GROUPS VS TEAMS
Group: Two or more individuals who interact and are interdependent in order to achieve specific goals.
Work team: A group whose members use their positive synergy, individual and mutual accountability, and complementary abilities to work intensely on a specific common purpose.
Group development stages
Forming: members join and begin the process of defining the group’s goal, organization, and leadership.
Storming: individuals resist collective control and argue over leadership, resulting in conflict management.
Norming: Close relationships develop as the group becomes cohesive and establishes its norms for acceptable behavior.
Performing: The group can focus on the task at hand with a fully functional group structure.
Adjourning: The group is disbanding and is no longer concerned with high performance standards.
A. Group Performance Satisfaction Model
Major components that determine group performance & satisfaction include:
External conditions (Organizational conditions)
Overall strategy
Authority structures
Formal regulations
Available organizational resources
Employee selection criteria
Performance management (appraisal) system
Organizational culture
General physical layout
Group member resources (depends on the resources each individual brings to the group)
Knowledge
Abilities
Skills (interpersonal skills)
Personality traits (how the individual will interact with other group members)
Group structure
Roles
Norms
Conformity
Status systems
Group size
Group cohesiveness
Group processes
Group decision making
Conflict management
Group processes
Group tasks
B. Group Decision making
Groups make many organizational decisions.
- Advantages of group decision making include the following benefits:
a. Generate more complete information and knowledge
b. Generate more diverse alternatives
c. Increase acceptance of a solution
d. Increase legitimacy
- Disadvantages of group decision making include:
a. Time consuming
b. Minority domination
c. Pressures to conform
d. Ambiguous responsibility
COMMUNICATION
A. Definition:
- Transfer and Understanding:
Transfer means the message must be in a form that is easy to understand for the recipient.
Understanding means clearly distinguishing understanding the message from accepting it.
- Interpersonal communication: Communication between 2 or more people.
- Organizational communication: All the patterns, network, the systems of the communications within an organization.
B. Four functions of the communication (CEMI):
- Control member behaviors
- Foster motivation for what is to be done.
- Provide a release for emotional expression.
- Provide information needed to make decisions.
C. Interpersonal Communication
There are elements to the communication process that are important to understand. Each interaction that we have will typically include an encoding, decording, message, channel , and noise.
- Message: sender’s intended meaning
- Encoding:converting the message in symbolic form
- Channel: The medium through which the message travels
- Decoding:retranslating symbol into a message
- affected by personal characteristics of the receivers
- Noise:disturbances that interfere with the transmission, receipt feedback of a message
D.Interpersonal Communication Methods
• Face-to-face
• Telephone
• Group meetings
• Formal presentations
• Memos
• Traditional Mail
• Fax machines
• Employee publications
• Bulletin boards
• Audio- and videotapes Hotlines
• Computer conferencing
• Voice mail
• Teleconferences
• Videoconferences
• Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Nonverbal Communication:
- Communication that is transmitted without words.
• Sounds with specific meanings or warnings
• Images that control or encourage behaviors
• Situational behaviors that convey meanings
• Clothing and physical surroundings that imply status
- Body language: gestures, facial expressions, and other body movements that convey meaning.
- Verbal intonation: emphasis that a speaker gives to certain words or phrases that conveys meaning.
E.Organizational Communication
Types of organizational communication
Formal Communication: Communication that follows the official chain of command or is part of the communication required to do one’s job.
Informal Communication (Grapevine): Communication that is not defined by the organization’s hierarchy. • Permits employees to satisfy their need for social interaction. • Can improve an organization’s performance by creating faster and more effective channels of communication.
F. Direction of Communication Flow
1. Downward communication is communication that flows downward from a manager to employees. It is used to inform, direct, coordinate, and evaluate employees.
2. Upward communication is communication that flows upward from employees to managers. Upward communication can be used to keep managers aware of how employees feel about their jobs, their coworkers, and the organization in general.
The organizational culture influences the extent of upward communication. A climate of trust, respect, and participative decision making encourages a significant amount of upward communication. A highly mechanistic and authoritarian environment severely limits upward communication in terms of both style and content.
3. Lateral communication is communication that takes place among any employees on the same organizational level.
4. Diagonal communication is communication that cuts across work areas and organizational levels.
The increased use of e-mail facilitates diagonal communication in an organization. Diagonal communication has the potential to create problems if employees do not keep their managers informed about decisions they have made or action they have taken.
G. Organizational Communication Networks
The chain network represents communication flowing according to the formal chain of command, both downward and upward.
The wheel network represents communication flowing between a clearly identifiable and strong leader and others in a work group or team. The leader serves as the hub through which all communication passes.
The all-channel network represents communication flowing freely among all members of a work team.
The grapevine is the informal organizational communication network.
- The grapevine is active in almost every organization. One survey reported that 63 percent of employees hear about matters first through rumors on the grapevine.
- The grapevine can act as both a filter and a feedback mechanism.