Groups or Teams
Teams are subsets of groups; teams a structured groups where members work together towards a common goal for which they are all accountable.
In groups, members are at least judged by personal contributions.
Generally speaking, teams are usually more leaderless than groups.
Personality attributes of engineers (Thompson, 1996); not great for teamwork:
- Strong need to win (high need for achievement)
- Preference for clearly defined, short-term goals
- Discomfort with ambiguity
- Impatience with indecisiveness
- Excessive immersion in details
Shannon, 1980; once again traits not great for teamwork:
- Highly individualistic
- Desire challenging work
- Self-directing
- Seek approval from peers
- Desire to share their knowledge
Group Dynamics
Groups have content, the technical problem being solved, and process, how the group is working together. The latter is group dynamic; the process should enhance the group’s ability to solve the task.
Stages of Group Development
Forming: getting acquainted, testing interpersonal behavior. This can take a while.
Storming: developing group structure and patterns of interaction
Norming: sharing acceptance of roles, sense of unity.
Performing: members enacting roles, directing effort towards goal attainment and performance.
Adjourning: members anticipating disbandment
Forming
Group/team leadership develops:
- Groups with assigned leader (e.g. supervisor)
- Leaderless groups: informal leaders emerge
- May not necessarily be the most effective leader
- Leader prototype theory: members have implicit notions about what a ‘good’ leader looks like; this is often different from what actually matters
- Tall/older people are more likely to be selected as leaders
- People with dominant, masculine faces more likely to be selected in times of war and trustworthy, feminine faces in times of peace
- Older people more likely to be selected in more traditional areas
- ‘Babble’ effect: most frequent communicator more likely to be chosen, although quality of communication more important than quantity
- Men five times more likely to be selected as leaders but are no more effective than women
- Self-managing teams: leader elected, rotated or responsibilities shared
Tips:
- Little time, no trust/existing relationships: share tasks/responsibilities
- Some time, no trust/existing relationships: rotate leadership
- Trust/existing relationships: nominate leader
Norming
Norms:
- Behaviors/rules/standards expected to be followed by team members, largely developed by the group itself
- Backed up by group beliefs and attitudes (group ‘culture’)
- As a person’s identification with a group increases, the group’s influence on the person’s behavior increases
- But if they don’t want to be part of the group, it has no effect
- Sanctions may be used to ensure compliance with group norms
Examples in the workplace: people coming in a few minutes late, people staying late until the boss leaves.
Cohesiveness
Degree to which members are attracted to and motivated to remain part of the group.
The more cohesive the group, the greater the conformity to group norms.
The desire for group conformity can have enormous influence on an individual’s judgement, attitude and performance. This can be to the detriment of the individual’s interests; group think.
Asch experiments: simple question with obvious correct solution. If all others in the group (eve a small group) pick the wrong answer, the participant often picks the wrong answer.
The more homogenous the group, the easier it is to manage relationships and the easier it is to be cohesive.
The more heterogeneous the group, the greater the variety of ideas, perspectives and experiences which may overcome the difficulty of getting the group performing.
High cohesiveness can make the group difficult to manage and less likely to listen to outsiders - it is not necessarily good, especially if they have harmful norms.
Conflict
Small amounts of conflict are optional.
Conflict can be inter/intragroup, or interpersonal and can be increased by:
- Diversity of members (culture, attitudes etc.)
- Different motivations (needs, expectations)
Workplace Tips
- Lack of diversity can encourage cohesion but also limit group effectiveness
- Too much diversity and the group may have no common ground
- Relatively stable membership required
- 5-8 members ideal
- Enough members to have pressure to conform
- Small enough that members can interact with others
- 20+ can cause polarization/subgroups
- The group, not individuals, should be rewarded
- Communicate with (and give frequent feedback) to the group, not individuals
- Group decision making where appropriate
- Intergroup competition can increase cohesiveness and pressure to conform