Many human resources managers do not have accurate information about team building, especially if they rely on HR-focused sources for their information, according to three management researchers. For example, in a 2003 book on human resources management, "only 8 of 750 pages are devoted to team phenomena." So the researchers set out to address gaps between current HR practice and the research literature by correcting nine "myths" about teams in three areas.
Team Composition
When creating teams, technical skills are the most important factor. Scientists have found that teamwork skills such as the following are more important to team performance than job knowledge: "providing feedback, cooperation, communication, team spirit and morale, adaptability, coordination, and accepting feedback."
Team members' average score on a trait is always the best way to decide if you have the right mix of members. If you wanted a team to advise you on a tuition reimbursement program, it might makes sense to have that team have the same level of education as your whole company. So if your employees averaged three years of college, you'd select a team of people with a mix of education levels that averaged out to roughly three years. However, for some types of tasks and traits, the team only performs as well as the worst or best member of the team. If your team was climbing a dangerous mountain, the authors note, you'd want the worst member to nonetheless be an experienced climber. In other cases, variation is the key. For example, teams with a mix of extroverts and introverts tend to perform better than teams with greater similarity on that trait: a team of extroverts would "struggle to control discussions" while one of introverts would "struggle to generate discussions."
Having diverse demographics—differences in age, gender, race, etc.—is important for team performance. In most cases, diversity in physical traits has no effect on group success, and in some it may actually hurt short-term performance (if unaddressed). If there are effects, however, they appear to go away over time. By contrast, diversity in functions, skills, and tenure within a company helps teams succeed over the long term.
Team Training
Team members need to know their own jobs well before joining a team. The authors say that "a series of recent scientific studies shows that training recall, transfer, and post-training team performance actually improve when training occurs within a team context." This happens because of the higher level of support the learner receives, from both team members and the team leader.
A shared view of "the nature of the task and the best way to accomplish it" is not critical to team success. People believe that "unique backgrounds and perspectives" result in better team performance, but research points out that if you do not go to the next step of reconciling those differences, the lack of shared goals "can often interfere with team processes and result in lower overall team performance." Communication and better coordination of effort result when group members ask about and use each other's opinions during decision-making.
Cross-training members to do the work of others, or at least become more familiar with it, does not increase team performance. In jobs with high workloads and interdependence of team tasks, rotating jobs among the members clearly improves team performance. The less the workload, and the less members must cooperate to complete their tasks, the less important this becomes, but few modern jobs have either of those luxuries.
Team Tasks
Successful teams are always self-managed and consist of members who must cooperate to do their individual jobs (who are "interdependent"). Higher interdependence always helps production teams, but for teams focused on planning work, having high or low interdependence works better than moderate levels "by promoting more open communication and less inner-team conflict." Similarly, self-management is more important for planning teams, although production teams also gain from it.
It is not important to consider an individual member's input based on that person's expertise and past accuracy. Although a breadth of perspectives improves team decision-making, fairness does not always require equal treatment. [Editor's note: Studies reviewed in TeamResearch News have shown that teams whose members accurately identify and weigh member expertise perform better than those who can't figure out who does what best.]
Individual incentives for performance do not have a place in the team environment. For example, rewarding members for competing with each other helps team speed, and rewarding cooperation enhances decision accuracy.
The authors say HR managers and consultants "will be well served to avoid the pitfalls of intuition and instead rely on research for insights and guideposts to direct their efforts towards team success."
Source: Hollenbeck, J., D.S. DeRue, and R. Guzzo (04), "Bridging the Gap Between I/O Research and HR Practice: Improving Team Composition, Team Training, and Team Task Design," Human Resource Management 43(4):353.
TeamResearch News summarizes the latest information from studies or expert articles on business teams. It is published as a free service of TeamTrainers Consulting.
© 2009 by Jim Morgan. All rights reserved.