Module 4.
What are the exceptions to media richness theory?
1. Ability to multi-communicate. Multitasking, such as texting a client and listening to the meeting, amounts to an amount of info transmitted by rich channel, when lean channels are combined. 2. Communication proficiency. Higher proficiency with the communication channel allows for more and faster information to be pushed through the channel. Internet channels may be harder, but face-to-face communication is well-mastered by mostly everyone and perhaps is hardwired naturally. 3. Social presence effects. Channels that have high media richness tend to have more social presence. This presence may distract from the message. For example, focusing on looking good in front of the boss.
What environment is the best for teams?
1. At least partly rewarding for performance. 2. Being organized around work processes. 3. Leaders who provide support and strategic direction, so members can focus on efficiency and flexibility. 4. The physical layout of workspace.
4 main influences on effective encoding and decoding.
1. Communication channel proficiency. Skill and motivation to communicate through a channel. (Some people are only skilled at face-to-face). 2. Similar codebooks - dictionaries of symbols, language, gestures, idioms and other tools to convey information. 3. Shared mental models of the communication context. Common understanding of the environment promotes efficiency. 4. Experience encoding the message. Experience teaches right choice of words, structure, e.t.c.
What are four levels of interdependence?
1. Complete independence. 2. Pooled interdependence. This is sharing of common resource (machinery etc). 3. Sequential interdependence (human centipede) 4. Reciprocal interdependence (human centipede back and forward)
4 structures to improve team decision making in team settings.
1. Constructive conflict. Present idea, someone else analyzes it. Encourages critical thinking and analysis. Helps examine logic and assumptions and find flaws. Main challenge: people get defensive when their ideas are questioned, regardless of logical content and politeness. Can degenerate into defensive behavior and personal attacks. 2. Brainstorming. Four rules: 1. Speak freely - describe even the craziest ideas. 2. Don't criticize others or their ideas. 3. Provide as many ideas as possible - the quality of ideas increases with the quantity of ideas. 4. Build on the ideas that others have presented. In sum, it encourages divergent thinking, while minimizing evaluation apprehension and other team dynamics problems. Brainstorming received a lot of criticism: 1. In media in error. 2. Many studies using college and uni students found it ineffective due to production blocking and evaluation apprehension. Both not true. Subsequent work found brainstorming to be effective in real-world setting. Student teams lacked supportive learning orientation norms. Brainstorming needs leadership approaches to reduce production blocking and evaluation apprehension. Also studies evaluated success based on the number of ideas generated, when tre result in reality is more creative ideas, not more ideas. Benefits of brainstorming is cohesion and participant commitment, since no criticism. Another benefit is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm generates more creativity. 3. Electronic brainstorming. Brainstorming through communication technology. 0. Full anonymity. 1. Enter your idea in. 2. Others are encouraged to piggyback. 3. Vote electronically. 4. Usually followed up by face-to-face discussion. Can be very effective due to minimal production blocking, evaluation comprehension and conformity problems. Too structured and technology bound for some executives. Execs may feel threatened by how direct and honest the info transmitted is and limited ability to control the discussion. 4. Nominal group technique. A variation of traditional brainstorming, but trying to combine the benefits of team decision making without problems. Nominal is because the group is formed during 2 out of 3 stages only. Stage 1: After the problem is described, the group members silently and independently document their ideas. Stage 2: Participants collectively describe these ideas to other team members using usually round-robin format. No criticism, but encouragement to ask for clarification of ideas presented. Stage 3: Silent and independent evaluation of the ideas. Benefits: Generates higher number and better quality ideas than traditional interacting and maybe even brainstorming. High degree of structure allows for high task orientation and low potential for conflict. Yet, production blocking and evaluation apprehension still occur to some extent. Also participants require training to apply this structured approach.
What are 5 c's of effective team members?
1. Cooperating. Willing and able to work together. Includes sharing resources and being adaptive, accommodating and flexible. 2. Coordinating. Efficiency and harmoniously. To achieve this the team members need to be familiar with each other's work. 3. Communicating. Free (not hoarding), efficient (best channel and language) and respectful (minimal arousal of negative emotions) communication and active listening. 4. Comforting. Positive and healthy psychological state maintenance through empathy, comfort, encouragement. 5. Conflict resolving. Conflict is inevitable. Team members must have skills (knowing conflict-solving styles and diagnostic skills) and motivation to resolve the conflict.
The importance of communication.
1. Coordination (frequent, timely and accurate communication facilitate synchronization). 2. Organizational learning (knowledge entry into organization and distribution). 3. Decision making. (need info of context, alternatives, outcomes, the extent to which it achieves objectives). 4. To change behavior. Passive or active influence on beliefs and behavior of others. 5. Supports well-being. Conveys knowledge and helps employees to better manage their work environment. Informal communication tips and such. Social interaction reduces risks of some physical and mental illnesses and fulfills the drive to bond, validate self-worth and maintain social identity.
Explain communication barriers (noise).
1. Imperfect perceptual process of both sender and receiver. We don't send or listen as well as we think. We also have hard time seeing perspetives of others, we tend to see our own perspectives and, as the result, overstimate how well the message is encoded or received. 2. Language issues. Different "codebooks". For example, some use expressive language, but others take expressive language literally. Corporate leaders sometimes use ambiguous language to avoid unwanted emotional responses. People rely on ambiguos language when communicating with people who have different values and beliefs to reduce the risk of conlict. Jargon - specialize words and phrases for specific occupations or groups is usually designed to improve communication efficiencty. It becomes communication noice to people who do not have jargon codebook. Excessive jargon can be frustrating for others, who do not posess it. 3. Tendency to filter messages. For example, deleting or delaying negative information, or using less harsh words. Therefore, it is important to have a culture of candor.
List 4 components of team effectiveness model and their subcomponents.
1. Organizational and team environment: rewards, communication, org. structure, org. leadership and physical space. This is split into: 3.. Team design: task characteristics, team size, team composition. 4. Team processes: team development, team norms, team cohesion, team trust. Leading to: Team effectiveness: accomplish tasks, satisfy member needs, maintain team survival.
People join (and are motivated to join) informal groups for four reasons:
1. People have an innate drive to bond. 2. Group membership is an inherent ingredient in a person's self-concept. 3. Some personal goals are accomplished better in groups. 4. Individuals are comforted in stressful situations by the mere presence of other people.
Explain the Communication Process Model
1. Sender forms message. 2. Sender encodes message into words, gestures, voice intonations etc. 3. The encoded message is transmitted via a communication channel(s). 4. Receiver senses the message. 5. Receiver decodes the message into something meaningful. (not always what coder intended). 6. (Usually) the sender looks for evidence that the receiver got the message and understood it. Formal (i got your message) or indirect evidence. 7. Feedback repeats communication process. Can be hampered by noise - psychological, social, structural. It may distort or break the communication process.
What are 4 things for the leaders to set-up in a team?
1. Task characteristics. 2. Team size. 3. Team composition. 4. Team roles.
Team structures to improve decision making.
1. Team members must be confident, but not to a point where they feel invulnerable. This can be accomplished through team norms that encourage critical thinking and diversity. 2. Implement checks and balances to prevent one or two people from dominating the discussion. 3. Team must be large enough to possess sufficient knowledge, but small enough to avoid time loss and restricting individual input. 4. Identify everyone's preferences, have them vigorously debated, create a few plausible options and get the leader to make a final call.
What are 4 constraints on the team decision making.
1. Time constraints. Teams take longer than individuals to make decisions (need to organize, coordinate, maintain relationships, time to learn about each other and build rapport, roles and rules coordination, only one person can speak at a time (production blocking : 1. must listen to others for good time to speak up - distracts from your own ideas. 2. ideas are fleeting - the longer you listen the more chances for ideas to die out. 3. concentrating on your own ideas distracts attention from listening to others)). 2. Evaluation apprehension. Reluctance for input due to fear of evaluation by others. Creative ideas often sound bizarre or illogical when first presented. 3. Pressure to conform. If opinion contradicts team norm we are more likely to keep it to ourselves. We may get punished or persuaded to comply for expressing opinion that others don't share. Also, we want others we conform to to validate our opinions. If they disagree with us, we start to question if we are in the right mind. 4. Some elements of groupthink. Pitfall of highly cohesive groups to value mutual agreement over quality due wanting to keep harmony. Group think is most likely to occur when 1. the team is isolated from others. 2. the team leader is opinionated. 3. team is under stress. 4. team has experienced recent failures or other decision-making problems 5. team lacks clear guidance from corporate policies or procedures. Groupthink concept is becoming less popular as some factors contributing to it are also involved in success, also evidence for groupthink came from case studies, most of which were apparently flawed. One important negative factor of group think is overconfidence. This gives false sense of invulnerability., reducing the attention to decision making.
What are three reasons why teams exist?
1. To fulfill a purpose. 2. Interdependence and need of collaboration to achieve common goals. 3. Influence each other with different levels of influence between members.
Explain communication channels.
1. Verbal channel. Verbal uses words and occurs through spoken or written channels. Example: spoken or written channel. Written is much slower, yet with Twitter it is becoming faster. .2. Non-verbal channel. Nonverbal does not use words.
Improving communication throughout the hierarchy: workspace design, web-based communication, direct communication with top management.
1. Workspace design. Attempt to increase collaboration through removing cubicles. Downside: increase noise, distractions and loss of privacy. Another attempt is to create team spaces, but also encourage sufficient interaction with people from other teams. 2. Web-based communication. Employees are skeptical to information screened and packaged by the management. Therefore, there is a new trend to encourage employees to post their own news on internal blogs and wikis. The accuracy of information depends on the quality of participants. However, the errors generally get quickly identified by the other participants. To engage in wikis, the employees need sufficient time and rewards or recognition. 3. Direct communication with top management. Senior executives understand their business better if they meet directly with employees and other stakeholders aka "management my walking around". Another way to communicate directly with employees are roundtable meetings or weekly huddles. These strategies potentially minimize filtering, because executives: (1) listen directly to employees (2) quicker and deeper understanding of internal organizational problems (3) employees may have more empathy fir decisions made further up the corporate hierarchy.
3 reasons explaining production blocking.
1. must listen to others for good time to speak up - distracts from your own ideas. 2. ideas are fleeting - the longer you listen the more chances for ideas to die out. 3. concentrating on your own ideas distracts attention from listening to others)).
Define management by walking around (MBWA)
A communication practice in which executives get out of their offices and learn from others in the organization through face-to-face dialogue.
Define information overload.
A condition in which the volume of information received exceeds the person's capacity to process it.
Define media richness.
A medium's data-carrying capacity, that is, the volume and variety of the information that can be transmitted during a specific time.
Team building
A process that consists of formal activities intended to improve the development and functioning of a work team.
Role
A set of behaviors that people are expected to perform because of the positions they hold in a team and organization.
Production blocking definition.
A time constraint in team decision making due to the procedural requirement that only one person may speak at a time.
Define grapevine.
An unstructured and informal network founded on social relationships rather than organizational charts or job descriptions.
Explain cross-cultural and gender communication.
As globalization and cultural diversity increase, more cross-cultural communication issues arise. These issues are: 1. Language: limited vocabulary, accent, intonation, volume, speed etc. 2. The style of responses. For example, silence is a sign of respect in Japan, but a sign of being uninterested in Brazil. Talking over people is normal in Brazil, but rude in Canada. 3. Non-verbal communication: gestures, body position etc. Looking in the eyes is a sign of interest in Canada, but First Nations people are taught to look down when talking to authority figures. Some gestures are positive in one culture, but have very negative meaning in another culture.
Explain email communication benefits and problems.
Benefits: Email is preferred medium for coordinating work and for sending well-defined information for decision making. Often increases the volume of communication and alters the flow of that information within groups and throughout organization. Reduces some face-to-face and voice communication, but increases communication with people further up the hierarchy. Social and organizational status differences are less apparent. Stereotype biases are reduced as age, race and other features are hidden, however if we already know the other person's personal characteristics, we increasingly rely on stereotypes. Problems: 1. Poor medium for communicating emotions. No facial expressions. Highlighting, bold font helps, but can't replace facial expressions. 2. Reduces politeness and respect. Disparaging messages or more frequently sent over email and receivers are more likely to react more negatively to negative messages. One reason for sending mean messages is that it is quick process that does not give time for a sober second thought that traditional letters give. Second reason is low social presence (impersonal). However, in teams, where norms and rules are established, this behavior greatly decreases). 3. Poor medium for ambiguous, complex and novel situations. For poorly defined situations, communication channels that transmit a larger volume of information with more rapid feedback are required. 4. Contributes to information overload. Creates glut, as it is effortless to create and copy messages to many people.
Advantages and disadvantages of teams.
Benefits: 1. Under right conditions, teams make better decisions, develop better products and services and create a more engaged workforce, than working alone. 2. Quick information sharing and coordination and less errors, than traditional manager-employee teams. 3. Under right circumstances - more motivation, because 1. we have a need to bond 2. accountability to fellow team members, who monitor performance more closely. 3. Coworkers become benchmarks of comparison.
Define wikis
Collaborative Web spaces where anyone in a group can write, edit, or remove material from the website.
Explain improving interpersonal communication.
Comes from both sides: sender and receiver. As a sender: 1. Empathize with the receiver (be sensitive to words that may be ambiguous or trigger wrong emotional response). 2. Repeat the message (rephrase key points a couple of times). 3. Find time when the receiver is less likely to be distracted, as your messages always compete with other messages and noise. 4. If communicating criticism, focus on the problem, not the person. As a listener: 1. Sensing. Process of receiving signals from the sender and paying attention to them. Can be improved in three ways: (1) not form an opinion until speaker has finished (2) avoid interrupting the speaker's conversation (3) remain motivated to listen to the speaker. 2. Evaluating. Understanding the meaning, evaluating and remembering the message. To improve: active listeners must empathize with the speaker - try to understand and be sensitive to speaker's feelings, thoughts and situation, as well as organize the speaker's ideas during the communication. 3. Responding. This is a feedback to the sender, which motivates and directs the speaker's communication. To improve active listeners: maintain sufficient eye contact and send back channel signals ("i see" etc.). This shows interest. They also respond by clarifying the message - rephrase the speaker's ideas at appropriate breaks.
What characteristics are associated with effective team members?
Conscientiousness, extroversion and emotional intelligence.
List 4 constraints of the team decision making, and list 4 structures aimed to improve team decision making.
Constraints: 1. Time constraints, 2. Evaluation apprehension. 3. Conformity to peer pressure. 4. Groupthink (specifically overconfidence). Structures to improve decision making: 1. Constructive conflict. 2. Brainstorming. 3. Electronic brainstorming. 4. Nominal group technique.
Define self-directed teams (SDTs).
Cross-functional work groups that are organized around work processes, that complete an entire piece of work requiring several interdependent tasks, and that have substantial autonomy over the execution of these tasks.
Explain virtual teams.
Differences from regular teams: 1. Not co-located. 2. Depend on info technologies to communicate and coordinate. Virtual teams are gaining popularity as: 1. Information technology reliance increases. 2. Work is shifting from production-based to knowledge-based. These (1. and 2.) make them possible. What makes them necessary is: 3. Organizational learning. (encourage employees to share knowledge where direct meetings can't be set-up for geographical reasons) 4. Globalization (geographical reasons). Success depends on: 1. Good communication technology skills. 2. Strong self-leadership skills. (no supervision or peers). 3. Higher emotional intelligence (hard to decipher feelings from emails etc). 4. Good communication toolkit with a freedom to choose channels of communication. Enforcing communication is bad. Communication channels change over time. 5. A lot of structure is needed. (clear operational objectives, documented work processes, agreed upon roles and responsibilities). 6. Initial face-to-face meetings. (creates better bonding and mutual understanding).
Explain face-to-face communication persuasion and written communication persuasion.
Face-to-face communication is more persuasive than any forms of written communication. This is because (1) face-to-face is often accompanied by non-verbal. People are persuaded more when they receive emotional and logical messages. Non-verbal communication can set and/or amplify the emotional tone of the message. (2) spoken communication offers the sender high quality immediate feedback whether the receiver understands and accepts the message (successfully persuaded). This feedback allows to adjust the content and emotional tone of the message. more quickly than with written communication. (3) people are persuaded more under conditions of high social presence, rather than low social presence. The sender can easily monitor the receiver's listening in face-to-face conversations (high social presence), so listeners are more motivated to pay attention and consider the message. When written communication is used there is a higher degree of anonymity an psychological distance. These conditions reduce the motivation to think about and accept persuasive message. Written communication can persuade to some extent. Written messages present more technical detail, than face-to-face. This data is persuasive when the issue is important to the receiver. Also there is a moderate degree of social presence present in written communication, when communicating of close associates.
Explain communication through the grapevine.
Grapevine is unstructured and informal network founded on social relationships rather than organizational charts or job descriptions. Almost all employees use grapevine, but very few prefer this source of information. Only 1/3 of employees believe that grapevine information is credible. Employees turn to grapevine only when they have no other options. Grapevine transmits information rapidly in all directions. Usually a few people transmit a lot of info to others. The messages usually have some truth in them. Yet, it really distorts information by deleting fine details and exaggerating. Grapevine is more active where the employees are similar in backgrounds and are able to communicate easily. Water cool gossip talk is changed to email, social networking sites and tweets. Facebook has pages dedicated for people to write about their companies. Internet facilitated the globalization of these grapevine networks. Benefits of grapevine: 1. Employees rely on it when there is not information available through formal channels. 2. Main channel for organizational culture to be communicated. 3. Social interaction relieves anxiety. 4. Fulfills a drive to bond. Being a recipient of gossip is a sign of inclusion. Grapevine fulfills a drive for social interaction. Limitations of grapevine: 1. Information sometimes is so distorted that it escalates instead of reduces anxiety. 2. If management is slower than grapevine in communicating the information, the employees develop more negative views toward the organization. What action should be done about grapevine? 1. Listen to grapevine as a signal of employee anxiety, then correct the cause of that anxiety. 2. Listen to grapevine and step in, if needed, to correct blatant errors and fabrications. 3. Corporate leaders are to view grapevine as a competitor and directly inform employees of news, before they spread through a grapevine.
Team trust and its three foundations
High level of trust occurs when others affect you in the situations where you are at risk and you believe they will not harm you. It includes beliefs and conscious feelings towards team members. Foundations: 1. Calculus-based trust. Weakest one. You expect team members to act appropriately otherwise they will face sanctions. 2. Knowledge-based trust. How much we observed the person acts the same way in the same situations. 3. Identification-based trust. Based on mutual understanding and emotional bond. Think, act and feel like each other. High-performance teams have this kind of trust. Any misbehavior is usually fast forgotten, as everyone feels like their goals, beliefs etc. are very similar. People are more reluctant to acknowledge the violation of this kind of trust as it strikes their social identity. Employees usually join teams with a moderate to high, but not low level of trust in co-workers. The initial trust is called swift trust. Occurs because we have knowledge-based trust and want to fulfill our social identity. This trust is fragile, because it is based on assumptions. Trust decreases rather than increases over time.
What are the consequences of team cohesion?
In highly cohesive teams, the members want to maintain their membership and help team achieve mutual objectives. High cohesion teams spend more time together, share information, are more satisfied with each other, provide social support in stressful situations, more sensitive to each other's needs, develop better interpersonal relationships, reducing the conflict and having swift and effective conflict resolution, better co-operation and higher conformity to norms. All these factors increase the performance of highly cohesive teams. Good team performance is a predictor of cohesion. Moreover it has stronger effect on cohesion, than cohesion has on team performance. Team cohesion increases team performance only when team's norms are compatible with organizational values and objectives. This is because cohesion motivates people to perform on a level consistent with team norms. So if the norm is to procrastinate, the performance will decrease even if the cohesion is high.
Is team cohesion an emotional experience, and what influences team cohesion? List and explain individual factors.
It is emotional experience and is influenced by member similarity, smaller team size, member interaction, difficult entry, team success, external competitions and challenges. This is a reflection of member social identity with the group and belief of how being a part of the team will fulfill personal needs. 1. Member similarity. Teams have higher cohesion when members are similar. Similarity effect: people with similar values are more attracted to and are more comfortable with each other. Diversity usually makes cohesion harder, but it depends on the type of diversity. 2. Teams size. Smaller teams have more cohesion than larger teams. Easier to agree and coordinate. Yet, when there are not enough members to perform work, smaller teams have less cohesion. 3. Member interaction, Regular interaction promotes cohesion. This happens when task is highly interdependent and the members work in the same area. 4. Somewhat difficult entry. Prestige increases value of being a team member. Severe initiations can weaken team cohesion, because of the humiliation endured. 5. Team success. Cohesion is both emotional and instrumental. People feel more cohesion when their needs and goals are fulfilled. Cohesion increases proportionately to team's success. Also people wants to socially identify with successful teams. 6. External competition and challenges. Cohesion increases when faced with external competition.
Explain self-directed teams and what makes them successful.
Key points: 1. Work tightly together - better communication, speed, coordination. 2. Autonomy over scheduling, goals, performance, planning, execution. 3. Perform an entire chunk of work that has interdependent small specialized tasks. 4. Popular in manufacturing, services and government jobs. 5. Increase productivity and job satisfaction. Success depends on: 1. Must be responsible for the entire work process: making entire product or providing work service. This provides independence from other teams and interdependence in a team. 2. Sufficient autonomy. This allows speed and effectiveness of response to demands. This also motivates through feeling of empowerment. 3. Work site and technology must support coordination and communication and increase job enrichment. Team can't be a team if technology and space separates workers from each other.
Explain gender differences in communication.
Males: 1. Report talk - giving advice, assert power. 2. Give advice directly. 3. Dominate conversation style. 4. Apologize less often. 5. Less sensitive to nonverbal cues. Females: 1. Rapport talk- relationship building. 2. Give advice indirectly. 3. Flexible conversation style. 4. Apologize more often. 5. More sensitive to nonverbal cues. Some conflict may arise. For example, males give direct advice, rather than support, when women describe problems, which upsets women. Men, in turn, get upset, because their advice is rejected.
What are the benefits of informal groups?
Minimize stress though social-emotional support. This improves employee well-being, making the organization more effective. Informal networks increase power and influence through better information and preferential treatment and make their talent more visible.
Explain nonverbal communication.
Nonverbal communication includes facial gestures, voice intonation, physical distance and even silence. Necessary when can't do verbal communication and there is a need for immediate feedback. Even in face-to-face meetings nonverbal cues may reinforce interest or amplifying the meaning. Non-verbal communication is less rule-bound. Nonverbal cues are usually more ambiguous and are subjected to misinterpretation due to the lack of formal education on how to interpret them. Verbal communication is usually conscious, when non-verbal communication is usually automatic and non-conscious. Often translate well across cultures. (hardwired non-conscious responses to human emotions).
Team norms and teams. General info, why they form and how to prevent and change dysfunctional norms.
Norms apply only to behavior, not to private thoughts and feelings and apply to behaviors important to the team only. Team members usually comply with the norms without putting up a fight because they identify with the group and want to fit their behavior to group norms. The more individuals social identity is connected with the group, the more he or she is motivated to use norms to avoid negative sanctions. Norms form, because they are needed to: 1. help anticipate or predict how others will act. 2. as team members discover behaviors that facilitate efficiency. 3. experiences and values members bring to the team. Norms become deeply anchored, therefore must be established and enforced in the beginning of team development. One way to do that is to clearly state norms when the team starts to develop. Another way is to select people with appropriate values. If norms are faulty in an already established team, leaders can alter norms by active coaching or voicing the norms, alternatively, team-based rewards can be effective, or, as last resort, disband the team and replace with people with more favorable norms.
What are informal groups? Why do they exist?
People assembled together, but they don't need to be interdependent or focus on the same objective. They exist because: 1. we have innate drive to socialize. 2. we define ourselves by groups we belong to, because they shape and reinforce our self-concept (social identity theory). 3. for tasks that we can't do on our own. 4. we are comforted by presence of other people.
What are positive and negative effects of team diversity on team's performance?
Positive: 1. Ability to see the problem from different angles. (Different mental models). 2. Broader pool of technical competencies. 3. Better representation of organizations constituents. Negative: 1. Takes longer to become a high-performing team. Partially because it takes longer to bond. Another reason is people may segregate each other based on group characteristics. This reduces motivation to communicate and coordinate. With minimal diversity members have higher satisfaction, less conflict and better interpersonal relations; better on tasks that require a high degree of co-operation and coordination.
What is process losses?
Resources (including time and energy) expended toward team development and maintenance rather than the task.
Role of team building in acceleration of team development.
Team building attempts to speed up team development process. Can be applied to new teams, but is most commonly introduced to old teams that regressed to earlier stages due to membership turnover or loss of focus. Team-building interventions can be: 1. task-focused: clarify performance goals, increase team's motivation to accomplish these goals, establish a mechanism for systematic feedback on the team's goal performance. 2. problem-solving skills improvement. 3. clarify and reconstruct role perceptions individually. Also helps develop shared mental models. 4. improve relations between team members. Aim to to get everyone to learn more about each other, build trust in each other and find ways to manage conflict. Team building activities are ok as a solution to general problems. Specific problems need to be singled out, broken down and addressed. Also team building is often implemented as one-shot intervention, when in reality it needs to be continuously reinforced. Also, team building occurs on a job, not only in a leisure center like a park or what-not. To facilitate on-the-job team-building the members are encouraged to reflect on their work experiences.
When are teams better and when are individuals better?
Teams are better for complex tasks when several people are needed to have appropriate knowledge and skills. Complex work has better outcome when it is divided in specialized tasks coordinated with each other. Non-complex work that won't benefit from the specialization or that cannot be specialized is better is performed by the individual with sufficient skills, rather than a group. In case of needing specialization, team structure may not be necessary if minimal coordination is required.
Task characteristics and team development.
Teams are well suited when complex work is divided in specialized tasks and people coordinate with each other. Also, well-structured tasks work better with teams.
Define virtual teams
Teams whose members operate across space, time, and organizational boundaries, and are linked through information technologies to achieve organizational tasks.
Explain workplace communication through social media.
The companies are considering switching from email to social media. Social media serve several functions: 1. Presenting the individual's identity. 2. Enabling conversations. 3. Sharing information. 4. Sensing the presence of others in virtual space. 5. Maintaining relationships. 6. Revealing reputation or status. 7. Supporting communities. Different social media has a different combination of these functions. Many companies are not implementing social media, because of lack of knowledge, staff/resources and technical support.
Team cohesion
The degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members.
Task interdependence
The extent to which team members must share materials, information or expertise in order to perform their jobs.
How does task interdependence and need to work in teams scale to and affect each other?
The greater the task interdependence, the higher the need to organize it teams, because of better coordination due to better communication, also motivates. However, task goals must be the same. When goals are different, but the members are interdependent, conflict occurs and supervision is required.
Norms
The informal rules and shared expectations that groups establish to regulate the behavior of their members.
Define emotional contagion.
The nonconscious process of "catching" or sharing another person's emotions by mimicking that person's facial expressions and other nonverbal behavior.
Brook's law
The principle that adding more people to a late software project only makes it later. Also called the mythical man-month.
Social loafing
The problem that occurs when people exert less effort (and usually perform at a lower level) when working in teams than working alone.
Define communication.
The process by which information is transmitted and understood between two or more people.
Define persuasion.
The use of facts, logical arguments, and emotional appeals to change another person's beliefs and attitudes, usually for the purpose of changing the person's behavior.
Team development and its stages.
Tl:dr: know and trust each other, understand and agree on their respective roles, discover appropriate and inappropriate behavior and learn to coordinate. Stages: 1. Forming. Testing and orientation. Learn about each other, rewards, costs. Act polite, respect others, find out what is wanted from them. 2. Storming. Conflict as competition, establishing norms of behavior and performance standards. 3. Norming. Roles are established, consensus reached of objectives and mental model. 4. Performing. Coordination and conflict resolution are well-established. In high-performance teams, the members are highly cooperative, have high level of trust in each other, committed to group objectives and identify with the team. 5. Adjourning. Disbanding stage. Focus goes from task to relationship. Some teams spend more time than others in some of the stages 2 extra stages not mentioned in the 5-step model above: 1. Developing team identity. Internalizing the team. Shifting focus from "them" to "us". 2. Developing team competence. Forming shared or complementary mental models (Mental images of how things should go: workflow, the results etc.). Teams are more effective when they share common mental models.
Team roles and team development process.
To develop roles in a team they need to be formed and reinforced. Purpose can be to achieve goals or maintain relationships within the team. Can be formal and informal. Informal can be supporting others or generating new ideas. Informal roles can be shared but usually end up associating with one or two members of the team.
Explain emotional contagion.
To some degree our brain causes us to act as the person that we are watching. Non-conscious behavior - we mimic and synchronize our noverbal behaviors with other people. Emotional contagion serves three purposes: 1. Mimicry provides continuous feedback, communicating that we understand and empathize with the sender. 2. A way of receiving emotional meaning from others. Mimicking helps you experience the other person's emotion(s) more fully. Aids in receiving meaning along with words. 3. Fulfill the drive to bond. Mimicking signals that we share the same emotions as the other person feels. This strengthens relations among team members as well as between leaders and followers.
Choosing the best communication channel
Two important sets of factors to consider: 1. Social acceptance. Refers to: a. How well the communication medium is approved and supported by the organization, teams and individuals. This is expressed through team norms. b. Individual preferences for specific communication channels. These preferences are due to personality traits as well as previous experiences and reinforcement with particular channels. c. Symbolic meaning of the channel. Some communication channels are viewed as personal and some as impersonal; professional or social; succinct or long-winded. 2. Media richness. Volume and variety of information that can be transmitted during a specific time. High richness - ability to convey multiple cues (verbal and non-verbal information), allows timely feedback from receiver to sender, allows sender to customize the message to the receiver, makes use of complex symbols (words and phrases with multiple meanings). Face-to-face communication is on top of media richness and date-only reports are on the bottom. Rich media is better than lean when the communication situation is nonroutine and ambiguous. When the situation is routine, people have the same mental model, using rich media is a waste of time. When the situation is not routine, using rich medium helps quickly transmit large volumes of information. Using lean media would lead to misunderstandings and longer information processing.
Team size
Two pizza rule. 5-7 employees. This is too simplified. Large enough to provide necessary competencies to perform work. Small enough to have good coordination and member involvement. We want to avoid process loss and slow communication; lack of influencing, cohesion and motivation in big teams.
Explain information overload and how deal with it.
We have information processing capacity - amount of info we can process in a fixed unit of time. Jobs have varying information load. Too much information exceeds the person's capacity to process it. Information overload creates noise, as information gets overlooked or misinterpreted, when people can't process it fast enough. This also results in poorer quality decisions and higher stress. We can combat information overload by increasing information processing capacity or/and reducing the job's information load. Information-processing capacity can be increased through: 1. temporarily reading faster. 2. scanning though documents more efficiently. 3. removing distractions that slow information processing speed. 4. time management. If the overload is temporary, the employee can increase working hours. Information load can be reduced by: 1. buffering. Having incoming information filtered, usually by assistant. 2. ommitting. When we decide to overlook messages, such as using software rules to sort emails in fodlers that we never look at. 3. summarizing. For example,reading executive summaries, rather than the whole report.
What makes a team effective?
When it benefits the organization, members and it's survival: 1. Achievement of objectives. 2. Member satisfaction and well-being. 3. Ability to survive.
Can one team member not performing well significantly negatively affect the entire team's performance?
Yes.
evaluation apprehension
a decision making problem that occurs when individuals are reluctant to mention ideas that seem silly because they believe (often correctly) that other team members are silently evaluating them.
electronic brainstorming
a form of brainstorming that relies on networked computers for submitting and sharing creative ideas
brainstorming
a freewheeling, face-to-face meeting where team members aren't allowed to criticize, but are encouraged to speak freely, generate as many ideas as possible, and build on the ideas of others.
constructive conflict
a type of conflict in which people focus their discussion on the issue while maintaining respect for people having other points of view.
nominal group technique
a variation of brainstorming consisting of three stages: participants (1) silently and independently document their ideas (2) collectively describe these ideas to the other team members without critique, and (3) silently and independently evaluate the ideas presented.
Teams
groups of two or more people who interact and influence each other, are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational objectives, and perceive themselves as a social entity within an organization.
trust
the positive expectations one person has toward another person or group in situations involving risk.
Candor
the quality of being open and honest in expression.
groupthink
the tendency if highly cohesive groups to value consensus at the price of decision quality.