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CHAPTER 10: LEADING TEAMS 293
Teams in Organizations

More and more companies are recognizing that the best way to meet the chal-
lenges of higher quality, faster service, and total customer satisfaction is through
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an aligned, coordinated, and committed effort by all employees, and organizing
people into teams helps meet this objective. The concept of teamwork is a funda-
mental change in the way work is organized. Consider the Ralston Foods Sparks,
Nevada, plant, which produces cereal. The plant’s 150 or so workers are orga-
nized into six operating work groups, which are in turn divided into small teams.
Many of the teams function without designated leaders and handle all issues

and problems that arise, including hiring and firing, scheduling, quality, budget
management, and disciplinary problems. The top leaders of Cirque du Soleil, in-

cluding the CEO, chief operating officer, chief fi nancial officer, and vice president
of creation, function as a team to coordinate, develop, and oversee 13 acrobatic
troupes that travel to 100 cities on four continents. And at Massachusetts Gen-
eral Hospital, the emergency trauma team performs so smoothly that the team
switches leaders seamlessly, depending on the crisis at hand. With each new emer-
gency, direction may come from a doctor, intern, nurse, or technician—whoever
is particularly experienced with the problem. 5
Yet, teams are not right for every organizational situation. Some tasks by
their very nature are better performed by individuals. In addition, organizations
frequently fail to realize the benefits of teams because they have a hard time bal-

ancing authority between leaders and teams, fail to provide adequate training or
support for teamwork, or continue to manage people as a collection of individu-
als rather than on a team level. Effective teams have leaders who consciously
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build a team identity, actively involve all members, act as coaches and facilitators
rather than bosses, and invest time and resources for team learning. 7

What Is a Team?
A team is a unit of two or more people who interact and coordinate their work T Team
eam
a unit of two or more people
to accomplish a shared goal or purpose. This defi nition has three components. a unit of two or more people
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who interact and coordinate
First, teams are made up of two or more people. Teams can be large, but most who interact and coordinate
their work to accomplish a
their work to accomplish a
have fewer than 15 people. Second, people in a team work together regularly. shared goal or purpose
shared goal or purpose
People who do not interact regularly, such as those waiting in line at the com-
pany cafeteria or riding together in the elevator, do not compose a team. Third,
people in a team share a goal, whether it is building a car, placing mentally
challenged clients in job training, or writing a textbook. Today’s students are
frequently assigned to complete assignments in teams. In this case, the shared
goal is to complete the task and receive an acceptable grade. However, in many
cases, student teams are given a great deal of structure in terms of team roles
and responsibilities, time frame, activities, and so forth. In a work setting, these
elements are typically much more ambiguous and have to be worked out within
the team.
A team is a group of people, but the two are not one and the same. A pro-
fessor, coach, or employer can put together a group of people and never build a
team. The sports world is full of stories of underdog teams that have won cham-
pionships against a group of players who were better individually but did not
make up a better team. For example, the 2004 U.S. Olympic basketball team was
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made up entirely of superstar players, yet the members never coalesced as a team,
instead functioning as a group of individual players. The team came in third and
lost to Lithuania. In contrast, the 1980 U.S. hockey team that beat the Soviets to
win gold at the Lake Placid Olympics consisted of a bunch of no-name players.