The Assessment of Team Performance: Observations and Needs

Abstract

The abundance of teams within organizations illustrates the importance of team performance measurement—tools that measure teamwork. Taking into account the inherently complex nature of teams, this chapter presents a few insights and a picture of the research and practice on teamwork measurement over time. We define what makes a team and identify the characteristics of an effective team. Then, we present critical observations to team performance measurement that reflect the 30 years of experience of the first author, at observing, measuring, and assessing team performance in various domains. These observations provide insight into what attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions—how teams feel, act, and think—play an integral role in performance assessment, while taking situational factors and construct considerations into account. Support is presented from the literature on teams and performance measurement, and we provide major contributions from a sample of team performance measurement literature in the past 30 years. We conclude with a discussion on needs for developing future team-based measurement approaches. In this discussion of the future, emphasis is placed on our need, as a field, to continue closing the gap between research and practice through designing and validating effective performance-based measures that target practitioner needs.