College 3 Flashcards
Teams and diversity
What is the definition of trust in respect to this course?
The willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectations that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party.
What is the definition of team trust?
Combined level of trust in a team shared among team members. Assuming that when there is high trust in a team, all members of the team trust each other to a certain degree.
What is the relation between trust and performance?
Trust has not only been assumed but demonstrated to have a positive impact on performance.
What is the outcome of a meta-analysis on trust and team performance?
They found a positive correlation between intrateam trust and team performance.
What is the main reason of the correlation between team trust and team performance?
The main reason is probably that trust reduces feelings of vulnerability, which helps people within a team to work more effectively together.
So, when trust is present, team members are more likely to…
- Admit that they don’t know something.
- Critique each other’s ideas (this leads to higher quality).
- Share creative ideas and to resolve conflict, should conflict arise.
When does trust not always lead to a higher performance? So, what is the exception where team trust does not increase team performance?
One very noted exception is the role of trust in self-managing teams. These self-managing teams are highly autonomous and if trust in these teams is very high, we see that members of the team are less likely to monitor each other’s performance. The result can be that performance deteriorates.
So, if you like and trust your team mates so much that you don’t check up on them the performance can decline.
What is the definition of self-managing teams?
Self-managing teams are teams that determine by themselves how they are going to tackle a certain task, they determine by themselves if they are going to appoint a leader and if so how, how they are going to collaborate, the deadlines etc. everything is decided within the team.
There is no higher authority telling them how to structure their work process.
The only thing is that at a certain point in time the team has to deliver something.
What is trust import for besides performance?
Satisfaction and generally the relationship within the team.
What do you see when you look specifically at trust between leaders and subordinates and focus on trust that subordinates have in their leaders?
What we see is that if an employee trusts their leader they are much more satisfied with their job, they are much less likely to leave their organization and they’re much more committed to the organization.
They have also found associations, these are less strong but still significant. These associations are between high trust in the leader and higher performance of the employee, higher altruism, and commitment to leader’s decisions.
What is altruism?
Altruism can be seen as extra roll behaviours, things that you do on the job that are not technically part of your job description, but that make things easier.
True or false: it’s only important that subordinates have trust in their leaders, the trust a leader has in their subordinates is not important.
False. Trust in leaders is very important, but the opposite is also true, it’s important that leaders trust their subordinates.
What has a study shown about the trust leaders have in their subordinates?
A study has shown that if leaders trust their subordinates, they are more likely to show citizenship behaviours towards that subordinate. This ultimately leads to a better performance of these subordinates and also to a better performance by the leader.
What are citizenship behaviours?
You want a leader that includes you in everything that is going on, that helps you better yourself and to do a better job, this is called citizenship behaviour towards subordinate.
You want more from a leader than just punishment or reward.
What is a team?
- 2 or more individuals
- Social interaction
- Common goal(s)
- Perform tasks relevant to the organization
- Members are interdependent
- Members have different roles and responsibilities
- Members are linked to the organization
Some of these are quite strict, but it makes the difference between a team and a group.
What are the differences between work groups and work teams?
Work group
- Members interact to share information with other members of the group.
- Not responsible for a collective work product.
- You sit together, you interact, you work on the same things, but you are not collectively producing one output. There is al low level of interdependence.
- E.g., SPinO workgroup
Work team
- Members depend on one another and must interact to create something that no one person on the team could create alone.
- Create synergy; the whole is more than the sum of the parts.
- E.g., presentation team
What are team norms?
Once teams are created or developed, team norms soon arise.
These team norms essentially guide the behavior of the members of the team.
Informal and interpersonal rules.
For many teams or groups the norms are made much more explicit, often in the outset. And this is done in what is called the team charter.
Influence of norms on behaviour
Depends on importance of the team and team cohesion: in strong and cohesive teams, norms exert greater influence.
What is a team charter?
In a team charter the team purpose is clarified, it is written down, and expectations for behavior are set forth.
As a result of this there should be fewer misunderstandings, it should be clear what the team is about and what is expected from each individual team member.
Misunderstandings should be fewer and team members can be reminded of the group’s norms.
This sounds very formal but it makes sense to do something similar, even in smaller groups.
E.g., bylaws (statuten)
What are the steps of making a team charter?
- Team members (Who is on the team?)
- Core values (Who do you care about?)
- Group norms (How will you work?)
- Roles (What roles are necessary?)
- Metrics of success (What does success look like to you?)
- Standards of quality (What are your standards for high quality work and learning?)
Aaron et al. (2014) on team charters
They studied teams of business students who took a course. Over the duration of the course they worked in small teams where they had to develop a business plan.
A third of these students were asked to make a team charter before the very first meeting of their team. They were not given detailed instructions, they just explained what a team charter is and if they could make one.
Then another third of these students were also asked to make a team charter, but they were also given detailed instructions on how to make a team charter.
The other third of the students were in a control group where they didn’t have to make a team charter at all.
Group 1: no team charter
Group 2: team charter
Group 3: team charter with instruction
They followed the students over this course and at the end they measured a number of variables.
What did they measure in Aaron et al. (2014) on team charters?
They measured a number of organizationally relevant outcome variables, including
- Team satisfaction
- Internal communication in the team
- The degree to which they felt mutual support
- Effort
- Level of cohesion
What are the results of Aaron et al., (2014)?
Group 1 < group 2 < group 3
Group 1: no team charter
Group 2: team charter
Group 3: team charter with instruction
So even for teams that are relatively simple, such as temporary teams, making a team charter at the beginning has a positive effect on these outcome variables.
Team development stages
- Forming => getting to know each other
- Storming => some level of conflict and leadership dynamics
- Norming => cohesion, common goal
- Performing => goal-directed performance
- Adjourning => disbanding
When do you make a team charter?
A team charter needs to be made at the very beginning of the team, otherwise it doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore.
Punctuated equilibrium on group stages
These stages sound nice on paper, but in reality we can see that there are two stages: social goals and work goals.
‘Social goals’ (50%): getting to know each other
‘Work goals’ (50%): goal-oriented performance
What is the definition of cohesion?
“The resultant of all the forces acting on the members to remain part of the group.”
What is the interaction between cohesion, norms and performance?
Groups with a high performance norm become more productive when the cohesion increases.
Groups with a low performance norm become less productive when the cohesion increases.
E.g., in America people have to work hard outside, in these kinds of groups the performance is low. This is because you are punished by your teammates if you work harder, this is because this shows the guards that the groups can work harder than they actually do.
What is the general relation between cohesion and performance?
In general, high cohesion does increase performance.
This is probably because low performance norms are less common than high performance norms.
What can go wrong with decision making?
Groupthink.
Group cohesion can also lead to poor decision making, so group cohesion is also a factor contributing to groupthink.
Decision making
A specific type of performance which is really important in organisations.
What is the definition of groupthink?
Conformity-seeking tendency of the group that results in compromised decision making.
What is the cause of groupthink?
Members in the team seem to seek conformity; they are less inclined to be critical, to have deviant ideas and they are more inclined or pressured to agree with the majority of the team.
Because of these conformity pressures, the team doesn’t reflect well on all the aspects of the decision that needs to be made.
As a consequence the decisions are often poor.
What has research focused on concerning groupthink?
How to recognize it.
What are symptoms of groupthink?
Group rationalization
- This is how you can recognize groupthink.
- The group focuses on finding explanations that support a preferred course of action.
Direct pressure
- People who speak out against the dominant viewpoint in the group experience a lot of pressure from the team to change their mind.
Suppression (keeping silent)
- If you feel like your viewpoint is different from the dominant viewpoint you might stay silent, even without the direct pressure from your teammates.
Illusion of unanimity
- All of the above contribute to this illusion
- The illusion that everyone agrees because people who don’t agree don’t speak up.
What is important concerning groupthink?
Groupthink is something that you need to be very vigilant about in an organisation, and when you think it might be going on it’s important to act, preferably sooner rather than later.
