Working in a group

(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)

Groups are very powerful and you on one hand have to abide by the rules of the group and on the other hand benefits are to be gained from group membership. The idea is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Also, people gain satisfactions, establish or confirm an identity, gain help and support, share and help in a common activity

Kakbadse et al. (1988) identified 4 groups.

Formal Groups may be departments or project teams, at least they have some formal recognition and authority.

Informal Groups might be groups of common interest, a group of friends or a network of black managers.

Primary Groups are with regular and frequent interactions and they usually have an important influence on their members’ values, attitudes and beliefs.

Secondary Groups are often larger and less cohesive.

There are several organisational uses of formal groups like distributing and managing work, problem solving and decision making, passing on information, co-ordination and liasing, …

You should try to have multicultural groups which results in not having an agreed social way of behaving. This should be remembered.

In virtual groups interactions are hard to manage due to lack of immediacy of face-to-face meetings.

Factors affecting Groups

The group size is important and a bigger group brings more skills, knowledge but also less influence for their members. It has been shown that 5–7 members is best and a group of 10–12 should be split up to sub groups.

The nature of the task needs to be realistic and important to the group for it to be effective. It should also have the right degree of challenge. You should pay attention that the tasks are split up and the group does not need to perform two tasks at the same time.

Resources and support are needed in adequate amounts.

External recognition is important for members to feel that the work of their group is accepted as being important to the organisation � motivation.

Group composition has to take into account the necessary competences to tackle the group’s task. But remember that a homogeneous group will have high satisfaction, less conflict and also less creativity while a heterogeneous group will have the exact opposite with the added bonus that the outcome will be more widely accepted.

When you contribute to a group’s discussion, it is important to attend to both the completion of the task and to the maintenance of the group.

Task oriented

\- Proposing (…ideas of courses of action)

\- Building (…adding to proposals)

\- Disagreeing

\- Giving and seeking info

\- Summarising

Maintenance oriented

\- Gate-keeping

\- Encouraging

\- Resolving conflict

\- Giving feedback

\- Recognising feelings

Sometimes it is difficult to see whether a particular action is maintenance-oriented or self-oriented (to satisfy personal needs).

There are several self oriented behaviours as of Kakabadse:

\- Attacking/defending

\- Blocking/stating difficulties

\- Diverting

\- Seeking sympathy/recognition

\- Withdrawing

\- Point-scoring

\- Over-contributing

\- Trivialising/diluting

Here are some common problems in groups. One of them are hidden agendas, which should be brought out into the open, and blind spots, which occur when some people know something about somebody else that the individual does not know. One of the main reasons is that people do not want to hurt others. Again, they should be (sensibly) brought out into the open.

Group anxiety come from stress, which grows with the size of the group. There are then fewer opportunities for immediate confirmation or feedback and you tend to fantasise about what other people think or intend. This will be dealt with as a group or on an individual level. You need to deal with this in a way that is felt to be constructive and mutually acceptable.

Groupthink is when, after some time and forgetting the reason, there is a sense of ‘that’s the way to do it’. Janis (1972) suggested that under certain conditions commitment to the group overrides the ability to assess situations realistically. This might be:

\- time pressure

\- cohesive group

\- isolated group

\- leader has a preferred solution

these are the symptoms:

\- exaggerated sense of importance of the group.

\- Unanimity

\- Rationalising away the less-preferred options

\- Appeals to morality

\- Negative stereotyping

\- Members should conform

\- Self-censorship on doubt

To work against groupthink try to keep up a diversity of opinion, try to aim at a moderate consensus in the group and possibly make somebody the devil’s advocate or invite new members with different ideas.

You also need to structure group involvement and there are three systems for this.

With Round robins everyone in the group has an equal chance and you are focussing attention on the ideas rather than on who suggested them.

Problem -> Thinking -> In turn share ideas -> write down -> done

Brainstorming works in such a way that only after the group has exhausted all its ideas is evaluation carried out.

If you have a large group then it might be an idea to split the group up into several, smaller, buzz groups of two to five people to discuss issues in depth. A wider range of approaches to a problem may emerge than would have come from one larger group.