1. Managing Groups and Teams
Chapter 11
Prepared by C.J. Bamforth
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2. Learning Objectives Overview
LO 1 Different types of workplace groups and how informal groups develop LO 2 Use a systems approach to describe the factors that influence how groups operate LO 3 Discuss how group inputs affect teamwork synergy LO 4 Explain how group norms develop, and their significance LO 5 Summarise how group cohesiveness contributes to organisational citizenship behaviour LO 6 The five stages of group development and identify behaviours that contribute to each stage LO 7 Discuss how teams and task forces promote innovation LO 8 Summarise the role of entrepreneurial, self-managing and virtual teams and describe how they are differentiated
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:
LO 1 Differentiate between different types of workplace groups and explain how informal groups develop
LO 2 Use a systems approach to describe the factors that influence how groups operate
LO 3 Discuss how group inputs, including group composition, member roles and group size, affect synergy in teamwork
LO 4 Explain how group norms develop, and their significance
LO 5 Summarise how group cohesiveness contributes to organisational citizenship behaviour
LO 6 Describe the five stages of group development and identify behaviours that contribute to each stage
LO 7 Discuss how teams and task forces promote innovation
LO 8 Summarise the role of entrepreneurial, self-managing and virtual teams and describe how they are differentiated
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3. Definitions What is a group? What is an efficient group?
A group is two or more interdependent individuals interacting and influencing each other in collective pursuit of a common goal ( Shaw 1981)
What is an efficient group?
A group that uses its resources in the most productive way
What is an effective group?
A group that is focused on a common goal which reflects the needs of the organisation or group
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4. What examples can you give for each type?
LO1: Types of work group
Formal groups are created for a specific purpose usually by an organisation. Examples include:
Command or functional groups - made up of one manager and several subordinates e.g. A boss with several employees working under him/her.
Task groups support command/functional groups by assisting or carrying out functions that the command/functional groups may do. They may be temporary, eg a project team brought together to make an event happen; or they may be permanent, eg set up to provide ongoing counselling support to staff members in need.
Informal groups are set up by the employees to deal with members’ interests or needs, eg a staff club at work. They may operate quite separately from the organisation and its goals. For example, your university sports club brings together staff and students who enjoy particular sports. The university itself may have limited if any dealings with these sports clubs.
What examples can you give for each type?
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5. LO1: Informal group formation
Being part of a group means carrying out a particular set of activities in a particular way which is influenced by the common feelings, attitudes and opinions of the group (Homans, 1950; Nayak & Ketteringham 1986; Kinicki & Williams 2009 in Bartol et al, 2011).
Often informal groups form out of formal groups, as group members discover that they have common ways of doing things or common feelings, attitudes or opinions. This is one of the reasons for which social networks exist – so that we can seek out and work with those who operate in a similar way to ourselves; or with those who work in a different way, so that we can learn from them. This is why you will often hear about senior managers taking their trusted teams with them when they move companies.
Can you provide any examples of how being part of a formal group led to you to becoming involved in an informal one?
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6. LO2: What factors influence a group’s operation?
So what factors influence how a group operates?
This diagram suggests that what goes into making the group influences how things are done and what the outcomes are. If we think about a non-business example first, we see that if we want to make a dessert, we will use different ingredients and processes than if we want to make a main course. In the same way members of a group and their roles within the group will affect how they behave together, how they develop and ultimately what their performance will be. For example, when you go out with your friends on a Friday night you will probably behave quite differently from when you get together with your family for a Sunday lunch. Its the same in business – how you behave as part of a team serving customers at McDonald’s is likely to be quite different to how you may behave if you are promoted to the supervisory team. How groups form, work together and produce outcomes is also heavily influenced by what is going on in the wider environment. For example, expectations from senior management may influence how a group is formed, operates and what its expected outcomes are.
What factors influence how your work group operates?
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7. LO3: Factors impacting group synergy
Group attractiveness
Size of the group
Who is in the group
The characteristics of the group members
Member roles
Task roles: Developing group and reaching goals
Maintenance roles focus on developing group unity, ability and interpersonal relations
Self-oriented roles: focus on ‘me’ rather than ‘we’
Group process
Creates or destroys synergy
Why are individuals attracted to join a group?
It may because of group size, the members of the group, the characteristics of those in the group or the roles that the individual can play within the group. It may also be how the group operates (group processes). How these factors combine can either create group synergy or destroy it. Positive synergy means that the gains from having a group outweighs the energy needed to develop and operate the group itself. Negative synergy means that most of the group’s energies are taken up maintaining the group rather than getting key tasks done. If you have ever been part of a dysfunctional group you will know how difficult it is to get things done when everyone is looking after their own interests and fighting with each other.
Think about having to put together a winning sports team. Go through each of the areas above and show what you would need to do in each area to achieve the group goal of winning.
Explain each of the above using a sports team as an example
How does the explanation change for a business example?
Group goal
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8. Member roles: Group task roles
Initiator-contributor
Information seeker
Information giver
Coordinator
Orienter
Energiser
How important is each of these to group effectiveness?
Group task roles help the group to develop and reach goals.
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9. Member roles: Group-maintenance roles
Encourager
Harmoniser
Gatekeeper
Standard setter
Group observer
Follower
Do you need each of these in a group to make it effective?
Group maintenance roles are concerned with building group unity, positive interpersonal relations and developing individuals ability to work together well as a team.
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10. Member roles: Self-oriented roles
Aggressor
Blocker
Recognition seeker
Dominator
What strategies would you put in place to manage each of these role types?
Self-oriented roles relate to individual members personal needs. These may have a negative impact on group effectiveness
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11. Can you see an overlap between member and managerial roles?
Member roles
Group task
Group maintenance
Self oriented
Manager roles
Interpersonal roles
Informational roles
Decisional roles
To be effective in business which of these skills do you need and why?
The manager roles were originally identified by Mintzberg and were covered in Chapter 1. The member roles are covered in this chapter.
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12. LO4: Group norms: their formation and significance
Explicit statements
Critical previous events
Carry over behaviours
First behaviour
How we behave within a group is set by the group itself through group norms. These group ‘rules’ are used by the group to regulate the behaviour of all group members. These rules or norms can be set down in explicit written statements. Alternatively, they may be demonstrated by key group members the first time the group meets (first behaviour). They may also arise out of critical previous events or may have been brought into the group as a result of how group members have behaved previously in other groups. When you first join a company there are likely to be explicit rules (your contract, for example) that dictate what your obligations are towards the organisational group. How people respond to you in the early days of your job is also likely to affect how you behave on an ongoing basis. Likewise, you are likely to refer back to how you behaved in your previous job when you start a new job. Major events in your previous job may also influence how you behave in your new job. What is clear here is that our behaviour in groups is influenced by explicit norms (what we can see) and implicit norms (what we have to work out by observing others).
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13. LO5: Group cohesiveness & organisational citizenship
Want to join
Want to stay
Determinants
Membership requirements
Similar attitudes & values;
Major successes
External threats or
Consequences
Members emotionally intelligent;
Higher job satisfaction
Higher group cohesion & performance;
Readiness to innovate and change
Organisational citizenship means that members of the group do things that are not required by the job in order to help their fellow group members to attain their, and therefore the organisation’s, goals. This indicates that the group members care for each other and want to help each other. They are therefore likely to share similar attitudes and values and value their membership to the group. They may be drawn together by adversity (eg, an external threat) or by previous or likely future group successes.
A consequence of organisational citizenship is that members are emotionally intelligent, i.e. they are sensitive and supportive of each other’s needs. All group members have a sense of belonging to the team and actively work together to enhance their performance and that of the group. Since they feel little threat from each other, they are more likely to embrace change and to innovate to find solutions that benefit all or most of the team members.
Discussion question
Are there any times in your life where you have felt this sense of group cohesiveness? What was it that made the group feel special? What was the standard of performance within the group and what do you think were the major contributing factors to it?
Organisational citizenship
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14. LO6: The group formation process
Which stage takes the longest time to pass through and why?
It is commonly believed that groups go through a series of five stages in their formation process (Tuckman 1965; Tuckman & Jensen 1977). Understanding these stages helps us to be more objective about the group formation process and to be able to come up with strategies to move ourselves and others through the stages. One of the easiest ways to reflect on this is to think about what happens when you are placed into a new group for a university assignment. In the forming stage, everyone is busy finding out about the assignment and about each other and setting norms for behaviour within the group. In the second stage, there is often evidence of some storming as personalities and agendas clash. This stage often takes up a considerable amount of time. By the norming stage a leader has been identified, tasks have been agreed on and patterns of behaviour have been set. Time constraints often force movement into this stage. In the most productive stage of the process the assignment is done, hopefully in a positively synergistic way. Finally, after the assignment is completed, the group breaks up to go on to do other assignments and subjects. The success of the group formation process is how well you do in the assignment and how much you enjoyed working with each other. If you have been in a good group there can be a real sense of loss and students often seek to replicate ‘good groups’ in other subjects or assignments.
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15. Discussion Is a team the same as a group?
If you were asked to form a high performing team what would be the essential ingredients and why?
Think about times when you have felt part of a team and times when you have been in a group.
What are the differences between the two? Write them down.
Now go back to the theory covered earlier in this chapter. Does your experience and ‘gut feeling’ match what the theory says? List the similarities and differences.
If you were asked to form a high performing team now, what do you think would be the essential ingredients and why?
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16. Differences between teams and groups
A team
Identify problems and seek innovative solutions
Reach group consensus
Cross functional teams:
Implement solution & inform supervisors
Stimulates innovation and creativity
A group
Handles recurring issues in a narrow area
Make recommendations
Small functional teams:
Implemented by others
Deals with specific issue in a specific timeframe
Fundamentally, we know that teams are not the same as groups. This slide shows the key differences between the two.
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17. LO7: Essential ingredients of innovative teams
Diverse ideas
Diverse perspectives
Trust
Innovation and change
What makes companies like Google, Cisco and Facebook highly innovative organisations? They structure their organisations so that employees from different functional groups can work freely together on projects that excite them. This allows individuals to develop synergistic teams where they can stimulate each other to do exciting work.
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18. LO8: Types of innovative teams
Entrepreneurial
A group whose members have varied expertise and backgrounds
Assembled to develop new products & services
Self-managing
A team responsible for a task area without supervision
Able to decide group membership & behaviour
Virtual
A team whose members work together but who rarely meet
They use information technologies to communicate
There are three types of innovative teams:
Entrepreneurial groups are made up of individuals whose members are drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds because of their varied expertise. Entrepreneurial groups are brought together to make things happen, for example the manufacture of new products and services or the improvement of existing ones (Brahm 1995 in Bartol et al, 2011). Lee (2008 in Bartol et al, 2011) identified three essential ingredients for this type of team –extensive knowledge, working cohesively together and having a good understanding of cause and effect relationships, i.e. to be able to understand that if one thing happens it is likely to lead to a specific outcome.
Self-managing teams are brought together for a specific task. They decide themselves on who is in the group and the group norms. In order for leaders to empower their workers, it is necessary to make sure that they have the necessary skills, knowledge, training and support to do the job. For example, you wouldn’t hand over your car to your younger brother and sister without first making sure that they could drive or that they were going out with someone who could drive. The danger is that in some self-managing teams there may be social loafers (individuals who do not carry their fair share of the work and are carried by the others). It is often hard to get rid of these people (Parkin 2003).
Virtual teams are spread all over the world and are linked together by information technologies, eg discussion boards, teleconferencing, and telephone. Since information technologies form a crucial role in the team’s interaction it is important that all team members know how to use them and can use them well. Because the groups may be spread all over the world it is essential to have a clear plan about who is delivering what and when. Performance rewards must recognise the challenges of working in this unique environment.
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19. Factors contributing to effective virtual teams
Factors influencing effectiveness
Reward systems
Continual training
Flexible & well understood team processes
Technologically supported resources
Technologically savvy staff &
adequate technological training
Trust - cultural diversity is valued
Leaders model desired behaviours
Duarte & Snyder (1999, in Bartol et al, 2011) suggested that the following factors contribute towards the creation and operation of effective virtual teams.
These include:
Reward mechanisms that recognise and embrace the different working approaches that may arise as a result of the use of virtual teams
Continual training opportunities for all team members
Commonly understood and flexible team processes
Widely availably technologically supported resources which all team members are adequately trained in.
Development of an overall culture of trust that values diversity
Leaders need to model desired behaviours
Entire team must be comfortable and competent in operating in an online environment.
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20. Establishing a virtual team
Identify significant influence and power sources
Establish clear purpose or mission statement
Identify team members
Orchestrate initial contact between team members
Orientate members to virtual team processes
Set up team control and management processes
It is useful to compare the formation process for a virtual team against that used to form a group (see the slide for LO6).
What is the purpose of each of these steps?
How do these steps compare with the group formation process?
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21. Self managed teams: Issues for consideration
Work without supervision
Set own pay and bonus levels
How should leaders empower workers
How to develop self leadership skills
Team goal setting
Developing effective communication strategies
What are the issues likely to arise and what does the theory say about how to deal with them?
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22. Conclusion Teams are different from groups
Teams focus on innovation
Groups focus on solving particular issues
The success of teams and groups depends on
Their purpose
How they are formed
Their team members
their skills and expertise
their norms and behaviour
How big they are
The level of group cohesion
In this chapter you have been introduced to ways in which individuals come together to work, i.e. through groups and teams. We have explored what contributes to the success and failure of each. Throughout this presentation you have been encouraged to reflect on your own experience of being part of teams and groups. What were the strengths and weaknesses of each? What would you do differently next time in the light of your own personal experience and what you have now learnt?
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