Business Communication: Process and Product, 3e

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Communicating in Teams
Guffey text Ch 2, Thill/Bovee text Ch 2, Robbins
text Ch 8-9
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Why Use Teams?

• Two together can accomplish more than two
  separately
• When is this statement true?
• When is this statement not true?

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Why Use Teams?

• Better decisions
• Faster response
• Increased productivity
• Greater buy-in
• Less resistance to change
• Improved employee morale
• Reduced risks

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Beware Teams Arent Always the Answer

• Three tests
• Is the work complex, requiring different
  perspectives?
• Does the work create a common purpose/set of
  goals? Is purpose as strong a motivator as
  existing individual goals?
• Are group members involved in interdependent
  tasks?

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Characteristics of Successful Teams

• Small size, diverse makeup
• Agreement on purpose
• Agreement on procedures
• Ability to deal with conflict
• Use of good communication techniques
• Ability to collaborate rather than compete
• Shared leadership

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4 Stages of Team Development

• FORMING
• STORMING
• NORMING
• PERFORMING
• Teams can get stuck, or repeat stages.

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Roles Played by Team Members

• Task Roles
• Initiator
• Information seeker/giver
• Opinion seeker/giver
• Direction giver
• Summarizer
• Diagnoser

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Roles Played by Team Members

• Energizer
• Gatekeeper
• Reality tester

What kinds of statements might be made by these
role players?
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Roles Played by Team Members

• Relationship Roles
• Participation encourager
• Harmonizer/ tension reliever
• Emotional climate evaluator
• Praise giver
• Empathic listener

What kinds of statements might be made by these
role players?
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Roles Played by Team Members

• Dysfunctional Roles
• Blocker
• Attacker
• Recognition-seeker
• Joker
• Withdrawer

What kinds of statements might be made by these
role players?
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Skills for Team Leaders/Facilitators

• Task Relationships
• Goal setting
• Agenda making
• Clarifying
• Summarizing
• Verbalizing consensus
• Establishing work patterns
• Following procedures

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Skills for Team Leaders/Facilitators

• Interpersonal Relationships
• Regulating participation
• Maintaining positive climate
• Maintaining mutual respect
• Instigating group self-analysis
• Resolving conflict
• Instigating conflict

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ConflictFunctional vs. Dysfunctional
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Types of Conflict
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Task Conflict

• Low to moderate levels functional
• Positive effect on group performance when
  stimulates discussion

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Relationship Conflict

• Almost always dysfunctional
• Increases personality clashes
• Decreases understanding

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Process Conflict

• At low levels functional
• Becomes dysfunctional when
• Creates uncertainty about task roles
• Increases time to complete tasks
• Leads to members working at cross-purposes

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Conflict When to Call the Boss

• Conflict source is external to team
• Dysfunctional task or process conflict remains
  unresolved
• team applies conflict management process
• no immediate and sustained improvement
• Relationship conflict remains unresolved or
  creates hostile workplace environment

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Discussion Communication Matters

• Workplace Communication

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Managing Conflict

• Conflict management styles
• Six-step procedure for managing conflict
• Dealing with avoidance
• Group decision-making methods

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Conflict Management Styles
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Conflict Style Avoiding

• Behaviors
• Avoiding people you find troublesome
• Avoiding issues that are unimportant, complex, or
  dangerous
• Postponing discussion until later

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Conflict Style Avoiding

• Benefits
• Reducing stress
• Saving time
• Steering clear of danger
• Setting up more favorable conditions

• Costs
• Declining working relationships
• Resentment
• Delays
• Degraded communication and decision making

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Conflict Style Competing

• Behaviors
• Imposing of dictating a decision
• Arguing for a conclusion that fits your data
• Hard bargaining (making no concessions)

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Conflict Style Competing

• Benefits
• Asserting your position
• Quick victory potential
• Self-defense
• Testing assumptions

• Costs
• Strained work relationships
• Suboptimal decisions
• Decreased initiative and motivation
• Possible escalation of 4 horsemen

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Conflict Style Accommodating

• Behaviors
• Doing a favor to help someone
• Being persuaded
• Obeying an authority
• Deferring to anothers expertise
• Appeasing someone who is dangerous

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Conflict Style Accommodating

• Benefits
• Helping someone out
• Restoring harmony
• Building relationships
• Choosing a quick ending

• Costs
• Sacrificed concerns
• Loss of respect
• Loss of motivation

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Conflict Style Compromising

• Behaviors
• Soft bargaining (exchanging concessions)
• Taking turns
• Moderating your conclusions

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Conflict Style Compromising

• Benefits
• Pragmatism
• Speed and expediency
• Fairness
• Maintaining relationships

• Costs
• Partially sacrificed concerns
• Suboptimal solutions
• Superficial understandings

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Conflict Style Collaborating

• Behaviors
• Reconciling interests through a win-win solution
• Combining insights into a richer understanding

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Conflict Style Collaborating

• Benefits
• High-quality decisions
• Learning and communication
• Resolution and commitment
• Strengthening relationships

• Costs
• Time and energy required
• Psychological demands
• Possibility of offending
• Vulnerability risk

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Six-Step Procedure for Managing Conflict
Goal Collaborate or Compromise

• Listen
• Understand the other point of view
• Show concern for the relationship
• Look for common ground
• Invent new problem-solving options
• Reach a fair agreement

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Dealing with Avoidance

• Clear the air
• If youre on a team with someone who seems
  consistently irritated, a martyr, or
  passive-aggressive
• Ask for a private meeting
• Solicit feedback
• Listen without interrupting and with an open mind
• Request permission to respond with equal openness

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Group Decision-Making Methods

• Majority (vote)
• Consensus (buy-in)
• Minority (subgroup recommendation)
• Averaging (compromise)
• Authority rule with input

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each
method?
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Productive Meetings
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Is a Meeting Necessary?

• Topic is important
• Need for input/decision is urgent
• Requires an exchange of ideas
• A meeting is not necessary when
• Objectivedistribute information
• No immediate feedback required

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Productive Meetings

• Before the meeting
• Invite the right people
• those who have information
• those who make decisions
• those who implement decisions
• Distribute an agenda
• essential for introverts
• include required pre-meeting preparation

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Productive Meetings

• During the Meeting
• Establish ground rules
• Assign facilitator role
• Start on time (watch socializing)
• Introduce agenda, add items if needed or put on
  parking lot
• Appoint a recorder
• Encourage balanced participation
• Confront conflict frankly
• Summarize points of consensus

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Productive Meetings

• Ending the meeting
• End on time
• Review meeting decisions
• Remind people of action items (identify who will
  do what by when)
• Following up
• Distribute minutes of meeting
• Absentees (for record)
• list of decisions
• action items

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Organizing Team-Based Written and Oral
Presentations

• See text (p. 53-55)
• See consulting project on web site
• See boss (Loescher)
• Goal Successful, meaningful, and FUN project

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The End