Teaming By Amy C. Edmondson

Front 1

Success in today's complex and volatile business environment requires what three things?

Back 1

1) Flexibility

2) Coordination

3) Collaboration

Front 2

What is teaming?

Back 2

Teaming is a dynamic way of working that provides the necessary coordination and collaboration without the luxury (or rigidity) of stable team structures.

Front 3

True or false?

Teaming and its associated interpersonal behaviors support organizational learning, and require the right leadership mindset to optimize outcomes.

Back 3

True.

Front 4

What is organizing to learn?

Back 4

Organizing to learn is a way of leading that encourages speaking up, asking questions and sharing ideas so as to promote collective learning.

Front 5

What is execution-as-learning?

Back 5

Execution-as-learning is a way of operating that folds continuous learning into the day-by-day work process.

Front 6

What is the Process Knowledge Spectrum?

Back 6

The Process Knowledge Spectrum is a useful tool for categorizing operational settings. It has implications for matching the work context to appropriate teaming and learning goals.

Front 7

True or false?

Teaming comes naturally to teams and organizations.

Back 7

False. Although teaming is imperative in today's organizations, neither teams nor organizations naturally do it well.

Front 8

What four behaviors are required for successful teaming?

Back 8

1) Speaking up

2) Collaboration

3) Experimentation

4) Reflection

Front 9

True or false?

Speaking up, collaboration, experimentation and reflection are enacted in iterative cycles for teaming.

Back 9

True. Each new cycle is informed by the results of the previous cycle. Cycles continue until desired outcomes are achieved.

Front 10

There are several benefits to teaming. What two categories do these benefits fall into?

Back 10

1) Better organizational performance

2) More engaging and satisfying work environments

Front 11

True or false?

The collaborative behaviors required by teaming create group tensions and conflict.

Back 11

True. Leaders who do not grasp the concept that conflict is desirable to teaming and who do not learn the skills necessary to confront conflict are destined to fail.

Front 12

What four actions should leaders do to moderate conflict?

Back 12

1) Identify the nature of the conflict.

2) Model good communication.

3) Identify shared goals.

4) Encourage difficult conversations.

Front 13

True or false?

Due to the challenges of teaming, particular attention should be paid to the role of leadership.

Back 13

True. The mindset and practices of organizing to learn enable both teaming and learning.

Front 14

Successfully implementing an organizing-to-learn mindset involves four actions. What are they?

Back 14

1) Framing for learning

2) Making it psychologically safe

3) Learning to learn from failure

4) Spanning occupational and cultural boundaries

Front 15

__________ are interpretations that individuals rely on to sense and understand their environment.

Back 15

Frames. Most of the time, framing occurs automatically.

Front 16

______________ is a powerful leadership tool for shifting behaviors and enrolling people in change.

Back 16

Reframing.

Front 17

True or false?

How people working in an organization, especially those in leadership positions, frame a project can determine the difference between success and failure.

Back 17

True.

Front 18

Successfully framing a new initiative that calls for both teaming and learning is about roles and goals: the leader's _______, team members' _______ and the teaming effort's ________ or purpose.

Back 18

role... roles... goal

Front 19

In framing their role, what three things must a leader do?

Back 19

1) Explicitly communicate their interdependence.

2) Express their own fallibility.

3) Express the need for collaboration.

Front 20

True or false.

In defining team members' roles, leaders need to emphasize that they have picked skilled people who are vital to the success of the project.

Back 20

True.

Front 21

To inspire and unite team members, leaders must communicate a clear and compelling _______.

Back 21

Purpose.

Front 22

Establishing a learning frame involves four iterative steps. What are they?

Back 22

1) Enrollment

2) Preparation

3) Trial

4) Reflection

Front 23

To reinforce a learning frame, what four things can you do?

Back 23

1) Use verbal and visual discourse.

2) Explain desired interpersonal & collaborative behaviors in practical terms.

3) Initiate activities that facilitate new routines and help build confidence.

4) Use artifacts to visually reinforce elements of the frame.

Front 24

To achieve better teaming or learning results, what four things can you do?

Back 24

1) Tell yourself that the project presents an exciting opportunity.

2) See yourself as critical to a successful outcome.

3) Tell yourself that others are important to a successful outcome.

4) Communicate with others as if the preceding three points are true.

Front 25

__________ __________ describes individuals' perceptions regarding the consequences of interpersonal risks in their work environment.

Back 25

Psychological safety.

Front 26

Four specific image risks that people face at work are being seen as what?

Back 26

1) Ignorant

2) Incompetent

3) Negative

4) Disruptive

Front 27

In psychologically safe environments, characterized by both ________ and ________, people believe that if they make a mistake or ask for help, others will not ________ them.

Back 27

trust... respect... penalize

Front 28

True or false?

Psychological safety is essential to teaming and organizational learning.

Back 28

True because psychological safety encourages self-expression and productive discussion.

Front 29

True or false?

Psychological safety is about being nice or about lowering performance standards.

Back 29

False. Psychological safety allows groups to set high goals and work toward them through collaboration and collective learning.

Front 30

Research reveals seven specific benefits provided by psychological safety. What are they?

Back 30

1) Encourages speaking up

2) Enables clarity of thought

3) Supports productive conflict

4) Mitigates failure

5) Promotes innovation

6) Moderates the relationship between goals and performance, and

7) Increases employee accountability

Front 31

Does hierarchy and the fear it creates negatively affect psychological safety?

Back 31

Yes. Research shows that lower-status team members generally feel less safe than higher-status members.

Front 32

Leaders play crucial roles in promoting a psychologically safe organizations. But psychological safety cannot be simply authorized or mandated. Instead, it requires ______ _______ _____.

Back 32

specific leadership actions

Front 33

True or false?

In attempting to establish an environment of psychological safety, the emphasis should be on the group's tasks, how they're changing and what's needed to do them well.

Back 33

True. This makes the need for psychological safety a conclusion that people can discover for themselves.

Front 34

To cultivate a psychologically safe environment, leaders should do what eight things?

Back 34

1) Be accessible and approachable

2) Acknowledge the limits of current knowledge 3) Be willing to display fallibility

4) Invite participation

5) Refrain from penalizing failure

6) Use direct language

7) Set boundaries

8) Hold people accountable

Front 35

When bringing together people with different perspectives and skills, failure is inevitable because of both ________ and _________ challenges.

Back 35

technical and interpersonal

Front 36

Failures provide valuable information that allows organizations to be more ________, __________ and ________.

Back 36

productive, innovative and successful. But due to strong psychological and social reactions to failing, most of us see failure as unacceptable.

Front 37

Logically, we can see that many failures in organizations cannot be prevented, but emotionally, it's hard to separate failure from blame. This leads to the types of punitive reactions that cause many failures to go ________ or __________.

Back 37

unreported or misdiagnosed.

Front 38

The causes of failure vary across the Process Knowledge Spectrum. What are the usual causes for routine, complex and innovative operations?

Back 38

Routine ops failures => small process deviations.

Complex ops failures => faulty process or system breakdown.

Innovative ops failures => uncertainty and experimentation.

Front 39

What are the three broad categories for failures in organizations?

Back 39

1) Preventable failures

2) Complex failures

3) Intelligent failures

Front 40

Leaders looking to develop a learning approach to failure should adopt an inquiry orientation that reflects ________, _______ and _______ for ambiguity.

Back 40

curiosity, patience and tolerance for ambiguity.

Doing so makes it safe to talk about failures and reinforces norms of openness.

Front 41

What three things are critical to learning from failures?

Back 41

1) Failure detection

2) Failure analysis

3) Purposeful experimentation

Front 42

To encourage failure detection, leaders need to do what four things?

Back 42

1) Embrace the messenger

2) Gather data

3) Solicit feedback

4) Reward failure detection

Front 43

To support failure analysis, leaders should do what two things?

Back 43

1) Convene interdisciplinary groups

2) Take a systematic approach to analyzing data

Front 44

To promote purposeful experimentation, leaders must do what three things?

Back 44

1) Reward both experimentation and failure

2) Use terminology that counteracts psychological barriers to learning from failure

3) Design intelligent experiments that generate more smart failures.

Front 45

People teaming in today's workplaces are unlikely to be homogenous in beliefs, attitudes or opinions. When not managed ______ and _______, these differences can inhibit collaboration.

Back 45

consciously and carefully

Front 46

The term "______" refers to both visible and invisible divisions between people, including gender, occupation or nationality.

Back 46

"Boundaries". Boundaries exist based on the taken-for-granted assumptions and diverse mindsets that people hold in different groups.

Front 47

______ ______ involves deliberate attempts to reach across the barriers that exist within and between groups of all kinds.

Back 47

Boundary spanning. Rapid developments in technology and the greater emphasis on globalization have greatly increased the significance of boundary spanning in today's work environment.

Front 48

The three most common boundaries confronted in teams are?

Back 48

1) Physical distance

2) Knowledge-based

3) Status-based

Front 49

What three things are important leadership actions for promoting good communication across boundaries?

Back 49

1) Establishing a superordinate goal

2) Fostering curiosity

3) Providing process guidelines

Front 50

To overcome geographic boundaries, group members should do what three things?

Back 50

1) Make periodic visits to other sites

2) Pay close attention to unique local knowledge

3) Contribute to knowledge repositories and exchanges

Front 51

To overcome knowledge-based boundaries created by organizational diversity, group members should do what three things?

Back 51

1) Share individual perspectives

2) Emphasize the value brought by each organization

3) Establish a collective identity

Front 52

To overcome knowledge-based boundaries created by occupational diversity, group members should do what three things?

Back 52

1) Share expertise-based knowledge

2) Establish a collective identity

3) Use boundary objects (such as drawings, models and prototypes)

Front 53

To overcome hierarchical boundaries and minimizing experienced status gaps, leaders should do what two things?

Back 53

1) Be inclusive

2) Proactively engage group members in conversation