Group Dynamics: Understanding The Differences Between Groups And Teams

Understanding Group Dynamics

Every organization consists of a groups of individuals that work separately to reach a common goal.  Groups can have both positive and negative effects on individual performance and decision-making abilities. “Groups are basically people working together for a common purpose”, (Kozlowski, 2006).

Primarily it is imperative to understand the difference between groups and teams.

Part One, groups

Groups are two or more workers who come together to achieve specific personal responsibilities and particular common objectives. The group’s performance is merely a summation of each group members’ individual effort. For example, if there is an organization with three workers and each of them is able to produce ten units per day individually. It can be assumed that when they will be working together as a group they will produce thirty units. There could invariably be certain activities conducted during the day like social loafing that would impact the group’s performance. But it is safe to assume that the group’s performance will be better than one individual’s performance.

Understanding group dynamics

All groups have dynamics owing to members of the group individually due to their personality. Group dynamics reflect interactions between group members, and the group’s interactions with other groups. The meaning of group dynamics is, “the influential actions, processes, and changes that occur within and between groups over time.” (Forsyth, 2009). The behaviors of individuals in one group and the behaviors of one group of people with another group of people can affects these processes and are an important factor responsible for group dynamics.

How do group dynamics affect the decision-making proce (Forsyth, 2009)

Part Two, teams

Teams are a type of groups that generate positive actions through coordinated efforts. Bailey and Cohen (1997) proposed the following definition of teams:

 “A team is a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, who share responsibility for outcomes, who see themselves and are seen by others as an intact social entity, embedded in one or more larger social systems and who manage their relationships across organizational boundaries” (Claire B. Halverson, 2008)

Understanding team dynamics

In 1991 Dr. Raymond Belbin published a book called management teams. His theory was how different strengths and weaknesses can contribute to the success of the team. In his model, Belbin’s theory on team dynamics identified nine different roles which fall into separate categories. Each role had clear behavioral and interpersonal strengths as well as weaknesses.

Action Oriented Roles
Shaper	Implementer	Completer finisher
People Oriented Roles
Coordinator	Team worker	Resource investigator
Thought Oriented Roles
Plant	Monitor-Evaluator	Specialist

Each person brings to the team some strength’s and some weaknesses as discussed below.

Team role	Strengths	Weaknesses
Shaper	Competing, contending and dynamic, successful on pressure, strong willed to overcome obstacles.	Falling ill to provocation, displeasure, offends others feelings.
Implementer	Moderation, self-control, custom, efficient; turns ideas into experiencing and suffering actions.	Somewhat strong-willed; slow to respond to new possibilities
Completer finisher	Complicated, effort, and expending energy; searches out errors and omission, delivers on time.	Inclined to worry too much, and unnecessary. Reluctant to delegate.
Coordinator	Self-assurance, confident, a good people in charge; clarifies goals promotes decision – making and delegates well	Can be seen as controlling; offloads personal work.
Team worker	Co-operative, small, intelligent and good on noticing, listen, builds and averts friction.	Ambivalence in crunch situations. Unable to make a choice
Resource investigator	Energetic, enthusiastically, communicative; explores opportunities and delivers contacts.	Over optimistic; believing that good things will happen in the future, loses interest once initial enthusiasm has passed.
Plant	Inspiring, imaginative, strange, suspicious; solves difficult problems	Ignores details, too continually to thinking about communicate effectively.
Monitor-Evaluator	Sobriety, planning, expecting; sees all options and judges accurately	Lacks drive or the ability to inspire other
Specialist	Single – minded, faithful, loyal, brings knowledge and skills in rare supply	Provided and supplying only on a narrow front; dwells on technicalities.

(Senior, 2007)

Successful teams would need to have a mixture of qualified individuals. A team would be unbalanced if all of its members have similar styles of behavior. Belbin found people with similar strengths tend to compete for the tasks and responsibilities that best suit their natural styles rather than cooperate for the good of the team. Team development is important for all teams, but especially for a multicultural one.

Conclusion

Teams	Groups
– Joint leadership roles – Distinct and mutual accountability – Specific conclusion delivered by the team itself – Collective purpose – Collaborative discussions – Discussing problems and processes to find solutions during the meetings	– Individual leader that makes the final decision – Separate responsibilities for each group member – The purpose is the same as the larger organizational mission – Individual work products – Lack of communication – Discuss the final product during meetings

(Claire B. Halverson, 2008)

Understanding multicultural teams

Groups are not tools for a better organization. The individual efforts of people result in a level up of performance which would be greater than the sum of individual input if the employees work as a team.

How Group Dynamics Affect the Decision-Making Process

Reviewing how the team can be effective in an organization

Teams work in an organization to improve quality, complete projects and change processes. A team must have some components to ensure the success of the project or objective. Each member of the team brings a unique talent or skill to the table, which contributes to the overall success of the group.

Communication 

Team members can inspire and reward each other by showing their talent and creativity. Good communication makes a team successful. Providing plenty of opportunities to give feedback allows a team to grow. Team leaders should focus on developing accountability, trust, and less hierarchical approach.

Be transparent

Transparent working environments have been found to make teams more creative, and its members more content and motivated. Transparent and open workplace help employees feel secure in their positions. Therefore, team members feel more comfortable to provide ideas and suggestions thus enhancing creativity. Transparent environments help to develop a feeling of mutual respect between team members and team leaders. For example, Marc de Grandpre who is the senior VP of Marketing at KIND Healthy Snacks believes that transparency in the workplace is extremely important. Marc explains how they use transparency for effective team management at their company:

“How can your company learn, grow and succeed if people are afraid to be themselves, voice their opinions and genuinely show that they care about the brand and team? Having the company become a sort of safe space allows for brilliant ideas to flow and for problems in your company to be flagged and addressed head-on.”

Case study of James Hannam, team management consultant

James explains that on his projects, teams make use of Meister Task in order to achieve effective team and project management. They do this by providing team members with an overview of projects and responsibilities, via their shared Project Boards:

“If all of your team members can have a high-level of visibility over the project, while also understanding the part they are playing at any given time, you will foster a sense of responsibility, creating accountability among team members.”

He agrees that transparency is an important part to high-functioning teams. Each task within each project is assigned to a specific team member, making each individuals’ responsibility clear. With all tasks and responsibilities displayed transparently, team leaders do not have to be available on site for each project, knowing each task will be seen through by the assigned person. One of the best ways to support the team member in developing personally and professionally is by providing them with daily feedback. This also enables team members to clearly understand their overall role within the team.

If you are finding a conversation complicated or causing anxiety, remember that your aim in providing feedback is to help your team members grow and succeed. Although feedback conversations can be difficult, especially in non-hierarchical organizations, they are important and necessary for the development of team members and the success of your distance team.

Benefits of teamwork in a business

Teamwork contain and involve different people and different groups working together to maximize their efficiency and reach a common goal. There are many ways of organizing teams – some teams are organized around a particular product that is being developed, while others are organized around a process, such as manufacturing or research. In addition to providing team members with experience, benefits of teamwork include financial savings, increased efficiency, and new innovation and morale.

Understanding Teams

Teamwork allows team members to control more of the work process and the employees to take greater responsibility for decision making. This can lead to improved confidence felt by a person or group of people as employees gain more authority and ownership over the projects they are working on. The extra responsibility can lead to a more rewarding work environment and lower attrition. Working on a team also gives employees a greater sense of belonging and of accepting and agreeing, which helps them take more feeling of pleasure in their work, and their company.

Teamwork can help companies to be able to change and become adapting and modifying. By bringing employees from different parts of a project together into one team, problems or bottlenecks can sometimes be ironed out more easily. Case in point for example, “car manufacturers might sometimes use this method when designing automobiles. Instead of each new car design going through separate areas, such as design, engineering and parts supply, the car manufacturer will organize one team that includes employees from all those areas to design each car. As problems arise in one area, the entire team can deal with them and the work can proceed much faster.”

Some companies use teams and teamwork to create a work environment which excels at creativity. These companies sometimes base their corporate structure almost entirely around teamwork. For example, W.L. Gore & Associates is a technology company based around multi-disciplinary, project-based teams. People are hired into general work areas and then chosen to work on projects that best match their skills and interests. Leaders are appointed, and there is no chain of command or leadership hierarchy. Employees are also free to start new teams as new ideas come to them. This is called a flat lattice teamwork-based corporate structure, and is used by companies wishing to be leaders in innovation.

The P-O-L-C framework

Planning	Organizing	Leading	Controlling
– Discussing the vision and mission – Conversing strategizes – Providing goals and objectives	– Ability of formulating an organizational design – Culture building – Communication through social network	– Leadership/decision making – Communication through hierarchy – Consisting of groups and teams – Motivating team members	– Providing systems, processes, and responsibilities of each team member – Strategic human resources

The organization’s structure can be an even more powerful influence over employee actions.

Power

“Power is the ability to influence other’s behavior”. (Lussier, 2009) “is the capacity to influence the behavior of other. Power is a social term; that is, individuals have power in relation to other. People also involves a dynamic relationship among people that can change over time.” (Pfeffer, 1993)

For example, there is team member A, who is the manager, and team member B who is an employee. Power refers to a capacity that team member A has to influence the behavior of team member B. Therefore, team member B acts in accordance with what team member A wishes. In this situation, the employee is dependent on the manager, because the manager has something that the employee desires. This means that the manager has power over the employee to influence his or her behavior. Power does not require goal compatibility, merely dependence.

Importance of power

Power matters because it is how we live together in a community, governing how any form of organization works, and determining who gets to make the rules for the process. So, learning how power operates is the key to becoming effective. It limits the ability of being taken advantage of and increases the capability of being taken seriously.

Using power

“Power issues in organizations often focus on interpersonal relationships between managers and subordinates, or leaders and followers” (pferrer, 1981). There are specific actions called ‘power tactics’ which are used in a slightly different situation.

The power tactics include:

• Validitywhich includes relying on the authorities’ position or making a request according to organizational policies.
• Rational persuasionconsists of presenting logical arguments and factual evidence to demonstrate a request that is reasonable.
• Inspirational appeals, meaning developing emotional commitment by appealing to a target’s values, needs and hopes.
• Consultationleading to increasing the target’s support by involving him/her in the decision-making process.
• Exchangeby rewarding the target with benefits or favor in exchange for following the request.
• Personal appealswhich includes asking for a compliance based on friendship or loyalty.
• Ingratiationby using flattery, praise, or friendly behavior prior to making a request.
• Pressureby using warnings, repeated demands and threats.

Political behaviors and guidelines for developing political skills

• Learn the organizational culture.
• Learn the power players
• Do not surprise your boss.
• Be an honest team player.
• Stay tuned in to the grapevine.
• Resolve conflicts.

Culture is a complex and unclear phenomenon. Redfield (1948), defined culture as a “shared understanding made manifest in act and artifact.” This consists of shared ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving rooted in deep-level values and symbols associated with societal effectiveness and attributable to an identifiable group of people. (Claire B. Halverson, 2008)

“One has to recognize that countries and people differ in their approach and their ways of living and thinking. in order to understand them, we have to understand their way of life and approach. if we wish to convince them, we have to use their language as far as we can, not language in the narrow sense of the word, but the language of the mind.” -Jawaharlal Nehru

Any organization, specifically any human organization develops its own culture over time. A company may operate and expand to many different countries as it becomes more successful. Each corporation develops its own unique identity. Culture is the way we do things around ‘here,’ specifically. This means to understand the organization culture you have to be here for a long time before knowing how things work, because there are unique characteristics of every organization and it develops over time. As a leader, the person needs to understand and know how to manage that what we see is reflected in the values, beliefs, and assumptions that build up. It is important to try to understand how the values were created in the past.

Cultural values can deeply affect organizational and team structure, motivation and rewards, decision making, interpersonal interactions, and effectiveness. Schwartz reasoned that since values are motivational goals, basic human values might be derived by considering the most basic need of human beings. He divides the values into three fundamental categories, such as our biological needs as individuals, our need to coordinate our actions with other, and the need of groups to survive and flourish.

References

Claire B. Halverson, S. A. T. E., 2008. Effective multicultural teams. s.l.: Springer Verlag.

Forsyth, D. R., 2009. Group Dynamics. 5 ed. s.l.:Cengage Learning.

Kozlowski, S. W., 2006. Enhancing the Effectiveness of Work Groups and Teams. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 7(3), pp. 77-124.

Lussier, R. N., 2009. Management Fundamentals. 4 ed. s.l.:s.n.

Pfeffer, J., 1993. Managing with power:Politics and influence in organizations. boston: s.n.

pferrer, J., 1981. Power in organizations. s.l.:s.n.

Senior, S. S. a., 2007. Belbin’s Team Role Model: Development, Validity and Applications for Team Building. Journal of Management Studies, 44(1).