Chapter 13 Nurturing Teamwork MGT436-1 PDF

Chapter 13 Nurturing teamwork Lecture objectives 1. Appreciate the importance of the team in today’s complex working environments. 2. Explain the variables related to creative team inputs, processes, and outcomes as well as the factors that may affect team performance. 3. Understand t...

Chapter 13 Nurturing teamwork Lecture objectives 1. Appreciate the importance of the team in today’s complex working environments. 2. Explain the variables related to creative team inputs, processes, and outcomes as well as the factors that may affect team performance. 3. Understand the value of brainstorming and its influence on the generation of ideas. 2 Why is collaboration important? 1. Our society is complex and technologically sophisticated. 2. Timely information is the most important commodity. 3. Collaboration involves a group of people sharing their skills and ideas with the purpose of achieving a common objective. 4. The workforce with different perspectives, ideas, and expertise work together to find innovative solutions, which in turn help the organizations to solve problems in a more efficient manner. 5. The goal of a collaborative workplace is to maximize the possibilities of success by administering a communicative and collaborative experience across the organization. 3 Why do people join teams? (Robbins et al. 1994) 1. Security. 2. Self-esteem. Individuals who participate in teams get a strong sense of self-worth by voicing their opinions and by assisting team members in finding suitable solutions to the problems at hand. The more people value the group that they join, the more their own confidence is likely to grow. 3. Power. People can achieve more by belonging to or leading a team. Teams, for instance, have more bargaining power to negotiate issues with senior management than individual employees acting alone do. 4. Goal achievement. Individuals can achieve personal and organizational goals by being part of a team. 4 Why do teams fail? 1. Hidden Agendas 2. Lack of understanding 3. Lack of leadership 4. Wrong mix of team members 5. Unhealthy team environment 6. Treat a team like a group 5 Blind conformity Psychological phenomena. There are also psychological events that can cause team performance to deteriorate. Blind conformity refers to a tendency to engage in illogical or bizarre behavior in order to guarantee acceptance by a group. 6 Groupthink Groupthink. Group cohesiveness may prevent contradictory and/or alternative opinions from being considered and as such can stifle discussion and debate and have a negative effect on decision-making (Janis, 1972; Buchanan and Huczynski, 2019). Identify the reasons that forced these committees to make bad decisions. Groupthink is defined by Janis (1972) as: ‘the psychological drive for consensus at any cost that suppresses dissent and appraisal of alternatives in cohesive decision-making groups’. 7 Preventing groupthink (Janis, 1972) 1. Voice their opinions or express their concerns 2. Prepare and anticipate criticism 3. Get recommendations from different groups 4. Periodically divide the group 5. Invite outsiders 6. Play the ‘devil’s advocate’ role 7. Reconsider the action plan 8 Social loafing ‘The tendency for people in a group to slack off – i.e., not work as hard either mentally or physically in a group as they would alone’ (Thompson, 2003: 100) may also inhibit team performance. Causes 1. Equity of effort 2. Loss of personal accountability 3. Motivational loss due to the sharing of rewards 4. Co-ordination loss as more people perform the task 9 Team-building interventions during change 1. Confrontation meetings 2. Responsibility charting 3. Appreciative inquiry 10 Team-building interventions during change : Confrontation meetings Phase 1: Climate setting. The leader sets expectations to stimulate an open and authentic conversation. Phase 2: Information collecting. The team is divided into smaller teams and they are tasked to identify obstacles to productive goals achievement and suggest solutions. Phase 3: Information sharing. Phase 4: Priority setting and group action planning. Phase 5: Organization action planning. Phase 6: Immediate follow-up by the top management team. Phase 7: Progress review. 11 Team-building interventions during change :Responsibility Charting R: Responsible This team member has to initiate action to make sure that the action is carried out. A/V: Approval or Veto This team member has authority to approve or veto actions and decisions for the particular item. S: Support C: Consulted I: Informed This team member should be informed about the status of the activity. 12 Team-building interventions during change: Appreciative enquiry 1. Discovery.. 2. Dream.. Participants then have to imagine how things can ‘become’ by articulating and sharing their visions for the future. 3. Design.. The attention of the participants then turns to collaboratively develop a vision for the new future and craft an action plan that will take the team to the desired state. 4. Destiny.. During this phase, stakeholders are invited into an open-space planning and commitment session. 13 Creative teams: What do we know? 14 Team size The output of creative ideas on a per-employee basis decreased as team size increased (Bouchard and Hare, 1970; Renzulli et al. 1974). Creative Production Percent (CPP) improves with a decrease in team size until it reaches the group size of two, or dyads. Why does this happen? 1. The dyads experience a unique and exclusive one-to-one capability to share and exchange ideas. 2. Superior when project teams are required to break away from the usual or functional intellectual set. 15 Team longevity Interpersonal interaction as the primary means of gathering and collecting information or ideas (Hargadon and Sutton, 1997, 2000). A lot of processes, ideas or products/services are still complicated. The longer the groups have been in existence, the lesser innovative they become (Katz, 1982). 16 Reasons related to team longevity 1. Tended to be staffed by older employees. 2. Members tended to interact significantly less among themselves. 17 Task Creative work can occur at any occupation, where the task at hand involves complex, ill-defined problems, where the result requires the generation of novel and useful ideas (Mumford and Gustafson, 1988). It requires teamwork and the integration of specialized capabilities. 18 Knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) Individuals must be competent, and they must possess the necessary KSAs. Without “input” there can be no “output”. People who generate innovative ideas need to know the basic knowledge of their fields. It is important to consider the different KSAs that their team members are bringing into the project. 19 Resourcing the team Everything that the organization has to assist their employees’ work. Funds, material resources, systems and processes (Amabile and Gryskiewicz, 1989). The lack of project resources can constrain employees’ creativity. 20 Team composition Most teams struggle to pull together the right skills, attitudes, behaviors, and problem-solving styles to achieve adequate team diversity and cohesiveness. Milliken and Martins (1996) distinguish between two types of diversities: 1. Observable or readily detectable attributes. 2. Less visible or underlying attributes. 21 Team composition Diversity can either enhance or hinder creativity. Homogeneity among group members is not particularly facilitative for creative group outcomes. 22 Problem-solving Creative problem solving usually involves three key stages: 1. Define the problem. 2. Generate ideas. 3. Decide on the most feasible and valuable solution. 23 Brainstorming One of the earliest attempts to develop a structured approach. In 1938, Alex Osborn – one of the founders and executives of the advertising firm Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn (BBDO) – generated this technique. He came up with some rules designed to improve team problem-solving. Osborn labelled these as ‘brainstorming’ as this means using the brain to storm a problem. 24 Rules for successful brainstorming (Osborn, 1963) 1. Criticism of ideas should be abolished. 2. ‘Free-wheeling’ must be welcomed. 3. Many ideas must be gathered. 4. Combination and improvement need to be sought. 25 Advantages of brainstorming 1. Generates hundreds of ideas 2. Supports the organizational memory 3. Develops improved morale 4. Gains better understanding of each other. 5. Facilitates personal growth 6. Is relatively inexpensive 7. Enhances the possibilities of impressing clients 26 Disadvantages of brainstorming 1. The generation of ideas without screening them 2. It may not always be the answer to problems 27 Interpersonal processes 1. Trust (the team is perceived as interpersonally non- threatening) 2. Conflict (several benefits) 3. Team cohesiveness 28 Moderators of team performance 1. Task type. 2. Team leadership (a democratic–participative leadership style facilitates creativity and innovation in teams) 29 Team outcomes: Does brainstorming work in practice? Nearly all laboratory studies conducted over the last 40 years have discovered that brainstorming sessions lead to the generation of fewer ideas. 1. Evaluation apprehension. 2. Social loafing (or free-riding). 3. Production blocking. 30 Team outcomes: Does brainstorming work in practice? An interesting explanation is given by Sutton and Hargadon (1996:688) who argued that participants: 1) had no past or future task interdependence 2) had no past or future social relationships 3) didn’t use the ideas generated 4) lacked pertinent technical expertise 5) lacked skills that complement other participants 6) lacked expertise in doing brainstorming 7) lacked expertise in leading brainstorming sessions 31 Summary points Inputs to a team’s creative process include the size of the team, resources that are made available, team longevity, task, KSAs, and team composition. The most common creativity-enhancement technique is brainstorming. 32