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For my final paper I have chosen chapter 5, Performance and Productivity. This chapter

resonated with me because in my opinion this is the heart of social processes in organization.

This chapter summarizes the factors that play into what makes a team perform successfully. In

addition, Thompson further explains skills that are needed to overcome the struggles of

managing within a team. I feel what most resonated with me is when Thompson (2019)

explained what an integrated model of team performance is. On page 112, Thompson provided a

diagram to summarize the model of integrated work (Thompson, 2019). This diagram is what

resonated with me because it breaks down teamwork by context, essential conditions, and team

performance.

From this chapter, an important term to mention is Flow. Thompson states, “Flow is a

psychological state in which a person is highly engaged in a task. They are so interested in fact,

that the person loses track of time, and the process of engaging in the task is its own

reinforcement (Thompson, 2019).” Thompson supported this by proving a diagram to represent

how the flow experience is measured. A second concept that will support would be the term of

Engagement. This concept is important to mention because engagement is what drives a team to

work together. Other concepts Thompson points out are the different struggles that impacts a

team with methods to overcome these struggles. To provide examples of this concept, would be

Free Riding and Social Loafing.

From personal experience, I can say my team has felt the struggles of Social Loafing.

Thompson describes this as, “people in groups often do not work as hard as they do when alone

(Thompson, 2019). To further explain, my leadership and I had come up with a concept of a

game to motivate managers to accomplish goals to better their measured metrics. The metrics

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that were considered in my workplace of self-storage would be receiving five-star Google

reviews, move ins and retail sales. We divided our managers into teams and motivated them to

work together. With working together they would be able to accumulate the most points to win a

prize at the end of the game/month. The concept of this game was to help managers improve in

areas that needed the most work. At the end, the game was not successful because managers

reported that other managers did not believe that this concept would help them. It resulted in

these managers putting the work while others did not. In addition, the managers just advised to

work alone on their own metrics versus in a team.

Thompson shared some methods to overcome the struggles of Social Loafing. With

critique-full lenses, I can say we disassembled the teams after the managers voted to work alone.

This was the first mistake. If I were to have the chance to re do this experience, I would have

been more involved. In the Making the Team, Thompson (2019) states that keeping members of

the team equally responsible and involved in each task can result in a better job performance.

Secondly, I feel that we could have done a better job of displaying other contributions to the

game, or Thompson (2019) states, “identifiability”. Having to do this will have members of the

team to hold themselves accountable for the work they accomplish in their team.

In conclusion, I feel that Chapter 5 has provided me with some tools and concepts that I

can now take and utilize in my current workplace. Knowing that I had experience some of the

struggles presented in this Chapter and how this chapter provided the answer could have made a

positive difference in my team and our performance.

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Reference

Thompson, L. (2018). Making the Team: A Guide for Managers. (Sixth ed.). Pearson Higher Ed.