OBHR Chapter 5-8

Digital Channels Have Changed Organizational Communication

. Less face-to-face/telephone 2. More upward communication 3.Better relations with management 4. Reduces status differences 5. May reduce stereotyping

Stages of Team Development

Forming Period of testing and orientation Members defer to the existing authority Expectations learned, and how members fit into the team Storming Interpersonal conflict; members proactive, compete for roles, try to establish norms Norming Roles established; consensus around team objectives and team mental model Performing Efficient coordination; highly cooperative; high trust; commitment to team objectives; identify with the team Adjourning Disbanding; shift from task to relationship focus

Types of Team Building

Goal setting - clarifying team's goals and build motivation to achieve goals Problem solving - improve the team's decision making and critical thinking skills Role clarification - improves role definition and shared mental models Interpersonal relations - learn about each other, build trust, manage conflict, strengthen social identity

Goal Setting/Feedback Challenges

Goal setting is generally a highly effective practice for employee motivation and performance Problems putting goal setting/feedback into practice: Focuses employees on a narrow set of measurable performance indicators (i.e. "What gets measured, gets done") Very difficult goals may motivate unethical behavior Very difficult goals can be stressful, which undermines performance Interferes with learning process in new, complex jobs despite being effective in established jobs Motivates employees to set easy goals when tied to pay (bonus)

What Are 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 Exist to fulfill a purpose Interdependent: interact and collaborate Mutually accountable for achieving common goals and to influence each other Perceive themselves to be a team

Informal Groups

Groups that exist primarily for the benefit of their members Reasons why informal groups exist: Innate drive to bond Social identity: we define ourselves by group memberships Help accomplish personal goals Emotional support Informal groups potentially benefit organizations Manage coworker stress Improve knowledge sharing (social networks)

Drives (primary needs)

Hardwired brain characteristics that attempt to keep us in balance by correcting deficiencies Innate and universal - — exist from birth, everyone has them Initiate motivation: produce emotions that energize us to act, put us in a state of readiness

Need for achievement (nAch)

High nAch people want to accomplish reasonably challenging goals through their own effort. They desire clear feedback and recognition; choose moderate risk tasks; prefer working alone; money is a weak motivator. Low nAch people work better when money is an incentive. Entrepreneurs have high achievement need.

Levels of Employee Involvement

High: Employees are responsible for entire decision-making process. Medium-High: Employees collectively recommend solutions to the problem. Medium-Low: Employees hear problem individually or collectively, then are asked for information relating to that problem. Low: Employees individually asked for specific information; the problem is not described to them.

Holistic, Humanistic, Positive

Holistic: Should study/understand multiple needs together because they operate together Humanistic: Higher-order needs are influenced by personal and social influences (self-concept, social norms, experience), not just instinct. Positive: Emphasizes that people are naturally motivated to reach their potential (self-actualization) — foundation of positive organizational behavior

Emotions and Making Choices

How emotions affect the evaluation of alternatives Emotions form preferences before conscious evaluation - emotional marker process determines our preferences for each alternative before we consciously evaluate those alternatives. Moods and emotions affect the decision process. Emotions serve as information in decisions - we "listen in" on our emotions for guidance when making choices

Influences on team cohesion

Member similarity Team size Member interaction Somewhat difficult entry Team Success External challenges

Virtual (Remote) Teams

Members operate across space, time, and firm's boundaries, linked through information technologies to achieve organizational tasks Teams have degrees of remoteness/virtuality, which increases with the: Geographic dispersion of team members Percentage of members who work apart Percentage of time that members work apart Virtual/Remote Team Success Factors Virtual team member characteristics (e.g., good communication technology skills; strong self-leadership; and higher emotional intelligence) Toolkit of communication channels, and freedom to choose channels that work best for them Fairly high task structure Opportunities to meet face-to-face

Team cohesion outcomes

Motivated to remain members Willing to share information Better social support Resolve conflict effectively Better interpersonal relationships Better performance But only if norms are aligned with org goals Also, effect of performance on cohesion might be stronger than vice versa

Learned Needs Theory (McClelland's)

Needs can be strengthened/weakened (learned) through self-concept, social norms, past experience. Training can change a person's need strength through reinforcement and altering their self-concept. Three learned needs were studied in research. Need for achievement (nAch) Need for affiliation (nAff) Need for power (nPow)

Need for power (nPow)

People want to control their environment, including people and material resources. Personalized power: power for its own sake, to advance personal interests Socialized power: power as a means to help others Effective leaders have high need for socialized rather than personalized power

Types of Teams

Permanence How long that type of team usually exists Skill diversity Degree that team members have different skills/knowledge Authority dispersion Degree that decision-making responsibility is distributed throughout the team versus centralized

Expectancy Theory of Motivation

Predicts goal-oriented behaviour; It states that work effort is aimed toward behaviors that people believe will produce the most favourable outcomes It assumes that people are rational decision makers who chose where to direct their effort based on the probability of outcomes occurring and the positive/negative valences (expected satisfaction) of those outcomes

Creative Model Process

Preparation - Understand the problem or opportunity - Investigate information that seems relevant to issue Incubation - Period of relective thought - Noncounscious or low-level awareness, not direct attention to issue Illumination - Sudden awareness of a novel, although vague and incomplete, idea entering one's consciousness - May include an initial period of "fringe" awareness Verification - Detailed logical and experimental evaluation of the illuminated idea - Further creative thinking

Problem Identification Challenges

Problems/opportunities are constructed from ambiguous information, not "given" to us. Mental models Blind us from seeing unique problems or opportunities Decisive leadership Declare problems without sufficient time for logical assessment Stakeholder framing Construct decision maker's perception of the situation by providing or hiding information For example, suppliers market their new products as unique opportunities. For example, employees emphasize external causes rather than their own fault for problems. Stakeholders also offer concise evaluations/conclusions, hoping decision maker will avoid his/her own detailed analysis. Decision makers accept stakeholder framing to simplify information overload and reduce ambiguity. Perceptual defense Blocking out bad news as a coping mechanism (fail to see information that threatens self-concept) Solution-focused problems The problem identified is a veiled solution — underlying problem has not been analyzed Solutions have been reinforced by past successes Decision makers are comforted by the closure of having a solution

Communication

Process by which information is transmitted and understood between people

What are action scrips?

Programmed decision routines that speed up our response to pattern matches or mismatches

Programmed vs. Non-programmed decision making

Programmed decisions: standard operating procedures developed from past decisions, optimal solutions already documented Nonprogrammed decisions: require all steps in the decision model because the problems are new, complex, or ill-defined

Four Drive Theory of Motivation

Proposes that emotions are generated through four drives Drive to acquire drive to bond drive to comprehend drive to defend

Characteristics of Creative People

- Independent Imagination - High openness to experience - Moderately low need for affiliation - Strong self - direction value - Strong simulation value - Cognitive and Practical Intelligence - Ability to synthesize, analyze, and apply ideas - Knowledge and Experience - Prerequisite knowledge and experience - Not locked into a fixed knowledge mindset - Persistence - High need for achievement - Strong task motivation - Moderately high optimism and self-esteem

Individual Differences in Needs

- Intensity of needs in a particular situation varies from one person to the next - Self-concept, social norms, and past experience amplify or suppress drive-based emotions. - Self-concept, social norms, and past experience affect which goals are formed to respond to emotions — guide direction of our effort.

Engagement vs commitment

While commitment refers to employee's satisfaction as well as identification with the organization, employee engagement goes a step further, and involves the employee making discretionary efforts towards attainment of organizational goals.

Rational choice

effective decision makers identify, select, and apply the best possible alternative Two main elements of rational choice Calculating the best alternative from probabilities and expected satisfaction (valences) of outcomes Decision-making process

Needs

goal-directed forces that people experience Needs formed as people channel emotional energy toward specific goals

Communication process model

look at graphic

Extrinsic motivation

motivated to receive something that is beyond personal control for instrumental reasons; people direct their effort toward a reward controlled by others Extrinsic motivators seldom undermine intrinsic motivation Additive effect: Extrinsic motivator adds motivation beyond the intrinsic motivator alone Opposing effect: Introducing extrinsic sources of motivation will reduce intrinsic motivation Research evidence: Extrinsic motivators seldom undermine intrinsic motivation, particularly when extrinsic motivator is unexpected, has relatively low value, and is fixed (not contingent on specific behavior)

Intrinsic motivation

need fulfillment from doing the activity itself, not as a means to some other outcome Activity and need fulfillment controlled by the individual Anchored in the innate drives for competence and autonomy Drive for competence — applying skills and observing positive, meaningful outcomes from those talents Drive for autonomy — motivation is self-initiated rather than controlled from an external source

Divergent thinking

reframing a problem in a unique way and generating different approaches to the issue - Contrasts with convergent thinking — calculating the conventionally accepted "right answer" to a logical problem

Decision making

the conscious process of making choices among alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs

What is decision making?

the process of making choices among alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs.

Increasing P-to-O Expectancies

Measure job performance accurately Clearly explain the outcomes that will result from successful performance Describe how the employee's rewards were based on past performance Provide examples of others whose good performance has resulted in higher rewards

Team Advantages/Challenges

Advantages Better decisions, products Better information sharing and coordination Higher motivation due to team membership Fulfills drive to bond: motivated to fulfill group's goals Accountable to team: teams monitor member performance Coworkers are moving benchmarks of performance: employees motivated due to concern about being compared to performance of other team members Challenges Process losses Resources expended toward team development/maintenance rather than performance Takes time for members to resolve disagreements, mutually understand goals, negotiate roles, agree on conduct, etc. Process losses amplified when more people added Social loafing - employees exert less effort in groups than when working alone

Job Design

Assigning tasks to a job, including the interdependency of those tasks with other jobs Organization's goal - design jobs that can be performed efficiently yet employees are motivated and engaged

Increasing Outcome Valences

Ensure that rewards are valued Individualize rewards Minimize countervalent outcomes (e.g. peer pressure)

Identifying Problems Effectively

Be aware of problem identification biases Resist temptation of looking decisive when more thoughtful examination of the situation should occur Develop a norm of "divine discontent" (aversion to complacency with status quo) Discuss the situation with colleagues to discover blind spots and see different perspectives

Making Choices More Effectively

Be more contemplative than decisive for complex problems. Balance intuition with logical analysis. Revisit decisions that were made when feeling overly positive and confident. Practice scenario planning - a systematic process of thinking about alternative futures and what the organization should do to anticipate and react to those environments

Other Creative Team Structures

Brainwriting Individuals write down and distribute their ideas to others, who develop further ideas Usually a face-to-face setting, but no talking occurs during idea generation Lack of conversation reduces production blocking compared to brainstorming Electronic brainstorming Brainwriting using computer technology to document and share ideas (participants may be in the same room or remotely located) Ideas anonymously to other participants Participants anonymously vote electronically on the ideas presented Face-to-face discussion usually follows Strengths: less production blocking, evaluation apprehension, and conformity problems than brainstorming or brainwriting Limitations: considered too structured and technology-bound Nominal group technique Brainwriting with verbal stage

Employee engagement

Employee's emotional and cognitive motivation, particularly: Focused, intense, persistent, and purposive effort toward work-related goals High level of absorption in the work (i.e. intense focus) High self-efficacy (i.e. belief that you have the ability, role clarity, and resources to get the job done)

Problems with Email/Written Digital Channels

Communicates emotions poorly Reduces politeness and respect (flaming) People write digital messages with content they would not say face-to-face — "flaming" Senders post messages before emotions subside Written digital channels have low social presence — more impersonal, so less empathy/sensitivity Receivers infer a more negative interpretation than was intended Inefficient for ambiguous, complex, novel situations Increases information overload

Problems When Evaluating Decisions

Confirmation bias = post decisional justification (screening out information contrary to personal values and assumptions, and more readily accept confirming information) causes us to: Inflate strengths of the selected alternative Ignore/deflate strengths of rejected alternatives Gives people an excessively optimistic evaluation of their decisions Escalation of commitment: Tendencyto repeat or further invest in an apparently bad decision Causes of escalation of commitment Self-justification effect To look competent, people deliberately invest further in their failing projects to demonstrate its likely success Most common when decision makers: (a) are personally identified with the project, (b) have staked their reputations on the project's success, and (c) have low self-esteem Self-enhancement effect Natural tendency to think we are above average (lucky, competent) Results in (a) ignoring bad news about the decision and (b) overestimating chance that investing more will correct the problem — mostly unconscious bias Operates mostly nonconsciously Causes of escalation of commitment cont. Prospect theory effect We experience stronger negative emotions when losing something of value than positive emotions when gaining something of equal value Stopping a project hurts more than uncertainty of success associated with continuing to fund the project Sunk costs effect Sunk costs: the value of resources already invested in the decision Future investments should NOT consider size of previous investment in the project, only the expected future gains. But people are inherently motivated to invest in failing projects with high sunk costs. Sunk costs includes time investment, not just financial Sunk costs include closing costs: financial or nonfinancial penalties associated with shutting down a project

Importance of Communication

Coordinating work activities Organizational learning Better decision making Changing others' behavior Employee well-being

Contingencies of Involvement

DecisionStructure - Problem is new and complex. Knowledge Source - Employees have relevant knowledge beyond leader's knowledge. DecisionCommitment - Employees would lack commitment unless involved. Risk ofConflict - Norms support firm's goals. Employee agreement is likely

Implicit Favorite in Decision Making

Decision maker's (sometimes nonconscious) preferred alternative, used as a comparison with other choices Occurs because: Natural human preference to compare two choices rather than evaluate many alternatives at the same time Reduces cognitive effort: — minimize mental effort by quickly forming a preference (implicit favorite), then mainly seek evidence supporting the preference (confirmation bias - the process of screening out information that is contrary to our values and assumptions, and to more readily accept confirming information) Minimizes risk of cognitive dissonance: easy to change beliefs/feelings about alternatives to maintain consistency with implicit favorite preference

Team Development: Identities and Mental Models

Developing team identity Team becomes part of each member's social identity Developing team mental models and coordinating routines

drive to bond

Drive to form social relationships and mutual caring commitments with others Explains why people form social identities (align self-concept with social groups)

Drive to defend

Drive to protect ourselves physically and socially; "fight or flight" response; includes defending our relationships and belief systems Drive to defend is always reactive (triggered by threat), not proactive Only drive to defend is reactive (triggered by threat); other three drives are proactive — they are regularly activated by our perceptions to seek fulfillment

Drive to comprehend

Drive to satisfy our curiosity, to know and understand ourselves and our environment Related to higher order needs of growth and self-actualization

drive to acquire

Drive to seek, take, control, and retain objects and personal experiences Need for status and recognition; foundation of competition

How Four Drives Motivate

Drives generate emotions tagged to incoming sensory information Emotions become conscious experiences when sufficiently strong or conflict with each other When emotions energize us, our social norms, personal values, and experience (mental skill set) transforms drive-based emotions into goal-directed choice and effort

Team Building

Formal activities to improve the team's development and functioning (accelerating team development) Types of team building Goal setting - clarifying team's goals and build motivation to achieve goals Problem solving - improve the team's decision making and critical thinking skills(e.g. simulation games) Role clarification - improves role definition and shared mental models Interpersonal relations - learn about each other, build trust, manage conflict, strengthen social identity Team building can be effective under specific conditions: Need sound diagnosis to identify specific team problems and solutions Need to be a continuous process, not a one-shot inoculation Need to occur on-the-job, not just away from the workplace

Communication Barriers

Imperfect perceptual process Receivers don't listen as well as senders assume. Senders overestimate how well other people understand the message. Language Different languages Ambiguous language: causes misunderstandings, but may be appropriate to minimize emotional responses (e.g., "rightsizing") Jargon: noise when specialized words and phrases are transmitted to people who do not have the jargon codebook Filtering Delete or delay negative information Using less harsh (less emotive) words so the message sounds more favorable Information Overload

Intuitive Decision Making

Intuitive decision making is the ability to know when a problem or opportunity exists and to select the best course of action without conscious reasoning 1. Intuition is emotional experience Gut feelings are emotional signals Not all emotional signals are intuition 2. Intuition is rapid non-conscious analytical process Intuition uses action scripts.

Increasing work motivation through design

Job rotation: Moving from one job to another Benefits: More skill variety, more multi-skilled workforce, fewer repetitive strain injuries Job enlargement: Adding tasks to an existing job Benefit: more skill variety Job enrichment: Giving employees more responsibility for scheduling, coordinating, and planning work Job enrichment strategies: Natural grouping Combining highly interdependent tasks into one job For example, assembling entire product Establishing client relationships Employee has direct responsibility for clients Employee communicates directly with those clients

Creative Work Environments

Learning orientation Encourage experimentation Tolerate mistakes as part of the creative process Intrinsically motivating work Open communication Sufficient resources and job security Leader and coworker support (usually)

Creative Team Structures: Brainstorming

Participants think up as many ideas as possible. Four brainstorming rules Speak freely. Don't criticize. Provide as many ideas as possible. Build on others' ideas. Research evidence on brainstorming Improves divergent thinking and minimizes evaluation apprehension Requires (a) experienced facilitator, (b) coworkers who work together in a supportive culture

Maslow's Needs Hierarchy Theory

People motivated by several needs at the same time but the lowest unmet need has strongest effect When lower need is satisfied, next higher need becomes the primary motivator Self-actualization -- a growth need because people desire more rather than less of it when satisfied Maslow's model lacks empirical support: a needs hierarchy isn't universal to everyone. But Maslow generated amore holistic, humanistic,positive perspective ofmotivation.

Problems with Maximization

Rather than maximize, decision makers tend to satisfice - accept first alternative that is "good enough. Satisficing occurs because: Lack of information, time, cognitive capacity to determine the best alternative Too many alternatives (cognitive and emotional draining); helps to minimise cognitive effort Alternatives appear sequentially, not all at once; makes it necessary to engage in sequential evaluation against an implicit favorite (inherently satisficing) People avoid making a decision when presented with a very large number of choices.

Rational Choice Decision-Making Process

Rational choice decision making assumes this systematic process is followed. 1. Identify problem/opportunity (symptom vs. problem) Problem — gap between "what is" and "what ought to be" Symptom — outcomes of fundamental causes (outcomes produce the gap between "what is" and "what ought to be") Opportunity — deviation between current expectations and potentially better situation(s) not previously expected 2. Choose the best decision process Deciding how to decide: a meta-decision (e.g., whether decision is non/programmed; whether to involve others in the decision) 3. Discover/develop alternatives (possible solutions) Search for ready-made solutions first that have worked for similar problems, then develop/modify custom-made solution 4. Choose the best alternative Alternative with the highest expected satisfaction 5. Implement the selected alternative Rational choice assumes implementation occurs without resistance or other problems 6. Evaluate decision outcomes Determines whether gap between "what is" and "what ought to be" has narrowed

Multisource feedback

Received from a full circle of people around the employee Provides more complete and accurate information Several challenges expensive and time-consuming ambiguous and conflicting feedback inflated rather than accurate feedback stronger emotional reaction to multiple feedback

Creative Activities

Redefine the problem Revisit abandoned projects — might be seen in new ways People unfamiliar with issue explore the problem (fresh eyes) Associative play Playful activities — unusual variations of traditional games Morphological analysis — listing different dimensions of a system and the elements of each dimension and then looking at each combination Challenge to create something new from existing unrelated products (e.g., design a product to clean cutlery from an electric toothbrush and a hair dryer) Cross-pollination Employees across the firm exchange ideas or are brought into the team. It encourages informal social interaction in the organization. Design thinking A human-centered, solution-focused creative process that applies both intuition and analytical thinking to clarify problems and generate innovative solutions Involve several people with diverse knowledge/experiences who can empathize with end user. Preserve ambiguity: question and refine the stated problem. Review and learn from past solutions. Use tools to imagine better solutions for the future. Build several low-cost prototypes to test ideas, less time conceptualizing what might happen Tolerate failure; embrace a learning orientation.

Need for affiliation (nAff)

Seek approval of others, conform to their wishes and expectations, and avoid conflict and confrontation Need a relatively low need for affiliation in key decision-making positions so choices are not biased by personal need for approval

Increasing E-to-P Expectancies

Select people with the required skills and knowledge Provide required training and clarify job requirements Assign simpler or fewer tasks until employees can master them Provide sufficient time and resources Provide examples of similar employees who have successfully performed the task Provide coaching to employees who lack self-efficacy

Self-Directed Teams

Self-directed teams defined Cross-functional groups organized around work processes Two distinct features of SDTs: Complete entire piece of work requiring several interdependent tasks (minimizing the interaction with employees outside of the team) Autonomy over task decisions and execution (plan, organize and control without higher status supervisor) Success factors Responsible for entire work process High interdependence within the team Low interdependence with other teams Autonomy to organize and coordinate work

Influences on Effective Encoding/Decoding

Sender/receiver have similar codebooks. Codebooks: dictionaries of symbols, language, gestures, idioms, and other tools used to convey information Benefits of similar codebooks More accurate communication — similar meaning of symbols, etc. More efficient communication — less need to repeat message in different ways Sender is experienced encoding that message. Sender/receiver have the skill and motivation to use the selected channel. Sender/receiver have shared mental models of the communication context

Active Listening Process and Strategies

Sensing Evaluating Respondings

Evaluating Decisions Outcomes More Effectively

Separate decision choosers from evaluators. Publicly establish a preset level at which the decision is abandoned or reevaluated. Seek out sources of systematic and clear feedback for the decision's outcomes. Involve several people in the decision evaluation process.

Goal Setting Theory

The process of motivating employees and clarifying their role perceptions by establishing performance objectives

Team Size

Smaller teams are better because: Less process loss - less coordination, quicker agreement Require less time to develop More engaged with team - know members, more influential Feel more responsible for team's success But team must be large enough to accomplish task

Social Loafing Causes and Remedies

Social loafing is more likely to occur when: Individual performance is hidden or difficult to distinguish Work has low motivation (boring, low task significance) Team members have low conscientiousness, low agreeableness, low collectivism Team dynamics undermine employee motivation Minimizing social loafing (In class exercise - Explain in detail how those techniques minimize social loafing?): Form smaller teams Specialize tasks Measure individual performance Increase job enrichment Select motivated, team-oriented employees

Characteristics of Effective Feedback

Specific Refers to specific metrics Relevant Relates to behavior/results within employee's own control Timely Information available soon after behavior/results occur Credible Trustworthy/believable sources Sufficiently frequent More frequent for employees with low knowledge/experience More frequent is possible for jobs with short task cycle time

Effective Goal-Setting Features

Specific - What, how, where, when, and with whom the task needs to be accomplished Measurable - how much (quantity), how well (quality), at what cost; (indication of progress in needed) Achievable - sufficient challenging, yet accepted (E-to-P) Relevant - relevant to the individual job and within employee's control Time-framed - goals need a due date and specifying when they are assessed Exciting - more effective when employee commitment, not just compliance Reviewed - the motivational value of goal depends on employees receiving feedback and recognition on goal progress and accomplishment

Evaluating brainstorming

Strengths Produces more creative ideas (under some conditions) Less evaluation apprehension when team supports a learning orientation Strengthens decision acceptance and team cohesiveness Sharing positive emotions encourages creativity Weaknesses Production blocking still exists Evaluation apprehension exists in many groups

Motivation

The forces within a person that affect the direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior Motivated employees are willing to exert a particular level of effort (intensity), for a certain amount of time (persistence), toward a particular goal (direction)

Biased Decision Heuristics

The cornerstone of rational decision making is to calculate the alternative with the highest satisfaction People have built-in decision heuristics that automatically distort calculation of alternatives (probabilities and valences) Three most widely studied heuristic biases: Anchoring and adjustment heuristic Adjusting expectations/standards around an initial anchor point (e.g. opening bid) Availability heuristic Estimating probabilities by how easy event is recalled, even ease of recall is also due to other factors Representativeness heuristic Estimating the probability of something by its similarity to known others rather than by more precise statistics

Team cohesion

The degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members Both cognitive and emotional process Related to the team member's social identity

Job Specialization and Scientific Management

The result of division of labor in which each job includes a subset of the tasks required to complete the product or service (Short cycle time — the time required to complete the task before starting over with another item or client) Improves work efficiency Less time changing activities Jobs mastered more quickly (less training time) Better person-job matching (fewer skills needed, easier to match with abilities) Scientific management Frederick Winslow Taylor (early 1900s) Maximize work efficiency through specialization and standardization Also popularized training, goal setting, incentives Job specialization problems Low motivation - jobs trivial, socially isolating Higher absenteeism/turnover Higher wages to offset dissatisfying, narrowly defined work Affects work quality (plus and minus)

Team Decision-Making Constraints

Time constraints Teams take longer than individuals to make decisions Time to organize/coordinate/maintain relationships Production blocking: procedural requirement that only one person speaks at a time Evaluation apprehension Reluctance to mention ideas that seem silly because of belief (often true) that other team members are silently evaluating them Based on desire for a favorable self-presentation — creative ideas often sound bizarre Most common when higher status person attends meeting, or members formally evaluate each other Peer pressure to conform Suppressing dissenting opinions that oppose team norms Members might punish the violator, persuade him/her that the opinion is incorrect Conformity is subtle: we question our ideas when team members disagree Overconfidence (inflated team efficacy) High team efficacy is usually beneficial — set more challenging goals, more motivated to achieve goals Negative outcomes include (a) false sense of invulnerability, (b) less vigilant making decisions, (c) less task-oriented conflict (active discussion, respectful disagreement) Inflated team efficacy caused by (a) collective self-enhancement effect, (b) high team cohesion (mutual reinforcement), (c) external threats/competition (further motivates self-enhancement)