The Group : Nurturing Team Work

The Group : Nurturing Team Work
2014, Merve KAYA

• Understanding between a group and a
team differences
• Understanding stage of group development
process
• Understanding main reasons why teams fail
• Understanding of team problem solving
• Understanding the value of brainstorming
• Understanding advantages and
disadvantages of three different problem

• There are lots of famous people and we had already
known something about them. For example; football player
David Beckham or famous basketball player Dennis
Rodman. In the world who don’t have an idea about Bill
Gates of Microsoft. The examples are endless.
• The mistake is we often make is to forget taht these people
are not alone. They are part of a team which supports, and
often delivers their vision and goals. These shows us result
of our education system, which focuses on personal
performance.
• In the other facts; Michelangelo could not have a painted
the Sistine Chapel without the help of a group of artisans.
• Or Thomas Edison, the American inventor who generated
inventions like the telegraph, telephone, light bulb and
photograph, had a team of 14 people to help him

• A group can be defined as two or more individuals and
independent, who work together to implement particular
objectives. Groups have two forms;
Formal Group
Informal Group
• Formal Group must have specific tasks to perform.
Frontline hotel employees are an examples of a formal
group. They all have their own roles and responsibilities.
• Informal Group does not have any formal structure and
generally not organization-leader.

• The team can be defined as:
A small number of people with complementary
skills who have common purpose, goals.
• You can take any team , a pop group , it is quite
clear taht each member has a specific role. In
the end, they are part of a some thing bigger.

• We can show four specific reason for this;
1)Security ; people feel more stronger when they joined a team.
Because it helps to stress associated with a new job and team
members supports each others.
2)Self-Esteem ; people who are the participate a group get a
strong sence of self-worth. Team members is finding suitable
solutions to problems at hand.
3)Power ; It has been proposed taht people can succeed more
by leading a team.
4) Goal achievement ; Personal achieve personal organizational
goals by being part of team. In today, personals needs to
combine their talent , power or knowledge to achieve their
personal goals.

• Similarly to organizations and products, work teams also
all of these things have own development process. The
team development process have five stages ;
Forming;
Storming;
Norming;
Performing;
Adjourning;

• The Forming Stage ; These stage about which members try
to figure out and what they are supposed to be doing. This
stage is characterized with team’s goals , structure and
directions.
• Storming Stage ; These stage when members accept the
fact taht there is a team for the first time, but hey often
experience conflict , while they try to determine how hey fit
into the evolving power structure of team. These stage
important because of these stage sometimes groups have
problems during the early stages of their development.
• Norming Stage ; In these stage is where first relationships
develop and the team members begin to organize
themselves. Also this stage group identity the acceptable
behaviour. Also this stage team members try to find solutions
to the problems in hand by discussing them openly with each

• Performing Stage ; This stage is identify taht team loyalty
, where there is problem by all team members and where
conflicts are resolved efficiently.
• Adjourning Stage ; occurs when teams have succeed
their goals or when the task is completed and team
members are moving for the other challenge. This
stage, group’s member reactions different some of them
proud of results, or the others can feel sad which they
have development a product together cause they need to
seperate this rapport also the other members can do
criticize the effectiveness of team
All of stages of forming , storming, norming, performing and
adjourning provide a useful framework to understanding of
team development process.

• Teams have not always succeeded in securing their
objectives and hence which taht describe of the frame
why teams fail.
Hidden Agendas; This means that same team members
create their rules, create their own careers instead of
thinking about organization’s goals.
Lack of understanding; Misunderstanding with team
members for example it can be happen when team
member are brought together for the first time.
Lack of leadership; This is happening usually when the
team leader does not have good management skills and
personalities. Because the leader just can do balance of
team.

• Wrong mix of team members; Every team members have
different personality , characteristic and profeciency . A
team must be balanced which danger at generating too
many ideas or no ideas at all.
• Unhealthy team environment; The team members can
not work effectively if team members don’t feel
relax, confortable when they are working together.
• Treating a team like a group; Some organization label a
group as a team , however then the team cannot do
nothing more than collecting people.
• Psychological phenomena taht can cause teams to fail;
This is really important taht if team members do their
best, there are phychological events taht effect group’s
performance,opposite event also negatively effect the
performance. Following parts about phychological
phenomena and their effects on team working.

• Blind conformity;The human nature to want to be liked and to be
accepted by others. There have been several experiments which
relevant how people engage in illogical or wierd behaviour in order to
guarantee acceptance by a group.
For example nearly 50 years ago Solomon Asch who is a social
phychologist did several laboratory experiments in his studies which about
group’s social behaviours like negative side of group dynamics. In this
research, a group of seven to nine volunteer includes which figured table
with label as A. In these experiments there are 3 different line and A line
and researcher asks to the groups are which of these 3 lines similar to the
A. But in these group there are just one real person, the other six-seven
people are Asch’s assistants which hey are doing role to effecting real
person decision. All of assistans first of all give answers and then real
volunteer gives his/her decision. The end of the these research onlu 20 per
cent of the volunteer can give decion independent. The other 80 per cent
gave answer what the other group members gave. The test result shows
taht pressure of the other group member’s idea effected the decisions.

• Researchers have studied about this subject past four
decades. Janis (1972) did some research about
groupthink with American foreign policy such as
Korea, Vietnam and he tried to find why these
committees made such bad decision. And he discovered
the group cohesiveness had a negative effect on
outcomes. Loyalthy effects on the quality of the decision.
Groupthink limited decision making because;
Courses of action were accepted by everyone
Nobody in these committees was not think about
alternative routes for solving problems.
Group failed cause hey ignored the facts which did not
support the group’s view.

• Jonis has suggestion for best groupthink decisions;
1. Each team member must be encouraged their
opinions.
2. Leaders should be prepared must do criticism for
their actions.
3. Get advices for the same policy from different
groups with different leaders.
4. Periodically divide the group into subgroups.
5. Invite outsiders taht the group for talking their
reactions.
6. Someone from group should play the «devil’s
advocate» role

• This term was defined by Thompson as; who is studying
in a group , group members if feel physically alone in the
group who does not want to work much.
• Some of main reason given by researcher;
Equity of effort : «Everyone else is goafing off, so why
should not I?» They should also invest minumum effort to
the project.
Loss of personal accountability: «I’m lost in the crowd, so
who cares?»
Motivational loss due to the sharing of rewards: «Why
should I work harder than the others when everyone gets
the same reward?»
Co-ordination loss as more people perform the task:
«We’re getting in each other’s way»

• Creative teams, applies the inputs-processes-outcomes
model which is developed by Hackman and Morris(1975)
• Inputs: Encapsualate all the necessary thing of a team
such as materials or human resources.
• Processes: Shows the dynamic interactions about team
members as they work together on the way to achieving
their goals.
• Outcomes: Refer to the task and non-task-related results
of a team’s operation.

• Inputs represent the design and characteristic of a team
such as size of team or how many time groups members
have worked together.
Team Size : Group size has a critical role of group
performance. Researchers who they are Bouchard and
Hare (1970), found that for team member numbers
five,seven and nine members, the average output was
66,44 and 40.In Standford University classmates Bill
Hewlett and Dave Packard and Larry Page and Sergey
Brin tried to define team size like that big enough team for
necessary knowledge, skills and capabilities while at the
same time should be small enough for members to work
together without any difficulty.

• Katz and Allen’s research with 50 R&D teams identified an
inverse relationship between team longevity and
innovativeness.
• Positive project performance that these teams experienced
, new members coming together and generating fresh
viewpoints or concepts,while developing a better
understanding of each other’s knowledge, skills and abilities.
• They identified a number of reasons why the performance
long-term teams have problems
 The project teams must be manage generation problems. In
the team there are lots of different age of people . However old
team members generally have limits their knowledge and
solving to new problems.
 The team members sometimes ignore the important
knowlodges and they become isolated from important
resources which that effected the project performance.
Team Longevity

• Typically associate creative work with
advertisers, engineers, musicians, film directors, video
game developers and scientists.
• Developing new product or making improvements to an
existing product often requires the very careful co-ordination
and co-operation of people within departments, across
functional divisions , at different hierarchical levels within an
organization, and across sites and departments that may
form part of an external collaborating company.
Task
Knowledge,skills and abilities
• It is not a cliché to think that if you want great performance
you need great people.
• Everyday , engineering, design and marketing teams try to
solve problems for is delivered products to customer
• In the other , without ‘input’ there can be no ‘output’
because there is nothing on which to operate.
• Some team members will be better at defining the
problem, others can be better brainstorming.

• Resources include an array of elements : sufficient
funds, material resources,systems and processes for
work.
• Managers must decide on the resources which the team
will work with them.
Resourcing The Team
Team Composition
• In the team’s composition has really important part for
creating successful team.
• Teams should be achieved in terms of:
Knowledge,skills,attributes
Personality features required in the design of an effective
team.
When a team is too homogeneous , it tends to under-
perform and generation of creative outcomes.

• Action Processes: refer to the dynamic activities that
team members undertake.
• Communication is a key action process in team
working.
• Face-to-face communication is still the dominant
way of exchanging knowledge and ideas.
• Creative problem solving is another critical action
process in the team working. It has three key stages.
First, clearly define the problem.
Second, generate ideas taht could potentially solve
the problem.
Final, decide on the most feasible and valuable
solutions.
• Team problem solving is focusing on brainstorming.

• Alex Osborn, one of founders and executives of the
advertising firm Battern, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn
(BBDO)- generated this technique.
• Team meetings were generally creating new ideas
, especially from junior staff. He noticed junior people
were not expression their thoughts or ideas in front of the
senior colleagues at these meetings.
• With this method , people feel freedom to speak their
minds.
• Brainstorming is a method that using brain to storm a
problem.
• Creative process involves two steps;
First, Idea generation
Second, idea evulation
• Brainstorming generally focus on the first stage. In this
stage that problem definition and preparation which
combining with old ideas.

• There are four rules for brainstorming.
• First, during the brainstorming session, criticism of ideas
should be abolished. From our early years at school , in
the university we learn to use our judgement rather than
our creativity; we learn to show off ‘smartness’ by
criticizing other people’s ideas.
• For example ; Pop Idol , the reality entertaintment
show, became an instant hit not onlu due to its original
concepts. Cause some of the judges have been highly
critical of the participants performances.
• Second, brainstorming is taht participants should
welcome ‘free wheeling’. In other words, the wilder the
idea the better. Brainstorming sessions need to be daring
in generating wild ideas. No matter how unrealistic or

• Third, brainstorming sessions are encouraged to ‘go for
large quantities of ideas’. The greater is the probability of
coming up with a set of new and useful ideas. His rule
suggests taht quantity of ideas leads to quality.
• Fourth, his argues that ‘combination and improvement
need to be sought’ in a brainstorming session.
Participants should build on each other’s ideas. Better
ideas or the reconfiguration of existing ideas into novel
solution.
• These four rules are critical to the success of the
brainstorming process and for the creative output of team
problem solving.
• Brainstorming has been used in many different
fields, such as : social services, government
policies, military affairs, hospitals, education, advertising..
Etc.

• The generation of hundreds of ideas: not important being
realistic or not.
• Support the organizational memory: combine previous
knowledge from old problems. It can be helpful for future
brainstorming.
• Impressing clients: Clients are usually impressed by the
ideas. They may also collect ideas fastly.
• Improved morale: ’Feel-Good-Factor’, when participants
contribute to the success of company or project.
• Gain better understanding of each other: A mix of
people from different departments and different levels of
management are brought together in a brainstorming
setting.
• Enjoyment: Brainstorming is all about generating
valuable ideas in a relaxed manner. In brainstorming
contribute their ideas ; they often draw and come up with

• Personal growth and well-being : This process of
personal development can be of high importance to
individual’s thinking skills.
• Think up improvements : The systematic use of
brainstorming sessions may help a team to identify things
that are not going well and need to be changed or
improved.
• Relatively inexpensive : Brainstorming is a relatively
inexpensive technique that does not require a lot of time
in preparation or execution.

• The generation of ideas without screening them :
Although brainstorming may generate hundreds of
ideas, the method does not include any kind of screening
or evolution. Creative problem solving must be aimed at
selecting those ideas.
• It may not always be the answer to your problems :
Brainstorming sessions must be followed all rules . If any
of conditions are not met, outcome of the session is likely
to be less successful.

• The use of computers to interact and exchange ideas , making
easier contribute their ideas , since no one would know whose
ideas were whose. This technique allows team members to
generate a large quantity of ideas by sitting at their own desk
and by being electronically connected to other participants. At
the same time , they have evolved to enable users to interact
with other team members over the Web. There are five stages
of the electronic brainstorming process:
• 1)Generating Ideas : Each participant inputs his/her ideas
relevant to the topic into the computer at will. They have access
to the pool of ideas generated and archived into the computer.
Also team members can communicate each others in the
primary channels of communication.
• 2)Editing Ideas : The aim is to organize ideas so that team
members can identify similar ideas and combine them or
eliminate some ideas.
• 3)Evaluating Ideas : Ideas are then evaluated and prioritized
by each participant anonymously. A voting tool can be of
importance for selecting best ideas.
• 4)Implementing Ideas : Electronic brainstorming cannot
implement the best ideas. Many electronic brainstorming
software packages have a ‘plan-of-action’ tool where action

• It is not gurantee for problem solving.
• It needs fastly connection for implementing the ideas to
computer.
• There are too many ideas in there , which may result in
idea overload.
• Electronic brainstorming sessions require computers and
special softwares for brainstorming and it is relatively
expensive way than face-to-face way.

• This is the another problem solving techniques and it is calling
that ‘Brainwriting’. It requires the team members who attend a
brainstorming session. In this way , team members does not
has to wait for their turn to say their ideas.
• There are several versions of brainwriting. First one is
commonly known as Individual Poolwriting Technique . To
begin , each team member silently writes ideas on a piece of
paper and places the paper in the centre of the table. Each
participant then draws one of the table and adds more ideas.
This exchange of papers carries on until the end of the
session. After several turns, most of team members have ideas
and comments.
• In the second version of brainwriting, labelled as ‘brainwalking’.
Sheets of papers are posted in the walls of a room and team
members silently walk around the room, read what is on the
paper and add their ideas. Benefits of that participants can
view all comments at the same time. But it does not have
anonymity cause all team members can see who wrote the
comments.

• Several advantages ;
Many people do not feel relax when they are speaking
even in front of the small group.
Individuals do not have to wait to speak.
Brainwriting participants can produce a greater number of
ideas.
• NGT developed by Delbecq and Van de Ven at the
University of Wisconsin in 1968. In this method difference
is participants never interact. In this method every
participants wrote his/her idea . Then group declare
different letters for these ideas and every group member
vote the ideas. After that they are calculating the result of
vote which one is more important or which one has less
importance, they are finding using a table for votes.

• Trusting has highlights the importance of people’s ability
to associate with each other.
• Importance of trust in teams as the foundation for taking
risks, creating useful ideas, and solving problems.
• Researchers have ideas the impact taht conflict has on
idea generation and decision making. Recent studies
have highlighted several benefits of conflicts that have
not previously been considered.
• Conflict may be useful for generating ideas and
processes higher- quality decisions.

• Cohesiveness have several positive influences on team
interactions and creativity.
• Team with increased creative performance by
interpersonal liking ; team laugh and smile more together
and share increasing feelings of psychological safety.
• Task type, selection of project, does not onlu specify the
work to be done that need developing for future work. It is
interesting the note that when team members recognize
the need for creativity in order to get the job. This
increasing experiment with new
ideas, technologies, materials, components, markets or
processes.

• Leadership style facilitates creativity and innovation in
teams.
• Supportive supervisors effects the team members such
as positive feelings and more consantrate and it is
effecting the their professional growth.
• The most important things for team leaders , they need to
build an effective work team and made up of individuals
who trust and communicate well with each other, who are
willing to challange each other’s ideas and who are
supportive of the work they are doing.
• They should also be in a position to balance employees
freedom and responsibility, without domination or control
, while at the same time to show concern for employees
feelings and needs, generously recognize creative work
by individuals and teams, and encourage them to voice
their concerns, provide feedback and facilitate skill

• The main focus on performance outcomes, such as the
quality and quantity of ideas generated and on team
member satisfied.
• Why is the potential of brainstorming sessions not
realized in brainstorming studies?
There are three factors taht may explain this:
1) Evaluation apprehension(concern,worry) : Brainstorming
participants contribute their ideas because hey worry about
what other people would think of them.
2) Social loafing : Individuals working in teams may not
feel as accountable as they would if they were working
alone , and hence may reduce their efforts.
3) Production blocking : Brainstorming participants may
think their idea generation is blocked cause their inability to
express their ideas if hey have to wait for their turn to talk.

• In these presentation examined; how people work together in
teams effectively more than sum of individual achievements.
• Summarize;
- A group can be defined as two or more individuals, interacting
and independent, who work together to achieve particular
objectives. There are two type of groups as formal and
informal.
- People want to join teams for a variety of reasons. Leading a
team helps individuals to deal with their own insecurities.
- Team working usually requires the effective management of
individuals.
- The literature on creativity problem solving methods like
electronic brainstorming, brainwriting and the Nominal Group
Techniques (NGT).
• In addition to examining the direct effects of team inputs and
proceses on team performance, researchers such as task type

The Group : Nurturing Team Work

The Group : Nurturing Team Work

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