Learning, Remembering, Believing Enhancing Human Performance (1994) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
The Performance and Development of Teams
The Performance and Development of Teams
Pages 113-139
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From page 113... ...
requirements for high performance teams include vision (a shared purpose) , perceived dependent needs, leadership, coordination, and the skillful use of feedback to adjust and adapt to changes.
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From page 114... ...
We begin with what is known about team performance from laboratory research, then turn to the broader frameworks for understanding performance, including contextual influences. In the main part of the chapter, we examine team developmental processes, addressing issues about how teams learn and the effectiveness of team-building interventions.
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From page 115... ...
could be used in the meta-analysis. The strongest effect sizes)
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From page 116... ...
Model 2 highlights the importance of cooperation/competition as an influence on team output, both in terms of their direct effects on team accuracy and their indirect effects through the mediating variable of coordination. The model also calls attention to the ~~ -1 Inputs Throughputs Outputs Task load Task complexity Task structure Practice Cooperation/ Competition .....
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From page 117... ...
Further specification is achieved when the same variables for example, task load and practice are shown to have strong indirect effects on such output variables as time and direct effects on such other measures of team performance as quality of product. Identifying possible causal paths through which variables operate to produce effects is a major addition to the direct bivariate (two-variable)
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From page 118... ...
Contextual Variables Broader frameworks for analyzing factors that influence team performance include contextual variables. Emphasizing the context within which teams perform, Sundstrom et al.
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From page 119... ...
Intragroup processes, leadership behavior, training, and experience influenced self-reported effectiveness and satisfaction, but actual performance was related to the way teams managed their interactions with outside groups and other aspects of their organizational context. One implication of these findings is that attempts to foster internal processes such as cohesiveness may not improve team performance as much as negotiating favorable objectives or by promoting group products to top management.
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From page 120... ...
(Relying also on case material, in Chapter 12 we illustrate the role played by organizational cultures in affecting decisions about training programs.) Another contextual variable is the relationship between organizations during times of change (see Gladstein, 1984~.
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From page 121... ...
Team Learning, Developmental Phases, and Metacognition Recent conceptual work has concentrated less on the determinants of team performance construed in input-process-output terms than on the way teams learn through time and repeated interactions among their members. These investigators examine the details of group processes and ask questions about the way that teams learn or acquire new insights that contribute to performance.
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From page 122... ...
Although developed largely on the basis of observations made in one company, and therefore subject to bias, the authors have developed a "Team Learning Survey" used for data collection in other large companies. In a study of the lifespans of eight naturally occurring teams, Garsick (1988)
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From page 123... ...
Although the authors are less concerned about assessing the effect of the feedback on team performance, they provide categories that define what to look for. Referred to as "behavioral markers," the categories are based on a theory about the ways in which teams change and improve by developing a sense of identity, by moving toward goals, by learning how to perceive the world, by achieving a higher level of cognitive complexity, and by learning to monitor themselves, "metacognition." Examples of the categories are anticipate/confirm, clarify/compensate, detect and fill information gaps, and share mental and time management activities.
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From page 124... ...
Supported by results obtained in other studies (e.g., Chidester and Foushee, 1988) , the Orasanu finding suggests that future research should focus on the role of leader communication in team performance.
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From page 125... ...
There is much enthusiasm for these approaches among practitioners and consultants, but it is not matched by strong empirical support for their effect on team performance. Results from reviews of studies that evaluated effects of team-building interventions (DeMeuse and Liebowitz, 1981; Woodman and Sherwood, 1980; and Butler, 1986)
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From page 126... ...
A similar pattern was obtained for the studies that used the strongest research designs: most of these studies showed positive results for perceptual or attitudinal change; only one study found a significant behavioral change. Other changes in team-building interventions are a trend toward using multiple approaches and the inclusion of more than self-report indicators.
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From page 127... ...
The preference of most investigators is to assess team processes rather than performance. Yet as the studies reviewed above found, improved process may not translate to improved team performance.
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From page 128... ...
For example, some aspects of the package that enhance performance may be offset by other aspects that interfere with performance. Due to their complexity, teambuilding interventions do not focus specifically on the performance variables (which, in this study, were tons per man-shift and quality of ore)
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From page 129... ...
These effects do not translate into improved team performance in a simple or direct way. For example, a cohesive team may not improve its performance due to a lack of resources, poor intergroup relations, technical problems, or adverse conditions in the environment.
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From page 130... ...
They showed that the increased competitiveness of groups was due to intragroup consensus about the group's strategy; when groups acted in lock step, enhanced competition occurred. A similar finding was previously obtained by Druckman (19681: the most competitive groups in his study were those that agreed in prenegotiation sessions on the relative importance of the issues under discussion.
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From page 131... ...
An implication of these findings is that bargaining competitiveness is more likely to be increased or decreased by "affecting" the way team representatives prepare for the discussions or their orientation toward the negotiation than by the extent of their "loyalty" or their accountability to the team. These results highlight the importance of strategy development as an influence on the extent of conflict between teams; it may also be a positive influence on team performance.
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From page 132... ...
The case studies of team development emphasize the importance of the active learner who controls the pace and content of his or her own learning. Neither tradition of team research deals with the issue of transfer of skills from learning to performance settings.
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From page 133... ...
With regard to retention, 8 of 11 studies reported significant differences in favor of games, indicating that students retained information longer than those trained with more conventional approaches. With regard to attitude change, 8 of 11 studies showed that games had a greater effect on attitudes in terms of increased realism and approval of real-life persons than conventional methods.
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From page 134... ...
while the other group is exposed to a familiar, conventional method; · for some studies, administration of the posttest after a debriefing, allowing for the possibility that the pastiest responses were influenced by the debriefing discussion; · the techniques used in control classes may be regarded by students as vague, dull, and incomplete, so that any gains shown for the simulation classes are not strongly biased; · use of only a pretest-posttest design not adding groups without the pretest allowing for the possibility that the pretest interacted in different ways with one or another method of instruction. These flaws are not limited to game evaluations, but also characterize much of the evaluation literature in general; many of them can be remedied.
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From page 135... ...
Overall, they found that 56 percent of the comparisons between simulation games and conventional instruction showed no difference, 32 percent found differences favoring games, 7 percent favored games but their controls were questionable, and 5 percent found differences favoring conventional instruction. Dividing the studies into six subject-matter areas, the authors found that the greatest percentage of results favoring games were in mathematics (seven of eight studies)
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From page 136... ...
They will also clarify the distinction between cognitive and motivational effects on participants in gaming exercises used for team development.
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From page 137... ...
Improved team performance may not translate into improved organizational performance. Factors external to the organization and largely out of its control such as market growth-may account for its performance (Gladstein, 19841.
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From page 138... ...
It is possible that intragroup consensus contributes to the perceptual discrimination that seems to precede evaluative biases; this, too, remains to be explored. 4The effect sizes are averages, expressed as correlation coefficients.
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From page 139... ...
Most evaluations reported in the published literature have concentrated on games designed to improve skills in such areas as business management, language learning, negotiation, medical education and hospital administration, environmental management, and social science concepts. Thus, implications for the effectiveness of military simulations must be derived from a literature on nonmilitary applications.
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