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Effective Communication:Confronting and Expressing Opinions without Offending
Roni Reiter-PalmonDepartment of Psychology
Center for Collaboration Science
About
• Director – I/O Psychology
• Areas of research
– How creative ideas are developed
– Innovation in organizations
– Team performance
– Leadership
What is Communication?
• The ability to provide or exchange information
– In writing
– Speaking
– Other ways – technology, non-verbal
Communication and Collaboration
• Communication is essential building block for most workplace tasks
• Collaboration and teamwork require communication
Teams
• Why use teams?
• Multiple perspectives, points of view
• More knowledge
• Ability to share workload (physical and mental)
• Ability to capitalize of various strengths of team members (cognitive skills, personality)
• Diverse teams have more of these
Teams
• Teams used frequently
• In medicine
– Multiple disciplines provides multiple perspectives
– Increased knowledge
– Complex problems require multiple disciplines
Disadvantages of Teams
• Multiple perspectives, points of view can lead to conflict
• Different “languages”, approaches
• Coordination costs (time and effort)
• Dominant individuals in a group
• Social loafing
Communication in Teams
• Is a requirement
• Need to communication
– Opinion
– Agreement
– Disagreement
Voicing an opinion
• Typically not of concern
• Concerns arise when
– Potential for disagreement
– Power differential
– Both
Disagreement
• Can lead to conflict
• More difficult to voice when low power
– Concern about conflict
• Not all conflict is the same
• Task conflict – focus on the task itself
– What are the major issues (goals, obstacles)
– How do we solve the problem
• Personal conflict – focus on the person
– Dislike or distrust of other team members
– Overt or covert
• Task conflict can improve decision making– Focus on how to solve the problem better
• Person conflict hurts team efforts
• Sometimes hard to differentiate– Criticism related to task may be delivered as
personal criticism
– Personal criticism may be masked as task criticism
– Task criticism may be perceived as personal criticism
• Much of the conflict (both task and person) can be traced to team diversity
• Differences can create difficulty in communication
Defining Diversity• Surface level diversity
– Observable demographic factors
• Deep level diversity– Personality, values, attitudes
• Task related diversity
• Evaluating diversity– What is a diverse team?– Diverse on what?
Team diversity and Team outcomes• Effect of team diversity on social processes or
collaboration– Cohesion– Liking– Communication– Conflict
• Effects of team diversity on outcomes– Efficiency– Effectiveness– Creativity
Why?• Similarity attraction/Social categorizations
– Similarity leads to liking, trust
– Dissimilarity leads to “us” vs. “them”
– Homogeneous teams will be more successful
• Cognitive resources diversity
– Dissimilar members will bring different knowledge and skills
– Heterogeneous teams will be more successful
• Demographic diversity can hurt team functioning early, but disappears
• Task related diversity may make collaboration and communication more difficult early
• Better for more complex view of the problem
– Effective solutions for complex problems
– Creativity and Innovation
• We prefer to discuss things that we agree on
• We prefer to discuss information we all share
• These facilitate smooth team functioning
– It makes everyone comfortable
• Teams that are similar will have a similar world view, shared experiences
• Heterogeneous teams will have less in common
– Communication is more difficult
– Potential for misunderstanding and conflict
Expressing Dissent
• Why is it important?
– Prevents error - In many cases errors are noticed but no one brings it to attention
– Increases thoroughness
– Improves quality
– Allows for creativity and innovation
• Exercise
What stops us?
• Expressing dissent is uncomfortable
• Concern about being wrong/looking stupid
• Concern about offending others
• Can lead to conflict
What to do?
• How important is it to express your opinion?
– Not all issues are created equal
• How has the team reacted to dissenting opinions?
• What is you position in the team? Are you in a position of power
What to do?
• As a team member
– Express opinions when appropriate
– Explain yourself clearly
– Avoid assumptions
• About what others know or understand
– Present your opinion and dissent respectfully
– Know your audience – present information accordingly
– Point out common and shared opinions/points
• As a team member
– Ask others for their opinion – encourage others
– Ask for more information
– Accept conflicting or dissenting opinions
– Do not take dissent personally
– Find common ground
• As a leader
– Encourage team members to express opinions
– Explicitly solicit opinions
– Model acceptance
• Your team is looking at your behavior
– Surround yourself with people who will express opinions
• As a leader
– Model appropriate ways to express opinions and argue
– Remind the team of the overarching goal
– Remind the team of the value of diversity and diverse opinions
• As a leader
– Encourage team reflection
• Important for learning and preventing errors
– Ensure that dissent stays at the task level and does not develop into personal conflict
– Know when to stop discussions and reach a decision
Diversity of Opinions and Creativity
• We expect that diversity of opinions and points of view will facilitate creativity
• The same factors that lead to diversity of opinions can make it difficult to express and understand
Creativity Paradox• Factors that facilitate effective team functioning can
hinder creativity in teams
– Similarity makes collaboration easier, but innovation is less likely
– Diverse teams are more likely to innovate, but have difficulty collaborating
Steps in Problem Solving
• Problem Definition and Construction
– Identifying that a problem exists
– Based on past experiences
– Defining the parameters of the problem• Goals and Restrictions
• Information Search
– Internal and External
Steps in Problem Solving
• Idea/Solution Generation– Developing an idea or multiple ideas
– Brainstorming
• Idea/Solution Evaluation and Selection– Evaluation based on goals generated earlier, norms
– Identification of solution(s) to be implemented
Problem Construction• Different people will define problems
differently based on background, past experience, and personality
• Not likely to discuss problem construction differences
• May not be aware of problem construction difference
• Homogeneous groups are more likely to have similar problem constructions
• Diverse teams are more likely to develop creative and more comprehensive problem constructions, if they are discussed
Information Search
• More diverse teams will have access to more information
• Similar information is more likely to be shared
• Effective communication required to share information
Idea Generation
• Diverse teams will generate more diverse ideas
– Only if different ideas are discussed
– Only if groups are open and not critical too early
– Criticism of ideas (task) may also stifle ideas
Idea Evaluation and Selection• More alternatives not always better
– Cognitive load– Heterogeneous teams will have a more difficult time– Homogeneous teams will quickly remove options
• Homogeneous teams more likely to agree on criteria for evaluation
• Diverse teams are more likely to have complex evaluation criteria– If discuss and integrate various criteria
• Ineffective collaboration and communication will disrupt effective application of cognitive processes
• Diverse teams need to work harder to attain effective collaboration and communication
• Once collaboration and communication practices are set, diverse teams have a cognitive advantage
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