Donna Mc Kinnon: Group Development and Team Building Study Notes

Group Definition: Consists of two or more people interacting to achieve specific goals or meet needs. Characteristics include psychological awareness of one another and a small enough size for frequent face-to-face communication.
Team Definition: A small number of people with complementary skills committed to a common purpose, specific goals, and mutual accountability.
Key Differences: * Teams: Performance depends on collective effort and products; members are mutually accountable. * Groups: Performance depends on individual efforts and products; members are individually accountable and work is often delegated.
Henry Ford Quote: "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."

Size: * Ideal size is thought to be $7$ . * Ranges from $5$ to $12$ are associated with good performance. * Small teams ( $2$ - $4$ members) foster more agreement and questioning. * Large teams ( $12$ or more) tend to face subgroups and conflict.
Diversity: Relates to differing values, personalities, and demographics. It provides innovative solutions and creativity but may cause short-term difficulty in interpersonal learning.
Synergy: The ability of a group to produce more output than individuals working separately by bouncing ideas, correcting mistakes, and pooling diverse knowledge.
Social Loafing (Free-riding): The tendency for individuals to put in less effort when working collectively. This results from perceived inequity or dispersion of responsibility.

Effectiveness Determinants: Success requires cooperation, participation in decision-making, trust in management, training, and appropriate rewards (e.g., team grades).
Failure Factors: * Leadership: Lack of support, vision, or resources. * Focus: Lack of clarity regarding purpose, roles, or goals. * Capability: Lack of skills, knowledge, or ongoing learning.

Forming: Members get to know each other and establish common goals.
Storming: Members experience disagreement over direction and leadership.
Norming: Ties and consensus develop between members.
Performing: The group executes its primary tasks.
Adjourning: Only applies to temporary task forces that disband upon completion.

Formal Groups: Deliberately created by managers to achieve organizational goals. Included are Vertical (manager-subordinate), Horizontal (different expertise, same level), and Special-Purpose (task forces/projects).
Informal Groups: Spontaneously formed by employees for personal reasons or social needs (e.g., Friendship groups, Interest groups).
Specific Team Types: * Top-Management Team: Composed of the CEO, President, and department heads. * Research and Development Team: Members with expertise to develop new products. * Self-Managed Work Team: Employees who supervise their own activities and quality. * Virtual Team: Members who interact via information technology (email, video, etc.) rather than face-to-face.

Team Cohesiveness: The extent to which members are attracted to and motivated to stay in the team. Highly cohesive teams show greater conformity to rules.
Group Norms: Shared guidelines for behavior. These develop from carryover experiences, explicit leader statements, critical events, or first-behavior precedents (primacy).
Conformity and Deviance: A balance is required; while conformity ensures order, deviance allows for the introduction of new ideas.
Team Leader: Acts as the communication contact point between the team and management.

Question: What stage of group development is most important? * Options: A. Forming, B. Storming, C. Norming, D. Performing.
Question: Which type of group is one that managers establish to achieve organization goals? * Results: Formal group.
Question: What is the degree to which members are attracted to their group? * Results: Group cohesiveness.