Creativity & Teamwork Flashcards
What are the immediate benefits of teamwork?
- wider appreciation of learning
- cognitive flexibility: Learning to deal with conflicts, better integrate diverse ideas and problems to solutions
-increased perceived self confidence: To be an effective team member we need to expose self through ideas
Safe environment when ideas are taken on board self-confidence is reinforced
What are the 4C’s of high performance teams
Context composition competencies and change
What is change
The ability to monitor their own performance and make changes as needed
What is context for the team?
The need for teamwork type of team needed and the culture structure and systems that support teamwork. Essentially the organisational environment of the team.
What is composition of teams
Members with diverse skills can be complimentary skills to one another
Members clearly understand their roles and assignments and carry them out with commitment
If the team is too large members my lose motivation due to lack of involvement but if there isn’t enough members there is too much stress placed on each member
Need to make sure you get the right people because the wrong people make it more likely to fail
What are competencies
The teams ability to solve problems communicate make decisions manage conflict and so on
What is included in effective context management
Measurable clear goals
Team understanding that effective teamwork is critical in reaching goals
Reward systems so rewarding team performance and not individual performance
Teamwork culture make sure they establish a culture that supports teamwork processes and behaviour
Is job knowledge or being a team player more important for career development
Being a team player is more important
What are process losses
They occur when people do not work as hard in a group as they would alone
What are conversational bottlenecks?
Waiting to speak increased the chances of forgetting ideas
How is a fear of rejection a barrier to team creativity?
People only express conservative and non controversial ideas to avoid criticism
How can barriers to team creativity be avoided
The adoption of formal rules to guide the group and avoid problematic behaviours
What are the already existing rules
- Go for quantity: more ideas produced the higher chance you’ll come up with creative solutions and innovations
- withhold criticism: allows people to deal with the fear of rejection
- welcome wild ideas
- combine and improve ideas
What are the 5 behaviours that underpin team creativity within the norms perspective? (PIECE)
Participation Independence Elaboration Communication Exploration
Participation?
Is key to the creative process but might be affected by social loafing = lazy, rely on others
How can participation be boosted by different norms?
Norm for accountability: Shared expectations of team members that they will be asked to justify their beliefs and actions to others
Norm for equity: groups of norms that manage the distribution of rewards on the basis of contribution
Independence?
Teams that are formed to carry out creative work expect that individuals contribute with unique perspectives however they tend to be lost
Elaboration?
A process of systematic evaluation:
The potential of an idea define in developing an idea or expanding on existing ideas
The norm for elaboration is key to promoting this behaviour
Communication?
In addition to full participation, independent perspectives and elaboration, communication norms also help team creativity
Particularly relevant in culturally diverse groups
Exploration?
Exploration can help implementing innovation in groups
It is a rather difficult process among teams but one way to overcome exploration issues is through norms of risk-taking only by accepting that some failures will occur will groups be able to sustain creative output
How does being a part of a team increase personal satisfaction?
Teams provide a sense of security that allows individuals to take risks and make decisions that they wouldn’t if working alone.
How does teamwork make being at work enjoyable?
Can lead to developing personal relationships
What is the biggest disadvantage to working in a team?
It requires more time. Especially when the team is new as will require more meetings
Conflict in teams?
Personality conflicts are magnified in teams which will lead to disagreements
What is group think?
Limits innovation
When a group has been successful it begins to believe it will never fail.
What are the benefits of establishing roles up front in a team?
Prevents the same task from being done twice
Keeps things organised
Why should teams clarify their goals?
Prevents having to rework
Prevents non-goal outcomes
Prevents insufficient uses of time
Why is teamwork considered not natural for most individuals?
Most of us were bought up to do the best we can individually
What are the four basic categories of divergent thinking?
Fluency - large number of ideas
Flexibility- generate a wide variety of ideas
Originality - production of unusual ideas
Elaboration - developing or building on other ideas
What do people think of brainstorming techniques
Majority of people believe they would generate more ideas in a group than if they were alone
What is the funnel process and what does it relate to?
Funnel process: wider funnel of ideas, the more ideas that will be considered which will increase chances of effective solutions
Relates to needing everyone to participate
Why is the difference between a group and a team?
A group is a collection of individuals who coordinate their individual efforts.
A team is a group of people who share a common team purpose and a number of challenging goals. Members of the team are mutually committed to the goals and to each other. Without purpose and goals you cannot build a team.
