Deck 17: Teams and Teamwork

Question 1

Teams composed of "all-star" members who perform at high levels individually always make the best teams.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

The benefits of team performance can happen even if team members make no positive team contributions.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

In his or her role as a team leader, a manager is involved primarily in serving as a helpful contributing member of a project team.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Each team member must be aware of how his/her job fits into the overall scheme of the team's task.

Question 5

The principles of teams and teamwork cannot be applied to sports teams because the fan public expects only high individual performance and team results are unimportant.

Question 6

It is a fallacy that the longer team members, such as surgeons and basketball players, work with each other the higher is the team success.

Question 7

Synergy pools individual talents and efforts to create extraordinary results through collective action.

Question 8

A "must have" team skill as described in the textbook is encouraging and motivating others.

Question 9

Team contributions are the things that people do to help teams succeed and help their members enjoy the team experience.

Question 10

One way that high-performance teams can be distinguished is by the way members work with one another to achieve common goals.

Question 11

As a general rule, we expect teams to perform at higher levels than individuals.

Question 12

Often less-skilled individuals mold into high-performing teams because they apply their skills and motivation to the team effort and want team success more than individual success.

Question 13

The "teamwork effect" may be described in general as a familiarity with working with each other on a team.

Question 14

As a general rule, successful high-performance teams must perform multiple tasks flawlessly and in perfect order and unison.

Question 15

A team is a collection of people who regularly interact to pursue common goals.

Question 16

Managers of successful teams often carefully plan and choreograph the team members' activities.

Question 17

Teams have become less important in today's global society.

Question 18

It is not important that each team member be highly skilled in his/her job because another team member is expected to do more than their own individual job for overall success.

Question 19

It is not necessary for individually scripted activities to fit seamlessly into team tasks.

Question 20

Teams are rich in performance potential even though they are complex in the way they work.

Question 21

Accepting suggestions is a "must have" team skill.

Question 22

Resolving and negotiating conflict is a "must have" team skill.

Question 23

Fulfilling commitments is anachronistic in today's global world as a team skill.

Question 24

Serving as a mentor or sponsor of a problem-solving team is an important team and teamwork role for managers.

Question 25

More resources for problem solving, greater commitments to tasks, better control and work discipline, and more individual need satisfaction are just several benefits of teams.

Question 26

Communicating information and ideas is a "must have" team skill according to the textbook.

Question 27

In your own career, it will never be necessary to work in or lead a team.

Question 28

The process of people actively working together in groups to accomplish common goals is called synergy.

Question 29

Two important management skills are knowing when a team is the best choice for a task and knowing how to work with and manage a team to accomplish a task.

Question 30

The creation of a whole greater than the sum of its parts is called teamwork.

Question 31

The highest functioning teams never bother to build consensus as a team skill.

Question 32

Serving as an agent of broad-based organizational change is an important team and teamwork role for managers.

Question 33

A team is a small group of people with complementary skills, who work together to accomplish shared goals while holding themselves mutually accountable for performance results.

Question 34

Being a member of a team rarely influences individual attitudes and behaviours.

Question 35

Personality conflicts and poor readiness to work, but not differences in work styles or task ambiguity, are commonly encountered problems in teams.

Question 36

Listening to others is not important as a team skill.

Question 37

Persuading others to cooperate is never important as a team skill.

Question 38

Social loafing refers to the presence of "free riders" who slack off because responsibility is diffused in teams and others are present to do the work.

Question 39

The supervisor, facilitator, participant, and coach are four important team and teamwork roles for managers.

Question 40

It is not necessary to avoid disruptive acts and words as a team skill.

Question 41

Informal groups that emerge because members basically help one another do their jobs are called support groups.

Question 42

Informal groups are always detrimental to the growth of an organization as they are mostly involved in spreading rumors.

Question 43

An autonomous work group is a temporary group created to solve a specific problem.

Question 44

Informal groups can help satisfy social needs otherwise left unmet.

Question 45

Some key problems typically associated with meetings are: the discussion lacks candour; people are unwilling to tell the truth; and the right information isn't available, so decisions get postponed.

Question 46

Social imperfection refers to the presence of "free riders" who slack off because responsibility is diffused in teams and others are present to do the work.

Question 47

Project teams or task forces work on common problems on a permanent basis.

Question 48

Nothing happening when the meeting is over and no one putting decisions into action are key problems typically associated with meetings.

Question 49

Committees, project teams, task forces, and cross-functional teams are used relatively infrequently in the modern workplace, whereas employee involvement teams enjoy extensive, widespread usage in the modern workplace.

Question 50

A cross-functional team operates with members who come from different functional units of an organization.

Question 51

Informal groups that emerge for a wide variety of personal reasons (including shared non-work interests) are called friendship groups.

Question 52

Meetings can and should be places where information is shared, decisions get made, and people gain understanding of each other.

Question 53

The functional chimneys problem is more prominent in the case of cross-functional teams.

Question 54

People arriving early and leaving late or taking things too seriously are some of the key problems typically associated with meetings.

Question 55

If we consider that organizations are interlocking networks of groups, then managers and leaders serve as "linking pins" because each manager or leader acts as a superior in one work group and as a subordinate in the next higher-level one.

Question 56

The trend toward greater empowerment in organizations is associated with new developments in the use of face-to-face interaction techniques.

Question 57

Members of informal groups can satisfy needs that are otherwise unmet in their formal work assignments.

Question 58

Formal groups emerge from relationships and shared interests among the members.

Question 59

Project teams or tasks forces bring together people from various parts of an organization to work on common problems, but do so on a temporary basis.

Question 60

Considering that organizations are interlocking networks of groups, managers and leaders serve as "group processors" because they make the whole team function properly.

Question 61

Difficulty in establishing good working relationships may occur in virtual teams due to the depersonalization that results from the absence of face-to-face interaction.

Question 62

A key feature of any self-managing team is multitasking.

Question 63

Teams of workers whose jobs have been redesigned to create a high degree of task interdependence and have been given decision-making authority are called autonomous work groups.

Question 64

Starting with social messaging, assigning clear roles, and choosing members carefully are key to leading successful virtual teams.

Question 65

In the context of virtual teams, selecting team members high in initiative often leads to a lack of coordination among the members.

Question 66

Cross-functional teams are expected to focus purely on functional concerns and demands.

Question 67

For managers to create effective teams, they must collect data on team functioning by conducting structured or unstructured interviews, administering questionnaires, and having team meetings.

Question 68

Team building is a sequence of activities to analyze a team and make changes to improve its performance.

Question 69

Members of self-managing teams do not evaluate one another's performance contributions, nor do they hire or fire team members.

Question 70

Team building is a sequence of planned activities used to gather and analyze data on the functioning of a team and to implement constructive changes to increase the team's operating effectiveness.

Question 71

Cross-functional teams are expected to seek creative solutions and to think and act cross-functionally.

Question 72

The transition from traditional work settings to self-managing teams is usually effortless.

Question 73

For the diagnostic process to be effective in team building, careful and collaborative assessment of the team's inputs, processes, and results must be made.

Question 74

Team building adds nothing but extra time and effort into the effectiveness of a team.

Question 75

Because of information technology, virtual teams provide a problem-free approach to dealing with issues among team members at geographically dispersed locations.

Question 76

Members of a self-managing team are held individually accountable for performance results.

Question 77

Self-managing teams operate with participative decision making, shared tasks, and responsibility for many managerial tasks.

Question 78

To create an effective team, managers must institute a multi-step process that involves a clear and elevated goal, task-driven structure, competent and committed members, a collaborative climate, high standards of excellence, external support and recognition, and strong principled leadership.

Question 79

Self-management responsibilities include planning and scheduling work, training members, distributing tasks, meeting performance goals, ensuring quality, and solving day-to-day problems.

Question 80

Cross-functional teams are indispensable to organizations because they eliminate the barriers that separate departments and people.