EAGER: Identifying and Examining Operational Skills that Facilitate Effective Team Performance

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

Teams are ubiquitous in today's organizations. Yet, we still struggle with how to manage them in many ways. One issue may be that they are all unique, not only in the tasks they are assembled to perform but also in the skills members have available to compose and facilitate specific team processes. In previous literature, team member skills are typically characterized as either task-related (often assumed to be functional expertise) or interpersonal skills. While all of these skills are important they do not completely describe, nor adequately define, the variety of skills that a member can apply to the team's task and processes. Identifying what these other skills are is far more difficult than identifying what they are not. For the purposes of this proposal, we characterize them as skills, because it is the term most often used to describe what team members bring to the team. More specifically, we label them operational skills because in team operations comprise a myriad of processes that convert inputs into outputs and applying different operations results in different team outputs. Just as team members have unique task-related skills they bring to the team, they may also possess different operational skills that can be applied to the team's task. As such, team task results may be dependent upon which member's skills are applied to what team processes. The purpose of this proposed research, therefore, is to develop and test a taxonomy of team member operational skills that facilitates forward progress on the team's task. In particular, this project's objectives are to (1) determine the operational skills needed in a team domain, (2) determine whether operational skills can be useful in configuring teams, and (3) examine whether an explicit focus on aligning operational skills and task activities facilitates more effective team processes and performance. Intellectual Merit: The proposed project represents a rigorous, systemic approach to develop a taxonomy of operational skills that team members need to successfully complete their projects. Operational skills refer to team members' abilities to organize, synthesize, and decide in the team context. Scholarly and trade publications allude to the need for these types of meso-level skills (e.g., problem solving skills, decision making skills, management skills) but do not clearly describe or define them. To ensure a comprehensive examination of these skills, input will be extracted from the field in at least two significantly different sectors (e.g., healthcare and shipbuilding) and from controlled environments (i.e., gaming and laboratory). The results of this study will have a transformative impact in that they will (1) provide a theoretical basis for examining how operational skills are used to configure teams, assign tasks, and enhance performance and (2) formalize the incorporation of operational skills into team planning activities. Broader Impacts: Successful completion of the proposed research will provide clear explication of an additional set of necessary skills team members possess in the form of a taxonomy of operational skills. This taxonomy will enhance future research efforts by, for example, the inclusion of heretofore overlooked, or poorly specified, skills in studies of teams, more comprehensive examinations of the broad array of skills team members possess, and questionnaire scales grounded in this systematic research. Practice may also reap benefit from the results of this research through an introduction to a more nuanced approach to team staffing, as well as new opportunities for recruiting individuals with these skills and training programs that help employees enhance these skills. In the long term, the proposed research has the potential to be the foundation of a new paradigm for considering how teams are configured and task work is assigned, thereby transforming collaborative processes in teams and improving their performance. The proposed study will include students, particularly women and minority students, on the research team.