Team Dynamics and Group Processes

Team Dynamics & Group Cohesion

• Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
• A team is a group of individuals who depend on each other to achieve common goals.
  • Key characteristics include interdependency, a common goal, and a shared identity.

Group Processes

• Communication, decision-making, and cohesion are important group processes.

Communication

• Strategies for open communication include:
  • Providing opportunities for socialization.
  • Designing dressing rooms for open communication.
  • Encouraging respectful discussion of dissenting ideas.
  • Emphasizing group goals over personal goals.

Decision-Making

• Majority rule is often the best method for equal participation and power.
• Groupthink can occur where members conform to the group's ideas instead of expressing their own.
  • This is most likely to happen in highly cohesive groups.

Team Cohesion

• A group's tendency to remain united in pursuing its goals.
• It's a dynamic and multidimensional process involving:
  • Attraction to the group.
  • Commitment to the group.
  • Involvement in the group.

Conceptual Model of Group Cohesion

• Cohesion involves individual and group aspects which can be further divided into task and social aspects.
  • Individual aspects: beliefs about the personal benefits of group membership
  • Group aspects: beliefs about the group as a collective
  • Task cohesion: extent to which the group works together
  • Social cohesion: extent of liking among group members

Measuring Cohesion

• The Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) has 18 items measuring 4 dimensions.

Cohesion & Performance

• Cohesion and performance share a circular relationship.
  • Cohesion leads to improved performance, which leads to success, and greater cohesion.
  • Increased cohesion leads to increased self-esteem, morale and improved performance
  • Performance-to-cohesion relationship seems stronger than cohesion-to-performance relationship
  • Cohesion-performance relationship strongest for task cohesion
  • Cohesion is important but high task commitment is also necessary.

Correlates of Group Cohesion

• Environmental Factors
• Leadership Factors
• Team Factors
• Personal Factors

Environmental Factors: Group Size

• There is an inverse relationship between cohesion and group size.
• Smaller groups have a higher level of cohesion and develop cohesion more effectively.

Environmental Factors: Setting

• The factors holding a group together may change across situations.
  • Individuals may have different expectations based on changes in team ownership or league regulations.

Environmental Factors: Task

• The nature of the task (e.g., interactive or co-active) determines the need for cohesion.
  • Cohesion is most important for interacting teams (e.g., basketball, soccer, hockey).

Leadership Factors: Behavior

• Coach and athlete behaviors linked to higher team cohesion include:
  • Training and Instruction (improving performance).
  • Social Support (creating a positive atmosphere and warm relationships).
  • Positive Feedback (recognizing and rewarding strong performance).

Leadership Factors: Decision Style

• Coaches who use democratic decision-making styles tend to have teams with high task and social cohesion.

Leadership Factors: Transformational

• Transformational leadership styles, that recognize player needs, emphasize team goals and high performance expectations, lead to higher levels of cohesion.

Athlete Factors: Adherence

• There is a positive relationship between adherence (attendance/participation) and cohesion (regardless of performance).

Athlete Factors: Effort

• Perceptions of team cohesiveness are associated with actual or perceived effort.
• Players who perceive high task cohesion tend to exert more effort.

Athlete Factors: Sacrifice

• Individual and teammate sacrifices contribute to task and social cohesion.

Team Factors: Collective Efficacy

• Shared perception of the team's ability to succeed correlates with high task and social cohesion.

Team Factors: Psychological Momentum

• Perception that the team is progressing toward its goals (psychological momentum) is associated with higher levels of cohesion.

Team Development

• Three theories describe team development:
  • Linear perspective
  • Cyclical perspective
  • Pendulum perspective

Linear Perspective

• Teams grow in cohesiveness as they progress through 5 stages:
  • Forming
  • Storming
  • Norming
  • Performing
  • Adjourning

Cyclical Perspective

• Team development resembles a life cycle from birth to death.
  • Stages include: Formation, Testing limits, Expected behaviors and norms, Goal attainment, and Dissolution

Pendulum Perspective

• Cohesion swings back and forth depending on the team's stage of development.

Group Roles

• Behaviors required or expected of people occupying certain positions.
  • Formal roles: dictated by the organization (e.g., coach, captain).
  • Informal roles: evolve from group dynamics (e.g., enforcer, mediator).

Group Norms

• Norms refer to levels of performance, behavior patterns, and beliefs shared by all team members.
• Leaders should establish positive norms.
• Team meetings can be used to establish and modify norms.

Group Productivity

• Steiner's model measures the difference between potential and actual productivity, demonstrating that losses due to faulty group processes can hinder actual productivity.

Faulty Group Processes

• Group size can lead to communication challenges, depersonalization, and a reduced impact by each member (Ringelmann effect).
• Social loafing is when individuals put in less than their due effort due to motivational losses. This happens when individual contributions aren't evaluated, the task feels meaningless, or individuals feel a lack of involvement in the task.

Developing Cohesion

• Factors affecting team climate:

  • Social Support (mutual respect and support)
  • Proximity (closer contact promotes interaction)
  • Distinctiveness (high distinctiveness = better climate)
  • Similarity (greater similarity = closer climate)

• The MAPS Approach:

  • Mission (clarify team mission)
  • Assessment (assess team strengths and weaknesses)
  • Plan (develop action plans to improve effort and commitment)
  • Systematic evaluation (reflect, review, and revise group goals and plans)

• Coaching strategies to improve cohesion:

  • Establish clear team mission/slogan/song
  • Explain and emphasize individual roles in team success
  • Conduct periodic team meetings (venting and reinforcement)
  • Foster pride within subunits
  • Set challenging team goals
  • Conduct individual appreciation exercises

Explore the key concepts of team dynamics and group cohesion in this quiz. Learn about the importance of communication, decision-making, and how these processes affect overall team effectiveness. Test your understanding of group identity and strategies for fostering collaboration.