Class 5 - Group Flashcards
Characteristics of an Effective Team
Team Design
Clear purpose Clear roles and work assignments Shared leadership Consensus decisions Participation
Team Process Open communication Informality Listening Style diversity Civilized disagreement External relations Self-assessment External relations
Team Feedback/Learning
Managing Team Boundaries
Group Decision Making
Strength:
Generate more complete information and knowledge
Increased diversity of views
Increased acceptance of a solution
Weaknesses:
Takes longer
Conformity pressures
Discussions can be dominated by one or a few members
Ambiguous responsibility for the final outcome
Some Core Group Concepts
Roles
Norms
Cohesiveness
Roles
The set of expected behavior patterns that are attributed to occupying a given position in a social unit
People…
-play multiple roles
-learn roles from stimuli around them
-can shift roles rapidly when the situation demands
-experience conflicts between roles (ex if different bosses)
role identity.: Certain attitudes and actual behaviors consistent with a role
role perception: Our view of how we are expected to act in a given situation
Role Expectations – how others believe you should act in a given situation
Psychological contract – an unwritten agreement between employees and employer setting out mutual expectations
Role conflict – when an individual finds that compliance with one role requirement may make it more difficult to comply with another
Norms
Acceptable standards of behavior within a group that are shared by the group’s members
…often carry a sense of “oughtness”
…may vary in strength (and their level of enforcement)
Conformity and the Asch Studies(lines goes along (think they are right: informational conformity, or know you are right, but avoid discomfort: normative conformity) with group, with partner drops down). write down reduces
Useful norms for your teams:
Meetings
Working
Communication
Leadership
Consideration
Feedback
Cohesiveness
The degree to which members of the group are attracted to each other and motivated to stay in the group.
If high cohesiveness can enforce norms.
If low level will not enforce norms.
If high cohesive and high aligment with group and org goals will strongly increase productivity. if not aligned to goals iwll decrease produ.
if low cohesive and high alighmetn will moderate increase productivy. with low alignment will no sign effect on productivy
*Diagram
Encouraging Cohesiveness
Make the group smaller
Encourage agreement on group goals
Increase the time spent together
Increase the status and perceived difficulty of group membership
Stimulate competition with other groups
Give rewards to the group rather than members
Physically isolate the group
Groupthink (Janis)
*not good
A deterioration of individual’s mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgments as a result of group pressures.
Occurs when members:
Rationalize away resistance to assumptions
Pressure doubters to support the majority
Doubters keep silent/minimize their misgivings
Interpret silence as a “yes” vote
Minimize groupthink by:
Encouraging group leaders to actively seek input from all members and avoid expressing their own opinions
Appointing a “devil’s advocate”
Group Creativity Techniques
Brainstorming:
Generates a list of creative alternatives
Problem: production blocking and cognitive bandwagon effects
Nominal Group Technique (NGT):
Restricts discussion during the decision-making process to encourage independent thinking
Assumption Reversal:
Break your team out of “cognitive ruts”
Break associative barriers
Shake your mind free from preconceived notions
Engage in assumption reversal
Think of a situation, product, or concept related to a challenge you are facing, and think about the assumptions associated with that situation
Write down those assumptions then reverse them
Think about how to make those reversals meaningful
Everest - what made the everset team effective?
- common goal
- team compostion: trust, prior expereince, less egos
- everyone knew their role but also stepped up
- motivation - ethusiusm
- planned in advance, prepared well
- addressed error quickly, flexibility, adopted
- ground rules, tent meetings.
Book:
Group
Group Formal Group Informal Group Command Group Task Group Interest group Friendship Group
Reasons to Form groups: security, status, self-esteem, afflication, power, goal achievement
Stages of group developmenet
5 stage model
1) Forming
2) Storming
3) Norming
4) Performing
5) Adjourning
(alternative model: punctuated-equalibrium model)
Group Properties (6)
1) Roles
a. Role perception
B. role expectations
c. role conflict
2) Norms
a. Hawthorne studies - phsyical environment and productivity - status as speical better
b. Conformity
c. Deviant workplace behavior
3. Status
a. What determines status
1. power a person wields over others
2.a person’s ability to contribute to a group’s goal
3. an indiviudal’s personal characteristc
b. Status and norms
c. status and group interacton
4. Size
a. soical loafing
5. Cohesiveness
6. Diversity
Group Decision Making
a. group vers indivudal
-advandtages: more complete info
-increase acceptance of a solution
-more creative
-weaknesses: time consuming
- conformity pressures
- dominated by one or few
-ambiguous responsibility
Effective?
generally more accurate
but less accurate then the the most accurate person
By-products of group decison:
1) groupthink
2) groupshift
group decisoin-making techniques
(interacting groups: face to face, verbal and nonverbal)
1) brainstorming
2) nominal group technique - restrits discusion during begin and end.
Teams
Work Groups vs Work Teams
group: no need to work collaboratively, instead sum of indivudal contributions. no positive synergy.
team: generates postiive synergy through coordinated effort. *synergy: ind efforts result in level of performance greater than the sum of individ inputs.
a) goal - group can share info, but team collective performance
b) synergy - group: neutral, team: postiive
c) accountability - group: indiviudal, team: ind and mutal
d) skills - group: random and varied, team: complementary
