Chapter 8

Team Dynamics

Chapter 9
Communicating in
Organizations
1
AGENDA
• Take Up Test 1 & Discuss What’s next!
• Team effectiveness model
• Stages of team development
• Factors that contribute to team cohesiveness
• Activity: Lost at Sea
• Brainstorming
• Communication: process model, the grapevine, cultural and
gender differences
• Keys to effective communication
• Active listening
2
TEST 1 REVIEW

3
What’s Next?
WEEK / DATE CHAPTER DUE
Week 8: March 6 Chapter 8 AND 9 CH 8 AND CH 9 online quizzes due
Team Dynamics & March 12th
Communication

Week 9: March 13 Chapter 10 CH 10 online quiz

Power & Influence due March 19th

Week 10: March 20 Chapter 11 TERM ASSIGNMENT DUE 25%

Conflict & Negotiation CH 11 online quiz
due March 26th

Week 11: March 27 Chapter 12 AND 13 CH 12 AND CH 13 online quizzes

Leadership & due April 2nd
Organizational Structures

Week 12: April 3 Chapter 14 CH 14 online quiz due April 9th

Organizational Culture

Week 13: April 10 NO CLASSES – Good Friday

Week 14: April 17 FINAL TEST 4
FINAL TEST in class 30%
What are Teams?
• Groups of two or more people
• Exist to fulfill a purpose
• Interdependent – interact and
collaborate
• Mutually accountable for
achieving common goals –
influence each other
• Perceive themselves to be a
team

McShane/Steen/Tasa Canadian OB9e © 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. 

5
All rights reserved.
Many Types of Teams
Three distinguishing characteristics of teams:
• Permanence
• How long that type of team usually exists

• Skill differentiation
• Degree of skill/knowledge diversity in the team

• Authority differentiation
• Degree that decision-making responsibility is distributed
throughout the team or centralized

6
Discussion:
The Problem with Teams

• The late management guru Peter Drucker said: “The

now-fashionable team in which everybody works
with everybody on everything from the beginning
rapidly is becoming a disappointment.”
• In your tables discuss three problems
associated with teams

7
Team Advantages/Challenges

Advantages
1. Make better decisions, products/services
2. Better information sharing
3. Increase employee motivation/engagement

Challenges
4. Process losses: resources needed for team maintenance
5. Social loafing: members potentially exert less effort in
teams than alone
6. Brooks’ Law: adding more people to a late software
project only makes it later!
8
Informal Groups
• Groups that exist primarily
for the benefit of their
members
• Reasons why informal
groups exist:
• Innate drive to bond
• Social identity -- we define
ourselves by group
memberships
• Goal accomplishment
• Emotional support
McShane/Steen/Tasa Canadian OB9e © 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. 
9
All rights reserved.
Stages of Team Development
• Forming
• learn about each other and
evaluate membership

• Storming
• conflict; members proactively
compete for roles

• Norming
• roles established; consensus around team
objectives and team mental model

• Performing
• efficient coordination; highly cooperative;
high trust; commitment to team objectives;
identify with the team 10
 Team Effectiveness Model
Team States
• Norms
Organizational
• Cohesion
and Team
Environment • Team Efficacy
Team
• Team Trust •
• Rewards Team Design Effectiveness
• Accomplish tasks
• Communication
• Task characteristics • Satisfy member
• Org structure
• Team size needs
• Org leadership
• Team composition • Maintain team
• Physical space Team Processes
survival
• Team development
• Team norms
• Team cohesiveness
• Team trust

Time and Team Development

© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. 
11
All rights reserved.
Organization/Team Environment
Everything OUTSIDE the team
that influences its effectiveness:
• Reward systems
• Communication systems
• Organizational structure
• Organizational leadership
• Physical space

12
 Team Effectiveness Model
Team States
• Norms
Organizational
• Cohesion
and Team
Environment • Team Efficacy
Team
• Team Trust •
• Rewards Team Design Effectiveness
• Accomplish tasks
• Communication
• Task characteristics • Satisfy member
• Org structure
• Team size needs
• Org leadership
• Team composition • Maintain team
• Physical space Team Processes
survival
• Team development
• Team norms
• Team cohesiveness
• Team trust

Time and Team Development

McShane/Steen/Tasa Canadian OB9e © 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. 
13
All rights reserved.
Team Design: Task Characteristics

Best tasks for teams:

• Complex tasks divisible into specialized roles
• Well-structured tasks – easier to coordinate
• Higher task interdependence

Team Design

• Task characteristics
• Team size
• Team composition

14
Team Design: Team Size
• Smaller teams are better because:
• less process loss: need less time
to coordinate roles and resolve
differences
• require less time to develop
• more engaged with team
know members, more influence on the team
• feel more responsible for team’s success

• But team must be large enough to accomplish the task!

15
 Team Design: Team Composition
Cooperating
• Effective team Share resources
Accommodate others
members must be
Conflict
willing and able to Resolving Coordinating
work on the team • Diagnose conflict
sources
• Align work with
others
• Use best conflict- Team Member • Keep team on
• Effective team handling strategy Competencies track

members possess
Comforting Communicating
specific • Show empathy • Share information
• Provide psych
competencies comfort
freely, efficiently,
respectfully
• Build confidence
(5 C’s in diagram) • Listen actively

© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. 

16
All rights reserved.
Team Composition: Diversity
Team members have diverse knowledge, skills,
perspectives, values, backgrounds, etc.
• Advantages
• view problems/alternatives from different perspectives
• broader knowledge base

• Disadvantages
• take longer to become a high-performing team
• susceptible to “faultlines” or less motivation to coordinate

17
 Team Effectiveness Model
Team States
• Norms
Organizational
• Cohesion
and Team
Environment • Team Efficacy
Team
• Team Trust •
• Rewards Team Design Effectiveness
• Accomplish tasks
• Communication
• Task characteristics • Satisfy member
• Org structure
• Team size needs
• Org leadership
• Team composition • Maintain team
• Physical space Team Processes
survival
• Team development
• Team norms
• Team cohesiveness
• Team trust

Time and Team Development

McShane/Steen/Tasa Canadian OB9e © 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. 
18
All rights reserved.
Team States: Norms
Informal rules and shared expectations team establishes to
regulate member behaviors
• Norms develop through:
• Initial team experiences
• Critical events in team’s history
• Experience/values members bring to the team
• Preventing/Changing Dysfunctional Team Norms
• State desired norms when forming teams
• Select members with preferred values Team States

• Discuss counter-productive norms • Norms

• Cohesion
• Introduce team-based rewards that • Team Efficacy
counter dysfunctional norms • Team Trust

• Disband teams with dysfunctional19norms

Team States: Cohesion
Team cohesion: The degree of attraction people feel
toward the team and their motivation to remain members
• Team cohesion is stronger/occurs faster with:
• Higher member similarity
• Smaller team size
• Regular/frequent member interaction
• Somewhat difficult team entry (membership)
• Higher team success

20
Team States: Efficacy & Trust
The collective belief among team members in the
team’s capability to successfully completing a task
is team efficacy
• Teams with high level of efficacy outperform teams with
lower level of efficacy
• High efficacy leads to team members setting ambitious goals, put
forth greater effort, persist longer when faced with a challenge
and view negative feedback as an opportunity
• Low team efficacy leads to team members feeling apathy,
uncertainty and a lack of direction

21
 Team Effectiveness Model
Team States
• Norms
Organizational
• Cohesion
and Team
Environment • Team Efficacy
Team
• Team Trust •
• Rewards Team Design Effectiveness
• Accomplish tasks
• Communication
• Task characteristics • Satisfy member
• Org structure
• Team size needs
• Org leadership
• Team composition • Maintain team
• Physical space survival

Time and Team Development

McShane/Steen/Tasa Canadian OB9e © 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. 
22
All rights reserved.
Team Development: Forming Identities and
Mental Models

1. Developing team identity

• Viewing team as “us” rather than “them”
• Team becomes part of the person’s social identity

2. Developing team mental models and coordinating

routines
• Forming habitual routines with team members
• Forming shared/complementary
Team Processes
mental models
• Team development
• Team norms
• Team cohesiveness
• Team trust
23
General Guidelines for
Team Decisions
• Team norms should encourage critical thinking
• Should have sufficient team diversity
• Checks and balances to avoid dominant participants
• Maintain optimal team size for the task
• Practice active listening (more on this in a little bit!)
Activity Time
LOST AT SEA

25
BRAINSTORMING and
COMMUNICATION in teams!

26
Brainstorming

Participants think up as many ideas as possible

• Four brainstorming rules:
• Speak freely
• Don’t criticize
• Provide as many ideas as possible
• Build on others’ ideas

27
Brainstorming
• Limitations of brainstorming include:

• Production blocking: A time constraint in team decision

making due to the procedural requirement that only one
person may speak at a time
• Evaluation apprehension: A decision-making problem that
occurs when individuals are reluctant to mention ideas that
seem silly because the believe (often correctly) that other
team members are silently evaluating them
• Conformity effect (fixation: Pressure to conform to team
norms (suppress dissenting positions)

28
Communication:
Definition and Importance
Communication: process by which information is
transmitted and understood between people
Transmitting intended meaning (not just symbols)

Importance of communication
Coordinating work activities
Organizational learning
Better decision making
Changing others’ behavior
Employee well-being

29
Communication Process Model
Sender Receiver
Transmit
Message
Receive
Form Encode Decode
encoded
message message message
message

Noise

Receive
Decode Encode Form
encoded
feedback feedback feedback
feedback
Transmit
Feedback

30
Communication Channels
Verbal
Verbal communication uses words, so it includes spoken or
written channels
Spoken and written channels are very different from each other
and have different strengths and weaknesses
Non-verbal
Non-verbal communication is any part of communication that
does not use words. -- includes facial gestures, voice intonation,
physical distance, and even silence
Most is an automatic and nonconscious “display” of our
emotions  

31
Emotional Contagion
The automatic process of sharing another person’s
emotions by mimicking their facial expressions and
other nonverbal behavior

Serves three purposes:

1. Provides continuous feedback to speaker
2. Increases emotional understanding of the other person’s
experience
3. Communicates a collective sentiment -- sharing the
experience as part of drive to bond

32
How Email has Altered Communication
Preferred channel for
coordinating work

Tends to increase
communication volume

Significantly alters
communication flow

Somewhat reduces status

differences and stereotyping

33
Problems with Email
Communicates emotions poorly

Reduces politeness and respect

(flaming)

Inefficient for ambiguous,

complex, novel situations

Increases information overload

34
Communication Barriers
Perceptions
Filtering
Language
Jargon
Ambiguity
Consider this sentence:
Can you close the door?”

Information Overload

35
Information Overload
Job’s information load exceeds
person’s capacity to process it
Information gets overlooked or
misinterpreted
Two sets of solutions:
Increase information processing
capacity
 Examples: Learn to read faster,
remove distractions
Reduce information load
 Examples: Buffering, omitting,
summarizing

36
Cross-Cultural Communication
Verbal differences
Language
Voice intonation
Silence/conversational
overlaps

Nonverbal differences
Some nonverbal gestures
are universal, but others
vary across cultures

37
Gender Communication Differences

38
 Improving Communicating in Hierarchies
• Workspace design
• Open offices – consider noise,
distractions
• Clustering people in teams

• Internet-based organizational
communication
• Wikis/Google: collaborative document
creation
• Intranet: rapid distribution of company
news

• Direct communication with

management
• Management by walking around
(MBWA)
© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. 
• Town hall meetings 39
All rights reserved.
Organizational Grapevine
Grapevine is defined as an unstructured and informal
network founded on social relationships rather than
organizational charts or job descriptions
Early research findings:
• Transmits information rapidly in all directions
• Follows a cluster chain pattern
• More active in homogeneous groups
• Transmits some degree of truth

Changes due to internet

• Emerging grapevines channels: Email, texts,
tweets, etc.
• Social networks are now global, extends
grapevine
40
Grapevine Benefits/Limitations
• Benefits
• Fills in missing information from
formal sources
• Strengthens corporate culture
• Relieves anxiety
• Associated with the drive to bond

• Limitations
• Distortions might escalate anxiety
• Perceived lack of concern for
employees when company info is
slower than grapevine
41
Discussion: Grapevine
Take a moment to think about
the following statement from
your textbook:
“Corporate leaders need to
view the grapevine as a
competitor”.
What does this mean in terms of
how corporate leaders should
respond to the grapevine?

42
Effective Communication
Effective interpersonal communication depends
on the sender’s ability to get the message across
and the receiver’s performance as an active
listener
Getting your message across involves:
Empathize
Repeat the message
Use timing effectively
Focus on the problem, not the person

43
Self Assessment:
Are you an Active Listener?
There are several dimensions of active listening.
Five of these dimensions are estimated in this
self-assessment:
1. Avoiding Interruption
2. Maintaining Interest
3. Postponing Evaluation
4. Organizing Information
5. Showing Interest.

Together, these five dimensions represent the

total active listening score.

44
Active Listening Process
& Strategies
Sensing
• Postpone evaluation
• Avoid interruptions
• Maintain interest

Active
Listening
Responding Evaluating
• Show interest • Empathize
• Clarify the message • Organize information

45
Active Listening Example
A colleague stops by your desk and says, “I am tired of the lack of
leadership around here. The boss is so wishy washy, he can’t get
tough with some of the slackers around here. Why doesn’t
management do something about these guys? And YOU are
always so supportive of the boss; he’s not as good as you make
him out to be.”
Showing Empathy:
“You sound frustrated”
Asking for clarification:
“Could you help me understand better what you mean by the term ‘slackers’?”
Providing non-evaluative feedback:
“You think there are a lot of employees around here who are not doing their
share of the work.” 46
Active Listening
Showing empathy – Acknowledge feelings:
Sometimes it sounds like the speaker wants you to agree with
him/her but, in reality, they mainly want you to understand
how they feel
“Acknowledging feelings” involves taking in their
statements, but looking at the “whole message” including
body language, tone of voice, and level of arousal, and trying
to determine what emotion they are conveying
Then you let them know that you realize they are feeling that
emotion by just acknowledging it in a sentence

47
Active Listening
Asking for clarification and detail while withholding
your judgment and own opinions:
Formulate a relevant question to ask for more clarification
(requires that you listen carefully to what they say)
Frame your question as someone trying to understand in
more detail (often asking for a specific example is useful)
Conveys that you are making a good effort to understand
and not just trying to push your opinions onto them
Helps the speaker to evaluate his/her own opinions and
perspective
48
Active Listening
Providing non-evaluative feedback – feeding back the
message you heard:
Involves thinking about what the speaker is conveying,
paraphrasing it in your own words, and saying it back to
the speaker (without judging the correctness or merit of
what they said) and asking him/her if that is what they
meant
Allows the speaker to determine if he/she really got the
message across to you and helps prevent miscommunication
Helps the speaker become more aware of how he/she is
coming across to another person (self-evaluation)
49
Active Listening Example
A colleague comes to your office and says that “I am so
frustrated by the lack of professional leadership around
here….my boss seems to pick favourites and does not even
acknowledge the work that I do..it seems so pointless to work
hard around here sometimes!”
Showing Empathy:
“You sound upset”
Asking for clarification:
“Could you help me understand better what you mean when you say that
your boss picks favourites?”
Providing non-evaluative feedback:
“You think there are a lot of employees around here that get different
treatment from you and your work is 50not acknowledged.”
Active Listening Example
YOUR TURN
An Operations supervisor comes to your office to discuss
hiring some part time staff. You ask him/her to provide
specific details of the job requirements and to develop some
interview questions. He/she states “why should I fill out the
job requirements and develop interview questions…isn’t that
YOUR job? If I wanted to work in HR I would be here and
not in Operations!”
Showing Empathy:
Asking for clarification:
Providing non-evaluative feedback:

51
Summary: Chapter 8
• Differentiated between workplace teams & groups
• Identified challenges/advantages of working in teams
• Described the Team Effectiveness Model:
• Organizational and team development
• Team Design (Task Characteristics, Team Size, Team Composition)
• Team States
• Team Processes

• Described the stages of team development

• Explained the way in which team norms develop
• Explained the purpose and varieties of team building
• Described the rules for team brainstorming

52
Summary: Chapter 9
• Described the elements of the communication process and ways to improve the
process (similar codebooks, sender experience, sender/receiver motivation and
shared mental models)
• Differentiated between various communication channels (verbal, non-verbal, email
& social media)
• Defined emotional contagion
• Described relevant factors when choosing communication channels (media
richness & social acceptance)
• Identified barriers to effective communication (i.e. jargon & information overload)
• Described communication differences (cross-cultural & gender differences)
• Described the elements of active listening
• Described how to increase communication within organizations (workplace design,
internet-based communication & direct communication with management)
• Explained how the grapevine functions in organizations

53