Managing relationships Flashcards
What are the 3 attributes of groups?
1.) Sense of identity- acknowledged boundaries to the group which define who is in and who is out.
2.) Loyalty to the group and acceptance within the group - conformity or acceptance of the norms.
3.) Purpose and leadership - most groups have express purpose.
What are the 4 types of groups:
1.) Formal groups - created by managers to meet specific organisational objectives.
2.) Informal groups - develop out of individual relationships and are based on shared interests.
3.) Reference groups - person wants to join but is not currently a member of.
4.) Autonomous working groups- used in improving productivity as individuals are put together to work in small cells or teams.
What are teams?
Has joint objectives and accountability and may be set up by organisation under supervision of coaching of a team leader. Teams are a type of group but not all groups are teams.
What are the 4 strengths of a team?
1.) Work organisation - teams combine skills of different individuals.
2.) Control - fear of letting team down can be a powerful motivator.
3.) Ideas generation - teams can generate ideas
4.) Decision-making - Decisions are evaluated from more than one viewpoint with pooled information.
Problems with teams:
- Conformity
- Aibilene Paradox (team members accept an idea that they don’t like in belief that everybody else supports it.)
- Groupthink
-Risky shift (Take higher risk because accountability is diluted) - Team working is not suitable for all jobs
-Team processes can delay decision-making
-Group or team norms may restrict individual personality and flair
-Social facilitation performance of new, complex tasks is hindered by presence of an audience.
What are the 2 basic approaches of organisations to organise teamwork?
1.) Multi-disciplinary teams - contain people from different departments, pooling skills of specialists.
2.) Multi-skilled teams - contain people who themselves have more than one skill.
What does an effective team possess:
1.) Specialist skills- team might exist to combine expertise from different departments
2.) Power - power in wider organisation. team members may have influence.
3.) Access to resources - team members may contribute information, or be able to mobilise finance or staff or the task.
4.) Personalities and goals - will determine how group functions.
5.) Blend of individual skills and abilities of its members that will balance the team.
Belbin’s two team roles:
1.) Team (process) role - tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others at work in certain distinctive ways.
2.) Functional role - person being engaged to supply requisite technical skills and operational knowledge as demanded by the job.
Belbin’s 9 roles of a mix in a team:
1.) Co-ordinator - stable, dominant extrovert who clarifies group objectives
2.) Shaper- anxious, dominant extrovert with strong drive to get things done.
3.) Plant - high IQ introvert who generates original ideas
4.) Monitor-evaluator - another high IQ introvert who analyses plant’s suggestions.
5.) Implementer - controlled individual who converts idea into series of tasks.
6.) Resource-investigator - stable extrovert who gets useful resources from outside of the group.
7.) Team worker - low dominance extrovert who keeps team together
8.) Completer-finisher - anxious introvert who is mainly concerned with meeting deadlines
9.) Specialist - provides knowledge and skills to solve technical problems
Steiner - 4 basic ways a group functions:
1.) Additive - all members contribute
2.) Conjunctive (co-ordination) - high degree of dependence between members’ contributions
3.) Disjunctive (collaborative) - Members contribute different skills and abilities so that solutions are synergistic, reflecting optimum contribution of each individual. suits problem-solving groups.
4.) Complementary - task can be divided into separate parts and allocated to individuals with skills needed for each.
Tuckman’s 6 stages in group development:
1.) Forming: team coming together. individuals be trying to find out about each other. Wariness about introducing new ideas.
2.) Storming : involves more or less open conflict between team members. more realistic targets are set and trust increases.
3.) Norming : Period of settling down. agreements about work sharing, individual requirements and expectations of output.
4.) Performing : Team sets to work to execute its task.
5.) Dorming : once group has been forming well for a while, it may get complacent.
6.) Mourning/adjourning: group sees itself as having fulfilled its purpose, or it might physically disband.
What are the 3 main issues involved in team building?
1.) Team identity - get people to see themselves as part of the team
2.) Team solidarity- Encourage loyalty so that members put in extra effort for sake of the team. Injecting a level of competition between teams.
3.) Shared objectives - encourage teams to commit itself to shared work objectives and to co-operate willingly and effectively in achieving them. Involves range of leadership activities including:
-clearly setting objectives
-team participate in setting objectives
-regular feedback on progress and results, constructive contricisims.
- team involved in providing performance feedback
- offering positive reinforcement
-championing success of team
What are the 5 characteristics of high-performing teams (Peter) ?
1.) Clarity of purpose and near-term objectives
2.) Commitment
3.) Teamwork is focused on the task
4.) Strong leadership
5.) High levels of creativity and generation of new ways of doing things
Successful taskforce teams five key aspects:
- Keep team small.
- Limited lifespan and only exist for one specific task
-Membership should be voluntary - Communication within team should be informal and unstructured
-Team should be action-oriented.
Constructive criticism needs to be:
- balanced with positives
- specific
- focused on behaviour/results
-objective
-supportive/co-operative
-selective
-encouraging
