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CHAPTER 10: LEADING TEAMS 297
Leaders at McDevitt Street Bovis, one of the country’s largest construction

management firms, strive to accelerate the stages of team development to help put
teams on a solid foundation.

IN THE LEAD McDevitt Street Bovis
McDevitt Street Bovis credits its team-building process for quickly and effectively
unifying teams, circumventing damaging and time-consuming conflicts, and pre-

venting lawsuits related to major construction projects. The goal is to take the team
to the performing stage as quickly as possible by giving everyone an opportunity to
get to know one another, explore the ground rules, and clarify roles, responsibilities
and expectations.
Rather than the typical construction project characterized by confl icts, frantic
scheduling, and poor communications, Bovis wants its collection of contractors, de-
signers, suppliers, and other partners to function like a true team—putting the suc-
cess of the project ahead of their own individual interests. The team is fi rst divided
into separate groups that may have competing objectives—such as the clients in
one group, suppliers in another, engineers and architects in a third, and so forth—
and asked to come up with a list of their goals for the project. Although interests
sometimes vary widely in purely accounting terms, there are almost always com-
mon themes. By talking about confl icting goals and interests, as well as what all the
groups share, facilitators help the team gradually come together around a common
purpose and begin to develop shared values that will guide the project. After jointly
writing a mission statement for the team, each party says what it expects from the
others, so that roles and responsibilities can be clarified. The intensive team-building

session helps take members quickly through the forming and storming stages of
development, but meetings continue all the way through the project to keep rela-
tionships strong and to keep people on target toward achieving the team mission.
“We prevent confl icts from happening,” says facilitator Monica Bennett. Leaders at
McDevitt Street Bovis believe building better teams builds better buildings.
12
As at McDevitt Street Bovis, personal contact and face-to-face communica-
tion is important for building individuals into a team.

Team Types and Characteristics
In the following sections, we will look at various types of teams that have tradi-
tionally been used in organizations and examine some characteristics that are im-
portant to team dynamics and performance. Later in the chapter, we will discuss
the new challenge of leading virtual and global teams.

Traditional Types of Teams
There are three fundamental types of teams used in today’s organizations: functional
teams, cross-functional teams, and self-directed teams. Exhibit 10.3 illustrates these
types of teams.

Functional Teams A functional team is part of the traditional vertical hierarchy. Functional team
Functional team
team made up of a supervisor
This type of team is made up of a supervisor and his or her subordinates in the team made up of a supervisor
and subordinates in the formal
formal chain of command. Sometimes called a vertical team or a command team, and subordinates in the formal
chain of command
chain of command
the functional team can include three or four levels of hierarchy within a depart-
ment. Typically, a functional team makes up a single department in the organi-
zation. For example, the quality control department at Blue Bell Creameries in