Deck 10: Teams: Evaluating Team Effectiveness

Question 1

The ___ Model provides performance criteria and associated critical factors for teams.

Answer 1

Team

Question 2

A team member says to you, "The team feedback system is a complete waste of time. I go in, sit down with the facilitator, am told how team members rated me and either that I need to do better or get a pat on the back. I'm out of there in two minutes, max."

Answer 2

As the chapter stresses, team feedback sessions must be used carefully, if at all. The session described, if accurate, appears to have been inadequate in many ways. For instance, open-ended questions were not asked to encourage a two-way discussion, concrete examples of the member's performance weren't provided, specific behavior to be changed wasn't suggested, specific performance goals weren't addressed, agreement on specific performance-goals wasn't reached, follow-up sessions weren't scheduled, and so on. So, the team member's comments seem justified. These sorts of sessions would likely cause dissatisfaction and frustration not just with the feedback but also with the entire team evaluation process.

Question 3

List and define three types of rating scales.

Answer 3

1. Frequency-based. These indicate how frequently something (such as a behavior) occurs (e.g., rarely, sometimes, always)
2. Comparison-based. These compare ratees to others to provide a relative rather than absolute judgment (e.g., well-below average, above average)
3. Ability-based. These assess the strength of the ratee's abilities (e.g., very weak, satisfactory, very strong)

Question 4

List four steps for a team to follow to create an accountability document.

Question 5

Give six guidelines for conducting effective team feedback sessions.

Question 6

Briefly discuss four potential drawbacks of team evaluation systems.

Question 7

Give five general characteristics of effective team performance evaluation systems.

Question 8

Identify five common mistakes associated with 360-degree feedback systems.

Question 9

What are five issues to be addressed when conducting a team audit?

Question 10

A colleague says, "Ever since they put in the formal evaluation system everything has been messed up. We're all breaking our backs to create a high quality customer experience and all management focuses on is how much we sell." What might you say to your colleague?

Question 11

A colleague says to you over coffee, "My team members almost never rate me the same as I rate myself. I'm sure I know myself and what I'm doing better than anyone else, so it's really irritating that others are allowed to rate me. Sometimes I really think they're trying to hurt me."

Question 12

When a performance development plan is executed the failure to hold ___ meetings is a major contributor to project failure.

Question 13

___ lay out a roadmap of actions to be taken to support the achievement of specific goals. The example in the text related to improving customer service in a grocery store.

Question 14

___ feedback provides feedback from all sources of evaluations.

Question 15

___ have become a very popular way for administering surveys due to their ease of development and administration relative to traditional paper-and-pencil methods.

Question 16

This chapter focuses on the "___ the Team" component of the High Performance Teams Model.

Question 17

In addition to conducting a full 360-degree evaluation of a team, it is also useful to conduct a team ___ of the relationship between the team and its organizational environment.

Question 18

A(n) ___-based feedback report would have ratings such as "very weak," "satisfactory," and "very strong."

Question 19

When using an action-planning template, a team leader or team member would work with a ___ to complete a basic plan of action for performance improvements in the next year.

Question 20

A tool that can be highly beneficial in ensuring the effective linkage between action plans and responsibilities is the ___.

Question 21

Briefly discuss five potential benefits of team evaluation systems.

Question 22

What are three general objectives of traditional performance appraisals?

Question 23

What are the four stages in the cycle of dysfunctional teams?

Question 24

"Resources needed" is not information included in an accountability document.

Question 25

Management often greatly overestimates the amount of time and resources that will be required to successfully implement a 360-degree feedback system, causing them to resist its use.

Question 26

Many firms are abandoning forced-ranking performance appraisal systems, turning instead to peer-evaluation systems.

Question 27

The TEaM Model provides guidelines for effective use of feedback.

Question 28

Despite early concerns about how they might react to traditional performance appraisal systems, the Millennial Generation - those born between 1981 and 1999 - have adapted to them remarkably well.

Question 29

Those who provide feedback about a team leader, team member, or the overall team should be assured that their responses will be completely confidential and anonymous.

Question 30

Methods to evaluate team performance typically involve collecting, analyzing, and acting on feedback from one or more stakeholders or customers.

Question 31

Microsoft announced that is was abandoning its controversial "stack ranking" employee-review and compensation system, sometimes derided as "rank and yank," requiring managers to grade their employees and rank them against one another.

Question 32

Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, defended stack ranking, calling it "differentiation" and saying, "If you want teamwork, identify it as a value. Then you evaluate and reward accordingly. You'll get teamwork. I guarantee it."

Question 33

Which of the following is not a potential source of feedback in team performance evaluation systems?

A)self
B)immediate supervisor
C)peers
D)direct reports
E)none of the above

Question 34

Which of the following takeaways regarding developing and implementing an effective team evaluation system is false?

A)They require substantial time and resources.
B)They require effective coaching and training.
C)They can use "boilerplate" criteria, tables, and templates without modification across many situations.
D)They require buy-in from team leaders and members about the benefits of evaluating team performance.
E)none of the above

Question 35

10. Which of the following is not a sign of an effective organizational culture?

A)satisfying team experiences
B)organization-wide success stories about the team
C)team spirit
D)a can-do attitude
E)None of the above.

Question 36

Which of the following is not true of a tree diagram?

A)It can help teams execute action plans.
B)The logical flow of the tree diagram is from right to left.
C)The goal is stated in a box on the far left side of the diagram.
D)Each general action step may be supported by multiple specific action steps to support it.
E)None of the above.

Question 37

Which of the following is not a step to follow to create a tree diagram?

A)State the desired goal of the team.
B)Identify a set of general action steps that would help the team achieve the stated objective.
C)List more specific action steps that the team could take to successfully implement each action step.
D)Assign responsibility for each specific action step to one or more team members.
E)None of the above.

Question 38

The discussion of 360-degree feedback systems for different types of teams and taring targets indicates that each of the following is true except that:

A)Different types of raters should sometimes be used for different types of team members.
B)When making decisions about such systems, the particular team and context in question should be considered.
C)For consistency, all ratings across teams should focus on the same outcomes, behaviors, and competencies.
D)Questions should be tailored to the type of team (e.g., project team, service team)
E)None of the above.

Question 39

Which of the following is not true of 360-degree feedback?

A)The process model must begin with management making fundamental decisions about appropriate performance measures and targets for teams.
B)Decisions about performance measures and targets should be guided by an understanding of the organization's mission, vision, and strategic objectives.
C)Decisions must be made about the structure of the feedback process.
D)The feedback session summary report should be kept to no more than three pages.
E)none of the above

Question 40

Which of the following would be included in a performance development plan?

A)key factors
B)feedback source
C)none of the above
D)objectives
E)evaluation focus

Question 41

A question such as, "The team member is willing to work with me as a partner if I have concerns about the service I am receiving from him/her" would be answered by which of the following evaluators?

A)network team
B)customer
C)team leader
D)coworkers
E)none of the above

Question 42

Which of the following would not be a column heading for an action plan worksheet based on a 360-degree feedback process?

A)performance outcomes
B)objectives
C)constraints
D)progress check dates
E)none of the above

Question 43

With team evaluation systems, peer pressure tends to dampen team member motivation.