OBHR 330 Chapter 12: Teams Processes and Communication

Team processes

reflects different types of communication, activities, and interactions that occur within teams that contribute to their ultimate end goals

Coordination loss

when the act of integrating or coordinating team activities consumers more time and energy than the activity itself

Production blocking

when team members have to wait on one another before they can complete their part of the team task

Motivational loss

when team members don’t work as hard as they should

Social loafing

when team members exert less effort due to the presence of others

Task work processes

activities of team members that relate directly to the accomplishment of tasks

Teamwork processes

interpersonal activities that facilitate the accomplishment of the team’s work but are not directly related to task accomplishment

Team communication

process by which information and meaning gets transferred from a sender to a receiver

Team states

specific types of thoughts and feelings that coalesce in the minds of team members as a consequence of working together

What team processes can cause

process gain and process loss

Process gain

also known as synergy, teams perform at a higher level together than they would as individuals

Process loss

team perform at lower levels together than they would as individuals, occurs because of coordination loss and motivation loss

Coordination loss

driven by production blocking

Motivation loss

happens when there is reduced accountability on the team, driven by social loafing among individual team members

Task work processes

creative behavior (brainstorming), decision-making (team decision-making)

Team decision-making

multiple members gather and consider ideas relevant to their specializations and make recommendations to the team or the leads

Teamwork processes

transition processes, action processes, interpersonal processes

Transition processes

focus on preparation for future work; mission analysis, strategy formulation, goal specification

Action processes

processes that occur while task work is being accomplished; monitoring progress toward goals, systems monitoring, helping behavior, team coordination

Interpersonal processes

manner in which team members manager their relationships; motivating others, confidence building, conflict management

Conflict management

relationship conflict and task conflict

Relationship conflict

incompatibilities with respect to personal values or preferences, almost always bad for the team

Task conflict

disagreements on team’s task, can be beneficial to the team because it creates more thoughtful solutions and output

Why communication is not a perfect process

sender has to be clear and send message, receiver has to listen and understand message, information richness has to be appropriate to message

Centralization

degree to which communication in a network flows though a select few members rather than all, low centralization means everyone communicates with everyone, high centralization means most people communicate with one person

Team states

cohesion, potency, mental models, transactive memory

Cohesion

emotional attachment that bods team members together, may lead to groupthink; to leverage the benefits of cohesion, teams should acknowledge that cohesion can be detrimental, assess group’s level of cohesion, formally institute the role of devil’s advocate

Potency

degree which team members think that the team can be effective across a variety of situations and tasks, strong potency has strong positive impact on team performance

Mental models

level of common understanding among team members regarding team’s task

Transactive memory

how specialized knowledge is distributed among members that results in an effective system of memory for the team