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Enjoying Your Work Richard Brislin |
Working within
groups is an increasing
workplace demandThe challenges facing businesses today are so complex that individual employees must be able to combine their talents with those of others and to form groups.
Employers are asking the faculty of business schools to prepare students to work in groups. Job applicants will often be asked questions about their group memberships and their contributions to various work teams.
Groups are collections of people who influence one another. Effective groups combine the skills of individual members and encourage the development of innovative contributions that go beyond the abilities of any one person. The influential social scientist George Homans suggested that groups have four features. Members of groups interact with each other. Further, they listen and respond to each other's messages during their communications. Person A contributes, person B takes that into account and offers suggestions, and person B in turn recognizes A's efforts. This is quite different from people speaking without any reference to the presence of others.
If they are members of groups, people engage in mutually agreed upon activities. In the workplace, these activities involve goals that cannot be achieved by one person and demand collective effort. Examples are bringing a new product to market, organizing a convention and developing complex software. While activities are often accomplished most effectively through face-to-face meetings, more and more "virtual groups" are working together given today's computer technology. I know of team projects that have been successfully completed through e-mail with the group members never having a face-to-face meeting.
Group members develop affective ties, also called sentiments. In effective groups, the sentiments are positive and respectful. Problems arise when negative emotions come to the forefront, and groups suffering from negativity are likely to become unproductive and dysfunctional.
People who work in groups agree to behave according to shared norms that guide their everyday behaviors. Norms exist for various aspects of the workplace: punctuality, informal indicators of who is productive and who is not, and the amount of non-work socializing that is expected. Groups often have leaders who are "rate setters." These people model what group members have agreed is a reasonable work load and level of productivity. Some ambitious newcomers to a workplace become "rate busters" if they go beyond the group norm regarding productivity. These people risk becoming socially rejected and will find themselves uninvited to informal group gatherings. Some people can accept this isolation and come cannot. If they are to become group members, these newcomers must become attentive to the agreed-upon workplace norms.
Company executives who view employees as individuals who work only for their narrow and independent self-interests are mistaken. Groups exert powerful influences on members, and executives should recognize their importance in the workplace. Change efforts should often focus on group norms as well as the goals of individual workers.
The purpose of this column is to increase understanding of
human behavior as it has an impact on the workplace. Given the amount
of time people spend at work, job satisfaction should ideally be high and
it should contribute to general life happiness. Enjoyment can increase as
people learn more about workplace psychology, communication, and group influences.
Richard Brislin is a professor in the College of Business Administration,
University of Hawaii. He can be reached through the
College Relations Office: cro@cba.hawaii.edu