• Statement about how you see your preference for doing teamwork. (This can be work-related or academic/school-related).
• Next, do the team player inventory on p.192 (exhibit 9.4 Ch 9) and report your findings.I don't want your 10-point inventory, but do want to know more broadly how you scored and how you feel your accuracy was with your initial statement.
• Are there specific factors that might completely change your preference/scores to the inventory?

p.192 (exhibit 9.4 Ch 9)

Selecting People for Teamwork Professor Edward Lawyer writes that "people are very naive about how easy it is to make a team. Teams are the Ferrari's of work design. They're high performance but high maintenance and expensive."89 He adds that teams make workplaces extremely effective, not just fast. They are a very good use of resources (time, people, and money). That said, it's almost impossible to have an effective work team without carefully selecting people who are suited for teamwork or for working on a particular team. A focus on teamwork (individualism/collectivism), team level, and team diversity can help companies choose the right team members.90 We may think we can always simply choose the best players, but that is not necessarily the way to success. We are hired for those high-paying jobs once we graduate from university so that we can develop teams. We are hired to take low-performance teams and tum them into higher performance teams. How do we do that? To answer that question, let's look at what makes successful team players. Are you more comfortable working alone than with others? If you are, you may not be well suited for teamwork Studies have found that job satisfaction is higher in teams when team members prefer working with others.91 An indirect way to measure someone's preference for teamwork is by assessing that person's degree of individualism or collectivism. Individualism-collectivism refers to the degree to which a person believes that people should be self-sufficient and that loyalty to oneself is snore in1portant than loyalty to one's tean1 or company. 92 Individualists, who put their oven welfare and interests first, generally prefer independent tasks in Collectivists, who put group or tean1 interests ahead of self-interests, generally prefer interdependent tasks in which they work with others; also, collectivists would rather cooperate than compete and are fearful of disappointing team or of being ostracized fro1n team s.

Given these differences, it makes sense to select team members who are collectivists rather than individualists. Many companies use individualis1n- collectivisn1 as an initial screening device for tean1 n1e1nbers. But if team diversity is desired, individualists may also be appropriate. To determine your preference for team work, take the Team Player Inventory in Exhibit 9.4.

Team level refers to the average level of ability, experience, personality, or any other factor on a tean1. For example, a high level of team experience n1eans that a team has especially experienced team members. This does not mean that every member of the team has considerable experience, but that enough tean1 members do to significantly raise the average level of experience on the team. Tean1 level is used to guide the selection of tea1nmates when teams need a particular set of skills or capabilities to do their jobs well. For exa1nple, en1ployees at Bo1nbardier's Montreal plant are graduates of certified engineering schools in Quebec, or in other provinces, and the con1pany's designers are registered professional engineers in the province. SAP in Vancouver en1ploys highly trained and skilled graduates from the British Colun1bia Institute of Technology. 9

Exhibit 9.4 The Team Player Inventory

Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree.

1. I enjoy working on team/group projects 1 2 3 4 5

2. Team/group project work easily allows

others not to pull their weight. 1 2 3 4 5

3. Work that is done as a team/group is

better than work done individually. 1 2 3 4 5

4. I do my best alone rather than

in a team/group 1 2 3 4 5

5. Team/group work is overrated in terms

of the actual results produced. 1 2 3 4 5

6. Working in a team/group gets me to

think more creatively. 1 2 3 4 5

7. Teams/groups are used too often when

individual work would be more effective. 1 2 3 4 5

8. My own work is enhanced when I am in

a team/group situation. 1 2 3 4 5

9. My experiences working in team/group

situations have been primarily negative. 1 2 3 4 5

10. More solutions/ideas are generated when

working in a team/group situation than

when working alone 1 2 3 4 5

Team level refers to the average level of ability, experience, personality, or any other factor on a team.