Week 4| Teamwork and Leadership Flashcards
What are the organisatonal advantages of Teamwork?
- It is more productive
- it improves team members quality of working life
- It improves an organisation’s problem solving capabilities
- Working in groups in a more natural form of organisation
What are the influences of group membership?
- Through social interaction with others, we acquire beliefs, attitudes, values and characteristic behaviours
- In this way, who we associate with has a crucial impact on our sense of identity
- Groups also create a social setting, where we can exert our influence on others (e.g. exhortation, demonstration, coercion, bribery, shame, etc)
- Groups satisfy important needs (social affiliation, common purpose, recognition, etc)
In organisations, what is the definition of teams? What challenegs do teams face
Teams are formal groups intentionally created to an objective set by the organisation.
But informal groups can arise spontaneously and reflect common needs of members
The goals and objectives of an informal group may not be in alignment with those of the host organisation
So the challenge of teamwork is to not let informal and formal groups work together
What are group dynamics?
- Two or more people acting interdependently to achieve an objective
- The strength of the interaction depends on the nature of the common objective, the context in which it takes place and the temperament of the group members
What are the difference between groups and teams?
Groups:
- information may be shared
- Contribution to organisation- little awareness
- Interdependent between members- may be recognised
- Externally opposed objective- Lacking no specific purpose
- Specialization of labour- arbitrary
Teams:
- Information is shared and reflected on
- clear understanding of contribution to organisation
- Understand value of synergy between interdependence between members
- Externally opposed objective: clear objective
- Specialization of labour: clearly defined roles
What are the five stages in Tuckman’s model?
- Forming: members gets to know each and seek to establish ground rules
- Storming: members tend to resist control by group leaders and show hostility
- Norming: Members work together and develop close relationships of camaraderie
4 Performing: Group member work toward getting their job done
5, Adjourning: Group members disband, either after meeting goals because members leave
Tuckmans model originally had four stages, however added the fifth stage in later
What stages of Tuckman’s model are classified as independent, dependence/independence, returning to independence?
Independence: Pre-stage (*before anything even happens)
Independence/dependence: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing
Returning to independence: Adjourning
What are the question an individual may ask themselves vs what a team would ask?
Individual
Forming: How do i fit in?
Storming: What’s my role here?
Norming: What do the others expect me to do?
Performing: How can i best perform my role?
Group:
Forming: Why are we here?
Storming: Why are we fighting over whos in charge and who does what
Norming: Can we agree on roles and work as a team?
Performing: Can we do the job properly
Why are there alternatives to Tuckmans model?
1, Teams are often brought together to work on specific projects (e.g. members are not total strangers to each other or their way of working)
- The culture of the organisational context provides them with strong existing norms, so they may be able to skip over the norming stage
- Teams may not follow the progression over the stages as Tuckman suggest and go backwards e.g. they may go from performing to norming
- Team members may not all tart together e.g a new member may join when team is already in norming stage
What is Gersicks punctuated model?
It is the punctuated model of equilibrium of teams of two groups
The springboard may be the conflict the group has that results them in higher performance
In what two ways can we split team dynamics?
Task and maintenance
Task: activities where the team focuses on its job at hand
Maintenance: activities where the team is working on its own internal processes and focuses its efforts on establishing common purpose and effectiveness
What are the downsides of teamwork?
Downsides of teamwork are:
- group think
- social loafing
- The Ringelmann effect
- free riding
- cultural differences “individualism vs collectivism”
What 3 types of leadership structures are there?
Centralised, decentralised and distributed
What are the four necessary forms of distributed leadership?
- Envisioning: Creating a strong vision of the purpose of the team that can easily be translated into a set of values (maintenance)
- Organising: providing structure through a focus on details, deadlines and structures (task & maintenance)
- Spanning: Networking, gathering information, championing the team in the rest of the organization, dealing with outsiders =, preventing the team from becoming isolated etc; importantly the spanning leader may have to coordinate the team’s activities with the rest of the organization (task & maintenance)
- Social: negotiation, conflict resolution, “surfacing problems” confronting anti-social behaviour (maintenance)
