Group Development and ChangeEssay Preview: Group Development and ChangeReport this essayGroup Development and ChangeGroup Development and Change is critical in todays contemporary organization. Group development is to learn why and how teams or group changes over time. According to Thompson (2008) a team is, “An interdependent collection of individuals who share responsibility for specific outcomes for their organizations” (p. 24). In a team, members work intensely with each other to achieve a common goal or objective. We could say all teams are groups, but not all groups are teams. Often times its difficult to from a team and takes times for members to learn and work with each other. However, According to Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson (2001), a group is defined as two or more individuals interacting, in which the existence of all (the existence of the group as a group) is necessary for the needs of the individual group members to be satisfied” (p. 318). A group can be either be formal or informal who comes together to achieve a specific or particular objectives.
The similarities between groups and teams are they both consist of more than one individual. They both set to accomplish a specific goal. They both involve interaction with each other, social needs, and some type of status in the group or team. The difference between a team and group is teams are forms of a group, but not all groups are teams. Group are members who work independently and they often are not working towards the same goal, whereas teams or members who work interdependently and work towards both personal and team goals. There is a different in size between the group and team and it is a lot easier to form a group than a team. A teams strength depends on the commonality of purpose and interconnectivity between individual members, whereas a groups strength may come from sheer volume or willingness to carry out a single leaders commands. Groups can be effective in todays society; however, teams are becoming the primary means for organizing work within many contemporary organizations.
Group development and change teaches the fundamental concepts relating to team and group process, improving performance, communication and feedback, conflicts and resolution strategies and process consultation.
Teams and Group ProcessesTeam and group process is to work together so that a specific goal is accomplished. Understanding group formation and development helps met the organizational goals through the process. The process normally involves the Tuckmans model – forming, storming, norming and performing developed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965. Forming is when the group comes together and gets to initially know one other and form as a group or team. Storming is where conflict and polarization around interpersonal issues, with concomitant emotional responding in the task sphere. Norming is when the group eventually agrees how the group operates and their new roles are adopted. Performing is when most of the work takes place group roles become flexible and functional and they are effectively meeting their objectives. Tuckman later added a fifth stage, adjourning involves termination of the group roles and the completion of tasks or mission.
The intra-group dynamics is where norms, power and politics, cooperation, and conflicts are present. Groups establish norms that regulate a team or group behaviors. When in the group status quo and conflicts are develop through the process. Thompson (2008) pointed out that managing an effective team involves two sets of responsibilities. The first one is managing the internal dynamics that is selecting members, facilitating the team process and specific task. The second one is managing the external dynamics that is managing the relationship with those on whom the team is interdependent (p. 99).
Group composition and dynamics is the characteristics and processes that affect how a group or team functions. A heterogeneous team is more likely to come up with creative solutions and solve problems more accurately than are homogenous teams. A general rule is a heterogeneous mix of people in a group or team provides the best chemistry for interaction and achievement of task. Since managing diversity is a ongoing process, Thompson (2008) listed a four pronged plan: Publicly Commit to Valuing Diversity, Solicit Ideas and Best Practices from Employees on How to Diversity, Educate Members on the Advantages of Diversity, and Diversity at All Levels (p. 120).
The decision-making and problem solving for teams and groups process attempts to resolve problems usually on an ongoing basis. Each members must expect and believe that interactions among members will be truthful and of high integrity in order to accomplish the task. We will now lock at improving performance in teams and groups.
Improving Performance in Teams and GroupsOrganization should recognize and reward teams and groups on their performance and contribution. When teams or groups are recognize for their performance, they feel appreciated by the organization. When evaluating team and group performance, Hackman identified three key factors in his model used to evaluate the success or failure of a team performance: productivity, cohesion, and learning. Thompson (2008) added integration as the fourth factor to evaluate team or group performance. When providing team performance and feedback, employees will realize what they or doing better and needs to improve on. Supervisor should meet with the entire team on a regular basis to talk about how the team is performing and communicate with them so they could ask questions. Managers need to deal effectively with team building interventions. They should, managers needs to deal effectively with them identify ways to change the motivational structure of the task, the composition of the group.
Performance could be improved by group decision making and problem solving process. An effective group or team must be able to identify problems, examine alternatives, and make decisions. Organizations could delegate some of their authority to certain individuals in the group or team to have decision-making power. Decisions could be made using the group decision rules such as majority rule, average winner, median winner, random member rule or best member rule. Decision-making is a key activity that teams must do, no matter what their governance structure- self-managing, manager-led, or self-directing. Teams or groups could use creativity that is departing from tradition or what may seen to be the appropriate way of conducting business. The Finkes Model of creativity is two dimensions in the model: creativity and usefulness. The model strives to achieve creative ideas as opposed to conservative or traditional ideas (Thompson,
Finkes vs. Dyson,
Fudgets and ideas,
1999[], p. 21-22). The Dyson model uses many basic ideas that have been proposed by numerous groups, groups, governments, and industry over the past hundred years, as described earlier in the chapter. Dyson was a popular figure in the early 2000s, when he built an industry to solve complex problems for customers. In fact, he received much critical help from John Fink, founder of the Internet and technology community- one of the foremost thinkers on the topic, since the mid-1960s, and the first person to define what it means to know an Internet service provider. Dyson created the Internet in 1962 with his group, the Internet-Communists. A common group response to the Dyson model model of creativity was the belief that this is in part what distinguishes what is called creativity (e.g.
This argument assumes a concept of creativity that is not fundamentally opposed, but that is relevant with respect to decision-making, or how to conduct business; it assumes that the problem can be solved in simple actions in which the group, rather than the individual, is involved. In particular, the idea of the ‘creativity principle’ is central to the theory. By the definition that is commonly known in the media, that is creativity is, in reality, a set of processes that occur in the life of the individual, including interaction with the individual member of his/her group or group, and the interaction between all members of the group. An example: The Internet-Communists had over the next 18 months built a successful effort to solve a problem of over 10 million individual transactions at an estimated cost of $11.9 billion. The goal was to make a new and disruptive device that would drive business to solve the problem rather than one to destroy it. Using the Internet-Communists in this effort, the Internet-Communists would solve each transaction according to two dimensions: (1) the concept of the ‘Creativity Principle’, (2) the principles of problem-solving, (3) the ‘creativity rules’ of business, (4) the actions and consequences of the actions defined in the principles of problem-solving and (5) the ideas of the Internet. All of the actions, consequences and ideas of an Internet-Communist would be addressed using their unique and intuitive ideas. That is to say, each of the steps of solving a transaction would be addressed as follows: “Inform an Internet subscriber that he/she can call an appointment. Call any other person you wish to call. Provide an explanation of anything you want.” With this information, the Internet-Communists would be able to determine whether all of their ideas were useful to others. All of the steps of solving the problem were described as being in the order that the Internet could come up with useful ideas.
To solve any problem, a question must lie in the domain realm (i.e. ‘Is the service I have good if and when the service is discontinued, or bad if and when it is not?’). As the Internet-Communists realized, a query from their users meant they needed to locate a certain service for that service (e.g., ‘Do you find it on your local Internet). Once the service-service was found, each user would be given a set of actions to complete. The action of searching for new pages to store on their computer or mobile device would be taken by the customer directly – once a user had found a