undefined | unit 3 foundations of group behavior

Unit - 3

Foundations of Group Behavior

Q1) The Meaning of Group & Group behavior & Group Dynamics.

A1) A group can be defined as two or more interacting and interdependent individuals who come together to achieve particular objectives. A group behavior can be stated as a course of action a group takes as a family. For example: Strike.

Q2) Define Group dynamics.

A2) Group dynamics refers to the attitudinal and behavioral characteristics of a group. Group dynamics concern how groups form, their structure and process, and how they function. Group dynamics are relevant in both formal and informal groups of all types. In an organizational setting, groups are a very common organizational entity and the study of groups and group dynamics is an important area of study in organizational behavior.

Q3) Bring out the Types of Groups.

A3) There are two types of groups individual’s form. They are formal groups and informal groups. Let us know about these groups.

Formal Groups

These are the type of work groups created by the organization and have designated work assignments and rooted tasks. The behavior of such groups is directed toward achieving organizational goals.

Formal groups can be further classified into two sub-groups:

Command Group: It is a group consisting of individuals who report directly to the manager.

Interest Group: It is a group formed by individuals working together to achieve a specific objective.

Informal Groups

These groups are formed with friendships and common interests.

These can be further classified into two sub-groups:

Task Group: Those working together to finish a job or task is known as a task group.

Friendship Group: Those brought together because of their shared interests or common characteristics is known as friendship group.

Q4) Why Do People Join Groups?

A4) There is no particular reason answering why individuals join groups. Group helps individual to feel stronger, have fewer self-doubts, and be more contrary to threats.

The following points help us understand the need of joining a group by individuals −

Security mirrors strength in numbers. Status pinpoints a prestige that comes from belonging to a specific group. Inclusion in a group is considered as important because it provides recognition and status.

Self-esteem transmits people's feelings of self-worth. Membership can sometimes raise feelings of self-esteem like being accepted into a highly valued group.

Affiliation with groups can meet one's social needs. Work groups significantly contribute to meet the need for friendships and social relations.

Groups represent power. What mostly cannot be achieved individually becomes possible with group effort. Power might be aimed to protect themselves from unreasonable demands. Informal groups provide options for individuals to practice power.

People may join a group for goal achievement. Sometimes it takes more than one person to accomplish a particular task.

Q5) Describe the Five – Stage Model of Group Development.

A5) The Five-Stage Model

New teams often experience growing pains—members of any team can’t work efficiently together without having any time to get acquainted with each other. In 1965, psychologist Bruce Tuckman developed an easy-to-digest model that shows how teams in various fields go through the same stages of group development. Learning these five stages of team development will allow you to shape successful teams that perform to their best potential.

Psychologist Bruce Tuckman developed his group development model in 1965 to explain how healthy teams cohere over time. Tuckman’s model identifies the five stages through which groups progress: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Each of the five stages of team development represents a step on the team-building ladder. As the group members climb the ladder, they morph from a random assembly of strangers into a high-performing team that can work toward a common goal. Here are Tuckman’s five stages of group development explained in detail:

The forming stage of group development: The forming stage is the first stage in Tuckman’s stages of group development and is a similar experience to your first day on a new job or at a new school. In this phase, most group members are overly polite and are still extremely excited about what their future may hold. Since the group dynamics and team roles aren’t yet established, the team leader will often take charge to direct the individual members. During Tuckman’s forming phase, new team members may discuss team goals, ground rules, and individual roles, but since this stage of development prioritizes people over the actual work, it’s unlikely the team will be high-performing at this time.

The storming stage of group development: The storming phase is like when you reach that point with a new roommate where you begin to notice their small idiosyncrasies that get on your nerves. For teams, the conflict often arises due to clashing working styles between team members. Some people may start to even doubt the team’s goals discussed in the earlier stage and will stop performing their necessary jobs altogether. This has a negative and stressful effect on those who keep up the hard work since the pre-established group processes no longer function smoothly. Some project teams think they can skip this stage, but it’s better to acknowledge conflicts now and work them out rather than avoiding them until they explode.

The norming stage of group development: The next of Tuckman’s stages is the norming phase. This is when the team moves past their previous quarrels and begins to recognize and value their teammates’ strengths. During this stage, team members increasingly respect those who are in leadership roles. Now that everyone has begun to bond and familiarize themselves with the team processes, teammates feel comfortable giving each other constructive feedback as they work toward accomplishing new tasks. Since these new tasks often come with a high degree of difficulty, it is not uncommon for groups to regress back into the storming phase. Even if a group slides back into old behavior, members’ new decision-making skills will make conflicts easier to resolve than they were during the initial storming phase.

The performing stage of group development: The performing phase is the happiest of all the stages of development. In this stage, your team performance is at an all-time high. This high-performance level means all team members are self-reliant and confident enough in their own problem-solving skills that they can function without oversight from the leaders. Everyone is working like a well-oiled machine, free of conflict and moving in sync toward the same end goal.

The adjourning stage of group development: The fifth stage of Tuckman’s development sequence is the adjourning phase. This final stage actually wasn’t added to the Tuckman model until 1977, and it is the most melancholy of all the stages of team formation. The adjourning phase assumes that project teams only exist for a set period of time; once the team’s mission is accomplished, the team itself dissolves. You can equate this stage to a breakup since team members often find it difficult to separate from people with whom they’ve formed close bonds. In fact, this phase is also sometimes known as the “mourning phase” because it is common for team members to experience a feeling of loss when the group is disbanded.

Q6) Write a note on Concept of Leadership

A6) Leadership can be defined as the ability of the management to make sound decisions and inspire others to perform well. It is the process of directing the behavior of others towards achieving a common goal. In short, leadership is getting things done through others.

Leadership is very important in a firm as it leads to higher performance by the team members, it improves motivation and morale within the members, and helps to respond to change.

Leadership facilitates organizational success by creating responsibility and accountability among the members of the organization. In short, it increases value in an organization.

Q7) Describe Styles of Leadership

A7) Leadership Styles

Different leadership styles exist in work environments. The culture and goal of an organization determine which leadership style fits best. Some organizations offer different leadership styles within an organization, depending on the necessary tasks to complete and departmental needs.

We find five different leadership styles in the corporate world. They are as follows −

Laissez-Faire

A laissez-faire leader does not directly supervise employees and fails to provide regular updates to those under his supervision. Highly experienced and trained employees with minimal requirement of supervision fall under the laissez-faire leadership style.

But not all employees possess these features. This leadership style blocks the production of employees needing supervision. The laissez-faire style implements no leadership or supervision efforts from managers, which can lead to poor production, lack of control and increasing costs.

Autocratic

The autocratic leadership style permits managers to make decisions alone without the input of others. Managers access total authority and impose their will on employees. No one opposes the decisions of autocratic leaders. Countries like Cuba and North Korea operate under the autocratic leadership style.

This leadership style benefits those who require direct supervision. Creative employees who participate in group functions detest this leadership style.

Participative

This is also known as the democratic leadership style. It values the input of team members and peers, but the responsibility of making the final decision rests with the participative leader. Participative leadership motivates employee morale because employees make contributions to the decision-making process. It accounts to a feeling that their opinions matter.

When an organization needs to make changes within itself, that is internally, the participative leadership style helps employees accept changes easily as they play a role in the process. This leadership style meets challenges when companies need to make a decision in a short period of time.

Transactional

Transactional leadership style is formed by the concept of reward and punishment. Transactional leaders believe that the employee's performance is completely dependent on these two factors. When there is an encouragement, the workers put in their best effort and the bonus is in monetary terms in most of the cases. In case they fail to achieve the set target they are given a negative appraisal.

Transactional leaders pay more attention to physical and security requirements of the employees.

Transformational

Transformational leadership has the ability to affect employee's perceptions through the returns that organization gets in the form of human capital benefits. These leaders have the ability to reap higher benefits by introducing knowledge management processes, encouraging interpersonal communication among employees and creating healthy organizational culture.

It helps in flourishing organizational innovation by creating a participative environment or culture. It promotes a culture where the employees have autonomy to speak about their experiences and share knowledge.

It has been seen that transformational leaders are more innovative than transactional and laisse-faire leaders.

Q8) Explain in detail: Trait Approach Contingency.

A8) The trait approach to leadership was one of the earliest theories of leadership. Although it is not a fully articulated theory with well-developed hypotheses, the trait approach formed the basis of most early leadership research. This approach focuses on the personal attributes (or traits) of leaders, such as physical and personality characteristics, competencies, and values. It views leadership solely from the perspective of the individual leader. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that traits produce patterns of behavior that are consistent across situations. That is, leadership traits are considered to be enduring characteristics that people are born with and that remain relatively stable over time.

The trait model of leadership is based on the characteristics of many leaders - both successful and unsuccessful - and is used to predict leadership effectiveness. The resulting lists of traits are then compared to those of potential leaders to assess their likelihood of success or failure.

Scholars taking the trait approach attempted to identify physiological (appearance, height, and weight), demographic (age, education and socioeconomic background), personality, self-confidence, and aggressiveness), intellective (intelligence, decisiveness, judgment, and knowledge), task-related (achievement drive, initiative, and persistence), and social characteristics (sociability and cooperativeness) with leader emergence and leader effectiveness.

Among the core traits identified are:

Achievement drive: High level of effort, high levels of ambition, energy and initiative

Leadership motivation: an intense desire to lead others to reach shared goals

Honesty and integrity: trustworthy, reliable, and open

Self-confidence: Belief in one’s self, ideas, and ability

Cognitive ability: Capable of exercising good judgment, strong analytical abilities, and conceptually skilled

Knowledge of business: Knowledge of industry and other technical matters

Emotional Maturity: well adjusted, does not suffer from severe psychological disorders.

Others: charisma, creativity and flexibility.

Q9) Define contemporary leader.

A9) A contemporary leader is a leader who uses personal influence to develop and inspire people to achieve organizational goals and make a difference in the community.”

Contemporary leadership styles include quantum leadership, charismatic leadership, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, relational leadership, shared leadership and servant leadership. Effective nursing leadership nowadays creates healthy work environments that maintain nurses and allow them to deliver best quality care for the patients.

Q10) Discuss the Concept of transformations leadership.

A10) Transformational leadership:

The transformational leadership which the majority of latest studies evaluated the success of its application. It is necessary to say that this style achieve past what transactional does. This type of leadership style stresses the importance of individual interaction with other members of the society or team. The primary aim of this leadership style is to create a formidable relationship with the members of a team, and to inculcate the spirit of trust and deep understanding. The interaction between individual members aims at increasing performances and building trust and understanding. According to advocates, transformational leadership is in a position to explicitly lead the change, especially in the behavior of individual subjects. Such leaders will want to increase team motivation by offering numerous motivational messages to the subordinates, and increasing the percentage of trust among team members. The success of transformational leaders is based entirely on the flexibility of the set rules, and the ability of a leader to convince the subjects that their varied views with definitely make a big difference. Proponents of this leadership style argue that transformational leaders are able to institute viable changes in the organization based on the ability to inspire performances. Both the leader and the followers under this type of leadership are portrayed as to be having high moral.

Transformational leaders lead employees by aligning employee goals with the leader’s goals. Thus, employees working for transformational leaders start focusing on the company’s well-being rather than on what is best for them as individual employees. However, transactional leaders ensure that employees demonstrate the right behaviors because the leader provides resources in exchange.

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