HRM 360 - Midterm #2

Teams?

A collection of people brought together to apply their individual skills to a common project or goal.

Groups?

Usually consists of three or more people who work independently to attain organizational goals.

What’s the ideal team size and why?

Usually between three and seven, who use their complementary skills to collaborate in a joint effort.

According to Google’s Project Aristotle, what leads to team effectiveness?

It didn’t matter so much who was on the team, but rather how team members interacted with each other, structured their work, and viewed their contributions.

What is psychological safety?

The shared belief among team members that it is safe for them to trust each other enough to take risks.

Psychological safety benefits?

Better communication, knowledge sharing, greater reporting of errors, improved learning behaviors, and a higher ability to learn from failure. Essential to lead and growth.

What are the 5 stages (and basics concepts of each) of the Tuckman Model?

1. Forming

   • The members meet for the first time, get to know each other, and try to understand where they fit within the team structure.

2. Storming

   • After a period of time, tensions may arise between members and different personalities might clash, leading to conflict within the team.

3. Norming

   • The team members resolve the conflict and begin to work well together and become more cohesive.

4. Performing

   • The team becomes invested in achieving its goals and operates as a unit.

5. Adjourning

   • The final stage takes place when individuals either leave the team or have no reason to be in further contact with their teammates.

What are “team norms”?

Team norms are ground rules that impact the functioning of the team.

Why are team norms important?

In sum, the right norms can increase a team’s intelligence, making team norms more important than team smarts when it comes to successfully completing an assignment.

What’s synergy?

The interaction that makes the total amount of work produced by a team greater than the amount of work produced by individual members working independently.

What are some of the benefits and gains of positive synergy?

Teams with good synergy are more committed to goals, apply more diverse skills and abilities to tasks, and show greater willingness to share information and knowledge. Typically, teams that share common interests and values have a better chance of creating and maintaining positive synergy.

What are the pros of cross-functional teams?

The cross-functional model can be effective in both large and small companies and is growing in popularity. Cross-functional teams comprising members with different perspectives, experiences, and expertise have the ability to see the big picture and find innovative ways to achieve goals.

What are the cons of cross-functional teams?

Disadvantages of cross-functional teams include lack of trust after the task is complete, teams often disband and re-form with new team members to work on a new goal, insufficient support from upper management, leading to low morale and failure, and growth limitations for team members working on a specific project for a certain period of time.

Why is groupthink a major disadvantage of team decision-making?

Because the team members are more concerned with preserving harmony in the group than with risking opinions that may cause conflict or offense.

What factors contribute to team ineffectiveness?

People who are not agreeable and not conscientious are ineffective team members.

What’s the difference between decision-making and problem solving?

Decision-making is the action or process of identifying a strategy to resolve problems. Problem-solving is a method that requires analytical thinking and intuition to find a solution.

What are the 5 steps of effective decision-making?

1. Define the problem

2. Identify and weigh decision criteria

3. Generate alternatives

4. Rate alternatives

5. Choose, implement, and evaluate the decision

Where do most decision-making processes break down?

What are the 3 decision-making approaches?

• Bounded rationality: being restricted by a variety of constraints.

• Satisficing: aiming for acceptable results rather than the best or optimal solutions.

• Intuition: relying on imagination, stored knowledge, and “knowing”.

• Heuristics: taking shortcuts or using “rules of thumb”.

What are the 10 different decision-making errors?

1. Common-information bias

2. Confirmation bias

3. Ease-of-recall bias

4. Hindsight bias

5. Projection bias

6. Escalation of commitment

7. Sunk-cost fallacy

8. Framing error

9. Loss aversion

10. Present bias

Why are creativity and innovation important to organizations?

The contribution from a group of individuals with varying knowledge, skills, backgrounds, and experiences can be a powerful force in creating innovative ideas, making decisions, and generating solutions.

How does DEI impact effective decision-making and innovation?

By fostering inclusive environments, DEI initiatives help organizations tap into a broader range of perspectives, leading to better problem-solving, more creative solutions, and ultimately, more effective decision.

What are the 3 types of support that foster creativity?

• Supervisory support

• Organizational support

• Work group support

What are the 6 types of innovation in organizations?

• exploratory

• product

• process

• organizational structure

• people

• exploitative

What does VUCA stand for?

Volatile

Uncertainty

Complexity

Ambiguity

What are ethics? Why are they important in organizations?

Moral principles that guide our behavior of duty and virtue that prescribe how we should behave. It’s the right and smart thing to do.

Why do people do bad/unethical things?

• Personal character

• Context

• Normalization

• Pressure (peers, authority)

• Trauma response

• Stress/overwhelm

• Denial/delusions

• Self-justification

• Negativity bias (and others)

What’s an “ethical dilemma”?

Situations where there’s no clear answer to a moral question.

• Example: Seeing your friend cheating on an exam

What are some criteria that define unethical behavior in orgs?

Cheating, lying, and breaking trust. Violating moral standards, company principles, etc causing harm or unfair advantages.

What are the 3 classical approaches to ethical decision-making?

• Utilitarian approach: Greatest good for the majority.

• Rights approach: Not infringe on anyone’s dignity, rights, entitlements.

• Justice approach: Focus on “fairness”.

Name and explain one contemporary approach to ethical decision making?

CHARACTER COUNTS!

• Josephson Institute Six Pillars of Character

  • Trustworthiness

  • Respect

  • Responsibility

  • Fairness

  • Caring

  • Citizenship

  • 1. Consider the interest and well-being of all stakeholders.

  • 2. Put the Six Pillars above all other values (money, success, winning).

  • 3. If you must violate one Pillar to honor another, apply the utilitarian approach.

What are the qualities of ethical leadership?

• Mission statement

• Core values
• Code of ethics
• Org structure
• Board of directors
• Ethics officers and hotlines
• Reward and performance evaluation systems
• Reporting and communication systems

What are the responsibilities of ethical followership?

• Experiential ethics training

• Reflection

• Postmortem and premortem group discussions

• Volunteer service

• Mentors

What are the components of Carroll’s CSR pyramid?

• philanthropic

• legal

• ethical

• economic

What are the components of an ethical, socially-responsible org culture?

• Mission statement

• Core values

• Code of ethics

• Org structure

• Board of directors

• Ethics officers and hotlines

• Reward and performance evaluation systems

• Reporting and communication systems

What are the two main types of org communication? Which is most important for an organization to manage?

Two main types: Formal & Informal

Formal is most important for an organization to manage.

What are the pros and cons of “the grapevine”?

Pros: Useful method of communicating messages quickly and efficiently in person, or through technological tools

Cons: communication networks where individuals creates and spreads untrue or inaccurate information to others through the organization.

What are the 3 types of formal communication?

• Downward

• Upward

• Lateral

What are the 4 main communication channels? Their pros and cons?

• Oral

• Written

• Electronic

• Nonverbal

What are some examples of communication “noise”?

• Actual sounds

• Complex language

• Emotions

• Biases

• Lack of coherence

• Personalities

• Cultural differences

• Poor listening skills

• Poor messaging skills

• Overload

What are 5 different barriers to communication?

• Filtering

• Information overload

• Differing perceptions

• Emotions

• Poor listeing

What are the 3 components of active listening?

• Sensing

• Processing

• Responding

What is ethnocentrism?

The tendency to believe your culture or ethnicity is superior to everyone else’s.

How is ethnocentrism a barrier to effective organizational communication?

Can lead to misunderstanding, lack of empathy, makes people feel undervalued, and belittle other cultures for their passive or formal nature.

What’s the difference between “high context” and “low context” cultural communication?

• Low-context cultures: depend on explicit messages conveyed through the spoken or written word

• High-context cultures: most messages are conveyed through body language, nonverbal cues, and the circumstances in which the communication is taking place

What are the 6 factors that can complicate intercultural communication? What’s an example?

• Slang and Idioms

• Euphemisms

  • Under the table

• Proverbs

• Verbal Dueling

• Humor

• Conversational Taboos

What do you have more of in an org or team when there’s trust?

More success in personal or professional relationships.

Disposition based trust?

Derived from possessing personality traits that include a general prosperity to trust others.

Cognition based trust?

Derived from relying on factual information as a basis for trust.

Affect baed trust

Derived from putting faith in others based on feelings and emotions.

What are the 3 drivers of trust? (terms and definitions)

• Authenticity

  • I experience the real you

• Logic

  • Your reasoning and judgment are sound

• Empathy

  • I believe you care about me and my success

What are the 3 keys of trust in social networks? (terms and definitions)

Ability - Successfully support the completion of a task

Integrity - Keep confidence + respect others

Benevolence - The ability to listen + positive remarks

What’s the relationship between trust and conflict?

We define conflict as a clash between individuals or groups in relation to different opinions, thought processes, and perceptions.

What’s the difference between functional and dysfunctional conflict?

Functional conflict = a constructive and healthy dispute between individuals or groups

Dysfunctional conflict = consists of disputes and disagreements that negatively affect individuals or teams

What are the 5 different Thomas Kilmann conflict styles?

• Competing

• Accommodating

• Avoiding

• Collaborating

• Compromising

What are the 6 stages of the negotiation process?

1. Getting ready to negotiate

2. Shaping expectations

3. Providing supporting evidence

4. Negotiating the deal

5. Reaching an agreement and implementing the deal

6. Resolving Disputes using a third party

What are 2 strategies of integrative bargaining?

• Separate the people from the problem

• Focus on interests, not positions

How is the text’s definition of leadership limited or problematic?

What’s the importance of the “first follower” to leader emergence?

The first follower is essential to leader emergence because they legitimize the leader’s vision and catalyze broader group adoption.

• I.e first dude followed the dance video

What is an “informal leader”?

Is a person who does not receive a title but is perceived by others as a leader.

Manager:

• Short term goals and expectations

• Trains and develops

• Operations run smoothly

• Promotes stability

Leader:

• Visionary

• Long Term goals

• Inspires followers

• Big picture

• Role model

• More important than managers

What’s problematic about the “trait leadership perspective”?

Trait theory has since been widely criticized for its limiting methodology and inaccurate conclusions. Researchers believed that traits in isolation could not predict leadership success.

What are S1, S2, S3 and S4 in Hershey & Blanchard’s SLII Model?

S1 = telling

S2 = selling

S3 = participating

S4 = delegating

What are the main differences between transactional (LMX), transformational, and charismatic leadership?

LMX = builds on the idea that leaders develop different relationships with different followers.

Transformational = inspires followers to transcend their self-interests for the good of the organization and commit to a shared vision.

Charismatic = which is the ability of a leader to use their personality or charm to inspire, motivate, and acquire loyalty and commitment from employees.

What are two reasons women are underrepresented in leadership roles?

• Leadership style and expectations

• Family and career demands

What are three things organizations can do to support and promote more women?

• Eliminate prejudice

• Redress the balance

• Encourage networking

According to the HBR article, what are “Shark Tanks, Petting Zoos, and Mediocracies” and why are they a problem?

Shark Tanks, Petting Zoos, and Mediocracies are toxic team environments that stifle innovation and performance by fostering fear, avoidance, or complacency instead of trust, accountability, and honest collaboration.

What is “power”?

The capacity to influence the actions of others.

What are some of the different kinds of power?

Org power:

1. Legit power

2. Reward power

3. Coercive power

Personal power:

1. Expert power

2. Referent power

What are some of the different tactics for influencing others?

• Rational appeals

• Upward appeals

• Exchange

• Consultation

• Silent authority

Do people tend to respond better to “soft” influence tactics, or “hard” tactics? Why?

People react better to “soft” rather than “hard” tactics. Soft tactics result in commitment and are a frequent choice of leaders with personal sources of power such as expert and referent power. In contrast, hard tactics are likely to generate compliance or resistance, and they are used by leaders with position power such as legitimate, reward, and coercive power

What is Prof. Rinderle’s definition of “politics”?

Negative political beahvior.

Why is “politics” unavoidable?

You are participating whether you decide to or not.

What are the four different types of organizational politics?

• The Weeds

• The Rocks

• The High ground

• The Woods

What does “culture eats strategy for breakfast” mean?

A company's culture can override and undermine even the best-laid plans, making them difficult or impossible to implement effectively.

What differentiates a strong organizational culture from a weak one?

Organizations with strong cultures tend to select the same types of employees because they are perceived to best fit the culture.

What are three situations in which an organizational culture can become dysfunctional?

• Change hindrances are obstacles that impede progress and make it difficult for the organization to adapt to different situations.

• Diversity hindrances are obstacles that limit the range of employees in organizations.

• Mergers and acquisitions hindrances are obstacles that make it difficult for two organizations to join together.