Motivation, Leadership, and Teamwork: Key Concepts and Strategies

Posted on May 17, 2024 in Psychology and Sociology

CHAPTER 8: MOTIVATION.

4 measures: Return on assets, Product quality, Customer satisfaction, Stock returns. Motivation: the desire to act and move toward a goal. Performance = F (motivation x ability x opportunity), All 3 components necessary for performance. Managers can influence motivation and opportunity more than ability.

Questions for increasing work motivation.

What desires, wants and needs get people to act (content theories)? What role does the environment play in motivation (context theories)? Through what psychological means do personal and environmental factors affect a person’s motivation (process theories)?

Maslow’s need theory and Alderfer ERG approach.

Maslow’s: must satisfy more basic needs (food, water) before motivation for higher level needs (affection, self-actualization) kicks in. Alderfer’s ERG approach: Collapses Maslow’s 5 levels into 3 needs-Existence: all material and physiological desires, Relatedness: encompasses social relationships with significant others, Growth: internal esteem and self-actualization

McClelland’s learned needs.

Achievement: those who thrive on working efficiently, solving problems, and mastering complex tasks (predicted that people high in this need make the best leaders), Associated with good leadership, though they can demand too much. Power: seeing most work situations as opportunities to influence other people or take control, Can make strong work ethic but may lack flexibility, people skills. Affiliation: wanting to establish and maintain friendly relationships, Can be problematic for managers because you have to set boundaries.

Deci’s self-determination theory.

Focuses on growth needs of people. 3 basic needs: Competence: need to be effective in dealing with the environment, Autonomy: need to control the course of their lives. Relatedness: need to have a close, affectionate relationship with others. These foster volition, motivation, engagement, which results in enhanced performance, persistence, creativity

Herzberg’s 2 factor theory:

Job satisfaction– Influenced by motivator factors like: Achievement, Recognition, Responsibility, Work itself, Advancement, Personal growth. Improving these increases job satisfaction.Job dissatisfaction– Influenced by hygiene factors like: Working conditions, Coworker relations, Policies and rules, Supervisor quality, Base wage, salary. Improving the hygiene factors decreases job dissatisfaction.

Job characteristics model:

Core job dimensions- Skill variety, task identity, task significance, Autonomy, Feedback. Critical psychological states: Experienced meaningfulness of the work, Experienced responsibility for work outcomes, Knowledge of the actual results of the work activities. Personal and work outcomes; High internal work motivation, High quality work performance, High work satisfaction, Low absenteeism and turnover. Interventions: how to enrich boring jobs: Combine tasks: enhances skill variety, task identity, task significance, Form natural work units: enhances task identity, task significance, Establish client relationships: enhances skill variety, task identity, task significance, Vertically load jobs: enhances autonomy, task identity, Open feedback channels: enhances feedback.

Motivation potential score (MPS) =

MPS - Variety + Identity + Significance x Autonomy x Feedback 3

Growth-needs-strength:

People with low growth need strength may be content working in un-enriched jobs

Reinforcement theory and organizational behavior.

Reinforcement theory: people are motivated to repeat behavior that gets rewarded and avoid behavior that gets punished. 5 step approach to increase motivation: Identify performance-related behaviors, Measure frequency of these behaviors, Identify contingencies supporting current behaviors, Develop and implement a behaviorally based intervention strategy, Measure resulting performance-related behaviors.

Operant conditioning: employs strategies involving the addition or removal of pleasant or aversive consequences

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Punishment in the workplace:

Progressive discipline- Systems that increase in severity with the number of times punishment is administered. Punishment should be avoided if possible- Can have unintended consequences, Tells people what they should not do, not what they should do. Characteristics of effective punishment: Clear expectations, Consistent, Timeliness, Powerful effect

Expectancy theory:

Based on 3 employee beliefs. Expectancy: belief that effort leads to the desired performance level. Instrumentality: belief that a given performance level will lead to a specific outcome. Valence: value placed on future outcome

Equity approach to motivation.

Equity: workers’ perceptions of the fairness of outcomes they receive on the job, Social comparisons by which people compare their job inputs (time, expertise) and outcomes (pay, recognition), When people perceive inequity, motivated to restore balance. Equity sensitivity: individual difference, People high in equity sensitivity, More outcome-oriented, Want more than others for the same level of input, Value extrinsic outcomes (pay, status, fringe benefits). Low in equity sensitivity: Pay more attention to inputs, Less sensitive to equity issues, Value intrinsic outcomes (feeling accomplished, liking the job). ***equity does not equal equality***

Goal setting:

Specific, difficult but attainable goals lead to higher performance than no goals or do your best goals. Good goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based

CHAPTER 9: CONFLICT.

Inevitable but not always bad, Significant portion of manager’s job is negotiating

Different types:

Task conflict: occurs over tasks, ideas, and issues, Can be beneficial if at an optimal level. Relationship conflict: personalized and highly threatening to personal relationships. Task conflict increases performance in decision-making teams whereas relationship conflict decreases team performance

Myths:

Conflict is not always dysfunctional: Can improve performance

Positive and negative effects of conflict:

Positive effects: Brings problems into the open, Can motivate people to try to understand others, Encourages people to voice new ideas, Forces people to challenge their thinking and assumptions. Negative effects: Can lead to negative emotions and stress, Reduces communication between participants, which can hurt work coordination, May cause leaders to avoid participative leadership and rely on top-down authoritarian decisions, Can result in negative stereotyping and work group divisions because members of opposing groups emphasize differences between them and opposition

Diagnose conflict source.

Do disputants have access to the same information? Do disputants perceive common info differently? Are disputants significantly influenced by their role in the organization? What stressful factors might they be reacting to? What ways do personal differences play a role in the dispute?

Sources/factors of conflict.

Informational: when people have developed their point of view on the basis of a different set of facts. Perceptual: exert their influence when people have different images or interpretations of the same thing, each person selects the data that supports their point of view and devalues info that doesn’t support it. Role: people believe that their roles within an organization are in conflict, ‘turf’ associated with their position is being threatened. Environmental: scarce resources, uncertainty, degree to which competition is present, Mixed motive situation: employees rewarded for competing but told to work toward the department’s overall outcome as a whole, Zero-sum game: success of one employee means failure of another, can lead to intense conflict. Personal: incompatible personal values, different personalities, differing long and short-term goals, can become bitter arguments with moral overtones

To negotiate or not:

2 points to consider. Whether an issue that appears to be non-negotiable truly is, If there is no way to create added value for yourself you shouldn’t be negotiating. BATNA: best alternative to a negotiated agreement, The alternative left if a negotiated agreement is not reached. Considerations: Current BATNA, Likelihood of favorable negotiated outcomes, Direct cost of negotiating, Indirect and opportunity costs

5 conflict handling styles

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Team performance vs individual performance

  • Teams can outperform individuals, higher productivity, more rapid innovation and creativity
  • Can often fail though
  • Group of people who are collectively accountable for definable outcomes and have a high degree of task interdependence and interaction
  • Task interdependence: extent to which team members must interact with each other to complete their tasks

Group vs team

  • Group: 3+ people who work independently toward an organization’s goals
  • Team: collection of people who use their skills in complimentary ways to collaborate in join effort where people communicate with and are interdependent on one another
    • If proper conditions for teamwork are not present, you are better off making individual assignments
    • Challenge to recognize when and where a team might provide unique potential to deliver results
  • 3 different types of teams
    • Recommend things
    • Make or do things
    • Run things

Stages of team development

  • Forming: initial entry of members to group, defining roles, determining group’s task
  • Storming: high emotion and tension, expectations need to be clarified
  • Norming: begins to come together as coordinated unit, regulate behavior
  • Performing: emergence of mature, organized, well functioning team
  • Adjourning: completing task and ending team
    • Doesn’t always go in this order, can be revisited

When teams make sense

  • Not solution for every situation
  • Best when:
    • No individual expert exists
    • Superior in stimulating innovation and creativity
    • Creating context where people feel connected valued

Team effectiveness scorecard

  • Determining if team is high performing:
    • Production output
    • Member satisfaction
    • Capacity for continued cooperation
  • High performance team:
    • Produces high quality work and has members who derive value from being part of the group and can learn in ways that make them able to cooperate even better in the future
  • 5 characteristics
    • Small size
    • Mutual accountability
    • Complimentary skills
    • Productive team norms
    • Shared purpose

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Conflict resolution: recognize and encourage desirable but discourage undesirable, team conflictCollaborative problem solving: recognize obstacles to collaborative group problem solving and to implement appropriate corrective actionsCommunication: listen non-evaluatingly and appropriately use active listening techniquesGoal setting and performance management: establish specific, challenging and accepted team goalsPlanning and task coordination: coordinate and synchronize activities, information and task interdependencies between team members

Shared purpose and performance objectives

  • The biggest key to an effective team is having a clear and compelling goal
  • Outcome based goals: describe specific outcomes by which success will be determined, how would we know success? When would we declare victory?
    • Example: win 3 new accounts in next quarter
  • Activity based goals: describe just the activities
    • Develop a plan for winning new accounts

Productive norms and processes

  • Norms: rules or standards of behavior, often unwritten
  • 5 essential process norms (5 C’s)
    • Confidence: shared belief that team has capability to successfully perform
    • Cooperation: results in high-quality, reciprocal exchange of info
    • Coordination: integration of individual efforts towards team goals
    • Cohesion: members’ shared commitment to and affinity for team
    • Conflict: disagreement and friction among members


How to build team cohesiveness

  • Schedule social time
  • Get agreement on group goals
  • Focus attention on competition with outside groups
  • Reward members for group results
  • Reduce contact with other groups
  • Create a sense of performance ‘crisis’
  • Establish mutual accountability- 2 types of team rewards
    • Cooperative: distributed equally
    • Competitive: distributed based on individual performance
    • Social loafing: when people exert less effort in a group than when they work alone

Managing threats to team performance and decision making

  • Risky shift: people in groups tend to make more extreme decisions than individuals do
    • Could be riskier, could be more risk avers
  • Innocent bystander: people in a group often feel diffusion of responsibility because others are  available to act
  • Escalation of commitment
    • Persisting with a losing course of action, even in the face of clear evidence of their folly
    • Conformity and obedience
      • Surprisingly easy to induce people to view themselves as instruments for carrying out another person’s wishes

Common team traps or dysfunctions

  • Teams get too big
  • Casual or convenient team assignments
  • Inattention to results
  • Absence of commitment and trust
  • Unclear or diluted accountability

Social conformity

  • Social conformity: when social pressures persuade members to conform to the perceived vale of the group
  • Groupthink: tendency of member in highly cohesive teams to lose their critical evaluative capabilities
  • Abilene paradox: going along with group because others seem eager to do something

Strategies to help teams avoid social conformity

  • Ask each team member to fill role of being critical evaluator
  • Encourage members to share their objections
  • Don’t let leader become obviously partial to one course of action
  • Create subgroups with different leaders
  • Have members discuss ideas with outsiders
  • Have different members act as devil’s advocate at each meeting
  • Write alternative scenarios for the intentions of competing groups
  • Hold second chance meetings after initial decisions
  • Make use of pre-votes and anonymous decision votes
  • Use electronic meeting formats to avoid intentional or unintentional personal persuasion

Social loafing and self limiting behaviors

  • Ringelmann effect: some people don’t work as hard in groups as they do individually because they don’t have or don’t believe they have individual accountability
  • Self limiting behavior: whenever team members chose to limit engagement in team’s work
    • Avoid these effects via identifiability, find ways  to communicate each member’s contribution to task

Effective team interventions: holding effective meetings

  • Practical interventions
    • Holding effective meetings
    •  after action reviews, debriefs, process checks
    • Dealing with free riders
  • Effective meetings
    • Ask what 2 or 3 most important things that need to get done are
    • Determine how much time everyone has
  • Things to do
    • Always work from agenda
    • Appoint a scribe
    • Ask direct questions
    • Attach action assignments to specific members
    • Avoid leading all discussion yourself
    • Push team to stay focused on key meeting objectives
    • Close every meeting with brief review of what was accomplished

Debriefs

  • Great teams have productive failures that are seen as opportunities for growth
  • Use process check forms

Dealing with social loafers

  • Correctly state issue in terms of behaviors not generalizations about traits
  • Ask if it’s legitimate to give feedback
  • Make sure you have a balanced set of facts
  • Create spoken norms for clear expectations
  • Social contracting :agree on goals, tasks, and consequences of not doing the work