Working in Student Teams

Several of your MBA courses will require you to complete projects or other assignments as part of a student team.  These exercises will culminate in a team comprehensive case competition in your MGT 6359-Strategic Management course.

A student team is not a small group of students who complete an assignment by dividing it into sections that can be completed independently by individual students.  A student team is a group of students working in collaboration to achieve an outcome that satisfies a course requirement.  While your assessment in a given course will be based in part on the quality of your team's outcome, as with all other course activities the point of the exercise is what you learn from performing it.  Therefore, it is essential that you approach student team assignments with a positive attitude.

You will almost certainly be called upon to serve as a team member in your future endeavors as a professional and a member of your community.  Organizations use teams to accomplish many tasks because they recognize that different people bring different points of view, concerns, experiences, knowledge, and skills which enhance creative problem solving.  Working in teams also frequently leads to more efficient work management, better morale within the organization, and higher-quality decision making.

A successful student team is characterized by:

1. Communication - Members of a successful student team share knowledge and information freely.  No member of the team "stockpiles" information, and no member acts as a "gatekeeper" preventing other members from sharing their knowledge with the team.  Concerns are addressed and conflicts are resolved in a timely fashion.
2. Inclusion - Members of a successful student team are quick to acknowledge each other's contributions.  Team members do not compete with each other, recognizing that success in this case is defined in terms of the best outcome for the entire team rather than for individual members.
3. Shared leadership - In many cases, as a new team forms a natural leader will emerge.  However, successful teams recognize that each member is responsible for the collective outcome, and members are therefore motivated to share leadership responsibilities.
4. Full participation - Successful team participation means that all members are contributing.  No one is monopolizing the conversation.  No one is abstaining from the conversation.  Members are voicing their ideas and opinions even when it brings them into direct conflict with each other.  Members of the team do not attack each other even as they are criticizing each other's ideas.  And all members feel that they are being heard and treated with respect regardless of whether any individual idea they contribute is used.
5. Consensus - A successful team determines in the beginning how decisions will be made, and all team members agree to support the team's decisions.
6. Flexibility - Team members must be prepared to listen to unusual ideas from each other.  They must also make every attempt to understand what other members of the team are working on.  In an exceptional team, members can actually trade places with each other during the course of a project without difficulty.
7. Commitment to excellence - Just as you are expected to perform to standards of excellence as an individual student, your team is expected to take a personal interest in the quality of the team's outcome.
8. Role division - Because each member of a student team brings different knowledge, skills, and experiences to the table, each member is naturally going to gravitate toward one role or activity associated with the team's assignment.  The team should take time in the beginning to identify the strengths of individual members and, to some extent, formalize these natural role assignments, bearing in mind that the highest-functioning teams could reassign roles and still achieve good results.

Getting Your Team Off to a Good Start

When your instructor assigns you a team project, certain decisions have generally already been made:

1. The team's general purpose has already been defined in terms of an assignment to be completed.
2. The instructor has already determined that the assignment is an appropriate one for a team.
3. The instructor has usually determined the appropriate size of the team.

Still, your team has decisions of its own to make, and they are very much in line with the strategic planning process.

1. Articulate the team's mission - Your instructor has given you an assignment.  Your first task as a team is to reach consensus about what your mission is--in other words, make sure that everyone on your team understands and agrees on what the assignment is and what a positive outcome will look like.  A well-stated mission will be firmly connected to the guidelines for the assignment, realistic, specific, motivational, and reflective of the abilities of your team members.
2. Set goals - Once your team agrees on its overall purpose, it is time to consider the nuts and bolts--specific activities that must be performed and benchmarks that must be reached for the team to consider itself on the right track.  Your team's goals should be specific, and they should be prioritized.  Each goal statement should specify not only what is to be accomplished, but who is responsible for it and by when.  Also take time to consider how each goal will be accomplished.
3. Develop an action plan - Now that your team has a good idea of what needs to be done, write down a plan of attack.  A well-conceived action plan will assist your team by setting "checkpoints"--points in the process where you can stop to assess what you've accomplished thus far, celebrate progress where appropriate, and change direction if necessary.
4. Establish a code of conduct - Each team should agree on fundamental behavioral rules from the beginning.  The idea is not to be legalistic--for instance, for a team of 5 to 7 people it is generally not necessary to agree on a procedure for introducing a new idea.  However, teams should reach consensus about interpersonal issues that are most like to create unnecessary conflicts.  Common issues to address in this manner include the length of meetings (since some members can become irritated by meetings that last longer than anticipated) and the appropriate manner in which to disagree or offer criticism.
5. Take inventory - Take some time at the beginning to identify the skills and talents of each member of your team as they relate to the assignment at hand.  Technical, organizational, problem solving, and interpersonal skills will all become very important as the team progresses.
6. Cast the show - Each team member should understand early what his or her role is and what the expectations and responsibilities are, and should possess the skills or abilities necessary to fulfill that role.  Productive teams may have as many as eight key roles, even if they have fewer than eight members:

1. Leader - A strong communicator who can inspire the team and promote consensus.

2. Critic - An analyst who defines and clarifies issues and tends to prevent the team from reaching a bad compromise.

3. Implementer - A forward-thinking problem solver who keeps the team assignment moving forward.

4. Specialist - A team member who may understand the ins and outs of the assignment better than the rest of the team due to a particular ability, such as a talent for research.

5. Diplomat - In a student team, this may be the member who moves the assignment forward by staying in close communication with the instructor, with members of other students teams, or with other people outside the team who can be of assistance.

6. Coordinator - A good organizer who is willing to manage a plan once the team has agreed on it and inclined to take responsibility for seeing tasks completed.

7. Innovator - A creative thinker who keeps the team's energy up with new ideas.

8. Inspector - A goal-oriented person who keeps tabs on how much the team is actually accomplishing toward its goal.

Development Stages of the Team

Your student team will pass through four stages of development to reach its highest productivity:

1. Forming - The first time your team gets together, you will probably not function as a team.  At this point, you do not know enough about each other to determine what roles you will hold.  During this stage, one member will probably emerge as the team leader who begins to organize the remaining members into a cohesive team.  The forming stage is often uncomfortable, so don't be alarmed if you or your teammates are uneasy about the project or about team formation.  At this point, the members of your team are likely to be too formal and polite for any difficult issues to be resolved, which is the challenge to be overcome.
2. Storming - Once your team has gotten somewhat adjusted to each other, the polite formality may fade away and be replaced with the first instances of conflict--arguments over the purpose of the assignment, disagreement over group roles, frustration over the logistics of the meeting schedule, or, in many cases, hostility stemming from earlier bad experiences with student teams which resulted in one person doing most of the work, or one person receiving a lower grade than anticipated because of what he or she perceives as failings in other team members.  Team members must begin to embrace problem solving in order to progress from this stage.
3. Norming - In the third stage of team development, many of the major conflicts have been resolved, and team members are beginning to get comfortable with the idea of reorganizing--reassigning roles based on legitimate strengths rather than first impressions.  Communication improves, members begin to like each other on some level, and the team begins to buy in to the project at hand and feel some optimism about what they will accomplish together.  Conflicts will still crop up, but the team will be able to handle them more appropriately in this stage, and by this time the team's code of conduct is in place.
4. Performing - In the final stage of team development, communication and morale are at their peak.  Members of your team are prepared to cooperate with each other, stay on task, and believe that the team will have a positive outcome.

Whether your instructor assigns you to a student team, or your team forms out of affinity, you will find that you aren't equally effective working with everyone.  While it is easy to blame other people for unpleasant team experiences, you should remember that the only person whose behavior you have any control over is you.  The following table lists the traits that will make you most and least effective as a member of your team:

 

Traits to Acquire	Traits to Avoid
Courteous Interested in your teammates Optimistic Quick to accept responsibility/blame Quick to express appreciation Constructive and quiet in criticism Helpful Respectful of other people Cooperative Humble Positive Charitable Reliable Effective in communicating Attentive in listening Flexible Trustworthy Diplomatic Committed to learning	Oblivious of team priorities Slow to volunteer Negative Malignant Slow to collaborate Controlling Aggressive Volatile Passive-aggressive Lazy Defiant

Running an Effective Meeting

1. Have an agenda - At minimum, an effective meeting agenda should include the purpose of the meeting, the topics to be discusses and who will lead each discussion, and estimated length of each discussion.  Ideally, agendas should be developed in advance of the meetings.  One approach to this is to email team members and ask them to submit agenda items by a deadline.  If there is no time for this, spend the first few minutes of the meeting agreeing on what is to be discussed.
2. Decide who will fill the key roles for the meeting - Each meeting needs a leader or facilitator, who keeps the team on task during the meeting; a timekeeper, who ensures that the entire meeting time isn't consumed by the first few items on the agenda; the notetaker, who keeps a detailed record of what was discussed in the meeting, what decisions were made, and who is responsible for action items, and will send out minutes from the meeting to all team members later; and the scribe, who keeps meeting notes on a board or flipchart during discussion and brainstorming.
3. Evaluate your meetings - Spend a few minutes after each meeting discussing how the meeting went and how future meetings can be made more productive.