Assignment 2: Analysis Of Groups And Experiences
MGMT 1001
Assignment 2—Everest Report
Student Name: Lu Zhang
Student ID: z3489372
Course: MGMT1001
Tutorial Time: Wednesday 9:00-10:00 a.m.
Tutor’s Name: Dhamnika Abeysigbe
Lecturer’s Name: Hugh Bainbridge
Due date: 20 May 2014
Table of Contents
Table of contents
Executive summary
Introduction
Analysis of Leadership and Experiences Leadership trust Leadership effectiveness
Analysis of Groups and Teams and Experiences Roles and status system Conformity Group cohesiveness and group tasks
Analysis of Communication and Experiences Disinhibition
Methods of communication interpersonally Conflict …show more content…
management
Conclusion
Appendix Goals on track Simulation 1—group Simulation 2—group Team contract
References
Executive Summary
The Everest simulation, a virtual mountain—climbing game designed by Harvard Business School and Forio Business Simulation, was applied in our Management 1001 course. Students will undertake a set of challenges and have to solve these challenges as a tem. Usually students are gathered in clusters of five or six and each person has their own goals to achieve. Therefor the relationship conflicts caused by the diversities in personal scores and information about promoting the task result challenges the group’s ability of communication and leadership.
Each group will be given two attempts to complete the simulation. Before starting, everyone has to do some preparation about his or her goals and watch a video, which describes what will happen. The first simulation is performed with communication barriers, which will lead to conflict and ambiguity. Our group reached scores of 26% at the first time and 2 of 5 reached the summit. The failure resulted from ineffective leadership, chaotic group as well as troubled communication. Since we were more experienced and everyone had intense desire to get high scores, the second simulation was performed with well-organized group and critical analyzing. And we got 63% and 3 of 5 got the summit. There are numerous reasons contributes to the improvement including an better leadership trust, effective leadership, enhanced status system, clearly team goals, well conflict management and etc.
Ultimately, the Everest simulation is a elegant simplification because users can learn the basic concept about management and teamwork after participate the game. Therefor , I have a better understanding that leadership, group and team as well as communication have different influences between virtual world and physical team.
Introduction
As one of the assignments demonstrated by ‘Management 1001’, the Everest simulation divided students into a set of groups and each group consists of five or six people.
Group members have to complete a virtual climbing game to reach the summit of Mount Everest. And at the same time, it is also necessary to record about the team performance and organizational environment. This game is aimed to establish a virtual scene and give students opportunities to experience the mediums of communication and teamwork challenges. By continue analyzing and practicing, students improve the ability on leadership, teamwork and communication. In retrospect, different approaches were used during the two simulations. Since the team members were unprepared and passive, we used a conservative and self-centered approach in the first simulation, which leaded to low team scores of 26%. So this report will have a present a critical analysis of the team’s Everest experience on the observer’s opinion regarding leadership effectiveness, groups and teams via virtual and physical, and the disinhibition phenomenon in communication. All of the 3 aspects will attach management theories and concepts as well as the …show more content…
experiences.
Analysis of Leadership And Experiences
Leadership is the process of influencing a group to achieve goals. The effective leadership is significant to communication efficiency and output improvement. We will discuss the leadership in two aspects. One is leadership trust is an essential factor in leadership. The other is the approach to become effective leader.
Leadership trust
Leadership trust, referring to the belief in the integrity, character and ability of a leader, is a significant consideration for the leader to establish as a result of today’s uncertain environment. In the first simulation, since group members were unfamiliar with each other, they played at the first time with lower mutual trust, and what is worse, they didn’t trust the leader. For example, photographer had goals requiring him to spend two consecutive days at both camp 1 and camp 2. Although the leader told him to conform to team’ goal and advance to climb, he didn’t trust the leader and ignored others’ suggestion and turned to complete his own goals selfishly, which decrease the group points.
According to management theories, trust in leadership is meaningfully contributed to high level of job outcome, including job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Brower, Lester, Korsgaard & Dineen, 2009, pp. 327-47). It is proved by research that teammates who trust a leader are more likely to be sensitive to the performance of leader. The reason is they are so confident that the leader will not abuse their needs and interests (Gao, Janssen & Shi, 2011, pp. 787-798). Which means, to assess another’s trustworthiness, it is important for the leader to act for five dimensions including integrity, competence, consistency, loyalty and openness?
So in my opinion, one of the most important reasons that our group failed is the team leader got into a distrusted phase. At the first simulation, unfamiliarity relationship and leader’s passivity contributed to failure that only 2 of 5 reach the summit and gained 26/100 points. Also leaded to other teammates felt unsafe and suspected the ability lead had. So if I were the leader of the group, before the first simulation, I will gather everybody and have a group meeting to let the group members know more about each other. I will give an introduction of my schedule for the game, perform confidently and tell the truth to everyone that I considered about each one’s goal and made the fair and well thought out decisions, please trust me and work together with me. And during the two simulations I will treat everyone fairly and promote voice from the group members. In summary, it is significant for a team leader to preform honestly and gain trust worthiness from his or he group members.
Leadership Effectiveness
As previously stated, an effective leadership makes an significant contribution to job production. There are various factors influent the leadership effectively including leadership training, which refers to the well-trained leader usually perform more effectively, gender differences, which means that males and females lead different styles in leadership. However the most important element in our group is cross-cultural leadership.
Our group consists of members from different countries, the leader is Malaysian (actually an ethnic Chinese Malaysian), marathoner and me—the observer are Chinese and other three are Australian.
According to management theories, national culture is certainly an important situational variable in determining which leadership style will be most effective. One study indicated that Australian leader prefer to inspire the whole group conquer difficulties and try to get the best results. Australian leaders would not make all the decision by themselves. On the contrary, our lead is an Asian who were competent decision maker, effective communicators and supportive of teammates. In fact, the leadership differences result from diverse national cultures of the group members. National culture is an significant characteristic in identifying the leadership importance as national culture feature plays an important role in establishing interpreting sighs, symbols, artifacts and actions. In practice, western leadership theories pay more attention on human beings especially the satisfaction and final individual interest of the group members. Obviously it is a kind of revenue for group on account of this provoking factor. On the contrary, the Asian culture has total different concepts and theories on leadership, which cannot be adapted to western culture. Eastern culture concentrated more on collective responsibility, which is a moral part connecting the team leader with the other members. In other words, in a team with Asian culture, it is necessary for team leader to protect the team members while loyalty towards the leader also an important thing for team member to show. Meanwhile a network relationship of in-group plays an important role for leadership effectively on an Asian leadership culture (Swierczek, 1991, pp. 3-10)
At an observer’s standpoint, in our simulation, our group leader, who is an ethnic Chinese Malaysian, is arbitrary sometimes. If I were a leader I will listen to others, generate all ideas and make the best decision for our group.
Analysis of Groups and Teams And Experiences
Although we increased our group scores in the second simulation, we still fail that 2 of 5 didn’t reach summit and we got a low score of 63% at second time. Here I will discuss about groups and teams at an observer’s standpoint and talk about three aspects: roles and status system, conformity as well as group cohesiveness and group tasks.
Roles and status system
The variation in roles expressively revealed different behavior patterns to each group member, which also enhanced the ability in problem solving as well as strategic analyzing skills.
Our first simulation was governed under virtual team，which all group members worked together via internet in order to achieve common goals. On account of geographical dispersion as well as lacking of face-to-face communication, it was important to have someone performing the proper roles such as task-related roles, which help the group to focus on the task at hand, and the maintenance-related roles, which help the group to maintain good interpersonal relationships within the group (Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014, pp. 390-403). Most of the time, in my opinion, it is leader’s responsibility to play these roles. However in practice, our leader is passivity and inability, he could not settle the conflict when the environmentalist had a critical healthy and argued to stay at camp while the photographer consist going, which result in team`s dissatisfaction. After few conflicts for power and dominance, the leader, photographer and marathoner concentrated on self-oriented role (Benne and Sheats, 1948, pp. 41-49). In addition, we achieved 0/3 of bonus scores in the first simulation indicated the destructive effects of the dysfunctional
roles.
With strong aspire to make improvement; our group had a meeting to critically discuss about methods to avoid mistakes including unstable leadership hierarchy, dysfunctional roles and relationship conflict. Also the second simulation is a physical team. Consequently our team leader was more talkative and performed a more contributing role in motivating members and enhancing satisfactions. In addition, we applied the theory of role modification at second time, which was of benefit to us to manage conflict more efficient and our team have a satisfied achievement of bonus score of 2/3.
Conformity
Comparing the first simulation with the second, one interesting thing is that most of the members were talkative at the first time. We had intense debate last for more than one hour during the virtual exercise at the first time while we finished the whole simulation in thirty minutes in the second face-to-face practice on account of suffering greatly from conformity pressure. Solomon Asch did a research demonstrated that usually individuals desire to be collective in their groups therefor they preferred to be in harmony and agreement with others rather than to be disruptive by giving the answers they knew were wrong.
For example, marathoner in our team kept more silent at the second time compared to the first one since her native language is not English. She was silent and just accepted the other`s decision when others had an impassioned discussion. As a result her low team morale led to friction to generate idea and to group cohesiveness which creating the theory of groupthink—“individual tends to align is or her opinion to conform to others’ opinions especially when he or she was exerted extensive pressure” (Turner and Pratkanis, 1997, pp.53-71). Although we made great improvement in the goal achieved at the second time from 26% to 63%, we should have reached higher score if the marathoner was more talkative.
At the observer’s standpoint, it is leader’s responsibility to manage the whole group and generate as more ideas as possible. If I were a leader, I will be more considerable to ask about marathoner’s opinion and collect all ideas to maintain the group’s cohesiveness.
Group Cohesiveness and Group Tasks
The group conflicts usually result from the inconsistent individual goals, establishing lower group cohesiveness (Ahearne, Makenzie and Podsakoff, 1997, pp. 974-983). At the first simulation, most of the members were unprepared and had low attitude matches to reach the summit. We just regard it as a game and didn`t pay much attention on it so we failed for the first climbing. By setting a target goal to make all the teammates survive and gain a minimum of 90% in the second time, group cohesiveness improved extremely since all members performed at a earnest attitude and some of them even scarified individual goals for reaching a better team score. With the strong group cohesiveness, our group was more productive and gained 63/100 of the goal. The reason why we failed to reach 90/100 is because we made a untouchable target which got everyone tired in later game stages. In my opinion, it is important for a group to set appropriate goals to increase both group cohesiveness and the group’s attitude.
Analysis of Communication And Experiences
It is important for a team to perform with efficient communication. So it will talk about three aspect of communication including disinhibition, methods of communication interpersonally and conflict management
Disinhibition
In the first Everest, we utilized a virtual communication media approach instead of face to face communication. As an observer, I found something interest during the two simulation. The leader was usually very bashful in the class but became so talkative and expressed his opinion directly online while others also performed more active than usual. It was a little bite out of order because everybody pay attention to their keyboard and ignored the continuous refreshing words in the small window. This is a management theory—online disinhibition effect can make a pretty well explanation for this phenomenon.
Online disinhibition effect refers that some people are more self-disclose or perform more often via online than they would in the physical world. And invisible is one of the most important fact that influence the disinhibition effect. Other than physical pattern, online communication make people concentrate more on exchanging information by words. Since they are hardly influenced by others non-verbal communication and body language, they could express themselves under a more freely. As a result usually people tend to be more talkative online compared with in person (Suler, 2004, pp.321-326).
However, although online disinhibition effect played an important role in our first simulation by generating more useful ideas, it really leaded to a great chaos because everyone concentrated on their own opinions and ignored others’ which lead to inefficient communication. As a result, other teammates ignored the questions from marathoner about weather predicting and some of them died on account of frostbite. By contrast, we played the second simulation face to face, and it is amazing that online disinhibition effect undermined. At this time, every teammate declared in order and clearly. We predicted the weather together by common sense and made such a successful in avoiding getting frostbite. And we also gain the additional bonus point.
Methods of communication interpersonally
Communication refers to the transfer and understanding of meaning and there are a wide variety of communication methods from which to choose. At the first practice, we utilized a virtual communication medium approach, which connected with each other in a small chatting window online. Although communication online saved time and travel expense, it is an ineffective method on account of vague and ambiguous information. And in the second simulation everyone prefers a physical discussion. In a face-to-face communication, group talked to each other via verbal intonation, non-verbal communication and body language to help them expressed clearly and was able to address immediately any question and concerns of other teammate. Since we successfully shifted the approach on communication from virtual to physical, team motivation and performance was reinforced dramatically in the second simulation.
Conflict Management
Both Everest simulations were dominated by numerous conflict, which is “perceived incompatible differences that result in interference or opposition.” In the human relations view of conflict, all conflict must be avoided because conflict is bad. However in another management theories—the interactionist view of conflict indicates that group needs some conflict to act effectively. In both of the Everest simulation, we had a conflict between the leader and photographer. At camp 4 the leader decided to advance and reach the summit together while the photographer tried to complete his personal goal and stay on camp 4. All the team members had a heated communication and the photographer accepted the leader’s decision which scarify himself to reach the whole team’s goal. In spite of having conflict, we dealt well with the conflict and generate more ideals after communication. We perform more effectively by making full use of conflicts.
Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014, pp. 390-403).
Conclusion
Ultimately, all the teammates had an enjoyable time in the Everest since this simplistic design simulated the real working environment we will meet in the future.
During the two simulations, we made critical thinking about how to assess trust from others and make an effective leadership, how to avoid groupthink and enhance the group cohesiveness and how to reduce ambiguity conflicts and increase apparently communication. As a observer, on one side, I had an brilliant invaluable experience to understand the essence of effective of leadership, teamwork as well as communication and learned about the complex influences of the interplay between communication, teamwork and leadership. On the other side, I felt confident about applying these basis concepts in practice for next time.
Appendix
Goals on track
Simulation 1—group scores
Goals
Points
Round 2: Medical Challenge Points
0
Round 3: Weather Challenge Points
0
Round 4:Oxygen Tank Allocation Points
0
Percent of Team Goals Achieved
26%
Simulation 2—group scores
Goals
Points
Round 2: Medical Challenge Points
1
Round 3: Weather Challenge Points
1
Round 4: Oxygen Tank Allocation Points
0
Percentage of Team Goals Achieved
63%
TEAM CONTRACT
TEAM CONTRACT
Everest 2
Team Name: Group 133
Name
Role
Contact
1
Shuming Wang
Photographer
0421163788
2
Madhur Verma
Doctor
0403356477
3
Kah Hao Tan
Leader
0450083263
4
Ying Ye
Marathon
0416810605
5
Lu Zhang
Observer
0450810803
6
Emy Yoneda
Environmentalist
0435489755
7
Team Procedures
1. 1. Day, time, and location of team members for Everest 2: 10th May 10.00p.m.Friday , UNSW Australian School of Business
1. 2. Preferred method of communication before and during Everest 2 (i.e., e-mail, mobile, chat function, face-to-face in a specified location).
A. A. Before the climb Facebook Messenger
A. B. During the climb (Note: Everest 2 has to be conducted face-to-face in a specified location during the exercise) Round Table in the Australian School of Business
A. C. After the climb Facebook Messenger
1. 3. Team goal for Everest 2: 100% personal and team success
1. 4. Decision-making policy (By consensus? By majority vote? By team leader?): Team Voting, Team Leader, and Concensus
Team Participation
1. 1. How will we resolve conflict? Use voting to resolve the conflict
1. 2. Strategies for encouraging/including ideas and debate from all team members : Allow everyone to express their ideas, take turns in speaking
1. 3. Strategies for achieving our goal:
2. Promote communication and cooperation to ensure everyone meets their personal goals and team goals
3.
4. 4. Preferences for leadership (team leader only, shared leadership): Shared Leadership
Personal Accountability
1. 1. Expected individual attendance, punctuality, and participation at Everest 2: - Everyone needs to reach the location on time that has been planned. - Everyone should participate and express their views
1. 2. What are the consequences for lack of engagement in Everest 2? - Potentially failing the team goal - Unable to complete the report to a satisfactory level
References
H.H. Brower, S.W. Lester, M.A. Korsgaard, and B.R. Dineen, ‘A closer look at trust between managers and subordinates: understanding the effects of both trusting and being trusted on subordinate outcomes’, Journal of Management, April 2009, pp. 327-47;
R.C. Mayer and M.B. Gavin, ‘trust in management and performance: Who minds the shop while the employees watch the boss?’, Academy of Management Journal, October 2005, pp.874-88
K.T. Dirks and D.L. Ferrin, ‘Trust in leadership: Metaanalytic findings and implications for research and practice’, Journal of Applied Psychology, August 2002, pp. 611-28
Gao, L., Janssen, O. & Shi, K. 2011, ‘Leader Trust and Employee Voice: The Moderating Role of Empowering Leader Behaviors’, The Leadership Quarterly, pp. 787-798
Swierczek, F.W. 1991, ‘Leadership and Culture: Comparing Asian Managers’, Leadership and Organization Development Journal, vol. 12, pp. 3-10.
Hoch, J.E. & Kozlowski, S.W.J. 2014, ‘Leading Virtual Teams: Hierarchical Leadership, Structural Supports, and Shared Team Leadership’, Journal of Applied Psychology, pp. 390-403
Benne, K. & Sheats, P. 1948, Functional roles of group members, Journal of Social Issues, vol. 4, pp. 41-49.
Suler, J. 2004, ‘The Online Disinhibition Effect’, Cyberpsychology and Behavior, vol. 7, pp. 321-326
Turner, M. & Pratkanis, A. 1997, Mitigating groupthink by stimulating constructive conflict, Using Conflict in Organisations, pp. 53-71.
M. Ahearne, S. Mackenzie and P. Podsakoff, Moderating effects of goal acceptance on the relationship between group cohesiveness and productivity, Journal of Applied Psychology, pp. 974-983.
Assignment 2—Everest Report
Student Name: Lu Zhang
Student ID: z3489372
Course: MGMT1001
Tutorial Time: Wednesday 9:00-10:00 a.m.
Tutor’s Name: Dhamnika Abeysigbe
Lecturer’s Name: Hugh Bainbridge
Due date: 20 May 2014
Table of Contents
Table of contents
Executive summary
Introduction
Analysis of Leadership and Experiences Leadership trust Leadership effectiveness
Analysis of Groups and Teams and Experiences Roles and status system Conformity Group cohesiveness and group tasks
Analysis of Communication and Experiences Disinhibition
Methods of communication interpersonally Conflict …show more content…
management
Conclusion
Appendix Goals on track Simulation 1—group Simulation 2—group Team contract
References
Executive Summary
The Everest simulation, a virtual mountain—climbing game designed by Harvard Business School and Forio Business Simulation, was applied in our Management 1001 course. Students will undertake a set of challenges and have to solve these challenges as a tem. Usually students are gathered in clusters of five or six and each person has their own goals to achieve. Therefor the relationship conflicts caused by the diversities in personal scores and information about promoting the task result challenges the group’s ability of communication and leadership.
Each group will be given two attempts to complete the simulation. Before starting, everyone has to do some preparation about his or her goals and watch a video, which describes what will happen. The first simulation is performed with communication barriers, which will lead to conflict and ambiguity. Our group reached scores of 26% at the first time and 2 of 5 reached the summit. The failure resulted from ineffective leadership, chaotic group as well as troubled communication. Since we were more experienced and everyone had intense desire to get high scores, the second simulation was performed with well-organized group and critical analyzing. And we got 63% and 3 of 5 got the summit. There are numerous reasons contributes to the improvement including an better leadership trust, effective leadership, enhanced status system, clearly team goals, well conflict management and etc.
Ultimately, the Everest simulation is a elegant simplification because users can learn the basic concept about management and teamwork after participate the game. Therefor , I have a better understanding that leadership, group and team as well as communication have different influences between virtual world and physical team.
Introduction
As one of the assignments demonstrated by ‘Management 1001’, the Everest simulation divided students into a set of groups and each group consists of five or six people.
Group members have to complete a virtual climbing game to reach the summit of Mount Everest. And at the same time, it is also necessary to record about the team performance and organizational environment. This game is aimed to establish a virtual scene and give students opportunities to experience the mediums of communication and teamwork challenges. By continue analyzing and practicing, students improve the ability on leadership, teamwork and communication. In retrospect, different approaches were used during the two simulations. Since the team members were unprepared and passive, we used a conservative and self-centered approach in the first simulation, which leaded to low team scores of 26%. So this report will have a present a critical analysis of the team’s Everest experience on the observer’s opinion regarding leadership effectiveness, groups and teams via virtual and physical, and the disinhibition phenomenon in communication. All of the 3 aspects will attach management theories and concepts as well as the …show more content…
experiences.
Analysis of Leadership And Experiences
Leadership is the process of influencing a group to achieve goals. The effective leadership is significant to communication efficiency and output improvement. We will discuss the leadership in two aspects. One is leadership trust is an essential factor in leadership. The other is the approach to become effective leader.
Leadership trust
Leadership trust, referring to the belief in the integrity, character and ability of a leader, is a significant consideration for the leader to establish as a result of today’s uncertain environment. In the first simulation, since group members were unfamiliar with each other, they played at the first time with lower mutual trust, and what is worse, they didn’t trust the leader. For example, photographer had goals requiring him to spend two consecutive days at both camp 1 and camp 2. Although the leader told him to conform to team’ goal and advance to climb, he didn’t trust the leader and ignored others’ suggestion and turned to complete his own goals selfishly, which decrease the group points.
According to management theories, trust in leadership is meaningfully contributed to high level of job outcome, including job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Brower, Lester, Korsgaard & Dineen, 2009, pp. 327-47). It is proved by research that teammates who trust a leader are more likely to be sensitive to the performance of leader. The reason is they are so confident that the leader will not abuse their needs and interests (Gao, Janssen & Shi, 2011, pp. 787-798). Which means, to assess another’s trustworthiness, it is important for the leader to act for five dimensions including integrity, competence, consistency, loyalty and openness?
So in my opinion, one of the most important reasons that our group failed is the team leader got into a distrusted phase. At the first simulation, unfamiliarity relationship and leader’s passivity contributed to failure that only 2 of 5 reach the summit and gained 26/100 points. Also leaded to other teammates felt unsafe and suspected the ability lead had. So if I were the leader of the group, before the first simulation, I will gather everybody and have a group meeting to let the group members know more about each other. I will give an introduction of my schedule for the game, perform confidently and tell the truth to everyone that I considered about each one’s goal and made the fair and well thought out decisions, please trust me and work together with me. And during the two simulations I will treat everyone fairly and promote voice from the group members. In summary, it is significant for a team leader to preform honestly and gain trust worthiness from his or he group members.
Leadership Effectiveness
As previously stated, an effective leadership makes an significant contribution to job production. There are various factors influent the leadership effectively including leadership training, which refers to the well-trained leader usually perform more effectively, gender differences, which means that males and females lead different styles in leadership. However the most important element in our group is cross-cultural leadership.
Our group consists of members from different countries, the leader is Malaysian (actually an ethnic Chinese Malaysian), marathoner and me—the observer are Chinese and other three are Australian.
According to management theories, national culture is certainly an important situational variable in determining which leadership style will be most effective. One study indicated that Australian leader prefer to inspire the whole group conquer difficulties and try to get the best results. Australian leaders would not make all the decision by themselves. On the contrary, our lead is an Asian who were competent decision maker, effective communicators and supportive of teammates. In fact, the leadership differences result from diverse national cultures of the group members. National culture is an significant characteristic in identifying the leadership importance as national culture feature plays an important role in establishing interpreting sighs, symbols, artifacts and actions. In practice, western leadership theories pay more attention on human beings especially the satisfaction and final individual interest of the group members. Obviously it is a kind of revenue for group on account of this provoking factor. On the contrary, the Asian culture has total different concepts and theories on leadership, which cannot be adapted to western culture. Eastern culture concentrated more on collective responsibility, which is a moral part connecting the team leader with the other members. In other words, in a team with Asian culture, it is necessary for team leader to protect the team members while loyalty towards the leader also an important thing for team member to show. Meanwhile a network relationship of in-group plays an important role for leadership effectively on an Asian leadership culture (Swierczek, 1991, pp. 3-10)
At an observer’s standpoint, in our simulation, our group leader, who is an ethnic Chinese Malaysian, is arbitrary sometimes. If I were a leader I will listen to others, generate all ideas and make the best decision for our group.
Analysis of Groups and Teams And Experiences
Although we increased our group scores in the second simulation, we still fail that 2 of 5 didn’t reach summit and we got a low score of 63% at second time. Here I will discuss about groups and teams at an observer’s standpoint and talk about three aspects: roles and status system, conformity as well as group cohesiveness and group tasks.
Roles and status system
The variation in roles expressively revealed different behavior patterns to each group member, which also enhanced the ability in problem solving as well as strategic analyzing skills.
Our first simulation was governed under virtual team，which all group members worked together via internet in order to achieve common goals. On account of geographical dispersion as well as lacking of face-to-face communication, it was important to have someone performing the proper roles such as task-related roles, which help the group to focus on the task at hand, and the maintenance-related roles, which help the group to maintain good interpersonal relationships within the group (Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014, pp. 390-403). Most of the time, in my opinion, it is leader’s responsibility to play these roles. However in practice, our leader is passivity and inability, he could not settle the conflict when the environmentalist had a critical healthy and argued to stay at camp while the photographer consist going, which result in team`s dissatisfaction. After few conflicts for power and dominance, the leader, photographer and marathoner concentrated on self-oriented role (Benne and Sheats, 1948, pp. 41-49). In addition, we achieved 0/3 of bonus scores in the first simulation indicated the destructive effects of the dysfunctional
roles.
With strong aspire to make improvement; our group had a meeting to critically discuss about methods to avoid mistakes including unstable leadership hierarchy, dysfunctional roles and relationship conflict. Also the second simulation is a physical team. Consequently our team leader was more talkative and performed a more contributing role in motivating members and enhancing satisfactions. In addition, we applied the theory of role modification at second time, which was of benefit to us to manage conflict more efficient and our team have a satisfied achievement of bonus score of 2/3.
Conformity
Comparing the first simulation with the second, one interesting thing is that most of the members were talkative at the first time. We had intense debate last for more than one hour during the virtual exercise at the first time while we finished the whole simulation in thirty minutes in the second face-to-face practice on account of suffering greatly from conformity pressure. Solomon Asch did a research demonstrated that usually individuals desire to be collective in their groups therefor they preferred to be in harmony and agreement with others rather than to be disruptive by giving the answers they knew were wrong.
For example, marathoner in our team kept more silent at the second time compared to the first one since her native language is not English. She was silent and just accepted the other`s decision when others had an impassioned discussion. As a result her low team morale led to friction to generate idea and to group cohesiveness which creating the theory of groupthink—“individual tends to align is or her opinion to conform to others’ opinions especially when he or she was exerted extensive pressure” (Turner and Pratkanis, 1997, pp.53-71). Although we made great improvement in the goal achieved at the second time from 26% to 63%, we should have reached higher score if the marathoner was more talkative.
At the observer’s standpoint, it is leader’s responsibility to manage the whole group and generate as more ideas as possible. If I were a leader, I will be more considerable to ask about marathoner’s opinion and collect all ideas to maintain the group’s cohesiveness.
Group Cohesiveness and Group Tasks
The group conflicts usually result from the inconsistent individual goals, establishing lower group cohesiveness (Ahearne, Makenzie and Podsakoff, 1997, pp. 974-983). At the first simulation, most of the members were unprepared and had low attitude matches to reach the summit. We just regard it as a game and didn`t pay much attention on it so we failed for the first climbing. By setting a target goal to make all the teammates survive and gain a minimum of 90% in the second time, group cohesiveness improved extremely since all members performed at a earnest attitude and some of them even scarified individual goals for reaching a better team score. With the strong group cohesiveness, our group was more productive and gained 63/100 of the goal. The reason why we failed to reach 90/100 is because we made a untouchable target which got everyone tired in later game stages. In my opinion, it is important for a group to set appropriate goals to increase both group cohesiveness and the group’s attitude.
Analysis of Communication And Experiences
It is important for a team to perform with efficient communication. So it will talk about three aspect of communication including disinhibition, methods of communication interpersonally and conflict management
Disinhibition
In the first Everest, we utilized a virtual communication media approach instead of face to face communication. As an observer, I found something interest during the two simulation. The leader was usually very bashful in the class but became so talkative and expressed his opinion directly online while others also performed more active than usual. It was a little bite out of order because everybody pay attention to their keyboard and ignored the continuous refreshing words in the small window. This is a management theory—online disinhibition effect can make a pretty well explanation for this phenomenon.
Online disinhibition effect refers that some people are more self-disclose or perform more often via online than they would in the physical world. And invisible is one of the most important fact that influence the disinhibition effect. Other than physical pattern, online communication make people concentrate more on exchanging information by words. Since they are hardly influenced by others non-verbal communication and body language, they could express themselves under a more freely. As a result usually people tend to be more talkative online compared with in person (Suler, 2004, pp.321-326).
However, although online disinhibition effect played an important role in our first simulation by generating more useful ideas, it really leaded to a great chaos because everyone concentrated on their own opinions and ignored others’ which lead to inefficient communication. As a result, other teammates ignored the questions from marathoner about weather predicting and some of them died on account of frostbite. By contrast, we played the second simulation face to face, and it is amazing that online disinhibition effect undermined. At this time, every teammate declared in order and clearly. We predicted the weather together by common sense and made such a successful in avoiding getting frostbite. And we also gain the additional bonus point.
Methods of communication interpersonally
Communication refers to the transfer and understanding of meaning and there are a wide variety of communication methods from which to choose. At the first practice, we utilized a virtual communication medium approach, which connected with each other in a small chatting window online. Although communication online saved time and travel expense, it is an ineffective method on account of vague and ambiguous information. And in the second simulation everyone prefers a physical discussion. In a face-to-face communication, group talked to each other via verbal intonation, non-verbal communication and body language to help them expressed clearly and was able to address immediately any question and concerns of other teammate. Since we successfully shifted the approach on communication from virtual to physical, team motivation and performance was reinforced dramatically in the second simulation.
Conflict Management
Both Everest simulations were dominated by numerous conflict, which is “perceived incompatible differences that result in interference or opposition.” In the human relations view of conflict, all conflict must be avoided because conflict is bad. However in another management theories—the interactionist view of conflict indicates that group needs some conflict to act effectively. In both of the Everest simulation, we had a conflict between the leader and photographer. At camp 4 the leader decided to advance and reach the summit together while the photographer tried to complete his personal goal and stay on camp 4. All the team members had a heated communication and the photographer accepted the leader’s decision which scarify himself to reach the whole team’s goal. In spite of having conflict, we dealt well with the conflict and generate more ideals after communication. We perform more effectively by making full use of conflicts.
Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014, pp. 390-403).
Conclusion
Ultimately, all the teammates had an enjoyable time in the Everest since this simplistic design simulated the real working environment we will meet in the future.
During the two simulations, we made critical thinking about how to assess trust from others and make an effective leadership, how to avoid groupthink and enhance the group cohesiveness and how to reduce ambiguity conflicts and increase apparently communication. As a observer, on one side, I had an brilliant invaluable experience to understand the essence of effective of leadership, teamwork as well as communication and learned about the complex influences of the interplay between communication, teamwork and leadership. On the other side, I felt confident about applying these basis concepts in practice for next time.
Appendix
Goals on track
Simulation 1—group scores
Goals
Points
Round 2: Medical Challenge Points
0
Round 3: Weather Challenge Points
0
Round 4:Oxygen Tank Allocation Points
0
Percent of Team Goals Achieved
26%
Simulation 2—group scores
Goals
Points
Round 2: Medical Challenge Points
1
Round 3: Weather Challenge Points
1
Round 4: Oxygen Tank Allocation Points
0
Percentage of Team Goals Achieved
63%
TEAM CONTRACT
TEAM CONTRACT
Everest 2
Team Name: Group 133
Name
Role
Contact
1
Shuming Wang
Photographer
0421163788
2
Madhur Verma
Doctor
0403356477
3
Kah Hao Tan
Leader
0450083263
4
Ying Ye
Marathon
0416810605
5
Lu Zhang
Observer
0450810803
6
Emy Yoneda
Environmentalist
0435489755
7
Team Procedures
1. 1. Day, time, and location of team members for Everest 2: 10th May 10.00p.m.Friday , UNSW Australian School of Business
1. 2. Preferred method of communication before and during Everest 2 (i.e., e-mail, mobile, chat function, face-to-face in a specified location).
A. A. Before the climb Facebook Messenger
A. B. During the climb (Note: Everest 2 has to be conducted face-to-face in a specified location during the exercise) Round Table in the Australian School of Business
A. C. After the climb Facebook Messenger
1. 3. Team goal for Everest 2: 100% personal and team success
1. 4. Decision-making policy (By consensus? By majority vote? By team leader?): Team Voting, Team Leader, and Concensus
Team Participation
1. 1. How will we resolve conflict? Use voting to resolve the conflict
1. 2. Strategies for encouraging/including ideas and debate from all team members : Allow everyone to express their ideas, take turns in speaking
1. 3. Strategies for achieving our goal:
2. Promote communication and cooperation to ensure everyone meets their personal goals and team goals
3.
4. 4. Preferences for leadership (team leader only, shared leadership): Shared Leadership
Personal Accountability
1. 1. Expected individual attendance, punctuality, and participation at Everest 2: - Everyone needs to reach the location on time that has been planned. - Everyone should participate and express their views
1. 2. What are the consequences for lack of engagement in Everest 2? - Potentially failing the team goal - Unable to complete the report to a satisfactory level
References
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