Organization and Leadership Lecture 5

Definition of a team: collection of individual who are: interdependent in the tasks, share output responsibility, an intact social entity, embedded in larger social systems, manager their relationships across organizational boundaries

Working Group: only exchange of viewpoints and information, no mutually responsibility, make decisions that support the individual members --> no clear goal

Pseudo Team: some performance demand, no focus on collective achievement, joint performance is below the individual potential --> clear goal but no motivation e.g. Freanch Team WM 2010

Potential Team: high performance demands, blur reason for teaming up, goals are required, no feeling of joint responsibility --> not a clear focus and joint responsibility

Real Team: complement each other, equally involved in joint affair, strong we feeling

High Performing Team: fulfills real team requirements, try to develop each personally and success as well, surpass all expectations, high engagement of members 

6 Fundamentals: <12 members, complementary skill set, common purposes, common agreed goals, share working approach, mutual accountability

Team Leaders: provide clear direction, set rules of behavior, build up common team identity, exploit power of positive feedback --> need to be good team players --> can create conditions for high performance 

Circle --> moving from 1 to 4 and start again

1. Forming: unclear situation, team forming, insecure atmosphere as members get to know each other, tasks and rules are defined

2. Storming: power and status clarification takes place, first conflicts occur and a we feeling develops, goals are questioned by the group

3. Norming: norms/rules of the game are laid out and mutual support starts, team feeling develops and mutual acceptance, increase of team spirit and action orientation

4. Performing: Roles become flexible and cooperative behavior possible, stable relationship and better task accomplishment therefore, team is goal and performance orientated

Increasing diversity in teams due to globalization, individual mobility, role changes, demographic changes

Primary diversity dimensions (surface): visible for everyone because they are recognized without interaction, are stable and provide basis for boundaries and discrimination e.g. Age, sex, ethnicity etc.

Secondary diversity dimensions (deep): become obvious during the development process, primary dimensions are often overlaid by secondary diversity characteristics e.g. personality, language, religion, values at work, working style etc. 

Chances: more diversity means better outcomes of teamwork

Drawbacks: more diversity, worse interpersonal processes, diminished team outcomes

Leader must realize positive potential and prevent drawbacks

Information processing:

- Basics: Individuals posses different resources e.g. knowledge, attitudes --> can complement each other

- Effects on individuals, group and company: may come to better decisions due to the plus of resources than uniform teams, may avoid group think more effectively, may help to increase overall performance

Similarity Attraction & Social Identity: 

- Basics: People like others similar to themselfs (gender etc.), formation of subgroups in teams due to diversity characteristics

- Effect: Diverse groups tend to reduce communication and cooperation, uniform teams may have more joint commitment and increase performance, diverse teams may reduce performance due to mistakes in communication, reduced cooperation etc.

Recommendations for leaders: diversity has to be useful to the task and faultlines should be weak (not too 2 group with the same diversities but rather mixed --> old female and male and the same for young), must convey higher order similarties (company culture, identity etc.), use team building measures, encourage intensive discussions and empathy --> demonstrate value of diverstiy for the team

Different Types of conflicts in team processes:

- Relationship conflict: Emotional tension on an interpersonal basis -->avoid, speak openly, discuss etc.

-Process conflict:controversies over issue of duty, power etc. ->initally allow discussion, later avoid it

-Task conflict: differences in viewpoints/opinions over content -> allow throughouts and utilize to brainstorm -> use for productive means, actively use to make team work

Social Loafing --> less work input because they work in a group, stronger when input cannot be individually identified --> leads to lower team performance

- Reduceing Socal loafing: increase transperancy of individual results, combine individual and team-based compensation, allocate meaningful activities

Groupthinking: extreme optimism creats illusion of invulnerability, pressure to avoid unpopular opinion sharing, whitewashing of bad decisions, pressure to protect group from external opinions

Recommendations for Leaders: Allow/foster conflict and utilize it positively through rules, brainstorming etc., adrees relationship conflicts openly to overcome them, only dicuss process intially.