Week 13 - Reflections

1. Mechanistic/organic structure (incl. degree and type of formalization, if any, and level of task interdependence

We would recommend that Sylvia organize her team using an organic structure. This structure is conducive to greater participation, information sharing and adaptability. There is also a high level of task interdependence which will serve as a motivator for team participation. Our team was very organic in structure and allowed to be very informal. The members of the team were dynamic in their roles on the team. This would work for Sylvia if her team is as dynamic as ours has been. It would probably benefit Sylvia greatly to have an initial face to face (f2f) meeting to determine quickly what general personality types each team member portrays. Sylvia also needs to ensure team roles are formalized and well-establish early on in setting up her virtual team; otherwise, ineffective coordination may result creating team inefficiencies. Depending on how formalized the project due date and process dates are, this first meeting may give all involved the opportunity to pick and choose tasks that fit there own personal work habits and skills, making the final outcome be of higher quality hopefully then might have been possible if tasks were assigned by some other means.

2. Design of individual jobs/tasks

Sylvia may want to divide the team tasks among the members. This could be done by asking and assessing the member’s strengths and weaknesses. The tasks should be within the individuals skill set so that it is done correctly and there is no stress placed on the individual. These tasks could be based on the following team roles: encourager (praise/support ideas of other team members), gatekeeper (encourage all team members to participate), harmonizer (mediates intra-group conflict and reduces tension), initiator (identifies and works towards goals) and summarizer (keep track of what’s said in team meetings). Our team was able to use Simon's individual skill set with his expertise with computers. Sylvia may need to keep tabs on the productivity of the team members to assess the appropriateness of individual tasks and assignments. Each person may also be asked to serve as more then one role. If Sylvia takes the time to determine where each members interest and skill set is, the design of each individuals task should become much easier.

3. Leadership, including shared leadership (if any)

Sylvia should identify people who show leadership qualities and perhaps let them take on some of the task responsibilities and follow up at a set date to see how things are progressing. With a new team, there will be some “ramp up” time period and this is the time period that work tendencies will start to appear obvious to other team members. Sylvia needs to organize her team in a way that will produce the best end results. She could assume the leadership in order to influence, motivate and enable her team. As noted in the text, “a team or work unit may have several leaders at the same time” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 360). With this in mind, she could also structure her team using shared leadership where the leadership is share among all team members. Our team was structured using shared leadership (all team members were leaders; there were no followers). This elevated some of the power issues. The team bought into the project and felt empowered to present their ideas without consequences. Leadership roles were based on the tasks that we were assigned. As noted in our blog, “Our shared leadership was established quickly after our first team meeting.” As ‘initiator’, Ellen took the lead to post the initial assignment to BB each week and often times provided an initial response to the assignment. As ‘summarizer’, Kara took everyone’s individual responses to assignments and consolidated into a single response for weekly blog postings. As ‘encourager’, Randy always supported the ideas of all team members. And as ‘gatekeeper’, Simon ensured our blogs were posted on time using his technical expertise. If the dynamics of Sylvia's team does not allow for shared leadership, she will need to look at a more acceptable type of leadership.

4. Decision making

Decision making is part of all groups and can be the most difficult. Multiple issues may come into play here and could cause some team issues. Sylvia needs to make sure she follows the Rational Choice Paradigm – “the view in decision making that people should – and typically do – use logic and all available information to choose the alternative with the highest value” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 198).

Here are a couple of problems her group may face with problem identification:

• Stakeholder Framing: People with “vested interests try to “frame” the situation by persuading decision makers that the available information points to a problem” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 201) that may not have any importance at all. Don’t let your team members persuade you down this path.


• Perceptual Defense: This is when people “block out bad news as a coping mechanism” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 201). This may not be true for everyone, but people may inadvertently avoid negative information. When this happens, the group could be going after the wrong problem.


• Mental Models: This may be a hard one to avoid in your group. This is when “visual images … of the external world are developed in our minds which help us understand and navigate in our surrounding environment” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 201). This is basically how things should be. This may prevent your team from seeing unique problems or opportunities because they don’t fit into you existing mental model.

While Sylvia should strive to use the “Rational Choice Decision-Making Process”: 1) identify problem or opportunity; 2) choose the best decision process; 3) develop alternative solutions; 4) choose the best alternative; 5) implement the selected alternative; 6) evaluation decision outcomes” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 199), she also needs to be aware that “…emotions also influence – perhaps even dominate – the decision-making process” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 200).

Other things for Sylvia to consider are to:

• encourage the team members of identify problems and opportunities;


• keep emotions out of the project;


• set reasonable time frames for completions of goals; and


• use brainstorming and not groupthink.

Silvia should also try to make sure everyone on the team knows to keep personal opinions out of the decision making process where it would not help the situation. This is a trap that many virtual teams stumble upon. When the majority of contact is made electronically, it can be difficult to ascertain the true meaning of what someone says in communication, which can lead to team members taking what was said personally when it may have not been intended in that way.

5. How to use power and influence and handle conflict

There are five (5) sources of power: 1) legitimate (certain roles can request certain behaviors of others), 2) reward (ability to control allocation of rewards), 3) coercive (apply punishment; i.e., peer pressure), 4) expert (capacity to influence others based on knowledge/skills) and 5) referent (respect for the power holder). It is difficult with the information given to determine Sylvia's source of power. Sylvia should use the power(s) that will provide the greatest influence for her team. She would have expert power if she knows more about the project than the other members of the team. If Silvia was given the task of organizing this team, then she will have some sort of legitimate power over her team members. If she has been given leeway to find people for the team, she should be in an even better position. Hopefully she can find people with a desire to do the task she has in mind for them.

Sylvia will need to know how to handle conflict. There wasn’t any conflict in our team; however, that will not always be the case. There are five (5) types of interpersonal conflict-handling styles: 1) forcing (win-lose orientation); 2) problem solving (win-win orientation); 3) compromising (middle-ground); 4) avoiding (smooth over) and 5) yielding (completely giving in). Sylvia needs to determine which conflict-handling style(s) will quickly resolve any conflicts amongst her team.

She also needs to keep in mind conflict is not always bad; it can be good as well. Conflict can bring better decisions, response organization, and team cohesion. Conflict can also cause stress, lower moral, create turnover, lower performance, and distorted information. Due to the high level of task interdependence, there may also be an increase in conflict. She should defiantly work towards getting the team members to engage each other in the beginning so each gets an idea as to each others work ethic and attitude so that conflict is kept to a minimum.

6. Values and shared norms that work well

Sylvia’s norms will tend to work better when the more closely the person’s social identity is connected with the group. When norms are followed, direct reinforcement is needed. Keep in mind “norms apply only to behavior, not to private thoughts or feelings” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 249). Also, the values and norms will most likely be that of the company, unlike our team that worked with our own values and norms.

Sylvia also needs to determine the values of each team member – what beliefs do they hold that have a tendency to guide their outcomes / course of actions. She will need to establish team norms – “informal rules and shared expectations that groups establish to regulate the behavior of their members” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 249).

7. Team dynamics issues, including storming, cohesiveness, etc.

Sylvia should make sure all team members are aware of any individual challenges that could affect the team dynamics. For example, are there certain days during the week you won’t be available due to other accountabilities; will you be travelling and out-of-pocket anytime throughout this assignment; does a non-traditional work schedule keep you from interacting with team members on a set bases. This will help to minimize any perceptual biases her team might foster towards other team members.

Given that they are such a small team, it is important that Sylvia establish team building and team trust early on in the development of her team. “Members of smaller teams also tend to feel more engaged because they get to know their teammates (which improves trust), have more influence on the group’s norms and goals and feel more responsible for team’s successes and failures” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 242). The three (3) foundations of trust in teams include: 1) identification-based trust – “based on mutual understanding and an emotional bond among team members” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 252); 2) knowledge-based trust- “based on the predictability of another team member’s behavior” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 252); and 3) calculus-based trust – “represents a logical calculation that other team members will act appropriately because they face sanctions if their actions violate reasonable expectations” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 252).

Should Sylvia find her team competing for team roles during the storming stage, as organizer of this virtual team, she’ll need to use her legitimate power to assign roles. While “smaller teams tend to have more cohesion than larger teams because it is easier for a few people to agree on goals and coordinate work activities” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 250), she also needs to be aware that the size of her team could also effect task performance since “small teams have less cohesion when they lack enough members to perform the required tasks” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 250). As noted above, Sylvia needs to make sure she’s assigning tasks based on preferred team roles to minimize any issues with cohesiveness.

Our team worked extremely well with each other. There was a bond that was established early on with our team members and we quickly established trust for each other. There was never a week that went by when we wondered if a given team member would fail to come through on their accountabilities. Everyone participated fully in weekly meetings and teleconferences. Each of us took our roles very serious and fulfilled our group’s goal of posting a response to our blog based on assignments.

8. Communication

As noted in the article ‘Surviving the paradoxes of virtual teamwork’ (Dube’ and Robey, 2008), it is important for a virtual team to meet f2f due to the benefit of interpreting ‘non-verbal cues’. This group is most likely not going to meet in a f2f meeting due to the distance that they are apart, but they could have scheduled teleconference and video conferencing meetings. We would recommend setting up these meetings for the team early on so everyone can get somewhat accustomed to that form of communication. The meetings could be a way of pulling all of the information together. This worked very well with our team and we believe it would work well for Sylvia’s team. With a team this diverse and spread out, matching a face to a name becomes very important in future communication and crisis mitigation. Other communication vehicles that should be used include e-mail and virtual whiteboards. While our team only had the initial f2f meeting, we continued to communicate effectively either through periodic teleconferences or through BB.

Sylvia’s communication will be the most important part of making the virtual team successful. She will experience a different barrier that our team didn’t face; she won’t have the ability to meet in the same room. But she does have the internet at your finger tips and video conferences will be extremely beneficial to her. Communication is a crucial step in each of the team development stages. Communication is needed for developing the team norms – “the informal rules and shared expectations that groups establish to regulate the behavior of their members” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010 p.249). In most work environments, you need to communicate to express your thoughts and opinions. In order to make her new group successful, multiple teleconferences or video conferences are going to be needed. Email does work, but it may not express the emotions or may be taken the wrong way when conflict may occur.

Sylvia needs to keep these few things in mind when communicating:

• Empathize: Ability to understand and be sensitive to the feelings, thoughts, and situations of others.


• Repeat the message: Rephrase the key points a couple times.


• Use timing effectively: Your messages compete with other messages and noise, so find time when the receiver is less likely to be distracted by other manners.


• Be descriptive: Focus on the problem, not the person, if you have negative information to convey.

9. Handling member differences (e.g., perceptions, emotional intelligence, commitment, stress, personality, etc.)

Sylvia need to present information about the project without bias and this may help with negative perceptions. She needs to give the team a need to commit to the project and this could be done by sharing with them the purposed impact that the project with have on the company. Sharing information and setting goals for the team will help to decrease the stress.

Our team was unique in that we shared a lot of the same values and norms. As a result, we experienced very little stress working as a team. If Sylvia isn’t as lucky to have a team with these similarities, she will need to make sure through emotional intelligence that she learns how to manage the emotions of her team. This may include consoling, inspiring and managing dysfunctional emotions. She will also want to make sure everyone feel involved which will increase their affective commitment (emotional attachment to, identification with and involvement) with the team.

Our guess is she may not be as lucky as our group experience was. When put into groups, you don’t have the ability to “screen” applicants and may be forced to be with some conflicting personalities. Our group didn’t have this type of issue. We were all relatively the same personality types and were all working together towards the same goal. There are some obstacles Sylvia may need to look out for. When faced with any group obstacle, she needs to think about each of the other group members individually.

When handling member differences, she must first know about the following: Motivation + Ability + Role Perceptions + Situational Factors = MARS.

• Motivation: represents the forces within a person that affect his or her direction, intensity, and persistence of voluntary behavior. Basically think about how each team member may vary in each of these.


• Ability: The natural aptitudes and learned capabilities required to successfully complete a task. Depending on your team member’s experiences and general natural aptitudes, ability may play a role in possible team differences


• Role perceptions: The extent to which people understand the job duties (roles) assigned to or expected of them. Being clear in the roles of each team member will hopefully alleviate any possible stress.


• Situational Factors: An employee’s behavior or performance depends on how much the situation supports or interferes with their task goals. Conditions beyond a groups control can constrain or facilitate behavior and performance.

Knowing this acronym will assist Sylvia in knowing possible factors that may affect her group’s behaviors and their performances.

Sylvia should also stress how far apart some of the team members are geographically, in order to sort of keep that in all team members’ minds as they go through with this project. This is going to make meeting very difficult, so without some sort of video conferencing setup, the whole team is going to have a hard time telling when other members might be offended or unmotivated by some off comment or poorly worded email. Perhaps Sylvia could see if anyone on the team exhibits high emotional sensitivity and put them in charge of managing the information the team needs, in order to reduce the amount of differing versions of correspondence.

10. Motivation of individuals

Sylvia needs to ensure that each member of the team is engaged in the team project. She needs to assess each members drives, needs and behaviors as well as encourage and use feedback from each member of the team.

She should make sure individual motivational needs; i.e., achievement (accomplish goals through own effort), affiliation (seek approval from others) or power (control over others), is also met. For example, Kara scored high in the team role of ‘summarizer’ and is motivated by ‘achievement’. Being assigned the role of summarizer, her motivational need of achievement was met each week by being able to provide the initial consolidated response that would eventually be used to post to our blog.

In the beginning, this may be one of the most important facets of team building Silvia should work towards understanding. A lot of conflict and attitude attributes of team members come from how motivated they are to complete a project. Silvia should also watch how she presents each task. A task that sounds un-motivating to someone might sound closer to what they want if the way the task is presented is catered to their work style; i.e., someone wanting more in the way of personal power might be told how much this particular task will affect the outcome of the project, and maybe give it some weight in the eyes of the member responsible.

References
McShane, S. & Von Glinow, M (2010). Organizational Behavior (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Dube’, L., & Robey, D. (2008). Surviving the paradoxes of virtual teamwork. Information Systems Journal; January 2009, Vol. 19 Issue 1, p3-30.

Week 12

The following is the analysis of our team’s individual jobs according to the Job Characteristic Model (JCM). As you can see from the results, all of our positions appear to be designed with high motivational potential with minimal potential for any of our positions to be designed with the low motivational potential. The following provides details of our positions as it relates to the Job Characteristic Model (JCM):

	Skill Variety	Task Identity	Task Significance	Autonomy	Job Feedback
Kara	High	High	High	High	Moderate-high
Ellen	High	High	High	High	High
Randy	High	Moderate-high	High	Low	Low-Moderate
Simon	High	Moderate	High	High	Moderate

Ellen has high degree in all core job characteristics. "Employees are more motivated and satisfied when jobs have higher levels of these characteristics" (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, page 177).

Randy has low degree in two of the core job characteristics - autonomy and job feedback. Autonomy - "Employees must be assigned control of their work environment to feel responsible for their success and failures” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, page 178). Job feedback- employees want information about the consequences of their work effort.

It is clear that Bill Kap’s current job design has the low motivational potential. The following provides details on Bill’s position as it relates to the JCM:


Bill Kap – Warehouse Employee

Skill Variety (low): this position involves the skills to use a hand dollies or a forklift to stack finished products on a pallet.

Task Identity (low to moderate): this position has an “identifiable piece of work” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 177) which provides narrow task identity.

Task Significance (low to moderate): as noted in the article – “A large warehouse operation is crucial to the efficiency of the Kitchener plant.” There is a high degree of task significance for the organization, but Bill may not share this same level of significances towards his job.

Autonomy (low to moderate): this position has a structured schedule; part of ‘system’ - follows a set of established procedures when performing job (no freedom or independence to schedule work or determine procedures).

Job Feedback (high): as noted in the article – “If warehouse employees get behind, the whole system becomes clogged and finished products stack up in the manufacturing plant.” Bill will be able to immediate tell if he's not doing well if the system becomes clogged. He has impact on getting the finished product ready for delivery which may give him a sense of feedback.



Bill’s current job’s ability to motivate and create job satisfaction is low. This may be why he is absent so often. Low skill variety and task identify / significance makes his job less meaningful which leads to low motivation to succeed. The results of this have been proven by Bill missing work repeatedly. Low / moderate autonomy can cause for the lack of performance and motivation.

His job and current work situation does not satisfy his needs. Each person works independently and there is no feedback for a good or a bad work performance. The only need that his current job satisfies is affiliation.

The following are actions we would recommend to Bill’s current boss to increase his motivation:

Job rotation (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, page 180) may be used to provide Bill with motivation. This will increase his skill variety and will make work more meaningful. Job enrichment (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, page 181) which has proven to give higher job satisfaction and motivation would be a definite plus for Bill, but not likely in this type of work environment. If this could happen, Bill’s boss could provide Bill with a more flexible schedule.

Bill needs to work at extra jobs to make more money. Possibly he would make more of an effort to limit his days out of work if there was a reward system (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, pages 172 – 175) in place which could also be used to increase his productivity. The company may also look at including the work force in discussion about how to increase employee satisfaction through goal setting (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, page 146). Also, find ways to get Bill to feel connected at work through drive to bond (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, page 140).

The majority of the team felt that Bill’s most dominant need is affiliation (nAff) (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, page 139). Individuals with nAff work well when their main focus is cultivating long term relationships. Bill’s boss may want to recommend a career path, possible in sales, where Bill could cultivate these relationships.

Bill’s motivational needs are not being met, leading him to feel much less loyal to the position. Bill’s boss might want to move Bill to another position. If he was to be placed in a position that a more extroverted work style, such as sales or customer service, he might end up having a much more motivating experience at work.

References
McShane, S. & Von Glinow, M (2010). Organizational Behavior (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill

Week 11

This week we were asked to compare and contrast our Motivational Needs based on the questionnaire we independently completed. The following are our individual results:

	Achievement	Power	Affiliation
Ellen	25	16	15
Kara	25	17	9
Randy	21	11	10
Simon	19	13	12

We were asked to consider how our differing needs, if any, could affect our team performance. We had a few different thoughts this week. All of our primary motivational needs involve achievement, which is why most of our team's work has turned out to be such high quality. None of us are motivated by personal recognition, so coming to a quick consolidated response each week is accomplished quickly and painlessly. One member felt that differing needs is a must to have a well balanced team. As a result of our team having high scores in affiliation, we may lack unbiased decision making. If our team had all scored high in power; each member may not have wanted to give up their concern with maintaining individual power. Others felt that differing motivational needs could affect our team performance by interfering with our own motivation to complete weekly assignments. For example, one team member expressed that they were turned off by individuals who are motivated by power, especially personalized power. Also, if a team member(s) is motivated by power, they can put the project behind so that they can have the power by fixing it! It was also thought that those who are motivated by affiliation are never able to get their work done because they need to make sure that everyone agrees and no feelings get hurt.

As a team, how will we ensure that each of our team’s motivation needs is met including practical steps we can take as we organize our work on our team project to design in ways to meet each team member’s unique needs? We already seem to cater to high achievers, which helps satisfy all of our primary needs. It doesn't feel like any of us are feeling closed in or have our hands tied, which is why those of us with higher power needs hopefully haven't had any qualms with it. If our needs had been different from each other, we would have needed to make sure we understood the different motivation needs of our team mates and to do our best to accommodate their needs if different than our own needs without it effecting our motivation. Understanding each team members motivational needs will assist in getting their needs met – keeping in mind our own motivational needs but willing to adjust them and compromise to meet each team members. We also need to ensure that we don’t let our own needs become overpowering and close ourselves off to each other team members needs.

Based on the case we read about Bill Kap, the majority of the team felt that Bill’s most dominant need was affiliation since he was involved in multiple activities. Bill wants affiliation because he values his outside affiliations more than he does his work. He needs to feel connected. Another team member felt that affiliation is Bill's driving motivator, but not when it comes to work. The fact that he had less attendance problems with a more hands off management approach leads this team member to believe that power is also a driving factor for him, as he probably secretly takes offense to some micro-managing. And still another team member felt his dominant need was achievement – that perceptual bias would say Bill’s dominant need is affiliation since he is widely known for his socializing and “likes a good time”. However, in looking at his job tasks, they are more in line with achievement. Instead of being a member on the soccer team (affiliation), he is the referee (individual task). In the warehouse, he is individually tasked with putting finished products on a pallet vs. working on an assembly line with other employees where products are being manufactured (sequential interdependence).

We all agreed that power is definitely not a need for Bill. Power is his least dominant need since he does better with hands-off type managers. It appears that he is de-motivated by these types if individuals. The way that this manifests itself is through absenteeism.

Week 10

While the halo effect could affect the validity of our team peer evaluations of shared leadership, our group does not feel it will. Our team is dynamic and each person picks up and does what needs to be done. The team is cohesive in its approach to weekly assignments. There don’t appear to be any hidden agendas or personality conflicts on the team. Because our personality types are very similar, we’ve not experienced some of the challenges other teams with more diverse personalities may encounter. We have shown great first impressions and have carried out good work throughout the semester. We have maintained open communications and work well together.

But if the question is to be hypothetical, each group member could control your grade if a bad impression was made. The contact hypothesis (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 81) “states that, under certain conditions, people who interact with each other will be less prejudiced or perceptually biased against each other”. “The halo effect is most likely to occur when concrete information about the perceived target is missing or we are not sufficiently motivated to search for it.” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 78). To avoid a bad effect to our ratings, more interaction with group members would help and missing information would be needed. Since our team is very good about gathering the data and information needed before we discuss the problem, we proactively negate the halo effect before it arises.

We have evolved and have made our team successful. After completing the Team Roles Preference Scale again, our roles are the same as note on ‘Week 6 Update’ of our blog. We have grown in our trust of each other and ourselves. The assignments are an opportunity for the group to discuss what they have learned during the week. We also have mutual respect for each other. The team is dynamic and there is no distinct leader. Each person fills in where they are needed.

Our shared leadership was established quickly after our first team meeting. We continue to communicate well and definitely have built trust knowing each others contributions will be completed on time. Each member’s contribution is valued and made part of the end product.

As we head into the final stretch of the course, our group needs to continue to be understanding of personal schedules. We will also need to continue to communicate and be as flexible as possible with each others needs. Along with these team commitments, each of us has made the following personal commitment on areas to improve on / remain consistent with:

• Ellen plans on fulfilling the needs of the assignment with the help of the team.
• Kara will continue to consolidate individual responses which will be used to post our team’s collaborative response.
• Randy will continue to work towards getting assignments in on time.
• Simon will work to improve his information gathering and try to improve his timely submissions to the discussion.

References

McShane, S. & Von Glinow, M (2010). Organizational Behavior (5^th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill

Week 9

This week we were tasked with reminiscing about problems we have encountered in our past workplaces that were caused by some sort of attribution error, such as a self-serving bias or self-fulfilling prophecy. We each discussed times when these have affected us, and detailed how this can help us to stop these same issues from effecting our group dynamic.

While raising children, Ellen has seen self-serving bias. They are always blaming their failures on the external factors.

Kara has seen fundamental attribution error in her workplace when dealing with some individuals who cannot get the job done according to established procedures. Without Kara understanding procedures weren’t being followed due to being understaffed (external factor), this could cause her to avoid working with these individuals.

Simon has seen people get "thrown under the bus" because of a self-serving bias during project work. As a member on a team working on a website, the client refused to provide guidance, even with the project leaders continued harassment. When the project was not delivered on time, the project leader told the client it was Simon's fault because he could not do the required coding for the project, when really it was the project leaders fault for not getting the final deliverable list nailed down, leading to scope creep.

Randy has seen self serving biases many times in his work environment. A former co-worker would always have the tendency to take credit for department successes. This tendency made for low cohesion and a tendency for Randy to be less of a team player. The self serving bias can cause many issues within a small department, especially when the outcomes are unfavorable and you get blamed for it. Also, Randy has personally experienced fundamental attribution error. Through the “grapevine” at work, it may have been mentioned he comes in late (internal factor) but do these people really know his schedule. This attribution error is understandable, but the perceivers need to get the facts straight. With his work responsibilities, he’s required to stay late and work weekends (external factors).

In our group situation, there are many opportunities to have attribution errors since we do not interact with each other for any length of time and we have very limited information about each other. There is the potential to blame each other for our failures. While our group has only been together for a relatively short period of time, the limited information that we do know about each other has made us aware of external factors that “could” hinder team member’s contribution; i.e., fluctuating work schedule; raising small children, traveling; etc. Without this information, it could appear team member(s) aren’t pulling their weight. Also, along with causing low cohesion and lack of team work mentioned above, internal and external factors have bad effects on work teams; i.e., causing deadline delays, a “bad” end product, etc.

How will each of us avoid attributions errors in our team for the rest of this semester? Ellen will try to give the team the information needed concerning her needs. We communicate and discuss what we have for needs concerning this class. Kara will clarify with the team member(s) what external factor(s) might be causing them not to contribute to the weekly team assignment(s) should this happen. Simon hopes to take responsibility for problems that arise because of his own doing. Our team is thoughtful enough to see the wisdom in that and he does not feel that anyone would blame something on a fellow team mate when they know that it isn't the case. Randy indicated we will continue to communicate openly. Also by reading Chapter 3 and knowing attribution errors exist will be a great help in avoiding them.

Week 8

As part of this week’s assignment, we were asked to complete the Jung Typology Test (personality test) and an assessment to determine whether or not we were an introvert or extrovert. The results of both the test and assessment are as follows:

Jung Typology Test:

Ellen - INTJ

Kara – ISFJ

Randy - ISTJ

Simon - INTP

Self-Assessment 2.7:

Ellen – Moderate introversion

Kara – Between extroversion and introversion

Randy - Moderate introversion

Simon - Moderate introversion

A summary of our test results indicate we are all introverts, split between sensing & intuitive, majority in thinking and majority in judging. The results all seem to fit each of us.

When it comes to our team’s energizing preferences, we are all introverted - all of us obtain our energy mainly from the internal world. How we take information in is split – half of us receive directly from the external world (sensing) and half of us receive directly from the internal or imaginative world (intuition). With the exception of one person who makes decisions based on emotions (feeling), the majority of our team reaches a decision through logic (thinking). Our team organizes their lives around plans (judging) with the exception of one team member who tends to be more flexible and spontaneous (perceiving).

Our team has a tendency to take an objective approach (thinking) when reaching a decision. Having three (3) thinking & one (1) feeling will possibly lead us to make logical decisions and analyze all possible aspects when making these decisions. Having one (1) person with the feeling characteristic will give us a balance. Kara ensures that we take a subjective approach (feeling) when working on our blog. Our team also has a tendency to live our lives very planned and organized (judging). Having one (1) person being perceptive has led others to be more open and make us more dynamic. Simon ensures that we stay flexible (perceiving) in our approach and that we consider all options before posting our final blog. While Kara and Randy tend to be more detailed oriented (sensing), Ellen and Simon ensure our group sees the bigger picture (intuiting) when approaching team assignments.

All personality types are represented (mix of all results) with the exception of our energizing preference (we are all introverts) according to the Jung Typology results. While this could present itself as a pitfall, a couple of our team members seem to be pretty close to the extroverted side, at least as far as thinking outside the box. While our test results show us to be introverted, sometimes we obtain our energy from the external world (extrovert). We are all creative individuals, but in most settings we would prefer to keep more of our creative solutions to ourselves. Whereas in a group of like minded introverts, we have less of a feeling that our remarks will be criticized, so we are more open to sharing them then we would normally be. Also, having a strong extrovert could possible hurt the team when we brainstorm or converse with each other. On the other hand, it could limit us in communication, but it hasn’t to date. Even though we all scored as introverts, in this type of team setting it seems to work really well. No one team member dominates our weekly discussions. When we converse, everyone generally stops and allows everyone to finish their thoughts, which might not be as easy with a big extrovert on the team. We probably all appreciate this, but an extrovert might get annoyed with our conversations!

Based on the “Big Five” (CANOE: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness to experience, Extroversion.), we have all the personality dimensions and demonstrate these on a weekly basis within our group communication. We have high conscientiousness, high agreeableness, low neuroticism, high openness to experience, and the opposite of extroversion.

Our team effectiveness is impacted by having a balance of all characteristics. We feel that our personality types compliment each other. As a result, we are able to effectively work together to complete team assignments and to post quality work to our blog.

Week 6 Update

Ellen relies on referent power since she’s fairly new in her position and has not acquired expert power. This type of power works well when interacting with her patients and co-workers. Kara tends to rely on expert power in performing her job. She’s valued in her department for her knowledge and expertise. She also relies on referent power as she is respected by her peers for her willingness to help increase their knowledge. Randy tends to rely on legitimate and expert power. Legitimate power is the easiest to use at Widget Inc. since people tend to respond quicker to those with higher authority. If he needs to get certain tasks completed, he‘ll use his legitimate power. If his legitimate power isn’t enough, he relies on those with higher legitimate power in order for them to communicate what he needs. He frequently relies on other’s expert power when working on projects since these individuals are looked to for their work process knowledge /skills. People will tend to listen when the “expert” speaks. Simon generally relies on expert power. He holds expert knowledge within his organization which he uses to make discretionary decisions in order to complete tasks. He uses coercive power, if needed, to move obstacles in order to complete a project.

Ellen uses integrating as the method of choice to handle conflict. She finds that she is more comfortable in situations where she is aware of the root of the problem and then works to fix it. She uses this type of conflict resolution daily as a nurse. Kara tries to use a problem-solving approach when it comes to handling conflict. She finds it counterproductive when working on complex task not to try to come up with a 'win-win orientation'. If not, she feels it can potentially de-motivate team members and suppress creativity. If; however, the situation becomes too emotionally charged, she reverts to an avoiding approach. Simon’s preferred method of conflict handling is integrating; however, once a decision is made, he relies on a dominating approach. Instead of letting others change the outcome, he takes a stand to ensure the best solution is adopted. Randy’s preferred style when it comes to handling conflict is based on what the conflict is and how strongly he feels towards the problem. Typically, he avoids conflict but will always work towards the ultimate best solution and won’t settle.

Ellen would like to expand her expert power. She doesn’t feel she’s an expert in anything even though she has worked in the field of medicine for over 30 years. She uses avoiding for conflict management at times and would like to have the confidence as an expert to take on the little issues instead of avoiding them. While Kara's tendency is to use an avoiding approach in emotionally charged situations, she’d like to learn how to use a problem-solving or compromising approach as she realizes the conflict is still there and will continue to manifest itself until dealt with. She would like to develop reward power. Simond would like to develop his referent power in order to reduce the need to use his coercive power. Change is difficult but in order for Randy to expand his skills in conflict management, he would like to try less avoiding. As for power sources, he believes using influence would expand his skills.

Our team roles continue to develop and are dynamic. Ellen is the initiator, Kara is the summarizer, Simon is the gatekeeper and Randy is the encourager. We’re all harmonizers since we’re all professional and want to succeed at this project. There is no clear leader in our group. The roles of summarizer and creating the blog are well defined.

We continue to work well as a team. We’re all task oriented and have team trust to complete assignments on time and correctly. The initial f2f meeting and multiple teleconferences have allowed us to build team cohesion.

Week 5 Update

Communication for week 4 was 99% group discussion board. Everyone tried to participate, but because of fragmented work schedules, our interaction seemed to be less coordinated than earlier weeks. Regardless of our conflicting schedules, each group member contributed to the final assignment. We were able to complete this week’s assignment by using Group Task Behaviors such as proposing how we approach the assignment and building on that idea.

There are a couple of minor roles starting to develop. Kara has taken the lead on editorial functions and Simon has been uploading the edited blog entries. All other roles are dynamic. We have moved into the norming stage of development. If all goes well over the next several weeks, we should move into the performing stage.

All of our companies appear to have similar espousal values such as integrity, commitment and citizenship. Other espousal values that were not shared by our companies included accountability, compassion, customer service driven, service level excellence and ethically minded. We all feel that the enacted values are different than the espousal values. For example, in one company, organizational leaders valued citizenship, excellence and commitment as these values contributed to the financial bottom line. The employees at this same company valued compassion, integrity and excellence which were more in line with job satisfaction. Another company’s espousal value of integrity may not be enacted since some decisions are made by focusing on the smaller picture, not the bigger picture causing integrity to be lost.

The majority of us had many old pictures and representations of how our businesses have progressed over the years including documents, awards, plagues and pictures of former presidents. These artifacts are key in showing the sustainability of many of our companies.

We all feel that our companies have strong corporate cultures based on the fact that our companies have been in existence for many years. For some companies, our corporate culture has been re-shaped through the acquisition of other companies. Our success is based on our culture being dynamic and changing based on current business environments. We all believe that an adaptive culture is most effective in creating member expectations because it is flexible and allows employees to define their roles within the organization. It also helps the company to be more competitive.

Third week update

Our team met once face to face (f2f) at USM’s Portland campus where we got to know each other pretty quickly. We all turned out to be team players. Each of us brought our winter survival practice answers with us. Sitting in a conference room without any threat of survival, it was easy for our team to make rational choices based on concepts outlined in the Rational Choice Decision-Making process (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 199). We know “…that emotions also influence -- perhaps even dominate -- the decision making process” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 200). We discussed how and why we would use the item and as a team we agreed on the ranking that we would assign for each item. We all had the opportunity to justify our individual rankings if different from other team member’s rankings. Through this open dialogue approach, we were able to work as a team to come up with the best choice for our team’s ultimate survival. When we sat down and discussed it logically, we were almost on target with the expert. Our team score was 20. The lowest individual score was 22.

During week 2, our team met f2f. We found this extremely useful to meet our teammates and to be able to have this verbal connection to collaborate as a team to come up with our first blog. The team meeting was a more efficient use of time. We were able to complete our assignment in an hour and a half.

During week 3, our team’s only recourse of communication was the Team 3 Group Discussion Board up until Friday. On Friday, we met via teleconference. Blackboard gave us the opportunity to collect our thoughts before our teleconference. The teleconference provided us with the opportunity to collectively discuss the content of our second blog.

At this point in time our team has all the components of Team Competencies (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 244). We are in the forming stage of team development as it relates to the Stages of Development (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 246). We are working on Team Cohesion (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 250). This will be accomplished when we finish this week’s blog. Along with holding a f2f kick-off meeting, we are also using information and communication technologies (ICTs) as recommended in ‘Surviving the paradoxes of virtual teamwork’ (Dube’ and Robey, 2008) to continue to develop our team relationship and to complete team assignments. Everyone has been posting thoughtful ideas concerning how best to complete the assignments on Blackboard. Given the early stages of our team and having a successful f2f meeting in Week 2 and teleconference in Week 3, we don’t feel at this time that there’s anything that’s not working. Everyone is participating as a cohesive team. We all appear to be playing similar roles at this time.

References

McShane, S. & Von Glinow, M (2010). Organizational Behavior (5^th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Dube’, L., & Robey, D. (2008). Surviving the paradoxes of virtual teamwork. Information Systems Journal; January 2009, Vol. 19 Issue 1, p3-30.

First Meeting!

Our team introduced ourselves via Blackboard. We also met face-to-face as recommended by Dr. Shelleman. We will continue to communicate with each other via Blackboard and meet face-to-face, as needed, on Tuesday’s. We’re looking into the possibility of connecting with each other via teleconference. This will ensure our team stays connected each week in order to meet course requirements.

We discussed our responses to the Individual Homework Week 1 - Questions for Reflection and Dialogue. We reviewed our individual scores for the “What Team Roles Do You Prefer?” exercise. Two (2) people were strong in the Encourager, one (1) person was strong in the Gatekeeper; one (1) person was strong in the Harmonizer; two (2) people were strong in the Initiator and one (1) person was strong in the Summarizer. We feel we have a well-rounded team! We also took some time to discuss our individual ratings for the Team Exercise 7.4 - Winter Survival Exercise. After explaining to each other our rational for our individual ranking using the concepts presented in the “Guidelines for Reaching Consensus", we collaborated as a team to come up with a team ranking as well as a survival plan.

We also came up with our team name (Team Amguli).