L4 Groups and Leadership

Question 1

What is a team?

Answer 1

Interdependent collection of individuals who work together toward a common goal and who share responsibility for specific outcomes for their organisations

Question 2

What are the input and process factors that affect team performance?

Answer 2

Input variables:

i) Environment or context
ii) Task characteristics
iii) Team members

2) Processes:
i) Norms
ii) Communication and coordination
iii) Cohesion
iv) Decision-Making

Question 3

How does the environment of a team affect team performance? (Input factor)

Answer 3

The resources and support that the team receives from the organisation affects team performance
• Training, managerial support, and communication and cooperation BETWEEN TEAMS were correlated with team member satisfaction and performance

Question 4

How do the task characteristics of a team affect team performance? (Input factor)

Answer 4

The divisibility of the task: Divisible vs. unitary (Steiner, 1972)
– Team members are motivated by tasks that require a variety of skills, provide autonomy, are meaningful and important, and provide performance feedback

Question 5

How do the Team members affect team performance? (Input factor)

Answer 5

Personality Predictors of Teamwork (Neuman & Wright, 1999)
–Agreeableness and Conscientiousness predict supervisor ratings of work team performance, objective measures of work team accuracy, and work completed.

–General cognitive ability and job specific skills are good predictors of team performance (Neuman & Wright, 1999)

Question 6

How do the Norms affect team performance? (Process factor)

Answer 6

Informal and sometimes unspoken rules that teams adopt to regulate members’ behaviour
• The most common norm relates to the productivity of team members. (Violation of productivity is the most serious violation) Less serious violations include dress code or lateness

Question 7

How do the Communication and Coordination affect team performance? (Process factor)

Answer 7

• Good communication is important in teams, particularly when the task is highly INTERDEPENDENT and dynamic
• Effective groups are able to minimise coordination losses (i.e., reduced coordination that occurs when team members expend their energies in different directions or fail to synchronise their work)
• Social loafing: reduced motivation and performance in groups that occurs if there is a reduced feeling of accountability or reduced opportunity for evaluation of individual performance. Must try increase their accountability. Increase evaluation of individual performance.

Question 8

How does Cohesion affect team performance? (Process factor)

Answer 8

Degree to which team members desire to remain in the team and are committed to the goals
• Cohesion is associated with successful team performance (Mullan & Cooper, 1994) (Stable, unity in team, strong norms, can be pressure for conformity. In general, success, but can lead to problems)

Question 9

How does group decision making affect team performance? (Process factor)

Answer 9

Can be advantageous due to

• larger pool of knowledge,
• checking each others errors,
• when there are demonstratable right answers (One dominator),
• can rely on person with most expertise, one person solves anogram - suddenly easy task.

Groups perform better than individuals but not when
- you combine responses of individuals (nominal group)
- you have one particularly bright person
there is an Illusion of group effectivity

Question 10

What is the Illusion of group effectivity

Answer 10

Experience-based belief that we produce more and better ideas in groups than alone

Question 11

Why don’t groups always do better than best member?

Answer 11

Process loss: Aspects of group interaction inhibit good decision-making

1. Failure to share unique information
2. Group polarisation (People become more extreme in their judgements after discussing it with the group due to hearing favourable arguments and seeking acceptance)
3. Groupthink (maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important than considering the facts in a realistic manner)

Question 12

What are conditions for Group Think?

Answer 12

• Group under stress
• Directive leader
• Illusion of unanimity
• No clear rules about how you should be making decisions, no processes in place for decision making
• No external sources of information

Question 13

What are some ways we can improve group decision making?

Answer 13

• Leader doesn’t reveal wishes
• Devil’s Advocate (Tim’s job is to disagree with everything everyone’s saying)
• Authentic dissent (If you disagree, please tell us and explain why)

Question 14

Are two heads better than one?

Answer 14

Groups have a head start but face certain obstacles.
E.g desipte Illusion of group effectivity: (Experience-based belief that we produce more and better ideas in groups than alone) there is process loss (failure to share unique info, group polarisation, groupthink)

Question 15

Discuss 6 theoretical approaches to leadership

Answer 15

1. The trait approach
2. The behavioural approach
3. The power and influence approach
4. The contingency approach
5. Leader-Member Exchange Theory
6. Transformational leadership approach

Question 16

1) The Trait Approach

Answer 16

some traits are shared by all effective leaders
– High energy level
– Tolerance for stress
– Emotional maturity
– Integrity
– Self-confidence (this makes them more persistent in achieving their goals)
– Motivation (need for power (high), achievement(high), affiliation (weak to moderate))
– The Big 5*
– Intelligence

Question 17

2) Big 5 discrepancies between perceived leader traits and actual leader traits?

Answer 17

(Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002)

Extroversion (.31 overall) (.33 Percieved leader) (.24 Actual effectiveness of leaders)

Conscientiousness (.28 Overall) (.33 Percieved leader) (.16 Actual effectiveness of leaders)

Openness to Experience .24 .24 .24

Emotional Stability .24 .24 .22

Agreeableness (.08 Overall) (.05 Perceived leader) (.21 Actual effectiveness of leaders)

Question 18

3) Correlation between leadership and intelligence

Answer 18

• Meta-analysis revealed correlation of .27 between leadership and intelligence (Judge, Colbert & Ilies, 2004)

Perceptions more highly correlated with intelligence than actual leadership effectiveness.

Question 19

4) The Behavioural Approach

Answer 19

Emphasises what leaders actually do on the job and the relationship of this behaviour to leader effectiveness.

Initiating structure vs. consideration behaviours (agree with “he is friendly and approachable”) (Halpin & Winter, 1957).

Consideration more strongly related to satisfaction and initiating structure more related to performance (Judge et al., 2004)
This is very simplistic, only 2 categories

Question 20

5) The Power and Influence Approach (5 types of power)

Answer 20

Types of Power (French & Raven, 1960)

i) Reward power (you can give a positive incentive for desirable behaviours)
ii) Coercive power (can punish followers)
iii) Legitimate power (employees believe they should be in power because of authority, police stripes on sleeve)
iv) Expert power (followers believe leader has special expertise)
v) Referent power (follower wants to be like the leader because of personal reasons)

Question 21

4) The Contingency Approach

Answer 21

• Effective leadership depends on a match between the characteristics of the leader and the situation.
• Fiedler’s Contingency Theory: Leaders are classified as primarily person-oriented or task-oriented. The type of leader who will be more effective depends on the leader’s degree of control over the situation (Fiedler, 1978)
• Control is contingent on 3 factors:
Leader-follower relationships
Degree of task structure
Leader’s authority or position
• Task-oriented leaders effective in favourable and unfavourable circumstances
• Person-oriented effective in neutral circumstances

Question 22

5) Leader-Member Exchange Theory (Dansereau et al., 1975):

Answer 22

• Leadership is based upon mutual influence between leader and members of group
• Leaders differentiate their subordinates in terms of:
–Their competence and skill
–The extent to which they can be trusted
–Their motivation to assume greater responsibility

• Subordinates with these attributes become members of in-group; those without become members of outgroup (treated differently, more formally)

• Leaders and subordinates use different types and degrees of influence depending on in/out-group status
• Theory has been expanded to include exchanges between co-workers and team members (Sherony & Green, 2002; Liden, Wayne, & Sparrowe, 2000)

Question 23

6) Transformational Leadership Transformational leadership:

Answer 23

6) Transformational Leadership Transformational leadership:
The process of influencing major changes in the attitudes and assumptions of organisation members and building commitment for major changes in the organisation’s objectives and strategies.

Full Range Leadership Theory	
Transformational	
-	Attributed Charisma
-	 Idealised Influence
-	 Inspirational Motivation
-	 Intellectual Stimulation
-	 Individualised Consideration 

Transactional Leadership

• Contingent Reward
• Active Management-by-Exception (Some engage in leadership but punishing others, and look for mistakes)
• Passive Management-by-Exception (They have their power by punishment, but don’t seek punishing, only if someone tells them about it)

Non - Leadership
- Laissez-Faire

Question 24

Discuss similarities between the 6 theories of leadership

Answer 24

• Yukl (1994) noted that there is some convergence in the findings from different lines of leadership research:
–Importance of influencing and motivating
–Importance of maintaining effective relations
–Importance of making decisions

Others more recently say successful leaders nowadays need political awareness, finances, and technical aspects.