Chapter 2: Communicating in Teams

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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

1. Listen
2. Understand the other point of view
3. Show concern for the relationship
4. Look for common ground
5. Invent new problem-solving options
6. 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