SELECTING INDIVIDUALS IN TEAM SETTINGS: THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL SKILLS, PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS, AND TEAMWORK KNOWLEDGE

Although work is commonly organized around teams, there is relatively little empirical research on how to select individuals in team-based settings. The goal of this investigation was to examine whether 3 of the most commonly used selection techniques for hiring into traditional settings (a structured interview, a personality test, and a situational judgment test) would be effective for hiring into team settings. In a manufacturing organization with highly interdependent teams, we examined the relationships between social skills, several personality characteristics (Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability), teamwork knowledge, and contextual performance. Results indicate that each of these constructs is bivariately related to contextual performance in a team setting, with social skills, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and teamwork knowledge incrementally predicting contextual performance (with a multiple correlation of .48). Implications of these results for selection in team and traditional settings are discussed.     

Analyzing Team Performance: In the Eye of the Beholder?

The effect of team-member experience was examined in relation to perceptions of importance of teamwork behaviors during an analysis of team performance. Impor- tance ratings were collected from military aircrews (i.e., two-member teams) from three distinct types of aircraft. Results indicated that when assessing team behavior importance, less experienced team members weighted difficulty of performing team behaviors more heavily, whereas more experienced team members weighted time spent performing team behaviors more heavily. Implications for analyzing team performance, with respect to the process of conducting such analyses and the type of information collected, are discussed.     

The Optimal Team Functioning Model: A Grounded Theory Framework to Guide Teamwork in Curling

A constructivist grounded theory approach was used to investigate teamwork and team effectiveness in the sport of curling. Focus group and individual interviews were conducted with 78 athletes and 10 coaches from 19 high-performance curling teams. Data analysis led to the creation of the Optimal Team Functioning (OTF) model, which comprises 8?key components for optimal team functioning: (a) individual attributes, (b) team attributes, (c) foundational process of communication, (d) structural team processes, (e) individual regulation processes, (f) team regulation processes, (g) context, and (h) desired outcomes. Components and relationships within the model, along with practical implications, are discussed.

Lay Summary: Developing effective sport teams is a challenging and complex process. Unfortunately, few resources are available to guide coaches and athletes in their efforts to optimally function and perform as a unit on a daily basis. This novel team dynamics research was carried out with high-performance coaches and athletes to uncover a comprehensive and ecologically valid model mapping out effective teamwork within the sport of curling. The Optimal Team Functioning Model focuses on concrete actions that can be applied to successfully set up and manage a team and its individual members throughout a season.     

Emergent Leadership Behaviors: The Function of Personality and Cognitive Ability in Determining Teamwork Performance and KSAs

This study investigated the theoretical underpinnings of individual differences in emergent leadership behaviors and their relationships to teamwork processes and outcomes. Both personality and cognitive ability were utilized to examine behaviors of leadership emergence, team performance, and KSAs. Three hundred and twenty undergraduate psychology students completed personality and cognitive ability tests and then formed sixty-seven mixed-gender teams. Members rated each other on emergent leadership behaviors as well as their team on specific interpersonal and self-management KSAs. Results revealed that extroversion, openness to experience and cognitive ability were predictive of emergent leadership behaviors. Conscientiousness and cognitive ability were associated with team performance. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.     

A multiple-goal, multilevel model of feedback effects on the regulation of individual and team performance

When working as a member of a team, individuals must make decisions concerning the allocation of resources (e.g., effort) toward individual goals and team goals. As a result, individual and team goals, and feedback related to progress toward these goals, should be potent levers for affecting resource allocation decisions. This research develops a multilevel, multiple-goal model of individual and team regulatory processes that affect the allocation of resources across individual and team goals resulting in individual and team performance. On the basis of this model, predictions concerning the impact of individual and team performance feedback are examined empirically to evaluate the model and to understand the influence of feedback on regulatory processes and resource allocation. Two hundred thirty-seven participants were randomly formed into 79 teams of 3 that performed a simulated radar task that required teamwork. Results support the model and the predicted role of feedback in affecting the allocation of resources when individuals strive to accomplish both individual and team goals.     

LEADERSHIP IN ACTION TEAMS: TEAM LEADER AND MEMBERS’ AUTHENTICITY,AUTHENTICITY STRENGTH,AND TEAM OUTCOMES

A field study was conducted with 47 Army action teams spanning 9 weeks to assess the influence of team leader authenticity on team authenticity and team outcomes. Results showed that team leader authenticity at Time 1 predicted teamwork behavior and team productivity at Time 3, with these relationships mediated by team authenticity at Time 2. We further explored the moderating role of authenticity strength in the team authenticity–teamwork behavior relationship. Team authenticity interacted with authenticity strength such that the team authenticity–teamwork behavior relationship was stronger when authenticity strength was higher rather than lower. Implications of these findings for theories of shared leadership, team leadership, and authentic leadership are discussed.     

Exploring the Effects of Value Diversity on Team Effectiveness

Purpose

The goal of the present study was to explore the potential impact of within-team value diversity with respect to both team processes and task performance.

Design/Methodology/Approach

We explored value diversity within a comprehensive framework such that all components of basic human values were examined. A sample of 306 participants randomly assigned to 60 teams, performed a complex hands-on task, demanding high interdependence among team members, and completed different measures of values and team processes.

Findings

Results indicated that value diversity among team members had no significant impact on task performance. However, diversity with respect to several value dimensions had a significant unique effect on team process criteria. Results were consistent with respect to the nature of the impact of value diversity on team process outcomes. Specifically, the impact of team value diversity was such that less diversity was positively related to process outcomes (i.e., more similarity resulted in more team cohesion and efficacy and less conflict).

Implications

The results indicated that disparity among teammates in many of these values may have important implications on subsequent team-level phenomena. We suggest team leaders and facilitators of teambuilding efforts could consider adding to their agendas a session with team members to analyze and discuss the combined value profiles of their team.

Originality/Value

This is the first study to highlight the unique impact of many unexamined, specific components of team diversity with respect to values on team effectiveness criteria.     

Solidarity in STEM: How Gender Composition Affects Women’s Experience in Work Teams

The relationships among the percentage of women in a team and women’s sense of team identification and collective efficacy as well as team performance was examined. We explored these relationships in a sample of student teams conducting a semester-long social science research project within the context of science and technology-focused university. Findings with 95 U.S. college students (43 women) show that women experience higher team identification and collective efficacy as the percent of women teammates increases. Additionally, women’s team identification and collective efficacy mediate the relationship between the percentage of women on the team and overall team performance. Interestingly, the number of men on the team did not influence men’s sense of team identification, collective efficacy, or team performance. This research has implications for team composition. Specifically, when navigating diversity in teams, managers and leaders should aim to build teams that are composed of multiple women versus an approach that divides women up among various teams. In doing so, managers can better secure conditions for the development of positive teamwork experiences and, ultimately, performance.

     

Deep-level composition variables as predictors of team performance: a meta-analysis

This study sought to unify the team composition literature by using meta-analytic techniques to estimate the relationships between specified deep-level team composition variables (i.e., personality factors, values, abilities) and team performance. The strength of the team composition variable and team performance relationships was moderated by the study setting (lab or field) and the operationalization of the team composition variable. In lab settings, team minimum and maximum general mental ability and team mean emotional intelligence were related to team performance. Only negligible effects were observed in lab settings for the personality factor and team performance relationships, as well as the value and team performance relationships. In contrast, team minimum agreeableness and team mean conscientiousness, openness to experience, collectivism, and preference for teamwork emerged as strong predictors of team performance in field studies. Results can be used to effectively compose teams in organizations and guide future team composition research.     

Investigating a process model for leader affective presence,interpersonal emotion regulation,and interpersonal behaviour in teams

Leader affective presence is the tendency of leaders to elicit feelings that are consistent among other individuals, and has been supported as a relevant personality trait for understanding teamwork. Drawing on a model that integrates personality and emotion regulation, this study aimed to expand research on affective presence by proposing team members’ perceptions of leader interpersonal emotion regulation as a process that explains how leader affective presence is related to team member behaviour. In the model, teamness—the perception that interdependence and reflexivity are required in the team—is presented as a boundary condition to the effects of affective presence via emotion regulation. Results of a study conducted with 99 teams showed that team member ratings of leader positive affective presence were linked to their perceptions that leaders had used affect-improving emotion regulation which in turn was associated with greater team citizenship behaviour. Contrariwise, team member ratings of leader negative affective presence were associated with perceived use of affect-worsening emotion regulation by leaders which in turn was associated with lower levels of team citizenship, but only when teams were low in teamness. These findings contribute to understanding how leaders’ individual differences are related to teamwork through affective processes.     

The Psychometric Properties of Scales That Assess Market Orientation and Team Leadership Skills: A Preliminary Study

This study assessed the psychometric properties of two scales that can be used in predicting team performance: specifically how team members assess the market orientation of their work unit as well the leadership skills present in the team. The first scale is a three-dimensional assessment of the unit's market orientation (innovative, process, or customer service) using 24 items. The other is a three-dimensional scale that assesses team leadership skills (facilitator, coach, and manager) also using 24 items. Fifty-two participants from teams in different organizations completed the two scales as well as demographic and team performance items. Principal components analyses and internal consistency analyses suggest that the two new scales have good psychometric properties. Perceived team performance was related equally well to all three dimensions of unit market orientation, as well as to all three dimensions of team leadership skills. However, all three team leadership skill dimensions had higher correlations with performance as well as with liking being a member of the team than did the three market orientation dimensions. Perceived performance was more highly related to all three dimensions of market orientation and all three dimensions of leadership skills than to liking being a member of the team. The new measures described should be useful in team performance theory, research, and practice.     

Antecedents of daily team job crafting

This study investigated potential antecedents of team job crafting defined as the extent to which team members engage together in increasing (social and structural) job resources and challenges, and decreasing hindering job demands. Mindful of the teamwork literature, we hypothesized that individual employee factors (self-efficacy for teamwork, daily affect), team features (team cohesion, climate) and the organizational context of teams (engaging leadership and organizational resources for teamwork) relate positively to daily team job crafting behaviour. Data were collected among 46 multi-professional rehabilitation teams whose members completed two daily surveys after their weekly meetings. Multilevel regression analyses showed that self-efficacy for teamwork and team members’ positive affect were positively associated with team job crafting behaviour at the individual (within-team) level. In addition, a team climate characterized by a clear vision of the teams’ targets, supportiveness and innovation and connecting leadership were positively related to daily team job crafting at both the within- and between-team levels of the data. Overall, the study offers novel insights into the antecedents of teams’ daily job crafting behaviours. For practice, the results suggest that actions and interventions conducive to positive team processes offer the most promising route to enhancing team job crafting behaviour.     

What You Do for Your Team Comes Back to You: A Cross-Level Investigation of Individual Goal Specification,Team-Goal Clarity,and Individual Performance

This article reports findings from a longitudinal field study on multilevel processes in teams and examines the role of individual team-goal specification and team-goal clarity with regard to individual performance. It is hypothesized that individual team-goal specification predicts change in individual performance over time, particularly when team-goal clarity is low. Multisource data gathered in 31 project teams supported the hypotheses. Overall, the findings suggest that team members can improve their individual performance when engaging in teamwork processes that are relevant for the team as a whole.     

Making Teamwork Work: Team Knowledge for Team Effectiveness

This study examined the impact of two types of team knowledge on team effectiveness. The study assessed the impact of taskwork knowledge and teamwork knowledge on team satisfaction and performance. A longitudinal study was conducted with 27 service-management teams involving 178 students in a real-life restaurant setting. Teamwork knowledge was found to impact both team outcomes. Furthermore, team learning behavior was found to mediate the relationships between teamwork knowledge and team outcomes. Educators and managers should therefore ensure these types of knowledge are developed in teams along with learning behavior for maximum effectiveness.     

Reflexivity in Teams: A Review and New Perspectives

Team reflexivity posits that the extent to which teams reflect upon and adapt their functioning is positively related to team performance. While remarkable progress has been made to provide evidence of this relationship, the underlying framework is missing elements of current theoretical streams for analyzing and describing teamwork, leaving the diversity of effects of team reflexivity often untouched. In this article, we present an update for this framework, by reviewing previous research on reflexivity, addressing gaps in the literature, and revising the original model by integrating feedback and dynamic team effectiveness frameworks for describing temporal developments of reflexivity. We furthermore propose a new dimensional structure for reflexivity, relying on prior work conceptualizing teams as information-processing systems that learn and advance through social-cognitive elements. Our model is therefore not only suitable for explaining the diverse set of relationships between team reflexivity on outcomes, but also provides valuable directions for viewing reflexivity as process that takes place during both transition and action phases of teamwork. We conclude with implications for managers, identify limitations, and propose an agenda for further research into this area. This article contributes an extended perspective relevant for further theory development and for effectively managing reflexivity in teams.     

Phase-specific relationships between team learning processes and transactive memory development

With this study we seek to contribute to the research on the emergence of transactive memory, that is, the knowledge of “who knows what”, as part of the structural component of transactive memory systems (TMSs). Based on our theoretical model of team learning and transactive memory development, we analyse the relationships among different team learning behaviours and transactive memory during various phases of team development. We use a longitudinal design with three points of measurement at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of a semester, to examine real student project teams over their full life cycle. The results support our presumptions of phase-specific influences of team learning behaviours on transactive memory development. This shows that knowledge-based processes (storage and retrieval) play a more important role during early stages of project-based teamwork, followed by a shift to a higher relevance of communication-based processes (reflection and co-construction) in later stages. Implications for further research and team management phenomena are discussed.     

Antecedents of team potency and team effectiveness: an examination of goal and process clarity and servant leadership

Integrating theories of self-regulation with team and leadership literatures, this study investigated goal and process clarity and servant leadership as 3 antecedents of team potency and subsequent team effectiveness, operationalized as team performance and organizational citizenship behavior. Our sample of 304 employees represented 71 teams in 5 banks. Results showed that team-level goal and process clarity as well as team servant leadership served as 3 antecedents of team potency and subsequent team performance and team organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, we found that servant leadership moderated the relationships between both goal and process clarity and team potency, such that the positive relationships between both goal and process clarity and team potency were stronger in the presence of servant leadership.     

Team tenure and team performance: A meta-analysis and process model

Team tenure is a key component of models of team effectiveness. However, the nature of the relationship between team tenure and team performance is unclear due to underdeveloped theory on the nature of team tenure, various unintegrated theoretical conceptualizations of team tenure, and mixed empirical findings. Further, there is a lack of theory as to the intervening team processes and emergent states that account for the “black box” of the team tenure–team performance relationship. Accordingly, we conducted meta-analyses of the relationships of team tenure with team processes and performance. Our results, based on 622 effect sizes reported in 169 studies, show that team tenure, conceptualized as additive team tenure, collective team tenure, and team tenure dispersion, is positively related to team performance. Relative weights analysis found additive team tenure to be a relatively more important predictor of team performance than collective team tenure or team tenure dispersion. We found that team cognition, motivational-affective states, and behavioral processes mediate the relationships of additive team tenure, collective team tenure, and team tenure dispersion with team performance, respectively. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.     

AN EVALUATION OF GENERIC TEAMWORK SKILLS TRAINING WITH ACTION TEAMS: EFFECTS ON COGNITIVE AND SKILL-BASED OUTCOMES

This study evaluated the utility of generic teamwork skills training for enhancing the effectiveness of action teams. Results from 65 4-person action teams working on an interdependent command and control simulator revealed that generic teamwork skills training had a significant and positive impact on both cognitive and skill-based outcomes. Trained team members evidenced higher levels of declarative knowledge regarding teamwork competencies and demonstrated greater proficiency in the areas of planning and task coordination, collaborative problem-solving, and communication. Furthermore, results indicated that cognitive and skill based outcomes were interrelated. Team members' declarative knowledge regarding teamwork competencies positively affected planning and task coordination, collaborative problem solving, and communication skills. However, we found that the effects of declarative knowledge differed across team members depending on their roles and responsibilities. The team benefited the most from the knowledge held by the team member who occupied the most critical position in the workflow. Implications of these findings for future research and practice are discussed.     

团队中信任形成的映象决策机制

有关团队管理的研究日益注重团队行为过程及其因素并聚焦团队动力机制。其中,团队中信任形成机制成为管理心理学中的前沿领域。以往研究表明,团队成员间的信任模式及其水平是高绩效工作团队的关键条件,团队中信任的形成过程受到成员的个体价值取向、人际交往能力、团队领导风格以及团队共享心理模型特征等诸多因素的影响。而团队信任形成与发展的机制,则仍然是有待深入研究的重要课题。为了进一步研究与分析团队运作机制,以映象理论为基础,采用了实验模拟方法,系统考察团队成员信任的形成过程及其关键特征,深入探索团队成员信任形成的映象决策机制。实验采用团队局域网络模拟方法和被试间因子式设计,分别设置了高目标冲突（个体目标导向）和低目标冲突（团队目标导向）等两种条件。对随机组合的20个团队进行了投资任务的实验模拟与分析,结果表明,团队成员的信任决策是一种映象决策,表现出拒绝阈限。在建立信任关系的过程中,理想映象和当前映象的加工对能力和诚信更加重视,容易导致不信任;而对善意的要求稍宽一些。团队成员在工作任务中对理想映象和当前映象之间进行相容性检验,并作出信任决策判断。在这一动态过程中,相容性知觉起着部分中介作用,形成了映象决策的机制