Context
The contextual factors that appear
to be most significantly are
related to team performance:
• Adequate resources:
a. All work teams rely on resources
outside the group to sustain it.
b. A scarcity of resources directly
reduces the ability of the team to
perform its job effectively.
c. As one set of
researchers concluded, “perhaps one of the most important characteristics of an
effective work group is the support the group receives from the organization.’’
• Leadership and structure:
a. Agreeing on the specifics of work and how they fit together to integrate individual skills
requires team leadership and structure.
b. Leadership is not always needed. Self-managed work teams often perform better than
teams with formally appointed leaders.
c. On traditionally managed teams, we find that two factors seem influence team
performance. Leaders who expect good things from their team are more likely to get
them!
• Climate of Trust:
a. Members of effective teams trust each other and exhibit trust in their leaders.
b. When members trust each other they are more willing to take risks.
c. When members trust their leadership they are more willing to commit to their leader’s
goals and decisions.
• Performance evaluation and reward systems:
a. How do you get team members to be both individually and jointly accountable? The
traditional, individually oriented evaluation and reward system must be modified to
reflect team performance.
b. Individual performance evaluations, fixed hourly wages, individual incentives are not
consistent with the development of high-performance teams.

c. Management should consider group-based appraisals, profit sharing, gainsharing, smallgroup
incentives, and other system modifications that will reinforce team effort and
commitment.