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We're All in This Together
Group dynamics: Forging high-achieving teams that exceed the sum of their parts
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Business New Haven
2/4/2002
By:
Susan Cornell
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These days, it seems, we're teeming with teams.
There are project teams, supplier teams, planning teams, work teams, design teams and quality teams. There are cross-functional and functional teams, flat teams and hierarchical teams. There are advisory teams, action teams, task forces, steering groups and committees, teams that appear on an ad hoc basis, and those with a structure and charter.
Organizational “teams” have been around since the dawn or recorded industrial history and have been a key ingredient in organizations as long as organizations have existed. Teams are a natural unit for activity. By definition, a team is simply people doing something together.
The operative word is “together.”
Together, teams can increase productivity, improve communications and perform work that individuals or ordinary groups cannot. Or, teams can fail - sometimes miserably, and occasionally spectacularly. Teams often make better use of resources, and can be more efficient and creative at solving problems.
But how do we maximize the value of the group and improve what's really going on within the group or team?
Sandra Spataro, a professor of organizational behavior at Yale's School of Management, is an expert on diversity in organizations, organizational culture and values, collaboration in groups and teams, communication and social influence, and power and politics. Spataro's research examines the influences of the market environment as well as an organization's formal and informal social structures on individuals' work experience, and the demographic composition of the workforce.
A variety of forces bind members to their groups. Spataro observes that “When group members identify with the group they are in, they are more bound to it. The extent to which people feel their membership in the group is central to who they are and 'what they value will determine their commitment to the group.
“Many factors influence identification, including the prestige of the group, how clear the boundary is between one's own group and other groups, and competition with other groups,” Spataro explains. “Research has shown that people will start to identify with a group simply through its formation - things like giving a group a name and a place to work all stimulate the identification process.”
But who will emerge as a leader and who a follower in a group? Spataro points to the work of Stanford organizational-behavior professor Jeffrey Pferrer, who has observed that successful leaders demonstrate many if not all of the following qualities:
• Energy, endurance, and
physical stamina
• Ability to focus
• Sensitivity
• Flexibility
• Willingness to engage in conflict
• Ability to submerge one's ego in service of a greater good.
Spataro is of the belief that gender differences persist in leader behavior. “On average, women use more collaborative, deferential styles, [while] men are more authoritative and aggressive. This, of course, extends to the manner they lead groups and how they are evaluated.
“In traditional hierarchical groups, with clear authority structures, women can be discounted as 'weak,'” adds Spataro. “Whereas, in flatter, more collaborative structures, typically males styles can be seen as 'overkill' or 'power-tripping.'”
These patterns exist in general terms, Spataro emphasizes, though not always in specific instances. “It is important to note that there are clear and strong examples on both sides that are quite different,” she says. “Generalizations in this area may serve only to perpetuate the stereotypes that are the basis of the difficulty.”
Frequency of talking and position at the meeting table can also affect who emerges and is perceived as the group leader. “Power and influence in group discussions goes to those who talk the most and those seated at the head of a rectangular table [or near the center of a long side],” Spataro explains. “Individuals who initiate the most communication receive the most communication from others. And dominant individuals [those who speak the most, and those with 'high status' demographic characteristics] tend to choose 'high talking' seats,” she adds.
In Harvard Business Review's “Hot Groups,” professors Harold Levant and Jean Lipman-Blumen identify a special variety of teams - “a lively, high-achieving, dedicated group, usually small, whose members are turned on to an exciting and challenging task.” In a nutshell, “Hot groups do great things fast,“ they write.
These effective groups “labor intensely at their task - living, eating and sleeping their work” and move beyond their own limits. Spataro added, “In general, effective groups bring together the right people, have the right balance of direction from outside versus authority to control their activities, and have the right norms of trust and openness.”
She advises: “As a group leader, staying focused on the basics is one of the most important things you can do: Know exactly what your group is doing, what problem you are trying to solve; understand the resources and timelines available to you; and be sure to keep the discussion moving forward and on track.
“Many aspects of group dynamics can derail these very simple objectives,” adds Spataro. “An effective group starts from good grounding in these basics.”
The leader, like the team, faces potential pitfalls and can fall flat on his or her face. Suggests Spataro: “One of the interesting challenges leaders face is to stay vigilant during times of great success. Groups are no more vulnerable to failure than when they relax in the face of potential biases that can shape their decisions or pressures to conform.
“Success can lull groups into thinking they are invulnerable,” she explains. “One of the most important jobs of a group leader is to consistently maintain the behaviors and relationships - both formal and informal - that bring success to the group. When there are problems, leaders are naturally more attentive; when things are going right, vigilance is essential.”
Groups can exert both positive and negative influences upon their members. “Ideally, group members stimulate each other to be more creative and more analytical,” Spataro says. “The pervasiveness of teams in workplaces is born out of a belief in the synergy that arises from interaction among team members. When group members trust and respect each other, and when the group is well situated and motivated for their task, this can and does occur.”
However, there is the downside to groups. “Unfortunately, what often occurs is 'free-riding,' where members of a group fail to contribute individually,” Spataro observes. “Free-riders just rely on the contributions of other group members. In general, individual ownership of the group's task tends to decline as group size increases.”
Further, groups can influence their members through pressures to conform. “Desire to conform is a natural tendency, and in work groups [especially tightly knit ones] the pressure to conform, in thought, behaviors, attitudes, ideas, everything, can be enormous,” Spataro says.
To forestall potential problems, Spataro advises groups to “deliberately set up checkpoints to make sure pressures to conform are not directing too much of the group's behavior. These can include appointing a 'devil's advocate'; holding 'second-chance' meetings in which members can reflect for some time after an immediate group meeting before making a final decision; developing norms that encourage creativity and original thinking; and rewarding individual contributions.”
Resolving conflict between and among group members is not always desirable. Notes Spataro: “It is important to differentiate between interpersonal conflicts and task-oriented conflict. Moderate conflict about the work the group is actually doing can be quite beneficial to group productivity and outcomes.
“It's when the conflict is personal in nature, involving egos and hurt feelings, that conflict is problematic,” she adds.
Spataro points to the work of Eisenhardt, Kahwajy and Bourgeois who, in their study How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight, suggest the following: focus on the facts; multiply the alternatives; create common goals; use humor; and seek consensus with qualification.
Improving relationships between members of the group can promote cooperation within the group. “Relationships between group members are most affected when emotions are involved,” Spataro observes. “Negative emotions may arise out of a specific conflict or from a feeling that responsibilities are not shared fairly or from just a general malaise. Regardless of the source, exercising emotional intelligence can often shift feelings more toward the positive.”
Spataro adds that being emotionally intelligent involves not only expressing one's own emotions appropriately, but also being sensitive to the emotions of others.
“Interpersonal conflicts in groups, as in all other parts of life, often stem from a failure of the parties to really listen to each other,” Spataro says. “To the extent that group members in a difficult relationship can come to understand one another's experiences and feelings about those experiences, they will be more able to come to agreeable terms for working together.
“Listening, with a view toward really understanding, involves not only hearing words, but also perceiving emotions, paraphrasing back to the speaker and asking questions,” she adds.
Since groups have the potential to accomplish so many remarkable tasks, devise better quality goods and services, and generate higher-quality decisions, how can we make groups even more productive?
Says Spataro: “One answer to this question is that success breeds success. An early win for a group can be the best foundation for future successes. The confidence and respect among group members that come from things going well ends up helping the group perform better in the long run.”
She adds, however, that groups should be proceed with caution. “The same is true of failure, that is, that early failure can breed more problems,” explains Spataro. “Patterns get set early in the life of a group and once set, they are difficult to change.”
Group decisions can be much better than individual decisions. Spataro says that there the many potential advantages of group decisions over individual decisions including:
• Increased knowledge and information obtained from resource-pooling;
• Group members can stimulate and encourage one another, generating synergy;
• Improved implementation due to higher motivation and commitment from members; and
• Increased legitimacy.
Nevertheless, group decision processes can be time-consuming and are prone to various biases that can lead to ill-considered decisions.
“When group members prioritize agreement over decision quality [ so-called 'group-think'] or everyone just goes along with a suggestion when no one really feels strongly about it [the 'Abilene paradox'] or when group members together are either more risky or more cautious than a reasonable individual [group polarization], group decisions can be seriously derailed,” explains Spataro.
She advises: “To make quality decisions, groups should develop norms that encourage disagreement and make it easy for dissenting opinions to be raised, even if they are the minority. Groups should also be careful about what decision rules they choose. On the one hand, open voting can exacerbate pressure to conform; or consensus can take an extremely long time.”
Spataro adds that there is a difficult balance between allowing enough time to hear and consider different opinions and staying efficient. The best rule, she says, is a function of the type of decision being made.
“Simple decisions can be made through voting or even the discretion of the leader,” explains Spataro. “More complex decisions will benefit more from greater involvement of group members.”
Spataro, who teaches a course on “Collaboration in a Diverse Workforce” at SOM, notes that diversity is ubiquitous in the workplace today. “The advantages of diversity in groups are potentially many, as they bring together a variety of perspectives, experiences, information resources, styles and cultures. Diverse groups have been shown to be more creative and to make better decisions.
“On the other hand,” she adds, “diverse groups have also been shown to be more conflictual [sic] and less cohesive. To enjoy the benefits of diversity and carefully minimize the problems, managers need to build and emphasize the common ground among group members. For example, 'We are all part of the same organization,' 'We all have the same goals.' If group members pay more attention to the similarities that bind them than to the demographic categories that differentiate them, the complications of diversity should be minimized.”
Research also shows that diversity not only with regard “traditional” characteristics such as age, sex and race, matter; “differences in tenure, functional background, educational experience, even political orientations can operate just like sex or race differences,” Spataro notes. She adds that groups “that include differences on any of these dimensions should be managed as 'diverse' groups, with emphasis on the common identities and goals that bind group members to each other.”
Twenty-first century organizations will be required to keep up with a bewildering pace of change and to forge the ability to continually reshape themselves. By understanding group dynamics and how to maximize the potential of key players, organizations can profit from ownership of winning teams.
For managers seeking more in-depth information about building high-performing teams, the following is a list of selected readings on the topics of teamwork and collaboration:
Druskat, V. & Wolff, S., 2001: “Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups,” Harvard Business Review.
Eisenhardt, Kahwajy and Bourgeois, 1997: “How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight,” Harvard Business Review.
Hackman, J. Richard (Ed.), 1990: “Groups that Work (And Those That Don't,” Jossey-Bass: San Francisco.
LaFasto, F. & Larson, C., 2001: “When Teams Work Best,” Sage: Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Leavitt, Harold J. and Lipman-Blumen, J., 1995: “Hot Groups,” Harvard Business Review.
Marquardt, M. & Horvath, L., 2001: “Global Teams,” Davies-Black Publishing: Palo Alto, Calif.
Thompson, L., 2000: “Making the Team,” Prentice Hall: New Jersey.
Useem, M., 2001: “The Leadership Lessons of Mount Everest,” Harvard Business Review.
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