Increasing Team Motivation

The discussion of the impact of social loafing on a team helps identify the factors that encourage motivation in the team. Increasing a team’s motivation depends on multiple factors: the task it performs, how performance will be evaluated and rewarded, the team’s belief in its ability to succeed, and the team members’ sense of commitment or belonging.

Task

A team is more motivated when the task it performs is interesting, involving, and challenging. Probably the best description of how to create this type of task comes from the job characteristic model (Hackman & Oldham, 1980). A satisfying job creates three critical psychological states: experienced meaningfulness, responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge of results. A task is meaningful when it provides the opportunity to use a variety of skills, to complete an entire piece of work from beginning to end, and to affect others with its completion. Responsibility is experienced when given autonomy or the freedom to design, schedule, and carry out the task as desired. Knowledge of results comes from feedback on the effectiveness of one’s performance.

However, a good team task is more than just a good individual task. A good team task requires task interdependence; team members must work together to successfully complete the task. Task interdependence is an additional factor that can be added to the job characteristic model (Van der Vegt, Emans, & Van de Vliert, 1998). It is a shift from individual responsibility to experienced team responsibility

for outcomes. To be successful, team members must feel responsible for both their own work and the work of the other team members. It is only when team members experience both types of responsibility that they work in a cooperative way.

Task interdependence can come from the distribution of skills among team members and the work processes of the team. It is one reason why action teams (e.g., sports teams) and cross-functional teams (e.g., design teams where members have different skills) often are more successful than student project teams. In a sports team, the players need one another to succeed. In a cross-functional team, working together is the only way to complete a project. However, in a student team, the students typically all have the same skills and knowledge, so they do not need one another to complete the task.

Interdependence helps motivate team members in several ways. When team members depend on one another to complete a task, power is shared among the members (Franz, 1998). The more team members need one another to complete a task, the more power each team member has over the team. Task interdependence affects how factors, such as conflict, cohesiveness, work norms, and autonomy relate to team effectiveness (Langfred, 2000). When teams are highly interdependent, these variables have a more powerful effect on how well teams perform. Interdependence also encourages members to believe that their contributions to the team are indispensable, unique, and valuable, thereby making them more willing to put effort into the team’s task (Kerr & Bruun, 1983).

Evaluations and Rewards

Interdependence relates to both the task and the outcome of the team’s work. The task may require coordinated effort, but team members may believe their evaluations and rewards are primarily based on individual performance rather than on the success of the team’s effort. Research shows that a belief in outcome interdependence is important because it helps motivate members to work together (Van der Vegt et al., 1998).

To be successful, team members must feel responsible for both their own work and the work of other team members. Team goals and team reward systems encourage this dual sense of responsibility. For example, managerial teams often do not perform well because managers are more concerned about what happens in their respective departments than in the organization as a whole. One of the values of companywide profit-sharing programs is to make organizational success an important goal. When it is achieved, each member of the management team is rewarded. This encourages the managers to think about what is good for the

organization rather than only about what is good for their departments.

A balance of individual- and team-based rewards is necessary to encourage both a commitment to the team and an incentive for individual performance (Thompson, 2004). Finding the right balance can be difficult for an organization. In addition, the performance evaluation system must fairly identify both team success and an individual’s contribution to that success. When individual contributions to the team are identifiable and linked to the reward system, motivation is increased (Harkins & Jackson, 1985). (The topic of evaluating and rewarding teams is discussed in more detail in Chapter 16.)