Managerial Psychology Groups

Groups and Teams Managerial Psychology More and More Teams • Last year, how many teams were you on? • Business is increasingly team-based as departments and hierarchies yield to projects and networks. Flexibility requires expertise where the work is done. • Teams leverage varied expertise, motivate performance, offer learning opportunities, give emotional support... Kinds of Teams • Your project team is a temporary formal work group • Groups can be temporary or permanent, formal (created by an organization) or informal (created by individuals to fulfill their needs), focused on work, socializing, personal growth, etc. Team Effectiveness • How many of you were on a team that did really well? Do you know why? • Any teams that messed up? In terms of: – Performance goals (quality, quantity, timeliness, efficiency, innovation) – Member satisfaction (meet individual needs, maintain trust) – Team learning (skills, perspectives, behaviors) – Customer satisfaction (external stakeholders) Teams Develop Over Time Productivity Happiness Workload Forming Storming Norming Performing? Time Team Challenges • Changes such as starting up, adding a new person, or beginning a project challenge a team to grow • We can simplify team development into stages or challenges that may be experienced many times • Forming: Who are we? Who leads? Who cares? • Storming: We are different. We disagree. • Norming: We set goals, assign tasks, develop routines, manage conflict, hold each other accountable • Performing: We coordinate, trust each other, care • Renewing/Disbanding: We learn, revisit our goals, thank each other, say goodbye Team Performance Curve performance high-performing team team working group team effectiveness Team Performance Video • Working Group – Only common purpose is to complete a task – Focus on individual performance – Incremental results • Team – – – – – Complementary skills, division of labor Commitment to team purpose & performance Mutual accountability Able to overcome barriers Higher performance • High Performance Team – And members committed to each other’s personal growth Katzenbach & Smith The Wisdom of Teams Everything In Groups? #unique ideas • Research shows group brainstorming produces fewer ideas than nominal group (individual) brainstorming • Yet people persist in believing in group benefits electronic traditional 2 4 6 8 10 12 (Gallupe & Cooper, Sloan Mgmt Rev, 1993) Process Losses • Cost in time for meetings • Coordination losses depend on task baseball: success is 90% member skill basketball: success is 35% skill • Motivation losses diffusion of responsibility/social loafing • Political struggles, influence processes who gets air time, power, rewards? hierarchy, majority vs. minority influence Social Loafing • depends on identifiability of contributions always identifiable sound pressure never identifiable real group 1 2 3 4 # on team Norm Formation • Groups form norms (expected and typical behaviors), e.g., who will sit where, who talks a lot, how do we divide up work, how is conflict handled, who leads, how are emotions expressed • Sherif found that groups converged on a group norm for the autokinetic effect • Group norms could be influenced by an extreme confederate • Individuals could be replaced over generations but the norm remained It moved about 3.5 inches PERSON A Average distance estimates gence r e v n o C PERSON B PERSON C Alone Group Session 1 Group Session 2 Group Session 3 Group Cohesiveness • Cohesiveness is attraction to the group • Similarity/identity, proximity, success, few alternative sources of reward, shared threat lead to more cohesiveness • Cohesiveness can be good, but it can lead to conflict avoidance, poor results, defensiveness toward outsiders, GroupThink (more next time) Roles In Groups • Newcomer, task coordinator, facilitator, emotion manager, scout, ambassador • Leadership can be distributed • Fuzzy boundaries: Mortensen (2004) found groups think they know who is in the group but disagree • Ancona et al find more X-Teams where people are differentially “core” to the team X-Teams’ Expandable Tiers Outer net tier Core: carry team identity, create strategy and make key decisions Operational: do ongoing work, focus on specific tasks and decisions Core member tier Operational tier Outer-net: specialized expertise for separable tasks, join and leave Bacon & eggs breakfast: pig is committed; chicken is involved; the cow is a provider