NAME: Identification Number: COURSE: LECTURER:

prisca amaten bango bba f1308 - 0322 Team DYNAMICS MR. singh sureenDEV

TABLE OF CONTENT Topic pages

Introduction...3 1. Explain Groupthink. What actions may a team leader take to minimize this effect? .........4 2. Explain the Abilene Paradox. How may a team leader handle the concerns of an individual who raises his disagreement in the future? ......................................................5 3. Have you experienced social loafing or free riding in a team setting? What could have been done or can be done to avoid these effects?.....................................................6

4. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Electronic Brainstorming. How would you make this method effective? .............................................................................7

5. Describe the elements of Rater Bias and Ratee Bias in Performance appraisal.8 Conclusion...9 References..10

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INTRODUCTION Business environment of this age rely heavily on teams to accomplish their tasks, but due to team flexibility, issues arising and thereby affecting team performance, some of the issues are discussed in the below paragraph and ways on how to handle such situations are also highlighted.

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Question 1 Groupthink is the tendency of the members of a group to yield to the desire for compromise at the cost of considering alternative courses of action. This occurs when team members place too much importance on a particular priority above others even when the agreement reflects poor judgment, improper or immoral actions. However, it is needed and involves a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgment as a result of group pressure towards conformity of opinion. (Janis 1998). Adhering to pressure groupthink pose, can lead the decision makers to misjudge overlooking other information, feel too confident and embrace an attitude of immunity. Team Size Monitoring: Size of the team must be correlated with groupthink in other to minimise the effects of groupthink because teams with larger number of member is likely to experience this occurrence. Intimidation and hesitation increases among the group as the size of the team grow. Although there is no specific amount of members that make a perfect team size but it is a generally belief that a team more than ten members may feel less personal responsibility for the team outcomes and possess some risky attitude (McCauley, 1998). Structure Discussion Methods and Alleviate Time Pressure: By sharing guidelines on systematic decision making processes and reducing time pressure. This can also be seen as a way of performing their duties in the team without allowing time and peer pressure and thereby avoiding wrong decision making. Leaders can ease groupthink effects conditions of lack of logical principals and stress. Use the Six Thinking Hats approach: In a bid of minimizing the effect of groupthink, it is important for leaders to explore the solution without narrowing down too quickly. Leaders can introduce the Six Thinking Hats approach which improves mental functioning and encourages the team to take more different path or think outside the box sometimes.

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QUESTION 2 According to Abilene Paradox is a situation where a group of individuals agree to a course of action based on the notion of it is best for the group even with going against the preferences of members of the group. This occurs when individuals feel their objections are not strong enough to support changing the minds of others in their group. It is commonly referred to as rocking the boat (Baumeister, 1988). It involves a common breakdown of group communication in which each member mistakenly believes that their own preferences are counter to the other member of the group and therefore, does not raise objections. Large number of teams thread through this path in making collective decision but because of the philosophy or procedures of agreement in the group, they often end up on this road. A team leader handles the concern of individual who raises disagreement in the future by: Conduct a Private Vote: This a situation where secret polling is conducted in other to gain individual opinion on a particular decision without the fear of other members and eliminating the attitude of doing what the team wants to do and assuring them of anonymity and then share the overall outcome with the team (Harvey, 1974). Reduce Status Gap: High status members in a group are often at the center of communication and lower status members are likely to feel pressure to conform quickly. In a group where majority of the members are of high status, the lower status member may not be able to speak out their opinion on issues because they are often overwhelmed by the high status member achievement, experience or resume (Harvey, 1974).

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QUESTION 3 Social loafing is the tendency of certain members of a group to get by with less effort than what they would have put when working alone. This behavior can cause problems for the dynamics of the team and active team members pick up the slack of the loafers which can cause anger and dislikes within the team. Free rider effect, where some members do not put in their share of work under the assumption that others efforts will cover their underperformance and cause Sucker effect, where the other that is the fully performing members lower their efforts in response to the free riders attitude. Social Loafing has the possibility of individual group members to reduce their work effort as groups increase in size when performance is needed in a group such as miss meetings, show up late, and fail to start or complete individual tasks. (Leigh, 2008) In an effort to reduce social loafing effects in teams, the following strategies can be implemented: Reward Team Member Performance: Team members should recognise and reward

contributions by individuals. It is important for team members to feel appreciated and acknowledged by members of their team as well as by the organisation. Members are likely to loaf in a group if their contribution is less recognise and are more likely to cheat the organisation whenever they feel they have been treated unfair (De Cremer, 2002). Using Team Contracts: At the beginning of every teamwork, members should develop a written statement of what to achieve and how is going to be achieved which includes division of labour among the members. This system will totally eliminate social loafing because each member knows what he or she is expected to do during the course of the task. Therefore, all the members will put in extra effort to complete their task in other not to be labeled (Katzenbach, 1993). Right Staffing Level: Maintaining the right staffing level is important to reduce social loafing in teams, as the team grows personal contribution to the team becomes less important to the team chances of success. Basically, as the team increases in size the feeling of insignificance increases.

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QUESTION 4 Electronic Brainstorming is the use of computers to allow members to interact and to exchange ideas. During this type of brainstorming, members are seated around a table contains computer stations and large screen in other to project ideas generated by members. The ideas gathered using this brainstorming methods are unknown and tends to express more freely an in greater quantity. It also gives organisations the opportunity to gather is ideas efficiently, organize them, make decision and increase productivity (Jessup, 1993) ADVANTAGES Entry of Ideas: This is the generation of different ideas from different sources by members of the team in real time. Electronic brainstorming enables each member to generate their ideas and at the same time share it with the group due to its mode of information generation and connection base. SIZE: In electronic brainstorming, large number of members can easily be handled without experiencing free riding. This is an advantage for organisation, putting mind to work on the problem and involving several people in the creative process. It will also improve organisational memory. DISADVANTAGES Loss of Social Interaction: Interaction at work brings about inefficiencies in performance but nonverbal communication such as facial expressions, laughing is important for building feelings of relationship and trust between members. This lack of communication may leave the team less satisfied than when traditional brainstorming is used. Small Teams: Smaller electronic brainstorming group will not generate as many ideas as larger groups. Although it does not mean that this kind of brainstorming is bad but larger groups tends to be more productive. However, it does not mean smaller group is less effective than traditional brainstorming.

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QUESTION 5 A rater can be define as the assessment of individuals or employees based on their performance in a specific period of time by a superior power, while Ratee is the person whose performance is under check. A ratee is also known as the employee. Rater bias may be based on favoritisms against people of a certain age, sex, religion, color, national origin, or others. When a rater makes an early decision about an employee, and then ignores the employees actual performance, the rater is seen to have first impression bias (Leigh, 2008). Some of the elements of rater bias are; Halo: This is the situation whereby the rater is been one sided. Once the rater knows one positive or negative fact about an individual, they tend to tailor other information with their initial perception. Reciprocity: This is when the rater feel obligated to return favours based on what the ratee did in the past. The rater sees it as an avenue of making it up to the ratee for the good deeds exhibited in the past. However, this will reduce the integrity of both parties drastically. Some of the elements of Ratee bias are: Social Comparison: Ideally raters evaluation should be objective and based on external define standards. Rater should be conscious that employees will compare response with each other and this is a habit among the employees. Egocentric Bias: This is the feeling of being under recognized by the rater for the effort, work they do and the value they add to the firm. Employees expect more rating after the evaluation because they belief their contribution to the group or firm is more extensive. Therefore, it is advised, the rater should provide facts to justify the ratings (Caruso, 2006)

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CONCLUSION Having all this key issues in mind, the leader can guide against any form of discrepancies among the team members and present or future consequences are curbed likewise on the part of the members.

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REFERENCES Baumeister, R.F. and Scher, S. J., (1988). Self Defeating Behaviour patterns among normal individuals. Psychological Bulletin. Issue 104, pp. 3-22. De Cremer, D., (2002) Respect and Cooperation in social dilemmas: The importance of feeling included. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Pp. 1341-1345 Harvey, J., (1974) The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement. Organisational Dynamics, vol.3. Pp.63-80. Hempel, J., (2006) Big blue brainstorm, Business week, p.70. Janis, I. L., (1998) Victims of Groupthink. 2nd Edn Boston Houghton Mifflin. Pearl Publisher Jessup, L. M. and Valacich, J. S. (1993) Group Support Systems. New York: Macmillan. Katzenbach, J.R. and Smith, D.K. (1993) March-April. The discipline of teams. Havard Business Review, issue 71(2). Pp. 111-120. Leigh, L. T. (2008) Making the Team a Guide for Managers, 3rd Edn Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Pearson Prentice Hall. McCauley, C. (1998) Groupthink Dynamics in Janis Theory of groupthink: Backward and Forward. Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes. Pp.142-162

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