By Janet Kidd Stewart. Special to the Tribune.
Chicago Tribune
Published: Sunday, July 5, 1998
Section: 13, Page: 7
Whether you assemble auto parts or lead a company division, chances are you've been
asked to be part of a team. Not the company softball team, mind you, where you have the
choice to give up your own time to play. Instead, these are work teams, and many times
what they do doesn't look at all like fun and games.
Companies from Motorola to the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain have used work teams as they
try to squeeze optimum productivity out of their work forces. Just as with sports, there
have been winners and losers. Some have seen productivity actually decline because of
infighting and a lack of direction.
"Self-directed teams are not necessarily a good idea for all organizations,"
said Leigh Thompson, an organizational behavior professor at Northwestern University's
J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
Thompson helps lead a three-day executive management program at the school called Team
Building for Managers. One sold-out session this past spring drew about 50 professionals
to Evanston, about half of them women and all coming with at least some exposure -- good
and bad -- to the work-team concept. (Another session will be offered Nov. 8-11).
Singling out the strengths of teams was not the point of the session, Thompson said;
rather, acknowledging their weaknesses can be a key to making them work. Self-directed
teams, in which workers come up with goals and plans on their own, are popular in theory
but often don't work, she said. "They're great for innovation, but they can be
time-consuming." Other team structures, in which managers play a limited role in
shaping group directives, can be more effective. But all have potential for disaster, she
said.
"For every case of team success, there are equally dramatic failures," she
said.
Worse, women and minorities often suffer greater stereotyping in groups, Thompson said.
"The research suggests women are viewed more harshly than men," she said.
"Even people who say out loud they don't carry prejudices will revert to classic
sex-role thinking in a group dynamic. In any team situation, there is an early natural
status competition based on gender, age and race."
How to survive--even thrive--on a team? First, know why so many have failed, seminar
experts suggested. "The answer is not chemistry," Thompson said. "There are
good, scientific reasons" for the failures.
One is the human tendency to make a scapegoat. By assigning blame to a personality
within the office, it becomes easy to justify why something isn't working.
Another problem is group think. Starting with brainstorming doesn't generate ideas that
are as good as independent thinking, Thompson said. It's better to let workers think about
initial concepts independently, then use brainstorming sessions to improve on those ideas.
Realize too that you don't have to love every member of your group. Fancy corporate
retreats where workers are asked to fall backward into their co-workers' arms or climb
mountains together can have a positive personal impact, but they don't erase office-rooted
differences, Thompson said. Many problems that seem like personality conflicts are due to
structural problems with the way workers are asked to perform their jobs.
Bottom line: With the freedom a team environment provides, re-design the process used
to get certain projects done. If you constantly tussle with a co-worker about a regular
report deadline, for example, question the need for the report in the first place.
Although teams have the potential to do more than individuals, groups often are
hamstrung by slackers who pull less weight than when their work is under scrutiny alone,
Thompson notes in her book, "The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator" (Prentice
Hall, $50). If your team faces regular decision-making tasks, you also may be better off
forming early strategic voting coalitions, she said.
Finally, know what kind of team player you are, Thompson suggests. If you are
comfortably in a clique within your own department at work, don't get lulled into the idea
that such an insular group will help you weather any storm. Instead, be a
"boundary-spanner," or someone who links up with people from disparate groups.
This will help not only with your networking, it will increase the perception of you as
someone with a lot of contacts and, therefore, power. 
