Team Building and Cohesion
Introduction
For any team since the dawn of time, achieving cohesion between team members has never been easy. Team members are diverse, owing to their personalities, history, experiences, positions, and many more factors. This variation often causes some tugs of war when it comes to decision-making, communication, and accountability. Yet this diversity is what makes a great team, so teams must get past the diversity and variations to work effectively, which is what the Auto Dealer’s team requires. This paper utilizes knowledge about teamwork to derive active steps that should be taken to bring the Auto Dealers team together as an effective, productive, problem-solving team.
Self-concept
Individuals are at the center of each team and people in a team learning to lead themselves first is step one in the team developing to lead itself and function effectively. The first and most important thing to do when an individual wants to improve himself/herself is learning and understanding their self-talk, because it creates a positive self-concept. Everyone has a self -image, a perception of what they think about themselves and how they think other people perceive them, and the biggest contributing factor to this self-image is how people talk about themselves. Our words have an impact on our self-image and negative or poorly chosen words bruise our self-image, the impact may be immediate, gradual, small or large, but it is there (Dahlke, 2017b). This relationship can be examined in an example.
Take the example of someone who is explaining to others what their passion is and they say, “I compose music.” This is a very simple sentence with basic information, but as modifiers are added to the sentence, it’s meaning, tone and perception change. For example, “I compose music very well”, also gives basic information, but the added modifiers indicate the speaker thinks highly of their music composition skills. According to the article “You Are What You Speak” by Dahlke (2017b), modifiers mostly convey feelings and often reflect our inner-selves, so negative words are often accompanied by a blip of negative feelings. Therefore, the art of listening to and adjusting our self-talk is the first step towards a positive self-image. Additionally, challenging the thoughts that accompany self-talk is essential to adjusting our words to be positive. For example, complaining that a week will be miserable is erroneous, because it is highly unlikely that every single moment will be intolerable, so we should look at the silver linings. One should also look at every difficult situation as a problem to be solved, and an opportunity to learn. This positive approach works wonders towards out attitude when faced with problems. Once all these factors are considered, only then can we our positive image and receive insight in how to control ourselves and learn about others, as a result, we find that we’re having an easier time relating with others.
Communication in a team
The next step after achieving mastery over ourselves is learning how to communicate with others effectively. This skill helps us handle conversations effectively, diffuse tense situations, and achieve a coordinated team environment. The article “TA and Communication” by Dahlke (2017c) describes a communication as a transaction between one party and the other, and the success of this transaction is determined by the ego state we use when approaching a communication. The three different ego states are Parent, Adult, and Child, and they dictate our state of mind as we conduct communication activities. In the Parent ego state, our communication is characterized by parental type, critical or nurturing statements we’ve learned over the years. Adult ego state allows us to approach communication from a logical, analytical and problem solving state of mind, while the in the Child ego state we approach communication from a more emotional state of mind. All these ego states determine our verbal and non-verbal communication, and determines the success of the communication depending on the types of transaction.
During communication there is party one and party two, types of transactions are based on the state of mind of each party. The transaction is from Adult, Parent, or Child, to Adult, Parent of Child. From the example of the Auto Dealers team, the communication is failing because the managers are in different states of mind and this is hindering communication. Complementary transactions are when a sender receives the expected response from the receiver, and is always between people in similar ego states, i.e. Parent-parent, Adult-adult or Child-Child. It is an ideal transaction but rarely happens because it is unlikely for people to be in the same ego states. Other transaction types are crossed transactions where the communication is conflicting and ulterior transactions where each party has an agenda; this may lead to passive aggression in some cases.
Going back to the managers in the Auto Dealers team, for communication to be successful, I would advise them to achieve constructive transactions. The key to doing this is both parties to approach the conversation from an adult ego state; it results in more success at reading others and solving problems (Dahlke, 2017c). So it is necessary to remain in the adult ego state even when the receiver is not. Additionally, life positions are often shaped by experiences and they influence communication style, with the most successful one being when both parties are okay. Otherwise, when one part is okay and the other is not or both are not, the communication can go south with one of them feeling disadvantaged and getting defensive or shy, or both feeling alienated. The general manager is autocratic, leading to a condescending tone, blaming others and making them feel inadequate, it would be prudent for him/her to make others feel okay too, to enable open communication and a problem solving mindset.
The Groupthink bottleneck
Cohesion is the dream of any team, to work with unanimous decision making and absolute understanding when communication, yet this could lead to ineffectiveness due to Groupthink. As the article “Groupthink: The Dark Side Of Teamwork” by Dahlke (2017a) explains, Groupthink is when members of a team want to achieve consensus so much that they do not consider other viewpoints or courses of action. This implies that a team needs to attain a delicate balance between individual member autonomy and group consensus. As appealing as Groupthink may appear, it has some shortcomings such as the illusion of unanimity, members avoiding external opinions, ignoring ethical consequences of group decisions or actions, overconfidence, and members suppressing their ideas in fear of going against the majority. Counterarguments are necessary for the growth of any group, so certain measures can be taken to mitigate Groupthink and increase team effectiveness.
First and foremost, limiting the team size helps reduce Groupthink because people feel less intimidated, take personal responsibility and can speak up. As in the case of the Auto Dealer, Groupthink was not a problem because of the small team size, each member felt free to air their opinions. Educating members about the dangers of Groupthink and encouraging thinking also allows members to analyze the group’s actions, policies and their implications before taking action, this way, even unpopular alternatives are heard. Additionally, ensuring impartial leadership and external views encourages people to reduce conformity to group norms and challenge views of team members to create an environment of open inquiry (Cherry, 2020).
Building a positive team climate
The ideal climate for any team is one of trust, it allows members to feel safe from ridicule, manipulation, embarrassment, micro-management, exploitation or punishment. According to the article “Building_a_Positive_group_Climate” by Dahlke_ND, all these factors are traits that destroy team morale and are a result or consequence of a climate of fear. Leaders need to be problem-centered, uncritical, person-centered, sharing and rewarding instead of control-centered, critical, authoritative, withholding and punishing, to allow team members to grow, open up, and share ideas. A climate of criticism and fear discourages dialogue which is a key factor for communication, airing of opinions, and learning. Creating this positive team climate is the responsibility of every team member. In the case of the Auto Dealer, the climate of the team is not conducive as seen in the meeting, the General manager leading the meeting is autocratic, the Sales manager is dominating, the Parts and service managers are too critical and blaming. For a better climate, the General Manager should be considerate of the opinions of others, and the other managers should be more centered towards problem solving to fix whatever problem they face instead of fixating on pinning the blame on each other.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, communication is never as easy as it seems, as observed in the topics above, yet it is something we take for granted. According to the article, “Excising Our Communication Demons” by Dahlke_ND, communication is a complex process that requires the sender and receiver to talk and listen carefully within a conducive communication environment in order for the communication to be successful. The factors discussed above such as self-concept, Groupthink, transactional communication, and a positive team climate need to be considered carefully for communication to be successful. And the Auto Dealer’s team direly needs to refactor itself appropriately in order to achieve effectiveness, otherwise it will be tearing itself apart to its inevitable doom. Therefore, people need to encode and decode communication based on intent, history, and internal factors of themselves and the person they are communicating with. Unsuitable communication environment coupled with improper encoding and decoding of communication adds charges dubbed communication demons and can cause negative perceptions in communication leading to misunderstanding, discomfort and conflict. So for effective communication, even in the Auto Dealer’s case, calls for reading our minds, the minds of others and adjusting our communication styles to ensure our communication is delivered and interpreted appropriately.
References
Cherry, K. (2020, April 3). The Asch Conformity experiments. Very Well Mind. https://www.verywell.com/the-asch-conformity-experiments-2794996
Dahlke, Arnie (2017a). Groupthink: The Dark Side Of Teamwork. See Presentations Section: Dahlke_2017a_Groupthink_The_Dark_Side_Of_Teamwork
Dahlke, Arnie (2017b). You Are What You Speak. See Presentations Section: Dahlke_2017b_You_Are_What_You_Speak.pdf
Dahlke, Arnie (2017c). TA and Communication. See Presentations Section: Dahlke_2017c_TA_and_Communication.pdf
Dahlke_ND_Building_a_Positive_Group_Climate.pdf. See Presentations Section (Module 4).: Dahlke_ND_Building_a_Positive_Group_Climate.pdf
Excising Our Communication Demons. See Presentations Section (Module 4).: Dahlke_ND_Excising_Our_Communication_Demons.pdf