Chapter Twelve: Formal and Informal Groups

FORMAL GROUPS

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we
are an ocean.”
-Ryunosuke Satoro
 
The major purpose of formal groups is to
perform specific tasks and achieve specific
objectives defined by the organization
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping
together is progress. Working together is
success.”
- Henry Ford
Factors that contribute to the negative
attitude in committee meetings

Lack of trust
A negative mindset: “meetings aren’t real
work”
Missing or incomplete information
Meetings are poorly run
Viewed as the end result, not the means to an
end
 
Committees and group activities have
continued to flourish in spite of:
 Widespread condemnation
 Widespread dislike

“Meetings are necessary”

 Committees

The members has the authority to handle the
problem at hand.
Equal committee roles
Can create special human problems
 System Factors to
Consider

 Size
 Composition
 Agendas
 Surface Agendas
 Hidden Agendas
 Agendas should:
 Specify date, time, and place
 Indicate the primary purpose of the meeting
 Presenters, allotted time, time available for discussion
 Help focus on decisions not on discussions.
 Room for new items
 Priority over items
 Date, time and place of next meeting
 System Factors to
Consider

Leadership Roles
 Task leader
 Social leader
 Accomplishment of objectives and stay on target
 The two roles, task and social, supports each other to maintain group
relationships
 Commonsense Practices:
 Who
 Site
 Technology
 Credit
 Open and directed
 Balance
 Summarizing and Assignments
 Leadership Roles

Task Roles Social Roles
 Define a problem or goal  Support and recognition
 Request facts, ideas or  Sensing of the mood
opinions  Reduce tension and
 Provide F, I, O reconciliation
 Provide structure
 Modify position, admit
 Summarization
errors
 Determine if agreement
 Facilitate participation
has been reached
 Check for consensus  Evaluation
 Test ethicality  Deal with team Stress
Structured Approaches

 Open discussions
 There are methods that work for specific objectives
and provide greater control over the process
 All alternatives has one thing in common: they start
in finding a problem and its solution
 There are four important alternative structures:
 Brainstorming
 Nominal Groups
 Delphi Decision Making
 Dialectic Inquiry
 Brainstorming

 Four Basic Guidelines:
 Generate as many ideas as possible.
 Be creative, freewheeling and imaginative
 Build upon (piggyback), extend, or combine earlier ideas
 Withhold criticism of others’ ideas
 The success depends on Listening
 Electronic Brainstorming
 Two main principles
 Deferred judgment
 Quantity breeds quality
 Nominal Group
Technique

 Steps:
 Individuals are brought together with a problem
 Develop solution independently, writing it on cards
 Ideas are shared in a structure format
 Brief time allotment for clarification
 Designation of preferences for the best alternatives by secret ballot
 Announcement of group decision
 Advantages:
 Equal participation
 Tight control of time
 Disadvantages:
 Rigidity
 No feelings of cohesiveness
 Delphi Decision
Making

Members (respondents) chosen are all experts
Questionnaire or Survey form
Gathered responses are summarized and fed back to the members for
their review
Success depends on:
 Adequate time, participant expertise, communication skill, and
member’s motivation.
The merits of this process include:
 Elimination of interpersonal problems
 Efficient use of experts’ time
 Adequate time for reflection and analysis
 Diversity and quantity of ideas generated
 Accuracy of predictions and forecasts made
 Dialectic Decision
Making

Traces are rooted from Plato and Aristotle
Tends to overcome the problems of face-to-face
decision-making groupings
Key step: Explicit or implicit assumptions
Merits:
 Better understanding of proposals, its premises, and
its pros and cons
Disadvantages:
 Forging of compromise
 Focus on better debaters
Dialectic Decision
Making
 Problem

Proposal A Proposal B
generated generated

Assumptions Assumptions
underlying A underlying B
are identified are identified

Presentation Presentation
of A’s pros of B’s pros
and cons and cons

Choice

Compromise New
A B
of A and B Alternative
 Group Decision
Support System

Uses technological advances
One example is electronic bedroom
The quality of information is substantial
 System Factors to
Consider

Systems View of Effective Committees
Inputs Processes Outcomes

Size
Leadership Support

Composition
Group Quality
Stuctures
Agendas

Feedback
 Potential Outcomes of
Formal Group Processes
 Support for Decisions

 “people who participate in making a decision feel more
strongly motivated to accept it and carry out.”
 has greater weight
 Quality of Decisions
 effective problem solving tools
 Individual Development
 Fairly even participation among members
 Social facilitation (role modeling)
 Person’s general level of arousal and awareness
 Raises level of performance
 Stimulates the person close to the gap
 Consensus: A Key
Issue

A necessary prerequisite?
Requirement or implicit expectation
Shared level of understanding
Ideas to reach consensus:
 Conducting a straw poll
 Super majority vote (90%)
 Ask members to withdraw
 Creation of subgroup and empower it
 Pinpoint patterns of the problem
 Expedite closing of discussion
 Facilitation Skills

“act of assisting or making easier the
progress or improvement of something”
Separate idea-getting from idea-evaluation
Generate multiple solutions
Balanced contribution
Processing of own success
 Weaknesses of
Committees

“you go to the meeting and I’ll tend the store”
Some meetings are unproductive
Criticism
“how to make the best use of them”
Weaknesses of a committee that must be
known before using them:
 slowness and expensiveness, groupthink,
polarization, escalating commitment, divided
responsibility
 Slowness and
Expensiveness

 “Committees keep minutes and waste hours”
 On occasion, delay is desirable
 If a quick and decisive action is necessary, an
individual approach is more effective.
 Groupthink

 Meetings often lead to conformity and compromise
 Bringing individual thinking in line with group’s
thinking (leveling effect)
 Dominant members
 Groupthink Detection:
 Self censorship
 Rationalization that what they are doing is acceptable to others
 Illusion of invulnerability
 Self appointed mind-guards
 Illusion of unanimity
 Stereotyping others outside the group
 Illusion of morality
 Pressure on dissidents
 
 Present to groups that act as though it is above the
law
 Consequences: deterioration in a group’s judgment,
failure to engage in reality testing, lowered quality of
decision making
 To prevent groupthink, designation of Devil’s
Advocate is needed
 Questions the ideas of others
 Guardians of clear and moral thinking
 Polarization

 Individuals bring to the group their strong
predispositions, either positive or negative, toward
the topic
 “some groups tend to make a risky shift in their
thinking
 Escalating
Commitment

 “group members may persevere in advocating a
course of action despite rational evidence that it will
result in failure”
 Reasons why this happens:
 Selective perception
 Competence motive
 Fear of losing face
Divided Responsibility

 “Several bodies responsibility are nobody’s
responsibility”
 “Why should I bother with this problem? I didn't
support it in the meeting”
 Overcoming the
Weaknesses

Proper group structure must be selected
Group size
Leadership roles played