Leadership enhancing the lessons of experience 8th by hughes curphy chap 10

Individuals Versus Groups Versus Teams • Team members usually have a stronger sense of identification among themselves, than group members do.. • Team members often have more differenti

Groups, Teams, and Their Leadership

“We are born for cooperation, as are the feet, the hands, the eyelids, and the upper and lower jaws.”

• Groups and teams are different than solely the

skills, abilities, values, and motives of those

who comprise them

• Groups and teams have their own special

characteristics

• Groups are essential if leaders are to impact

anything beyond their own behavior

• Group perspective looks at how different

group characteristics can affect relationships

both with the leader and among the followers

Individuals Versus

Groups Versus Teams

• Team members usually have a stronger sense

of identification among themselves, than group members do

• Teams have common goals or tasks

• Task independence typically is greater with

teams than with groups

• Team members often have more differentiated and specialized roles than group members

• Teams should be considered highly specialized groups

The Nature of Groups

• A group is two or more persons interacting with

one another in a manner that each person

influences and is influenced by each other

person

– This definition incorporates the concept of reciprocal

influence between leaders and followers.

– Group members interact and influence each other.

– The definition does not constrain individuals to only

one group

• Although groups play a pervasive role in

society, most people spend little time thinking

about the factors that affect group processes

and intragroup relationships

– Leaders with a large span of control tend to be more

directive, spend less time with individual subordinates, and use impersonal methods to influence followers

– Leaders with a small span of control tend to show

more consideration and use personal approaches to influence followers.

• Group size affects group effectiveness

Group Size (continued)

• Additive task: A task where the group’s output

simply involves the combination of individual

outputs

• Process losses: Inefficiencies created by more

and more people working together

• Social loafing: Phenomenon of reduced effort

by people when they are not individually

accountable for their work

• Social facilitation: People increasing their level

of work due to the presence of others

Developmental Stages of Groups

• Tuckman’s four stages of group development:

1 Forming

2 Storming

3 Norming

4 Performing

• These stages are important because:

– People are in many more leaderless groups than

they realize

– There are potential relationships between leadership

behaviors and group cohesiveness and productivity.

• Gersick studied project teams and identified

punctuated equilibrium, which suggests that

teams do not start work immediately as

described by Tuckman

Group Roles

• Group roles are sets of expected behaviors

associated with particular jobs or positions

3 Intrasender role conflict

4 Intersender role conflict

5 Interrole conflict

6 Person-role conflict

7 Role ambiguity

Group Norms

• Norms are informal rules groups adopt to

regulate and regularize group members’

behavior

• Norms are more likely to be seen as important and apt to be enforced if they:

1 Facilitate group survival.

2 Simplify, or make more predictable, what behavior is

expected of group members.

3 Help the group to avoid embarrassing interpersonal

problems.

4 Express the central values of the group and clarify

what is distinctive about the group’s identity.

Group Cohesion

• Group cohesion is the sum of the forces that

attract members to a group, provide resistance

to leaving it, and motivate them to be active in it

—the glue that keeps a group together

• Highly cohesive groups interact with and

influence each other more than less cohesive

– Highly cohesive groups sometimes develop goals

contrary to the larger organization’s goals.

Group Cohesion (continued)

• Overbounding: Tendency of highly cohesive

groups to erect what amount to fences or

boundaries between themselves and others

• Groupthink: People in highly cohesive groups

often become more concerned with striving for unanimity than in objectively appraising different courses of action

• Ollieism: When illegal actions are taken by

overly zealous and loyal subordinates who

believe that what they are doing will please their leaders

Effective Team Characteristics and Team Building

• There are several key characteristics of

effective teams

1 Teams have a clear mission and high performance

standards.

2 Leaders often evaluate equipment, training facilities,

and available outside resources.

3 Leaders spend a considerable amount of time

assessing the technical skills of team members.

4 Leaders work to secure the resources and

equipment necessary for team effectiveness.

5 Leaders spend time planning and organizing in

order to make optimal use of available resources.

6 Teams have high levels of communication, which

minimize interpersonal conflicts.

Effective Team Characteristics and Team Building (continued)

• The following four variables need to be in place for a team to work effectively:

1 Task structure

2 Group boundaries

3 Appropriate norms

4 Authority

• Hackman and Ginnett developed the concept of

organizational shells to help team leaders

consider these four variables

Organizational Shells

Team Leadership Model

• The Team Leadership Model (TLM)

consists of three components:

1 Input

2 Process

3 Output

• The TLM is a mechanism to:

– Identify what a team needs, to be effective.– Points the leader either toward roadblocks

or toward ways to make the team even more effective than it already is

Systems Theory Applied to Teams

FIGURE 10.2 An Iceberg Metaphor for Systems Theory Applied to Teams

Basic TLM Outputs: Outcomes of

High-Performance Teams (HPT)

FIGURE 10.3 Basic TLM Outputs: Outcomes of High-Performance Teams

TLM Process Variables: Diagnose the Team Using the Process Variables

FIGURE 10.4 TLM Process Variables: Diagnose the Team Using the Process Variables

Leadership Prescriptions of the

– Engineer it to do what you want it to do.

– Manufacture it to meet those specifications.

• Three critical functions for team leadership:

1 Dream

2 Design

3 Development

Three Functions of TLM Leadership

FIGURE 10.5 Three Functions of TLM Leadership

Team Leadership Model

FIGURE 10.6 Team Leadership Model

Concluding Thoughts about the TLM

• Even if a team is well designed, has superior

organizational systems, and has access to

superior-quality ongoing development, without

adequate material resources it is not likely to

do well on the output level

• Leaders can influence team effectiveness by:

– Ensuring the team has a clear sense of purpose and performance expectations.

– Designing or redesigning input stage variables at the individual, organizational, and team design levels.

– Improving team performance through ongoing

coaching.

Factors from the Team Leadership Model and

the Interactional Framework

Virtual Teams

• Challenges are associated with leading

geographically dispersed teams (GDTs), also

known as virtual teams.

• Research shows that five major areas need to change for global teams to work

1 Senior management leadership

2 Innovative use of communication technology

3 Adoption of an organization design that enhances

global operations

4 Prevalence of trust among team members

5 The ability to capture the strengths of diverse

cultures, languages, and people

Virtual Teams (continued)

• Leaders of virtual teams need to bear in mind

the following research conclusions

– The distance between members is multidimensional – The impact of such distances on performance is not directly proportional to objective measures of

distance.

– Differences in the effects that distance seems to have

is due at least partially to two intervening variables:

– Integrating practices within a virtual team.

– Integrating practices between a virtual team and its larger host organization.

• Clusters, a new alternative to the traditional

idea of teams, are formed outside a company

context, but are hired and paid by companies as

a unit, as a permanent part of the company

• The Group perspective shows that followers’

behaviors can be the result of factors somewhat independent of their individual characteristics

• Leaders should use a team perspective for

understanding follower behavior and group

performance

• Team Leadership Model suggests that team

effectiveness can be best understood in terms

of inputs, processes, and outcomes.

– By identifying certain process problems in teams, leaders can use the model to diagnose

appropriate leverage points for action.