Groups and Teams Flashcards
Groups and Teams
Group: two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives
Team: bounded and stable sets of individuals, collaborate interdependently in order to achieve shared objectives, collective accountability
Formal group: defined by the organisation’s structure with designated work assignments establishing tasks
Why do People Form Groups?
Social Identity Theory: people have emotional reactions to the failure or success of their group because their self-esteem gets tied up into groups performance
Ingroup Favouritism: we see members of our ingroup as better than than the other people
Group Development
The five-stage model: stages of group development
- Forming stage: characterised by uncertainty of group purpose, structure, leadership
- Storming stage: intergroup conflict is present
- Norming stage: characterised by close relationship and cohesiveness with strong sense of group identity
- Performing stage: group is fully functional and now performing the task at hand
- Adjourning stage (temporary groups): concern with wrapping up activities rather than task performance
Punctuated-Equilibrium Model (alternative group development model)
Temporary groups with deadlines.
- their first meeting sets the group’s direction
- this first phase of group activity is one of inertia
- a transition takes place exactly when the group has used up half its allotted time
- this transition initiates major changes
- a second phase of inertia follows the transition
- the group’s last meeting is characterised by markedly accelerated activity
Group Property 1: Roles
Roles: set of expected behaviour patterns attributed to a person occupying a given position in a social unit
Role perception: the way we think we are supposed to act in a given situation
Role expectations: how other believe a person should act in a given situation, in the workplace we look at role expectations through the perspective of the psychological contract: an unwritten agreement between employees and employer, sets out mutual expectations as to what management expects from workers and vice versa
Role conflict: phenomenon under which an individual is confronted with divergent role expectations
Group Property 2: Norms
Norms: acceptable stands of behaviour within a group that are shaped by the members of the group
4 main categories within the workplace:
1. performance norms: e.g. level of output, time constraints
2. appearance norms: e.g. dress code
3. social arrangement norms: e.g. ability to form friendships
4. resource allocation norms: e.g. assignment of challenging jobs
Conformity: phenomenon of adjusting the behaviour of an individual to align with the norms of the group
Reference groups: significant groups to which individuals belong or hopes to belong and with whose norms individuals are likely to conform
Deviant workplace behaviour: voluntary behaviour that violates significant organisational norms and threatens the well-being of the organisation or its members, e.g. leaving early, sabotage, stealing, blaming co-workers, sexual harassment etc
Group Property 3: Status
Socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others. Important motivator and has major behaviour consequences.
According to status characteristics theory, status tends to derive from:
- the power a person wields over others: people who control the outcomes tend to be perceived as high status, because they likely control the group’s resources
- a person’s ability to contribute to a group’s goals: people whose contributions are critical to the group’s success tend to have high status
- an individual’s personal characteristics: someone whose personal characteristics are positively valued by the group typically has higher status than someone with fewer valued attributes
High status people are often granted more freedom, easily resist conformity pressures and more assertive. Your own status affects the way people perceive you.
Group Property 4: Size
Group size affects groups overall performance.
Smaller groups are usually faster when completing tasks and individuals perform better.
The advantage of large groups is their wide diversity of inputs, performance increases with group size the addition of new members has diminishing returns on productivity.
Social loafing: tendency for individuals to put in less effort when working collectively than alone, prevented by setting up a common group purpose, intergroup competition, distributing group rewards and engaging in peer evaluations
Group Property 5: Cohesiveness
Degree to which group members are attracted to each other and are motivated to stay in the group. Affects group productivity positively, depends on group performance-related norms.
How to engage group cohesiveness: make the group smaller, encourage agreement with group goals, increase the time members spend together, increase the group’s status and the perceived difficulty of attaining membership, stimulate competition with other groups, give reward to the groups rather than to individual members, and physically isolate the group
Group Property 6: Diversity
Degree to which members of a group are similar to, or different from one another.
In the early stages, diversity seems to increase group conflicts as people are settling in, however overtime, diverse groups may perform better.
Group Decision Making
Groups vs Individuals
Groups usually generate more complete information and knowledge.
However, they consume a lot of time, conformity pressures within the group, domination of the group by small group members, lack of allocation of responsibilities.
Effectiveness and efficiency:
groups have better creativity and accuracy but individuals are more efficient as they have superior speed.
Groupthink
Phenomenon in which the norm for consensus overrides the realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action, occurrence in which individuals do not express their unusual and unpopular views because of group pressures.
Managers should encourage group discussion, let someone play the role of devil’s advocate or monitor the size of groups to tackle groupthink.
Group Shift
Describes the way group members tend to exaggerate the initial positions they hold when discussing a given set of alternatives and arriving at a solution.
Group Decision-Making Techniques
Interaction of groups: interacting groups come together face-to-face and rely on verbal and non-verbal communication
Brainstorming: can overcome the pressures for conformity that dampen creativity by encouraging any and all alternatives while withholding criticism
Nominal group technique: Restricts discussion or interpersonal communication during the decision making process, physically present but operation are done independently.
1. Before the discussion, each member independently writes down ideas.
2. Each member presents one idea to the group, no discussion takes place until all ideas have been presented and recorded.
3. The group discusses the ideas for clarity and evaluates them.
4. Each group member silently and independently rank-order the ideas. The idea with the highest aggregate ranking determines the final decision.
Electronic meeting: individuals can interact on computers, make comments on the basis of proposed solutions and vote in favour of a solution while staying anonymous
Differences Between Groups and Teams
The main difference between work groups and work teams is that work teams maintain a positive synergy that may increase the effectiveness and the efficiency of the team.
The extensive use of teams creates the potential for an organisation to generate greater outputs with no increase in inputs.
Types of Teams
Problem solving teams:
- composed of 5 to 12 people who meet on a regular basis to discuss possible improvements regarding the quality, efficiency and environment of their work
- usually work for the same department of an organisation
Self-managed work teams:
- composed of 10 to 15 people that undertake responsibilities and duties of their formal supervisors
- effectiveness depends on the team norms, the team tasks and the reward structure of the organisation
- higher job satisfaction but also a higher absenteeism and turnover rate
- sometimes leading to lower group performance
Cross-functional teams:
- composed of employees from different departments of an organisation but from the same hierarchical level
- main advantage is that their members are employees from different areas of expertise within the organisation
- encouraging exchange of information, the development of new ideas and the solution of complex and demanding projects
- but it takes time to build trust and teamwork
Virtual teams:
- composed of people that communicate through computer technology and work together
- main disadvantage is that there is no physical interaction between its members
- can be productive if members trust each other
- progress is controlled by supervisors and the results are published throughout the organisation
- tend to share more unique information but less information overall
Multi-team system:
- represent a collection of two or more interdependent teams that share a subordinate goal, a team of teams
- bigger the task complexity, bigger the team, but when the teams become bigger, the coordination becomes tough
- organisations solve this by employing multi-team system
Creating Effective Teams
- Adequate resources
- teams need resources to achieve their goals and purpose
- teams should receive support from managers and the larger organisation - Leadership and structure
- teams that assign different responsibilities to each member and develop a structure tends to be more successful
- the role of the leader that facilitates the work of a team is also important - Climate of trust
- interpersonal trust among team members facilitates cooperation, reduces the need to monitor each other’s behaviour, foundation of leadership - Performance evaluation and reward system
- should encourage team effort and commitment
-besides individual evaluation and rewarding, group reward system should be used to reflect the team performance
Team Composition
- Ability of members
- part of a teams performance depends on the knowledge, skills and ability of its individual members
- high ability teams are more adaptable to changing situations
- smart team leaders help less intelligent team members when they struggle with a task but less intelligent leader can neutralise the effect of a high ability team - Personality of members
- teams which higher levels of conscientiousness and openness
- minimum level of team member agreeableness also matters
- open team members communicate better with one another and throw out more ideas, making team composed, creative and innovative - Allocation of roles
- teams have different needs, members should be selected to ensure all the various roles are filled
- put most able, experiences, and conscientious workers in the most central roles in a team - Diversity of members
- attributes such as demography or the date of joining should help us predict turnover
- turnover will be greater among those with dissimilar experiences because communication is more difficult and conflict is more likely - Size of teams
- most effective teams have five to nine members
- when teams have excess members, cohesiveness and mutual accountability decline, social loafing increases and more people communicate less
- option is to break the group into sub-teams - Member preference
- when selecting team members, managers should consider individual preferences along with abilities, personalities, and skills
- difference in preference can be a direct threat to the team’s morale and individual satisfaction
Team Process
- Common plan and purpose
- effective teams begin by analysing the team’s mission, developing goals to achieve that mission, and creating strategies for achieving the goals
- common purpose provides direction and guidance under any conditions
- agree on whether their goal is to learn about and master a task or simply to perform the task
- effective teams show reflexibility, they reflect on and adjust their master plan when necessary - Specific goals
- successful teams translate their common purpose into specific, measurable, and realistic performance goals
- specific goals facilitate clear communication
- difficult but achievable goals raise team performance - Team efficacy
- effective teams have confidence in themselves, they believe they can succeed
- crucial to help a team achieve small successes to build confidence - Mental models
- effective teams share accurate mental models (organised mental representations of the key element within a team’s environment that team members share) - Conflict levels
- conflict might be productive for a team when it generates discussion and critical thinking and prevents groupthink
- but when conflicts between team members increase, effectiveness decreases - Social loafing
- effective teams undermine this tendency by making members individually and jointly accountable for the team’s purpose, goals, and approach
- members should be clear on what they are individually responsible for and what they are jointly responsible for on the team
Turning Individuals into Team Players
Be sure candidates can fulfil their team roles as well as technical requirements, if they can’t, don’t hire them or assign them to tasks that don’t require teamwork or train them
- workshops help employees improve their problem-solving, communication, negotiation, conflict-management, and coaching skills
- organisation’s reward system must encourage cooperative efforts rather than competitive ones so that teams select new members carefully so they will contribute to team effectiveness.
Teams aren’t always the Answer
Teamwork takes more time and often more resources than individual work.
Therefore the benefits of using teams have to exceed costs. Before rushing to implement teams, assess whether the work required or will benefit from a collective effort.
Three tests:
1. a good indicator is the complexity of work and the need for different perspective
- does the work create common purpose or set of goals
- Determine whether members of the group are interdependent
