Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

FOSTER TEAM EFFECTIVENESS BY FULFILLING KEY LEADERSHIP FUNCTIONS
293
factor that most powerfully explains the difference between the excellent and poor teams.
Then the class reconvenes and subgroups give their reports. A large number of the explanations
offered will have something to do with the personality or style of team leaders,
which can be used to launch a discussion of the tendency of observers to over- attribute to
leaders responsibility for team outcomes.
When that discussion has run its course, students are then asked to reconsider the
examples they came up with at the beginning, this time focusing on the degree to which
critical team functions had been fulfilled (whether by the leader or in other ways) for their
“ best ” and “ worst ” teams. To prime their thinking, the following questions can be posed:
(1) Was a team appropriate for accomplishing that particular piece of work? (2) Was the
right type of team created? (3) Were the essential and enabling conditions for effectiveness
in place? (4) Did the team have access to competent coaching to help members exploit the
favorable aspects of their performance situation and overcome or circumvent obstacles
to good performance? Discussion of these matters can provide a good review of both the
functions that are most critical to team effectiveness and the variety of ways that they can
be fulfi lled by team leaders and members.
Team Diagnostic Survey ( TDS )
The TDS is an instrument that assesses the standing of work teams on the conditions
discussed in this chapter. A typical classroom project is to ask students to use the instrument
as part of an analysis of the strengths and vulnerabilities of some team whose members
are interested in learning about and improving their team.
The TDS is taken online and a graphical assessment report is also provided online. For
a detailed description of the instrument and its psychometric properties, see Wageman,
Hackman, and Lehman ( 2005 ). The TDS is freely available for educational, research, and
government use; consulting and commercial users are asked to pay a fee to support programming
and user services. The instrument can be accessed at: https://research.wjh.harvard.
edu/TDS (educational, research, and government) or at: http://www.team - diagnostics.
com (consulting and commercial).