selecting team types principles guidelines and making recommendations for team composition

Select Team Type and Create Team Principles or Guidelines

Types of Teams – select one that makes the most sense for Johns Hopkins Health System (https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/about/mission.html), given the mission and goals.

• Attached PDF
• Provide a rationale.
• Recommend useful guidelines for a virtual team
• Provide a rationale.

Team Principles or Guidelines

Make Recommendations for Team Composition

Recommend the following based on Johns Hopkins Health System needs

• Team Size
  • As you can imagine, the question of the optimal team size has benefited from much discussion among both academics and practitioners. We know that more is not necessarily better when it comes to putting together a team. Too many members can increase the likelihood of “free-ridership” or conflict. However, we also know that the tasks we want teams to undertake require a sufficient number of members to ensure the work gets done in a timely manner. Moreover, many projects benefit from multiple and diverse perspectives, which are more likely to be accessed in a large team. Sadly, there is no rule or formula that can be universally applied when deciding on team size. Thus, your goal should be to discover as much as you can about the benefits and issues associated with team size and its implications for effectiveness, but also to accept that your ability to offer specific recommendations is inevitably limited. The article Smaller Teams—Better Teamwork in the Resources section can help by providing more information on the efficacy of small teams. Your team may decide it is useful to research team size to ensure you have the depth of understanding required to identify and analyze the consequences for optimal team performance associated with team size. The journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes may be particularly useful. Adding a search for titles that include the word team should get you to some potentially useful research. Two authors who have an interest in team size and who have published in this journal are Jennifer Mueller from the University of San Diego and Bradley Staats from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Team Composition
  • The topic of team composition has benefited from extensive study. Scholars and researchers have attempted to answer whether performance is likely to be stronger when a team is composed of members who are diverse (heterogeneous) or when its members are similar (homogeneous). Three examples of research related to this question are referenced below. The first, by Mello and Ruckes (2006), looks at the likelihood of increased information sources in heterogeneous teams, recognizing that better decisions may be the result. The challenge for such teams and their leaders is that there may be greater differences in opinion. In other words, achieving consensus can be difficult. As a result, those members who disagree with a decision may reduce their effort and commitment. This is one reason some leaders may prefer a more homogeneous team. The second article, by Steffens, Terjensen, and Davidsson (2012), focuses on new venture team composition and venture persistence and performance over time. This study found that while higher levels of team homogeneity had a positive impact on short term outcomes, the positive effect was reduced over time. The Turel and Yi (2010) study looked at the traits of team members. Their interest was in investigating the potential impact of team heterogeneity in levels of extroversion and conscientiousness on team performance. Perhaps not surprisingly, this work supports the assumption that if there are great differences in conscientiousness among team members, there is likely to be a negative impact on team performance. The authors explore whether increasing the heterogeneity in the extroversion trait helps to mitigate this effect. The authors’ research supports the need for managers to pay close attention to member traits and fit for the team and the tasks with which that team is charged.
• Team Roles
  • When reading about teams you will find lots of discussion about the role of leader but may see very little about other roles that are equally important for success. While this will vary depending upon the project and the team, examples of roles that can be important include the people responsible for such tasks as:

• scheduling and organizing meetings
• creating and maintaining the project plan
• within-team and external communications (perhaps not the same person)
• research and writing
• reviewing and editing
• facilitating meetings and making sure all members are heard

A main point to remember is that high-performing teams are likely to require members to execute and share many different roles.

Analyze options for handling team leadership

• Team Leadership
  • Many people have formed views about what it takes to be an effective leader in general and about team leadership in particular. Most will have had some experiences with school, sports, social, or work teams where there have been formal leaders. Most will also have been in situations where informal leaders emerged. Of course, it will be important to inform these views with insights gleaned from experts who have spent their careers studying and thinking about workplace teams and team leadership. When you conduct a search for helpful work on team leadership, you will find that scholars have explored many questions, in many different contexts, in the interest of discovering the elements and implications of team performance. It is safe to assume that if you have a question, scholars somewhere have either studied and written about it or are in the process of doing so. Before doing any research, however, it is important to identify and agree on the questions you see as being particularly important for your circumstances.

The following topics have been explored in depth in the articles listed below:

• Whether having a team leader matters, and if so, when, and why. See, for example, Heidal & Antonsen, 2014; Hackman & Wageman, 2004; Pearce & Herbik, 2004; Webber & Webber, 2015; Yun, Faraj, Xiao, & Sims, 2003.
• Whether it is good to rely on external team leadership when the ultimate goal is to empower the team to take responsibility for making its own decisions. See, for example, Rapp, Gilson, Mathieu, & Ruddy, 2016; Druskat & Wheeler, 2003.
• How and under what circumstances informal team leaders emerge. See, for example, Zhang, Waldman, & Wang, 2012.
• How team leadership may be developed—see, for example, Sitkin & Hackman, 2011.
• Whether virtual teams require different approaches to team leadership and, if so, how and why. See, for example, Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014; Minkin, 2012; Hoch & Wegge, 2008; Zhang & Fjermestad, 2006.
• Whether sharing team leadership works. See, for example, Hoch, Pearce, & Weizel, 2010.

Identify the team leadership model best suited for your organization and provide a rational for your explanation.