Major Objectives of the Course

Discover  there is a long standing and valuable body of ideas and theory about effective teams that speak directly to the action skills of team leadership.

Gain some keen insights about the nature of the leadership challenges in teams. I hope you have come to realize, for example, that leadership in teams is learning to set the right conditions for effective team performance, that leadership does not have to reside in single individuals. Leadership in smart, self-managed teams is more about circuits of influence and patterns of skillful interactions among members than leadership" traits" that reside in a single, appointed “leader.” 

Realize a valid diagnosis about group problems and challenges requires knowing how to ask the right questions and design effective interventions. Bad questions lead to a faulty diagnoses. Faulty diagnoses and we try to fix the wrong things

A Helpful Distinction: between

“Group Social Processes”

and

“Content of What a Group Does”

Groups operate on two levels

Content: an overt conscious level that  focuses on task, what a group does

Social Group Processes: a more implicit level, HOW the group is functioning. Task processes—how groups accomplish their work Maintenance processes—how groups meet psychological

and relationship needs

Content: the "business at hand, " the subject matter, the concrete examples: The literal or data/facts relevant to the

problem being handled The content of what folks say (what it

“means” to others is part of the process) Quantifiable measures of performance Measurable outcome statements Formal structure of authority

By contrast……PROCESS is:

Often dynamic and fluid, and for the untrained, sometimes difficult to follow.

The Creation of a Norm

We Seek Out Others for Social Comparison

Ambiguous, confusing circumstance

Psychological reaction-arousal

Increase in affect (emotions)UncertaintyNeed for information

Comparison with others

Establish a norm

Social comparison: gaining information from other people’s reactions (Festinger, 1954)

How should I act?

WHEW! NOW I KNOW WHAT I SHOULD DO

Normsa group's unspoken rules:

generally agreed-on informal rules that guide all members' behavior in the group. Norms represent shared ways of viewing the world, and as a result, become terms for membership.

Norms come from groups

Fundamental human need to belong to social groups. We learn that survival and prosperity is more likely if

we live and work together. To live together, we need to agree on common

beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviors that reduce in-group threats; act for the common good.

We thus learn to conform to rules of other people. And the more we see others behaving in a certain

way or making particular decisions, the more we feel obliged to follow suit.

This will happen even when we are in a group of complete strangers. We will go along with the others to avoid looking we don’t know what to do.

Norms, if codified

Become formal rules of proper conduct. However, in most instances, norms are adopted implicitly as people align their behaviors during the group formation process until consensus about appropriates actions emerges.

Examples of Process

Who talks to whom and who listens to whom? Use of space “Handshake" How roles are filled or not filled? task vs.

maintenance How the patterns of influence evolve, their nature and

how informal leadership responds to formal authority Tacit norms Groups sometimes are explicit about how they will

decide; often a decision making methodology just evolves as a function of process.

Examples of Group Social Processes

Social facilitation Group think Loafing Risk taking and polarization

The Very Presence of Others Effects Our BehaviorSocial Facilitation

When we have tasks which we find relatively easy, we find the presence of other people a positive stimulus such that we perform even better. However, when the tasks are difficult, we find the audience unnerving and we are more likely to put in a worse performance.

Social Facilitation

Michaels et al. (1982) 2 groups of subjects

categorized as good or bad players

Unobtrusive observation

2 conditions: play with vs without audience

Results?

Example of “Field Research”

Watched pool players at the university union to observe social facilitation.

Good pool players, who made an average of 71% of their shots when playing alone, increased performance to 80% when a group of 4 people began watching them.

Average pool players, who made about 36% of their shots when playing alone, decreased to about 25% shots made when 4 people started watching them.

  Micheals, J. W., Blommel, J. M., Brocato, R. M., Linkous, R. A., & Rowe, J. S.

(1982). Social facilitation and inhibition in a natural setting. Replications in Social Psychology, 2, 21-24. 

Should you play pool in public?

No Audience Audience

% S

hots

Mad

e

Good players

Bad players

Group Level of Analysis

Groups can “have a life of their own.”

Tuckman’s stages as example

Forming

Storming

Norming

Adjourning

Task

Performing

What Methods Do Researchers Use to Measure Individual and Group Processes?

Observational measures: observing and recording events Qualitative and

quantitative (structured) measures

Bales's Interaction Process Analysis (IPA) classifies behaviors into two categories: task and relationship behaviors

What Methods Do Researchers Use to

Measure Individual and Group Processes? Self-report measures: group members

describe their perceptions and experiences Example: Moreno's sociometry method

USING PATTERNS OF INFLUNCE TO DEFINE LEADERSHIPTwo “groups”; same members

Group A: Who influences the group the most?

Group B: Who influences you the most?

Patterns of interdependency

All relationships to some extent have interdependencies

Mutually beneficial

What Are Communication Networks?

Types: three, four, five person Centralized vs. decentralized

Social LoafingWhy Do People Loaf in Groups?

VS

Group Papers

“Hate ‘em”“Hey prof, why should she get

the same grade as I when she loafed her way thru.”

Social Loafing Theory: Modification of Social Facilitation Theory The tendency for people to do worse on

simple tasks but better on complex tasks when they are in the presence of others and their individual performance cannot be evaluated.

Social Loafing

Tendency to reduce effort when pooling effort toward a common goal and when group members are not individually accountable.

Decreases when tasks are challenging or appealing, and when fellow group members are friends (as opposed to strangers) and can be held accountable.

Social Loafing

Williams and Karan (1985): Task Difficulty (easy or hard maze) Type of evaluation (individual vs collective) Time to solve maze

Social Loafing

Easy Difficult

Tim

e to

Com

plet

e M

aze

-.6

-.4

0

-.2

.2

.4

.6

IndividualEvaluation

Collective Evaluation

Group Decision Making

Group Think: The tendency for members of highly cohesive

groups to assume that their decisions can’t be wrong, that all members must support the group’s decision strongly, and that contrary information should be ignored

Group Decision Making

Causes of Group Think: Cohesiveness Emergent group norms

Norms suggesting that the group is moral and infallible Biased Processing of Information

Groups motivated to find reasons to support their views rather than seeking truth and accuracy

Groups Often Fail to Pool Information Focus on Information all members already know Devil’s Advocate Technique and Authentic Dissent

ameliorate such tendencies

Group Polarization

Originally dubbed the “risky shift” The risky shift is the tendency for group

decisions to be riskier than the average decision of the individuals in the group.

Group Decision Making

Basic Nature of Group Polarization: Group polarization is the tendency of group

members to shift toward more extreme positions

+ Neutral -

Views Held by Group Members

Before Group Discussion

+ Neutral -

Views Held by Group Members

After Group Discussion

Group Polarization

Why? Group discussion leads you to hear more

information. Active participation in a discussion leads you

to “rehearse” your thoughts leading to more attitude change.

Safer to provide more extreme answers once the normative opinion of the group has been determined.

Social Group ProcessesObserving and understanding

process can lead to a more complete understanding of what is really going on.