11. Work Groups & Work Teams

🧠 Work Group vs Work Team

Term

Definition

Work Group

People working together with interrelated tasks (but not necessarily interdependent). E.g., university faculty.

Work Team

A type of work group with: – Interdependence & coordination – Assigned roles – Shared goals.

🔑 All teams are groups, but not all groups are teams.

💻 Virtual Teams

  • Communicate via tech (email, IM, webcams).

  • Performance tends to be lower than face-to-face teams (slower, less satisfying).

  • Richer media (video, voice) = better results than just text.

👥 Group vs Team Concepts

Group-Related Concepts:

  • Roles: Formal (assigned) vs. Informal (naturally formed).

  • Norms: Unwritten rules (e.g., work ethic, dress).

  • Group Cohesiveness: Attraction that keeps a group together.

  • Process Loss: Time/energy wasted on non-task things like conflict resolution or socializing.

Team-Related Concepts:

  • Team Conflict:

    • Cooperative: Open, respectful → improves performance.

    • Competitive: Aggressive, dismissive → lowers performance.

  • Team Commitment: Involvement + dedication → linked to high performance & low turnover.

  • Team Mental Model: Shared understanding of what (taskwork) and how (teamwork).

⚙ Group & Team Performance

Group Work:

  • Can outperform individuals by combining efforts.

  • But may suffer from process loss (distractions, coordination challenges).

Social Effects:

  • Social Facilitation: Others' presence helps on easy tasks.

  • Social Inhibition: Others’ presence hurts on hard/new tasks.

Additive Tasks:

Tasks where output is countable.

  • Group performance = total of each member’s contribution (e.g., cashier productivity).

  • Bigger groups = more Social Loafing unless individual effort is measured.

    • Social loafing refers to the reduction in individual effort when people work as a group compared to when they work alone.

💡 Brainstorming

  • Intended to boost creativity.

  • Can backfire: people hold back ideas, get shy, or distracted.

  • Electronic brainstorming = better (no turn-taking, less pressure).

    • Example: a team using a shared online document or a dedicated brainstorming software (like Miro, Mural, or even a simple Google Docs file) where everyone types in their ideas simultaneously and anonymously

  • Best method: Discuss in group → generate ideas individually.

🧩 Problem Solving vs Decision Making

  • Problem Solving: Groups often perform as well/better than best individual.

  • Decision Making: Can be tricky due to:

    • Group Polarization: Decisions become more extreme than any one member's opinion.

    • Groupthink: Bad decisions made for the sake of harmony.

🔎 Avoid groupthink by encouraging dissent, breaking into subgroups, and staying open to outside input.

🚀 Team Innovation & KSAOs

  • Best innovative teams discuss + reflect on how to improve.

  • Driven by internal/external pressure.

  • High average cognitive ability → better team performance.

  • KSAOs for team success:

    • Teamwork knowledge

    • Social skills

    • Personality traits like collectivism

🌈 Group Diversity

Type

Benefits

Cognitive

Innovation, problem-solving

Demographic

Representation & understanding of diverse client needs

🛠 Interventions for Work Groups

1. Autonomous Work Teams

  • Small teams assemble entire product.

  • Participative leadership, frequent meetings.

  • Leads to higher job satisfaction.

2. Quality Circles

  • Employees meet to solve job-related problems.

  • Improves productivity and workplace health.

  • Health Circles = focus on well-being.

3. Team Building

  • Improves team function (task & relationship focus).

  • Planned, facilitated by a trainer, applied to existing teams.

💬 Final Quote:

“Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not good idea.”
— Frederick Saunders