One way to potentially prevent problems associated with too much cohesion is to formally institute the role of a(n) ________, a person who is responsible for evaluating and challenging prevailing points of view in a constructive manner and also bringing in fresh perspectives and ideas to the team.
- mediator
- arbitrator
- mental model
- devil's advocate
- conflict appraiser
A step in preventing problems associated with too much cohesion would be to formally institute the role of devil's advocate. The person performing the devil's advocate role would be responsible for evaluating and challenging prevailing points of view in a constructive manner and also bringing in fresh perspectives and ideas to the team.
Cohesion: A team state that occurs when members of the team develop strong emotional bonds to other members of the team and to the team itself.
In highly cohesive teams, when members try to maintain harmony by striving toward consensus on issues without ever offering, seeking, or seriously considering alternative viewpoints and perspectives, this is
- groupthink.
- centralization.
- group cohesion.
- interdependence.
- cognitive dissonance.
In highly cohesive teams, members may try to maintain harmony by striving toward consensus on issues without ever offering, seeking, or seriously considering alternative viewpoints and perspectives. This drive toward conformity at the expense of other team priorities is called groupthink and is thought to be associated with feelings of overconfidence about the team's capabilities.
Groupthink: Behaviors that support conformity and team harmony at the expense of other team priorities.
John F. Kennedy's decision to go forward with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, NASA's decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger in unusually cold weather, and Enron's board of directors' decisions to ignore illegal accounting practices are famous examples of
- noise.
- groupthink.
- team process.
- network structure.
- communication complexity.
In highly cohesive teams, members may try to maintain harmony by striving toward consensus on issues without ever offering, seeking, or seriously considering alternative viewpoints and perspectives. This drive toward conformity at the expense of other team priorities is called groupthink and is thought to be associated with feelings of overconfidence about the team's capabilities. Some famous examples of groupthink are John F. Kennedy's decision to go forward with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, NASA's decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger in unusually cold weather, and Enron's board of directors' decisions to ignore illegal accounting practices.
Groupthink: Behaviors that support conformity and team harmony at the expense of other team priorities.
Daphne is the top performing nurse on the maternity ward at Downtown General Hospital. In advance of her annual performance review, her supervisor, Raul, begins observing her work behavior more closely to facilitate a more thorough review. One day, a doctor begins berating a nurse for not notifying him of a patient's change in medication, and Daphne steps in to defuse the situation by explaining that the medication was changed from to a brand name drug to an identical generic version. Another day, Raul watches as Daphne works with two other nurses to sort out how best to deal with the aggressive husband of a woman recovering from a five-week premature delivery. Additionally, Raul sees that Daphne keeps a daily calendar of events and tasks. Going into the performance review, Raul concludes that Daphne is exhibiting a high degree of
- group cohesion.
- devil's advocacy.
- boundary spanning.
- teamwork competency.
- groupthink competency.
One approach to training teams is to help individual team members develop general competencies related to teamwork activities. This type of training could involve many different forms of knowledge, skills, and abilities, including conflict resolution, collaborative problem solving, communication, goal setting and performance management, and planning and task coordination. Taken together, such knowledge, skills, and abilities are referred to as transportable teamwork competencies. This label reflects the fact that trainees can transport what they learn about teamwork from one team context and apply it in another.
Work Complexity: The degree to which job requirements tax or just exceed employee capabilities.
Motivating and confidence building, conflict management, and affect management are types of ________ processes.
- strategic
- behavioral
- interpersonal
- communication
- transformational
Interpersonal processes are important before, during, or in between periods of taskwork, and each relates to the manner in which team members manage their relationships. Motivating and confidence building refer to things team members do or say that affect the degree to which members are motivated to work hard on the team's task. Expressions that create a sense of urgency and optimism are examples of communications that would fit in this category. Affect management involves activities that foster a sense of emotional balance and unity. Conflict management involves the activities that a team uses to manage conflicts that arise in the course of its work.
Interpersonal Justice: The perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment received by employees from authorities.
Jasmine is promoted to a position in marketing after two years in customer service at the upscale clothiers Blanston Brothers. She is excited about the opportunity and tries hard to fit in with her new team. Things go well at first, and the team works effectively to come up with new approaches to promote a new line of silk ties and handkerchiefs. One day at lunch, her co-workers are talking about their children, and Jasmine mentions she does not plan on having kids. Two of her teammates, Misty and Marco, are shocked. Since both come from large families and have multiple siblings, they cannot understand Jasmine's decision, and they become distant towards her. As a result, the team begins to lose the productivity gains it once had. This team is demonstrating ________ conflict.
- task
- goal
- mission
- strategy
- relationship
Relationship conflict refers to disagreements among team members in terms of interpersonal relationships or incompatibilities with respect to personal values or preferences.
Relationship Conflict: Disagreements among team members with regard to interpersonal relationships or incompatibilities in personal values or preferences.
A special surveillance and rescue team is being deployed to counter the menace of pirates in the Indian Ocean. Nick, Sid, and Kevin are the core members of the team. Nick was elected as the leader of the team. Sid is responsible for monitoring the team's progress toward its goals. Kevin took on the role of motivator and confidence builder for the team. This team has worked together before and has developed a high level of common understanding regarding the team and its mission. Members also strongly believe that the team can be effective across a variety of situations and tasks. As a standard practice, before deployment, the team members observe how other members perform their roles by shadowing and going through simulations. Beyond his task responsibilities, Kevin's role also consists of behaviors that contribute to ________ processes.
- transition
- brainstorming
- transactive memory
- action
- interpersonal
Interpersonal process is important before, during, or in between periods of taskwork, and each relates to the manner in which team members manage their relationships. Kevin took on the role of motivator and confidence builder for the team, which consists of behaviors that contribute to interpersonal processes.
Interpersonal Justice: The perceived fairness of the interpersonal treatment received by employees from authorities.
Lou chose the new product team very carefully, recruiting only the best performers from marketing, operations, finance, and HR. She expected this group to design and develop a stellar new product in record time. She doesn't understand why this team composed only of superstars has not lived up to her expectations. Lou's group has not demonstrated synergy.
When a group produces more than you would expect from its constituent members, they exhibit synergy. In this case, the group has actually demonstrated process loss, not the expected synergy.
Stars: Employees with high commitment levels and high task performance levels who serve as role models within the organization.
It is easy to keep an accurate account of the contribution of each member in a team.
It is often quite difficult to gauge exactly how much each team member contributes to the team. Members of teams can work together on projects over an extended period of time, and as a consequence, it's difficult to keep an accurate accounting of who does what. Members contribute to their team in many different ways, and contributions of some members may be less obvious than others. Finally, members of teams don't always work together at the same time as a unit.
Team: Two or more people who work interdependently over some time period to accomplish common goals related to some task-oriented purpose.
When teams engage in ________, their activities are focused on generating novel and useful ideas and solutions.
- decision making
- creative behavior
- boundary spanning
- interpersonal processing
- groupthink
When teams engage in creative behavior, their activities are focused on generating novel and useful ideas and solutions. The team environment is also uniquely suited to fostering creative behavior.
Citizenship Behavior: Voluntary employee behaviors that contribute to organizational goals by improving the context in which work takes place.
________ is the phenomenon occurring when members of a team exert less effort when working on team tasks than they would if they worked alone on those same tasks.
- Groupthink
- Social loafing
- Self-serving bias
- Social facilitation
- Framing effect
Feelings of reduced accountability cause members to exert less effort when working on team tasks than they would if they worked alone on those same tasks. This phenomenon is called social loafing, and it can significantly hinder a team's effectiveness.
Social Loafing: A type of motivational loss resulting from members feeling less accountable for team outcomes relative to independent work that results in individually identifiable outcomes.
Mark, David, Tia, and Ashley are team members in a computer programming class. They have been assigned the task of creating a computerized payroll system involving multiple programs. Mark and Tia worked very hard and created programs that worked well. David and Ashley, however, did not work as hard as they could and created programs with numerous errors. This resulted in a payroll system that could not be implemented. The team's poor performance that was a result of David and Ashley not doing their best can be termed as
- groupthink.
- synergy.
- social facilitation.
- hierarchical sensitivity.
- motivational loss.
Motivational loss, or the loss in team productivity, occurs when team members do not work as hard as they could.
Motivational Loss: Process loss due to team members’ tendency to put forth less effort on team tasks than they could.
A team of highly skilled and qualified members of an organization failed to perform the team objective assigned to them. When the reason for this lack of performance was investigated, it was clear that, although the team members worked hard, they had to wait for their teammates to complete a particular task before they could start their own. Which of the following explains the reason for process loss in this case?
- motivational loss
- social facilitation
- production blocking
- groupthink
- cognitive dissonance
Process loss is the phenomenon of getting less from the team than you would expect based on the capabilities of its individual members. One factor that causes process loss is production blocking, which occurs when members have to wait on one another before they can do their part of the team task.
Production Blocking: A type of coordination loss resulting from team members having to wait on each other before completing their own part of the team task.
The phenomenon of a team delivering "less than the sum of its parts" can be explained by the term
- process loss.
- social loafing.
- decision informity.
- production blocking.
- communication conflict.
Process loss is the phenomenon of getting less from the team than you would expect based on the capabilities of its individual members.
Process Loss: When team outcomes are less than expected based on the capabilities of the individual members.
Process gain is synonymous with
- synergy.
- team conflict.
- decision infirmity.
- confidence building.
- hierarchical sensitivity.
Getting more from the team than you would expect according to the capabilities of its individual members is called process gain. This capability, which is synonymous with "synergy," is most critical in situations in which the complexity of the work is high or tasks require members to combine their knowledge, skills, and efforts to solve problems.
Process Gain: When team outcomes are greater than expected based on the capabilities of the individual members.
________ is getting more from the team than you would expect according to the capabilities of its individual members.
- Process gain
- Dynamic cohesion
- Task improvement
- Production blocking
- Hierarchical sensitivity
Getting more from the team than you would expect according to the capabilities of its individual members is called process gain. This capability, which is synonymous with "synergy," is most critical in situations in which the complexity of the work is high or tasks require members to combine their knowledge, skills, and efforts to solve problems.
Process Gain: When team outcomes are greater than expected based on the capabilities of the individual members.
Team ________ is a term that reflects the different types of communication, activities, and interactions that occur within teams that contribute to their ultimate end goals.
- gain
- process
- diversity
- cohesion
- effectiveness
Team process is a term that reflects the different types of communication, activities, and interactions that occur within teams that contribute to their ultimate end goals. Team characteristics-like member diversity, task interdependence, team size, and so forth-affect team processes.
Process Gain: When team outcomes are greater than expected based on the capabilities of the individual members.
A psychology class has been assigned an individual case study project as well as a group project. The members of the group will receive the same grade for the group project, but they will be graded separately for their individual projects. Drew, Ben, Donna, and Julia are members of one such group. Drew and Donna worked very hard on the group project. Ben and Julia, however, did not contribute much to the group project because they felt that Drew and Donna would manage to get good grades for it. Instead, they focused their efforts on their individual projects. Ben and Julia's behavior is an example of
- groupthink.
- staff validity.
- self-serving bias.
- social loafing.
- attribution error.
Feelings of reduced accountability cause members to exert less effort when working on team tasks than they would if they worked alone on those same tasks. This phenomenon is called social loafing, and it can significantly hinder a team's effectiveness.
Social Loafing: A type of motivational loss resulting from members feeling less accountable for team outcomes relative to independent work that results in individually identifiable outcomes.