Lead Team Effectiveness: Conditions By Hackman

BSBLDR403 Lead team effectiveness

Part-A  Case Study: 1 Read the following case study and complete the questions that follow.

Getting the most from your team

In leading teams: setting the stage for great performances, J. Richard Hackman, a Harvard University Psychology Professor, shares his extensive knowledge and research on teamwork. He suggests team leaders need to ensure there are five essential conditions in place that contribute to a team’s success. These are:

• The team must be a real team, rather than a team name only. • The team must have compelling direction for its work(a clear common goal) • The team must have a structure that encourages and facilitates teamwork. • The team must operate within a supportive organisational context. • The team must have expert teamwork coaching.

Hackman studied what he calls ‘real time teams’ – team such as air plane cockpit crews or orchestras that have no second chance to perform their work correctly. He says that examining teams such as these, which have to operate within highly stressful and pressured situations at the peak of their ability, helps us understand how more every day teams can operate more effectively. He recalls that the biggest surprise he encountered while undertaking he research on leading teams was unhappy one: ‘… how incredibly under-utilized members’ talents were in most of the teams we studies… most teams, including senior executive teams , generally leave untapped enormous pools of member talent …. Team leader and the members must learn how to better harness and focus member’s talent in carrying out the teams work – and to do so in a way that strengthens the team itself as a performing unit and that contributes to the ongoing learning and growth of individual team members’.

Answer the following question based on the above case study information:

a. How would you go about ensuring that the five conditions identified by Hackman were present by your work team or for a team that you can observe? b. Describe whether you think each condition already exists now in this team. Give examples. c. For each condition outline a plan for implementing or improving it.

Case Study: 2 Read the following case study and complete the questions that follow.

Leadership styles and team effectiveness

Harvard business school professor Teresa Amiable, worked with several colleagues on the problem and the things leaders can do to make their team members feel supported. The team focused on the employees who worked in what they defined as ‘creative’ employment, which included developing new fabrics and creating new databases. Their findings are relevant to team leader in all industries, as the researchers identified a range of actions leaders take that can have either a positive or a negative effect on staff members’ ability to be creative. Teresa’s team identified four leadership activities that give team members a more positive perception of the level of support they receive:

• Giving timely feedback and reacting to problems at work with understanding and assistance. • Showing support for a team member’s action or decisions; helping alleviate stressful situations for subordinates; socialising and generally interacting with the team on a personal level; keeping team members informed about stressful situations; addressing subordinates’ negative feelings; interacting with the team on a personal level. • Recognising good work privately and publicly. • Asking for team members’ idea and opinions and acting on these ideas or wishes.

The team identified three leadership activities that give team members a more negative perception of the level of support they receive:

• Checking on the status of assigned work too often; displaying an inadequate understanding of subordinates’ capabilities or work; providing non-constructive negative feedback on work done; checking on the status of assigned work for too long; displaying lack of interest in subordinates’ work or ideas. • Giving assignments that are not appropriate for the team member; not providing enough clarity about an assignment; changing assignments or objectives too frequently; giving assignments that conflict with other management instructions. • Avoiding solving problems or creating problems.

Dave and the Vision team

The leader of the Vision team was not a particularly charismatic leader. Rather, he was quietly effective through a number of consistent behaviours: he monitored progress on the project at reasonable intervals, rather than making team members feel that he was monitoring them personally. In addition, he essentially monitored his own work for them, frequently reporting to them on his own project tasks. Moreover, he frequently consulted them for their ideas on the project- ideas that were often implemented.

He was a champion for the project, selling it throughout the organisation whenever he heard of doubts that others had about it. In the course of selling the project across the organisation, he gathered useful technical and tactical information that he then brought back to the team. He frequently recognised good work on the project, almost always in a public setting (such as a team meeting).

James and the Fusion team

By contrast, the leader of the Fusion team, James, was ineffective on many counts. He micromanaged the work by narrowly defining assignments, constantly inquiring about individual progress and trying to direct people’s work. He didn’t campaign the project or serve as an information-gathering ambassador for it. James rarely recognised good work and when he did, it was in a private-rather than public-setting.

James’ narrow definitions of the project tasks deprived the project of the creative ideas the team might have generated if given more latitude. Without that creative thinking, the team’s performance suffered, likely reinforcing James’s basic tendency to micromanage and closely monitor individual team members. The micromanaging and negative monitoring angered the team members, who wasted their time venting their frustrations about James rather than working productively on the project.

Answer the following question based on the above case study information:

a. Dave and James have different approaches to promoting team effectiveness and leadership. How would you rate yourself as a team leader- more like Dave or James? Explain your response.

b. Give some example of work or tasks where you think James’ management style would work well, Explain why you think this in this case.

Part –B

Question 1: 

Suggest a solution to address each impact you have listed. You should refer to the strategies for developing team cohesion to support you responses.

Question 2:

Research a leader you admire it might be someone you have worked with who you can interview such as team leader, supervisor and manager. Describe:

a. The qualities of the person you have selected or aspects of their leadership that you admire. b. Their greatest challenges and achievements as a leader. c. How they supported their team member in the problem identification and resolution processes. d. Please describe the real situation where they led by example. e. By adopting some of the practices of the person you researched for Question (a), how could you be an effective leader? f. Why is it important to have open communication between yourself and senior managers?