paper
Page 1 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
PRINTED BY: reshakeia@gmail.com. Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
honest exchange of views, or by seeking clarity and gaining agreement on roles and responsibilities.
Moving towards creativity
The third assumption that Bion explored was that of pairing. This is: based on the collective and unconscious belief that, whatever the actual problems and needs of the group, a future event will solve them. The group behaves as if pairing or coupling between two members within the group, or perhaps between the leaders of the group and some external person, will bring about salvation… the group is in fact not interested in working practically towards this future, but only sustaining a vague sense of hope as a way out of its current difficulties… members are inevitably left with a sense of disappointment and failure, which is quickly superseded by a hope that the next meeting will be better.
Once again there is a preoccupation. This time it is about creating something new, but in a fantasized or unreal way, as a defence against doing anything practical or actually performing. The antidote of course is for the leader to encourage the team members to continue in their endeavours and to take personal responsibility for moving things on. Collaborative working requires greater openness of communication and data flow.
Moving through cohesion and cosiness
Turquet (1974) has added a fourth assumption, labelled ‘oneness’. This is where the team seems to believe it has come together almost for a higher purpose, or with a higher force, so the members can lose themselves in a sense of complete unity.
There are parallels to the stage of performing but somehow, once again, the team has fallen into an unconscious detraction from the primary task in hand. Attainment of a sense of oneness, cohesiveness or indeed cosiness is not the purpose the team set out to achieve. Good and close teamworking is often essential and can be individually satisfying, but it is not the purpose. Too much focus on team cohesion can lead to abdication from the task, and is only a stage on the way to full teamworking. The goal is interdependent working co-existing with collaborative problem solving. This requires the leader to set the scene and the pace, and team members to act with maturity.
See Chapter 4 for more ideas on leading change.
STOP AND THINK!
Q 2.7 Imagine that you are one of a team of five GPs working at a local practice. You want to initiate some changes in the way the team approaches non-traditional medical methods such as counselling, homeopathy and osteopathy. The GPs meet monthly for one hour to discuss finances and review medical updates. They do not really know each other well or work together on patient care. There is no real team leader, although the Practice Manager takes the lead when the group discusses administration.
Page 2 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
Using one of the models of team development described above, explain how you could lead the team towards a new way of working together. What obstacles to progress do you predict, and how might you deal with them?
Page 3 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
PRINTED BY: reshakeia@gmail.com. Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
HOW INDIVIDUALS AFFECT TEAM DYNAMICS
Here we use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™ to see how individual personalities might influence and be influenced by the team. We also use Meredith Belbin’s (1981) research into team types to indicate what types of individuals best make up an effective team.
MBTI™ and teams
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™ suggests that if you are a particular type you have particular preferences and are different from other people of different types (see Table 1.5 for MBTI™ types). This means that when it comes to change, people with different preferences react differently to change, both when they initiate it and when they are on the receiving end of it. This is also true when you are a member of a team. Different people will bring their individual preferences to the table and behave in differing ways.
Page 4 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
PRINTED BY: reshakeia@gmail.com. Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
When undergoing team change, individual team members will typically react in one of four ways (see the four illustrations):
• Some will want to ascertain the difference between what should be preserved and what could be changed. There will be things they want to keep.
• Some will think long and hard about the changes that will emerge internally from their visions of the future. They will be intent on thinking about the changes differently.
Page 5 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
• PRINTED BY: reshakeia@gmail.com. Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
Some will be keen to move things on by getting things to run more effectively and efficiently. They will be most interested in doing things now.
• Some will be particularly inventive and want to try something different or novel. They will be all for changing things.
The use of MBTI™, or any other personality-profiling instrument, can have specific benefits when teams are experiencing or managing change. It can identify where individuals and the team itself might have strengths to be capitalized on, and where it might have weaknesses that need to be supported.
Behaviours exhibited by team members will run ‘true to type’, so knowing your preferences and those of the rest of the team will help aid understanding. It is also true that different team tasks might be suitable for different types – either because they are best matched or because it provides a development opportunity. Surfacing differences helps individuals see things from the other person’s perspective, and adds to the effective use of diversity within the team.
Researching in the health care industry, McCaulley (1975) made the point that similarity and difference within teams can have both advantages and disadvantages:
• The more similar the team members are, the sooner they will reach common understanding. • The more disparate the team members, the longer it takes for understanding to occur. • The more similar the team members, the quicker the decision will be made, but the greater the
possibility of error through exclusion of some possibilities. • The more disparate the team members, the longer the decision-making process will be, but the
more views and opinions will be taken into account.
McCaulley also recognized that teams valuing different types can ultimately experience less conflict. A particular case worth mentioning is the management team. Management teams both in the
United States and the United Kingdom are skewed from the natural distribution of Myers-Briggs types within the whole population. Typically they are composed of fewer people of the feeling types and fewer people of the perceiving types. This means that
Page 6 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
PRINTED BY: reshakeia@gmail.com. Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
management teams, when making decisions about change, are more likely to put emphasis on the business case for change, and less likely to think or worry about the effect on people. You can see the result of this in most change programmes in most organizations. They are also more likely to want to close things down, having made a decision, rather than keep their options open – thus excluding the possibility of enhancing and improving on the changes or responding to feedback.
There are some simple reminders of the advantages and disadvantages of the preferences for teams making decisions about managing change within organizations listed in Table 2.5.
Table 2.5 Complementarity and conflict in teams
Extroversion Needed to raise energy, show enthusiasm, make contacts and take action. But they can appear superficial, intrusive and overwhelming.
Where individuals draw their energy from
Introversion Needed for thinking things through and depth of understanding. But can appear withdrawn, cold and aloof.
Sensing Needed to base ideas firmly in reality and be practical and pragmatic. Can appear rather mundane and pessimistic.
What an individual pays attention to or how he/she receives data and information
Intuition Needed to prepare for the future and generate innovative solutions. Can appear to have head in the clouds, impractical and implausible.
Thinking Needed to balance benefits against the costs and make tough decisions. Can appear rather critical and insensitive.
How an individual makes decisions Feeling Needed to be in touch with emotional intelligence, to negotiate and to reconcile. Can appear irrational and too emotional.
Judging Needed for his/her organization and ability to complete things and see them through. Can appear overly rigid and immovable.
What sort of lifestyle an individual enjoys
Perceiving Needed for his/her flexibility, adaptability and information gathering. Can appear rather unorganized and somewhat irresponsible.
Page 7 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
PRINTED BY: reshakeia@gmail.com. Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
Belbin’s team types
What people characteristics need to be present for a team to function effectively? Belbin (1981) has been researching this question for a number of years. The purpose of his research was to see whether high and low performing teams had certain characteristics. He looked at team members and found that in the higher performing teams, members played a role or number of roles. Any teams without members playing one of these roles would be more likely to perform at a lower level of effectiveness. (Of course different situations require certain different emphases.) He identified the roles shown in Table 2.6, with their contributions and allowable weaknesses.
Page 8 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
PRINTED BY: reshakeia@gmail.com. Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
Table 2.6 Belbin team-role summary sheet
Page 9 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
STOP AND THINK!
Q 2.8 What team role(s) are you likely to use? Q 2.9 What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of the eight roles?
Belbin concluded that if teams were formed with individuals’ preferences and working styles in mind, they would have a better chance of team cohesion and work-related goal achievement. Teams need to contain a good spread of Belbin team types.
Different teams might need different combinations of roles. Marketing and design teams probably need more Plants, while project implementation teams need Implementers and Completer Finishers. Likewise, the lack of a particular team type can be an issue. A management team without a Co- ordinator or Shaper would have problems. An implementation team without a Complete Finisher might also struggle.
HOW WELL TEAMS INITIATE AND ADAPT TO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
Throughout the last decades of the 20th century many organizations repeated the mantra, ‘people are our greatest assets’, and many would then apologize profusely when they were forced into downsizing or ‘rightsizing’ the workforce. Similarly, many organizations have sung the praises of teams and how essential they are within the modern organization. Many organizations have sets of competences or stated values that
Page 10 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
PRINTED BY: reshakeia@gmail.com. Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
implicitly and explicitly pronounce that their employees need to work in the spirit of teamwork and partnership.
It was therefore interesting for the authors to discover that there was a real lack of any authoritative research on the interplay between organizational change and teamworking. We have seen the effect that change has on individuals and groups of individuals, but what has not been studied is the effect of change on teams. And as a consequence there is very little research on strategies for managing and leading teams through organizational change.
Whelan-Berry and Gordon (2000), in their research into effective organizational change, conducted a multi-level analysis of the organizational change process. To quote them:
They found no change process models at the group or team level of analysis in the organization studies and change literature. Literature exists which explores different aspects of team or group development, team or group effectiveness, implementation of specific interventions, and organizational and individual aspects of the change, but not a group/team change process model … the lack of change process models for the team or group level change process in the context of organizational change leaves a major portion of the organizational change process unclear.
They continue:
The primary focus of existing organizational change models is what to do as opposed to explaining or predicting the change process. Most of the models implicitly, and a few explicitly, acknowledge the inherent (sub) processes of group level and individual level change, but do not include the details of these processes in the model. The question is how does the change process vary when considered across levels of analysis? For example, how does a vision get ‘translated,’ that is, take on meaning, in each location or department? In addition, what happens at the point of implementation? We must ‘double click’ at the point of implementation in the organizational level change process; that is, we must look at the group and individual levels and their respective change processes to understand the translation and implementation of the organizational-level change vision and desired change outcomes to group and subsequently to individual meanings, frameworks, and behaviours.
Table 2.7 examines each type of team previously identified and looks at the way in which this type of team can impact or react to organizational change. We also look at the pros and cons of each team type when involved in an organizational change process.
Page 11 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
PRINTED BY: reshakeia@gmail.com. Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
Table 2.7 Teams going through change
Team type Group Work Parallel Project Matrix
Propensity to initiate change
Dependent on nature and composition of group
Limited Limited in terms of organizational impact
Potentially high depending on integration into organization
Fair given propensity to address change
Propensity to adapt to change
Dependent on purpose and composition of group
Dependent on team members and team culture
Dependent on purpose and team members
Theoretically high. Good for limited changes in scope but not total
Dependent on degree of enabling or disabling structure
Advantages during change
Difficult to get alignment
Good at implementation once it is clear
Good for pilot schemes
Good focus for specific implementation goals
Flexible, so good for initiating ideas
Disadvantages during change
Useful for coming up with out-of- the-box ideas
Does not like change too often
Can become alienated through failure, or through boasting about success
Not good for tackling complex topics such as values or leadership
Leadership sometimes not clear, so discussion can go on for ever
Advice for leaders
Good for initiating ideas and spreading the word
Need to involve the leaders or shapers of these teams early – especially if you need their commitment rather than compliance
Useful for starting things up and proving an idea. Do not let members become too isolated. Encourage them to link in with the outside world
Good for short-range tasks such as appointing consultants or researching techniques. Not good for the complex stuff. Do not be tempted to give complex issues like ‘improve communication’ to a project team
Good for initiating ideas and spreading the word
Team type Virtual Network Management Change Propensity to initiate change
Limited unless project- specific
Potentially large depending on nature and composition of group
Theoretically and practically high. Typically should be the team that initiates change
Raison d’être
Propensity to adapt to change
Dependent on purpose and team members
Dependent on purpose and team members
Theoretically and practically high. Sometimes will have difficulty adapting to others’ change
Theoretically and practically high
Advantages during change
Wide reaching, so good for sharing
Powerful, so makes an impact Has increased energy and sense of
Page 12 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
Brings disparate groups together if tightly focused
sense of purpose and sense of urgency
purpose because it was set up to make change happen
Disadvantages during change
Lack of cohesion means purpose may be misunderstood and important issues are not raised
Not good for monitoring implementation because of lack of process and regularity
Often resistant to changing through lack of time or lack of teamwork, so role-modelling of desired changes can be weak. Focus on events after the launch often poor due to packed agenda and belief that it will all happen smoothly
Not impactful if it lacks influence (presence of powerful people)
Advice for leaders
Involve the key virtual teams early especially the leaders and shapers, but do not expect them to implement anything complicated
Good for initiating ideas and spreading the word
Do something surprising yourself if you want your management team to change the way it works Insist on role-modelling Keep your eye on the ball because there will be problems
Recruit powerful people Work on alignment Ensure resources
Page 13 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90
PRINTED BY: reshakeia@gmail.com. Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
Page 14 of 14
1/14/2019https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/api/v0/books/9780749472597/print?from=82&to=90