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problem solving teams in organizational behavior

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Complex Problem Solving in Teams: The Impact of Collective Orientation on Team Process Demands

Associated data.

Complex problem solving is challenging and a high-level cognitive process for individuals. When analyzing complex problem solving in teams, an additional, new dimension has to be considered, as teamwork processes increase the requirements already put on individual team members. After introducing an idealized teamwork process model, that complex problem solving teams pass through, and integrating the relevant teamwork skills for interdependently working teams into the model and combining it with the four kinds of team processes (transition, action, interpersonal, and learning processes), the paper demonstrates the importance of fulfilling team process demands for successful complex problem solving within teams. Therefore, results from a controlled team study within complex situations are presented. The study focused on factors that influence action processes, like coordination, such as emergent states like collective orientation, cohesion, and trust and that dynamically enable effective teamwork in complex situations. Before conducting the experiments, participants were divided by median split into two-person teams with either high ( n = 58) or low ( n = 58) collective orientation values. The study was conducted with the microworld C3Fire, simulating dynamic decision making, and acting in complex situations within a teamwork context. The microworld includes interdependent tasks such as extinguishing forest fires or protecting houses. Two firefighting scenarios had been developed, which takes a maximum of 15 min each. All teams worked on these two scenarios. Coordination within the team and the resulting team performance were calculated based on a log-file analysis. The results show that no relationships between trust and action processes and team performance exist. Likewise, no relationships were found for cohesion. Only collective orientation of team members positively influences team performance in complex environments mediated by action processes such as coordination within the team. The results are discussed in relation to previous empirical findings and to learning processes within the team with a focus on feedback strategies.

Introduction

Complex problems in organizational contexts are seldom solved by individuals. Generally, interdependently working teams of experts deal with complex problems (Fiore et al., 2010 ), which are characterized by element interactivity/ interconnectedness, dynamic developments, non-transparency and multiple, and/or conflicting goals (Dörner et al., 1983 ; Brehmer, 1992 ; Funke, 1995 ). Complex problem solving “takes place for reducing the barrier between a given start state and an intended goal state with the help of cognitive activities and behavior. Start state, intended goal state, and barriers prove complexity, change dynamically over time, and can be partially intransparent” (Funke, 2012 , p. 682). Teams dealing with complex problems in interdependent work contexts, for example in disaster, crisis or accident management, are called High Responsibility Teams. They are named High Responsibility Teams (HRTs; Hagemann, 2011 ; Hagemann et al., 2011 ) due to their dynamic and often unpredictable working conditions and demanding work contexts, in which technical faults and slips have severe consequences for human beings and the environment if they are not identified and resolved within the team immediately (Kluge et al., 2009 ). HRTs bear responsibility regarding lives of third parties and their own lives based on their actions and consequences.

The context of interdependently working HRTs, dealing with complex problems, is described as follows (Zsambok, 1997 ): Members of interdependently working teams have to reach ill-defined or competing goals in common in poor structured, non-transparent and dynamically changing situations under the consideration of rules of engagement and based on several cycles of joint action. Some or all goals are critical in terms of time and the consequences of actions result in decision-based outcomes with high importance for the culture (e.g., human life). In HRT contexts, added to the features of the complexity of the problem, is the complexity of relationships, which is called social complexity (Dörner, 1989/2003 ) or crew coordination complexity (Kluge, 2014 ), which results from the interconnectedness between multiple agents through coordination requirements. The dynamic control aspect of the continuous process is coupled with the need to coordinate multiple highly interactive processes imposing high coordination demands (Roth and Woods, 1988 ; Waller et al., 2004 ; Hagemann et al., 2012 ).

Within this article, it is important to us to describe the theoretical background of complex problem solving in teams in depth and to combine different but compatible theoretical approaches, in order to demonstrate their theoretical and practical use in the context of the analysis of complex problem solving in teams. In Industrial and Organizational Psychology, a detailed description of tasks and work contexts that are in the focus of the analysis is essential. The individual or team task is the point of intersection between organization and individual as a “psychologically most relevant part” of the working conditions (Ulich, 1995 ). Thus, the tasks and the teamwork context of teams that deal with complex problems is of high relevance in the present paper. We will comprehensively describe the context of complex problem solving in teams by introducing a model of an idealized teamwork process that complex problem solving teams pass through and extensively integrate the relevant teamwork skills for these interdependently working teams into the idealized teamwork process model.

Furthermore, we will highlight the episodic aspect concerning complex problem solving in teams and combine the agreed on transition, action, interpersonal and learning processes of teamwork with the idealized teamwork process model. Because we are interested in investigating teamwork competencies and action processes of complex problem solving teams, we will analyze the indirect effect of collective orientation on team performance through the teams' coordination behavior. The focusing of the study will be owed to its validity. Even though that we know that more aspects of the theoretical framework might be of interest and could be analyzed, we will focus on a detail within the laboratory experiment for getting reliable and valid results.

Goal, task, and outcome interdependence in teamwork

Concerning interdependence, teamwork research focuses on three designated features, which are in accordance with general process models of human action (Hertel et al., 2004 ). One type is goal interdependence, which refers to the degree to which teams have distinct goals as well as a linkage between individual members and team goals (Campion et al., 1993 ; Wageman, 1995 ). A second type is task interdependence, which refers to the interaction between team members. The team members depend on each other for work accomplishment, and the actions of one member have strong implications for the work process of all members (Shea and Guzzo, 1987 ; Campion et al., 1993 ; Hertel et al., 2004 ). The third type is outcome interdependence, which is defined as the extent to which one team member's outcomes depend on the performance of other members (Wageman, 1995 ). Accordingly, the rewards for each member are based on the total team performance (Hertel et al., 2004 ). This can occur, for instance, if a team receives a reward based on specific performance criteria. Although interdependence is often the reason why teams are formed in the first place, and it is stated as a defining attribute of teams (Salas et al., 2008 ), different levels of task interdependence exist (Van de Ven et al., 1976 ; Arthur et al., 2005 ).

The workflow pattern of teams can be

  • Independent or pooled (activities are performed separately),
  • Sequential (activities flow from one member to another in a unidirectional manner),
  • Reciprocal (activities flow between team members in a back and forth manner) or
  • Intensive (team members must simultaneously diagnose, problem-solve, and coordinate as a team to accomplish a task).

Teams that deal with complex problems work within intensive interdependence, which requires greater coordination patterns compared to lower levels of interdependence (Van de Ven et al., 1976 ; Wageman, 1995 ) and necessitates mutual adjustments as well as frequent interaction and information integration within the team (Gibson, 1999 ; Stajkovic et al., 2009 ).

Thus, in addition to the cognitive requirements related to information processing (e.g., encoding, storage and retrieval processes (Hinsz et al., 1997 ), simultaneously representing and anticipating the dynamic elements and predicting future states of the problem, balancing contradictory objectives and decide on the right timing for actions to execute) of individual team members, the interconnectedness between the experts in the team imposes high team process demands on the team members. These team process demands follow from the required interdependent actions of all team members for effectively using all resources, such as equipment, money, time, and expertise, to reach high team performance (Marks et al., 2001 ). Examples for team process demands are the communication for building a shared situation awareness, negotiating conflicting perspectives on how to proceed or coordinating and orchestrating actions of all team members.

A comprehensive model of the idealized teamwork process

The cognitive requirements, that complex problem solving teams face, and the team process demands are consolidated within our model of an idealized teamwork process in Figure ​ Figure1 1 (Hagemann, 2011 ; Kluge et al., 2014 ). Individual and team processes converge sequential and in parallel and influencing factors as well as process demands concerning complex problem solving in teams can be extracted. The core elements of the model are situation awareness, information transfer, individual and shared mental models, coordination and leadership, and decision making.

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Relevant teamwork skills (orange color) for interdependently working teams (see Wilson et al., 2010 ) integrated into the model of an idealized teamwork process.

Complex problem solving teams are responsible for finding solutions and reaching specified goals. Based on the overall goals various sub goals will be identified at the beginning of the teamwork process in the course of mission analysis, strategy formulation and planning, all aspects of the transition phase (Marks et al., 2001 ). The transition phase processes occur during periods of time when teams focus predominantly on evaluation and/or planning activities. The identified and communicated goals within the team represent relevant input variables for each team member in order to build up a Situation Awareness (SA). SA contains three steps and is the foundation for an ideal and goal directed collaboration within a team (Endsley, 1999 ; Flin et al., 2008 ). The individual SA is the start and end within the idealized teamwork process model. SA means the assessment of a situation which is important for complex problem solving teams, as they work based on the division of labor as well as interdependently and each team member needs to achieve a correct SA and to share it within the team. Each single team member needs to utilize all technical and interpersonal resources in order to collect and interpret up-to-date goal directed information and to share this information with other team members via “closed-loop communication.”

This information transfer focuses on sending and receiving single SA between team members in order to build up a Shared Situation Awareness (SSA). Overlapping cuts of individual SA are synchronized within the team and a bigger picture of the situation is developed. Creating a SSA means sharing a common perspective of the members concerning current events within their environment, their meaning and their future development. This shared perspective enables problem-solving teams to attain high performance standards through corresponding and goal directed actions (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993 ).

Expectations of each team member based on briefings, individual mental models and interpositional knowledge influence the SA, the information transfer and the consolidation process. Mental models are internal and cognitive representations of relations and processes (e.g., execution of tactics) between various aspects or elements of a situation. They help team members to describe, explain and predict circumstances (Mathieu et al., 2000 ). Mental models possess knowledge elements required by team members in order to assess a current situation in terms of SA. Interpositional knowledge refers to an individual understanding concerning the tasks and duties of all team members, in order to develop an understanding about the impact of own actions on the actions of other team members and vice versa. It supports the team in identifying the information needs and the amount of required help of other members and in avoiding team conflicts (Smith-Jentsch et al., 2001 ). This knowledge is the foundation for anticipating the team members' needs for information and it is important for matching information within the team.

Based on the information matching process within the team, a common understanding of the problem, the goals and the current situation is developed in terms of a Shared Mental Model (SMM), which is important for the subsequent decisions. SMM are commonly shared mental models within a team and refer to the organized knowledge structures of all team members, that are shared with each other and which enable the team to interact goal-oriented (Mathieu et al., 2000 ). SMM help complex problem solving teams during high workload to adapt fast and efficiently to changing situations (Waller et al., 2004 ). They also enhance the teams' performance and communication processes (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993 ; Mathieu et al., 2000 ). Especially under time pressure and in crucial situations when overt verbal communication and explicit coordination is not applicable, SMM are fundamental in order to coordinate implicitly. This information matching process fosters the building of a shared understanding of the current situation and the required actions. In order to do so teamwork skills (see Wilson et al., 2010 ) such as communication, coordination , and cooperation within the team are vitally important. Figure ​ Figure1 1 incorporates the teamwork skills into the model of an idealized teamwork process.

Depending on the shared knowledge and SA within the team, the coordination can be based either on well-known procedures or shared expectations within the team or on explicit communication based on task specific phraseology or closed-loop communication. Cooperation needs mutual performance monitoring within the team, for example, in order to apply task strategies to accurately monitor teammate performance and prevent errors (Salas et al., 2005 ). Cooperation also needs backup behavior of each team member, for example, and continuous actions in reference to the collective events. The anticipation of other team members' needs under high workload maintains the teams' performance and the well-being of each team member (Badke-Schaub, 2008 ). A successful pass through the teamwork process model also depends e.g., on the trust and the cohesion within the team and the collective orientation of each team member.

Collective orientation (CO) is defined “as the propensity to work in a collective manner in team settings” (Driskell et al., 2010 , p. 317). Highly collectively oriented people work with others on a task-activity and team-activity track (Morgan et al., 1993 ) in a goal-oriented manner, seek others' input, contribute to team outcomes, enjoy team membership, and value cooperativeness more than power (Driskell et al., 2010 ). Thus, teams with collectively oriented members perform better than teams with non-collectively oriented members (Driskell and Salas, 1992 ). CO, trust and cohesion as well as other coordination and cooperation skills are so called emergent sates that represent cognitive, affective, and motivational states, and not traits, of teams and team members, and which are influenced, for example, by team experience, so that emergent states can be considered as team inputs but also as team outcomes (Marks et al., 2001 ).

Based on the information matching process the complex problem solving team or the team leader needs to make decisions in order to execute actions. The task prioritization and distribution is an integrated part of this step (Waller et al., 2004 ). Depending on the progress of the dynamic, non-transparent and heavily foreseeable situation tasks have to be re-prioritized during episodes of teamwork. Episodes are “temporal cycles of goal-directed activity” in which teams perform (Marks et al., 2001 , p. 359). Thus, the team acts adaptive and is able to react flexible to situation changes. The team coordinates implicitly when each team member knows what he/she has to do in his/her job, what the others expect from him/her and how he/she interacts with the others. In contrast, when abnormal events occur and they are recognized during SA processes, the team starts coordinating explicitly via communication, for example. Via closed-loop communication and based on interpositional knowledge new strategies are communicated within the team and tasks are re-prioritized.

The result of the decision making and action taking flows back into the individual SA and the as-is state will be compared with the original goals. This model of an idealized teamwork process (Figure ​ (Figure1) 1 ) is a regulator circuit with feedback loops, which enables a team to adapt flexible to changing environments and goals. The foundation of this model is the classic Input-Process-Outcome (IPO) framework (Hackman, 1987 ) with a strong focus on the process part. IPO models view processes as mechanisms linking variables such as member, team, or organizational features with outcomes such as performance quality and quantity or members' reactions. This mediating mechanism, the team process , can be defined as “members' interdependent acts that convert inputs to outcomes through cognitive, verbal, and behavioral activities directed toward organizing taskwork to achieve collective goals” (Marks et al., 2001 , p. 357). That means team members interact interdependently with other members as well as with their environment. These cognitive, verbal, and behavioral activities directed toward taskwork and goal attainment are represented as gathering situation awareness, communication, coordination, cooperation, the consolidation of information, and task prioritization within our model of an idealized teamwork process. Within the context of complex problem solving, teams have to face team process demands in addition to cognitive challenges related to individual information processing. That means teamwork processes and taskwork to solve complex problems co-occur, the processes guide the execution of taskwork.

The dynamic nature of teamwork and temporal influences on complex problem solving teams are considered within adapted versions (Marks et al., 2001 ; Ilgen et al., 2005 ) of the original IPO framework. These adaptations propose that teams experience cycles of joint action, so called episodes, in which teams perform and also receive feedback for further actions. The IPO cycles occur sequentially and simultaneously and are nested in transition and action phases within episodes in which outcomes from initial episodes serve as inputs for the next cycle (see Figure ​ Figure2). 2 ). These repetitive IPO cycles are a vital element of our idealized teamwork process model, as it incorporates feedback loops in such a way, that the outcomes, e.g., changes within the as-is state, are continuously compared with the original goals. Detected discrepancies within the step of updating SA motivate the team members to consider further actions for goal accomplishment.

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Teamwork episodes with repetitive IPO cycles (Marks et al., 2001 ).

When applying this episodic framework to complex problem solving teams it becomes obvious that teams handle different types of taskwork at different phases of task accomplishment (Marks et al., 2001 ). That means episodes consist of two phases, so-called action and transition phases , in which teams are engaged in activities related to goal attainment and in other time in reflecting on past performance and planning for further common actions. The addition of the social complexity to the complexity of the problem within collaborative complex problem solving comes to the fore here. During transition phases teams evaluate their performance, compare the as-is state against goals, reflect on their strategies and plan future activities to guide their goal accomplishment. For example, team members discuss alternative courses of action, if their activities for simulated firefighting, such as splitting team members in order to cover more space of the map, are not successful. During action phases, teams focus directly on the taskwork and are engaged in activities such as exchanging information about the development of the dynamic situation or supporting each other. For example, a team member recognizes high workload of another team member and supports him/her in collecting information or in taking over the required communication with other involved parties.

Transition and action phases

The idealized teamwork process model covers these transition and action phases as well as the processes occurring during these two phases of team functioning, which can be clustered into transition, action, and interpersonal processes. That means during complex problem solving the relevant or activated teamwork processes in the transition and action phases change as teams move back and forth between these phases. As this taxonomy of team processes from Marks et al. ( 2001 ) states that a team process is multidimensional and teams use different processes simultaneously, some processes can occur either during transition periods or during action periods or during both periods. Transition processes especially occur during transition phases and enable the team to understand their tasks, guide their attention, specify goals and develop courses of action for task accomplishment. Thus, transition processes include (see Marks et al., 2001 ) mission analysis, formulation and planning (Prince and Salas, 1993 ), e.g., fighting a forest fire, goal specification (Prussia and Kinicki, 1996 ), e.g., saving as much houses and vegetation as possible, and strategy formulation (Prince and Salas, 1993 ; Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995 ), e.g., spreading team members into different geographic directions. Action processes predominantly occur during action phases and support the team in conducting activities directly related to goal accomplishment. Thus, action processes are monitoring progress toward goals (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995 ), e.g., collecting information how many cells in a firefighting simulation are still burning, systems monitoring (Fleishman and Zaccaro, 1992 ), e.g., tracking team resources such as water for firefighting, team monitoring and backup behavior (Stevens and Campion, 1994 ; Salas et al., 2005 ), e.g., helping a team member and completing a task for him/her, and coordination (Fleishman and Zaccaro, 1992 ; Serfaty et al., 1998 ), e.g., orchestrating the interdependent actions of the team members such as exchanging information during firefighting about positions of team members for meeting at the right time at the right place in order to refill the firefighters water tanks. Especially the coordination process is influenced by the amount of task interdependence as coordination becomes more and more important for effective team functioning when interdependence increases (Marks et al., 2001 ). Interpersonal processes occur during transition and action phases equally and lay the foundation for the effectiveness of other processes and govern interpersonal activities (Marks et al., 2001 ). Thus, interpersonal processes include conflict management (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995 ), like the development of team rules, motivation and confidence building (Fleishman and Zaccaro, 1992 ), like encourage team members to perform better, and affect management (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995 ), e.g., regulating member emotions during complex problem solving.

Summing up, process demands such as transition processes that complex problem solving teams pass through, are mission analysis, planning, briefing and goal specification, visualized on the left side of the idealized teamwork process model (see Figure ​ Figure3). 3 ). The results of these IPO cycles lay the foundation for gathering a good SA and initiating activities directed toward taskwork and goal accomplishment and therefore initiating action processes. The effective execution of action processes depends on the communication, coordination, cooperation, matching of information, and task prioritization as well as emergent team cognition variables (SSA and SMM) within the team. The results, like decisions, of these IPO cycles flow back into the next episode and may initiate further transition processes. In addition, interpersonal processes play a crucial role for complex problem solving teams. That means, conflict management, motivating and confidence building, and affect management are permanently important, no matter whether a team runs through transition or action phases and these interpersonal processes frame the whole idealized teamwork process model. Therefore, interpersonal processes are also able to impede successful teamwork at any point as breakdowns in conflict or affect management can lead to coordination breakdowns (Wilson et al., 2010 ) or problems with monitoring or backing up teammates (Marks et al., 2001 ). Thus, complex problem solving teams have to face these multidimensional team process demands in addition to cognitive challenges, e.g., information storage or retrieval (Hinsz et al., 1997 ), related to individual information processing.

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The integration of transition, action, interpersonal, and learning processes into the model of an idealized teamwork process.

Team learning opportunities for handling complex problems

In order to support teams in handling complex situations or problems, learning opportunities seem to be very important for successful task accomplishment and for reducing possible negative effects of team process demands. Learning means any kind of relative outlasted changes in potential of human behavior that cannot be traced back to age-related changes (Bower and Hilgard, 1981 ; Bredenkamp, 1998 ). Therefore, Schmutz et al. ( 2016 ) amended the taxonomy of team processes developed by Marks et al. ( 2001 ) and added learning processes as a fourth category of processes, which occur during transition and action phases and contribute to overall team effectiveness. Learning processes (see also Edmondson, 1999 ) include observation, e.g., observing own and other team members' actions such as the teammate's positioning of firewalls in order to protect houses in case of firefighting, feedback, like giving a teammate information about the wind direction for effective positioning of firewalls, and reflection, e.g., talking about procedures for firefighting or refilling water tanks, for example, within the team. Learning from success and failure and identifying future problems is crucial for the effectiveness of complex problem solving teams and therefore possibilities for learning based on repetitive cycles of joint action or episodes and reflection of team members' activities during action and transition phases should be used effectively (Edmondson, 1999 ; Marks et al., 2001 ). The processes of the idealized teamwork model are embedded into these learning processes (see Figure ​ Figure3 3 ).

The fulfillment of transition, action, interpersonal and learning processes contribute significantly to successful team performance in complex problem solving. For clustering these processes, transition and action processes could be seen as operational processes and interpersonal and learning process as support processes. When dealing with complex and dynamic situations teams have to face these team process demands more strongly than in non-complex situations. For example, goal specification and prioritization or strategy formulation, both aspects of transition processes, are strongly influenced by multiple goals, interconnectedness or dynamically and constantly changing conditions. The same is true for action processes, such as monitoring progress toward goals, team monitoring and backup behavior or coordination of interdependent actions. Interpersonal processes, such as conflict and affect management or confidence building enhance the demands put on team members compared to individuals working on complex problems. Interpersonal processes are essential for effective teamwork and need to be cultivated during episodes of team working, because breakdowns in confidence building or affect management can lead to coordination breakdowns or problems with monitoring or backing up teammates (Marks et al., 2001 ). Especially within complex situations aspects such as interdependence, delayed feedback, multiple goals and dynamic changes put high demands on interpersonal processes within teams. Learning processes, supporting interpersonal processes and the result of effective teamwork are e.g., observation of others' as well as own actions and receiving feedback by others or the system and are strongly influenced by situational characteristics such as non-transparency or delayed feedback concerning actions. It is assumed that amongst others team learning happens through repetitive cycles of joint action within the action phases and reflection of team members within the transition phases (Edmondson, 1999 ; Gabelica et al., 2014 ; Schmutz et al., 2016 ). The repetitive cycles help to generate SMM (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993 ; Mathieu et al., 2000 ), SSA (Endsley and Robertson, 2000 ) or transactive memory systems (Hollingshead et al., 2012 ) within the team.

Emergent states in complex team work and the role of collective orientation

IPO models propose that input variables and emergent states are able to influence team processes and therefore outcomes such as team performance positively. Emergent states represent team members' attitudes or motivations and are “properties of the team that are typically dynamic in nature and vary as a function of team context, inputs, processes, and outcomes” (Marks et al., 2001 , p. 357). Both emergent states and interaction processes are relevant for team effectiveness (Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006 ).

Emergent states refer to conditions that underlie and dynamically enable effective teamwork (DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus, 2010 ) and can be differentiated from team process, which refers to interdependent actions of team members that transform inputs into outcomes based on activities directed toward task accomplishment (Marks et al., 2001 ). Emergent states mainly support the execution of behavioral processes (e.g., planning, coordination, backup behavior) during the action phase, meaning during episodes when members are engaged in acts that focus on task work and goal accomplishment. Emergent states like trust, cohesion and CO are “products of team experiences (including team processes) and become new inputs to subsequent processes and outcomes” (Marks et al., 2001 , p. 358). Trust between team members and cohesion within the team are emergent states that develop over time and only while experiencing teamwork in a specific team. CO is an emergent state that a team member brings along with him/her into the teamwork, is assumed to be more persistent than trust and cohesion, and can, but does not have to, be positively and negatively influenced by experiencing teamwork in a specific team for a while or by means of training (Eby and Dobbins, 1997 ; Driskell et al., 2010 ). Thus, viewing emergent states on a continuum, trust and cohesion are assumed more fluctuating than CO, but CO is much more sensitive to change and direct experience than a stable trait such as a personality trait.

CO of team members is one of the teamwork-relevant competencies that facilitates team processes, such as collecting and sharing information between team members, and positively affects the success of teams, as people who are high in CO work with others in a goal-oriented manner, seek others' input and contribute to team outcomes (Driskell et al., 2010 ). CO is an emergent state, as it can be an input variable as well as a teamwork outcome. CO is context-dependent, becomes visible in reactions to situations and people, and can be influenced by experience (e.g., individual learning experiences with various types of teamwork) or knowledge or training (Eby and Dobbins, 1997 ; Bell, 2007 ). CO enhances team performance through activating transition and action processes such as coordination, evaluation and consideration of task inputs from other team members while performing a team task (Driskell and Salas, 1992 ; Salas et al., 2005 ). Collectively oriented people effectively use available resources in due consideration of the team's goals, participate actively and adapt teamwork processes adequately to the situation.

Driskell et al. ( 2010 ) and Hagemann ( 2017 ) provide a sound overview of the evidence of discriminant and convergent validity of CO compared to other teamwork-relevant constructs, such as cohesion, also an emergent state, or cooperative interdependence or preference for solitude. Studies analyzing collectively and non-collectively oriented persons' decision-making in an interdependent task demonstrated that teams with non-collectively oriented members performed poorly in problem solving and that members with CO judged inputs from teammates as more valuable and considered these inputs more frequently (Driskell and Salas, 1992 ). Eby and Dobbins ( 1997 ) also showed that CO results in increased coordination among team members, which may enhance team performance through information sharing, goal setting and strategizing (Salas et al., 2005 ). Driskell et al. ( 2010 ) and Hagemann ( 2017 ) analyzed CO in relation to team performance and showed that the effect of CO on team performance depends on the task type (see McGrath, 1984 ). Significant positive relationships between team members' CO and performance were found in relation to the task types choosing/decision making and negotiating (Driskell et al., 2010 ) respectively choosing/decision making (Hagemann, 2017 ). These kinds of tasks are characterized by much more interdependence than task types such as executing or generating tasks. As research shows that the positive influence of CO on team performance unfolds especially in interdependent teamwork contexts (Driskell et al., 2010 ), which require more team processes such as coordination patterns (Van de Ven et al., 1976 ; Wageman, 1995 ) and necessitate mutual adjustments as well as frequent information integration within the team (Gibson, 1999 ; Stajkovic et al., 2009 ), CO might be vitally important for complex problem solving teams. Thus, CO as an emergent state of single team members might be a valuable resource for enhancing the team's performance when exposed to solving complex problems. Therefore, it will be of interest to analyze the influence of CO on team process demands such as coordination processes and performance within complex problem solving teams. We predict that the positive effect of CO on team performance is an indirect effect through coordination processes within the team, which are vitally important for teams working in intensive interdependent work contexts.

  • Hypothesis 1: CO leads to a better coordination behavior, which in turn leads to a higher team performance.

As has been shown in team research that emergent states like trust and cohesion (see also Figure ​ Figure1) 1 ) affect team performance, these two constructs are analyzed in conjunction with CO concerning action processes, such as coordination behavior and team performance. Trust between team members supports information sharing and the willingness to accept feedback, and therefore positively influences teamwork processes (McAllister, 1995 ; Salas et al., 2005 ). Cohesion within a team facilitates motivational factors and group processes like coordination and enhances team performance (Beal et al., 2003 ; Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006 ).

  • Hypothesis 2: Trust shows a positive relationship with (a) action processes (team coordination) and with (b) team performance.
  • Hypothesis 3: Cohesion shows a positive relationship with (a) action processes (team coordination) and with (b) team performance.

Materials and methods

In order to demonstrate the importance of team process demands for complex problem solving in teams, we used a computer-based microworld in a laboratory study. We analyzed the effectiveness of complex problem solving teams while considering the influence of input variables, like collective orientation of team members and trust and cohesion within the team, on action processes within teams, like coordination.

The microworld for investigating teams process demands

We used the simulation-based team task C 3 Fire (Granlund et al., 2001 ; Granlund and Johansson, 2004 ), which is described as an intensive interdependence team task for complex problem solving (Arthur et al., 2005 ). C 3 Fire is a command, control and communications simulation environment that allows teams' coordination and communication in complex and dynamic environments to be analyzed. C 3 Fire is a microworld, as important characteristics of the real world are transferred to a small and well-controlled simulation system. The task environment in C 3 Fire is complex, dynamic and opaque (see Table ​ Table1) 1 ) and therefore similar to the cognitive tasks people usually encounter in real-life settings, in and outside their work place (Brehmer and Dörner, 1993 ; Funke, 2001 ). Figure ​ Figure4 4 demonstrates how the complexity characteristics mentioned in Table ​ Table1 1 are realized in C 3 Fire. The screenshot represents the simulation manager's point of view, who is able to observe all units and actions and the scenario development. For more information about the units and scenarios, please (see the text below and the Supplementary Material). Complexity requires people to consider a number of facts. Because executed actions in C 3 Fire influence the ongoing process, the sequencing of actions is free and not stringent, such as a fixed (if X then Y) or parallel (if X then Y and Z) sequence (Ormerod et al., 1998 ). This can lead to stressful situations. Taking these characteristics of microworlds into consideration, team processes during complex problem solving can be analyzed within laboratories under controlled conditions. Simulated microworlds such as C 3 Fire allow the gap to be bridged between laboratory studies, which might show deficiencies regarding ecological validity, and field studies, which have been criticized due to their small amount of control (see Brehmer and Dörner, 1993 ).

Overview of complexity characteristics of microworlds in general and in C 3 Fire (cf. Funke, 2001 ).

Fire examples 4
GoalsPeople try to reach many goals, some of which may be contradictory, and therefore they have to make trade-offs.Extinguish a forest fire and/or protect houses simultaneously.Two fires are spreading out. Brown cells are extinguished, black cells are burned down. A house and a school are blocked with fire-breaks (gray cells).
Side-effectsSide effects of a given course of action exist due to coupled processes and force people to choose between many possible courses of action.If the participant decides to refill his/her water tank on his/her back, he/she is not able to fight a fire during this refill process.Unit 2, one firefighting unit, stands on the local water tank for refilling its water supply.
DynamicMicroworlds are dynamic, because “their current state is a function of the history of the interaction between the subject and the system” and “they change, both as a consequence of the subject's actions and autonomously” (Brehmer and Dörner, , p. 173). People have to act in real time and directly influence the system's state even though they do not know exactly when they have to make decisions.If the participant does nothing, the fire spreads in all directions. If the participant extinguishes burning fields, the fire spreads in the directions where no firefighting occurs. If the wind direction changes, the direction of fire spreading also changes and the participant needs to recognize this for his/her further actions.Two fires are spreading out into all directions. The fire stops bevor a placed fire-break. The fire spreads out predominantly in a westward direction, because the wind is coming from the East.
OpaqueOpaque means that the people do not have all relevant information. Thus, people have to form hypotheses and test them autonomously during activity.Restricted visibility field. Not everything within the simulation environment is visible for the participants without exploring the environment. All units see the houses, trees, bushes and so on, but they can only see the fire if they are close to it.The restricted visibility field is represented by the yellow squares. e.g., unit 5 only sees five burning cells and four non-burning cells and has an intersection of two cells with unit 4. Unit 1 only sees eight burning cells and one burned-out cell and has an intersection of one cell with unit 4.

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Examples for the complexity characteristics in Table ​ Table1 1 represented within a simulation scenario in C 3 Fire.

In C 3 Fire, the teams' task is to coordinate their actions to extinguish a forest fire whilst protecting houses and saving lives. The team members' actions are interdependent. The simulation includes, e.g., forest fires, houses, tents, gas tanks, different kinds of vegetation and computer-simulated agents such as firefighting units (Granlund, 2003 ). It is possible, for example, that the direction of wind will change during firefighting and the time until different kinds of vegetation are burned down varies between those. In the present study, two simulation scenarios were developed for two-person teams and consisted of two firefighting units, one mobile water tank unit (responsible for re-filling the firefighting units' water tanks that contain a predefined amount of water) and one fire-break unit (a field defended with a fire-break cannot be ignited; the fire spreads around its ends). The two developed scenarios lasted for 15 min maximum. Each team member was responsible for two units in each scenario; person one for firefighting and water tank unit and person two for firefighting and fire-break unit. The user interface was a map system (40 × 40 square grid) with all relevant geographic information and positions of all symbols representing houses, water tank units and so on. All parts of the map with houses and vegetation were visible for the subjects, but not the fire itself or the other units; instead, the subjects were close to them with their own units (restricted visibility field; 3 × 3 square grid). The simulation was run on computers networked in a client-server configuration. The subjects used a chat system for communication that was logged. For each scenario, C 3 Fire creates a detailed log file containing all events that occurred over the course of the simulation. Examples of the C 3 Fire scenarios are provided in the Figures S1 – 3 and a short introduction into the microworld is given in the video. Detailed information regarding the scenario characteristics are given in Table S1 . From scenario one to two, the complexity and interdependence increased.

Participants

The study was conducted from Mai 2014 until March 2015. Undergraduate and graduate students ( N = 116) studying applied cognitive sciences participated in the study (68.1% female). Their mean age was 21.17 years ( SD = 3.11). Participants were assigned to 58 two-person teams, with team assignments being based on the pre-measured CO values (see procedure). They received 2 hourly credits as a trial subject and giveaways such as pencils and non-alcoholic canned drinks. The study was approved by the university's ethics committee in February 2014.

The study was conducted within a laboratory setting at a university department for business psychology. Prior to the experiment, the participants filled in the CO instrument online and gave written informed consent (see Figure ​ Figure5). 5 ). The median was calculated subsequently ( Md = 3.12; range: 1.69–4.06; scale range: 1–5) relating to the variable CO and two individuals with either high ( n = 58) or low ( n = 58) CO values were randomly matched as teammates. The matching process was random in part, as those two subjects were matched to form a team, whose preferred indicated time for participation in a specific week during data collection were identical. The participants were invited to the experimental study by e-mail 1–2 weeks after filling in the CO instrument. The study began with an introduction to the experimental procedure and the teams' task. The individuals received time to familiarize themselves with the simulation, received 20 min of training and completed two practice trials. After the training, participants answered a questionnaire collecting demographic data. Following this, a simulation scenario started and the participants had a maximum of 15 min to coordinate their actions to extinguish a forest fire whilst protecting houses and saving lives. After that, at measuring time T1, participants answered questionnaires assessing trust and cohesion within the team. Again, the teams worked on the following scenario 2 followed by a last round of questionnaires assessing trust and cohesion at T2.

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Overview about the procedure and measures.

Demographic data such as age, sex, and study course were assessed after the training at the beginning of the experiment.

Collective Orientation was measured at an individual level with 16 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree ) developed by the authors (Hagemann, 2017 ) based on the work of Driskell et al. ( 2010 ). The factorial structure concerning the German-language CO scale was proven prior to this study (χ 2 = 162.25, df = 92, p = 0.000, χ 2 /df = 1.76, CFI = 0.97, TLI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.040, CI = 0.030-0.051, SRMR = 0.043) and correlations for testing convergent and discriminant evidence of validity were satisfying. For example, CO correlated r = 0.09 ( p > 0.10) with cohesion, r = 0.34 ( p < 0.01) with cooperative interdependence and r = −0.28 ( p < 0.01) with preference for solitude (Hagemann, 2017 ). An example item is “ I find working on team projects to be very satisfying ”. Coefficient alpha for this scale was 0.81.

Trust in team members' integrity, trust in members' task abilities and trust in members' work-related attitudes (Geister et al., 2006 ) was measured with seven items rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree ). An example item is “ I can trust that I will have no additional demands due to lack of motivation of my team member .” Coefficient alpha for this scale was 0.83 (T1) and 0.87 (T2).

Cohesion was measured with a six-item scale from Riordan and Weatherly ( 1999 ) rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree ). An example item is “ In this team, there is a lot of team spirit among the members .” Coefficient alpha for this scale was 0.87 (T1) and 0.87 (T2).

Action process: coordination

Successful coordination requires mechanisms that serve to manage dependencies between the teams' activities and their resources. Coordination effectiveness was assessed based on the time the firefighting units spent without water in the field in relation to the total scenario time. This measure is an indicator of the effectiveness of resource-oriented coordination, as it reflects an efficient performance regarding the water refill process in C 3 Fire, which requires coordinated actions between the two firefighting units and one water tank unit (Lafond et al., 2011 ). The underlying assumption is that a more successful coordination process leads to fewer delays in conducting the refill process. Coordination was calculated by a formula and values ranged between 0 and 1, with lower values indicating better coordination in the team (see Jobidon et al., 2012 ).

Team performance

This measure related to the teams' goals (limiting the number of burned out cells and saving as many houses/buildings as possible) and was quantified as the number of protected houses and the number of protected fields and bushes/trees in relation to the number of houses, fields, and bushes/trees, respectively, which would burn in a worst case scenario. This formula takes into account that teams needing more time for firefighting also have more burning cells and show a less successful performance than teams that are quick in firefighting. To determine the worst case scenario, both 15-min scenarios were run with no firefighting action taken. Thus, the particularities (e.g., how many houses would burn down if no action was taken) of each scenario were considered. Furthermore, the houses, bushes/trees and fields were weighted according to their differing importance, mirroring the teams' goals. Houses should be protected and were most important. Bushes/trees (middle importance) burn faster than fields (lowest importance) and foster the expansion of the fire. Values regarding team performance ranged between 0 and 7.99, with higher values indicating a better overall performance. Team performance was calculated as follows (see Table ​ Table2 2 ):

Explanation of formula for calculating team performance in both scenarios.

a=number of protected houses (those that were not touched by fire)
b=number of protected bushes/trees
c=number of protected fields
max a=number of affected houses in the worst case (those that are burned out, extinguished or still on fire)
max b=number of affected bushes/trees in the worst case
max c=number of affected fields in the worst case
5=weighting of houses (highest priority)
2=weighting of bushes/trees (middle priority)
1=weighting of fields (lowest priority)

Means, standard deviations, internal consistencies, and correlations for all study variables are provided in Table ​ Table3 3 .

Means, standard deviations, internal consistencies, and correlations for all study variables.

1 Performance scenario 15.822.031
2 Performance scenario 25.312.530.31 1
3 Time without water scenario 10.1770.09−0.48 −0.24 1
4 Time without water scenario 20.2140.10−0.02−0.30 0.25 1
5 Collective Orientation3.120.460.810.140.20 −0.20 −0.42 1
6 Trust T14.430.510.830.180.06−0.11−0.080.051
7 Trust T24.470.500.87−0.020.06−0.00−0.12−0.030.83 1
8 Cohesion T14.020.640.870.00−0.09−0.22 −0.06−0.170.47 0.51 1
9 Cohesion T24.010.650.870.01−0.07−0.17−0.08−0.180.39 0.47 0.87

Performance range from 0 to 7.99; Time without Water range from 0 to 1 (lower values indicate a more effective handling of water); CO range from 1 to 5 .

Team complex problem solving in scenario 1 correlated significantly negative with time without water in scenario 1, indicating that a high team performance is attended by the coordination behavior (as a team process). The same was true for scenario 2. In addition, time without water as an indicator for team coordination correlated significantly negative with the team members' CO, indicating that team members with high CO values experience less time without water in the microworld than teams with members with low CO values.

In order to analyze the influence of CO on team process demands such as coordination processes and thereby performance within complex problem solving teams we tested whether CO would show an indirect effect on team performance through the teams' coordination processes. To analyze this assumption, indirect effects in simple mediation models were estimated for both scenarios (see Preacher and Hayes, 2004 ). The mean for CO was 3.44 ( SD = 0.32) for teams with high CO values and it was 2.79 ( SD = 0.35) for teams with low CO values. The mean concerning team performance in scenario 1 for teams with high CO values was 6.30 ( SD = 1.64) and with low CO values 5.35 ( SD = 2.30). The mean concerning time without water (coordination behavior) for teams with high CO values was 0.16 ( SD = 0.08) and with low CO values 0.20 ( SD = 0.09). In scenario 2 the mean for team performance was 6.26 ( SD = 2.51) for teams with high CO values and it was 4.36 ( SD = 2.24) for teams with low CO values. The mean concerning time without water for teams with high CO values was 0.18 ( SD = 0.08) and with low CO values 0.25 ( SD = 0.11).

For analyzing indirect effects, CO was the independent variable, time without water the mediator and team performance the dependent variable. The findings indicated that CO has an indirect effect on team performance mediated by time without water for scenario 1 (Table ​ (Table4) 4 ) and scenario 2 (Table ​ (Table5). 5 ). In scenario 1, CO had no direct effect on team performance ( b(YX) ), but CO significantly predicted time without water ( b(MX) ). A significant total effect ( b(YX) ) is not an assumption in the assessment of indirect effects, and therefore the non-significance of this relationship does not violate the analysis (see Preacher and Hayes, 2004 , p. 719). Furthermore, time without water significantly predicted team performance when controlling for CO ( b(YM.X) ), whereas the effect of CO on team performance was not significant when controlling for time without water ( b(YX.M) ). The indirect effect was 0.40 and significant when using normal distribution and estimated with the Sobel test ( z = 1.97, p < 0.05). The bootstrap procedure was applied to estimate the effect size not based on the assumption of normal distribution. As displayed in Table ​ Table4, 4 , the bootstrapped estimate of the indirect effect was 0.41 and the true indirect effect was estimated to lie between 0.0084 and 0.9215 with a 95% confidence interval. As zero is not in the 95% confidence interval, it can be concluded that the indirect effect is indeed significantly different from zero at p < 0.05 (two-tailed).

Indirect Effect for Coordination and Team Performance in Scenario 1.

-ratio
b (YX)00.59210.40471.4630
b (MX)−00.03650.0171−2.1329
b (YM.X)−10.97121.9735−5.5592
b (YX.M)00.19200.36730.5228
Sobel0.40000.20370.00080.79931.9693
Effect0.41340.23460.00840.9215−0.09241.0999

Y = Team Performance Scenario 1; X = Collective Orientation T0; M = Coordination (time without water in scenario 1); Number of Bootstrap Resamples 5000 .

Indirect Effect for Coordination and Team Performance in Scenario 2.

-ratio
b (YX)1.10860.49992.2176
b (MX)−0.09150.0185−4.9419
b (YM.X)−6.57352.4634−2.6685
b (YX.M)0.50710.53660.9450
Sobel0.60150.26020.09151.11152.3117
Effect0.60550.23240.18761.10140.03401.2578

Y = Team Performance Scenario 2; X = Collective Orientation T0; M = Coordination (time without water in scenario 2); Number of Bootstrap Resamples 5000 .

Regarding scenario 2, CO had a direct effect on team performance ( b(YX) ) and on time without water ( b(MX) ). Again, time without water significantly predicted team performance when controlling for CO ( b(YM.X) ), whereas the effect of CO on team performance was not significant when controlling for time without water ( b(YX.M) ). This time, the indirect effect was 0.60 (Sobel test, z = 2.31, p < 0.05). As displayed in Table ​ Table5, 5 , the bootstrapped estimate of the indirect effect was 0.61 and the true indirect effect was estimated to lie between 0.1876 and 1.1014 with a 95% confidence interval and between 0.0340 and 1.2578 with a 99% confidence interval. Because zero is not in the 99% confidence interval, it can be concluded that the indirect effect is indeed significantly different from zero at p < 0.01 (two-tailed).

The indirect effects for both scenarios are visualized in Figure ​ Figure6. 6 . Summing up, the results support hypothesis 1 and indicate that CO has an indirect effect on team performance mediated by the teams' coordination behavior, an action process. That means, fulfilling team process demands affect the dynamic decision making quality of teams acting in complex situations and input variables such as CO influence the action processes within teams positively.

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Indirect effect of collective orientation on team performance via coordination within the teams for scenario 1 and 2, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001, numbers in italic represent results from scenario 2, non-italic numbers are from scenario 1.

Trust between team members assessed after scenario 1 (T1) and after scenario 2 (T2) did not show any significant correlation with the coordination behavior or with team complex problem solving in scenarios 1 and 2 (Table ​ (Table3). 3 ). Thus, hypotheses 2a and 2b are not supported. Cohesion at T1 showed no significant relationship with team performance in both scenarios, one significant negative correlation ( r = −0.22, p < 0.05) with the coordination behavior in scenario 1 and no correlation with the coordination behavior in scenario 2. Cohesion at T2 did not show any significant correlation with the coordination behavior or with team performance in both scenarios. Thus, hypotheses 3a and 3b could also not be supported. Furthermore, the results showed no significant relations between CO and trust and cohesion. The correlations between trust and cohesion ranged between r = 0.39 and r = 0.51 ( p < 0.01).

The purpose of our paper was first to give a sound theoretical overview and to combine theoretical approaches about team competencies and team process demands in collaborative complex problem solving and second to demonstrate the importance of selected team competencies and processes on team performance in complex problem solving by means of results from a laboratory study. We introduced the model of an idealized teamwork process that complex problem solving team pass through and integrated the relevant teamwork skills for interdependently working teams into it. Moreover, we highlighted the episodic aspect concerning complex problem solving in teams and combined the well-known transition, action, interpersonal and learning processes of teamwork with the idealized teamwork process model. Finally, we investigated the influence of trust, cohesion, and CO on action processes, such as coordination behavior of complex problem solving teams and on team performance.

Regarding hypothesis 1, studies have indicated that teams whose members have high CO values are more successful in their coordination processes and task accomplishment (Eby and Dobbins, 1997 ; Driskell et al., 2010 ; Hagemann, 2017 ), which may enhance team performance through considering task inputs from other team members, information sharing and strategizing (Salas et al., 2005 ). Thus, we had a close look on CO as an emergent state in the present study, because emergent states support the execution of behavioral processes. In order to analyze this indirect effect of CO on team performance via coordination processes, we used the time, which firefighters spent without water in a scenario, as an indicator for high-quality coordination within the team. A small amount of time without water represents sharing information and resources between team members in a reciprocal manner, which are essential qualities of effective coordination (Ellington and Dierdorff, 2014 ). One of the two team members was in charge of the mobile water tank unit and therefore responsible for filling up the water tanks of his/her own firefighting unit and that of the other team member on time. In order to avoid running out of water for firefighting, the team members had to exchange information about, for example, their firefighting units' current and future positions in the field, their water levels, their strategies for extinguishing one or two fires, and the water tank unit's current and future position in the field. The simple mediation models showed that CO has an indirect effect on team performance mediated by time without water, supporting hypothesis 1. Thus, CO facilitates high-quality coordination within complex problem solving teams and this in turn influences decision-making and team performance positively (cf. Figure ​ Figure1). 1 ). These results support previous findings concerning the relationships between emergent states, such as CO, and the team process, such as action processes like coordination (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995 ; Driskell et al., 2010 ) and between the team process and the team performance (Stevens and Campion, 1994 ; Dierdorff et al., 2011 ).

Hypotheses 2 and 3 analyzed the relationships between trust and cohesion and coordination and team performance. Because no correlations between trust and cohesion and the coordination behavior and team complex problem solving existed, further analyses, like mediation analyses, were unnecessary. In contrast to other studies (McAllister, 1995 ; Beal et al., 2003 ; Salas et al., 2005 ; Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006 ), the present study was not able to detect effects of trust and cohesion on team processes, like action processes, or on team performance. This can be attributed to the restricted sample composition or the rather small sample size. Nevertheless, effect sizes were small to medium, so that they would have become significant with an increased sample sizes. The prerequisite, mentioned by the authors, that interdependence of the teamwork is important for identifying those effects, was given in the present study. Therefore, this aspect could not have been the reason for finding no effects concerning trust and cohesion. Trust and cohesion within the teams developed during working on the simulation scenarios while fighting fires, showed significant correlations with each other, and were unrelated to CO, which showed an effect on the coordination behavior and the team performance indeed. The results seem to implicate, that the influence of CO on action processes and team performance might be much more stronger than those of trust and cohesion. If these results can be replicated should be analyzed in future studies.

As the interdependent complex problem-solving task was a computer-based simulation, the results might have been affected by the participants' attitudes to using a computer. For example, computer affinity seems to be able to minimize potential fear of working with a simulation environment and might therefore, be able to contribute to successful performance in a computer-based team task. Although computers and other electronic devices are pervasive in present-day life, computer aversion has to be considered in future studies within complex problem-solving research when applying computer-based simulation team tasks. As all of the participants were studying applied cognitive science, which is a mix of psychology and computer science, this problem might not have been influenced the present results. However, the specific composition of the sample reduces the external validity of the study and the generalizability of the results. A further limitation is the small sample size, so that moderate to small effects are difficult to detect.

Furthermore, laboratory research of teamwork might have certain limitations. Teamwork as demonstrated in this study fails to account for the fact that teams are not simple, static and isolated entities (McGrath et al., 2000 ). The validity of the results could be reduced insofar as the complex relationships in teams were not represented, the teamwork context was not considered, not all teammates and teams were comparable, and the characteristic as a dynamic system with a team history and future was not given in the present study. This could be a possible explanation why no effects of trust and cohesion were found in the present study. Maybe, the teams need more time working together on the simulation scenarios in order to show that trust and cohesion influence the coordination with the team and the team performance. Furthermore, Bell ( 2007 ) demonstrated in her meta-analysis that the relationship between team members' attitudes and the team's performance was proven more strongly in the field compared to the laboratory. In consideration of this fact, the findings of the present study concerning CO are remarkable and the simulation based microworld C3Fire (Granlund et al., 2001 ; Granlund, 2003 ) seems to be appropriate for analyzing complex problem solving in interdependently working teams.

An asset of the present study is, that the teams' action processes, the coordination performance, was assessed objectively based on logged data and was not a subjective measure, as is often the case in group and team research studies (cf. Van de Ven et al., 1976 ; Antoni and Hertel, 2009 ; Dierdorff et al., 2011 ; Ellington and Dierdorff, 2014 ). As coordination was the mediator in the analysis, this objective measurement supports the validity of the results.

As no transition processes such as mission analysis, formulation, and planning (Prince and Salas, 1993 ), goal specification (Prussia and Kinicki, 1996 ), and strategy formulation (Prince and Salas, 1993 ; Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995 ) as well as action processes such as monitoring progress toward goals (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1995 ) and systems monitoring (Fleishman and Zaccaro, 1992 ) were analyzed within the present study, future studies should collect data concerning these processes in order to show their importance on performance within complex problem solving teams. Because these processes are difficult to observe, subjective measurements are needed, for example asking the participants after each scenario how they have prioritized various tasks, if and when they have changed their strategy concerning protecting houses or fighting fires, and on which data within the scenarios they focused for collecting information for goal and systems monitoring. Another possibility could be using eye-tracking methods in order to collect data about collecting information for monitoring progress toward goals, e.g., collecting information how many cells are still burning, and systems monitoring, e.g., tracking team resources like water for firefighting.

CO is an emergent state and emergent states can be influenced by experience or learning, for example (Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006 ). Learning processes (Edmondson, 1999 ), that Schmutz et al. ( 2016 ) added to the taxonomy of team processes developed by Marks et al. ( 2001 ) and which occur during transition and action phases and contribute to team effectiveness include e.g., feedback . Feedback can be useful for team learning when team learning is seen as a form of information processing (Hinsz et al., 1997 ). Because CO supports action processes, such as coordination and it can be influenced by learning, learning opportunities, such as feedback, seem to be important for successful task accomplishment and for supporting teams in handling complex situations or problems. If the team is temporarily and interpersonally unstable, as it is the case for most of the disaster or crisis management teams dealing with complex problems, there might be less opportunities for generating shared mental models by experiencing repetitive cycles of joint action (cf. Figure ​ Figure2) 2 ) and strategies such as cross training (Salas et al., 2007 ) or feedback might become more and more important for successful complex problem solving in teams. Thus, for future research it would be of interest to analyze what kind of feedback is able to influence CO positively and therefore is able to enhance coordination and performance within complex problem-solving teams.

Depending on the type of feedback, different main points will be focused during the feedback (see Gabelica et al., 2012 ). Feedback can be differentiated into performance and process feedback. Process feedback can be further divided into task-related and interpersonal feedback. Besides these aspects, feedback can be given on a team-level or an individual-level. Combinations of the various kinds of feedback are possible and are analyzed in research concerning their influence on e.g., self- and team-regulatory processes and team performance (Prussia and Kinicki, 1996 ; Hinsz et al., 1997 ; Jung and Sosik, 2003 ; Gabelica et al., 2012 ). For future studies it would be relevant to analyze, whether it is possible to positively influence the CO of team members and therefore action processes such as coordination and team performance or not. A focus could be on the learning processes, especially on feedback, and its influence on CO in complex problem solving teams. So far, no studies exist that analyzed the relationship between feedback and a change in CO, even though researchers already discuss the possibility that team-level process feedback shifts attention processes on team actions and team learning (McLeod et al., 1992 ; Hinsz et al., 1997 ). These results would be very helpful for training programs for fire service or police or medical teams working in complex environments and solving problems collaboratively, in order to support their team working and their performance.

In summary, the idealized teamwork process model is in combination with the transition, action, interpersonal and learning processes a good framework for analyzing the impact of teamwork competencies and teamwork processes in detail on team performance in complex environments. Overall, the framework offers further possibilities for investigating the influence of teamwork competencies on diverse processes and teamwork outcomes in complex problem solving teams than demonstrated here. The results of our study provide evidence of how CO influences complex problem solving teams and their performance. Accordingly, future researchers and practitioners would be well advised to find interventions how to influence CO and support interdependently working teams.

Ethics statement

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of Ethical guidelines of the German Association of Psychology, Ethics committee of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Department of Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the Ethics committee of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Department of Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science.

Author contributions

VH and AK were responsible for the conception of the work and the study design. VH analyzed and interpreted the collected data. VH and AK drafted the manuscript. They approved it for publication and act as guarantors for the overall content.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01730/full#supplementary-material

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problem solving teams in organizational behavior

Six Steps to Effective Problem Solving Within Organizations

  • Dr. Nancy Zentis
  • March 20, 2015

Six Steps to Effective Problem Solving Within Organizations article

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  Managers and their subordinates sometimes lack the problem-solving skills necessary to move things forward within their organizations. Luckily, OD process consulting focused towards problem solving training can be an effective antidote to this, as it helps in building critical skills to handle a possible deadlock.

Problem solving training is an intervention tool that helps managers and employees develop critical thinking skills to sharpen their logic, reasoning, and problem-defining capability. Problem solving training also helps develop abilities to evaluate causation, analyze alternatives, and select and execute solutions. This training is an integral part of organizational efforts to introducing quality management programs as it helps define a process to manage problems.

In this article, we will introduce the six-step problem solving process defined by Edgar Schein, so that teams trained in this can find the best solution to a problem and create an action plan.

Why Use a Problem Solving Process?

Since problems can be many and root causes hidden, it may take an extended period of time to come to a solution. Developing a team to help search for answers and formulating a decision is advantageous to improving organizational quality and efficiency.

OD Problem Solving Process based on Edgar H. Schein’s Approach

OD expert, Edgar Schein along with other OD experts suggested that a process that helps in problem-solving, steers groups to successful outcomes. Schein’s approach is presented in a model that investigates problem definition, brainstorming, group decision-making, idea development, action planning, and assessment.

As an OD consultant, you can use this process to improve communication,  strengthen group cohesion, and make effective decisions.

  • Problem Definition .  Identify problems through  problem formulation and questioning. The key is asking the  right questions to discover root causes.
  • Brainstorming .  During this process,  assumptions are uncovered  and underlying problems are further revealed. Also, this is an opportunity to collect and analyze data.
  • Selection . Decisions are made within the group to  determine the appropriate solution and process  through creative selection .
  • Development .  Once the group has formed solutions and alternatives to the problem(s), they need to explore the pros and cons of each option through  forecasting consequences .
  • Action Planning . Develop an  action plan to implement and execute the solution process.
  • Assessment . This final stage requires an  evaluation of the outcomes and results of the solution process. Ask questions such as: Did the option answer the questions we were working on? Did this process address the findings that came out of the assumptions?

​ This process makes group problem solving in projects and meetings agreeable, action-oriented, and productive. Without a process, it can become challenging for teams or groups to create the best solutions and establish a plan of action.

Do tell us about the problem solving methods you use within your organization. We would love to hear from you.

Reference: Schein, E.H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership, (Vol 2). John Wiley & Sons.

About the Author:  Valamere S. Mikler is the founder and principal consultant of V.S.M. Professional Services and Consulting, a consulting firm providing organizational efficiency and administrative office management services. She can be reached at  [email protected] .

Additional Information: The Institute of Organization Development offers certification in OD Process Consulting. You can become certified as an OD Process Consultant and play an important role as a partner to make the organization more effective and help to align organizational changes with the strategy, culture, structure, systems, skills, and people. To learn more or register, please check out our website: www. instituteod.com or email us at [email protected].

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DE&I consulting services focus on helping organizations foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. Consultants assess the organization's current DE&I initiatives, develop DE&I strategies and policies, conduct training on unconscious bias and cultural competence, establish employee resource groups, and guide leaders in creating inclusive leadership practices. They work with organizations to attract and retain diverse talent, create inclusive hiring processes, and implement programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion at all levels. DE&I consultants aim to create an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and have equal opportunities for growth.

Leadership Development Strategies

Leadership Development Strategies focus on cultivating effective leaders within an organization. Consultants work with organizations to assess leadership capabilities, identify leadership gaps, and design leadership development programs that enhance leadership skills, competencies, and behaviors. These strategies may include executive education, coaching and mentoring programs, leadership training workshops, and succession planning initiatives. The aim is to build a strong leadership pipeline and foster a culture of leadership excellence throughout the organization.

Mentoring Program

Mentoring Programs involve establishing formal or informal relationships between experienced employees (mentors) and less experienced employees (mentees) within an organization. Consultants assist organizations in designing and implementing mentoring programs that facilitate knowledge transfer, skill development, and career growth. They establish mentoring guidelines, match mentors and mentees based on specific criteria, provide training and resources for mentors, and monitor the progress of the mentoring relationships. Mentoring programs aim to enhance employee development, engagement, and retention by leveraging the expertise and wisdom of experienced professionals.

Talent Management Strategies

Talent Management Strategies involve designing and implementing initiatives to attract, develop, engage, and retain top talent within an organization. Consultants work with organizations to develop comprehensive talent management strategies that encompass recruitment and selection processes, onboarding programs, performance management systems, career development frameworks, succession planning, and employee retention strategies. The goal is to ensure the organization has the right people in the right roles, with opportunities for growth and development that align with their skills and aspirations.

Executive Coaching, Competency Development, 360° Feedback

Executive Coaching, Competency Development, and 360 Feedback are individual-focused strategies that aim to enhance leadership and professional effectiveness. Consultants provide executive coaching services to senior leaders, offering personalized guidance, support, and feedback to help leaders develop their strengths, address developmental areas, and enhance their leadership capabilities. Competency development involves identifying and developing specific skills and competencies required for success in particular roles or functions. 360-degree feedback involves collecting feedback from multiple sources, including peers, subordinates, and superiors, to provide a comprehensive assessment of an individual's strengths and areas for improvement.

Job Redesign/Analysis

Job Redesign/Analysis is the process of reevaluating and modifying job roles and responsibilities to optimize efficiency, productivity, and employee satisfaction. Consultants analyze existing job descriptions, tasks, and workflows to identify opportunities for improvement. They may conduct job analyses to determine essential skills, competencies, and qualifications required for each role. Based on these findings, consultants provide recommendations for job redesign, such as clarifying roles and responsibilities, redistributing tasks, and implementing automation or technology solutions to streamline processes and enhance job satisfaction.

Performance Management

Performance Management involves establishing systems and processes to monitor, assess, and improve employee performance. Consultants work with organizations to design and implement performance management frameworks that align with organizational goals and values. This includes setting clear performance expectations, defining key performance indicators (KPIs), establishing regular feedback and coaching mechanisms, conducting performance evaluations, and linking performance outcomes to rewards and recognition. Performance management systems aim to drive individual and team performance, align employee efforts with organizational objectives, and support employee development.

Career Planning/High Potentials

Career Planning/High Potentials initiatives involve designing strategies and programs to support employees in planning and advancing their careers within the organization. Consultants work with organizations to establish career development frameworks, provide guidance on career paths and progression opportunities, and assist in identifying and nurturing high-potential employees. They may offer career counseling, development planning, and training programs to enhance employees' skills, competencies, and knowledge needed for career growth. Career planning initiatives aim to engage and retain talented individuals by providing them with a clear path for advancement and professional development.

Culture Strategies

Culture Strategies focus on shaping and transforming the organizational culture to create a positive and productive work environment. Consultants assist organizations in assessing their current culture, identifying areas for improvement, and developing strategies to align the culture with the desired values, behaviors, and goals. This may involve initiatives such as defining core values, establishing cultural norms, enhancing communication and collaboration practices, promoting diversity and inclusion, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and innovation.

Team Development Strategies

Team Development Strategies focus on improving the effectiveness and performance of teams within an organization. Consultants work with teams to enhance communication, collaboration, and decision-making processes. They facilitate team-building activities, provide training on effective teamwork and conflict resolution, and help establish clear roles and responsibilities. Team development strategies may also involve conducting assessments to identify team dynamics and strengths, and designing interventions to improve team cohesion, trust, and productivity.

Organization Change (OCM) Strategy

Organization Change Management (OCM) Strategy refers to the planned approach or roadmap that an organization follows to implement and manage changes within its structure, processes, technologies, or culture. OCM strategies involve identifying the need for change, setting goals, creating a plan, and executing and evaluating the change process. Organization Change Consulting involves developing and implementing effective strategies to manage and navigate organizational change. The consultant focuses on helping organizations transition smoothly from their current state to a desired future state, considering various factors such as technology advancements, market shifts, mergers and acquisitions, or internal restructuring. Consultants specializing in OCM work closely with organizational leaders to identify OCM processes and help implement a consistent approach to change management, and train internal consultants to lead change management projects and provide support throughout the change process. Consultants may develop assessments, develop communication and training programs, and provide guidance on change implementation to ensure successful organizational transitions. OCM design typically includes steps such as stakeholder analysis, communication and training plans, risk assessment, and monitoring progress to ensure a smooth transition and successful adoption of the changes.

Human Resources Strategies

Human resources (HR) consulting services assist organizations in optimizing their HR practices and processes. Consultants work with HR departments to enhance talent acquisition and retention strategies, develop compensation and benefits programs, design performance management systems, implement employee engagement initiatives, and ensure compliance with labor laws and regulations. They may also provide guidance on organizational restructuring, workforce planning, employee relations, and HR technology implementation. HR consultants help organizations align their HR practices with business objectives and create a positive and productive work environment.

Change Management

Change management consulting services support organizations in managing and implementing significant organizational changes. Consultants help identify change management strategies and plans, assess the impact of change, and design effective communication and training programs to support employee adoption and buy-in. They work with leaders and teams to overcome resistance, address cultural and behavioral challenges, and foster a positive change culture. Change management consultants provide guidance throughout the change process, ensuring a smooth transition and successful adoption of new processes, systems, or structures.

Organizational Development Consulting

Organizational development (OD) consulting services focus on helping leaders lead change initiatives to improving organizational effectiveness and results. Consultants work closely with leaders to assess the organization's current state, identify areas for improvement, create action plans and design interventions, and implement changes to enhance employee engagement, teamwork, leadership development, and organizational culture. They facilitate strategic planning, conduct organizational assessments, and implement initiatives such as talent management, succession planning, performance management, and employee training and development programs. OD consultants aim to align people, processes, and systems to drive sustainable organizational growth and change.

Employee Engagement Strategies

Employee Engagement Strategies aim to create a work environment where employees feel motivated, committed, and connected to the organization. Consultants assist organizations in measuring employee engagement levels, identifying factors that influence engagement, and developing strategies to enhance it. These strategies may include initiatives such as fostering a positive work culture, improving communication and recognition practices, providing opportunities for growth and development, promoting work-life balance, and empowering employees to contribute their ideas and opinions. The goal is to create a work environment that fosters high employee morale, satisfaction, and productivity.

Organization Culture Change/Transformation

Organization Culture Change or Transformation involves deliberately altering the beliefs, values, behaviors, and norms that define the culture of an organization. Organization Culture Change consulting involves assisting organizations in transforming their existing culture or establishing a new desired culture within the organization. The organizational culture encompasses shared values, beliefs, behaviors, and norms that shape the way people work and interact within an organization. Culture change consultants help organizations identify their current culture, define the desired culture, and create strategies to bridge the gap between the two. They may conduct cultural assessments, facilitate workshops and training programs, develop communication strategies, and provide guidance to leaders and employees on how to align their behaviors and practices with the desired culture. This change is typically aimed at aligning the organizational culture with the company's vision, mission, and strategic objectives. Culture change initiatives often require a shift in leadership style, employee engagement, communication practices, and organizational practices to create a new cultural environment that supports desired outcomes such as increased collaboration, innovation, or adaptability.

Organization Design/Redesign

Organization Design or Redesign refers to the process of structuring an organization to align its structure, roles, processes, and systems with its strategic objectives. It involves reviewing and potentially revising elements such as reporting lines, departmental structure, job roles and responsibilities, decision-making processes, and overall organizational hierarchy to optimize efficiency, coordination, and effectiveness within the organization, ensuring that it is well-positioned to achieve its goals. Organization Systems Design or Redesign consulting focuses on designing or restructuring the systems and processes within an organization to optimize efficiency, effectiveness, and overall performance. This service involves analyzing existing organizational systems, such as workflows, communication channels, decision-making processes, and information management systems, to identify areas for improvement. Consultants work closely with organizational leaders to redesign these systems, incorporating best practices, automation, and streamlining processes to enhance productivity and achieve organizational goals. They may also provide recommendations on implementing new technologies or software to support the redesigned systems and ensure successful integration within the organization.

Systems Design

Systems Design refers to the process of creating or modifying the systems and processes within an organization to optimize efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness. It involves analyzing the existing systems, identifying areas for improvement, and designing new systems or reconfiguring existing ones to meet organizational goals. Systems design may include aspects such as technology infrastructure, software applications, data management, workflow processes, and automation to enhance operational performance and streamline organizational activities.

Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning is the process of defining an organization's direction, setting goals, and formulating action plans to achieve those goals. It involves assessing the organization's current state, identifying opportunities and challenges, and developing strategies to effectively allocate resources and achieve the desired outcomes. Strategic planning typically includes analyzing the external environment, conducting internal assessments, setting objectives, formulating strategies, and establishing a framework for monitoring and adapting to changes in the business landscape. Strategy consulting services focus on assisting organizations in formulating and implementing strategic plans to achieve their long-term objectives. Strategy consultants also help organizations align their vision, mission, values, processes, and organizational structure with the strategic goals.

Succession Planning

Succession Planning is the process of identifying and developing internal talent to fill key leadership positions within an organization when they become vacant. Consultants work with organizations to create succession planning strategies that align with the organization's long-term goals. They assess the current talent pool, identify high-potential employees, and design development programs to groom them for future leadership roles. Succession planning may involve creating development plans, providing leadership training, and implementing strategies to ensure a smooth transition when key positions need to be filled.

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Problem solving teams: creating resilient organisations through managing complexity, this video content is for agile alliance members only.

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Abstract/Description

One reason many of us came to the field of software engineering or software development is because we enjoy solving problems. It exercises out mental muscles, and gives us a feeling of satisfaction to know we can add value to our organizations and customers by solving tough problems. However, as the organizations we work for get bigger, and the scope of work gets bigger, so too do the problems we need to solve. There comes a point where we can’t solve them alone, or even with the immediate team we work with. Some problems require a cross-organization, multi-function approach. When our goal is to be a more agile, lean-thinking organization, we need to develop approaches to solving these types of problems.

This is where Problem Solving Teams come into play. Problem Solving Teams are temporary structures that bring together leaders and team members from across the organization to focus on solving a specific problem. The benefits are many, including not just a solved problem, but also a more resilient organization, a stronger social network and a growing cohort of problem solvers with increased skills and abilities.

This approach draws from many influences, including complexity science, social network theory, military doctrine, flight crews, and emergency responders. We have been experimenting with this approach across several areas that involve multiple geographies and multiple functions.

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Why Problem-Solving Skills Are Essential for Leaders in Any Industry

Business man leading team in problem-solving exercise with white board

  • 17 Jan 2023

Any organization offering a product or service is in the business of solving problems.

Whether providing medical care to address health issues or quick convenience to those hungry for dinner, a business’s purpose is to satisfy customer needs .

In addition to solving customers’ problems, you’ll undoubtedly encounter challenges within your organization as it evolves to meet customer needs. You’re likely to experience growing pains in the form of missed targets, unattained goals, and team disagreements.

Yet, the ubiquity of problems doesn’t have to be discouraging; with the right frameworks and tools, you can build the skills to solve consumers' and your organization’s most challenging issues.

Here’s a primer on problem-solving in business, why it’s important, the skills you need, and how to build them.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Problem-Solving in Business?

Problem-solving is the process of systematically removing barriers that prevent you or others from reaching goals.

Your business removes obstacles in customers’ lives through its products or services, just as you can remove obstacles that keep your team from achieving business goals.

Design Thinking

Design thinking , as described by Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar in the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , is a human-centered , solutions-based approach to problem-solving and innovation. Originally created for product design, design thinking’s use case has evolved . It’s now used to solve internal business problems, too.

The design thinking process has four stages :

4 Stages of Design Thinking

  • Clarify: Clarify a problem through research and feedback from those impacted.
  • Ideate: Armed with new insights, generate as many solutions as possible.
  • Develop: Combine and cull your ideas into a short list of viable, feasible, and desirable options before building prototypes (if making physical products) and creating a plan of action (if solving an intangible problem).
  • Implement: Execute the strongest idea, ensuring clear communication with all stakeholders about its potential value and deliberate reasoning.

Using this framework, you can generate innovative ideas that wouldn’t have surfaced otherwise.

Creative Problem-Solving

Another, less structured approach to challenges is creative problem-solving , which employs a series of exercises to explore open-ended solutions and develop new perspectives. This is especially useful when a problem’s root cause has yet to be defined.

You can use creative problem-solving tools in design thinking’s “ideate” stage, which include:

  • Brainstorming: Instruct everyone to develop as many ideas as possible in an allotted time frame without passing judgment.
  • Divergent thinking exercises: Rather than arriving at the same conclusion (convergent thinking), instruct everyone to come up with a unique idea for a given prompt (divergent thinking). This type of exercise helps avoid the tendency to agree with others’ ideas without considering alternatives.
  • Alternate worlds: Ask your team to consider how various personas would manage the problem. For instance, how would a pilot approach it? What about a young child? What about a seasoned engineer?

It can be tempting to fall back on how problems have been solved before, especially if they worked well. However, if you’re striving for innovation, relying on existing systems can stunt your company’s growth.

Related: How to Be a More Creative Problem-Solver at Work: 8 Tips

Why Is Problem-Solving Important for Leaders?

While obstacles’ specifics vary between industries, strong problem-solving skills are crucial for leaders in any field.

Whether building a new product or dealing with internal issues, you’re bound to come up against challenges. Having frameworks and tools at your disposal when they arise can turn issues into opportunities.

As a leader, it’s rarely your responsibility to solve a problem single-handedly, so it’s crucial to know how to empower employees to work together to find the best solution.

Your job is to guide them through each step of the framework and set the parameters and prompts within which they can be creative. Then, you can develop a list of ideas together, test the best ones, and implement the chosen solution.

Related: 5 Design Thinking Skills for Business Professionals

4 Problem-Solving Skills All Leaders Need

1. problem framing.

One key skill for any leader is framing problems in a way that makes sense for their organization. Problem framing is defined in Design Thinking and Innovation as determining the scope, context, and perspective of the problem you’re trying to solve.

“Before you begin to generate solutions for your problem, you must always think hard about how you’re going to frame that problem,” Datar says in the course.

For instance, imagine you work for a company that sells children’s sneakers, and sales have plummeted. When framing the problem, consider:

  • What is the children’s sneaker market like right now?
  • Should we improve the quality of our sneakers?
  • Should we assess all children’s footwear?
  • Is this a marketing issue for children’s sneakers specifically?
  • Is this a bigger issue that impacts how we should market or produce all footwear?

While there’s no one right way to frame a problem, how you do can impact the solutions you generate. It’s imperative to accurately frame problems to align with organizational priorities and ensure your team generates useful ideas for your firm.

To solve a problem, you need to empathize with those impacted by it. Empathy is the ability to understand others’ emotions and experiences. While many believe empathy is a fixed trait, it’s a skill you can strengthen through practice.

When confronted with a problem, consider whom it impacts. Returning to the children’s sneaker example, think of who’s affected:

  • Your organization’s employees, because sales are down
  • The customers who typically buy your sneakers
  • The children who typically wear your sneakers

Empathy is required to get to the problem’s root and consider each group’s perspective. Assuming someone’s perspective often isn’t accurate, so the best way to get that information is by collecting user feedback.

For instance, if you asked customers who typically buy your children’s sneakers why they’ve stopped, they could say, “A new brand of children’s sneakers came onto the market that have soles with more traction. I want my child to be as safe as possible, so I bought those instead.”

When someone shares their feelings and experiences, you have an opportunity to empathize with them. This can yield solutions to their problem that directly address its root and shows you care. In this case, you may design a new line of children’s sneakers with extremely grippy soles for added safety, knowing that’s what your customers care most about.

Related: 3 Effective Methods for Assessing Customer Needs

3. Breaking Cognitive Fixedness

Cognitive fixedness is a state of mind in which you examine situations through the lens of past experiences. This locks you into one mindset rather than allowing you to consider alternative possibilities.

For instance, your cognitive fixedness may make you think rubber is the only material for sneaker treads. What else could you use? Is there a grippier alternative you haven’t considered?

Problem-solving is all about overcoming cognitive fixedness. You not only need to foster this skill in yourself but among your team.

4. Creating a Psychologically Safe Environment

As a leader, it’s your job to create an environment conducive to problem-solving. In a psychologically safe environment, all team members feel comfortable bringing ideas to the table, which are likely influenced by their personal opinions and experiences.

If employees are penalized for “bad” ideas or chastised for questioning long-held procedures and systems, innovation has no place to take root.

By employing the design thinking framework and creative problem-solving exercises, you can foster a setting in which your team feels comfortable sharing ideas and new, innovative solutions can grow.

Design Thinking and Innovation | Uncover creative solutions to your business problems | Learn More

How to Build Problem-Solving Skills

The most obvious answer to how to build your problem-solving skills is perhaps the most intimidating: You must practice.

Again and again, you’ll encounter challenges, use creative problem-solving tools and design thinking frameworks, and assess results to learn what to do differently next time.

While most of your practice will occur within your organization, you can learn in a lower-stakes setting by taking an online course, such as Design Thinking and Innovation . Datar guides you through each tool and framework, presenting real-world business examples to help you envision how you would approach the same types of problems in your organization.

Are you interested in uncovering innovative solutions for your organization’s business problems? Explore Design Thinking and Innovation —one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses —to learn how to leverage proven frameworks and tools to solve challenges. Not sure which course is right for you? Download our free flowchart .

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

About the Author

Problem-Solving Behaviours, Organisational Forms and the Complexity of Tasks

  • January 2001

Giovanni Dosi at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies

  • Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.

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Comparing the Project Management Function in functional and projectbased organisations

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Turn your team into skilled problem solvers with these problem-solving strategies

Sarah Laoyan contributor headshot

Picture this, you're handling your daily tasks at work and your boss calls you in and says, "We have a problem." 

Unfortunately, we don't live in a world in which problems are instantly resolved with the snap of our fingers. Knowing how to effectively solve problems is an important professional skill to hone. If you have a problem that needs to be solved, what is the right process to use to ensure you get the most effective solution?

In this article we'll break down the problem-solving process and how you can find the most effective solutions for complex problems.

What is problem solving? 

Problem solving is the process of finding a resolution for a specific issue or conflict. There are many possible solutions for solving a problem, which is why it's important to go through a problem-solving process to find the best solution. You could use a flathead screwdriver to unscrew a Phillips head screw, but there is a better tool for the situation. Utilizing common problem-solving techniques helps you find the best solution to fit the needs of the specific situation, much like using the right tools.

Decision-making tools for agile businesses

In this ebook, learn how to equip employees to make better decisions—so your business can pivot, adapt, and tackle challenges more effectively than your competition.

Make good choices, fast: How decision-making processes can help businesses stay agile ebook banner image

4 steps to better problem solving

While it might be tempting to dive into a problem head first, take the time to move step by step. Here’s how you can effectively break down the problem-solving process with your team:

1. Identify the problem that needs to be solved

One of the easiest ways to identify a problem is to ask questions. A good place to start is to ask journalistic questions, like:

Who : Who is involved with this problem? Who caused the problem? Who is most affected by this issue?

What: What is happening? What is the extent of the issue? What does this problem prevent from moving forward?

Where: Where did this problem take place? Does this problem affect anything else in the immediate area? 

When: When did this problem happen? When does this problem take effect? Is this an urgent issue that needs to be solved within a certain timeframe?

Why: Why is it happening? Why does it impact workflows?

How: How did this problem occur? How is it affecting workflows and team members from being productive?

Asking journalistic questions can help you define a strong problem statement so you can highlight the current situation objectively, and create a plan around that situation.

Here’s an example of how a design team uses journalistic questions to identify their problem:

Overarching problem: Design requests are being missed

Who: Design team, digital marketing team, web development team

What: Design requests are forgotten, lost, or being created ad hoc.

Where: Email requests, design request spreadsheet

When: Missed requests on January 20th, January 31st, February 4th, February 6th

How : Email request was lost in inbox and the intake spreadsheet was not updated correctly. The digital marketing team had to delay launching ads for a few days while design requests were bottlenecked. Designers had to work extra hours to ensure all requests were completed.

In this example, there are many different aspects of this problem that can be solved. Using journalistic questions can help you identify different issues and who you should involve in the process.

2. Brainstorm multiple solutions

If at all possible, bring in a facilitator who doesn't have a major stake in the solution. Bringing an individual who has little-to-no stake in the matter can help keep your team on track and encourage good problem-solving skills.

Here are a few brainstorming techniques to encourage creative thinking:

Brainstorm alone before hand: Before you come together as a group, provide some context to your team on what exactly the issue is that you're brainstorming. This will give time for you and your teammates to have some ideas ready by the time you meet.

Say yes to everything (at first): When you first start brainstorming, don't say no to any ideas just yet—try to get as many ideas down as possible. Having as many ideas as possible ensures that you’ll get a variety of solutions. Save the trimming for the next step of the strategy. 

Talk to team members one-on-one: Some people may be less comfortable sharing their ideas in a group setting. Discuss the issue with team members individually and encourage them to share their opinions without restrictions—you might find some more detailed insights than originally anticipated.

Break out of your routine: If you're used to brainstorming in a conference room or over Zoom calls, do something a little different! Take your brainstorming meeting to a coffee shop or have your Zoom call while you're taking a walk. Getting out of your routine can force your brain out of its usual rut and increase critical thinking.

3. Define the solution

After you brainstorm with team members to get their unique perspectives on a scenario, it's time to look at the different strategies and decide which option is the best solution for the problem at hand. When defining the solution, consider these main two questions: What is the desired outcome of this solution and who stands to benefit from this solution? 

Set a deadline for when this decision needs to be made and update stakeholders accordingly. Sometimes there's too many people who need to make a decision. Use your best judgement based on the limitations provided to do great things fast.

4. Implement the solution

To implement your solution, start by working with the individuals who are as closest to the problem. This can help those most affected by the problem get unblocked. Then move farther out to those who are less affected, and so on and so forth. Some solutions are simple enough that you don’t need to work through multiple teams.

After you prioritize implementation with the right teams, assign out the ongoing work that needs to be completed by the rest of the team. This can prevent people from becoming overburdened during the implementation plan . Once your solution is in place, schedule check-ins to see how the solution is working and course-correct if necessary.

Implement common problem-solving strategies

There are a few ways to go about identifying problems (and solutions). Here are some strategies you can try, as well as common ways to apply them:

Trial and error

Trial and error problem solving doesn't usually require a whole team of people to solve. To use trial and error problem solving, identify the cause of the problem, and then rapidly test possible solutions to see if anything changes. 

This problem-solving method is often used in tech support teams through troubleshooting.

The 5 whys problem-solving method helps get to the root cause of an issue. You start by asking once, “Why did this issue happen?” After answering the first why, ask again, “Why did that happen?” You'll do this five times until you can attribute the problem to a root cause. 

This technique can help you dig in and find the human error that caused something to go wrong. More importantly, it also helps you and your team develop an actionable plan so that you can prevent the issue from happening again.

Here’s an example:

Problem: The email marketing campaign was accidentally sent to the wrong audience.

“Why did this happen?” Because the audience name was not updated in our email platform.

“Why were the audience names not changed?” Because the audience segment was not renamed after editing. 

“Why was the audience segment not renamed?” Because everybody has an individual way of creating an audience segment.

“Why does everybody have an individual way of creating an audience segment?” Because there is no standardized process for creating audience segments. 

“Why is there no standardized process for creating audience segments?” Because the team hasn't decided on a way to standardize the process as the team introduced new members. 

In this example, we can see a few areas that could be optimized to prevent this mistake from happening again. When working through these questions, make sure that everyone who was involved in the situation is present so that you can co-create next steps to avoid the same problem. 

A SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis can help you highlight the strengths and weaknesses of a specific solution. SWOT stands for:

Strength: Why is this specific solution a good fit for this problem? 

Weaknesses: What are the weak points of this solution? Is there anything that you can do to strengthen those weaknesses?

Opportunities: What other benefits could arise from implementing this solution?

Threats: Is there anything about this decision that can detrimentally impact your team?

As you identify specific solutions, you can highlight the different strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of each solution. 

This particular problem-solving strategy is good to use when you're narrowing down the answers and need to compare and contrast the differences between different solutions. 

Even more successful problem solving

After you’ve worked through a tough problem, don't forget to celebrate how far you've come. Not only is this important for your team of problem solvers to see their work in action, but this can also help you become a more efficient, effective , and flexible team. The more problems you tackle together, the more you’ll achieve. 

Looking for a tool to help solve problems on your team? Track project implementation with a work management tool like Asana .

Related resources

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

How to build your critical thinking skills in 7 steps (with examples)

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

10 tips to improve nonverbal communication

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

Scaling clinical trial management software with PM solutions

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

4 ways to establish roles and responsibilities for team success

Module 10: Managing Groups and Teams

Types of teams, learning outcomes.

  • Discuss the types of teams

Organizations use different types of teams in different ways to accomplish their objectives. Some teams have a very simple and specific focus, and others face complex issues with organization-wide ramifications. We can look at teams and classify them in a variety of ways. Let’s first take a look at them based on their task complexity and team member fluidity.

Task complexity is the extent to which a task is intricate and consists of different, interrelated parts. Membership fluidity is the extent to which membership within a team is stable. Low membership fluidity would mean that people are often entering into and leaving the team, and high membership fluidity means they are quite stable, not changing often at all.

Simple Work Teams

Simple work teams have low task complexity and low team fluidity. Their goal is simple problem solving, and often they are a group that supports day-to-day activities, dealing with issues that require input from more than one person or to generate commitment from employees. Usually these are people from a same team or department, so they generally have a similar focus and tend to work together relatively easily.

Administrative Teams

Five people fist bumping over laptops on a desk

An example of an administrative team might be a relocation committee that’s dedicated to relocating a plant to a new area. Members of the team might flow in and out, but the complexity of the task is rather high and not at all part of their regular routine. Management level members work for a finite period of time to accomplish the strategic objective of moving the plant—all its machinery, all its people, and so on—to a new address.

Cross-Departmental Teams

A cross-departmental team tends to have a low complexity level but a high team membership fluidity, meaning that the work is fairly simple but the teams are committed and fairly unchanging. Their goal is integration in structure and setting ground rules, and their focus is internal and very specific.

A cross-departmental task force is an example of this type of team. Perhaps an organization is installing a new system that will manage all their data, both at the main office and at their plants, in an entirely different way. The task force might come together from different areas of the organization to identify the types of data their departments generate and how that data will be transferred over to the new system, how people will be trained to use the new system and even how change around the system will be managed.

Process Teams

Process teams deal with high complexity tasks and have high team member fluidity, meaning people are assigned to the team and stay. These folks are creative problem solvers and deal with implementation. Their focus is strategic and broad.

Process teams do not have departmental affiliation and function independently to undertake broad, organizational-level process improvements. For instance, the department store Mervyn’s, the now defunct discount department store chain, had a SWAT team that rushes in to solve a store’s critical issues. They were deployed at any time, whenever they’re needed. They even attempted to solve organizational-wide issues like flextime and insurance.

Self-Managed Teams

a group of people in a meeting

Overall self-managed teams include these characteristics:

  • The power to manage their work
  • Members with different expertise and functional experience
  • No outside manager
  • The power to implement decisions
  • Coordination and cooperation with other teams and individuals impacted by their decisions
  • Internal leadership, based on facilitation. This means that a rotating leader focuses on freeing the team from obstacles as they do their work.

Self-managed teams require a change in structure on behalf of the organization and a high level of commitment on behalf of all parties to ensure their success. Most self-managed teams that fail do so because of a lack of commitment on the part of the organization.

Chart showing the team membership fluidity and task complexity of various teams. Process teams have high team membership fluidity and high task complexity. Administrative teams have low team membership fluidity and high task complexity. Simple work teams have low team membership fluidity and low task complexity. Cross-departmental teams have high team membership fluidity and low task complexity.

Virtual Teams

It’s worth noting that there are now also virtual teams, which are teams that use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal. It is true that these virtual teams might be an administrative, cross-functional, simple work or even a process team, but they are distinctive in that they allow people to collaborate online.

Because virtual teams have limited social interaction – many times they have not met in person – they tend to be more task-oriented and exchange less social information. But they’re able to do their work even if the members of the team are thousands of miles apart, and allows people to work together who may not otherwise be able to collaborate.

Practice Question

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10.5 Team Diversity

  • How does team diversity enhance decision-making and problem-solving?

Decision-making and problem-solving can be much more dynamic and successful when performed in a diverse team environment. The multiple diverse perspectives can enhance both the understanding of the problem and the quality of the solution. As I reflect on some of the leadership development work that I have done in my career, I can say from experience that the team activities and projects that intentionally brought diverse individuals together created the best environments for problem-solving. Diverse leaders from a variety of functions, from across the globe, at varying stages of their careers and experiences with and outside of the company had the most robust discussions and perspectives. Diversity is a word that is very commonly used today, but the importance of diversity and building diverse teams can sometimes get lost in the normal processes of doing business. Let’s discuss why we need to keep these principles front of mind.

In the Harvard Business Review article “Why Diverse Teams are Smarter” (Nov. 2016), David Rock and Heidi Grant support the idea that increasing workplace diversity is a good business decision. 9 A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have returns above the industry mean. Similarly, in a global analysis conducted by Credit Suisse, organizations with at least one female board member yielded a higher return on equity and higher net income growth than those that did not have any women on the board.

Additional research on diversity has shown that diverse teams are better at decision-making and problem-solving because they tend to focus more on facts, per the Rock and Grant article. 10 A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that people from diverse backgrounds “might actually alter the behavior of a group’s social majority in ways that lead to improved and more accurate group thinking.” It turned out that in the study, the diverse panels raised more facts related to the case than homogenous panels and made fewer factual errors while discussing available evidence. Another study noted in the article showed that diverse teams are “more likely to constantly reexamine facts and remain objective. They may also encourage greater scrutiny of each member’s actions, keeping their joint cognitive resources sharp and vigilant. By breaking up workforce homogeneity, you can allow your employees to become more aware of their own potential biases—entrenched ways of thinking that can otherwise blind them to key information and even lead them to make errors in decision-making processes.” In other words, when people are among homogeneous and like-minded (nondiverse) teammates, the team is susceptible to groupthink and may be reticent to think about opposing viewpoints since all team members are in alignment. In a more diverse team with a variety of backgrounds and experiences, the opposing viewpoints are more likely to come out and the team members feel obligated to research and address the questions that have been raised. Again, this enables a richer discussion and a more in-depth fact-finding and exploration of opposing ideas and viewpoints in order to solve problems.

Diversity in teams also leads to greater innovation. A Boston Consulting Group article entitled “The Mix that Matters: Innovation through Diversity” explains a study in which BCG and the Technical University of Munich conducted an empirical analysis to understand the relationship between diversity in managers (all management levels) and innovation. The key findings of this study show that: 11

  • The positive relationship between management diversity and innovation is statistically significant—and thus companies with higher levels of diversity derive more revenue from new products and services.
  • The innovation boost isn’t limited to a single type of diversity. The presence of managers who are either female or are from other countries, industries, or companies can cause an increase in innovation.
  • Management diversity seems to have a particularly positive effect on innovation at complex companies—those that have multiple product lines or that operate in multiple industry segments.
  • To reach its potential, gender diversity needs to go beyond tokenism. In the study, innovation performance only increased significantly when the workforce included more than 20% women in management positions. Having a high percentage of female employees doesn’t increase innovation if only a small number of women are managers.
  • At companies with diverse management teams, openness to contributions from lower-level workers and an environment in which employees feel free to speak their minds are crucial for fostering innovation.

When you consider the impact that diverse teams have on decision-making and problem-solving—through the discussion and incorporation of new perspectives, ideas, and data—it is no wonder that the BCG study shows greater innovation. Team leaders need to reflect upon these findings during the early stages of team selection so that they can reap the benefits of having diverse voices and backgrounds.

Concept Check

  • Why do diverse teams focus more on data than homogeneous teams?
  • How are diversity and innovation related?

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  • Authors: J. Stewart Black, David S. Bright
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  • Book title: Organizational Behavior
  • Publication date: Jun 5, 2019
  • Location: Houston, Texas
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20 Leadership

Content in this chapter comes from openstax.

Ducks following a leader

After reading this chapter, you should be able to answer these questions:

  • What is the nature of leadership and the leadership process?
  • What are the processes associated with people coming to leadership positions?
  • How do leaders influence and move their followers to action?
  • What are the trait perspectives on leadership?
  • What are the behavioral perspectives on leadership?
  • What are the situational perspectives on leadership?
  • What does the concept “substitute for leadership” mean?
  • What are the characteristics of transactional, transformational, and charismatic leadership?
  • How do different approaches and styles of leadership impact what is needed now?

EXPLORING MANAGERIAL CAREERS

John Arroyo: Springfield Sea Lions

John Arroyo is thrilled with his new position as general manager of the Springfield Sea Lions, a minor league baseball team in. Arroyo has been a baseball fan all of his life, and now his diligent work and his degree in sports management are paying off.

Arroyo knew he had a hard act to follow. The general manager whom John replaced, “T.J.” Grevin, was a much-loved old-timer who had been with the Sea Lions since their inception 14 years ago. John knew it would be difficult for whoever followed T.J., but he didn’t realize how ostracized and powerless he would feel. He tried a pep talk: “I’m the general manager—the CEO of this ball club! In time, the staff  will  respect me.” [Not a very good pep talk!]

After his first season ends, Arroyo is discouraged. Ticket and concession sales are down, and some long-time employees are rumored to be thinking about leaving. If John doesn’t turn things around, he knows his tenure with the Sea Lions will be short.

Questions:  Is John correct in assuming that the staff will learn to respect him in time? What can John do to earn the loyalty of his staff and improve the ball club’s performance?

Outcomes:  During the winter, John thinks long and hard about how he can earn the respect of the Sea Lions staff. Before the next season opener, John announces his plan: “So I can better understand what your day is like, I’m going to spend one day in each of your shoes. I’m trading places with each of you. I will be a ticket taker, a roving hot dog vendor, and a janitor. And I will be a marketer, and an accountant—for a day. You in turn will have the day off so you can enjoy the game from the general manager’s box.” The staff laughs and whistles appreciatively. Then the Springfield mascot, Sparky the Sea Lion, speaks up: “Hey Mr. Arroyo, are you going to spend a day in my flippers?” “You bet!” says John, laughing. The entire staff cheers.

John continues. “At the close of the season, we will honor a staff member with the T.J. Grevin Award for outstanding contributions to the Sea Lions organization. T.J. was such a great guy, it’s only right that we honor him.” The meeting ends, but John’s staff linger to tell him how excited they are about his ideas. Amidst the handshakes, he hopes that this year may be the best year yet for the Sea Lions.

Sarah Elizabeth Roisland is the manager of a district claims office for a large insurance company. Fourteen people work for her. The results of a recent attitude survey indicate that her employees have extremely high job satisfaction and motivation. Conflict is rare in Sarah’s office. Furthermore, productivity measures place her group among the most productive in the entire company. Her success has brought the company’s vice president of human resources to her office in an attempt to discover the secret to her success. Sarah’s peers, superiors, and workers all give the same answer: she is more than a good manager—she is an outstanding leader. She continually gets high performance from her employees and does so in such a way that they enjoy working for her.

There is no magic formula for becoming a good leader. There are, however, many identifiable reasons why some people are better and more effective leaders. Leaders, especially effective leaders, are not created by simply attending a one-day leadership workshop. Yet effective leadership skills are not something most people are born with. You can become an effective leader if you are willing to invest the time and energy to develop all of the “right stuff.”

According to Louise Axon, director of content strategy, and her colleagues at Harvard Business Publishing, in seeking management talent,  leadership  is an urgently needed quality in all managerial roles. 1  Good leaders and good leadership are rare. Harvard management professor John P. Kotter notes that “there is a leadership crisis in the U.S. today,” 2  and the late USC Professor Warren Bennis states that many of our organizations are overmanaged and underled. 3

The Nature of Leadership

The many definitions of leadership each have a different emphasis. Some definitions consider leadership an act or behavior, such as initiating structure so group members know how to complete a task. Others consider a leader to be the center or nucleus of group activity, an instrument of goal achievement who has a certain personality, a form of persuasion and power, and the art of inducing compliance. 4  Some look at leadership in terms of the management of group processes. In this view, a good leader develops a vision for the group, communicates that vision, 5  orchestrates the group’s energy and activity toward goal attainment, “[turns] a group of individuals into a team,” and “[transforms] good intentions into positive actions.” 6

Leadership  is frequently defined as a social (interpersonal) influence relationship between two or more persons who depend on each other to attain certain mutual goals in a group situation. 7  Effective leadership helps individuals and groups achieve their goals by focusing on the group’s  maintenance needs  (the need for individuals to fit and work together by having, for example, shared norms) and  task needs  (the need for the group to make progress toward attaining the goal that brought them together).

A picture of Joe Madden at the pitcher mound talking to his team.

Leader versus Manager

The two dual concepts, leader and manager, leadership and management, are not interchangeable, nor are they redundant. The differences between the two can, however, be confusing. In many instances, to be a good manager one needs to be an effective leader. Many CEOs have been hired in the hope that their leadership skills, their ability to formulate a vision and get others to “buy into” that vision, will propel the organization forward. In addition, effective leadership often necessitates the ability to manage—to set goals; plan, devise, and implement strategy; make decisions and solve problems; and organize and control. For our purposes, the two sets of concepts can be contrasted in several ways.

First, we define the two concepts differently. In  Management and Organizational Behavior , we defined management as a process consisting of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. Here we define leadership as a social (interpersonal) influence relationship between two or more people who are dependent on each another for goal attainment.

Second, managers and leaders are commonly differentiated in terms of the processes through which they initially come to their position. Managers are generally appointed to their role. Even though many organizations appoint people to positions of leadership, leadership per se is a relationship that revolves around the followers’ acceptance or rejection of the leader. 8  Thus, leaders often emerge out of events that unfold among members of a group.

Third, managers and leaders often differ in terms of the types and sources of the power they exercise. Managers commonly derive their power from the larger organization. Virtually all organizations legitimize the use of certain “carrots and sticks” (rewards and punishments) as ways of securing the compliance of their employees. In other words, by virtue of the position that a manager occupies (president, vice president, department head, supervisor), certain “rights to act” (schedule production, contract to sell a product, hire and fire) accompany the position and its place within the hierarchy of authority. Leaders can also secure power and the ability to exercise influence using carrots and sticks; however, it is much more common for leaders to derive power from followers’ perception of their knowledge (expertise), their personality and attractiveness, and the working relationship that has developed between leaders and followers.

From the perspective of those who are under the leader’s and manager’s influence, the motivation to comply often has a different base. The subordinate to a manager frequently complies because of the role authority of the manager, and because of the carrots and sticks that managers have at their disposal. The followers of a leader comply because they want to. Thus, leaders motivate primarily through intrinsic processes, while managers motivate primarily through extrinsic processes.

Finally, it is important to note that while managers may be successful in directing and supervising their subordinates, they often succeed or fail because of their ability or inability to lead. 9  As noted above, effective leadership often calls for the ability to manage, and effective management often requires leadership.

CONCEPT CHECK

The Leadership Process

Leadership is a process, a complex and dynamic exchange relationship built over time between leader and follower and between leader and the group of followers who depend on each other to attain a mutually desired goal. 10  There are several key components to this “working relationship”: the leader, the followers, the context (situation), the leadership process per se, and the consequences (outcomes) (see  Figure 3 ). 11  Across time, each component interacts with and influences the other components, and whatever consequences (such as leader-follower trust) are created influence future interactions. As any one of the components changes, so too will leadership. 12

A picture showing components of the leadership process as described in the chapter.

Leaders are people who take charge of or guide the activities of others. They are often seen as the focus or orchestrater of group activity, the people who set the tone of the group so that it can move forward to attain its goals. Leaders provide the group with what is required to fulfill its maintenance and task-related needs. (Later in the chapter, we will return to the “leader as a person” as part of our discussion of the trait approach to leadership.)

A photo shows a view of the General Assembly Hall, with Alan Gilbert leading the New York Philharmonic on stage to pay a tribute to Ban Ki-moon at the completion of his 10-year term.

The Context

Situations make demands on a group and its members, and not all situations are the same. Context refers to the situation that surrounds the leader and the followers. Situations are multidimensional. We discuss the context as it pertains to leadership in greater detail later in this chapter, but for now let’s look at it in terms of the task and task environment that confront the group. Is the task structured or unstructured? Are the goals of the group clear or ambiguous? Is there agreement or disagreement about goals? Is there a body of knowledge that can guide task performance? Is the task boring? Frustrating? Intrinsically satisfying? Is the environment complex or simple, stable or unstable? These factors create different contexts within which leadership unfolds, and each factor places a different set of needs and demands on the leader and on the followers.

The Process

The process of leadership is separate and distinct from the leader (the person who occupies a central role in the group). The process is a complex, interactive, and dynamic working relationship between leader and followers. This working relationship, built over time, is directed toward fulfilling the group’s maintenance and task needs. Part of the process consists of an exchange relationship between the leader and follower. The leader provides a resource directed toward fulfilling the group’s needs, and the group gives compliance, recognition, and esteem to the leader. To the extent that leadership is the exercise of influence, part of the leadership process is captured by the surrender of power by the followers and the exercise of influence over the followers by the leader. 19  Thus, the leader influences the followers and the followers influence the leader, the context influences the leader and the followers, and both leader and followers influence the context.

The Consequences

A number of outcomes or consequences of the leadership process unfold between leader, follower, and situation. At the group level, two outcomes are important:

  • Have the group’s maintenance needs been fulfilled? That is, do members of the group like and get along with one another, do they have a shared set of norms and values, and have they developed a good working relationship? Have individuals’ needs been fulfilled as reflected in attendance, motivation, performance, satisfaction, citizenship, trust, and maintenance of the group membership?
  • Have the group’s task needs been met? That is, there are also important consequences of the leadership process for individuals: attendance, motivation, performance, satisfaction, citizenship, trust, and maintenance of their group membership.

The leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of the leadership process focuses attention on consequences associated with the leadership process. The theory views leadership as consisting of a number of dyadic relationships linking the leader with a follower. A leader-follower relationship tends to develop quickly and remains relatively stable over time. The quality of the relationship is reflected by the degree of mutual trust, loyalty, support, respect, and obligation. High- and low-quality relationships between a leader and each of his followers produce in and out groups among the followers. Members of the in group come to be key players, and high-quality exchange relationships tend to be associated with higher levels of performance, commitment, and satisfaction than are low-quality exchange relationships. 20  Attitudinal similarity and extroversion appear to be associated with a high-quality leader-member relationship. 21

The nature of the leadership process varies substantially depending on the leader, the followers, and the situation and context. Thus, leadership is the function of an interaction between the leader, the follower, and the context.

The leadership context for the leader of a group of assembly line production workers differs from the context for the leader of a self-managing production team and from the context confronted by the lead scientists in a research laboratory. The leadership tactics that work in the first context might fail miserably in the latter two.

CATCHING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

How a Start-Up Finds the Right Leader

Start-ups, by their very nature, require innovation to bring new products and services to market. Along with establishing a new brand or product, the leader has to develop the relationships and processes that make a company succeed, or risk its early demise. While leading an established firm has its challenges, a start-up requires even more from a leader.

How critical is leadership to a start-up? Ask the four cofounders of the now-defunct PYP (Pretty Young Professionals), a website founded as a source of information for young professional women. What began as four young professional women working on a new start-up ended with hurt feelings and threats of legal action. In 2010, Kathryn Minshew, Amanda Pouchot, Caroline Ghosn, and Alex Cavoulacos decided to create the website and Minshew was named CEO (Cohan 2011a). Lines blurred about Minshew’s authority and the ultimate look, feel, and direction of the website. Ideals about shared leadership, where the company was going, and how it was going to get there ultimately got lost in the power shuffle. By June 2011, passwords were changed and legal actions began, and in August Minshew and Cavoulacos left altogether (Cohan 2011b).

When the legal haggling from PYP was over, Alex Cavoulacos and Kathryn Minshew, joined by Melissa McCreery, tried again. But this time, rather than hoping for the best, they put a leadership plan in place. Minshew was named CEO of the new start-up, The Daily Muse, with Cavoulacos as chief operating officer and McCreery as editor in chief. Rather than trusting to luck, the three cofounders based their team positions on strengths and personalities. Cavoulacos and McCreery agreed that Minshew’s outgoing personality and confidence made her the proper choice as CEO (Casserly 2013).

No single trait will guarantee that a person can lead a start-up from idea to greatness, but a survey of successful entrepreneurs does show some common traits. According to David Barbash, a partner at Boston-based law firm Posternak Blankstein & Lund LLP, personality is paramount: “You can have great technology but if you’re not a great communicator it may die in the lab” (Casserly 2013 n.p.). A start-up needs a leader who is confident and willing, if not eager, to face the future. According to Michelle Randall, a principal of Enriching Leadership International, start-up CEOs have to be willing to fundraise and not be too proud to beg (Casserly 2013). Peter Shankman, an entrepreneur and angel investor, says leaders have to be willing to make the hard decisions, even risking being the bad guy (Casserly 2013).

Gary Vaynerchuk credits his success to six factors. Angel investor, social media marketer, and early social media adopter, Vaynerchuk leveraged YouTube in its early years to market wine from the family’s liquor store, eventually increasing sales from $3 million to $60 million a year (Clifford 2017). Gary believes good leaders recognize that they don’t dictate to the market, but rather respond to where it is going. They have respect for and believe in other people, and have a strong work ethic, what Vaynerchuk called a “lunch pail work ethic”: they are willing to put in long hours because they love the work, not the perks. He also stresses that he loves technology and doesn’t fear it, is obsessed with the youth of today, and is optimistic about people and the future of humanity (Vaynerchuk 2017).

Leading a startup requires more than simple management. It requires the right leader for the right company at the right time, which means matching the right management skills with the proper flexibility and drive to keep it all together and moving in the right direction.

Why would start-up leaders need different leadership qualities than someone managing an established firm?

Leader Emergence

Leaders hold a unique position in their groups, exercising influence and providing direction. Leonard Bernstein was part of the symphony, but his role as the New York Philharmonic conductor differed dramatically from that of the other symphony members. Besides conducting the orchestra, he created a vision for the symphony. In this capacity, leadership can be seen as a differentiated role and the nucleus of group activity.

Organizations have two kinds of leaders: formal and informal. A  formal leader  is that individual who is recognized by those outside the group as the official leader of the group. Often, the formal leader is appointed by the organization to serve in a formal capacity as an agent of the organization. Jack Welch was the formal leader of General Electric, and Leonard Bernstein was the formal leader of the symphony. Practically all managers act as formal leaders as part of their assigned role. Organizations that use self-managed work teams allow members of the team to select the individual who will serve as their team leader. When this person’s role is sanctioned by the formal organization, these team leaders become formal leaders. Increasingly, leaders in organizations will be those who “best sell” their ideas on how to complete a project—persuasiveness and inspiration are important ingredients in the leadership equation, especially in high-involvement organizations. 22

Informal leaders, by contrast, are not assigned by the organization. The  informal leader  is that individual whom members of the group acknowledge as their leader. Athletic teams often have informal leaders, individuals who exert considerable influence on team members even though they hold no official, formal leadership position. In fact, most work groups contain at least one informal leader. Just like formal leaders, informal leaders can benefit or harm an organization depending on whether their influence encourages group members to behave consistently with organizational goals.

As we have noted, the terms  leader  and  manager  are not synonymous. Grace Hopper, retired U.S. Navy admiral, draws a distinction between leading and managing: “You don’t manage people, you manage  things . You lead  people .” 23  Informal leaders often have considerable leverage over their colleagues. Traditionally, the roles of informal leaders have not included the total set of management responsibilities because an informal leader does not always exercise the functions of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. However, high-involvement organizations frequently encourage their formal and informal leaders to exercise the full set of management roles. Many consider such actions necessary for self-managing work teams to succeed. Informal leaders are acknowledged by the group, and the group willingly responds to their leadership.

Paths to Leadership

People come to leadership positions through two dynamics. In many instances, people are put into positions of leadership by forces outside the group. University-based ROTC programs and military academies (like West Point) formally groom people to be leaders. We refer to this person as the  designated leader  (in this instance the designated and formal leader are the same person).  Emergent leaders , on the other hand, arise from the dynamics and processes that unfold within and among a group of individuals as they endeavor to achieve a collective goal.

A variety of processes help us understand how leaders emerge. Gerald Salancik and Jeffrey Pfeffer observe that power to influence others flows to those individuals who possess the critical and scarce resources (often knowledge and expertise) that a group needs to overcome a major problem. 24  They note that the dominant coalition and leadership in American corporations during the 1950s was among engineers, because organizations were engaged in competition based on product design. The power base in many organizations shifted to marketing as competition became a game of advertising aimed at differentiating products in the consumer’s mind. About 10–15 years ago, power and leadership once again shifted, this time to people with finance and legal backgrounds, because the critical contingencies facing many organizations were mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and creative financing. Thus, Salancik and Pfeffer reason that power and thus leadership flow to those individuals who have the ability to help an organization or group [overcome its critical contingencies]. As the challenges facing a group change, so too may the flow of power and leadership.

Many leaders emerge out of the needs of the situation. Different situations call for different configurations of knowledge, skills, and abilities. A group often turns to the member who possesses the knowledge, skills, and abilities that the group requires to achieve its goals. 25  People surrender their power to individuals whom they believe will make meaningful contributions to attaining group goals. 26 The individual to whom power is surrendered is often a member of the group who is in good standing. As a result of this member’s contributions to the group’s goals, he has accumulated  idiosyncrasy credits  (a form of competency-based status). These credits give the individual a status that allows him to influence the direction that the group takes as it works to achieve its goals. 27

It is important to recognize that the traits possessed by certain individuals contribute significantly to their emergence as leaders. Research indicates that people are unlikely to follow individuals who, for example, do not display drive, self-confidence, knowledge of the situation, honesty, and integrity.

Leadership as an Exercise of Influence

As we have noted, leadership is the exercise of influence over those who depend on one another for attaining a mutual goal in a group setting. But  how  do leaders effectively exercise this influence?  Social or (interpersonal) influence  is one’s ability to effect a change in the motivation, attitudes, and/or behaviors of others.  Power , then, essentially answers the “how” question: How do leaders influence their followers? The answer often is that a leader’s social influence is the source of his power.

French and Raven provide us with a useful typology that identifies the sources and types of power. As a review those types of power are  reward power, coercive power, referent power, expert power,  and  legitimate power. 28

As you know, not all forms of power are equally effective (see Figure 5 ), nor is a leader’s total power base the simple sum of the powers at his disposal. Different types of power elicit different forms of compliance: Leaders who rely on coercive power often alienate followers who resist their influence attempts. Leaders who rely on reward power develop followers who are very measured in their responses to [what?]; the use of rewards often leads people to think in terms of “How much am I getting?” or “How much should I give?” or “Am I breaking even?” The use of referent power produces identification with the leader and his cause. The use of rationality, expert power, and/or moralistic appeal generally elicits commitment and the internalization of the leader’s goals. 29

A figure showing leaders, followers, and power as a interdependent relationship

Leaders who use referent and expert power commonly experience a favorable response in terms of follower satisfaction and performance. Research suggests that rationality is the most effective influence tactic in terms of its impact on follower commitment, motivation, performance, satisfaction, and group effectiveness. 30

Reward and legitimate power (that is, relying on one’s position to influence others) produce inconsistent results. Sometimes these powers lead to follower performance and satisfaction, yet they also sometimes fail. Coercive power can result in favorable performance, yet follower and resistance dissatisfaction are not uncommon.

Good leaders, whether formal or informal, develop many sources of power. Leaders who rely solely on their legitimate power and authority seldom generate the influence necessary to help their organization and its members succeed. In the process of building their power base, effective leaders have discovered that the use of coercive power tends to dilute the effectiveness of other powers, while the development and use of referent power tends to magnify the effectiveness of other forms of power. A compliment or reward from a person we like generally has greater value than one from someone we dislike, and punishment from someone we love (such as “tough love” from a parent) is less offensive than the pain inflicted by someone we dislike. 31

In sum, one key to effective leadership, especially as it pertains to the exercise of social and interpersonal influence, relates to the type of power employed by the leader. Overall leader effectiveness will be higher when people follow because they want to follow. This is much more likely to happen when the leader’s influence flows out of intrinsic such as rationality, expertise, moralistic appeal, and/or referent power.

Leadership is also about having a vision and communicating that vision to others in such a way that it provides meaning for the follower. 32  Language, ritual, drama, myths, symbolic constructions, and stories are some of the tools leaders use to capture the attention of their “followers to be” to evoke emotion and to manage the meaning “of the task (challenges) facing the group.” 33  These tools help the leader influence the attitudes, motivation, and behavior of their followers.

Influence-Based Leadership Styles

Many writers and researchers have explored how leaders can use power to address the needs of various situations. One view holds that in traditional organizations members expect to be told what to do and are willing to follow highly structured directions. Individuals attracted to high-involvement organizations, however, want to make their own decisions, expect their leaders to allow them to do so, and are willing to accept and act on this responsibility. This suggests that a leader may use and employ power in a variety of ways.

The Tannenbaum and Schmidt Continuum

An image showing leadership of a continuum ranging from authority by the manager to freedom for subordinates.

In the 1950s, Tannenbaum and Schmidt created a continuum (see  Figure 6 ) along which leadership styles range from authoritarian to extremely high levels of worker freedom. 34  Subsequent to Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s work, researchers adapted the continuum by categorizing leader power styles as  autocratic  (boss-centered),  participative  (workers are consulted and involved), or  free-rein (members are assigned the work and decide on their own how to do it; the leader relinquishes the active assumption of the role of leadership). 35

Theory X and Theory Y Leaders

McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y posits two different sets of attitudes about the individual as an organizational member. 36  Theory X and Y thinking gives rise to two different styles of leadership. The  Theory X leader  assumes that the average individual dislikes work and is incapable of exercising adequate self-direction and self-control. As a consequence, they exert a highly controlling leadership style. In contrast,  Theory Y leaders  believe that people have creative capacities, as well as both the ability and desire to exercise self-direction and self-control. They typically allow organizational members significant amounts of discretion in their jobs and encourage them to participate in departmental and organizational decision-making. Theory Y leaders are much more likely to adopt involvement-oriented approaches to leadership and organically designed organizations for their leadership group.

Theory X and Theory Y thinking and leadership are not strictly an American phenomenon. Evidence suggests that managers from different parts of the global community commonly hold the same view. A study of 3,600 managers from 14 countries reveals that most of them held assumptions about human nature that could best be classified as Theory X. 37  Even though managers might publicly endorse the merits of participatory management, most of them doubted their workers’ capacities to exercise self-direction and self-control and to contribute creatively. 38

Directive/Permissive Leadership Styles

Contemplating the central role of problem-solving in management and leadership, Jan P. Muczyk and Bernard C. Reimann of Cleveland State University offer an interesting perspective on four different leadership styles (see  Figure 7 ) that revolve around decision-making and implementation processes. 39

A four-quadrant depiction of leadership styles based on power use.

A  directive autocrat  retains power, makes unilateral decisions, and closely supervises workers’ activities. This style of leadership is seen as appropriate when circumstances require quick decisions and organizational members are new, inexperienced, or underqualified. A doctor in charge of a hastily constructed shelter for victims of a tornado may use this style to command nonmedical volunteers.

The  permissive autocrat  mixes his or her use of power by retaining decision-making power but permitting organizational members to exercise discretion when executing those decisions. This leader behavior is recommended when decision-making time is limited, when tasks are routine, or when organizational members have sufficient expertise to determine appropriate role behaviors.

Also sharing power is the  directive democrat,  who encourages participative decision-making but retains the power to direct team members in the execution of their roles. This style is appropriate when followers have valuable opinions and ideas, but one person needs to coordinate the execution of the ideas. A surgeon might allow the entire surgical team to participate in developing a plan for a surgical procedure. Once surgery begins, however, the surgeon is completely in charge.

Finally, the  permissive democrat  shares power with group members, soliciting involvement in both decision-making and execution. This style is appropriate when participation has both informational and motivational value, when time permits group decision-making, when group members are capable of improving decision quality, and when followers are capable of exercising self-management in their performance of work.

The permissive democratic approach to leadership is characteristic of leadership in high-involvement organizations. Here, leaders act as facilitators, process consultants, network builders, conflict managers, inspirationalists, coaches, teachers/mentors, and cheerleaders. 40  Such is the role of Ralph Stayer, founder, owner, and CEO of Johnsonville Foods. He defines himself as his company’s philosopher. At Quad/Graphics, president Harry V. Quadracci is a permissive democrat because he encourages all Quad employees to play a major role in decision-making and execution as they manage their teams as independent profit centers.

A photo shows Jeff Bezos flashing the slide showing the phenomenal growth of Amazon’s Kindle eBook sales in comparison to physical book sales during his presentation of the new Kindles.

  • What is the role of the leader and follower in the leadership process?
  • How do the theories of Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s leadership continuum and McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y attempt to define leadership?

The Trait Approach to Leadership

Ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Chinese scholars were keenly interested in leaders and leadership. Their writings portray leaders as heroes. Homer, in his poem  The Odyssey , portrays Odysseus during and after the Trojan War as a great leader who had vision and self-confidence. His son Telemachus, under the tutelage of Mentor, developed his father’s courage and leadership skills. 41 Out of such stories there emerged the “great man” theory of leadership, and a starting point for the contemporary study of leadership.

The  great man theory of leadership  states that some people are born with the necessary attributes to be great leaders. Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, Napoleon, and Mahatma Gandhi are cited as naturally great leaders, born with a set of personal qualities that made them effective leaders. Even today, the belief that truly great leaders are born is common. For example, Kenneth Labich, writer for  Fortune  magazine, commented that “the best leaders seem to possess a God-given spark.” 42

During the early 1900s, scholars endeavored to understand leaders and leadership. They wanted to know, from an organizational perspective, what characteristics leaders hold in common in the hope that people with these characteristics could be identified, recruited, and placed in key organizational positions. This gave rise to early research efforts and to what is referred to as the  trait approach to leadership.  Prompted by the great man theory of leadership and the emerging interest in understanding what leadership is, researchers focused on the leader—Who is a leader? What are the distinguishing characteristics of the great and effective leaders? The great man theory of leadership holds that some people are born with a set of personal qualities that make truly great leaders. Mahatma Gandhi is often cited as a naturally great leader.

Leader Trait Research

Ralph Stogdill, while on the faculty at The Ohio State University, pioneered our modern (late 20th century) study of leadership. 43 Scholars taking the trait approach attempted to identify physiological (appearance, height, and weight), demographic (age, education, and socioeconomic background), personality (dominance, self-confidence, and aggressiveness), intellective (intelligence, decisiveness, judgment, and knowledge), task-related (achievement drive, initiative, and persistence), and social characteristics (sociability and cooperativeness) with leader emergence and leader effectiveness. After reviewing several hundred studies of leader traits, Stogdill in 1974 described the successful leader this way:

The [successful] leader is characterized by a strong drive for responsibility and task completion, vigor and persistence in pursuit of goals, venturesomeness and originality in problem solving, drive to exercise initiative in social situations, self-confidence and sense of personal identity, willingness to accept consequences of decision and action, readiness to absorb interpersonal stress, willingness to tolerate frustration and delay, ability to influence other person’s behavior, and capacity to structure social interaction systems to the purpose at hand. 44

The last three decades of the 20th century witnessed continued exploration of the relationship between traits and both leader emergence and leader effectiveness. Edwin Locke from the University of Maryland and a number of his research associates, in their recent review of the trait research, observed that successful leaders possess a set of core characteristics that are different from those of other people. 45  Although these core traits do not solely determine whether a person will be a leader—or a successful leader—they are seen as preconditions that endow people with leadership potential. Among the core traits identified are:

  • Drive —a high level of effort, including a strong desire for achievement as well as high levels of ambition, energy, tenacity, and initiative
  • Leadership motivation —an intense desire to lead others
  • Honesty and integrity —a commitment to the truth (nondeceit), where word and deed correspond
  • Self-confidence —an assurance in one’s self, one’s ideas, and one’s ability
  • Cognitive ability —conceptually skilled, capable of exercising good judgment, having strong analytical abilities, possessing the capacity to think strategically and multidimensionally
  • Knowledge of the business —a high degree of understanding of the company, industry, and technical matters
  • Other traits —charisma, creativity/originality, and flexibility/adaptiveness 46

While leaders may be “people with the right stuff,” effective leadership requires more than simply possessing the correct set of motives and traits. Knowledge, skills, ability, vision, strategy, and effective vision implementation are all necessary for the person who has the “right stuff” to realize their leadership potential. 47  According to Locke, people endowed with these traits engage in behaviors that are associated with leadership. As followers, people are attracted to and inclined to follow individuals who display, for example, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, and the motivation to lead.

Personality psychologists remind us that behavior is a result of an interaction between the person and the situation—that is, Behavior =  f  [(Person) (Situation)]. To this, psychologist Walter Mischel adds the important observation that personality tends to get expressed through an individual’s behavior in “weak” situations and to be suppressed in “strong” situations. 48  A strong situation is one with strong behavioral norms and rules, strong incentives, clear expectations, and rewards for a particular behavior. Our characterization of the mechanistic organization with its well-defined hierarchy of authority, jobs, and standard operating procedures exemplifies a strong situation. The organic social system exemplifies a weak situation. From a leadership perspective, a person’s traits play a stronger role in their leader behavior and ultimately leader effectiveness when the situation permits the expression of their disposition. Thus, personality traits prominently shape leader behavior in weak situations.

Finally, about the validity of the “great person approach to leadership”: Evidence accumulated to date does not provide a strong base of support for the notion that leaders are born. Yet, the study of twins at the University of Minnesota leaves open the possibility that part of the answer might be found in our genes. Many personality traits and vocational interests (which might be related to one’s interest in assuming responsibility for others and the motivation to lead) have been found to be related to our “genetic dispositions” as well as to our life experiences. 49  Each core trait recently identified by Locke and his associates traces a significant part of its existence to life experiences. Thus, a person is not born with self-confidence. Self-confidence is developed, honesty and integrity are a matter of personal choice, motivation to lead comes from within the individual and is within his control, and knowledge of the business can be acquired. While cognitive ability does in part find its origin in the genes, it still needs to be developed. Finally, drive, as a dispositional trait, may also have a genetic component, but it too can be self- and other-encouraged. It goes without saying that none of these ingredients are acquired overnight.

Behavioral Approaches to Leadership

The nearly four decades of research that focused on identifying the personal traits associated with the emergence of leaders and leader effectiveness resulted in two observations. First, leader traits are important—people who are endowed with the “right stuff” (drive, self-confidence, honesty, and integrity) are more likely to emerge as leaders and to be effective leaders than individuals who do not possess these characteristics. Second, traits are only a part of the story. Traits only account for part of why someone becomes a leader and why they are (or are not) effective leaders.

Still under the influence of the great man theory of leadership, researchers continued to focus on the leader in an effort to understand leadership—who emerges and what constitutes effective leadership. Researchers then began to reason that maybe the rest of the story could be understood by looking at what it is that leaders  do . Thus, we now turn our attention to leader behaviors and the behavioral approaches to leadership.

It is now common to think of effective leadership in terms of what leaders do. CEOs and management consultants agree that effective leaders display trust in their employees, develop a vision, keep their cool, encourage risk, bring expertise into the work setting, invite dissent, and focus everyone’s attention on that which is important. 59  William Arruda, in a  Fortune  article, noted that “organizations with strong coaching cultures report their revenue to be above average, compared to their peer group.” Sixty-five percent of employees “from strong coaching cultures rated themselves as highly engaged,” compared to 13 percent of employees worldwide.” 60 Jonathan Anthony calls himself an intrapreneur and corporate disorganizer, because same-old, same-old comms practices are dying in front of our eyes. 61  Apple founder Steve Jobs believed that the best leaders are coaches and team cheerleaders. Similar views have been frequently echoed by management consultant Tom Peters.

During the late 1940s, two major research programs—The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan leadership studies—were launched to explore leadership from a behavioral perspective.

The Ohio State University Studies

A group of Ohio State University researchers, under the direction of Ralph Stogdill, began an extensive and systematic series of studies to identify leader behaviors associated with effective group performance. Their results identified two major sets of leader behaviors: consideration and initiating structure.

Consideration  is the “relationship-oriented” behavior of a leader. It is instrumental in creating and maintaining good relationships (that is, addressing the group’s maintenance needs) with organizational members. Consideration behaviors include being supportive and friendly, representing people’s interests, communicating openly with group members, recognizing them, respecting their ideas, and sharing concern for their feelings.

Initiating structure  involves “task-oriented” leader behaviors. It is instrumental in the efficient use of resources to attain organizational goals, thereby addressing the group’s task needs. Initiating structure behaviors include scheduling work, deciding what is to be done (and how and when to do it), providing direction to organizational members, planning, coordinating, problem-solving, maintaining standards of performance, and encouraging the use of uniform procedures.

After consideration and initiating structure behaviors were first identified, many leaders believed that they had to behave one way or the other. If they initiated structure, they could not be considerate, and vice versa. It did not take long, however, to recognize that leaders can simultaneously display any combination of both behaviors.

The Ohio State studies are important because they identified two critical categories of behavior that distinguish one leader from another. Both consideration and initiating structure behavior can significantly impact work attitudes and behaviors. Unfortunately, the effects of consideration and initiating structure are not consistent from situation to situation. 62  In some of the organizations studied, for example, high levels of initiating structure increased performance. In other organizations, the amount of initiating structure seemed to make little difference. Although most organizational members reported greater satisfaction when leaders acted considerately, consideration behavior appeared to have no clear effect on performance.

Initially, these mixed findings were disappointing to researchers and managers alike. It had been hoped that a profile of the most effective leader behaviors could be identified so that leaders could be trained in the best ways to behave. Research made clear, however, that there is no one best style of leader behavior for all situations.

The University of Michigan Studies

At about the same time that the Ohio State studies were underway, researchers at the University of Michigan also began to investigate leader behaviors. As at Ohio State, the Michigan researchers attempted to identify behavioral elements that differentiated effective from ineffective leaders. 63

The two types of leader behavior that stand out in these studies are job centered and organizational member centered.  Job-centered behaviors  are devoted to supervisory functions, such as planning, scheduling, coordinating work activities, and providing the resources needed for task performance.  Employee-member-centered  behaviors include consideration and support for organizational members. These dimensions of behavior, of course, correspond closely to the dimensions of initiating structure and consideration identified at Ohio State. The similarity of the findings from two independent groups of researchers added to their credibility. As the Ohio State researchers had done, the Michigan researchers also found that any combination of the two behaviors was possible.

The studies at Michigan are significant because they reinforce the importance of leader behavior. They also provide the basis for later theories that identify specific, effective matches of work situations and leader behaviors. Subsequent research at Michigan and elsewhere has found additional behaviors associated with effective leadership: support, work facilitation, goal emphasis, and interaction facilitation. 64

These four behaviors are important to the successful functioning of the group in that support and interaction facilitation contribute to the group’s maintenance needs, and goal emphasis and work facilitation contribute to the group’s task needs. The Michigan researchers also found that these four behaviors do not need to be brought to the group by the leader. In essence, the leader’s real job is to set the tone and create the climate that ensure these critical behaviors are present. 65

The Leadership Grid ®

Much of the credit for disseminating knowledge about important leader behaviors must go to Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton, who developed a method for classifying styles of leadership compatible with many of the ideas from the Ohio State and Michigan studies. 66  In their classification scheme,  concern for results  (production) emphasizes output, cost effectiveness, and (in for-profit organizations) a concern for profits.  Concern for people  involves promoting working relationships and paying attention to issues of importance to group members. As shown in  Figure 9 , the Leadership Grid® demonstrates that any combination of these two leader concerns is possible, and five styles of leadership are highlighted here.

A graphical representation shows the managerial grid based on the concern for people and the concern for production.

Blake and Mouton contend that the sound (contribute and commit) leader (a high concern for results and people, or 9,9) style is universally the most effective. 67  While the Leadership Grid® is appealing and well structured, research to date suggests that there is no universally effective style of leadership (9,9 or otherwise). 68  There are, however, well-identified situations in which a 9,9 style is unlikely to be effective. Organizational members of high-involvement organizations who have mastered their job duties require little production-oriented leader behavior. Likewise, there is little time for people-oriented behavior during an emergency. Finally, evidence suggests that the “high-high” style may be effective when the situation calls for high levels of initiating structure. Under these conditions, the initiation of structure is more acceptable, favorably affecting follower satisfaction and performance, when the leader is also experienced as warm, supportive, and considerate. 69

  • What are the behavioral approaches to defining leadership?
  • What roles do gender and the popular perceptions of gender roles have on views of leadership traits?

Situational (Contingency) Approaches to Leadership

As early as 1948, Ralph Stogdill stated that “the qualities, characteristics, and skills required in a leader are determined to a large extent by the demands of the situation in which he is to function as a leader.” 70  In addition, it had been observed that two major leader behaviors, initiating structure and consideration, didn’t always lead to equally positive outcomes. That is, there are times when initiating structure results in performance increases and follower satisfaction, and there are times when the results are just the opposite. Contradictory findings such as this lead researchers to ask “Under what conditions are the results positive in nature?” and “When and why are they negative at other times?” Obviously, situational differences and key contingencies are at work.

Several theories have been advanced to address this issue. These are Fiedler’s contingency theory of leadership, the path-goal theory of leader effectiveness, Hersey and Blanchard’s life cycle theory, cognitive resource theory, the decision tree, and the decision process theory. 71  We explore two of the better-known situational theories of leadership, Fred Fiedler’s contingency model and Robert J. House’s path-goal theory, here. Victor Vroom, Phillip Yetton, and Arthur Jago’s decision tree model also applies.

Fiedler’s Contingency Model

One of the earliest, best-known, and most controversial situation-contingent leadership theories was set forth by Fred E. Fiedler from the University of Washington. 72  This theory is known as the  contingency theory of leadership.  According to Fiedler, organizations attempting to achieve group effectiveness through leadership must assess the leader according to an underlying trait, assess the situation faced by the leader, and construct a proper match between the two.

The Leader’s Trait

Leaders are asked about their  least-preferred coworker (LPC),  the person with whom they  least  like to work. The most popular interpretation of the LPC score is that it reflects a leader’s underlying disposition toward others—for example: pleasant/unpleasant, cold/warm, friendly/unfriendly, and untrustworthy/trustworthy. (You can examine your own LPC score by completing the LPC self-assessment on the following page.)

Fiedler states that leaders with high LPC scores are  relationship oriented —they need to develop and maintain close interpersonal relationships. They tend to evaluate their least-preferred coworkers in fairly favorable terms. Task accomplishment is a secondary need to this type of leader and becomes important only after the need for relationships is reasonably well satisfied. In contrast, leaders with low LPC scores tend to evaluate the individuals with whom they least like to work fairly negatively. They are  task-oriented  people, and only after tasks have been accomplished are low-LPC leaders likely to work on establishing good social and interpersonal relations.

The Situational Factor

Some situations favor leaders more than others do. To Fiedler,  situational favorableness  is the degree to which leaders have control and influence and therefore feel that they can determine the outcomes of a group interaction. 73  Several years later, Fiedler changed his situational factor from situational favorability to situational control—where situational control essentially refers to the degree to which a leader can influence the group process. 74  Three factors work together to determine how favorable a situation is to a leader. In order of importance, they are (1)  leader-member relations —the degree of the group’s acceptance of the leader, their ability to work well together, and members’ level of loyalty to the leader; (2)  task structure —the degree to which the task specifies a detailed, unambiguous goal and how to achieve it; and (3)  position power —a leader’s direct ability to influence group members. The situation is most favorable for a leader when the relationship between the leader and group members is good, when the task is highly structured, and when the leader’s position power is strong (cell 1 in  Figure 10 ). The least-favorable situation occurs under poor leader-member relations, an unstructured task, and weak position power (cell 8).

A model showing how task-motivated and relational-motivated leadership vary in terms of performance based on relationships between leaders and followers

Leader-Situation Matches

Some combinations of leaders and situations work well; others do not. In search of the best combinations, Fiedler examined a large number of leadership situations. He argued that most leaders have a relatively unchangeable or dominant style, so organizations need to design job situations to fit the leader. 75

While the model has not been fully tested and tests have often produced mixed or contradictory findings, 76  Fiedler’s research indicates that relationship-oriented (high-LPC) leaders are much more effective under conditions of intermediate favorability than under either highly favorable or highly unfavorable situations. Fiedler attributes the success of relationship-oriented leaders in situations with intermediate favorability to the leader’s nondirective, permissive attitude; a more directive attitude could lead to anxiety in followers, conflict in the group, and a lack of cooperation.

For highly favorable and unfavorable situations, task-oriented leaders (those with a low LPC) are very effective. As tasks are accomplished, a task-oriented leader allows the group to perform its highly structured tasks without imposing more task-directed behavior. The job gets done without the need for the leader’s direction. Under unfavorable conditions, task-oriented behaviors, such as setting goals, detailing work methods, and guiding and controlling work behaviors, move the group toward task accomplishment.

As might be expected, leaders with mid-range LPC scores can be more effective in a wider range of situations than high- or low-LPC leaders. 77  Under conditions of low favorability, for example, a middle-LPC leader can be task oriented to achieve performance, but show consideration for and allow organizational members to proceed on their own under conditions of high situational favorability.

Controversy over the Theory

Although Fiedler’s theory often identifies appropriate leader-situation matches and has received broad support, it is not without critics. Some note that it characterizes leaders through reference to their attitudes or personality traits (LPC) while it explains the leader’s effectiveness through their behaviors—those with a particular trait will behave in a particular fashion. The theory fails to make the connection between the least-preferred coworker attitude and subsequent behaviors. In addition, some tests of the model have produced mixed or contradictory findings. 78  Finally, what is the true meaning of the LPC score—exactly what is being revealed by a person who sees their least-preferred coworker in positive or negative terms? Robert J. House and Ram N. Aditya recently noted that, in spite of the criticisms, there has been substantial support for Fiedler’s theory. 79

Path-Goal Theory

Robert J. House and Martin Evans, while on the faculty at the University of Toronto, developed a useful leadership theory. Like Fiedler’s, it asserts that the type of leadership needed to enhance organizational effectiveness depends on the situation in which the leader is placed. Unlike Fiedler, however, House and Evans focus on the leader’s observable behavior. Thus, managers can either match the situation to the leader or modify the leader’s behavior to fit the situation.

The model of leadership advanced by House and Evans is called the  path-goal theory of leadership  because it suggests that an effective leader provides organizational members with a  path  to a valued  goal.  According to House, the motivational function of the leader consists of increasing personal payoffs to organizational members for work-goal attainment, and making the path to these payoffs easier to travel by clarifying it, reducing roadblocks and pitfalls, and increasing the opportunities for personal satisfaction en route. 80

Effective leaders therefore provide rewards that are valued by organizational members. These rewards may be pay, recognition, promotions, or any other item that gives members an incentive to work hard to achieve goals. Effective leaders also give clear instructions so that ambiguities about work are reduced and followers understand how to do their jobs effectively. They provide coaching, guidance, and training so that followers can perform the task expected of them. They also remove barriers to task accomplishment, correcting shortages of materials, inoperative machinery, or interfering policies.

An Appropriate Match

According to the path-goal theory, the challenge facing leaders is basically twofold. First, they must analyze situations and identify the most appropriate leadership style. For example, experienced employees who work on a highly structured assembly line don’t need a leader to spend much time telling them how to do their jobs—they already know this. The leader of an archeological expedition, though, may need to spend a great deal of time telling inexperienced laborers how to excavate and care for the relics they uncover.

Second, leaders must be flexible enough to use different leadership styles as appropriate. To be effective, leaders must engage in a wide variety of behaviors. Without an extensive repertoire of behaviors at their disposal, a leader’s effectiveness is limited. 81  All team members will not, for example, have the same need for autonomy. The leadership style that motivates organizational members with strong needs for autonomy (participative leadership) is different from that which motivates and satisfies members with weaker autonomy needs (directive leadership). The degree to which leadership behavior matches situational factors will determine members’ motivation, satisfaction, and performance (see  Figure 11 ). 82

A path model from leadership behaviors & situational forces, through combine to influence, to subordinate outcomes of motivation, satisfaction, and performance.

Behavior Dimensions

According to path-goal theory, there are four important dimensions of leader behavior, each of which is suited to a particular set of situational demands. 83

  • Supportive leadership —At times, effective leaders demonstrate concern for the well-being and personal needs of organizational members. Supportive leaders are friendly, approachable, and considerate to individuals in the workplace. Supportive leadership is especially effective when an organizational member is performing a boring, stressful, frustrating, tedious, or unpleasant task. If a task is difficult and a group member has low self-esteem, supportive leadership can reduce some of the person’s anxiety, increase his confidence, and increase satisfaction and determination as well.
  • Directive leadership —At times, effective leaders set goals and performance expectations, let organizational members know what is expected, provide guidance, establish rules and procedures to guide work, and schedule and coordinate the activities of members. Directive leadership is called for when role ambiguity is high. Removing uncertainty and providing needed guidance can increase members’ effort, job satisfaction, and job performance.
  • Participative leadership —At times, effective leaders consult with group members about job-related activities and consider their opinions and suggestions when making decisions. Participative leadership is effective when tasks are unstructured. Participative leadership is used to great effect when leaders need help in identifying work procedures and where followers have the expertise to provide this help.
  • Achievement-oriented leadership —At times, effective leaders set challenging goals, seek improvement in performance, emphasize excellence, and demonstrate confidence in organizational members’ ability to attain high standards. Achievement-oriented leaders thus capitalize on members’ needs for achievement and use goal-setting theory to great advantage.
  • Identify and describe the variables presented in Fiedler’s theory of leadership.
  • What are the leadership behaviors in the path-goal theory of leadership?
  • What role does culture have in how leadership is viewed?
  • What are the differences between the trait, behavioral, and situational approaches to defining leadership?

Substitutes for and Neutralizers of Leadership

Several factors have been discovered that can substitute for or neutralize the effects of leader behavior (see  Table 1 ). 89   Substitutes for leadership behavior can clarify role expectations, motivate organizational members, or satisfy members (making it unnecessary for the leader to attempt to do so). In some cases, these substitutes supplement the behavior of a leader. Sometimes it is a group member’s characteristics that make leadership less necessary, as when a master craftsperson or highly skilled worker performs up to his or her own high standards without needing outside prompting. Sometimes the task’s characteristics take over, as when the work itself—solving an interesting problem or working on a familiar job—is intrinsically satisfying. Sometimes the characteristics of the organization make leadership less necessary, as when work rules are so clear and specific that workers know exactly what they must do without help from the leader (see  An Inside Look  at flat management structure and the orchestra with no leader).

Table 1: Substitutes for and Neutralizers of Leader Behavior
Leader Behavior Influenced
Supportive or Neutralizer Substitute Leadership Instrumental Leadership
 Adapted from   by G. A. Yukl.
A. Subordinate Characteristics:
1. Experience, ability, training Substitute
2. “Professional” orientation Substitute Substitute
3. Indifference toward rewards offered by organization Neutralizer Neutralizer
B. Task Characteristics:
1. Structured, routine, unambiguous task Substitute
2. Feedback provided by task Substitute
3. Intrinsically satisfying task Substitute
C. Organization Characteristics:
1. Cohesive work group Substitute Substitute
2. Low position power (leader lacks control over organizational rewards) Neutralizer Neutralizer
3. Formalization (explicit plans, goals, areas of responsibility) Substitute
4. Inflexibility (rigid, unyielding rules and procedures) Neutralizer
5. Leader located apart from subordinates with only limited communication possible Neutralizer Neutralizer

Neutralizers  of leadership, on the other hand, are not helpful; they prevent leaders from acting as they wish. A computer-paced assembly line, for example, prevents a leader from using initiating structure behavior to pace the line. A union contract that specifies that workers be paid according to seniority prevents a leader from dispensing merit-based pay. Sometimes, of course, neutralizers can be beneficial. Union contracts, for example, clarify disciplinary proceedings and identify the responsibilities of both management and labor. Leaders must be aware of the presence of neutralizers and their effects so that they can eliminate troublesome neutralizers or take advantage of any potential benefits that accompany them (such as the clarity of responsibilities provided by a union contract). If a leader’s effectiveness is being neutralized by a poor communication system, for example, the leader might try to remove the neutralizer by developing (or convincing the organization to develop) a more effective system.

Followers differ considerably in their  focus of attention  while at work, thereby affecting the effectiveness of the act of leadership. Focus of attention is an employee’s cognitive orientation while at work. It reflects what and how strongly an individual thinks about various objects, events, or phenomena while physically present at work. Focus of attention reflects an individual difference in that not all individuals have the same cognitive orientation while at work—some think a great deal about their job, their coworkers, their leader, or off-the-job factors, while others daydream. 90  An employee’s focus of attention has both “trait” and “state” qualities. For example, there is a significant amount of minute-by-minute variation in an employee’s focus of attention (the “state” component), and there is reasonable consistency in the categories of events that employees think about while they are at work (the “trait” component).

Research suggests that the more followers focus on off-job (nonleader) factors, the less they will react to the leader’s behaviors. Thus, a strong focus on one’s life “away from work” (for example, time with family and friends) tends to neutralize the motivational, attitudinal, and/or behavioral effects associated with any particular leader behavior. It has also been observed, however, that a strong focus on the leader, either positive or negative, enhances the impact that the leader’s behaviors have on followers. 91

MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP

You Are Now the Leader

Leading and managing are two very different things. Being a manager means something more than gaining authority or charge over former colleagues. With the title does come the power to affect company outcomes, but it also comes with something more: the power to shape the careers and personal growth of subordinates.

According to Steve Keating, a senior manager at the Toro Company, it is important not to assume that being made a manager automatically makes you a leader. Rather, being a manager means having the  opportunity  to lead. Enterprises need managers to guide processes, but the employees—the people—need a leader. Keating believes that leaders need a mindset that emphasizes people, and the leader’s job is to help the people in the organization to be successful. According to Keating, “If you don’t care for people, you can’t lead them” (Hakim 2017 n.p.).

For someone who has been promoted over his peers, ground rules are essential. “Promotion doesn’t mean the end of friendship but it does change it,” according to Keating. If a  peer  has been promoted, rather than grouse and give in to envy, it is important to step back and look at the new manager; take a hard look at why the peer was promoted and what skill or characteristic made you a less appealing fit for the position (Hakim 2017).

Carol Walker, president of Prepared to Lead, a management consulting firm, advises new managers to develop a job philosophy. She urges new managers to develop a core philosophy that provides a guide to the day-to-day job of leading. She urges managers to build up the people they are leading and work as a “servant leader.” The manager’s perspective should be on employee growth and success. Leaders must bear in mind that employees don’t work for the manager; they work for the organization—and for themselves. Managers coordinate this relationship; they are not the center of it. Work should not be assigned haphazardly, but with the employee’s skills and growth in mind. “An employee who understands why she has been asked to do something is far more likely to assume true ownership for the assignment,” Walker says (Yakowicz 2015 n.p.). A leader’s agenda should be on employee success, not personal glory. Employees are more receptive when they recognize that their leader is working not for their own success, but for the employee’s success.

A survey from HighGround revealed one important item that most new managers and even many seasoned managers overlook: asking for feedback. Everyone has room for growth, even managers. Traditional management dictates a top-down style in which managers review subordinates. But many companies have found it beneficial to turn things around and ask employees, “How can I be a better manager?” Of course, this upward review only works if employees believe that their opinion will be heard. Managers need to carefully cultivate a rapport where employees don’t fear reprisals for negative feedback. Listening to criticism from those you are leading builds trust and helps ensure that as a manager, you are providing the sort of leadership that employees need to be successful (Kauflin 2017). Showing respect and caring for employees by asking this simple question is  inspiring —an important aspect of leadership itself. Whether asking for feedback or focusing on an employee’s fit with a particular job description, a leader helps guide employees through the day-to-day, builds a positive culture, and helps employees improve their skills.

  • What do you think are the most important qualities in a leader? In a manager? Are your two lists mutually exclusive? Why?
  • How do you think a leader can use feedback to model the growth process for employees?
  • Identify and describe substitutes of leadership.

Transformational, Visionary, and Charismatic Leadership

Many organizations struggling with the need to manage chaos, to undergo a culture change, to empower organizational members, and to restructure have looked for answers in “hiring the right leader.” Many have come to believe that the transformational, visionary, and charismatic leader represents the style of leadership needed to move organizations through chaos.

The Transformational and Visionary Leader

Leaders who subscribe to the notion that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” are often described as  transactional leaders.  They are extremely task oriented and instrumental in their approach, frequently looking for incentives that will induce their followers into a desired course of action. 92  These reciprocal exchanges take place in the context of a mutually interdependent relationship between the leader and the follower, frequently resulting in interpersonal bonding. 93  The transactional leader moves a group toward task accomplishment by initiating structure and by offering an incentive in exchange for desired behaviors. The  transformational leader , on the other hand, moves and changes (fixes) things “in a big way”! Unlike transactional leaders, they don’t cause change by offering inducements. Instead, they inspire others to action through their personal values, vision, passion, and belief in and commitment to the mission. 94 Through charisma (idealized influence), individualized consideration (a focus on the development of the follower), intellectual stimulation (questioning assumptions and challenging the status quo), and/or inspirational motivation (articulating an appealing vision), transformational leaders move others to follow.

The transformational leader is also referred to as a visionary leader.  Visionary leaders  are those who influence others through an emotional and/or intellectual attraction to the leader’s dreams of what “can be.” Vision links a present and future state, energizes and generates commitment, provides meaning for action, and serves as a standard against which to assess performance. 95  Evidence indicates that vision is positively related to follower attitudes and performance. 96  As pointed out by Warren Bennis, a vision is effective only to the extent that the leader can communicate it in such a way that others come to internalize it as their own. 97

As people, transformational leaders are engaging. They are characterized by extroversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience. 98  They energize others. They increase followers’ awareness of the importance of the designated outcome. 99  They motivate individuals to transcend their own self-interest for the benefit of the team and inspire organizational members to self-manage (become self-leaders). 100  Transformational leaders move people to focus on higher-order needs (self-esteem and self-actualization). When organizations face a turbulent environment, intense competition, products that may die early, and the need to move fast, managers cannot rely solely on organizational structure to guide organizational activity. In these situations, transformational leadership can motivate followers to be fully engaged and inspired, to internalize the goals and values of the organization, and to move forward with dogged determination!

Transformational leadership is positively related to follower satisfaction, performance, and acts of citizenship. These effects result from the fact that transformational leader behaviors elicit trust and perceptions of procedural justice, which in turn favorably impact follower satisfaction and performance. 101  As R. Pillai, C. Schriesheim, and E. Williams note, “when followers perceive that they can influence the outcomes of decisions that are important to them and that they are participants in an equitable relationship with their leader, their perceptions of procedural justice [and trust] are likely to be enhanced.” 102  Trust and experiences of organizational justice promote leader effectiveness, follower satisfaction, motivation, performance, and citizenship behaviors.

Charismatic Leadership

Ronald Reagan, Jesse Jackson, and Queen Elizabeth I have something in common with Martin Luther King Jr., Indira Gandhi, and Winston Churchill. The effectiveness of these leaders originates in part in their  charisma , a special magnetic charm and appeal that arouses loyalty and enthusiasm. Each exerted considerable personal influence to bring about major events.

It is difficult to differentiate the charismatic and the transformational leader. True transformational leaders may achieve their results through the magnetism of their personality. In this case, the two types of leaders are essentially one and the same, yet it is important to note that not all transformational leaders have a personal “aura.”

Sociologist Max Weber evidenced an interest in charismatic leadership in the 1920s, calling  charismatic leaders  people who possess legitimate power that arises from “exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character.” 103  Charismatic leaders “single-handedly” effect changes even in very large organizations. Their personality is a powerful force, and the relationship that they forge with their followers is extremely strong.

Travis Kalanick speaks at TED2016 - Dream, February 15-19, 2016, Vancouver Convention Center, Vancouver, Canada.

The charismatic leadership phenomenon involves a complex interplay between the attributes of the leader and followers’ needs, values, beliefs, and perceptions. 104  At its extreme, leader-follower relationships are characterized by followers’ unquestioning acceptance; trust in the leader’s beliefs; affection; willing obedience to, emulation of, and identification with the leader; emotional involvement with his mission; and feelings of self-efficacy directed toward the leader’s mission. 105  This can work to better the welfare of individuals, such as when Lee Iacocca saved thousands of jobs through his dramatic turnaround of a failing corporate giant, the Chrysler Corporation. It also can be disastrous, as when David Koresh led dozens and dozens of men, women, and children to their fiery death in Waco, Texas. Individuals working for charismatic leaders often have higher task performance, greater task satisfaction, and lower levels of role conflict than those working for leaders with considerate or structuring behaviors. 106  What are the characteristics of these people who can exert such a strong influence over their followers? Charismatic leaders have a strong need for power and the tendency to rely heavily on referent power as their primary power base. 107  Charismatic leaders also are extremely self-confident and convinced of the rightness of their own beliefs and ideals. This self-confidence and strength of conviction make people trust the charismatic leader’s judgment, unconditionally following the leader’s mission and directives for action. 108  The result is a strong bond between leader and followers, a bond built primarily around the leader’s personality.

Although there have been many effective charismatic leaders, those who succeed the most have coupled their charismatic capabilities with behaviors consistent with the same leadership principles followed by other effective leaders. Those who do not add these other dimensions still attract followers but do not meet organizational goals as effectively as they could. They are (at least for a time) the pied pipers of the business world, with lots of followers but no constructive direction.

ETHICS IN PRACTICE

Uber’s Need for an Ethical Leader

Almost since its initial founding in 2009 as a luxury car service for the San Francisco area, controversy has followed Uber. Many complaints are against the tactics employed by the company’s founder and former CEO, Travis Kalanick, but the effects are found throughout the business and its operations.

In 2009, UberBlack was a “black car” service, a high-end driving service that cost more than a taxi but less than hiring a private driver for the night. It wasn’t until 2012 that the company launched UberX, the taxi-esque service most people think of today when they say “Uber.” The UberX service contracted with private drivers who provided rides in their personal vehicles. A customer would use Uber’s smartphone app to request the ride, and a private driver would show up. Originally launched in San Francisco, the service spread quickly, and by 2017, Uber was in 633 cities. The service was hailed by many as innovative and the free market’s answer to high-priced and sometimes unreliable taxi services. But Uber has not been without its critics, both inside and outside of the company.

In 2013, as the UberX service spread, some UberBlack drivers protested at the company’s headquarters complaining about poor company benefits and pay. They also claimed that competition from the newly launched UberX service was cutting into their sales and undermining job security. Kalanick rebuffed the protests, basically calling the complaints sour grapes: most of the protestors had been laid off earlier for poor service (Lawler 2013). Controversy also arose over the use of contract drivers rather than full-time employees. Contractors complained about a lack of benefits and low wages. Competitors, especially taxi services, complained that they were being unfairly undercut because Uber didn’t have to abide by the same screening process and costs that traditional yellow taxi companies did. Some municipalities agreed, arguing further than Uber’s lack of or insufficient screening of drivers put passengers at risk.

Uber quickly generated a reputation as a bully and Kalanick as an unethical leader (Ann 2016). The company has been accused of covering up cases of sexual assault, and Kalanick himself has been quoted as calling the service “Boob-er,” a reference to using the service to pick up women (Ann 2016). Uber has been criticized for its recruiting practices; in particular, it has been accused of bribing drivers working for competitors to switch over and drive for Uber (Ann 2016).The company was also caught making false driver requests for competing companies and then canceling the order. The effect was to waste the other driver’s time and make it more difficult for customers to secure rides on the competing service (D’Orazio 2014). Susan J. Fowler, former site reliability engineer at Uber, went public with cases of outright sexual harassment within Uber (Fowler 2017). Former employees described Uber’s corporate culture as an “a**hole culture” and a “‘Hobbesian jungle’ where you can never get ahead unless someone else dies.” (Wong 2017) One employee described a leadership that encouraged a company practice of developing incomplete solutions for the purpose of beating the competitor to market. Fowler went so far as to compare the experience to Game of Thrones, and other former employees even consider “making it” at Uber a black mark on a resume (Wong 2017).

In terms of social acrimony and PR disasters, arguably caused or even encouraged by leadership, Uber’s rise to notoriety has arguably been more bad than good. In June 2017, Kalanick made one too many headlines and agreed to step down as the company’s CEO.

  • In the summer of 2017, Transport of London (TfL) began proceedings to revoke Uber’s permit to operate in London. How do think Uber’s poor corporate reputation may have been a factor in TfL’s thinking?
  • What steps do you think Uber’s new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, needs to take to repair Uber’s reputation?
  • Despite Uber’s apparent success in launching in multiple markets, it continues to post quarterly losses in the millions and shareholders effectively subsidize 59 percent of every ride (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-profitability/true-price-of-an-uber-ride-in-question-as-investors-assess-firms-value-idUSKCN1B3103). How is this an outworking of Uber’s overall corporate culture?
  • What are the defining characteristics of transformational and charismatic leaders?

Leadership Needs in the 21st Century

Frequent headlines in popular business magazines like  Fortune  and  Business Week  call our attention to a major movement going on in the world of business. Organizations are being reengineered and restructured, and network, virtual, and modular corporations are emerging. People talk about the transnational organization, the boundaryless company, the post-hierarchical organization. By the end of the decade, the organizations that we will be living in, working with, and competing against are likely to be vastly different from what we know today.

The transition will not be easy; uncertainty tends to breed resistance. We are driven by linear and rational thinking, which leads us to believe that “we can get there from here” by making some incremental changes in who we are and what we are currently doing. Existing paradigms frame our perceptions and guide our thinking. Throwing away paradigms that have served us well in the past does not come easily.

A look back tells most observers that the past decade has been characterized by rapid change, intense competition, an explosion of new technologies, chaos, turbulence, and high levels of uncertainty. A quick scan of today’s business landscape suggests that this trend is not going away anytime soon. According to Professor Jay A. Conger from Canada’s McGill University, “In times of great transition, leadership becomes critically important. Leaders, in essence, offer us a pathway of confidence and direction as we move through seeming chaos. The magnitude of today’s changes will demand not only  more  leadership, but  newer forms  of leadership.” 109

According to Conger, two major forces are defining for us the genius of the next generation of leaders. The first force is the organization’s external environment. Global competitiveness is creating some unique leadership demands. The second force is the growing diversity in organizations’ internal environments. Diversity will significantly change the relationship between organizational members, work, and the organization in challenging, difficult, and also very positive ways.

What will the leaders of tomorrow be like? Professor Conger suggests that the effective leaders of the 21st century will have to be many things. 110  They will have to be  strategic opportunists;  only organizational visionaries will find strategic opportunities before competitors. They will have to be  globally aware ; with 80 percent of today’s organizations facing significant foreign competition, knowledge of foreign markets, global economics, and geopolitics is crucial. They will have to be  capable of managing a highly decentralized organization ; movement toward the high-involvement organization will accelerate as the environmental demands for organizational speed, flexibility, learning, and leanness increase. They will have be  sensitive to diversity ; during the first few years of the 21st century, fewer than 10 percent of those entering the workforce in North America will be white, Anglo-Saxon males, and the incoming women, minorities, and immigrants will bring with them a very different set of needs and concerns. They will have to be  interpersonally competent ; a highly diverse workforce will necessitate a leader who is extremely aware of and sensitive to multicultural expectations and needs. They will have to be  builders of an organizational community ; work and organizations will serve as a major source of need fulfillment, and in the process leaders will be called on to help build this community in such a way that organizational members develop a sense of ownership for the organization and its mission.

Finally, it is important to note that leadership theory construction and empirical inquiry are an ongoing endeavor. While the study of traits, behavior, and contingency models of leadership provide us with a great deal of insight into leadership, the mosaic is far from complete. During the past 15 years, several new theories of leadership have emerged; among them are leader-member exchange theory, implicit leadership theory, neocharismatic theory, value-based theory of leadership, and visionary leadership, 111  each of which over time will add to our bank of knowledge about leaders and the leadership process.

Leaders of the 21st-century organization have a monumental challenge awaiting them and a wealth of self-enriching and fulfilling opportunities. The challenge and rewards awaiting effective leaders are awesome!

  • What is the role of leadership in the 21st century?

A social (interpersonal) influence relationship between two or more persons who depend on each other to attain certain mutual goals in a group situation.

designated leader

The person placed in the leadership position by forces outside the group.

emergent leader

The person who becomes a group’s leader by virtue of processes and dynamics internal to the group.

formal leader

That individual who is recognized by those outside the group as the official leader of the group.

informal leader

That individual whom members of the group acknowledge as their leader.

great man theory of leadership

The belief that some people are born to be leaders and others are not.

consideration

A “relationship-oriented” leader behavior that is supportive, friendly, and focused on personal needs and interpersonal relationships.

initiating structure

A “task-oriented” leader behavior that is focused on goal attainment, organizing and scheduling work, solving problems, and maintaining work processes.

contingency theory of leadership

A theory advanced by Dr. Fred E. Fiedler that suggests that different leadership styles are effective as a function of the favorableness of the leadership situation least preferred.

Least-preferred coworker (LPC)

The person with whom the leader least likes to work.

path-goal theory of leadership

A theory that posits that leadership is path- and goal-oriented, suggesting that different leadership styles are effective as a function of the task confronting the group.

A special personal magnetic charm or appeal that arouses loyalty and enthusiasm in a leader-follower relationship.

charismatic leader

A person who possesses legitimate power that arises from “exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character.”

transformational leader

A leader who moves and changes things “in a big way” by inspiring others to perform the extraordinary.

visionary leader

A leader who influences others through an emotional and/or intellectual attraction to the leader’s dreams of what “can be.”

Summary of Learning Outcomes

13.1 The Nature of Leadership

Leadership is a primary vehicle for fulfilling the directing function of management. Because of its importance, theorists, researchers, and practitioners have devoted a tremendous amount of attention and energy to unlocking the secrets of effective leadership. They have kept at this search for perhaps a greater period of time than for any other single issue related to management.

13.2 The Leadership Process

Organizations typically have both formal and informal leaders. Their leadership is effective for virtually identical reasons. Leadership and management are not the same. Although effective leadership is a necessary part of effective management, the overall management role is much larger than leadership alone. Managers plan, organize, direct, and control. As leaders, they are engaged primarily in the directing function.

13.3 Leader Emergence

There are many diverse perspectives on leadership. Some managers treat leadership primarily as an exercise of power. Others believe that a particular belief and attitude structure makes for effective leaders. Still others believe it is possible to identify a collection of leader traits that produces a leader who should be universally effective in any leadership situation. Even today, many believe that a profile of behaviors can universally guarantee successful leadership. Unfortunately, such simple solutions fall short of the reality.

13.4 The Trait Approach to Leadership

13.5 Behavioral Approaches to Leadership

It is clear that effective leaders are endowed with the “right stuff,” yet this “stuff” is only a precondition to effective leadership. Leaders need to connect with their followers and bring the right configuration of knowledge, skills, ability, vision, and strategy to the situational demands confronting the group.

13.6 Situational (Contingency) Approaches to Leadership

We now know that there is no one best way to be an effective leader in all circumstances. Leaders need to recognize that how they choose to lead will affect the nature of their followers’ compliance with their influence tactics, and ultimately impacts motivation, satisfaction, performance, and group effectiveness. In addition, the nature of the situation—contextual demands and characteristics of the follower—dictates the type of leadership that is likely to be effective. Fiedler focuses on leader traits and argues that the favorableness of the leadership situation dictates the type of leadership approach needed. He recommends selecting leaders to match the situation or changing the situation to match the leader. Path-goal theory focuses on leader behavior that can be adapted to the demands of a particular work environment and organizational members’ characteristics. Path-goal theorists believe both that leaders can be matched with the situation and that the situation can be changed to match leaders. Together, these theories make clear that leadership is effective when the characteristics and behavior of the leader match the demands of the situation.

13.7 Substitutes for and Neutralizers of Leadership

  • What does the concept of “substitute for leadership” mean?

Characteristics of followers, tasks, and organizations can substitute for or neutralize many leader behaviors. Leaders must remain aware of these factors, no matter which perspective on leadership they adopt. Such awareness allows managers to use substitutes for, and neutralizers of, leadership to their benefit, rather than be stymied by their presence.

13.8 Transformational, Visionary, and Charismatic Leadership

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in key leader traits and behaviors. As organizations face increasing amounts of chaos in their external environments, searches for “the right leader” who can bring about major organizational transformations has intensified. This search once again focuses our attention on a set of “key” motives, knowledge, skills, and personality attributes. Emerging from this search has been the identification of the charismatic and transformational leader.

13.9 Leadership Needs in the 21st Century

Leadership in the high-involvement organization differs dramatically from that in the traditional and control-oriented organization. Leaders external to the team have as one of their primary roles empowering group members and the teams themselves to self-lead and self-manage. Leaders internal to the team are peers; they work alongside and simultaneously facilitate planning, organizing, directing, controlling, and the execution of the team’s work.

Although we know a great deal about the determinants of effective leadership, we have much to learn. Each theory presented in this chapter is put into practice by managers every day. None provides the complete answer to what makes leaders effective, but each has something important to offer.

Finally, our understanding of leadership has many shortcomings and limitations. The existing literature is largely based on observations from a Western industrialized context. The extent to which our theories of leadership are bound by our culture, limiting generalization to other cultures, is largely unknown. Cross-cultural leadership research will no doubt intensify as the global economy becomes an ever more dominant force in the world.

Chapter Review Questions

  • Define leadership and distinguish between leadership and management.
  • Discuss the processes associated with people coming to positions of leadership.
  • Discuss the different forms of power available to leaders and the effects associated with each.
  • It has been observed that effective leaders have the “right stuff.” What traits are commonly associated with leader emergence and effective leaders?
  • Both the Ohio State University and University of Michigan leadership studies identified central leader behaviors. What are these behaviors, and how are they different from one another?
  • Blake and Mouton’s work with the Leadership Grid® identified several leadership types. What are they, and how does this leadership model look from the perspective of situation theories of leadership?
  • Identify and describe the three situational variables presented in Fiedler’s contingency theory of leadership.
  • What are the four leadership behaviors in the path-goal theory of leadership?
  • Discuss the differences between the internal and external leadership roles surrounding self-managed work teams.
  • What are substitutes for leadership? What are neutralizers? Give an example of each.
  • What are the distinguishing features of the transformational and the charismatic leader

Group Skills Application Exercises

  • Identify a charismatic leader and a leader with little charisma. What are the traits and skills that allow them to succeed in their roles? How can you incorporate the traits that allow them to be successful in their roles into the skills you will need to have in a leadership position?
  • You have just taken a leadership position where 40 percent of the workforce telecommutes. You want to encourage teamwork and want to ensure that telecommuting is not hurting teamwork. What is your plan to discover how things are working and how to communicate your desire to have effective teamwork?
  • You are at a meeting, and during the meeting someone on the team addresses their manager and points out a crucial mistake that could doom the project. The person says that their manager should have caught it and because of that should resign. As a leader of the group, how would you deal with the subordinate, the manager, and communication with the entire team?

Problem Solving in Teams and Groups Copyright © 2021 by Cameron W. Piercy, Ph.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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types of teams

  | 4 min read

4 types of teams you’ll find in organisations

Chances are you’re reading this because you are part of a team. You could be in a workplace team, a sports team or maybe you’re just getting started in management and want to understand the different types of teams. Whatever reason you’re here, we’re glad you snuck over to this side of the internet.

By definition, a team is a group of individuals who collaborate on related tasks to achieve a common goal . Whether it’s reaching a sales target, reducing safety incidences or reaching a team goal, collaboration and teamwork are essential. Teams generally have a list of set activities to take part in that can define their team in relation to the organisation – think ‘design team’, ‘sales team’ and ‘operations team’.

Learning about how different teams operate is useful for just about everyone. Science shows us that social interaction and teamwork contributed to our evolutio n as well as the size of our human brains. Isn’t that fascinating?

Read on to find out more about the different types of teams you’ll come across throughout your career and your life.

4 Different Types of Teams

#1: functional teams.

Functional teams are permanent and include members of the same department with different responsibilities. A manager is responsible for everything and everyone reports to them. This is the typical top-down management approach that you’ll see in most organisations. Across all organisational teams, it’s important to prioritise workplace culture; the foundations of which are communication and trust.

To take your functional team to the next level, consider running a program in-house to improve communication by giving your team the tools to give feedback without causing offense. Additionally, it may be worthwhile getting clear on each individual teams’ goals, identity and preferred support methods to boost productivity and individual employee engagement.

Diagram of functional team by Pragmatic Thinking

#2: Cross-Functional Teams

Cross-functional teams are made up of individuals from various departments. These teams tackle specific tasks that require different inputs and expertise. This can happen when various teams need to work on a project together to get the best outcome. This can be a difficult dynamic to navigate if teams have been operating in a ‘silo’ approach up until the point of collaboration. It’s crucial that the different personalities and perspectives are embraced, and that everyone in the cross-functional team are working to their strengths .

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

#3: Self-Managed Teams

Generally, individuals in self-managed teams are employees of the same organisation who work together. Even though they may have a wide array of objectives, their aim is to reach a common goal. They operate without managers and are relatively autonomous, sharing responsibility and leadership. High-performing teams can often fall into this category.

People working in startups or small businesses may also find themselves in this type of team dynamic. It can be difficult for people who have worked in other types of teams for most of their career to adjust to this way of working, so there will likely be an adjustment period of sorts. It’s crucial that self-managed teams know how to deliver feedback and have tough conversations with tact. Without high levels of communication, trust, autonomy and mutual respect, self-managed teams will find it difficult to thrive.

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

#4: Virtual Teams

Virtual teams are made up of individuals who work in different physical locations and who use technology and collaboration tools to achieve a common goal.

With more employees looking for work from home opportunities, virtual teams will become much more common in the future of work . You may even have a few remote team members in your organisation right now who need to collaborate within a functional or cross-functional team.

It’s important for virtual team members to be involved from a cultural perspective within your organisation. Having face to face video calls and giving your team members the opportunity to connect on a personal relationship level will help to improve rapport and moral. We’ve already shared a bunch of info on creating a strong remote team culture , so give that a look when you have a moment.

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

Did you find this article useful? Be sure to share it with a fellow manager directly or better yet, give it a share on LinkedIn.

If you’d like to explore the topic of team dynamics further, we’d recommend taking a look at our article on how to turn your dysfunctional team into an effective team , it’s a real good read.

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Pragmatic Thinking

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What is locus of control : Psychology concepts for the workplace

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The Art of Mentoring

Work Teams in Organizational Behavior

Concept of work teams .

Teams are getting popular in modern organizations. More and more organizations are restructuring themselves around teams to better utilize employee talents.

Work group and work teams are not the same thing. The following figure shows the comparing Work group and work teams:

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

A work group is a group that interacts primarily to share information and make decisions to help each member perform. Its performance is summation of what its members perform as individuals.

A   work team is a cooperative group whose individual efforts result in positive synergy through coordinated efforts.

Its performance is greater than the summation of what its members perform as individuals. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Types of Work Teams

The work teams can be of the following types:

  • Problem-solving teams
  • Self-managed teams
  • Cross-functional teams
  • Virtual teams

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

1. Problem-solving teams:

These teams discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency and the work environment. They consist of 8 to 10 members from the same department. The team meets for a few hours each week.

  • Quality circle is an example of problem-solving team which is concerned with solving problems related to quality, efficiency and safety at work place.
  • Problem-solving teams share ideas and offer suggestions. However, they lack authority to make and implement decisions.

2. Self-managed work teams:

They are autonomous teams who take on many of the responsibilities of their former supervisors. They solve problems, implement solutions and take full responsibility for outcomes. They are empowered.

  • Typically, Self-managed teams are group of 10 to 15 employees who perform related or interdependent jobs. They select their own members and evaluate each other’s performance. The following figure shows the Self-managed work teams:

The responsibilities self-managed work teams take on are:

  • Planning and scheduling of team work
  • Assigning tasks to members
  • Collective control over the pace of work through performance evaluation and quality control.
  • Making operating decisions
  • Taking corrective actions to solve problems
  • Training of group members for multi-skilling.

3. Cross-functional teams:

These teams are made up of employees of the same hierarchical level, but from different work areas, who came together to accomplish a specific task. The membership cuts across departments and functions. Members are experts in various specialties.

  • Committee and task force are examples of cross-functional teams.
  • Cross-functional teams are effective to:
  • Coordinate complex projects
  • Exchange information
  • Develop new ideas and solve problems

However, these teams take time to build trust and team work. Members need to learn to work with diversity and complexity.

  • Effectiveness of cross-functional team depends on:
  • Establishment of clear and specific goals
  • Careful selection and appraisal of members
  • Equity in rewarding efforts of members

4. Virtual teams:

These teams use information technology and computers to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal. Members collaborate on-line through communication links such as:

  • Wide area networks (WAN)
  • Video conferencing
  • E-mail, Voice-mail, etc.

Virtual teams lack face-to-face communication. They have limited social interaction. But they overcome time and space constraints. They allow people to work together who are miles apart.

Building Effective Work Teams (Factors in Managing Teams)

Effectiveness is doing the right thing. It is concerned with attaining goals. The components needed for building effective work teams are:

  • Work Design
  • Composition

problem solving teams in organizational behavior

1. Work Design:

The following characteristics of work design help build effective teams:

  • Autonomy: Responsibility for work and freedom in doing work to the team.
  • Skill variety: Opportunity for use of different skills and abilities by the team.
  • Task identity: Doing the whole piece of work by the team.
  • Task significance: Doing work should be worthwhile to the team.

Team should work together with collective responsibility to complete significant tasks.

2.  Team Composition:

The following variables in team composition help build effective teams:

  • Ability: Variety in abilities of team members. The members should have right technical, decision making and interpersonal skills.
  • Personality: Team members should have traits, such as extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience.
  • Roles: Team members should have diversity to fulfill various roles.
  • Size: The size of the team should be neither too small and nor too big. Between 6 to 10 members is a good number.
  • Flexibility: The team members should be adaptable to each other’s tasks.
  • Member Preference: Team members should have preference for team work.

3. Context:

The following contextual factors help build effective teams:

  • Adequate Resources: The members should have access to adequate resources outside the team. Management must support teams.
  • Leadership: Team members should agree on who is to do what. Leadership roles are shared.
  • Evaluation and Reward: Team members should be individually and collectively accountable for performance. Reward should be based on team performance.

4. Process:

The following process variables help build effective teams:

  • Common purpose: It provides direction and guidance. It should be accepted by the team. It is a broad vision.
  • Specific Goals: The purpose should be translated into specific goals. They help teams maintain focus on getting results. Goals should be specific, measurable, realistic, challenging and time bound.
  • Team Efficacy: Team should believe in success. Members should have collective confidence in themselves. Training should be provided.
  • Conflict: Functional conflict should be encouraged to improve team effectiveness.
  • Social Loafing: Teams should discourage the tendency of social loafing. There should be accountability at both the individual and team levels.

Group Decision Making

Decisions are taken either by an individual or by a group. When a decision is taken by an individual in the organization, it is known as individual decision. Group decision refers to the decisions which are taken by a group of organizational members.

There are many situations which suddenly come up as ill-structured problems which are unlikely to be solved by a single individual.

In such situation, the manager may assign the problem to a group of experts for recommendations. It is often argued that group can make higher quality decisions than individuals.

Issues in Managing Work Teams

The key issues in managing work teams are:

1. Issue of Total Quality Management (TQM) in Teams:

The issue is how to make the work teams effective for total quality management.

TQM is continuously improving quality through everyone’s commitment and involvement to satisfy customers. Quality is everyone’s responsibility. TQM requires encouragement to employees by management for quality improvements. Work teams are the vehicles for improving quality.

2. Issue of Workforce Diversity in Teams:

The issues are:

  • How to manage diversity in work team?
  • How to develop cohesiveness in work team?
  • How to minimize conflicts?
  • How to turn individuals into team players?

Work teams tend to be high in diversity. Such teams take time to develop cohesiveness.

3. Issue of Mature Teams:

The issue is how to reinvigorate mature teams.

The effectiveness of work team can diminish over time. Maturity can retard team creativity. Mature teams suffer from group think. Members assume that they know what everyone is thinking.

4. Issue of Effectiveness of Teams:

The issue is how to increase and maintain team effectiveness in terms of:

  • Common goals and norms: For the team
  • Work design: Autonomy, skill variety, task identity and task significance.
  • Team composition: Team members should be cooperating, coordinating, communicating, comforting and conflict resolving (5Cs).
  • Team context: Team leadership and rewards.
  • Team process: Norms, cohesion, trust and team development.

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HBR IdeaCast podcast series

Dysfunctional Leadership Teams — and How to Fix Them

A conversation with researchers Thomas Keil and Marianna Zangrillo about the dynamics at the top of organizations.

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CEOs get a ton of credit or blame for a company’s performance. But the entire leadership team is vital to success, and any dysfunction is often overlooked. Sometimes the CEOs leading them don’t even see that they’re not working. Thomas Keil, management professor at the University of Zurich, and Marianna Zangrillo, a partner at The Next Advisors, have interviewed more than 100 CEOs and senior executives. Their research identifies three main types of failing leadership teams:  shark tanks ,  petting zoos , and  mediocracies . And they identify the pitfalls of each pattern and how to turn those teams around. Keil and Zangrillo wrote the HBR article “ Why Leadership Teams Fail .”

CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch.

Break any company down and at the core is the team, people working together with the team manager to achieve outcomes. A high performing team can drive success and inspire others. A dysfunctional one can stack up losses, run up costs, drain morale, and send team members running away. That dynamic is strongest at the top in the leadership team of the organization. When that team is dysfunctional, it puts an immensely disproportionate drag on strategy execution and organizational success.

Today’s guests have studied this and find that when the leadership team is dysfunctional, it’s usually in one of three ways and they have advice for changing those common types. Our guests today are Thomas Keil, Management Professor at the University of Zurich and Mariana Zangrillo, a partner at the Next Advisors. They wrote the HBR article, Why Leadership Teams Fail, and they join me now. Thomas and Mariana, thanks for joining me.

THOMAS KEIL: Thanks for having us.

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO:

Thank you for having us.

CURT NICKISCH: I guess we should start by defining exactly what you studied. You spoke to people in leadership teams.

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO: That’s correct. So we know that basically the health of the leadership team is quite crucial and very often is underestimated. And to learn about what kind of problems might affect these teams, we have interviewed more than 100 CEOs and senior executives while pursuing a multi-year research program of about 10 years. And in our study, while of course there are differences across different companies and situations, we noticed that leadership teams tend to exhibit one or three main patterns of dysfunction.

The first being very competitive, lot of infighting and considerable political maneuvering. We do know that some competition is necessary, but when that gets taken to the extreme, problems basically start. The second pattern we observed is the one of extreme conflict avoidance where team members just pursue collaboration, don’t challenge anymore each other because there is also a guarantee of not being challenged back. And then the third pattern that we notice is too much complacency, lack of competence, and fundamentally, focus on past performance, which is probably one of the most complicated of the patterns that we identified.

CURT NICKISCH: I’m curious how common this is to have a leadership team that is dysfunctional.

THOMAS KEIL: Initially when we started our study, we were not really looking at failing leadership teams. But as we spoke with people and as they often talked in more detail and often also asking to stay anonymous, they opened up that they had a lot of issues with the leadership team and it was surprisingly common in fact. You don’t often hear about that. You don’t often read about that because of course we all try to project a picture of success and of a strong team. But when you really go beyond that surface, it is very common in the top leadership teams. And it is very interesting that in some instances, CEOs were not really aware of the dysfunctions in their team, that they thought they had a well-working team. And when we spoke with some of the executives reporting to them, they portrayed a very different picture.

CURT NICKISCH: It sounds like the strength of a leadership team can make or break the job of the CEO, and they’re also the person who probably has the most control over shaping that team. But if they’re not aware of it themselves, what can they do to assess the effectiveness of their own team?

THOMAS KEIL: In our view, one of the first things is to watch out very carefully for telltale signals for each of these dysfunctions that we identified. There are signs, sometimes small signs that you need to be very carefully attuned to where you have to watch out very carefully, listen carefully what people say, what different people say. Those often signal that there is a problem well before it deteriorates to the extent that it really drives down the performance.

For instance, if people are starting to be too emotional when you have shouting matches in the meetings or when people are decidedly not communicating in the meeting, but try to take you aside afterwards, these are very strong signals that your team is starting to become too political.

If you have the other extreme that you have no emotion in the team, people don’t challenge each other. They rather play to each other’s proposals. That’s a sign that you’re lacking the level of ambition. You’re lacking the level of energy. You are ending up in what we call a petting zoo.

Or if people are fundamentally backward oriented, have no ideas, then you don’t have the right caliber in your team and you are in a mediocracy. So it’s really about monitoring very clearly what’s going on both inside the meetings but also outside of the meeting to get a sense of where your team is at.

CURT NICKISCH: Often CEOs will inherit that team. They may bring certain people in, they’re not always building it from scratch. Is part of the problem just the fact that it could take a long time to actually switch the team over or have the people in place that you think are optimal?

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO: We see a lot of differences depending also on the current situation that the CEO find. But we do see that in situations like a shark tank, it is often just one or two team members, which may be the problem. And if the CEO pays attention to how the individuals behave, they may quickly identify the one who might be the problem, have conversations with him and her. And if the person can get back on track and work with the rest of the team, it may even be possible that no change is needed. But if the person is really not adjusting the behaviors and keeps being self-serving, then a different situation is at hand and more changes are needed. The other extreme we typically see instead in the third type of dysfunction. So when we are looking at a team where we have a mediocracy, then basically we see the situation where the CEO may have to carry out many more changes.

CURT NICKISCH: There’s a famous story of Howard Schultz, the Starbucks CEO, going to Steve Jobs and complaining about his team. And apparently Steve Jobs said fire everybody and Schultz didn’t. But he said within a year, everybody had left anyway. So sometimes these are, do you want the pain now or do you want the pain later?

THOMAS KEIL: And we have a number of instances where we actually had CEOs that changed anything from 80% to a hundred percent of the team simply because they needed to transform the organization so radically that this wasn’t possible with the existing team.

CURT NICKISCH: So it sounds like a lot of judgment calls here to turn their teams into better performing ones. Let’s spend a little bit of time on each of these three main types and how to navigate those. The shark tank analogy is pretty vivid. This is one where there is a lot of in-fighting, whether outright or clandestine. How does this dynamic come about and what influence does the CEO have on that?

THOMAS KEIL: In the shark tank, you really have a competition taken to the extreme. When you start to say, “Okay, winning is more important than paying fair.” Then what you find is that where you would need cooperation, it no longer happens. And that is where the organization becomes political, where people only drive their own agenda, and no longer the agenda of the company. And that’s really a place where you need a very strong leader that actually reins in these behaviors, that sets limits very clearly, that sets a very clear direction.

Defines where competition is acceptable, defines what behaviors are acceptable, and also very clearly shuts down when behaviors escalate into a political domain, which is unfortunately even may mean that you have to lose a high performer because in a shark tank, you often have many high performers, but when you perform at the expense of the organization, it’s no longer in the interest of the organization. And you may have to in the short run, accept that you are losing a high performing individual, but then the team as a whole becomes stronger.

CURT NICKISCH: Well, let’s get to maybe the opposite problem, which is the petting zoo. What does that look like in practice at an organization?

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO: Well, when we have petting zoo, basically we have-

CURT NICKISCH: I love that name by the way. It’s great

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO: When we have the petting zoo, we have executives which tend to be extremely collaborative. Sometimes, they’ve been with organization for a very long time, tend to support each other to protect each other. Disagreement doesn’t happen. And in the executive meetings, when one executive speaks, everybody else nods and that is a clear sign the team is not basically doing their job because they are not constructively criticizing each other, pushing a little bit the boundaries, and ultimately breaking or going against the nature of what leadership teams really need to do.

We had one case where a CEO told us people just did not want to talk openly. They all were supporting each other, were not speaking up, conversations were not happening. And then he basically decided to shift the focus of executive meetings from questions of policy and procedures to interpretation and purpose and principles.

And during the various meeting, he carefully followed up on how much discussion was happening, who was speaking, who was raising issues and challenging colleagues, and who was simply nodding. And then from there, it was basically testing the temperature to see how well the team was functioning. So more debate is always necessary in these cases and that’s the CEO’s job to try to push each of the executives to participate more actively to the conversation, contribute with new perspectives to come to more optimal outcome.

CURT NICKISCH: Some people will hear that description of that team and think it’s maybe okay. It might be calming to the rest of the organization too to see there’s no apparent disagreement at the top. Why is the petting zoo so damaging?

THOMAS KEIL: What the petting zoo fundamentally misses is the level of ambition and the level of challenging each other that is needed, that people get out of their comfort zone. If we want to drive performance in a modern organization, we need to step out of the comfort zone and we need to work together on creating novel solutions. But if I’m just accepting my peers’ solutions, that’s just not happening. So we are essentially taking it too easy.

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO: The petting zoo sometime is the outcome of many years working together. So we see teams which are work together for 5, 10, 15 years, and whoever knew was brought in was someone who had to be fitting into that ways of working and not really the type of person who would challenge. And as we know very well, when there is no change, no novelty, no diversity, no new thinking, then it’s very difficult to make progress. So they favor stability and calmness over progress, which sometime can be also a choice, but certainly the overall performance and profitability in the long run tends to suffer.

THOMAS KEIL: And it may in fact be a sign of a lack of trust in the team. Because to really engage each other constructively, critically, you do need to trust that people will not attack you on the person, that it’s about the issues. It’s about the idea. It’s about building on each other. And when that trust isn’t there, you often find people acting nicely because it feels safe. But fundamentally, not trusting that any debate is actually meant to help me rather than to hurt my position in the organization.

CURT NICKISCH: Can a CEO in that petting zoo then replace one or two people? Can they simply try to change the culture of the team by challenging them more, by changing the budgets more so that there’s more competition over new projects? Any other tactics that a CEO can do in that situation?

THOMAS KEIL: In our view, it often depends on what is the underlying root cause of this behavior. If it’s a matter of trust, then you need to start with building the trust in the team. If it’s a matter of some degree of complacency in the team, then you need to start to change the behavior by processes, by for instance, forcing numbers onto the table by debating numbers. If it is a matter of people having been too long in a role, then one of the things a CEO can do is for instance also switching around roles so that nobody feels they are the absolute expert in their domain, and therefore you get some more of this challenging into the team.

CURT NICKISCH: Let me ask about the mediocracy. It sounds like this is a team where you could have people who are appropriately competitive, who are appropriately collaborative, but just not excellent in their work and what they’re doing. Is that the issue?

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO: Well, in the mediocracy, we typically find leaders that are ill-suited for the roles and they’re not up to the task. And these are the situations where we have seen CEOs carrying out the highest amount of executive changes. In this situation, we typically find teams where some people are competing excessively, some people are collaborating excessively, they can be different groups which are created, and they’re not really working with each other. So we have seen a number of CEOs which had basically to significantly remake the team, if not entirely. Typically, much more than 50% gets changed in these situations.

CURT NICKISCH: I’m just going to underline something that you said that these teams, they can look almost like shark tanks. They can also look like petting zoos or they can look like good teams, but they’re just still made up of people who aren’t up to the task.

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO: It is true, but actually in the mediocracy, what we actually see is people which are not fundamentally capable or suitable for the job. So it’s not anymore an interpersonal issue the way people deal with each other, but there is an objective issues with the capability and the fit of the individual or many individuals within that organization. And that’s probably what makes the role of the CEOs most difficult in these cases because it’s not anymore enough to address the behaviors, but you fundamentally have an issue also with the individual, many individuals independently of how they interact with each other.

CURT NICKISCH: What else can you do to right the ship in this case?

THOMAS KEIL: Changing people is always just the first step. You need to be very careful, of course, in this case with the selection of people so that you get then the right mix of skills. And again, the ability to compete, collaborate as is needed for the mandate of the CEO. But then also you need to very clearly define how you’re going to run this team. So because you’re essentially rebuilding the team, you really need to start from thinking about what is your purpose? What is your mandate as a CEO? How do you align a team around that? What kind of people will serve that best? What are the kind of mixes of responsibilities and where do you then design collaboration, competition around that? So it is really in the end more or less a complete rebuild of the top team.

CURT NICKISCH: Where do CEOs most often go wrong or what are the biggest stumbling blocks for CEOs when they’re trying to change these teams into more functional ones?

THOMAS KEIL: We see two important stumbling blocks. The first one, and you mentioned that already yourself earlier, is to actually recognize what are the issues in your team, because the team members will interact differently with the CEO than they interact as a team. Then they interact with each other when the CEO is not in the room. So it’s not always easy for a CEO to really understand what dynamic is going on. But the next, and even if you have recognized and you want to institute change, is the fact that the CEO needs to be very controlled in instituting the change. How the CEO acts himself or herself as a leader, how he or she interacts with the individual team members, interacts in those meetings is such an important driver. And often CEOs talk one game and then themselves behave differently, and that completely derails any kind of change that they may try to institute.

CURT NICKISCH: You study these teams, you advise these teams. I’m curious if you can just share some additional general advice for CEOs and leadership teams. How can they become more effective?

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO: Well, this basically goes back to the steps to high-performing teams. Very often is the lack of clarity, whether strategic, operational or behavioral, which causes this leadership team dysfunction. So if the CEOs go back to developing a clear vision and purpose so that they articulate a compelling vision, then we always tell the next step would be to focus on alignment. The team members have to have skills and behaviors that align with the vision and the purpose of the CEO and the organization, and on top of that, clearly need to have backgrounds, experiences, and strengths that will contribute to organizational performance.

It is very important to outline responsibilities as clearly as possible, defining goals and roles, and also how the decision making will happen, and finally, establish behavioral norms. If it is clear what are the norms that are expected from the team and the team members are encouraged through coaching and role modeling, then it is more likely that the organization will function in the way the CEO basically envisions that to drive ultimate performance.

CURT NICKISCH: I bet a lot of people listening to this episode, if they’re not in leadership teams too, they’re going to be wondering about their own and wondering about how well they perform, and they probably just don’t have enough insight into that. It’s the CEO, the manager of that team who has the best idea of whether or not an outwardly effective team is actually effective.

THOMAS KEIL: Let me challenge what you just said a little bit. I think very often the people in the teams have a very clear understanding what is working and what is not working, and I think teams also can take charge of changing this and of engaging as a group in change. It’s not only top down. We believe that there is a very important role for the executives in a top leadership team or then for team members to create the type of environment that the team as a whole can perform.

CURT NICKISCH: That’s really interesting. You don’t have to wait for the CEO to try to make a positive change and try to build trust.

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO: It’s very important that every individual takes ownership of own behavior, own future, and also organizational success. If everybody thinks that it’s only the CEO or the leader job to do the correct things, then the likelihood that the organization takes a good direction is much smaller. And if we are letting things happen to us or to our organization, then basically we are in the hand of fate and not in the hand of our competence.

CURT NICKISCH: Thomas and Mariana, thank you for coming on the show to talk about this.

MARIANNA ZANGRILLO: Thank you very much for having us.

THOMAS KEIL: It’s been a real pleasure.

CURT NICKISCH: That’s Thomas Keil, Management Professor at the University of Zurich and Mariana Zangrillo, a partner at the Next Advisors. They wrote the HBR article, Why Leadership Teams Fail.

And we have nearly 1000 episodes plus more podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at HBR.org/podcasts or search HBR in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Thanks to our team, Senior Producer Mary Dooe, Associate Producer Hannah Bates, Audio Product Manager Ian Fox, and Senior Production Specialist Rob Eckhardt. Thank you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back on Tuesday with our next episode. I’m Curt Nickisch.

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Definition

Problem-solving team

Problem-solving team, which is a team from the same department or functional area that’s involved in efforts to improve work activities or to solve specific problems. Members share ideas or offer suggestions on how work processes and methods can be improved.

Problem-solving team is the temporary combination of workers who gather to solve a specific problem and then disband.

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  • Cross-functional teams Cross-functional teams, which are work teams composed of individuals from...

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IMAGES

  1. 25 Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Activities for Your Team to Master

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  4. Lean Coach: Problem Solving Coaching / Avoiding Jumping to Solutions

  5. What are types of Teams-Part-1: Problem-Solving & Self-Managed Work Teams, Cross-Functional Teams

  6. What is a problem solving team?

COMMENTS

  1. The Two Traits of the Best Problem-Solving Teams

    The Two Traits of the Best Problem-Solving Teams. by. Alison Reynolds. and. David Lewis. April 02, 2018. hbr staff/the new york public library. Summary. An analysis of 150 senior teams showed that ...

  2. Complex Problem Solving in Teams: The Impact of Collective Orientation

    Introduction. Complex problems in organizational contexts are seldom solved by individuals. Generally, interdependently working teams of experts deal with complex problems (Fiore et al., 2010), which are characterized by element interactivity/ interconnectedness, dynamic developments, non-transparency and multiple, and/or conflicting goals (Dörner et al., 1983; Brehmer, 1992; Funke, 1995).

  3. Six Steps to Effective Problem Solving Within Organizations

    Problem Definition . Identify problems through problem formulation and questioning. The key is asking the right questions to discover root causes. Brainstorming . During this process, assumptions are uncovered and underlying problems are further revealed. Also, this is an opportunity to collect and analyze data. Selection.

  4. Is Your Team Solving Problems, or Just Identifying Them?

    Some teams are really good at identifying problems. When colleagues propose new ideas, team members readily ask tough questions and point out risks. But they ought to be providing constructive ...

  5. How to Solve Problems

    How to Solve Problems. To bring the best ideas forward, teams must build psychological safety. by. Laura Amico. October 29, 2021. HBR Staff/EschCollection/Getty Images. Teams today aren't just ...

  6. PDF The Two Traits of the Best Problem-Solving Teams

    The Two Traits of the Best Problem-Solving Teams. by Alison Reynolds and David Lewis. APRIL 02, 2018. hbr staff/the new york public library. Imagine you are a fly on the wall in a corporate training center where a management team of 12 is participating in a session on executing strategy. The team is midway through attempting to solve a new ...

  7. Problem Solving Teams: Creating resilient organisations through

    This is where Problem Solving Teams come into play. Problem Solving Teams are temporary structures that bring together leaders and team members from across the organization to focus on solving a specific problem. The benefits are many, including not just a solved problem, but also a more resilient organization, a stronger social network and a ...

  8. Why Problem-Solving Skills Are Essential for Leaders

    4 Problem-Solving Skills All Leaders Need. 1. Problem Framing. One key skill for any leader is framing problems in a way that makes sense for their organization. Problem framing is defined in Design Thinking and Innovation as determining the scope, context, and perspective of the problem you're trying to solve.

  9. (PDF) Problem-Solving Behaviours, Organisational Forms and the

    Organizational capabilities can be induced by social interaction as a standard problem-solving method (Cyert & March, 1963, as cited in Schreyögg & Kliesch-Eberl, 2007, with the latter defined as ...

  10. Problem Solving Strategies for the Workplace [2024] • Asana

    4 steps to better problem solving. While it might be tempting to dive into a problem head first, take the time to move step by step. Here's how you can effectively break down the problem-solving process with your team: 1. Identify the problem that needs to be solved. One of the easiest ways to identify a problem is to ask questions.

  11. Types of Teams

    Coordination and cooperation with other teams and individuals impacted by their decisions. Internal leadership, based on facilitation. This means that a rotating leader focuses on freeing the team from obstacles as they do their work. Self-managed teams require a change in structure on behalf of the organization and a high level of commitment ...

  12. 7.3 Using Teams to Enhance Motivation and Performance

    The evolution of the team concept in organizations can be seen in three basic types of work teams: problem-solving, self-managed, and cross-functional. Problem-solving teams are typically made up of employees from the same department or area of expertise and from the same level of the organizational hierarchy. They meet on a regular basis to ...

  13. Organizational culture

    Finally, organizational culture is an effective control mechanism for dictating employee behavior. Culture is in fact a more powerful way of controlling and managing employee behaviors than organizational rules and regulations. Norms are more powerful than rules. When problems are unique, rules tend to be less helpful.

  14. 5 Different Types of Teams & Their Role in the Organization

    Cross-functional teams may have difficulties trying to provide quality and meet standards since they have to deal with different processes and tools. 3. Self-managed teams. A self-managed team is a group of employees who work collaboratively and take full responsibility for both work processes and the final result.

  15. What is a Team? Types of Teams & Processes

    A team is defined as a group of people who perform interdependent tasks to work toward accomplishing a common mission or specific objective. Some teams have a limited life: for example, a design team developing a new product, or a continuous process improvement team organized to solve a particular problem. Others are ongoing, such as a ...

  16. 10.5 Team Diversity

    Additional research on diversity has shown that diverse teams are better at decision-making and problem-solving because they tend to focus more on facts, per the Rock and Grant article. 10 A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that people from diverse backgrounds "might actually alter the behavior of a group's social majority in ways that lead to ...

  17. Problem Solving in Organizations: Skills, Steps & Strategies

    Skills. There are three main skills that good problem solvers have: Listening. Evaluating. Communicating. Listening is more than just sound waves hitting your eardrum; it is more about gaining a ...

  18. Working in Diverse Teams

    22. Working in Diverse Teams. Decision-making and problem-solving can be much more dynamic and successful when performed in a diverse team environment. The multiple diverse perspectives can enhance both the understanding of the problem and the quality of the solution. Yet, working in diverse teams can be challenging given different identities ...

  19. Leadership

    In addition, effective leadership often necessitates the ability to manage—to set goals; plan, devise, and implement strategy; make decisions and solve problems; and organize and control. For our purposes, the two sets of concepts can be contrasted in several ways. First, we define the two concepts differently.

  20. 4 types of teams you'll find in organisations

    Teams generally have a list of set activities to take part in that can define their team in relation to the organisation - think 'design team', 'sales team' and 'operations team'. Learning about how different teams operate is useful for just about everyone. Science shows us that social interaction and. Read on to find out more ...

  21. Work Teams in Organizational Behavior

    The work teams can be of the following types: Problem-solving teams; Self-managed teams; Cross-functional teams; Virtual teams; 1. Problem-solving teams: These teams discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency and the work environment. They consist of 8 to 10 members from the same department. The team meets for a few hours each week.

  22. Organizational Behavior (OB)

    Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like The FIRO-B theory deals with ____________ in teams. (a) membership compatibilities (b) social loafing (c) dominating members (d) conformity, It is during the ____________ stage of team development that members begin to come together as a coordinated unit. (a) storming (b) norming (c) performing (d) total integration, An effective ...

  23. Dysfunctional Leadership Teams

    September 03, 2024. CEOs get a ton of credit or blame for a company's performance. But the entire leadership team is vital to success, and any dysfunction is often overlooked.

  24. Organizational Behavior and Leadership

    PRE-ASSESSMENT: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND LEADERSHIP (IBC1) (PIBC) Attempt #1 Status: Passed 1. Employees A and B work together on the same project team. When the team faces a complex problem, the team leader usually asks B to generate alternative solutions for the team to consider. Experience has shown that B is more likely to take initiative, to set ambitious goals, and to feel that the ...

  25. Problem-solving team

    Problem-solving team. Problem-solving team, which is a team from the same department or functional area that's involved in efforts to improve work activities or to solve specific problems. Members share ideas or offer suggestions on how work processes and methods can be improved. Problem-solving team is the temporary combination of workers ...