Module 20: Working and Writing In Teams Flashcards
People work in teams—including virtual teams
to create new products, streamline processes, hire employees, identify and solve problems, and brainstorm, articulate, and implement strategic organizational goals.
Team members operate on two basic behavioural principles:
What gets rewarded gets repeated; what gets measured gets done.
What Kinds of Communication Happen in Groups?
Different messages occur at different points in a group’s development.
Group messages fall into three categories:
1) informational messages
2) Procedural messages
3) interpersonal messages
Informational messages
focus on content: the problem or challenge, data, and possible solutions.
Procedural messages
focus on method and process. How will the group make decisions? Who will do what? When will assignments be due?
Interpersonal messages
focus on people, promoting friendliness, cooperation, and group loyalty.
Stages of group development
Orientation
Formation
Coordination
Formalization
What Roles Do People Play in Groups?
People play both group maintenance and task roles, and every role can be positive or negative.
Listening actively
Showing group members that they have been heard and that their ideas are being taken seriously
Encouraging participation
Demonstrating openness and acceptance, recognizing the contributions of members, calling on quieter group members
Relieving tensions
Joking and suggesting breaks and activities
Checking feelings
Asking members how they feel about group activities and sharing one’s own feelings with others
Solving interpersonal problems
Opening discussion of interpersonal problems in the group and suggesting ways to solve them
Positive maintenance roles and actions that help the group build loyalty, resolve conflicts, and function smoothly to achieve task goals include
Listening actively, Encouraging participation, Relieving tensions, Checking feelings, Solving interpersonal problems
Positive roles and actions that help the group achieve its task goals include
Seeking information and opinions, Giving information and opinions, Summarizing, Evaluating,Coordinating
Seeking information and opinions
Asking questions, identifying gaps in the group’s knowledge
Giving information and opinions
Answering questions, providing relevant information
Summarizing
Restating major points, pulling ideas together, summarizing decisions
Evaluating
Comparing group processes and products to standards and goals
Coordinating
Planning work, giving directions, and fitting together contributions of group members
Negative roles and actions that hurt the group’s products and processes include
Blocking,
Dominating,
Clowning,
Withdrawing
Blocking
Disagreeing with everything proposed. Criticizing ideas is necessary if the group is to produce the best solution, but criticizing every single idea without suggesting possible solutions blocks a group.
Dominating
Trying to run the group by ordering, shutting out others, and insisting on one’s own way. Active listening strategies (Module 19) build relationships, defuse conflict, and encourage participation. Authoritarian, tyrannical people don’t just alienate others; they reduce or eliminate productivity.
Clowning
Making unproductive jokes and diverting the group from the task. Jokes can defuse tension and make the group more creative, but too many or inappropriate jokes can frustrate or offend team members, or impede progress.
Withdrawing
Being silent in meetings, not contributing, not helping with the work, not attending meetings. Silently listening encourages others to contribute; passive-aggressive behaviours can create a dysfunctional team.
Effective groups balance three kinds of leadership, which parallel the three group development dimensions.
Informational leaders
Interpersonal leaders
Procedural leaders
Informational leaders
generate and evaluate ideas and text.
Interpersonal leaders
monitor the group’s process, check people’s feelings, and resolve conflicts.
Procedural leaders
set the agenda, make sure that everyone knows what’s due for the next meeting, communicate with absent group members, and check to be sure that assignments are carried out.
In successful groups
Leaders set clear deadlines and schedule frequent meetings. Members spend more time analyzing and identifying the task. Members communicate more often with each other, and deal directly with conflict.
In less successful groups,
members attempt to solve the task without discussing or defining it. Members depend on the leader for direction. Less successful groups meet less often, and they avoid talking about conflicts.
Groupthink
is the tendency for groups to put such a high premium on agreement that they directly or indirectly punish dissent
Group members who “go along with the crowd” and suppress conflict
Ignore the full range of alternatives
Seek only information that supports the positions they already favour
Fail to prepare contingency plans to cope with foreseeable setbacks
The best correctives to groupthink are to
Brainstorm for additional alternatives.
Test assumptions against those of a range of other people.
Encourage disagreement, perhaps even assigning someone to be “devil’s advocate.”
Protect the right of people in a group to disagree.
How Can Team Members Handle Conflict?
Listen actively to get at the real issue and repair bad feelings
Try the following ways to reduce the number of conflicts in a group.
Make responsibilities and ground rules clear at the beginning.
Frame ideas positively.
Acknowledge verbal and non-verbal messages of discomfort, anger, or hostility.
Discuss problems as they arise, rather than letting them fester until people explode.
Realize that group members are not responsible for each other’s feelings.
Steps in Conflict Resolution
- MAKE SURE THAT THE PEOPLE INVOLVED REALLY DISAGREE
- CHECK TO SEE THAT EVERYONE’S INFORMATION IS CORRECT
- DISCOVER THE NEEDS EACH PERSON IS TRYING TO MEET
- SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVES
- Repair bad feelings
Constructive ways to respond to criticism and get closer to the real concern include
Paraphrasing
Checking for feelings
Checking for inferences
Buying time with limited agreement
To paraphrase,
repeat in your own words, in a neutral tone, the verbal content of the critic’s message
When you check the speaker’s feelings,
you identify the emotions that the critic seems to be expressing verbally or non-verbally
When you check the inferences you draw from criticism,
you identify the implied meaning of the verbal and non-verbal content of the criticism
Buying time
is a useful strategy for dealing with criticisms that really sting. When you buy time with limited agreement, you avoid escalating the conflict (as an angry statement might do) but also avoid yielding to the critic’s point of view.
How Can Teams Co-Author Good Documents?
Talk about your purposes and audiences; discuss drafts and revisions as a group.
Collaborative writing
can be done by two people or by a much larger group.
Orientation
when members meet and begin to define their task
formation phase
people use interpersonal communication to resolve the conflicts that surface. Good leaders clarify procedures and roles, so that each person understands what s/he is supposed to do
Coordination
the longest phase, during which most of the group’s work is done
formalization
the group seeks consensus. In this stage, the group tries to forget earlier conflicts as members focus on agreeing to the solution
