BBUS 402 Final

Question 1

5 Key Defining Characteristics of Teams (Thompson Chp 1)

Answer 1

(1) exists to achieve a shared goal;
(2) interdependent regarding common goal;
(3) bounded and stable;
(4) authority to manage their own work
(5) internal process operate in a social system context

Question 2

2. Consider the four different types of teams described in Thompson, chapter 1. How is authority and control distributed in each type of team?

Answer 2

Manager lead – almost all manger;
Self-Managing – shared between team and management;
Self-Directing – almost all done by team with manager overseeing;
Self-Governing – all team

Question 3

What are the key characteristics of a corporate BHAG?

Answer 3

Clear and compelling –
something out of the ordinary (outside comfort zone).
Hold in its own right,
consistent with company ideology

Question 4

1. *According to Thompson Ch. 2, what are the essential conditions for successful team performance? What are some common threats to each of the essential conditions for successful team performance?

Answer 4

(1) Adequate skill & knowledge (KSA); Choking under pressure, learning curves, stress
(2) motivate and effort to complete task; social loafing, free riders, diffusion of responsibility, dispensability of effort, sucker aversion
(3) coordinate activities, communication, & internal processes

Question 5

2. *According to Thompson Ch. 2, what are the criteria by which a team’s effectiveness should be evaluated? Why is it important to evaluate a team’s effectiveness by other criteria besides team productivity?

Answer 5

Productivity, cohesion, learning and integration. Sometimes a new team might fail but if they learn something from their experience, …

Question 6

3. *Katzenbach and Smith provide a very specific definition of “team.” Write it here and then pick one phrase from the definition and elaborate.

Answer 6

Small number of people 
with complimentary skill 
who are committed to a common purpose
performance goals
and a common approach
for which they hold themselves mutually accountable

Question 7

1. *What are some examples of recognition-based awards? What are some of the general guidelines a manager should follow when implementing recognition awards?

Answer 7

There can be either cash or non-cash rewards. The best are those that are catered toward a specific individual. Choose with a person in mind, be genuine about it.

Question 8

What are some possible biases in peer evaluations?

Answer 8

Rater: Inflation bias, extrinsic incentives bias, homogeny bias, halo bias, fundamental attractor error, communication medium, experience effect, reciprocity bias, bandwagon bias, premacy and recency bias, conflict of interest bias, etc.

Ratee: egocentric bias, intrinsic interest, social comparison, fairness, listening to advice.

Question 9

3. Using Jeary & Cottrell’s book “136 Effective Presentation Tips,” describe five of the factors contributing to an effective presentation.

Answer 9

be yourself, 
practice, 
wear appropriate clothes that make you feel confident, 
good first impression, 
powerful voice.

Question 10

1. *What three key elements form the internal dynamics of a team? Why do you think managers often tend to overlook internal dynamics when team-building?

Answer 10

Technical or functional expertise,
Task-management skills
Interpersonal skills

Question 11

*What is diversity? What are some different types of diversity?

Answer 11

Diversity is a good mix of people with a variety of talents and viewpoints that can help expand a leader, surface levels, deep level, social layer.

Racial, cultural, gender, experience, etc.

Question 12

*Describe the processes and procedures that contribute to effective teamwork.

Answer 12

Team structure, team norms, Behavioral integration

Question 13

Think of an example of a high performance teams that you have experienced or are aware of. How do they fit the definition of a high performance team?

Answer 13

Committed to each others successes, common goal accountability, emotional investment

Question 14

Explain the concept of “First Who, Then What,” and describe how you can apply that in your own life.

Answer 14

Get the right people to work with then setting the goal

Question 15

*According to Collins, what does it mean to be rigorous?

Answer 15

To be rigorous means consistently applying exacting standards at all times and at all levels, especially in upper management. It means that the best people need not worry about their positions and can concentrate fully on their work.

Question 16

Explain how teams are affected by

Answer 16

a. Group mood and emotion (can be transmitted and effects others.)
b. Group cohesion (easier to manage more closely, overall better and more cohesion)
c. Trust (higher trust leads to more being done, as other can rely on each other)
d. Socialization (is a process that helps with unity)

Question 17

What conclusions can we draw from the Zand article about trust and teams?

Answer 17

Trust builds effective foundation for teams to work off of. Higher the trust the more success the team.

Question 18

1. What are some of the possible biases and points of error that may arise in team communication systems?

Answer 18

Message tuning + message distortion + uneven communication

Question 19

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a transactive memory system (TMS) in a team?

Answer 19

Benefits the group through greater amount of knowledge. Down side: reliance on other can become hindrance if they are not around.

Question 20

FIRO-B

Answer 20

This is the test we took to determine how much emotion we give and receive, etc.

Question 21

1. In what situations are individuals more effective decision-makers than groups, and in what situations are groups better than individuals?

Answer 21

Individual-short immediate decisions

Groups – better at finding correct answers when they exist

Question 22

2. Briefly describe the five decision-making pitfalls.

Answer 22

Groupthink – prioritizing consensus, escalation of commitment- staying on a failed project because of previous investments, abeliene paradox- doing what you think everyone else wants, Group polarization- group shifts towards others leanings. Unethical decisions, groups more likely to make unethical decision to benefit the group.

Question 23

1. What are the key differences between relationship, task, and process conflict?

Answer 23

Relationship – personally, defensive; task – conflict of the goal and process is conflict on how to achieve the goal.

Question 24

2. What interventions can be used to improve the quality of conflict a team is experiencing?

Answer 24

Collaboration, Rights based management- based on fairness and precedents. Power Based- one person calls the shots and determines all rules. Interest based- account for all interests in the team.

Question 25

Thomas Killman Conflict mode assessment

Answer 25

Assertiveness vs. Coopertiveness

Question 26

How can a manager measure creativity? What strategies can you use to enhance your own creativity?

Answer 26

Common way of evaluating the creativity of a team’s idea is via 3 indices:
Fluency – a simple measure of how many ideas a person (or team) generates. Alex Osborn the creator of
modern brainstorming was right: quantity often does breed quality
Flexibility – a measure of how many types of ideas a person (or team) generates.
Originality – is the ability to generate unusual solutions and unique answers to problems.
Strong relationship between quantity, diversity, and novelty of ideas
Two key skills involved in creative thinking:
Divergent thinking – moves outward form the problem in many directions and involves thinking without
boundaries
Convergent thinking – thinking that proceeds toward a single answer

Question 27

What are some of the arguments for the ineffectiveness of group brainstorming? What can be done to re-
structure the design of brainstorming groups to increase productivity and improve performance?

Answer 27

1. Criticism is ruled out
2. Free wheeling is welcome
3. Quantity is desired
4. Combination and improvement of ideas are encouraged
   Individual brainstorming – group members working independently.
   Group brainstorming is less efficient than solitary brainstorming in both laboratory and organization
   settings. Solitary brainstorming is much more productive than group brainstorming, in terms of quality and
   quantity of ideas.

Question 28

What are the major threats to team creativity? How can these threats be overcome and team creativity be
enhanced?

Answer 28

Social loafing
Conformity
Production blocking
Performance matching

Enhancing team Creativity

• Cognitive-goal instructions
• Social-organizational methods
• Structural-environmental methods

Question 29

How does each of the five types of teams listed in this chapter (Exhibit 10-1) manage their team boundaries? What are the tradeoffs between internal cohesion and external ties within each type of team?

Answer 29

Five types of teams in terms of their relationship to the environment”

Insulating – team is isolated from other parts of organization or its customers

Broadcasting – Teams concentrates on internal team processes until the team is ready to inform outsiders of its intentions

Marketing – Team concentrates on getting buy-in from outsiders through advertising, self-promotion, lobbying

X-Teams – Exploration, exploitation, exportation. Rapid execution. Rapid prototyping.

Question 30

1. Consider the list of common external roles for team members in Exhibit 10-2. Which of these roles do you think you play in your own team (in class)? Why? At work? Why?

Answer 30

External roles of team members
Boundary spanner
Bufferer
Interpreter 
Advisor 
Gate keeper 
Lobbyist
Negotiator or mediator 
Spokesperson
Strategist
Coordinator 

Role overload – when a person has too much work to do in the time available

Question 31

1. How can you increase your social capital?

Answer 31

Strategic network expansion involves connecting to people and teams in such a way that the manager is filling a structural hole.
Analyze your social network
Determine the brokers in your social network
3-step guide

1. Your circle of key business contacts
2. Who introduced you to the contact in column b?
3. Who did you introduce the contact in column b to?
   Identify “structural holes” in your organization
   Expand the size of the network
   Understand gender scripts in networks
   Diversify networks
   Build hierarchical networks: sociometry
   Multi-team systems: liaison roles, overlapping membership, cross-team integrating teams, management teams, representative integrating teams, individual integrating roles, improvement teams
   Types of ties in teams: friendship, idiosyncratic deals, trust ties, advice ties. Relationship strength, reciprocity, cognition, social distance
   Knowledge valuation

Question 32

Consider the different leadership styles outlined in this chapter. What are some of the representative behaviors associated with each style of leadership?

Answer 32

Aversive leadership – engaging in intimidation, dispensing reprimands
Directive Leadership- issuing instructions and commands, assigning goals
Transactional leadership- providing personal rewards, providing material rewards, managing by exception (active, passive)
Transformational leadership- providing vision, expressing idealism, using inspirational communication, having high-performance expectations
Empowering leadership- encouraging independent action, encouraging opportunity thinking, encouraging teamwork, encouraging self-development, participative goal setting, encouraging self-reward

Question 33

. Describe the key characteristics of each of the five decision styles outlined in this chapter.

Answer 33

Autocratic – leader makes decision with little to no involvement from the team members
Inquiry –the leader asks for information from the team, but ultimately makes the decision independently
Consultative approach – making different degrees of consultation with the team members, but the leader is still the final decision maker
Consensus building – involves extensive consultation and consensus with team members; ultimately team makes decision together
Delegation – team makes decision without leader; leader delegates problem to the team and the team determines the best course of action

Question 34

List some of the strategies for encouraging participative management in the workforce and how to implement each of these strategies.

Answer 34

Task delegation – Handing over the responsibility and authority required to accomplish a task without relinquishing final accountability.
Parallel suggestion involvement – Invite employees and team members to makes suggestions about organizational procedures and processes.
Job involvement – restructuring the task performed by employees to make them more rewarding, enriching and more autonomous. (more interesting tasks = more effectively and creatively) More costly than parallel
Organization involvement – restructures the organization so that employees at the lowest levels will have a sense of involvement not just in how they do their own jobs but also in the performances of the entire organization.

Question 35

1. What are some of the challenges inherent in maintaining both individual and team identity?

Answer 35

When self-esteem is shaken by personal setbacks, our groups provide us with reassurance and identity.
Types of teams and groups are common to many people’s identity:

• Gender groups
• Position, level, and class (rank and how many people supervised)
• Fractional unit (marketing and sales)
• Regional unit (Midwestern and north eastern)
• Ethnicity and race
Source of identity
Emotional (affective): I would prefer to be in a different group. Members of this group like on another. I enjoy interacting with the members of this group
Behavioral: in this group, members don’t have to rely on one another. All members need to contribute to achieve the group’s goals. This group accomplishes things that no single member could achieve.
Cognitive: I think of this group as a part of who I am. I see myself as quite different from other members of this group. I don’t think of this group as part of who I am.

Individual self is realized by differentiating ourselves from others and relies on interpersonal comparison processes and is associated with the motive of protecting or enhancing the person psychologically.
Relational self is achieved by assimilating with significant others and is based on personalized bonds of attachment.
Collective self is achieved by inclusion in large, social groups and contrasting the group to which one belongs with relevant out groups.

Question 36

2. What serious biases or misassumptions do groups that are involved in interteam conflict sometimes experience? How do these biases affect the ability of teams to accomplish their goals?

Answer 36

Interteam respect: far beyond the self-esteem of the members; people who don’t feel respected by their team are not as loyal to their team and not as committed. Respected members of “devalued” groups are the most likely to donate their time to their team and work to improve its image, rather than their personal image.
People derive a part of their identity from their teams, and identity is flexible – some situations people see themselves as part of the team, but in others they need to distinguish themselves from their team.

• Social Comparison
• Team discontinuity effect
• Team rivalry
o Vicarious retribution – when people who are not directly harmed by a rival group nonetheless seek retribution against members of that out group, who were not the original perpetrators of the initial attack of the in group
• Postmerger behavior
• Inter group conflict
o Realistic conflict
 Attaining the desired resources
 Preventing other groups from reaching their goals
 Disadvantage: group members often must be extremely vigilant about possible threats to the protected resource
o Symbolic conflict
o Mixed motive conflict
o Extremism
Biases associated with intergroup conflict
• Stereotyping
• Categorization: Us versus Them
• In group Bias (or “we are better than them”)
o Effect is strong that members of groups systematically judge their group members to be better than the group average and above the median on variety of social traits, even when all the members are judged consecutively.
o Enthocentrism: level of nations, regions, or ethic categories
o Collective narcissism: an emotional investment in an unrealistic belief about one’s group’s greatness; the greater the groups’ collective narcissism, the more aggressive they are toward outgroups.
o Implicit ingroup metafavoritism: the fact that we prefer ingroup members to display ingroup bias
• Racism and racial discrimination
• Denial
o Unearned privilege: advantages that accrue to people simply on the basis of their membership in a group
• Ingroup prototypicality
• Outgroup homogeneity bias
• Out group approach bias

Question 37

3. What are some strategies for reducing or de-escalating conflict that has already manifested itself within an organization?

Answer 37

Strategies to effectively deal with negative component of intergroup competition:
• Superordinate goals
• Contact
o Social and institutional support: should be a framework of social and institutional support. Development of a new social climate in which more tolerant norms can emerge
o Acquaintance potential: successful contact is that it be of sufficient frequency, duration, and closeness to permit the development of meaningful relationships between members of the groups concerned.
o Equal status: necessary for contact to be successful is that participants have equal status
o Shared goal: when members of different groups depend on one another for the achievement of a jointly desired objective, they have instrumental reasons to develop better relationships
o Cross-group friendships: sometimes it is not necessary for groups to have real contact with one another to improve intergroup relations
• Crosscut role assignments
• Communal sharing norms
o About social exchange, designating uncertain resources as common properties to be shared with other members of a social group
• Group Affirmation

Question 38

1. Give an example for each cell within the place-time model of social interaction. Why is face-to-face communication still the dominant preference of most managers and executives?

Answer 38

The place time model considers team s in terms of their geographic location and temporal relationship.
Richness – the potential information-carrying capacity of the communication medium.
Face-to-face contact is crucial in the initiation of relationships and collaborations.

• Researchers need regular face-to-face contact to be confident that they accurately understand each other’s work, particularly if it involves innovative ideas.
• Renew trust in their mutual comprehension
• Major conflicts must be resolved
• Groups may form more slowly and never fully
Same time Different place
Same time – face-to-face Telephone videoconference
Different time – single text editing, shift Work e-mail, voicemail
Face to face (kinetic, visual, paralinguistic, linguistic) Close
Two-way TV (visual paralinguistic, linguistic) Psychological distance
Telephone (paralinguistic, linguistic)
Computer messaging (linguistic Remote
Loss of informal communication
Virtual distance – refers to the feelings of separation engendered by communicating by e-mail, text, audio conferencing etc.
Disconnected feedback
Loss of informal modeling
Out of the loop employees
Four tactics to help people reframe their purpose on their team:
1. Tell yourself that the project is different from anything you’ve done before and presents a challenging and exciting opportunity to try out a new approach and learn.
2. See yourself as vitally important to a successful outcome, and to achieve the goal, you need the willing participation of others.
3. Tell yourself that others are vitally important to a successful outcome and may bring key pieces of the puzzle that you don’t anticipate
4. Communicate with others on the team as you would if the above 3 statements were true
Different time, same place. Different place, different time. Information technology and social behavior. Reduced status differences: The “weak Get Strong” effect. Equalization of participation. Technology can lead to face to face meetings. Increased time to make decisions
Communication: information suppression – the lower frequency of communication in CM groups
Risk Taking. Task performance and quality of group decisions. Social norms. Task performance and quality of group decisions.

Question 39

3. Review the “e-communication assessment and etiquette” in Exhibit 13-4. How do you rate? Do you think your social behavior or style of communication changes when you send e-mail or use other forms of information technology? Why or why not?

Answer 39

• Will e-mail be used for routine communication, while voice mail is the standard for more urgent communication?
• When is it appropriate to page people?
• What constitutes an acceptable use of cell phones?
• What is the appropriate use of PDAs and other wireless devices during meetings?
• How should instant messaging be utilized, and what limits should be placed on its use?
• What types of info should be communicated b voicemail?
• What are the standards for length of voice mail and email messages and for distribution
• Are there size limits on doc attached to email?
• When should spreadsheets, slide presentations, and multimedia resources be used to share info?
• When should the intranet, shared drives, or file transfer sites be used?
• What are appropriate methods for filtering info and messages?
• How often are associates expected to access various message and info sources?

Question 40

4. What are some structural or interpersonal strategies for enhancing local and virtual teams? What tradeoffs, in terms of money and time, are involved in each strategy? Given this information, which strategies seem the most practical or immediately viable?

Answer 40

Virtual teams – a task forcused group that meets without all members necessarily being physically present or even working at the same time.
Threats to effective processes in virtual teams – physical distance.
Two types of info in teams: Tacit knowledge and codified knowledge
Tacit is hard to articulate and acquire through experience
Codified – refers to knowledge that is transmittable in formal, symbolic language
Forming Storming Norming Performing

• Realistic virtual project team previews
• Coaching from experienced team members
• Develop a clear mission
• Acquire senior management support • Face to face teambuilding sessions
• Training on conflict resolution
• Encourage conflicting employees to work together to find common ground
• Shuttle diplomacy and meditation to create compromise solutions • Created customized templates or team charters specifying task requirements
• Set individual accountabilities
• Establish procedures
• Distinguish task; design procedures appropriate for each
• Assign a team coach • Ensure departmental and company culture supports virtual teamwork
• Provide sponsor support and resources for team to perform

Collabotory – the combination of tech, tools, and infrastructure that allows scientist to work with remote facilities and each other as if they were collocated.
Technology
GCSS (group comm. Support systems) providing or modifying within group communication
GISS (Group info support systems) supplementing info available to group or its members by info drawn form databases
GXSS (group external support systems) providing or modifying external comm. With those outside
GPSS (group performance support systems) channeling or modifying the group’s task performance processes
Schmoozing – our name for contact between people that has the psychological effect of having established a relationship with someone AKA virtual handshake – the exchange of some basic personal info significantly expedites the operation of virtual teams
Master virtual comm. Etiquette
• establish the purpose and importance of the team up front
• listen actively
• avoid monologues
• summarize ofthen and confirm understanding
• agree on actions and next steps
Reliability capital 1. Keep a written list of all the agreements, promises, and commitments you make 2. Ask your team to tell you one thing you can do to be more reliable in their eyes, and then do it. 3 be available to support and respond to team members
Mere-exposure effect – the tendency of people to like those whom they are exposed to more often