Title: Teams at work have more talent and experience, more diverse resources, and greater operating flexibility than individual performers. So why do so many work teams either struggle unpleasantly toward an unsatisfactory conclusion-or, worse, crash and burn
1Teams at work have more talent and experience,
more diverse resources, and greater operating
flexibility than individual performers. So why
do so many work teams either struggle
unpleasantly toward an unsatisfactory
conclusion-or, worse, crash and burn shortly
after launch?
2- How Do We Go About Understanding Why and What We
Can Do About It ?
3- THE HORRIFYING PHOTOS of young Iraqis abused by
American soldiers have shocked the world with
their depictions of human degradation, forcing us
to acknowledge that some of our beloved soldiers
have committed barbarous acts of cruelty and
sadism. How and Why could this ever happen? Are
we (they) no better than Saddam and his minions?
4The Question Continues Who should be held
accountable?
- CNN.com August 9, 2006Stress sent soldiers
to drink and drugs, colleague testifies. - The Mahmoudiya inquiry is one of several examples
of atrocities allegedly committed by U.S. troops
in Iraq being investigated. - Soldiers told of killing a raped teenager and her
family during stress counseling after two other
members of their unit were kidnapped from a
checkpoint and killed. - The killings of the soldiers "pretty much crushed
the platoon," said Cross, of the 1st Battalion,
502nd Infantry Regiment. "For a while we were
down, but we got back." - The unit also lost all of its belongings on
February 5 when the building in which they were
living burned down. - Cross said his unit went on long rotations
outside its forward base, sometimes spending
several weeks without hot food and showers or
contact with family and friends. - He testified that he and other soldiers were
constantly in fear and said the unit was "full of
despair." - The Army's surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley,
said last month that deployments in Iraq put
heavy mental stress on troops and that some will
need counseling
5- Should these few Army members be blamed as the
"bad apples" in a good barrel of American
soldiers, as our leaders have characterized them?
Or are they the once-good apples soured and
corrupted by an evil barrel? - Here is how psychology can help explain the
abuse - http//www.apa.org/topics/iraqiabuse.html
6Basic Premise of all Psychology
- Behavior is to be understood as a function
of Individual (x) Situation - B (f) I x SIndividual attributes
(values,attitudes, experience, education, etc.)
(X)Situation as the
individual understands it.
Behavior (f) Indiv Attributes (e.g, values,
attitudes, education, experience) x
the Situation
7. THE BASIC PREMISE of BMA516We Can Help You
Create the Right Circumstances for High
Performing Teams It is not primarily your
management style (personality or preferred
individual style of operating) that determines
how well a team performs, but how well you design
and support a team so that members can manage
themselves.
8The Big Five Situational Factors a Leader Can
Influence
- Create a Real Work Team
- Provide Compelling Direction
- Build Structure to Foster Not Impede Teamwork
- Tweak to Provide Organizational Support and
Resources - Arrange for or Provide Expert Coaching
9How the Leader Creates and Sustains the Situation
- Constructing bad barrels that produced many bad
apples or (as we will determine this semester)
how to set conditions that determine the stage
for great performances.
10- More Psychology to Help Us
11How We Try to Explain Our Own Behavior
- People moderate their behavior by how they
understand the circumstances of the situation as
they find it.
12Actors/ObserversTend to Attribute Causality
Differently
THE OBSERVOR
The OBSERVOR infers causes of others behavior
from the attributes of the actor.
ACTOR
ACTORS infer causes of own behavior from the
situation.
13Attribution of Responsibility for Success and
Failure The Classic Foursome.
The Locus of Responsibility
ability task difficulty
effort luck
Stable
Variable
Internal (Self)
External (Situation)
14Fundamental Attribution Error
- We generally underestimate the
situational/contextual causes of behavior as
experienced by others. - We make more dispositional attributions (e.g.,
individual qualities and traits) for other
people's behavior compared to our own (especially
for others failures while we tend to blame the
situation for our failures)
15Examples of Attributing the Cause of Failure
- When Other Fail- Qualities of the Individual
Caused the Problem We Tend to Hold The Person
Responsible, e.g., - He failed because he (fill in the blank) was
careless didnt try hard enoughdidnt ask for
help, etc. These are attributions to the
individual - When We Fail- We Blame the Circumstances
(Situation was just not right) - I had no choice, we were never given enough time
to finish the task there was never the proper
training of the people assigned to me to get the
job done correctly the job was given to us with
no clear direction
16EndObjective of the Course
- Identify the key situational conditions that any
leader can put in place to increase the
likelihood of team success-regardless of his or
her personality or preferred style of operating.
17End
- Leading Teams is to Structure, support, and guide
teams in a way that - enhance the social processes essential to
collective work - build shared commitment, skills, and
task-appropriate coordination strategies - help members troubleshoot problems and spot
emerging opportunities and - capture experiences and translates them into
shared knowledge
18End
- Five conditions that set the stage for great
performances a real team, a compelling
direction, an enabling team structure, a
supportive organizational context, and the
availability of competent coaching.
19Ends DickWay Dick GroupsMeans Groups
- The four groups will to a large extent will
determine the Means to achieve the End. - The Way we will do this is
- For you to read Thompson and Hackman carefully
- By writing and discussing Shared Inquiry
questions, insightfully, as led by the Four
Groups - By Group Designed Learning Activities
- Prof led occasional theoretical input and other
activities