Effective Team Performance Research Articles

Trust in interprofessional collaboration: Perspectives of pharmacists and physicians.

Trust is integral to effective interprofessional collaboration. There has been scant literature characterizing how trust between practitioners is formed, maintained or lost. The objective of this study was to characterize the cognitive model of trust that exists between pharmacists and family physicians working in collaborative primary care settings. Pharmacists and family physicians who work collaboratively in primary care were participants in this study. Family health teams were excluded from this study because of the distinct nature of these settings. Through a snowball convenience sampling method, a total of 11 pharmacists and 8 family physicians were recruited. A semistructured interview guide was used to guide discussion around trust, relationships and collaboration. Constant-comparative coding was used to identify themes emerging from these data. Pharmacists and family physicians demonstrate different cognitive models of trust in primary care collaboration. For pharmacists, trust appears to be conferred on physicians based on title, degree, status and positional authority. For family physicians, trust appears to be earned based on competency and performance. These differences may lead to interprofessional tension when expectations of reciprocal trust are not met. Further work in characterizing how trust is developed in interprofessional relationships is needed to support effective team formation and functioning.

LO095: Developing and implementing an interprofessional in-situ simulation program in an academic, tertiary-care emergency department: barriers, successes and the Ottawa Hospital experience

Introduction / Innovation Concept: During Emergency Department (ED) resuscitation of critically ill patients, effective teamwork and communication among various healthcare professionals is essential to ensure favorable patient outcomes and to minimize threats to patient safety. However, numerous individual and system factors create barriers to effective team functioning. Simulation center- based training has been used to improve Crisis Resource Management skills among physician and nursing trainees, but in-situ simulation is a relatively new concept in adult Emergency Medicine in North America. Methods: To enhance patient care and team effectiveness, an ED nursing and physician group was created to develop and implement a novel interprofessional in-situ simulation program in two Canadian, academic tertiary-care emergency departments. Departmental approval and financial support was obtained and sessions commenced in January 2015. Curriculum, Tool, or Material: Monthly high-fidelity simulation sessions are held in the ED resuscitation rooms at both campuses of our hospital. Each session is facilitated and debriefed by simulation-trained Emergency Medicine faculty and senior residents, a nurse educator and a research assistant. Technical support is provided by our simulation center staff. Participants are recruited from the physicians, residents, nurses, respiratory therapists and other support staff working in the ED. To minimize the impact on patient care, two additional nurses are scheduled to cover nursing assignments on “sim days”. Simulations are limited to fifteen minutes, followed by a twenty minute debriefing. Conclusion: We have successfully developed and implemented an interprofessional in-situ simulation program in our ED. Participant feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Lack of financial support, reluctance of staff to participate, and overwhelmed resources are some of the challenges to running a program like this in a busy ED environment. However, there are clear benefits: empowering team members, culture change, identification of latent safety threats, and a perception of improved teamwork and communication.

Understanding the Development of Team Identification: A Qualitative Study in UN Peacebuilding Teams

The goal of our study was to scrutinize the psychological processes that occur in individuals when developing identification with a highly diverse team. A qualitative, theory-generating approach following the principles of grounded theory was chosen as research design. Data were obtained from 63 personal interviews with members of seven UN peacebuilding teams in Liberia and Haiti. These teams were particularly well suited for analyzing the dynamics of identification processes as they constitute extreme cases with respect to team members’ identity diversity. Our analysis reveals four different processes that occur as individuals develop team identification (TI): enacting a salient identity, sensemaking about team experience, evaluating collective team outcomes, and converging identity. We can show that team members engage in both individual- and collective-directed sensemaking processes during TI development, thereby using internal (i.e., other team members) and external points of reference (i.e., team-external actors) for ingroup/outgroup comparisons. Moreover, our study reveals different modes of identity convergence (i.e., active, reactive, and withdrawal) which are associated with different types of TI (i.e., deep-structured TI, situated TI, and disidentification). Although team members’ identification with their workgroup has long been considered important for effective team functioning, knowledge about its development has remained limited and largely without empirical footing from a real-world team context. Our study represents the first empirical attempt to inductively identify the processes that occur in individuals as they develop TI.

Knowledge integration, teamwork and performance in health care.

Knowledge integration is the process of building shared mental models. The integration of the diverse knowledge of the health professions in shared mental models is a precondition for effective teamwork and team performance. As it is known that different groups of health care professionals often tend to work in isolation, the authors compared the perceptions of knowledge integration. It can be expected that based on this isolation, knowledge integration is assessed differently. The purpose of this paper is to test these differences in the perception of knowledge integration between the professional groups and to identify to what extent knowledge integration predicts perceptions of teamwork and team performance and to determine if teamwork has a mediating effect. The study is a multi-center cross-sectional study with a descriptive-explorative design. Data were collected by means of a staff questionnaire for all health care professionals working in the rehabilitation clinics. The results showed that there are significant differences in knowledge integration within interprofessional health care teams. Furthermore, it could be shown that knowledge integration is significantly related to patient-centered teamwork as well as to team performance. Mediation analysis revealed partial mediation of the effect of knowledge integration on team performance through teamwork. PRACTICAL/IMPLICATIONS: In practice, the results of the study provide a valuable starting point for team development interventions. This is the first study that explored knowledge integration in medical rehabilitation teams and its relation to patient-centered teamwork and team performance.

Constructive Controversy and Reflexivity Training Promotes Effective Conflict Profiles and Team Functioning in Student Learning Teams

In the current research, we examine the effects of a new team-training system that can be readily integrated into postsecondary teaching and learning activities. Our training focuses on generating ...

Processes in healthcare teams that include nurse practitioners: what do patients and families perceive to be effective?

To explore patient and family perceptions of team effectiveness of teams those include nurse practitioners in acute and primary care. Nurse practitioners provide safe and effective care. Patients are satisfied with the care provided by nurse practitioners. Research examining patient and family perceptions of team effectiveness following the implementation of nurse practitioners in teams is lacking. A descriptive qualitative design was used. We used purposeful sampling to identify participants in four clinical specialties. We collected data from March 2014-January 2015 using semi-structured interviews and demographic questionnaires. Content analysis was used. Descriptive statistics were generated. Participants (n = 49) believed that the teams were more effective after the implementation of a nurse practitioner and this was important to them. They described processes that teams with nurse practitioners used to effectively provide care. These processes included improved communication, involvement in decision-making, cohesion, care coordination, problem-solving, and a focus on the needs of patients and families. Participants highlighted the importance of interpersonal team dynamics. A human approach, trust, being open to discussion, listening to patient and family concerns and respect were particularly valued by participants. Different processes emerged as priorities when data were examined by speciality. However, communication, trust and taking the time to provide care were the most important processes. The study provides new insights into the views of patients and families and micro-level processes in teams with nurse practitioners. The relative importance of each process varied according to the patient's health condition. Patients and providers identified similar team processes. Future research is needed to identify how team processes influence care outcomes. The findings can support patients, clinicians and decision-makers to determine the processes to focus on to promote effective team functioning, and involve patients and families as team members.

Intraoperative crisis resource management during a non-intubated video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery.

The management of surgical and medical intraoperative emergencies are included in the group of high acuity (high potential severity of an event and the patient impact) and low opportunity (the frequency in which the team is required to manage the event). This combination places the patient into a situation where medical errors could happen more frequently. Although medical error are ubiquitous and inevitable we should try to establish the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for effective team performance and to guide the development of a critical event. This strategy would probably reduce the incidence of error and improve decision-making. The way to apply it comes from the application of the management of critical events in the airline industry. Its use in a surgical environment is through the crisis resource management (CRM) principles. The CRM tries to develop all the non-technical skills necessary in a critical situation, but not only that, also includes all the tools needed to prevent them. The purpose of this special issue is to appraise and summarize the design, implementation, and efficacy of simulation-based CRM training programs for a specific surgery such as the non-intubated video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery.

The impact of emotional intelligence on managers' performance: Evidence from hospitals located in Tehran.

Context:Most of the studies show that emotional intelligence (EI) is an important factor for effective leadership and team performance in organizations.Aims:This research paper aims to provide an exploratory analysis of EI in the hospitals managers located in Tehran, and examine its relation to their performance.Settings and Design:The present research was an analytical and cross-sectional study. Setting of the study was hospitals located in Tehran, Iran.Subjects and Methods:We conducted a cross-sectional study from a matched sample of 120 managers and 360 subordinates in hospitals located in Tehran. Cyberia shrink EI measure was used for assessing the EI of the participants. Moreover, a management performance Questionnaire is specifically developed for the present study. The total of 480 questionnaires analyzed throughout Kolmogorov–Smirnov, Mann–Whitney, and Kruskal–Wallis tests in SPSS.Results:The findings suggested a poor EI among hospital managers. As for EI subscales, social skills and self-motivation were in the highest and lowest levels respectively. Moreover, the results indicated that EI increases with experience. The results also showed there is no significant relationship between the components of EI and the performance of hospital managers.Conclusions:Present research indicated that higher levels of EI did not necessarily lead to better performance in hospital managers.

Personality Profiles of Software Engineers and Their Software Quality Preferences

Studies related to human aspects in software engineering (SE) have been performed from different perspectives. These perspectives include the study of human factors in different phases of software life cycle, effect of team performance in software development, how can a personality trait suit a particular task, and about some other miscellaneous issues. This research work aims to establish personality profiles of Pakistani software engineers using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument. This survey has collected personality profiles of 110 software engineers. Moreover, their preferences of software quality attributes have also been collected. Analysis of the study shows that the most prominent personality type is a combination of introversion, sensing, thinking and judging. Investigative results indicate that most of the software engineers consider usability and functionality as the most important software quality attributes.

Distinguishing between taskwork and teamwork planning in teams: Relations with coordination and interpersonal processes.

Planning in teams represents a critical process that lays the groundwork for effective team functioning. The current investigation examined whether emergent team planning can be meaningfully characterized in terms of a distinction between planning that focuses on taskwork and planning that focuses on teamwork. In Study 1, items written to reflect commonly identified indicators of team planning were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis. In Study 2, slightly modified items were provided to a separate sample, and a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted. In Study 3, the relationships between the different forms of planning and other team processes (i.e., coordination, interpersonal processes) were examined in order to determine whether there are unique relationships for task-focused and team-focused planning. Results from the first 2 studies provided support for a 2-factor structure of team planning, whereas Study 3 found independent relationships for taskwork and teamwork planning with subsequent team processes. Both forms of planning also exhibited indirect relationships with team performance via the mediating role of subsequent team processes.

Interprofessional Collaboration in Ontario’s Family Health Teams: A Review of the Literature

Background: In Ontario, 200 interprofessional Family Health Teams (FHTs) have been established since 2005 to improve primary healthcare access, patient outcomes, and costs. High levels of interprofessional collaboration are important for team success; however, effective team functioning is difficult to achieve. FHTs are in their infancy, and little is known about the determinants that have influenced the quality of team collaboration or the outcomes that FHTs have achieved. The objective of this article is to examine current knowledge regarding FHT team functioning.Methods and Findings: A search of the literature resulted in eleven articles for final analysis, which were primarily qualitative in nature. A narrative synthesis of study findings was completed. A number of common challenges to interprofessional collaboration were identified. Nevertheless, patients and providers described improved healthcare access, greater satisfaction, and enhanced quality of healthcare using a FHT approach. Collaboration was fostered by effective leadership, communication, outcome evaluation, and training for both professionals and patients alike.Conclusions: Ontario FHTs have generated improvements in healthcare access and outcomes. Collaborative team functioning, while present, has not reached its full potential. Supportive public policy, education for patients and providers, and evaluation research is needed to advance FHT functioning.

Emotional Intelligence Quotient and Leadership Effectiveness in the Pharmaceutical Industry: A New Template

Emotional Intelligence reflects the ability to feel and understand other people in social situations, to detect the nuances of emotional reactions and to utilize such knowledge to influence others through emotional regulation and control. As a result, it represents a critically important competency for effective leadership and team performance in organizations in the existing crisis era. In this paper, based on the international bibliography, we are trying to develop a Theoretical Communication Model on emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness so as to be applied in the decision making process for middle and senior managers of the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Improving corporate performance by enhancing team dynamics at the board level

Board performance research conducted over the last 50 years has focused on individual directors’ economically-motivated behaviors and outcomes, and has generated inconsistent and disappointing results. Most research does not consider the board as a team, despite recent calls for a focus on collective board processes and behaviors. A recent survey revealed that 90 per cent of directors rate their individual performance as very effective but only 30 per cent rate overall board performance at an equivalent level, exposing a gap that needs to be addressed. The discrepancy between individual and team performance effectiveness was the focus of this research, based on original data from 182 directors and their assessment of their board’s dynamic, team task performance efficacy, team potency and the impact of their activities, as a board, on firm profitability. Our findings show that director experience, social network and cultural intelligence quotient, as well as their ability to achieve high levels of team interaction – thereby lowering information asymmetry – have a significant impact on corporate profitability. Our study demonstrates that the impact of board functioning as a team is an eight times greater predictor of corporate performance than individual director demographics. We found that this team dynamic as well as team potency has a positive impact on profitability, while the focus on compliance-oriented tasks has a significantly negative effect on profitability. The insights of this study should help boards and their advisors better focus their efforts to improve team dynamic, optimize board interactions and refocus their attention on value-creating activities. We also believe that improving board team dynamics will have an unintended consequence of bringing a level of individual and team satisfaction back to the boardroom.

Moving toward Collective Mindsets: An Investigation of Group-based Synchrony in Work Teams

The keys to creating effective team performance have long been under investigation by researchers. Past research identifies social cohesion as an important precursor, but how to achieve social cohesion is lesser understood. This study proposes that at the core of an effective team is synchrony—the act of moving together “as one”—which has been shown to predict a variety of psychological and social outcomes. The question of whether— and if so, how—synchrony’s benefits extend to the domain of team performance, however, remains untested. This group- level study consists of examines real undergraduate student teams working together over an academic semester. This study tests a series of predictive links between synchrony, entitativity, and cohesion as team-level characteristics and their relationship to team performance. Results of structural equation models reveal that synchronous teams demonstrated greater team performance, as measured by instructor-assigned grades. Specifically, synchrony enables a social process of greater team entitativity and cohesion to emerge within teams, in turn predicting better team performance. In light of significant results, analytical alternatives for considering team-level emergent processes are provided, along with implications for leaders, managers, and educators wishing to extract the benefits of synchrony to build cohesive, yet effective, teams.

Reflections of Cross‐Cultural Collaboration Science

The notion that effective collaboration benefits team and organizational performance has been around for many years. Interest in the construct of collaboration is a dominant area of research not only in the fields of industrial organizational psychology and organizational behavior but also in other areas of study such as sociology and medicine (Bedwell et al., 2012). Most recently, the prevalence and growth of global work, consisting of activities such as trade, off-shoring, and economic activity across national borders, has aroused the interest of cross-cultural psychologists in studying collaboration. The articles presented in this special issue provide evidence of this growing area of inquiry. Looking across this growing body of theoretical and empirical research, we observe that the use of a common definition of this construct could help future cross-cultural and multicultural research to be more fruitfully conducted. Hence, our goal here is to highlight several fundamental questions that exist regarding collaboration within and across national and cultural borders. We will not attempt to review or summarize the literature that has been amassed over the past few decades. Rather, we seek to provide an integrated view of the key questions, problems, and opportunities that pose a direct challenge to our field. By highlighting these areas, we seek to stimulate others to conduct needed research. We believe that several fundamental questions regarding the nature of collaboration within and across cultures still exist. These questions are as follows: (i) What can be gained by studying collaboration from a cross-cultural perspective? (ii) What do we know (and not know) about collaboration within and between cultures? (iii) What do we need to know in order to effectively manage multicultural collaborations? (iv) How should we advance scholarship about cross-cultural and multicultural collaborations? The remainder of this paper is organized around these focal questions. Prior to answering these questions, we start with the presentation of a unifying definition of collaboration and the value for studying collaboration from a cultural perspective in the first place. We conclude with recommendations for future directions.

The Impact of Cross-Cultural Factors on Heavy Engineering Projects

Managing in today’s environment provides many challenges and project teams are frequently confronted with situations which challenge the traditional ways projects have been managed. Project success is dependent upon the effective management of people and at the heart of this process is client leadership. Terms such as responsive project manager, issue resolution and value criteria are increasing in popularity, however, dealing with the mutual inconsistency these three terms provides a challenge to most of today’s multinational construction organizations. In spite of recent extensive research, there has been little consideration given to how to classify success factors that influence cross-cultural project team performance. The reported research employed both in-depth interviews and postal questionnaires methodologies to capture the relevant experiences of senior managers in Kenya and the UK. The results were grouped under three major headings: (i) monitoring project team performance; (ii) achieving team goals; and (iii) maintaining team affiliations. The project leaders agreed that successful cross-cultural project team performance can be achieved by creating an effective integrated cross-cultural construction team. The findings accentuates a need for future research into project success factors to investigate the experiences of virtual project leaders and the difficulties faced in realizing effective project team performance.

Rapid Response Teams: Qualitative Analysis of Their Effectiveness

Multidisciplinary rapid response teams focus on patients' emergent needs and manage critical situations to prevent avoidable deaths. Although research has focused primarily on outcomes, studies of the actual team effectiveness within the teams from multiple perspectives have been limited. To describe effectiveness of rapid response teams in a large teaching hospital in California that had been using such teams for 5 years. The grounded-theory method was used to discover if substantive theory might emerge from interview and/or observational data. Purposeful sampling was used to conduct in-person semistructured interviews with 17 key informants. Convenience sampling was used for the 9 observed events that involved a rapid response team. Analysis involved use of a concept or indicator model to generate empirical results from the data. Data were coded, compared, and contrasted, and, when appropriate, relationships between concepts were formed. Results Dimensions of effective team performance included the concepts of organizational culture, team structure, expertise, communication, and teamwork. Professionals involved reported that rapid response teams functioned well in managing patients at risk or in crisis; however, unique challenges were identified. Teams were loosely coupled because of the inconsistency of team members from day to day. Team members had little opportunity to develop relationships or team skills. The need for team training may be greater than that among teams that work together regularly under less time pressure to perform. Communication between team members and managing a crisis were critical aspects of an effective response team.

Managing team performance: saying and paying

PurposeIn a turbulent economic climate, characterised by pressures to improve productivity and reduce costs, performance management has a more central role in helping to ensure competitive advantage. A focus on teamwork has become an almost universal feature of performance management in modern organizations. It is essential that messages concerning teamwork and rewards are clear and seen to be fair if they are to bring about commitment to discretionary effort, which is increasingly a key feature in gaining competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to focus on whether employee perceptions of the fairness of performance management systems have an impact on the effectiveness of team performance and discretionary effort.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses the concepts of equity and motivation to explore the outcomes, procedures and implementation of teamwork in contemporary organizations. It draws on a range of theoretical frameworks from both philosophy and social science, examines current practices and experiences and considers future trends. Empirical research includes a ten‐year study of practising managers and also ethnography, questionnaires and interviews in two large manufacturing and service organizations.FindingsInvestigations show that the espoused theory of organizations concerning the need for teamwork is often at odds with their theory in use. This frequently creates both actual and perceived injustice in organizations and a tension between managing performance and encouraging engagement, which is dependent on perceptions of fairness.Practical implicationsThe paper shows that organizations are sending out mixed messages that are causing tensions which may affect productivity.Originality/valueThis research opens a debate that seeks to assess the contribution of teamwork to the achievement of an organization's goals and how this may be applied in the practice of performance management.

Identifying attributes required by Foundation Year 1 doctors in multidisciplinary teams: a tool for performance evaluation

BackgroundEffective working in multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) is promoted as essential in ensuring good healthcare outcomes, suggesting that an understanding exists of the relationship between outcomes and the attributes needed by...

What makes teacher teams in a vocational education context effective?

PurposeAt a time when secondary vocational education is implementing competence‐based education (CBE) on a large scale, to adapt to the needs of students and of the labour market in a modern society, many vocational schools have recognised that interdisciplinary teacher teams are an important condition for this implementation. In order to provide students with the right competences for the labour market, different subject teachers should work and learn together and, by doing so, should be able to develop changes and improvements to ensure the effective implementation of CBE. In spite of the appeal of forming teacher teams in vocational education, studies on this subject show that teams in educational settings are not easily implemented. This paper aims to address this issue.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, 28 managers from a Vocational Education and Training (VET) college in The Netherlands were interviewed in order to find factors that are related to effective team functioning. The authors choose to rely on a qualitative approach, because there has hardly been any empirical validation of factors that are related to effective team functioning in a vocational education context. In order to determine what factors influence team effectiveness, the results from the interviews have been related to what is known about team effectiveness from the literature.FindingsBy relating the results from the interviews to what is known about team effectiveness from the literature, a framework for future research on team effectiveness in schools is provided. In line with the organisational and psychological literature on team effectiveness, the managers distinguished several aspects in their definition of team effectiveness. Moreover, the findings of the study highlight the importance of the development of task interdependence, transformational leadership, and group efficacy for producing effective teams in education.Originality/valueAlthough teams and team functioning have been the focus of researchers from different disciplines and have been studied from different perspectives, studies on the conditions that support or limit the successful implementation of teacher teams in vocational education are still scarce. The results of this study are expected to provide a deeper understanding of the mechanism that underlies the ability of teacher teams in vocational education to function effectively.