4.12. Teams and Leadership Flashcards
What are teams?
- Groups of two or more people
- Exist to fulfill a purpose
- Mutually accountable for achieving common goals
Types of teams
- Permanence: How long that type of team usually exists
- Skill differentiation: Degree of skill/knowledge diversity in the team
- Authority differentiation: Degree that decision-making responsibility is distributed throughout the team or centralized
e.g.
• Departmental teams (high permanence, medium skill differentiation and high authority differentiation)
• Bocconi student project groups (low permanence, low-medium skill differentiation and low authority differentiation)
Best tasks for teams
- Complex tasks divisible into specialized roles
- Well-structured tasks
- Higher task interdependence
Team advantages
- Make better decisions, products/services
- Better information sharing
- Increase employee motivation/engagement
Team challenges
- Process losses – resources needed for team maintenance
- Social loafing – members potentially exert less effort in teams than alone
- Group think and overconfidence (inflated team efficacy); usually happens when group has little diversity, similar thinking styles/ people conform to avoid feeling like outcast
Process losses
When keeping the team together is more work than doing the work
Techniques in teamwork: Brainstorming
• Participants think up as many ideas as possible
• Four brainstorming rules
– Speak freely
– Don’t criticize
– Provide as many ideas as possible
– Build on others’ ideas
• Conformity effect can sometimes be overcome by making people write down ideas independently
• This is a useful technique when trying to come up with novel ways of thinking – NOT when making a decision
Team size
• A team must be large enough to accomplish task
• But smaller teams are better because:
+ less process loss – need less time to coordinate roles and resolve differences
+ feel more responsible for team’s success
+ require less time to know members and for group to feel as a group (cohesion)
Team cohesion
The degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members
When is team cohesion strong?
– Higher member similarity
– Smaller team size
– Regular/frequent member interaction
– Somewhat difficult team entry (membership) -cognitive dissonance reduction (refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs)
Note about team cohesion
More cohesive teams perform better but risk of group-think higher
Team composition - diversity
Team members have diverse knowledge, skills, perspectives, values, etc
Advantages of team diversity
- view problems/alternatives from different perspectives (avoid group think)
- broader knowledge base
- better representation of team’s constituents
Disadvantages of team diversity
- take longer to become a high-performing team
* less motivation to coordinate
Stages of team development
- Forming: learn about each other.
- Storming: conflict; members proactive, compete for roles.
- Norming: roles established; consensus around team objectives and team mental model.
- Performing: efficient coordination; highly cooperative; high trust; commitment to team objectives; identify with the team.
- Adjourning: disbanding; shift from task to relationship focus.
General guidelines for team decisions
- Team norms should encourage critical thinking
- Sufficient team diversity but also cohesion
- Checks/balances to avoid dominant participants
- Maintain optimal team size
Define leadership
Leadership is the ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness of the organizations of which they are members.
Formal leadership models
• Transformational • Managerial – Task leadership – People leadership: \+ Servant leadership \+ Path-goal leadership • Competency view
Transformational leadership model
- Develop/Communicate the vision
– Framing the vision (McDonald’s setting up in Russia as “hamburger diplomacy”)
– Communicate the vision with sincerity and passion - Model the vision
– Symbolize and demonstrate the vision through their own behavior
– Builds employee trust in the leader - Encourage experimentation
– Encourage questioning current practices/trying out new ones - Build commitment to the vision
– rewards, recognition, celebrations
Managerial leadership
• Leaders do not spend their entire time working on a better future; they also need to deal with the reality
• Managerial leadership: Dealing with daily activities, support and guide the performance and well-being of individual employees and the work unit to achieve current objectives and practices
• Managerial leadership differs from transformational leadership
– Deals with the here and now
– Micro-focused (vs macro-focused)
Task leadership
– Assign work,clarify responsibilities
– Set goals and deadlines,provide feedback
– Establish work procedures,plan future work
People leadership
– Concern for employee needs
– Make workplace pleasant
– Recognize employee contributions
– Listen to employees
Servant leadership
- Leaders serve followers
* Described as selfless, humble, empathetic, and ethical coaches
Path-goal leadership
• Effective leaders choose styles that best influence employee motivation and firm performance in a given situation
• Four main path goal leadership styles
– Directive–Task-oriented behaviors;provide structure
– Supportive–People-oriented behaviors;provide support
– Participative–Employee involvement
– Achievement-oriented–Stretch goals; positive self-fulfilling prophecy
Path-goal contingencies
• Skill and experience of individuals:
– Low: directive and supportive leadership
• Locus of control:
– Internal (own charge): participative and achievement leadership
– External (believe in luck): directive and supportive leadership
• Team dynamics
– Low cohesion: supportive leadership
– Dysfunctional norms: directive leadership
Competency perspective
Idea that there is a “type” of person that is born to lead
• Still controversial – assumes there is only one correct way of leading
Natural cultural issues in leadership
• Societal cultural values and practices:
– Shape leader’s values/norms
– Shape follower prototype of effective leaders
• Some leadership styles are universal, others differ across cultures
– “Charismatic visionary” seems to be universal
– Participative leadership works better in some cultures than others
Level of task interdependence
- Reciprocal: everyone checks each other’s work
- Sequential: a -> b -> c
- Pooled: resources are divided specifically among a,b and c
8 leadership competences
- Personality: extroversion
- Self-concept: consistent and clear self-view, positive self-evaluation
- Leadership motivation: motivation to lead others, high need for power
- Drive: inner motivation to pursue goals, action-orientated, inquisitive
- Integrity: consistency in words and actions
- Cognitive/practical intelligence: above average cognitive ability
- Emotional intelligence: recognising and regulating emotions in self and others
- Knowledge in business: understands organisation’s environment
