1. Team Development
Chapter 5 - Cooperation and
Competition
Chapter 8 - Power and Social
Influence
Chapter 10 - Situational Leadership
March 26, 2015
2. The essence of teamwork is the cooperative
interactions of team members. Team members
should be working together toward a common
goal, but competition makes team members work
against one another. (Levi, p. 82)
3. Cooperation and Competition
Rather than being cooperative or
competitive, team members are often both
simultaneously – a mixed motive situation
• In what sense was teamwork a mixed motive
situation for team members in Remember the
Titans?
• What strategies did the Coach use to deal with
potentially negative effects of competition within
the team?
4. Cooperation and Competition
Even though working cooperatively on a team
should prevent competition, competition often
occurs anyway. Team members may misperceive
the situation and turn a cooperative situation
into a competitive one.
Levi asserts 3 reasons for this: Can you provide
examples from the movie?
0 Culture
0 Personality
0 Organizational rewards
5. Unhealthy Agreement
The Abilene Paradox (Harvey, 1988) has several
symptoms:
0 Team members feel angry about the decisions the team is
making
0 Team members agree in private that the team is making
bad decisions
0 The team is breaking up into subgroups that blame others
for the team’s problems
0 People fail to speak up in meetings or to communicate
their real opinions.
Consider all those who were part of an “extended” team – coaches,
assistants, players, as well as those in a position of influence. Were
there any “trips to Abilene?” Why or why not?
6. Rules for Constructive Controversy – Do
you have situations in which you can
apply them?
0 Establish openness norms.
0 Assign opposing views.
0 Follow the golden rule of controversy (discuss issues
with others the way you want issues discussed with
you).
0 Get outside information.
0 Show personal regard (criticize ideas, but not a
person’s motivation or personality).
0 Combine ideas (avoid either /or thinking – try to
combine ideas to create alternative solutions.)
7. Power and Social influence
What is the nature of conformity?
Defined as a change in a person’s behavior
or opinions as a result of real or imagined
pressure from a person or a group of people.
What causes people to conform to group
pressure?
What did Asch’s experiments on conformity
tell us about how people behave?