Tag Archives: groups

Myths

Teamwork is best – or IS IT?

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Group working is one of those topics that is awkwardly both straightforward and complex depending upon how you look at it.

Conventional wisdom sets us to assume that more heads are better than one and this maxim is often used as a justification for working in teams. But is it always a helpful perspective? In the spirit of Change Academy, we need to consider alternative views in order to get a more complete picture.

Cindy Vallance recently posted the question “When are many heads better than one?” This is a sensible question to ask when considering group working. As Cindy points out, sometimes teams are created to simply fulfill a structural need; to fill an office space or to organise a number of individuals under the supervision of a manager. These, as Cindy implies, are not good reasons for organising group working.

Tug of war
A set of clones with the same job is not a recipe for a successful team

What do we really know about team performance? And, if we are honest with ourselves, do groups always work better than individuals?

The answer, surely , is no. Have you ever sat on a committee and wondered ‘why are we all here?’?

Let’s take a sporting analogy. Put five excellent runners into a relay team. How well do they perform? In many cases, really well.

However if I think of the British men’s sprint relay team, in four of the last five Olympics they have been disqualified (1996, 2000, 2008, 2012). In 2004 they won the gold. In each Olympic competition the job is the same and, for the British team over this period, several individuals participated in the team more than once . So why is there such a wide difference between good and poor performances? It is sometimes easy to put it down to a mistake; incompetence or lack of attention, but sometimes the truth lies deeper.

The Ringlemann effect suggests that something different can happen in teams. If people’s personal roles are similar they can be disinclined to put everything into their work (this is a subconscious effect causing ‘free-riding’ rather than deliberate loafing). This effect has been shown in cases where a single worker has been put in a team with ‘non workers’ (i.e. people deliberately faking effort, but not actually doing real work). Even in these instances, the ‘real’ worker is often measured as putting in LESS effort than if they were doing the task on their own. In the classic experiment, assuming that men pulling a rope individually perform at 100% of their ability, apparently two-man groups perform at 93% of the average member’s pull, three-man groups at 85%, with eight-man groups pulling with only 49% of the average individual member’s ability.

So what is the solution? Never work in teams? No this would be a bit foolish, there are better questions…

1. Design team work carefully? Yes

2. Ensure a clear sense of purpose? Yes

3. Establish some reasonable measure of performance or achievement? Yes

4. Agree ways of working together, along with a readiness and willingness to improve ? Of course

5. Encourage trust and mutual respect amongst team members? Yes, but make sure that at its foundation is an understanding of 1-4  above.

So, reverting to my previous blog on teamwork, we must focus on our purpose, our goals, understand our differing roles, agree how we work together at a practical level and look to build positive working relationships based on mutuality and trust.

Like anything in life, if we have a team of people, we need to regularly re-consider the purpose of the team. Do we have a team because it adds to achieving the purpose, or is it just because we have always had a team?

Next time you are in a turgid committee meeting, or your project team has ground to a halt, – have a think about how the group could work better…

 

Further reading:

Beckhard, R. (1972) Optimizing Team Building Effort, J. Contemporary Business.  1:3,  pp.23-32

Ingham, A.G., Levinger, G., Graves, J., & Peckham, V. (1974). The Ringelmann effect: Studies of group size and group performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 371–384.

MacDonald, J. (1998) Calling a Halt to Mindless Change, Amacom, UK

 

 

 

 

Change Principles, Updates

Categorising Group Roles

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By Cindy Vallance @cdvallance

I have previously written about principles that can benefit groups when they want to think together. I have also written a series of blogs with practical tips for the chair and for participants in working to ensure that meetings are successful.

But what I haven’t yet done is share thoughts on the roles of group members. Role differentiation and clarity is important to any group. There are many many ways to categorise group roles and I do not profess any particular theoretical expertise on group dynamics. Do take a look at the work of The Centre for the Study of Group Processes at the University of Kent (also Twitter @Group_Lab) that researches social psychological processes affecting group & intergroup relations.

To keep things simple, as a starting point I will reference a single model used by one of my own University professors (Professor A.R. “Elango” Elangovan), which is a distillation of Kenneth Benne and Paul Sheats’ work on group behaviour that originated as far back as the 1940s. Benne and Sheats defined three categories of group roles: task-oriented roles, relations-oriented roles, and self-oriented roles.

Task-oriented roles include initiators, information seekers, information givers,  coordinators and evaluators. These roles are important in actually getting the work done.

Relationship-oriented roles serve a different purpose. These roles help the group function in a positive way. They include encouragers, harmonisers, gatekeepers, standard setters, and group observers.

Finally, Self-oriented individualistic roles generally weaken and disrupt the group. These roles include blockers, recognition seekers, dominators and avoiders.

If you have freedom of choice in forming your group, be careful in choosing your members. A diverse range of people who balance task and relationship-oriented roles will take the group forward in a positive way.

But what do you do about the dysfunctional self-oriented roles? Perhaps you don’t have complete control over group membership. If this is the case, then the goal should be to minimise or eliminate these behaviours through increased awareness and full group acknowledgment that all of these roles exist within groups. This is of course easier said than done but a start can be made by simply naming these roles and agreeing from the outset of the group creation that disruptive behaviour will not be tolerated. Coaching and feedback can also help to greatly reduce or eliminate these behaviours.

You have an idea of the range of roles you want. What is next?

Change Principles, Updates

When are many heads better than one?

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By Cindy Vallance @cdvallance

As a follow on to my last blog, why do we bother with groups at all?

Firstly, it is important to note that sometimes groups are formed as a conscious structural choice of an organisation. At the University of Kent, for example, staff members who were previously dispersed throughout colleges were collected into subject-based academic schools in the mid 1990’s. Professional services are similarly identified as functional units and sometimes co-located to provide support to the core business of the University’s Faculties / Schools. For example, Information Services, Human Resources, Finance and Research Services (among many others) each serve a functional purpose. While much could also be written about these groups, what follows is not focused on groups that are created as part of an organisational structure.

Rather, what about those groups or teams that are created for a reason beyond the formal structure? Research groups, project teams, working parties – these are groups that come together – usually over a finite amount of time – to accomplish a specific goal.

Why do we create these groups? What is the potential value that we gain? While in reality we do not always accrue significant benefits for a host of reasons we will consider, group decision making can be superior to individual decision-making in a number of different situations. Many heads can be better than one, for instance, when:6

  • Tasks require judgments about uncertain events and information available is either incomplete or uncertain
  • Concern for quality outcomes are high and potential benefits are substantial
  • Costs of errors is also high and it may be difficult to reverse or salvage a poor decision
  • Many feasible alternative solutions exist
  • Identifying the optimal alternative is difficult
  • Feedback about results will not be immediately available

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list and there are undoubtedly many more reasons that could be added. Perhaps two key factors that are common, however, are uncertainty and complexity.

So, if groups can sometimes be effective but aren’t in all cases; where do we go wrong? What are the characteristics of successful groups? More on this next time.

Change Principles, Updates

Building and Maintaining Resilience

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imageBy @cdvallance

The past few weeks since my last blog have been a struggle. Like many others around the University I have been battling what a colleague referred to as ‘the ubiquitous Kent bug.’ While I very much doubt that Kent is alone as an organisation that has had many of its members fall victim to a range of winter colds and flus, it has certainly been difficult for me to identify anyone absolutely brimming with energy and enthusiasm of late. Add to this a bout of cold, wet, grey weather, short days, dark nights and many work challenges. So what can be done?

For me, the only way to regain and then maintain my personal and professional resilience in relation to work is to reflect on the question ‘why do I bother?’ What do I believe about why I get up every morning and go to work? Of course I need and want a pay cheque. That is a given. But this isn’t enough for me and I believe it isn’t enough for others either. I believe we all (or at least the great majority of us) want to feel that we are making a positive difference in what we do and that we also want to share these feelings of pursuing a common purpose with others.

How do we do this? In my last blog, I shared six keys to successful change coined by leading thinker Rosabeth Moss Kanter. To recap, these were:

Show up, speak up, team up, look up, don’t give up, lift others up.

In my next few blogs I will discuss why I believe groups and teams are key to organisational success. This is partly selfish. My hope is that sharing my thinking about something I care about – team work and collaboration – will also help me rebuild my own resilience and restore my own energy in trying to make a positive difference at the University of Kent.