Organizational Behavior
Essay Preview: Organizational Behavior
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Part I: Group Development
There are five stages of team development namely:
1) Forming where teams come together and initial impressions are formed. This is the stage where Christine was chosen to be the team coordinator.
2) Storming stage where expectations are laid out.
3) Norming or initial integration where rules of behavior and what needs to be accomplished are set and are also a time for cooperation.
4) Performing or total integration stage where performance of tasks is handled and accomplished.
5) Adjourning stage where the team members achieve closure on task performance and their relationships.
At this time the team is in the stage of four which is performing or total integration. This is because all others had done their part except Mike. If Christine had understood stage two and three, laid out expectations and set rules for behavior and what needed to accomplished and pointed it out to Mike in clear way then he would have understood that his cooperation is critical to the teams success.
Part II: Problem Identification
The primary problem facing Christine and the group is social loafing where some members of the group tend to work less in a group than they would individually. The only member of this group responsible for this was Mike. He could not make meetings giving flimsy excuses one of them being him wanting to watch his favorite TV show, saying he has to work when the meetings are being held and in the end when all others had done their part Mike handed some rough handwritten notes meaning he had not put enough effort on his part of the project.
The secondary problem facing Christine and the group is heterogeneous meaning the team had different diverse personalities. Diane was quiet will not volunteer information until asked, Mike was the clown, Janet was reliable and Steve was businesslike. This is not always a problem because if used right these diverse qualities could be harnessed to enhance performance. This dynamic can create personality conflict which can affect the team working together.
Christine should have understood social facilitation in individual membership in teams. This is the tendency of ones behavior to be influenced by the presence of others in a group setting. This can cause the member to withdraw from active participation and even lead to social loafing. If she understood this concept she would built the following processes to support her group performance
-Having members spend time together. Sometimes members are not comfortable until they build some form of relationships before they can volunteer information and participate so spending time together can help especially Janet who was quiet and would not volunteer information. Secondly she should give positive feedback to motivate the group and create early success by establishing short term goals.
There other elements that she could have used to manage the team effectively like understanding personality traits of the group members that way she can better able to relate to them and also apply motivational theories to keep the group