Teams As Used In CVEN 349

Module 01-04Revised: January 16, 2003

Original Developed by Jim Morgan for ENGR 111/112

What is a Team Anyway?

A team is a small group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

Why Teams In The Classroom?

Working in groups enhances activities in Active/Collaborative Learning and for practice

Team skills are valued by industry

real real engineers work in teams

Common Team Problems(Student’s Perspective)

One of my teammates never comes to class.

One of my teammates never participants No one comes to our meeting prepared

to work One of my team members of very rude Most of my teammates just want to rush

to accomplishment.

Interdependence - This is the issue of how each member's outcomes are determined, at least in part, by the actions of the other members.

Five Issues to be Considered

in Team Building

Goal Specification - It is very important for team members to have common goals for team achievement, as well as to communicate clearly individual goals that you may have.

Five Issues to be Considered

in Team Building

Five Issues to be Consideredin Team Building

Cohesiveness - This term refers to the attractiveness of team membership. Teams are “attractive” to the extent that membership in them “adds value”, that is, members are drawn toward the team because of the benefits. Task cohesiveness refers to the way in which skills and abilities of the team members mesh to allow effective performance.

Five Issues to be Consideredin Team Building

Roles and Norms - All teams need to develop a set of roles and norms over time.

Roles - For a student team, the role structure will enable the team to cope more effectively with the requirements of a given task. The roles may be rotated so that all team members experience, and learn from, the various positions held. It is extremely important that the roles are understood and accepted by team members.

Five Issues to be Consideredin Team Building

Norms - Norms are the rules governing the behavior of team members, and include the rewards for behaving in accord with normative requirements, as well as the sanctions for norm violations. It is not uncommon for a set of norms to develop between team members which are never actively discussed. However, it is always better to have interaction rules appear in the form of a written document, such as in a Code of Cooperation (more about this later).

Five Issues to be Consideredin Team Building

Communication - Effective interpersonal communication is vital to the smooth functioning of any task team. It is also important for a team to develop an effective communication network; who communicates with whom; is there anybody "out of the loop?" Norms will develop governing communication. Do those norms encourage everyone to participate, or do they allow one or two dominant members to claim all the "air time?"

Team Composition and Roles

KEY TEAM ROLES INCLUDE: Meeting Coordinator, Recorder, Timekeeper, Encourager/ gatekeeper, Devil’s Advocate.

Roles should rotate among team members.

Important Team Roles

Meeting Coordinator - Coordinates and prepares the agenda (i.e, what needs to be accomplished, establishes a process, etc.) ; coordinates time, date and place of meetings; ensures all necessary resources are available for the meetings; keeper of the Code of Cooperation (to be discussed); monitors the decision making process; coordinates the process check. However, this person IS NOT THE BOSS.

Recorder - the recorder is the person responsible for doing the writing of the team whenever group work is being done. This should maximum participation by the rest of the team, since no one else needs to worry about it. If required, the recorder also ensures that the process(es) being used by the team is (are) documented and/or prepares an ACTION LIST to keep a record of assigned actions. In addition, the recorder makes sure that copies of their work are provided to the rest of the team.

Important Team Roles (continued)

Important Team Roles (continued)

Time Keeper - the time keeper has the responsibility of keeping tract of time, as well as keeping the team moving so that they can finish the task at hand.

Important Team Roles (continued)

Encourager/ Gatekeeper - the encourager/gatekeeper has the task of giving encouragement to all the other team members. The person also has the responsibility of maintaining a balanced level of participation for all the members. They will encourage the silent members and try to hold back the verbose, dominate members.

Devil’s Advocate - the devil’s advocate takes a position opposite to that held by the team to ensure that all sides of an issue are considered. This responsibility should be undertaken by all team members.

Important Team Roles (continued)

Code of Cooperation

The agreed upon rules governing the behavior of team members, as well as any appropriate rewards and sanctions.

• It sets a norm for acceptable behavior for each team member and represents how the team members will interact with one another;

• It should be developed, adopted, improved and/or modified by all team members on a continuous basis;

• It should be easily accessible to team members -- bring a copy to meetings.

Code of Cooperation

Exercise

INDIVIDUALLY, based upon your past experiences, use 2 minutes to write down the following:

What 2 elements would you like to see in your teams Code of Cooperation?

Exercise AS A TEAM use 8 minutes to provide a

handwritten document after you take the following action:

Discuss your individual Code of Cooperation elements and come to an agreement as to the ones everyone would like to include in a draft of the Team Code of Cooperation. Once you complete the above, add 3 new elements.

Five stages of Team Development

FORMING (orientation) - Tentative interactions; polite discourse; concern over ambiguity; and self-discourse.

STORMING (conflict) - Criticism of ideas; poor attendance; hostility; polarization; and coalition forming.

Five stages of Team Development (continued)

NORMING (cohesion) - Agreement on procedures; reduction in role ambiguity; revise Code of Cooperation based upon current experiences; and increased "we-feeling”.

PERFORMING (performance) - Decision making; problem solving; mutual cooperation; high task orientation; and emphasis is placed upon performance and production.

ADJOURNING (dissolution)

Effective Teamwork Includes The use of roles; The development of a Code of

Cooperation; The use of the check for understanding to

make sure everybody is “on the same page”;

Development of effective listening skills; The ability to give and take effective

constructive feedback;

Effective Teamwork Includes(continued)

The use of agendas for planning meetings:

The use of contact before work to provide time for non task related discussions;

The definition of decision-making processes to be included in the agenda;

The use of the issue bin to provide time for discussion of items not in the agenda; and

The use of an ACTION LIST to keep a record of assigned actions;

Effective Teamwork Includes(continued)

The use of a process check for continuous improvement;

A commitment from ALL the members of the team.