CA Exam Three (Ch. Five-Nine)

Roles

• Sets of expectations

• Types: task, maintenance, and individuals

Task Roles

• Roles that members assume to help accomplish the group’s mission

Maintenance Roles

• Roles that influence a group’s social atmosphere

• Nurture positive interpersonal relationships

Individual Roles

• Roles characterized by behavior that calls attention to each contributions of group members

Sources of Roles

Norms and power

Norms

• Rules that determine appropriate behavior in a group

• Develop from structuration and early group behaviors

Power

• The ability to influence or exert control over others

Five Bases

• Legitimate

• Referent

• Expert

• Reward

• Coercive

Status and Power

• High status depending on its perception within a culture

• The least transferable trait across cultural barriers

Trust

• The extent to which a person is confident in, and willing to act on the basis of, the words, actions, and decisions of another

Primary Tension

• The social unease that accompanies getting acquainted

Secondary Tension

• Conflict and stress that occur in groups as members vie for positions of leadership

• Helps to establish group norms

Time Orientations

1. Flexible

   a. set fewer deadlines

   b. more autonomy for group members

2. Separation

   a. separate physically when working on a task

3. Concurrency

   a. more likely to multitask

   b. look for ways to combine projects and activities

Group Climate

• The emotional environment of a group, which affects and is affected by interaction among members

• Types: defensive and supportive

  a. Defensive climates are counterproductive

  b. Supportive climates allow members to focus on group tasks

Evaluative vs Descriptive

• Evaluation = “you“ language; provokes defensiveness

• Description = “i“ language; describes the speaker’s thoughts about the person or idea and leads to more trust

Control vs Problem Orientation

• Communicative behavior that aims to control can make group members defensive

• Ex: “I know what’s good for you“

Strategy vs Spontaneous

• Strategy = staged, scripted communication

  a. Suggests manipulation

• Spontaneous = creates a more supportive environment

  a. Someone without a hidden agenda

  b. Responds immediately and honestly

Neutrality vs empathy

• Neutrality = indifference; arouses defensiveness in others

• Empathy = conveyed nonverbally, active listening, good eye contact, involvement and concern for group

Superiority vs Equality

• Superiority = seen as obnoxious and makes others defensive

• Equality = implies mutual trust and respect

Certainty vs Provisionalism

• Certainty = put others on the defense, others want to prove them wrong (counterproductive)

• Provisionalism = those who appear flexible and committed to solving problems

Disconfirming Responses

• Causes another person to value himself or herself less

• Ex: impervious, interrupting, irrelevant, tangential, impersonal, incoherent, and incongruous responses

Confirming Responses

• Causes a person to value himself or herself more

• Ex: direct acknowledgement, agreement about content, supportive response, clarifying response, and expression of positive feeling

Group Cohesiveness

• The degree of attraction members feel toward one another and the group

• Builds up group productivity

• Exceptions: high social cohesion and team performance falls off when cohesion is too high

Building of a Cohesive Team

• Building groups based on similarity in interpersonal attraction leads to strong cohesiveness but mediocrity as a task group

• A blend of similarity would be best

Benefits of a Cohesive Team

• If people perceive benefits from one group over another, they will get more attracted to that group

Productivity and Climate

• Positive group climate is essential for reaching maximum group potential

• To build climate, learn to communicate, and avoid defensive, disconfirming behavior

Variables that affect are

• Defensive behavior

• Confirming and disconfirming responses

• Group cohesiveness

• Group size

Verbal Communication

Communication Barriers:

• Bypassing

• Allness

• Fact-inference confusion

Bypassing

• Occurs when two people interpret the same word differently

Allness

• A simple but untrue generalization

Fact-interference Confusion

• Reaching a conclusion as if something was a fact when in reality, it was based on an inference

Listening Styles

• A preferred way of making sense out of spoken messages heard

• Four Styles: relational, analytical, critical, and task

Relational Listening Style

• Other-oriented; focused on the stories others tell

Analytical Listening Style

• Prefer to focus on facts; more likely to assume task-oriented roles

Critical Listening Style

• Evaluate info and able to spot inconsistencies; skilled at catching errors

Task Listening Style

• Helps keep group focused on the agenda

Barriers to Effective Listening

• Prejudging the communication or the communicator

• Rehearsing a response

Active Listening

1. Stop

2. Look

3. Listen

4. Ask questions

5. Paraphrase feelings

Nonverbal Communication

• Communication behavior that does not rely on written or spoken words

• Important; believed over verbal if they contradict, posture, movement, gestures, emblems(cues that take the place of spoken words) and regulators(controls the flow of communication), eye contact, facial expressions (6 primary emotions), vocal cues

Functions of Eye Contact

• Cognitive = indicates thought process

• Monitoring = how you seek feedback

• Regulatory = regulates the back-and-forth flow of communication

• Expressive = area around eyes that provide clues regarding feelings

Facial Expressions - 6 Primary Emotions

1. Happy

2. Anger

3. Surprise

4. Sadness

5. Disgust

6. Fear

Vocal Cues

• Paralanguage = vocal cues such as pitch, volume, speaking rate, and voice quality that provide information about the meaning of a message

• Can make inferences on a person’s feelings, competence, and personality

• Can contradict verbal content

Seating Arrangements

• Small-group Ecology = the consistent way that people arrange themselves physically in small groups

• Important where you sit bc you can meet future leaders; determines the amount of eye contact to make or avoid

Personal Space

• Proxemics = the study of how close to or far away from other people and objects we choose to be

• Hall’s four spatial zones, interpreting nonverbal

Hall’s Four Zones of Space

1. Intimate

2. Personal

3. Social

4. Public

Perception Checking

• The skill of asking someone whether your interpretation of his or her unspoken message is accurate

• Three Steps:

  a. Observe nonverbal cues

  b. Mentally draw a conclusion

  c. Ask the other person if your inference was accurate

Conflict

• Defined by William Wilmot and Joyce Hockner

Causes of Conflict

• Perception, personality, knowledge, culture, power/status, procedural differences, perceived resource inequity

Misconceptions About Conflict

1. Conflict should be avoided at all costs

2. All conflict occurs due to lack of understanding

3. All conflict can be resolved

Conflict Types

• Pseudo

• Simple

• Ego

Pseudo Conflict

• Occurs when individuals disagree because of poor communication

Simple Conflict

• Disagreement over a course of actions or idea resulting in task or process conflict

Ego Conflict

• Occurs when individuals become defensive about their positions because they think they’re being personally attacked

Conflict Management

• Avoidance, accommodate, competition, compromise, collaboration

Avoidance

• Conflict management style that involves ignoring disagreements in an effort to sidestep conflict

Accommodation

• Conflict management style that involves giving into the demands of others

• Can lead to bad decisions

• Lose-win approach

Competition

• Conflict management style that stresses winning at the expense of others involved

• Can lead to effective collaboration

Compromise

• Conflict management style that attempts to find the middle ground in the conflict

• Can result in dissatisfaction among group members

Collaboration

• To use positive communication strategies in conflict management in an attempt to achieve a positive solution for all involvement

• Has long-term results

• Disadvantage = time, effort, and skill

• Advantage = better solutions and satisfaction

Group Think

• The illusion of agreement exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas

• Symptoms, suggestions to reduce, how to deal with difficult group members

Symptoms of Groupthink

• Members apply pressure on those who don’t support

• Members believe their group can do no wrong

• Critical thinking is not encouraged or rewarded

Suggestions to Reduce Groupthink

• Encourage critical thinking; be sensitive to status differences; invites someone outside of the group to evaluate decision making

Conflict Management Through Consensus

• Occurs when all group members support and are committed to a decision

• Listen and honest interaction

Leadership

• Behavior or communication that influences, guides, directs, or controls a group

Trait Perspective

• A view of leadership as the personal attributes or qualities that leaders possess

Functional Perspective

• A view of leadership that assumes all group members can initiate leadership behaviors

• Types: task and process

Task Leadership

• Aims to accomplish a group goal

• Initiating, coordinating, summarizing, and elaborating

Process Leadership

• Help maintain satisfactory group climate

• Releasing tension, gatekeeping, encouraging, mediating

Situational Perspective

• Views leadership as the interaction of group needs and goals, leadership style, and the situation

Leadership Style

• Authoritarian

• Democratic

• Laissez-faire

Hersey’s Situational Leadership Model

• Telling, selling, participating, and delegating

Shared Leadership

• Occurs when two or more individuals within a team share leadership

• Groups that have this experience less conflict, greater consensus, and higher trust and cohesion

Transformational Leadership

• Leadership that aims to change an organization by realigning its culture around a new vision

• Four types:

  a. idealized leadership

  b. inspirational motivation

  c. intellectual stimulation

  d. individual consideration

• Relies on three critical skills:

  a. building shared vision

  b. surfacing and challenging mental models

  c. engaging in systems thinking

Emergent Leadership

• Occurs through process of elimination

• Leaders emerge through “methods of residues“

Servant Leadership

• Opposite of authoritarian leadership

• Skills: listening, other-oriented, seek consensus, nurture community