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1-2McGraw-Hill/Irwin copyright © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, inc. All Rights Reserved

Groups, Teams, and Their Leadership

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

~Marcus Aurelius

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Introduction

• Groups and teams are different than solely the skills, abilities, values, and motives of those who comprise them.

• 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.

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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 can be considered as highly specialized groups.

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The Nature of Groups

• Group: 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.

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Group Size

• Leader emergence is partly a function of group size.

• As groups become larger, cliques are more likely to develop.

• Group size can affect a leader’s behavioral style.

• Span of control

• Group size affects group effectiveness.

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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.

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Developmental Stages of Groups

• Stages of groups development:– Forming

– Storming

– Norming

– Performing

• These stages are important because:– People are in many more leaderless groups than

they may realize.

– The potential relationships between leadership behaviors and group cohesiveness and productivity.

• Punctuated equilibrium: Related to project teams.

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Group Roles

• Group roles: Sets of expected behaviors associated with particular jobs or positions.– Task role

– Relationship role

• Types of role problems:– Dysfunctional roles

– Role conflict

– Intrasender role conflict

– Intersender role conflict

– Interrole conflict

– Person-role conflict

– Role ambiguity

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Group Norms

• Norms: 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:– Facilitate group survival.– Simplify, or make more predictable, what

behavior is expected of group members.– Help the group to avoid embarrassing

interpersonal problems.– Express the central values of the group and

clarify what is distinctive about the group’s identity.

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Group Cohesion

• Group cohesion: The glue that keeps a group together.

• Highly cohesive groups interact with and influence each other more than do less cohesive groups.– Greater cohesiveness does not always lead

to higher performance.– Highly cohesive groups may have lower

absenteeism and lower turnover.– Highly cohesive groups may sometimes

develop goals contrary to the larger organization’s goals.

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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.

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Effective Team Characteristics and Team Building

• Key characteristics for effective team performance:– Effective teams have a clear mission and high

performance standards.

– Leaders of effective teams spend a considerable amount of time assessing the technical skills of the team members.

– Good leaders work to secure resources and equipment necessary for team effectiveness.

– Effective leaders spend considerable time planning and organizing in order to make optimal use of available resources.

– High levels of communication helped minimize interpersonal conflicts.

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Effective Team Characteristics and Team Building (continued)

• Four variables that need to be in place for a team to work effectively:– Task structure– Group boundaries– Norms– Authority

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Organizational Shells

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Ginnett’s Team Effectiveness Leadership Model

• Stages of the Team Effectiveness Leadership Model (TLM):– Input– Process

• Process measures• Group dynamics

– Output

• This model is a mechanism to:– Identify what a team needs to be effective,– Point the leader either toward roadblocks or

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

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Systems Theory Applied to Teams

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Basic TLM Outputs: Outcomes of High Performance Teams

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TLM Diagnosis Process: Diagnose Using the Process Variables

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Leadership Prescriptions of the Model

• A team should be built like a house or automobile:– Start with a concept

– Create a design

– Engineer it to do what you want it to do

– Manufacture it to meet those specifications

• The three critical functions for team leadership:– Dream

– Design

– Development

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Three Functions of Leadership

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Diagnosis and Leverage Points

• Process block of the TLM:– Individual factors

– Organizational level

– Team design

• Concluding thoughts about Ginnett’s Team Effectiveness Leadership model:– 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.

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Team Leadership Model, Robert C. Ginnett, Ph.D.: The Four Faces of the “Engine” of the Team Leadership Model

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Factors from the Normative Model of Group Effectiveness and the Interactional Framework

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Virtual Teams (Geographically Dispersed Teams – GDTs)

• Five major areas that need to change for global teams to work:– Senior management leadership– Innovative use of communication

technology– Adoption of an organization design that

enhances global operations– The ability to capture the strengths of

diverse cultures, languages, and people.

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Virtual Teams (Geographically Dispersed Teams – GDTs)

• Conclusions that leaders of virtual teams need to bear in mind:– Distance between members is

multidimensional.

– 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.

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Summary

• Group perspective: Showed 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: 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.