This document discusses meetings, teams, conflicts and interventions. It provides an overview of primary and secondary tensions in groups, counterproductive tendencies like conformity, and types of interventions. It also discusses characteristics of effective leadership, types of presentations like panels and symposia, and steps to create a quality team presentation.
Value Proposition canvas- Customer needs and pains
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1. CHAPTER8
Meetings and Teams:
Conflicts and Interventions
Griffin Harris
Erica Howard
Rachel Jermansky
Thomas Jackson
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
2. CH. 8 Overview
• Case Study: Gerald Sweeney
• Value of Meetings
• Primary & Secondary Tensions
• Counterproductive Group Tendencies
• Conformity
• Ethnocentrism
• Inadequate and Hidden Agendas
• Competition vs. Cooperation
• Tolerating High-Level Term Abstraction
• Types of Interventions
• Making Interventions Work
• Leadership
• Types of Collective Presentations
• Team Presentations
• Characteristics of a Quality Presentation
• Steps to Achieving a Quality Presentation
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
3. Case Study: Gerald Sweeney
• Senior Managing Director, likes efficiency and punctuality
• Meetings are a waste – skips one of the weekly Wednesday meetings
• New procedure introduced
• Subordinates left in dark; therefore, punished by Sweeney’s superiors
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
4. “Meetings, Bloody Meetings” (182)
• “...cul-de-sac where ideas are lured and quietly strangled” (181) –
Sir Barnett Cocks
• Most Problems: Waste of time and/or inconvenient interruption
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5. Values of Meetings
• To announce organizational changes and keep employees up to date
• To produce solutions and to increase the number of different solutions to
organizational problems
• To gain “buy-in” or acceptance of a decision through participation
• To “cultivate members as individuals” and create group cohesion.
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6. Teams
“Twice the work, half the credit.”
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7. Primary Tension
• “normal jitters and feelings of uneasiness experienced when groups first
congregate”
• First days of classes
• Anxiety over
• workload/work topic,
• ability to perform, or
• communication apprehension: anxiety about communicating, in general,
• unpreparedness
• team/individual past negative experience
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8. Secondary Tension
• “the stress and strain that occurs in a group later in its development.”
• Working in a group for a project
• Procedural: process of interacting with group is unproductive. Still hopeful.
• Equity: perception of inequality
• Disproportionate share of responsibilities or ignored by power holders
• Affective: personal dislike among individuals
• Clouds mental vision
• Substantive: “positive” legitimate conflict
• promote creativity, sharing of ideas, tests group strength
• should try to create disagreement to spur creativity and reach best product
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9. Counterproductive Group Tendencies
• Conformity
• Ethnocentrism
• Inadequate and Hidden Agendas
• Competition vs. Cooperation
• Tolerating High-Level Team Abstraction
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10. Conformity
• Group Think
• The Asch Effect
• Goal Lining
• All three are threats to team success
• All Create an illusion of group support
• Collaborative interaction is diminished
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11. Groupthink
• Irving Janis popularized the term
• Tendency for groups to make a decision without considering
alternatives
• Reduces creativity and spontaneity in meetings, resulting in
shortsighted solutions
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12. The Asch Effect
• Solomon Asch Experiment
• 4 out of 5 yielded to the pressures at least 1 time out of the 12
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13. Goal Lining
• Reach the goal is the only objective
• What is wrong with this?
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14. Cultural Elitism
• Ethnocentrism: “Tendency to think that our own culture is
superior to other cultures”
• Affective and Equity Tensions
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15. Inadequate Agendas
• Problems with Agendas
• Created to provide an illusion of structure and order instead of actually
facilitating structure and order
• Ignored
• Disregarded
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16. Hidden Agendas
• Personal/Political meeting objectives that are not shared with the entire group
• EXAMPLE: Goalof department is to find out what resources can be cut and
employees share things or hide things that may benefit them personally
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17. Competition vs Cooperation
• Cooperation facilitates effective communication
• High ego-involved individuals create competition
• Cooperation differs from conformity
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18. Tolerating High-Level Team Abstraction
• Vague Vocabulary
• EXAMPLE: Benefits, success & love
• Each member of the group may define “success” differently
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19. Intervention
• Tool of technique used to alter behavior that would likely not be altered had
there been no intervention
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21. Buzz Groups
• Used to increase participation and decrease potential for problems to equity
conflict
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22. Brainstorming and Brainwriting
• Idea generating intervention that involves identification and recording of ideas
relevant to topic being discussed
• Adam and Golanes say groups should take a break after brainstorming polling
brainstorming – Leader polls group members.
• This technique is good because it makes everyone participate
• Brainwriting: individual writes down ideas and draw from list during
brainstorming session
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
23. Normal Group Technique (NGT)
• Developed by Delbecq and Van de Van
• Participants write down their solutions to a problem
• Ideas are expressed, which are then written on a board
• Leader reviews ideas
• After clarifications, participants rank top five ideas
• The votes are then tallied, and the ideas with more votes are discussed
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24. Problem Census
• Members are polled initially regarding their individual perspective and
perceptions of problem
• Able to derive (before beginning) a better sense of task at hand and clearer
method of how group intends to meet project goals
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25. Risk Technique
• Requires participants to play the role of devils advocate
• After team decided on solution, each member plays devil’s advocate and
identifies a risk with that solution.
• The risks are recorded and proposal reevaluated.
• Most times reevaluation doesn’t result in elimination of proposal.
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26. General Procedural Model (GPM)
• Combines many of the techniques
• Steps:
• 1) Identify the problem: clarifies the objective for meeting (good idea to
use problem census)
• 2) Brainstorm
• 3) Evaluation
• 4) Selection of best idea: tries to come up with best solution (should
consider risk technique)
• 5) Put solution into effect: decide when and how this happens
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27. Making Interventions Work
• Interventions are only as good as the people who attempt to use them.
Intelligence, knowledge and communication skills do not always guarantee
effective teamwork
• In order for an intervention to work group members need to become
participant-observers
• Participant-observers are those in the group who concurrently participates and
observes the process of participation. They will comment on items on the
agenda and also ensure that the agenda is followed
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28. Leadership Responsibilities
• Plan for the meeting. Is the meeting necessary and what will be discussed,
• Get the meeting started. Don’t waste too much time at the beginning with
small talk.
• Keep the discussion on track. Stay on topic, meetings usually have time limits
and you don’t want to have to rush at the end.
• Summarize periodically
• Solicit comments from taciturn members. Just because a member of the group
isn’t talking doesn’t mean that they have nothing to share.
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29. Leadership Responsibilities (Cont.)
• Curtail verbose members. Don’t let one member of the group monopolize the
discussion.
• Employ Interventions. The leader should reduce negative group tensions.
• Conclude the meeting. Summarize what you have discussed and make other
important announcements regarding the next meeting.
• Plan for the next session. Figure out what will be discussed and handle any
logistics.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
30. Leadership Styles
• Authoritarian leaders are non-democratic and dictorial. They would determine a
meeting agenda.
• Laissez-faire leaders have a “hands off” approach and believe that the group
can guide itself. They assume that if an agenda is needed, the group would
decide to create one.
• Democratic leaders seek input and advice from the other group members.
Decisions that they make are done after considering concerns of the group.
They would seek input for the agenda and then create it themselves.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
31. Collective Presentations
• Team presentation have to appear as one presentation rather than disjointed
parts that donʼt flow
• There are 3 categories of collective presentations
• Panel Discussions
• Symposia
• Team Presentations
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32. Panel Discussions
• A group of individuals discussing a topic and are concurrently observed by an
audience.
• Members can begin with a prepared statement, but most comments are
impromptu and reactions to what others have said
• Usually have moderators to keep the conversation moving.
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33. Symposia
• A collection of individual presentations
• There is no collective work by the participants
• Participants will usually have differing perspectives on the same topic, in order
to help increase discussion.
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34. Team Presentations
• A collective effort to a single presentation
• The difference from other forms of presentation is the members will have
worked together prior to the presentation in order to present a cohesive
message.
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35. Characteristics of a Quality Presentation
• The introduction is clear, descriptive, inclusive, and engaging
• The presentation content comprehensively addresses the charge and
describes the response.In an oral presentation, each person knows what
others will be saying.
• Transitional statements have been considered and created that link one section
to another.
• The conclusion will summarize the entirety of the report and not simply the last
segment.
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36. Familiarity with All Material
• There will be no undesired content repetition.
• There will be no unexpected contradictory statements.
• There will be no surprising omissions.
• Members will be able to make intelligent references to other person’s
segments.
• There will be no sections that are clearly superficial when juxtaposed with
others of significant depth.
• Individual members and the group as a whole will adhere to time limits.
• It will be relatively easy to answer during a Q and A.
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37. Steps to Achieving Quality Presentation
• Use a modification of the general procedural model technique.
• Divide responsibilities and prepare individual outlines.
• Review Outlines.
• Discuss sequence and transitions.
• Identify message style.
• Plan the introduction and the conclusion.
• Practice individually.
• Practice the team presentation.
• Evaluation.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
38. Conclusion
• Meetings have flaws but are still necessary for effective organizational
communication
• In groups, awareness of common conflicts and counterproductive tendencies
is necessary to have effective organization communication
• Intervention techniques can increase participation in groups, reduce tensions,
and increase the flow of ideas
• Leadership and team work are needed to create cohesive team reports and
presentations
Tuesday, October 25, 2011