CA Exam Three (Ch. Five-Nine)

• Sets of expectations

• Types: task, maintenance, and individuals

• Roles that members assume to help accomplish the group’s mission

• Roles that influence a group’s social atmosphere

• Nurture positive interpersonal relationships

• Roles characterized by behavior that calls attention to each contributions of group members

Norms and power

• Rules that determine appropriate behavior in a group

• Develop from structuration and early group behaviors

• The ability to influence or exert control over others

Five Bases

• Legitimate

• Referent

• Expert

• Reward

• Coercive

• High status depending on its perception within a culture

• The least transferable trait across cultural barriers

• The extent to which a person is confident in, and willing to act on the basis of, the words, actions, and decisions of another

• The social unease that accompanies getting acquainted

• Conflict and stress that occur in groups as members vie for positions of leadership

• Helps to establish group norms

1. Flexible

   a. set fewer deadlines

   b. more autonomy for group members

2. Separation

   a. separate physically when working on a task

3. Concurrency

   a. more likely to multitask

   b. look for ways to combine projects and activities

• The emotional environment of a group, which affects and is affected by interaction among members

• Types: defensive and supportive

  a. Defensive climates are counterproductive

  b. Supportive climates allow members to focus on group tasks

• Evaluation = “you“ language; provokes defensiveness

• Description = “i“ language; describes the speaker’s thoughts about the person or idea and leads to more trust

• Communicative behavior that aims to control can make group members defensive

• Ex: “I know what’s good for you“

• Strategy = staged, scripted communication

  a. Suggests manipulation

• Spontaneous = creates a more supportive environment

  a. Someone without a hidden agenda

  b. Responds immediately and honestly

• Neutrality = indifference; arouses defensiveness in others

• Empathy = conveyed nonverbally, active listening, good eye contact, involvement and concern for group

• Superiority = seen as obnoxious and makes others defensive

• Equality = implies mutual trust and respect

• Certainty = put others on the defense, others want to prove them wrong (counterproductive)

• Provisionalism = those who appear flexible and committed to solving problems

• Causes another person to value himself or herself less

• Ex: impervious, interrupting, irrelevant, tangential, impersonal, incoherent, and incongruous responses

• Causes a person to value himself or herself more

• Ex: direct acknowledgement, agreement about content, supportive response, clarifying response, and expression of positive feeling

• The degree of attraction members feel toward one another and the group

• Builds up group productivity

• Exceptions: high social cohesion and team performance falls off when cohesion is too high

• Building groups based on similarity in interpersonal attraction leads to strong cohesiveness but mediocrity as a task group

• A blend of similarity would be best

• If people perceive benefits from one group over another, they will get more attracted to that group

• Positive group climate is essential for reaching maximum group potential

• To build climate, learn to communicate, and avoid defensive, disconfirming behavior

Variables that affect are

• Defensive behavior

• Confirming and disconfirming responses

• Group cohesiveness

• Group size

Communication Barriers:

• Bypassing

• Allness

• Fact-inference confusion

• Occurs when two people interpret the same word differently

• A simple but untrue generalization

• Reaching a conclusion as if something was a fact when in reality, it was based on an inference

• A preferred way of making sense out of spoken messages heard

• Four Styles: relational, analytical, critical, and task

• Other-oriented; focused on the stories others tell

• Prefer to focus on facts; more likely to assume task-oriented roles

• Evaluate info and able to spot inconsistencies; skilled at catching errors

• Helps keep group focused on the agenda

• Prejudging the communication or the communicator

• Rehearsing a response

1. Stop

2. Look

3. Listen

4. Ask questions

5. Paraphrase feelings

• Communication behavior that does not rely on written or spoken words

• Important; believed over verbal if they contradict, posture, movement, gestures, emblems(cues that take the place of spoken words) and regulators(controls the flow of communication), eye contact, facial expressions (6 primary emotions), vocal cues

• Cognitive = indicates thought process

• Monitoring = how you seek feedback

• Regulatory = regulates the back-and-forth flow of communication

• Expressive = area around eyes that provide clues regarding feelings

1. Happy

2. Anger

3. Surprise

4. Sadness

5. Disgust

6. Fear

• Paralanguage = vocal cues such as pitch, volume, speaking rate, and voice quality that provide information about the meaning of a message

• Can make inferences on a person’s feelings, competence, and personality

• Can contradict verbal content

• Small-group Ecology = the consistent way that people arrange themselves physically in small groups

• Important where you sit bc you can meet future leaders; determines the amount of eye contact to make or avoid

• Proxemics = the study of how close to or far away from other people and objects we choose to be

• Hall’s four spatial zones, interpreting nonverbal

1. Intimate

2. Personal

3. Social

4. Public

• The skill of asking someone whether your interpretation of his or her unspoken message is accurate

• Three Steps:

  a. Observe nonverbal cues

  b. Mentally draw a conclusion

  c. Ask the other person if your inference was accurate

• Defined by William Wilmot and Joyce Hockner

• Perception, personality, knowledge, culture, power/status, procedural differences, perceived resource inequity

1. Conflict should be avoided at all costs

2. All conflict occurs due to lack of understanding

3. All conflict can be resolved

• Pseudo

• Simple

• Ego

• Occurs when individuals disagree because of poor communication

• Disagreement over a course of actions or idea resulting in task or process conflict

• Occurs when individuals become defensive about their positions because they think they’re being personally attacked

• Avoidance, accommodate, competition, compromise, collaboration

• Conflict management style that involves ignoring disagreements in an effort to sidestep conflict

• Conflict management style that involves giving into the demands of others

• Can lead to bad decisions

• Lose-win approach

• Conflict management style that stresses winning at the expense of others involved

• Can lead to effective collaboration

• Conflict management style that attempts to find the middle ground in the conflict

• Can result in dissatisfaction among group members

• To use positive communication strategies in conflict management in an attempt to achieve a positive solution for all involvement

• Has long-term results

• Disadvantage = time, effort, and skill

• Advantage = better solutions and satisfaction

• The illusion of agreement exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas

• Symptoms, suggestions to reduce, how to deal with difficult group members

• Members apply pressure on those who don’t support

• Members believe their group can do no wrong

• Critical thinking is not encouraged or rewarded

• Encourage critical thinking; be sensitive to status differences; invites someone outside of the group to evaluate decision making

• Occurs when all group members support and are committed to a decision

• Listen and honest interaction

• Behavior or communication that influences, guides, directs, or controls a group

• A view of leadership as the personal attributes or qualities that leaders possess

• A view of leadership that assumes all group members can initiate leadership behaviors

• Types: task and process

• Aims to accomplish a group goal

• Initiating, coordinating, summarizing, and elaborating

• Help maintain satisfactory group climate

• Releasing tension, gatekeeping, encouraging, mediating

• Views leadership as the interaction of group needs and goals, leadership style, and the situation

• Authoritarian

• Democratic

• Laissez-faire

• Telling, selling, participating, and delegating

• Occurs when two or more individuals within a team share leadership

• Groups that have this experience less conflict, greater consensus, and higher trust and cohesion

• Leadership that aims to change an organization by realigning its culture around a new vision

• Four types:

  a. idealized leadership

  b. inspirational motivation

  c. intellectual stimulation

  d. individual consideration

• Relies on three critical skills:

  a. building shared vision

  b. surfacing and challenging mental models

  c. engaging in systems thinking

• Occurs through process of elimination

• Leaders emerge through “methods of residues“

• Opposite of authoritarian leadership

• Skills: listening, other-oriented, seek consensus, nurture community