Core conditions of team effectiveness: Development of a survey measuring Hackman’s framework

ABSTRACT

Leaders and team development practitioners working toward increasing interprofessional team effectiveness frequently need to quickly and accurately determine the extent to which a team possesses the most essential and foundational components required for effective teamwork. While there is no shortage of team theories, there are few freely available, practical, short, and well-developed surveys to measure team functioning across a variety of team types. We developed a 9-item team assessment to fill this gap in the literature, measuring the most fundamental criteria for optimising team functioning, based on Hackman’s widely used framework of the foundational conditions for team effectiveness. Reliability and validity of the assessment were investigated through multiple methods, including confirmatory factor analysis and bivariate correlations. Initial psychometric work would appear to support the use of this assessment to measure the three core conditions of team effectiveness. This assessment can be completed by interprofessional team members and their responses can be used to help leaders and team development practitioners focus resources on the most relevant conditions to increase the likelihood of team effectiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Teamwork
• teams
• team effectiveness
• surveys
• questionnaire design

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the 165 employees who participated in the surveys.

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katelyn J. Cavanaugh

Katelyn Cavanaugh serves as the Analyst for the Leadership Institute at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Jessica M. Logan

Jessica Logan is a Senior Organizational Development Consultant at Houston Methodist Hospital.

Stephanie A. Zajac

Stephanie Zajac is a Leadership Practitioner specializing in Teamwork research and practice for the Leadership Institute at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Courtney L. Holladay

Courtney Holladay serves as the Executive Director for the Leadership Institute at the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.