behaviour and moral frameworks (unwritten)
  • Socialisation + enculturation of new members of the team
  • Strongly cohesive groups will inherently pressure new members to conform to their culture

Group Development

Tuckman's model of team dynamics:

  1. Forming
  2. Storming
  3. Norming
  4. Performing
  5. Adjourning

Forming Stage

  • Team members meet each other 
  • Learn about the task/tasks at hand
    • Agile - the type of work that gets done
  • Group establishes boundaries socially and professionally
  • People begin to understand each other as individuals

Storming Stage

  • People become more comfortable and have settled in to the environment + culture
  • Members have had the chance to get to know one another
  • Sub-groups and hierarchies can emerge
  • Internal power struggles
  • Things go wrong and conflict ensues
  • Teams may fail to get past this stage and collapse

Norming Stage

  • Team goes through process of overcoming differences and conflict
  • Team becomes cohesive and adapts to the strengths & weaknesses of individuals
  • Roles and relationships are clearly defined
  • Group culture starts to emerge
    • Codes of behaviour and group norms
  • Team develops its individual identity 

Performing Stage

  • Team is working well
  • Members of the group are comfortable with one another
  • Work is smooth and productive
  • Balancing team, task and individual needs ensures harmony and order

Adjourning Stage

  • All good things come to an end - people leave, task is completed
  • Recognising efforts and value
  • Helping successful transition to new teams

What influences group behaviour?

  • Team composition
  • Organisational Strategy
  • Organisational Culture
  • Resources + technology
  • Authority Structures
  • Regulations
  • Selection processes
  • Performance appraisal & reward systems
  • Physical work setting

References

 

 

 

  • Australian Army Land Warfare Doctrine - LWD-02 - Leadership (2002)