Principles of Team Effectiveness

Assessment of Team Performance and Learning

1. Overview

• Assessment of individual members as well as assessment of the overall team are essential to enhancing teamwork
• Assessing teams improves goal attainment, enriches relationships, and enhances performance
• Both team performance and team learning should be assessed
• Performance assessments measure success, help correct behaviors, and motivate performance improvements
• Learning assessments enable team members to share thoughts and increase control of their learning
• Biases may prevent some team members from providing accurate assessments
  

2. Individual and Collective Evaluations

• Self-evaluations, self-monitoring, and self-regulation enable individuals to identify areas where they can improve their contributions to the team
• Peer evaluations allow team members to assess each others' strengths and weakness and collectively discuss how team performance can be improved
  

Note: If standards are not objective and confidential, team members may have challenges evaluating each other

3. Assessment of Team Learning

• In successful teams members learn from each others' thought processes
• Learning assessments enables identification of effective (or not effective) individual and group learning strategies
• Critical analysis of team members' work enables team members to increase control of their learning
• Strategies for assessing learning:
• Identify learning strategies and processes in relation to team goals
• Use questions to determine what the team members were able to do easily versus with difficulty
• Identify strategies needed to close learning gaps
• Use self-assessments to encouraging each team member to take responsibility of their learning
• Learn from assessments to improve future achievements
  

4. Benefits of Assessing Teams

• Improves goal attainment
• Strengthens commitment to common goals and priorities
• Helps team members scrutinize objectives to identify misunderstandings or thinking gaps
• Encourages leveraging of team members' differences to accomplish goals
• Enriches relationships
• Improves team's cohesiveness and morale
• Enhances communication among team members
• Increases role clarity and utilization of team member's strengths
• Reduce performance barriers and conflicts
• Enhances team performance
• Streamlines team processes
• Increases team members' confidence
• Improves quality of learning output
  

5. Assessment of Team Performance

• Successful teams measure accomplishments, identify issues, and correct internal problems
• Performance assessments ensure equitable contributions and identify areas for individual/ collective improvements
• Strategies for assessing performance:
• Generate clear and understandable team goals
• Identify examples of quality work and successful standards
• Use team discussion and reflection to compare team performance to goals
• Identify strategies needed to close  performance gaps
  

6. Team Assessment Biases

• Team members may provide positive ratings to other team members due to empathy or fear conflict (Inflation bias)
• Team members may feel obligated to return positive assessments because they received positive ratings (Reciprocity bias)
• Successful teams may attribute their success to all members of the team (Halo effect)
• Unsuccessful team may attribute their failure to selective members of the team (Scapegoating)