Principles of Team Effectiveness

1. Overview

• Optimum team size is approximately 4-6
• Diversity on a team increases productivity but lengthens the process
• Every team member should have clearly articulated roles
• Norms help establish and control team members’ behaviors

2. Diversity

• Diversity among team members fortifies the team but extends the process of getting work done
• Types of diversity to consider:
  
  

  Age	Language
  Attitudes	Learning styles
  Cognitive aptitude	Motivation
  Critical thinking ability	Opinion
  Communication ability	Problem-solving ability
  Conflict resolution ability	Race
  Education	Religion
  Ethnicity	Socio-economic status
  Experience	Values
  Gender

  
  

3. Team Norms

• Norms are rules that have some amount of agreement and are enforced through social sanctions
• Norms define appropriate behaviors
• Norms establish mutual understanding and team identity
• Areas to consider for establishing team norms include:
• Attendance
• Contribution
• Courteous-conversations
• Decision-making
• Enforcement
• Handling disagreements
• Participation
• Punctuality
• Tasks-assignments
  

4. Team Size

• Small teams are typically more productive than large ones
• Teams that are too small have difficulty accomplishing tasks – not enough people to share the work
• Large teams enable shared responsibility and accountability
• Management problems on very large teams may outweigh the incremental resources additional people provide
• Tasks determine the size of the team
• Student projects teams of between 4-6 members are a good rule of thumb

5. Roles

• Every team member should have a role – this keeps members committed to the work of the team
• Roles need to be clearly defined
• Problems can result from role ambiguity
• Types of roles:
• Behavioral (e.g. contributor, coordinator, critic, evaluator)
• Social (e.g. encourager, expediter, group process observer, follower)
• Meeting (e.g. facilitator, recorder, timekeeper)