Exam 12: Teams: Processes and Communication

Kelly has thought a lot about how to explain why she is quitting her job. Now that she has her thoughts in order, she is writing them down in a formal letter of resignation. Kelly is engaged in the decoding part of the communication process.

According to researchers, a cohesive team is always a high performance team.

What factors influence the communication process in teams?

Lou chose the new product team very carefully, recruiting only the best performers from marketing, operations, finance, and HR. She expected this group to design and develop a stellar new product in record time. She doesn't understand why this team composed only of superstars has not lived up to her expectations. Lou's group has not demonstrated synergy.

Team characteristics-such as member diversity, task interdependence, team size, and so forth-have an impact on team effectiveness.

Noah, a services manager at the Feel Well Health Clinic, consulted an alternative medicine specialist to see if it is feasible to incorporate certain treatments as part of the clinic's services. Noah is performing a(n) _____ activity of the boundary spanning process.

A special surveillance and rescue team is being deployed to counter the menace of pirates in the Indian Ocean. Nick, Sid, Leah, and Kevin are the core members of the team. Nick was elected as the leader of the team. Sid is responsible for monitoring the team's progress toward its goals. Kevin took on the role of motivator and confidence builder for the team. This team has worked together before and has developed a high level of common understanding regarding the team and its mission. Members also strongly believe that the team can be effective across a variety of situations and tasks. As a standard practice, before deployment, the team members observe how other members perform their roles by shadowing and going through simulations. Sid's role of monitoring the team's progress contributes to which of the following teamwork processes?

Kat is not worried about offering contrary or radical ideas in team meetings because both the team leader and the team members are supportive of new or even seemingly strange ideas and don't laugh at or criticize each other. Kat has a strong feeling of psychological safety within her team.

The idea behind _____ is that team members can develop shared mental models of what is involved in each of the roles in the team and how the roles fit together to form a system.

A special surveillance and rescue team is being deployed to counter the menace of pirates in the Indian Ocean. Nick, Sid, Leah, and Kevin are the core members of the team. Nick was elected as the leader of the team. Sid is responsible for monitoring the team's progress toward its goals. Kevin took on the role of motivator and confidence builder for the team. This team has worked together before and has developed a high level of common understanding regarding the team and its mission. Members also strongly believe that the team can be effective across a variety of situations and tasks. As a standard practice, before deployment, the team members observe how other members perform their roles by shadowing and going through simulations. Beyond his task responsibilities, Kevin's role also consists of behaviors that contribute to:

Many years ago, Sprint Telecommunications aired an advertisement intended to demonstrate the clarity of reception Sprint customers could expect. The ad showed a rancher, who had used a different company, complaining that he had ordered 100 oxen from his supplier and instead received 100 dachshunds. The mix-up was probably due to the presence of _____ in the communication process.

_____ activities refer to things team members do to obtain information about technology, competitors, or the broader marketplace.

The shallowest level of cross-training involves positional modeling.

_____ processes are primarily important before and between periods of taskwork, whereas _____ processes are primarily important as the task work is being accomplished.

Teamwork processes have a _____ effect on team commitment.

Having a cell phone conversation during a rock concert is difficult because of:

Britney, a manager in an advertising firm, was assigned a team and asked to come up with ideas for an advertising campaign. Britney briefed her team and outlined the purpose of the meeting clearly, after which she asked the members to individually generate ideas and bring their list to the next meeting. In the second meeting, the ideas were compiled, doubts clarified, and ideas built-on, after which the members were then asked to individually rank the ideas and submit the list to Britney, who tabulated the scores and created a list of the five highest rated ideas. Britney adopted _____ to generate the ideas.

A psychology class has been assigned an individual case study project as well as a group project. The members of the group will receive the same grade for the group project but will be graded separately for their individual projects. Drew, Ben, Donna, and Julia are members of one such group. Drew and Donna worked very hard on the group project. Ben and Julia, however, did not contribute much to the group project because they felt that Drew and Donna would manage to get good grades for it. Instead, they focused their efforts on their individual projects. Ben and Julia's behavior is an example of:

What synchronizes team members' activities in a way that makes them mesh effectively and seamlessly?

Transition processes are relevant before the team actually begins to conduct the core aspects of its work; they have no role between periods of work activity.