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What is a group?
a. Two or more people interacting interdependently to achieve a common goal
b. Starts with a vision → mission → strategy → goals → actions → roles → rules
2 types of interdependence
○ Sequential is an assembly line of people (person A to person B)
Can cause frustration if B waiting for A
○ Reciprocal (our group assignment)
Person A,B,C,D are interdependent on each other (we are not waiting for each other to do our task)
Our grade is a reciprocally interdependent task
Formal vs Informal
● Formal is established
○ Formal organizations to facilitate the achievement of org goals
○ You are intentionally put on something (intentionally designed with these people of capabilities)
● Informal group is where people naturally emerge in response to some common interest
○ Playing on a softball team is more informal (you signed up and gravitated towards it)
Why Form groups?
1. Means
Groups can be an important means to accomplish a certain outcome
e.g. Why join a neighbourhood watch? It's a MEANS to policing a
neighborhood
Our 1BA3 group with our mark being reliant on each other is the MEANS
2. Ends
The groups can be a desirable outcome in itself
e.g. why join a carpool? The end with the carpool provides companion ship, conversations, connections, networking
Our 1BA3 group with us building more friendships with them is the ENDS
3. Personal characteristics
Personal characteristics where we often see similar people attracted to each other where it leads to forming a group
Opposites attract – people form groups with different skillsets
e.g. case competition (not forming a group with all marketing experts but rather a diverse of complementary skills
Why are group stage models important?
1. Understanding the stages that I will go through will help me in better performance management
2. Maslow and Herzberg: it tells us that you can't move forward until you completed the ones before
3. How they align with conflict: the perception of it varies how quickly they go through this
Stage Model of Group Development
1. Forming
What are we doing here?
What are others like?
What is our purpose?
The point in the stage where you meet your group members, learning about each other
2. Storming
Conflict often emerges; sorting out roles & responsibilities is often at issue
1BA3 group; what backup? Which question will we do?
Storming occurred after the practice assignment?
Structuring your team for effective functioning
3. Norming
Norms are agreed on and the group becomes more cohesive
We met some sense of "we know our role", "we know the rules", etc
Peaceful stage (more comfortable)
Believing in each other
4. Performing
The group devotes its energies toward task accomplishment
State of maturity
Non disruptive resolution of conflicts as we are working on the task and completing it
1BA3 example – 3 performances (3 different assignments to show what we know)
5. Adjourning
To say goodbye
Group disperses after achieving goals
e.g. assignment
Practical Learnings from the Stage Model
1. A good tool for monitoring and troubleshooting how groups are developing
A good tool to tell us what to tell us on what we need to solve
If we’re having trouble, this gives us ideas on what we try to solve
2. Helpful for new groups to understand the process of developing together
A brand new group, it is helpful to show these groups what they need to work on
Shows new groups expectations and gives them an idea of what is ahead of them
3. Well acquainted task forces & committees can short-circuit these stages when they have a problem to work out
People who have lots of experiences with groups can shorten the group process and speed it up
4. Storming & norming may not be necessary for some organizational settings that are highly structured
The more bureaucratic orgs are, this mean there are more rules, guidelines, expectations, standards, roles and boundaries where therefore storming & norming may be decreased and uneccesary
Punctuated Equilibrium Model
● A model of group development that describes how groups with deadlines are affected by their first meetings and crucial midpoint transitions
● Phase 1: First meeting to midpoint of existence
○ Initial meetings (like forming in the 5 stage model)
○ Agenda setting
○ Talking about assumptions
○ Gathering information
○ Everyone nice to each other
● Midpoint transition – at halfway point, we may feel a push where we need to move
forward due to a sense of urgency
○ Our midpoint transition was during the week before the assignment since we wanted to get ahead
● Phase 2:
○ When decisions and approaches are played out
○ Completion of 1BA3 assignment is phase 2
Practical learnings from Punctuated Equilibrium Model
1. Prepare carefully for first meeting
Where it all starts
Carefully select your group members
Carefully assess if you really want to work with these people
2. As long as people are working, do not look for radical progress during phase 1
To be patient (as a manager or member of a group)
3. Manage the midpoint transition carefully
Recognizing that there is a point in time where one of all group members will look at each other that we are running out of time
4. Be sure that adequate resources are available prior to phase 2
Reduce and tangible stumbling blocks
In a group, people are not moving forward because they may lack the skill
5. Resist deadline change
As a manager setting the deadline, be cautious of adjusting it may be seen as a pattern of "that's what you are known for"
What are the 4 primary elements that lead to effective group structuring?
Size, Diversity, Norms/Rules, Roles
Group size
Impacts effectiveness of my group in terms of it being an effective group structure
How many people in group depends on the task (More is not always the best)
Additive Task (know for assignment #2)
When the group performance is dependent on the sum of the performance of individual group members
e.g. Building of a house (speed of construction)
Estimate speed of construction by adding the efforts of individual subtraits
Framers, fo ndation experts, roofers, heating experts (for above example)
Potential performance of group goes up as size goes up
Disjunctive task (know for assignment #2)
Group performance is dependent on the best group member
e.g. research team looking for a single error in a complex computer program. The group may contain a really smart analytical person with special insight
The potential performance might also go up with an increase in size
Conjunctive task (know for assignment #2)
When the group performance is limited by the performance of the POOREST group member
Weakest link – when there's a weak worker in a assembly line, it will slow them down
As group size goes down, potential performance will go up (decreasing any weak links)
Group structure
As groups become larger, they suffer from process losses
Process losses – something you suffer from motivating and coordinating the larger the group gets
motivating & coordinating problems can be broken down into 4 things
Communication problem
Stress management problems
Diversity management problems
Conflict resolution problems
Performance difficulties that result from problems of motivating and coordinating larger groups
Actual performance you end up with = potential performance – process losses
Group diversity
a. Diverse groups might take longer to do their forming, storming and norming
b. Diverse groups sometimes perform better when the task requires cognitive, creativity-demanding tasks and problem solving rather than routine work
Recommend: do not put beautiful diverse brains on routine work, put them on cognitive tasks
Group Norms (vs. Rules)
a. Collective expectations that members of social units have regarding the
behaviour of each other; informal; often unstated; collective about how to behave;
learned through osmosis
Rules: formal; usually stated either verbally or in writing; define
boundaries of what is acceptable and expected in behaviours
b. Four most common norms:
Dress Norms/Appearance Norms - not dress codes; learned definitions of casual, of formal; learned acceptance of tattoos/piercings
★Reward Allocation Norms★
Equity - we reward people based on their inputs (piece rate)
Equality - rewards are based on a pay grade/range, not input or job title, reward everyone equally (in the pay range)
Reciprocity - you help me, I help you (quid pro quo)
Social responsibility - you reward those who truly need the reward
Performance Norms - norms about your performance inside the organization
When you take a break or how long the break is
Expected work ethic can be shifted
Absenteeism consequences
Social Interaction - norms of behaviour outside the company (how you behave outside of work but are still an employee of the organization)
Staff beer nights
Dating from within the organization
Group Roles
1. Positions in a group that have a set of expected behaviours attached to
them
2. The job having a set of responsibilities
3. Key issues with roles:
Role ambiguity
A lack of clarity of job goals and methods
Role conflict
Intrasender role conflict
A single role sender provides incompatible role
expectations to a role occupant
Eg. A manager might tell an employee to take it
easy and not work so hard, while delivering yet
another batch of reports that require immediate
attention
Intersender role conflict
Two or more role senders provide occupant with
incompatible expectations
Interrole conflict
Roles held by a role occupant involve incompatible
expectations
For example, one person might fulfill the roles of a
functional expert in marketing, head of the market
research group, subordinate to the vice president of
marketing, and member of a product development
task force. This is obviously a busy person, and
competing demands for her time are a frequent
symptom of interrole conflict.
Person-role conflict
Role demands call for behaviour that is
incompatible with the personality or skills of a role
occupant
Many examples of “whistle-blowing” are signals of
person–role conflict. The organization has
demanded some role behaviour that the occupant
considers unethical.
Status effects
Status barriers that inhibit the role of communication
Hold a certain title or place in the chain of command
e.g. im the Vice President and you're not
Showing off your status
Cohesiveness
Social loafing
● What is social loafing?
The tendency to withhold physical or intellectual effort when performing a group task
Members exert less effort when working in teams than working alone
They are capable of exerting the effort but are purposely withholding effort
An example of a process loss
Social inhibition - group causes you to be less than your potential (a group can be an example of social facilitation or social inhibition)
● How can we counteract social loafing?
Make individual performance more visible (tell them that loafing isn’t acceptable)
Make sure the work is interesting
Increase feelings of indispensability
Increase performance feedback
Reward group performance
● 2 forms of social loafing
Free rider effect
When they lower effort to get a free ride of the expense of others
Sucker effect
Lower their effort because of a feeling of others being free riding and think this will restore equity within the group
Teams
A group becomes a team when there is:
A strong sense of shared commitment
When there is a synergy that develops such that the group's efforts are greater than the sum of its parts
2 critical elements with teams
Collective efficacy
We see people believe in each other
Team reflexivity
The belief in adaptability (circular relationship)
I got your back and you got my back
Types of teams
Self-managed teams
Self managed work team have an opportunity to do challenging work under full supervision, reduced supervision or no supervision
Full supervision means the boss is still looking over their shoulder and deciding pieces of puzzle to how they operate (zero autonomy)
Reduced supervision (semi autonomy)
No supervision (fully autonomous)
task
composition
support
Cross-functional
People from functional areas of expertise
e.g. apart of a case competition and finding members who provide complementary capabilities
composition
subordinate goals
physical proximity
autonomy
rules
leadership
Virtual teams
Teams that span the globe
As days gone by, one central hub where we talk about a head office
Why use groups in decision making?
Decision quality
■ Higher than individuals
■ More ideas
Decision acceptance and commitment
■ Fully engaged
Diffusion of responsibility
■ Could lead to social loafing
■ Ability of members to share the burden of negative consequences of a
poor decision
Disadvantages of Group Decision Making
Approaches to improving decision-making
1. Devil's advocate
○ Someone is appointment to challenge weaknesses of a proposed plan or
strategy
2. Whistle blowing
○ They are someone who speaks the truth
3. Encouraging outliers/ earning idiosyncratic credits
○ Encouraging people to be different
4. Disruptors
○ Someone who stirs the pot
○ Deliberately disrupts the process
How do groups handle risk
● Risky Shift
○ The tendency for groups to make riskier decisions than the average risk initially
advocated by their individual members
○ Diffusion of responsibility
○ Security in numbers encourages the group to take greater risks
● Conservative Shift
○ The tendency for groups to make less risky decisions than the average risk
initially advocated by their individual members
