Final Group Project: Cultural Conflict

Individual Differences - Cultural Conflict

Our group encountered cultural conflict per below as we considered that we have different values, beliefs and goals. When individual cultural, value and perspective come together, they will inevitably clash against one another and the result could be devastating. 

* Team members who are from different disciplines and pose communication issues or assume different assumptions from different disciplinary or industry backgrounds;

* Team members who have ideological difference about content or methods in achieving group outcomes;

* Team members with different interpretations of accountability and responsibility of tasks and team outcomes; and

* Team members with different personality

Solutions

We resolved the conflict by Negotiation, Communication and Trust.

Negotiation

Negotiation is a process in which groups with conflicting interests meet together to make offers, counteroffers, and concessions to each other in an effort to resolve their differences (George Jones, 2012).  Negotiation helped us to resolve conflict and to enhance cooperation and performance instead of competitive or dysfunctional outcomes.

According to Robbins Judge (2007), negotiation permeates the interactions of almost everyone in groups and organizations.  Despite there was cultural conflict occurred in our group, we were able to achieve a win-win outcome through negotiation. By taking the perspectives of the team members, we did not only enhance problem-solving abilities but also the ability to jointly solve problem at the bargaining table (Thompson 2009). Our successful negotiation undoubtedly fostered good team spirit and coherent as each member knows their role and supports other team members.

Negotiation works best on conflict resulted from different disciplines but less effective on conflict resulted from different personality.  Since personality is inborn, it is difficult to change.  No matter how we negotiate, we were unable to change others’ personality.  For this, we can only compromise to some extent.  For the other three differences which are not inborn, negotiation works well in resolving.  Each of us could try to understand others’ standpoint and then arrived at win-win situation.

Communication

Effective communication improves relationships, empowers people, provides clear direction and increases productivity.  One may lose motivation and the inability to make decision without it (eHow 2015).

Through open communication within our team, we successfully resolved conflict arisen from individual differences.  By communicating, we understood each other more in-depth.  Communication allowed us to clarify own and other’s standpoint.  We can also fully utilize each member’s strength as we understood each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  By communicating, we could not change others’ personality but we could understand and react accordingly.  By communicating, we could understand each member’s concern and feeling so that we could better collaborate.

Trust

Only with trust among team members, negotiation and communication can be effective.  Only if we trust each other, we could focus on our own assigned task and made the collaboration process smooth and efficient.  Without trust, no matter how we communicate and negotiate, there would be no result.  As each of us tried hard to build up trust among ourselves by showing positive track record and integrity, we could trust each other’s expressions when we negotiate and communicate.

Conclusion 

Though we encountered cultural conflicts due to individual differences, through negotiation, communication and building up trust with each other, our group had successfully collaborated and resolved the conflict.  We are all glad to be in a group and we all agreed that this is a productive and efficient group. 

References:

Communication Skills (2015), Retrieved from 25 April, 2015, from http://www.communicationskills.co.in/

George J, & Jones G (2012). Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior. (6th ed). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Leigh L. Thompson (2009). The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator

Martin, v. (2015). How to Work With People From Different Cultures. Retrieved 25 April, 2015, from http://www.ehow.com/how_8780495_work-people-different-cultures.html

Robbins Judge (2007). Organization Behaviour (12th ed). Pearson

Assignment 2

Introduction

Cherry believes that the unfair accusation from Philip is mainly due to his ignorance of some facts behind what he could see. Also, his poor management was the result of his wrong assumptions. Cherry believes that these are the reasons that Philip had put the wrong focus to solve the company’s operation problem. As Cherry wants to get fair treatment and at the same time she wishes the company’s operation to be improved, writing a letter of complaint to let Philip knows the true reason behind the poor department performance is a good channel. That will not only help to resolve the conflict situation between Cherry and Philip but also help to divert Philip’s management focus to the right direction.   

_________________________________________________________________________________

Complaint Letter

Mr. Philip Wong

Head of Personal Insurance Division

Smart Insurance Company Limited

19/F, 1 Boston Road, Hong Kong

Dear Mr. Wong,

I believe I am a loyal employee in this company for the past 12 years.  Recently, I feel that I am not being treated fairly.  This letter is a formal complaint against the lack of communication and unfair treatment that I have encountered since you have been appointed to lead the Personal Insurance Division last year.   

In December 2014, you said that you would have to review my team’s performance and effectiveness.  Since then, you have been criticizing my work and making unfavorable comments on me to some of my team members.  I am being accused of not completing my daily work despite me fulfilling and achieving the sales target.  Sometimes, I have been kept out of the team meetings because your assistant forgot to inform me about the changes of meeting schedule.  As you found that there is a sharp increase in customer complaints, you blamed it on me.  However, you ignored my explanation of the reasons behind and did not try to figure out the true reason.

  

Below are some things that you may have missed out and I would like to share with you:

1. There is 50% increase in my premiums sold as compared to last year Q1.  This increase was not able to be reflected on the Management Report due to the many of the policies sold were still pending for approval.   As feedback from most clients, competitors usually issue the policy to them within 10 working days.  However, we have to take at least 5-6 weeks.  As a result, half of our clients requested to withdraw the policy within the cooling-off period due to late issuance of policy.  Recently, there are two newly joined underwriting managers who are responsible for approving the policies.  They spent much longer time than the previous underwriting managers to approve the policies.  I knew these two new colleagues are related parties of you.  I will be glad if all colleagues’ work efficiency can be judged fairly despite of their relationship with anyone in the company.

2.  Recently, our hotline center received many customer complaints about the incorrect information on their policies documents such as incorrect policyholder name, incorrect insured items, and incorrect premium discount, etc.  Even there are some premiums being overcharged from client’s banking accounts.  There were 500 dispute cases per month (i.e. 10% of policy issued).  The case details can be retrieved from the “Monthly Customer Complaints & Grievances Report”.  Upon investigation, these incidents were due to the shortage of manpower in Policy Administration Department.   The staff turnover rate of the department was 50% in the past three months.  This resulted in the high volume of policy termination as well as loss of customers’ loyalty and trust. 

3. Due to the long processing time and incorrect policy information, 70% of incoming calls were customer complaints in which both the talking time and turn-around time for case follow up were triple than our ordinary business.  Although all of us made the best effort to shorten the conversation and speed up the follow up action, the service level of our hotline couldn’t be maintained in these three months.  In the worst situation, the long call queue and low call pick-up rate would make customer frustrated and got angry with our services.  It would be a big challenge for us to acquire new businesses if no further improvement on the quality of our policy. 

4. Every day I had to deal with such customer complaints and also spend most time to follow up the matter with those affected customers.  Even though there is no overtime compensation, I was willing to work late till 10pm every day in order to speed up the case settlement and reduce customer dissatisfaction as much as possible.  Under my hard work, 95% complaint cases could be managed and settled within 3 working days.  However, my hard work had never been appreciated.

Honestly, I had never encountered such problems from my previous manager, Ms Kay Wu, who are now the Head of Commercial Insurance Division.   

During the past few months, I had raised my concerns to you for at least four times.  I tried asking for a formal meeting to further discuss on this matter. However, you were no show for the first meeting and refused to talk to me in the second meeting because you suddenly had a lunch appointment with friends.  In the third meeting, you expressed that my behavior was very immature and unprofessional while instructed me to stop complaining and just do my job.  

I was very disappointed about the unfair treatment to me.  No matter how well I perform in my job, I would not be recognized for my efforts and contribution.   This unfair treatment had a negative impact on my productivity and morale.  I really enjoy my work but it becomes increasingly difficult for me to maintain a high performing team because of the unfair treatment. I have no alternative to take this step for bringing the matter to your attention as you did not give me a chance to meet face to face. 

I am seeking your help in resolving these problems that I am experiencing at work. I would be grateful if I could have the chance to talk to you at your convenience.  

Yours sincerely, 

Cherry

Customer Service Manager

Sales & Service Department 

Personal Insurance Division

_________________________________________________________________________________

Analysis:

Complaints aroused from Omission & Lack of communication

Cherry was being accused of poor performance by Philip.  In the letter, we can see the differences between Cherry and Philips’.  Philip was accusing her while he is defending.  Obviously Cherry is reluctant to agree with Philip’s comments.  The below shows Cherry and Philips’ communication:

Red for Cherry’s; Blue for Philip

Figure 1:

Their communication lines are parallel and there is no overlapping talking point.  Therefore, their communication channel is not correct.  That’s why Cherry feels upset about the negative comments.  In the letter, it shows Philip did not pay attention to Cherry’s explanation although she tried to raise the concerns to him for 4 times.  It is an intentional ignorance.  In the letter, Cherry had pointed out to Philip that she had voiced out to talk to him directly but Philip had ignored.  For Philip, he only focused on the management report for the reported sales figure.  What he saw in the report did not reflect the reality.  As Cherry explained, the lower sales figures in the report does not mean she had not made enough insurance policies sales.  Her premiums sold even got an increase as compared to last year.  Her effort was not reflected in the management report.  Philip also omitted the reasons of receiving increasing number of complaints.  His only focus was only on Cherry’s Sales & Service Department.  In his perception, customers’ complaints must be related to the department’s service but not from other reason.  He ignored to investigate the content of the customers’ complaints and so did not realize customers’ dissatisfaction were due to slow processing and incorrect information of the insurance policies.  So, these are the information that Philip omitted.  To bring Philip back to the truth, Cherry had explained the reason of the low sales figures and the content of the customers’ complaints, which is because of the slow approving process of the policies.  Moreover, Philip had ignored the fact of high staff turnover rate of Policy Administration Department.  When figuring out the reasons of receiving more complaints, Sales & Service Department should not be the only responsible party.  By pointing out this, Philip should be aware that he ignored this kind of fact.  Another thing Philip had ignored was Cherry’s effort.  In the letter, Cherry tried best to explain she had put best effort to settle customers’ dissatisfaction.  This is a good chance for Cherry to point this out as Philip as a boss, did not realize what Cherry’s team had done to help the company in this adverse situation.  This helps to change Philip’s perception on Cherry and her team.  He had bad impression on Cherry and her team because he did not realize what they had done to settle the customers’ complaints.  By pointing out what Cherry and her team had done, the letter helps to solve the problem of Philip’s ignorance of their effort.

Figure 2: The Shannon-Weaver Mathematical Model

Shannon, C. E. A (1949) Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 27, pp. 379-423 and 623-656, July and October, 1948.

According to Shannon’s communication process model, it is a conceptual model to explain how human beings communicate. Cherry (the information source) to explain the difficulties by talking (transmitter) to Philip in a meeting (channel) and Philip (the receiver) listened.  However it seems the message doesn’t go to Philip’s brain or mind (destination).  He gave no feedback at all. This creates miscommunication.  Miscommunication refers to fail to communicate clearly.  There are many reasons for miscommunication such as: office romance, assumptions, favoritism, criticism and non cooperation. In this case, assumption is the major problem. Philip has a roughly assumption on Cherry. (SpeedupCareer, 2015)

Miscommunication can cause severe damages for a business such as drop in revenue and productivity, investment lost, lost of human assets, etc.

Miscommunication generates Cherry’s negative feelings. She is upset, anxious, nervous or even angry by what Philip has done.  A negative emotion can influence employee’s performance.  At the end, the company suffers.  As Philip refused to communicate with Cherry face-to-face, she brought up his attention by writing the letter.  This is the only way that Cherry can do to “communicate” with Philip.  The letter helped Cherry to bring up the issues that Philip ignored as he refused to communicate.  Communication is the only way to provide channel for them to arrive at a viable solution to the situation.  

Complaints aroused from Differences

We are all human beings but the most interesting part is that we are all different but why don’t we all see eye to eye?  It’s because of our different education, family backgrounds, life experience, etc.  We have different values, perceptions and beliefs.  We select difference aspects of a message to focus our attention based on what interests us, what is familiar to us or what we consider important. (McLean, 2012)  Philip selectively believed what he is interested to see, such as there is a sharp increase of customer complains.  He only saw Cherry’s poor performance and ineffectiveness, however, Philip didn’t see the reasons behind.

Why do we see things differently?  It is because of the involvement of our senses and what we like to choose to experience by our context and environment.  Our habits, values and outlook on life are influenced by where we come from and where we are. (McLean, 2012) 

As in the case, Philip did not listen to Cherry by sitting down together in a formal or informal meeting.  He did not give feedback to Cherry’s explanation and her concern about the difficulties Cherry is facing.  In Cherry’s angle, as her manager, he also did not help Cherry to manage her stress level about the conflict.  Due to the different understanding of the facts with Cherry, Philip refused to talk to Cherry and keeps on accusing her.  By writing the letter, Cherry brought out facts in her points of view.  In Cherry’s point of view, increasing customers complaints are mainly caused by incorrect policy information, over-charged premiums, long processing time, etc.  These are not in Philip’s mind.  Cherry clearly pointed out in the letter for these facts and it helped Philip to look at the matter in another point of view.  For Philip, what he saw is only decreasing sales and increasing complaints.  In his understanding, these were caused by Cherry’s team.  The different understanding of Philip with Cherry is the main reason for the current conflict situation.  The letter clearly told Philip these are not caused by Cherry’s team but other departments.  Since he rejected to listen to the reasons explained by Cherry, the letter can provide a channel for Philip to understand these in a calm way.  

Avoid Climbing the Ladder of Inference

It is highly likely that Philip could have drawn wrong inferences on Cherry’s poor performance based his bias and the adverse comments provided by the two newly joined and inexperienced managers who are also related parties of Philip.  By referring to the materials appended in the letter, Philip should be able to select the reality and facts through the reasoning process in the ladder of influence.  By pointing out the fact that these two newly joined underwriting managers are related parties of Philip, he got a chance to climb down the ladder of inference again to rethink the reasonableness of his perception.  He should consider this factor when he draws his conclusion about the reasons of the decreasing sales and increasing number of complains.

The compliant letter could help Philip to draw better conclusions.  It could help Philip to analyze the evidence and data such as sales figures and the “Monthly Customer Complaints & Grievances Report”.  It would allow Philip to form opinions and judgment impartially based on the true facts and reality. The letter could help Cherry to check if her arguments are sound enough to validate or challenge Philip and other people's conclusions.  The complaint letter could also be used to challenge Philip’s assumption.  Apparently, Philip did not pay attention to Cherry’s explanation and selected the facts based on his own beliefs and experience.  He jumped up the ladder and assumed that the poor performance and the upsurge of complaint figures were mainly due to the laziness of Cherry’s team.  Once Philip has the opportunity to read the complaint letter, he would have changed his assumption and focused on addressing the issues with Cherry. 

Resolving the Conflict situation

According to Jain (2005), conflict is a process that begins when one party perceives another party has negatively affected or is about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about. Obviously, Cherry cared about the accusations of Philip and concerned about the way he handled her complaint.  It is considered that root cause of the conflict was mainly due to the failure of Philip in fully appreciating Cherry’s situation and institutionalizing an effective mechanism in handling conflict. 

The conflict between Cherry and Philip can be regarded as relationship conflict which primary based on interpersonal relationships dysfunction.  Philip has all along been adopting a passive and avoidance approach to handle the conflict with Cherry’s as he thought the issue was trivial.  He was not willing to interact with Cherry in order to avoid unnecessary direct confrontation.  On the contrary, Cherry takes proactive and collaborative approach by proposing a meeting with Philip and writing him a compliant letter with a view to incorporating his concerns into a consensus. 

Weiss and Hughes (2005) commented that conflict management works best when the parties involved in a disagreement are equipped to manage it themselves.  The aim of the complaint letter is to get Cherry and Philip back to the negotiation table to resolve conflict on their own so as to allow them to improve their relationship.  

Powerful ways to resolve disputes without 3rd party direct intervention

As in the case, Philip had selected some data and put it in his own interpretation, such as sales data.  Reported sales data could not reflect the actual premiums sold because of the slow policy approving process.  By elaborating the reason of why the sales data could not reflect the actual policies sold, the letter had brought Philip down the ladder of inference. Philip should then interpret the sales data again with the reason behind.   

To bring Philip’s attention to the real reason of increasing customer complaints, the letter had pointed out the long processing time of policies and incorrect policy information. By focusing on these reasons, Philip should know the responsibility is not on Sales and Service department.  

In the letter, Cherry also pointed out she is not happy about the unfair treatment from Philip. She described her effort made to settle customers’ complaints. She also told Philip that she did not mind to work overtime for the benefit of the company and customers. These are the facts that Philip had overlooked before. Philip assumed Cherry did not complete her daily work. By pointing out what Cherry was doing every day in the letter, Philip was brought down to the bottom of the ladder of inference and should start to observe the situation again.  

Since Cherry had tried to talk to Philip but not succeeded, writing a letter is the only way to provide solid evidence that Cherry had given a trial to communicate. Cherry had provided a solution in the letter, such as they can sit down together to talk about the issue. If there is no communication between Cherry and Philip, the dispute can never be resolved. The letter is a channel to bring Philip’s attention to Cherry and let him start to resolve the issue.   

Help an injured person to deal with feelings & the disruption in life

Since Cherry is not quite comfortable with the current situation, she could voice out her feeling about Philip’s ignorance and unfair treatment in the letter.  She pointed out that she likes her job and would like to contribute to the company. No matter Philip will look into the matter after reading the letter, Cherry had tried her best to voice out her feeling and this surely will help her to lessen her pressure.    

References:
Speedupcareer (2015) Miscommunication In The Workplace, available from http://www.speedupcareer.com/articles/miscommunication-in-the-workplace.html, accessed 31 March 2015
N.K. Jain (2005) Organizational Behaviour. India: Atlantic
McLean, S. (2012) Communication for Business Success, Chile, Creative Commons
Jeff Weiss and Jonathan Hughes (2005) Want Collaboration? Accept- and Actively Manage - Conflict

ASSIGNMENT 1 （FINAL)

<EXERCISE A1>

OUR PRODUCT

Nowadays “Eating Healthy” is popular in Hong Kong.  Our new product “Calories Rice Cooker” can provide a convenient and innovative cooking experience to busy Hong Kong people.  Calories Rice Cooker will indicate the calories of the food you put into it.  This is surely an innovative product that can attract busy Hong Kong working mothers.  With our cooker, user can know how much calories intake they have for each meal.    

OUR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

During the discussion, the leader, Amy, dominated.   Though Amy dominated the discussion, she didn’t feel good after the discussion.  As she tried to control the discussion, other team members were not quite involved.  Below are the feelings of the group:  

“As a leader, I think my team is non-productive.  They didn’t contribute ideas and it made MY presentation not rich enough.” AMY said.

Fion: “It is Amy’s Kingdom!  It is Amy’s presentation, who cares?”

Fred: “Whatever you said, you will be challenged and the comments are negative.  Who cares to throw out ideas?”

Cherry: “I am so frustrated and got no interest to get involved in the discussion.”

A. OUR TEAM IS LACK OF TRUST

Supervisor’s Confirmation Bias of Similarities 

Amy kept challenging Cherry's suggestions. Amy showed a sarcastic smile. She questioned her idea with her voice raised such as the production cost, feasibility and marketability. There is no doubt that Cherry was upset, de-motivated and dissatisfied.

When another team member, Fion, supported Cherry's idea, Amy showed a totally different response.  Amy showed concentration to Fion's comments and started to show appreciation.  It seems that Amy has no problem to accept Fion's suggestions.

We think that Amy got a confirmation bias. Confirmation bias refers to social stereotypes that most of us carry around in our heads such as facial characteristics, age, gender and race, etc.)  Amy always has a positive expectation to Fion.  As Amy thinks Fion and she got similarities. Such as their single eye-lid, personality (upfront, sensible and cheerful), gender and education background. Psychologists call these beliefs implicit theories.  Because of the similarities, Amy categorizes Fion as her same type. Amy found Fion trust-worthy. The bias skew Amy's judgment if Fion's comments are inaccurate.  Confirmation bias is phenomenon’s where in decisions makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or underweight evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis.

With this confirmation bias, not only Amy could not trust others but other team members also could not trust each other.  Cherry observed that Amy got bias and would only listen to team members’ ideas according to her own preference.   That is why Cherry felt frustrated.  As the leader is not trusting team members, team members cannot trust the leader and other team members as well. 
As team members believe the leader is not a fair leader so we are discouraged to contribute and get involved.  We also could not trust other team members as the leader favors some of the members.  This made the team not working towards the same goal.  There is no harmony within the team.

Low Level of Communication / Openness

As Amy set up rules of check in and cannot laugh, the level of communication in the team was low.  Amy’s openness was low.  She could not accept members’ ideas easily.  It shows that Amy was lack of trust towards individual team members. She just selectively trusted specific member with bias.  

Since there is low level of communication within the team, no trust was built up.  There is no linkage between team members when there is no trust.  Each individual possessed a conservative attitude and not willing to open up.  This leads the team to be quite silent.  A team without good communication cannot bring up innovative ideas.  There is no exchange of ideas and opinions and thus no synergy effect created by the team.  Therefore, the team failed to function as the purpose of forming a team is to create synergy effect. 

Low level of Risk Tolerance

Amy had a low level of risk tolerance as she would be the presenter of the pitch.  To her, it is her responsibility to give out a good idea.  She demonstrated a low trust level to the team.  She challenged members’ ideas negatively in a strong manner before accepting the idea.  She also possessed the final decision-making right.  The higher the risk, the higher the potential benefit.  Without the tolerance of risk, the team is lack of the spirit of taking challenge.  In short, the potential of the team is limited. 

Lack of Benevolent Concern

The pitch was presented by Amy alone to the top management.  To us, as team members, it is Amy’s presentation and seems that it is not our business.  Whatever good ideas we provided, the rewards won’t come to us.  We could not trust what Amy was doing was for the sake of the team.  Thus, we do not necessary to offer good ideas.

Because there is no benevolent concern, there is no strong driver to deliver ideas benefit to the team.  Individual members had no incentive to express good ideas as this does not bring immediate and direct benefit to us.  Thus, in turn, the team cannot generate good ideas.

(Deepak, M. February 2004) (Dr. Sandra L. 23 October 2007) (Roderick M.K. June 2009) (Robert F.H. September 2006)

B. OUR TEAM IS LACK OF CREATIVITY

Stressful and Restricted Atmosphere

Amy set up lots of rules and restrictions.  We must check in with Amy and seek for her approval before offering any new idea or suggestion.  The atmosphere was stressful and lack of freedom. The most unacceptable treatment was that all group members were not allowed to talk or speak without Amy’s permission.  Amy would reject our ideas directly or keep challenging the feasibility and marketability with harsh criticism.  Actually, challenges might help people to generate more creativity.  However, she never gave opportunity to members for further explanation.  It was a very unpleasant and stressful experience to everyone.  Meanwhile, we observed that she tended to ignore some ideas in a biased and selective manner.  We do not possess any power in the discussion, not even the freedom to talk and laugh.  This is surely a factor to kill our creativity.  Also, lack of freedom to communicate with each other made us difficult to offer creative ideas.  We felt unsafe to offer ideas since Amy kept on giving negative comments.

We encountered Emotional Blocks as we preferred to keep silence as the “harsh criticism” and “murder” ideas make everyone fear to fail or to be challenged.   Moreover, there was Environmental Blocks.  Motivation is mostly influenced by the work environment.  However, we were discouraged to offer innovative and new ideas due to the lack of cooperation, interaction and trust among the group. 

Under the pressure of being criticised, individual members will not come out to express ourselves.  While we need to obey the rules, there was no room for us to be creative.  Because of the strict control, members only focus on not violating the rules and this prohibited individual to express freely.  Since there was no input from individuals, the team could not bring up creative ideas neither.

Lack of Peer Culture

Most of creative ideas were killed by the supervisor without gathering further information.  Even though she agreed with a good idea, she would still keep challenging and give negative feedback/comments on it.  There were no trusting and respectful relationships built in the group.  Amy, as a supervisor, was not showing her concern to seek advice suggestions from us and she was not going to consider our every suggestions.  In our mind, Amy was just putting herself as the core.  Obviously the culture was not a peer culture.  Though Amy is the supervisor, we were not showing support to her due to the fact that we, as team members, were not being respected.

Ladder of Inference

By following the ladder of inference, Amy did select available data based on her preference, interpret the selected data subjectively and draw the conclusion on her own decision.  She failed to obtain more information to further explore the idea and asked members to share their views before making a decision.  Our involvement in the decision making process was minimal.  She just jumped up the conclusion based on her own perception and assumption.  There was lack of collaboration due to her micromanagement.  

(Catmull, E.D. September 2008) (Teresa, M.A. September - October 1998)

C.  OUR TEAM IS NOT COLLABORATIVE

 

No sense of community

Apparently, the meeting was held in a poor atmosphere under the influence of the supervisor. She kicked off the meeting by setting unwelcome instructions with a view to preventing team members from offering ideas and suggestions. Whatever member offered, Amy just kept challenging their justification instead of asking them to elaborate their ideas further. 

Amy used her position power to dominate the meeting.  She showed no collaborative behavior.  There was no communication among the members and the way of communication was top down instead of two-way.  There was no sense of community.  The comments or feedbacks given by Amy were always in a negative manner which led to the lack of trust, commitment and eventually inattention to results among the members. 

No Empowerment

No empowerment was given by Amy throughout the meeting as there were only challenges, dissatisfaction and stress.  Amy failed to build the team ego as she adopted the traditional team approach which operates under the tyranny of the “We”.  She put group consensus and constraint above individual freedom.

Solely Task-Oriented Leadership

Leadership is critical to teamwork.  However, Amy failed to lead with example by communicating openly and honestly to the members thereby unable to win the respect and trust of others. Her un supportive attitude also lowers the trust and mutual respect in the team.  Therefore, members were unwilling to excel for achieving their ultimate goal.

Under Amy’s leadership, team members’ self-esteem was extremely low and they were hesitated to express their views in order to avoid being challenged.  They preferred lay-low and unwilling to share their ideas due to poor team spirit. It was observed that Amy just pooled people together but failed to motivate them to function effectively as a team.  Obviously, Amy was task-oriented with low relationship-oriented intention.  A highly collaborated team should have a leader with both task- and relationship-oriented.

(Bill F. and Andy B. July – August 2005) (Lynda G. and Tamara J. E. November 2007) (Confirmation Bias, NA) (Charles E.T. 21 December 2012).

GOOD POINT TO HAVE AMY

Amy appeared to be a devil in the whole product development process.  However, to some extent, she was serving as the engine of the team.  Only with a strong and strict team leader, we were able to have a clear direction on what we should do next.  Since Amy was demanding and always gave negative feedbacks, we could then re-think the feasibility of our ideas though this greatly hindered our creativity.  With this demanding leader, we operated at a fast pace. Thus, Amy also served as an important part in making the team collaborates.  

<EXERCISE A2>

OUR PRODUCT

Busy looking at the food package to calculate the calories?  It is time for a smart calories rice cooker to help you pursuing a more relaxing and healthy life.

As people are more concern with their health, many people would like to calculate how much calories intake they have for each meal.  It makes them so busy looking at the food package and then calculate.  With this intelligent rice cooker, calories will be indicated and it saves your time to find and calculate.  You may question, rice cooker can only cook rice, and how can I calculate calories of other dishes?  That is why this cooker called “smart calories rice cooker”.  You can also cook other food such as vegetables or meat on top of this rice cooker as there is a pan on top of it. This is not a rice cooker but your “Meal Cooker”.  So actually this is a Two-In-One convenient cooker which can also serve the calories calculating purpose.  

OUR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

During our discussion in exercise 2, each team members felt comfortable to express own ideas and we were willing to get full involvement in the discussion because we had the below feeling:

Fion: “We feel comfortable to talk and express ideas in the team!!”

Cherry: “we appreciate, trust and respect to each other’s efforts!!”

Amy: “Everyone contributes and makes our work efficient and the goals are easily achieved.”

Fred: “This is OUR presentation and we strive the best for it”

Everyone was equal and free to express ideas. Team members listened, appreciated and gave feedbacks.  They were involved, committed and devoted to the discussion. 

Fred suggested a "robot hoover" and was appreciated by the team.  Fred's idea was genius and it suited for lazy people and that the robot hoover is smaller than a normal hoover which is easy to hide underneath the couch. 

Cherry suggested a "calories rice cooker" and gained positive feedbacks from all team members. They thought it was the excellent idea and sure there will be a huge market for it. It does not only save people's time but also save gas and electricity.

Fion gave positive feedback on both electric appliances.  Fion concerned the cost of making these two. They discussed the production cost saving element.  

A. WE TRUST EACH OTHER

High Level of Communication

We built a relationship by exchanging ideas freely. Confidence, encouragement, appreciation and positive feedbacks were given by each other.

We worked towards the same goal of developing an innovative product.  We let each other know what we are thinking and listening to each other.  We emphasized on communication with each other.  That is why we could throw out ANY kinds of ideas that made our products to be more creative.

Each individual member felt the confidence to express ideas freely under the “Trust” environment.  There was no pressure in communicating with others as no one will intentionally give out negative comments.  Individual was comfortable as we knew our ideas expressed would be listened and considered carefully.  No matter the idea was good or bad, we still TRUSTED constructive suggestions could be provided by other team members.  This “Trust” was the major driver for team members to contribute ideas to the team.  Without this “Trust”, team members would have no motivation to contribute anything.  No trust then no confidence granted to individual.  Without confidence, individual would rather keep silence or just agree with others’ ideas without adding constructive comments.  Thus, “Trust” enhances communication between individuals.

At Group Level, the “Trust” created a bonding between each team member.  This bonding acts as a bridge linking up individuals.  Together the group with the “Trust” element was able to drive each team member to get involve and contribute.  The “Trust” element was essential in driving members to communicate.  A group without communication driven by trust element is of no value.  This kind of group cannot “combine” the contributions of team members.  Trust drives communication and thus leads to effectiveness of combining the effort and contributions of team members.           

High Level of Alignment of interests

The team has consistent value, thinking and direction.  We think it is the best to help the company to generate more revenues and to increase the market penetration.

We were very clear of what we wanted such as presenting to Senior Executive altogether.  This involved and motivated everyone.  We took one another's ideas into account and find ways to accommodate them. 

Since individual members’ interest of developing an innovative idea is consistent with the group’s interest, there is no doubt that the whole team is moving towards the same direction.  This greatly drives the team to achieve the goal of developing an innovative idea to present the pitch in an effective manner.  When all individuals in the team are working towards the same goal, the team obviously will move to the destination in a faster and more efficient way.

Benevolent Concern

As we were going to present the pitch collectively, everyone had a sense of responsibility and wanted to perform the best.  It was not just the team leader’s presentation but the team’s presentation.  It helped to enhance the sense of ownership.  That also made each of us trust each other as no one wanted to have a bad performance in front of top management.

Individuals’ concern to strive for best performance links the team members together.  This linkage strengthens the team’s goal to present the pitch in a nice way.  With sense of ownership due to benevolent concern, individual members were willing to give 100% effort while the team could achieve the goal of performing well in the presentation with members’ contribution of effort.

TRUST!! TRUST!!! TRUST!!!

This was a high trust group.  Trust is important in relationships especially in working group.  This enables coordination and commitments, enhances control and prediction.  It also increases productivity.  Trust plays a significant role in anticipating the emotional effects that decisions and actions might have on others.  Trust helps us to respond tactfully and respectfully in emotional situations.  Moreover, trust elicits the perceptions, feelings and concerns of others, recognizing that conflict is inevitable and using it to strengthen relationships. (Deepak, M. February 2004) (Dr. Sandra L. 23 October 2007) (Roderick M.K. June 2009) (Robert F.H. September 2006)

B. OUR TEAM IS CREATIVE

Relaxing and Free Atmosphere

Since there is no pressure of giving wrong ideas that will lead to being criticized, the atmosphere is relaxing.  No one will afraid being commented negatively.  There would not be any penalty or punishment even when expressing a bad idea.  Without the pressure of saying wrong things, team members felt so free to throw out any ideas in mind.  That is why we felt relaxing and free.

Everyone was in equal position.  By following the Pixar’s operating principles, all of us not only have the freedom to communicate with each other (“interaction”) and also felt safe to express ideas (“trust environment”).  Furthermore, work group support and encouragement could help us to achieve the best outcome.

Instead of being controlled, we were given the autonomy and freedom to share new ideas as well as making our own decision on how to present the new product.   The more often we exchanged ideas and information by working together, the more knowledge we would have.  It could help the team to maintain a good balance between creativity and work outcome.

Peer Culture

By creating a mutually supportive group, everyone felt committed to their job and was willing and eager to work closely with each other.  A good example was that when Cherry offered an idea to introduce the core benefits of our “Smart Calories Rice Cooker”, Amy proactively raised her concern on how to deliver a key message to CEO in a simple script within ONE minute.  Meanwhile, both Fred and Fion gave helping hands by suggesting a “unique” caption.  In the whole process, we were open to new ideas, constructively challenged one another’s idea as well as invested in helping everyone to think of the possibilities instead of constraints.  All of us were loyal to the group and the collective work. It was unlike “Exercise 1” where the supervisor was trying to look for reason not to use the new idea instead of searching for reasons to explore its feasibility.

​Everyone was encouraged to brainstorm as much as ideas as possible.  We also freely and generously recognized creative ideas to encourage team collaboration and communication.  This was a good way to construct an environment that nurtured trusting and respectful relationships and unleashed everyone’s creativity.  It was completely different from our previous exercise in creating a climate of fears that undermined people’s intrinsic motivation. (Catmull, E.D. September 2008) (Teresa, M.A. September - October 1998)

C. OUR TEAM COLLABORATES

Strong Sense of Community

Given the equal status of team members, no individual’s agenda overrides our ultimate goal. We were able to share our views freely and comfortably so that high performance collaboration could be achieved. 

Individual members got a feel that we are a member of the team and there is a responsibility for us to let the team performs the best.  When individual got a sense of belongings to the team, the team could collaborate.  With this sense of belongings, the team becomes really “one team”.  Every team member would think with the “team” in our mind.  The team owns loyal members which greatly enhance the team effectiveness in performing best in creating the pitch.

Group Ego

Since there was no leader, we got a shared identity.  Each of us understood that if the team failed, each individual would fail.  Since the team would present the pitch collectively, each of us got strong driver for good performance and with good ideas.  

The group ego creates a special feel of linkage between individual members.  We become “one family one team”.  Our interest and destiny are interlinked.  We only did the best things for the team and would not do something harmful to the team.

Collaborative team

In the team development process of forming, storming, norming and performing, we were able to build trust which fostered creativity and new insight to facilitate constructive dialogues and discussions. 

With the freedom to communication with anyone, we had enhanced mutual respect and trust so that we could fully participate in the discussion. As a result, we could efficiently work out solutions to address complicated issues and disagreements.

Everyone in the group held the same position, we were not afraid to make criticism on others views and ideas. Similar to the peer culture in Pixar, people at all levels support one another and everyone is fully invested in helping everyone else turn out the best work.

(Bill F. and Andy B. July – August 2005) (Lynda G. and Tamara J. E. November 2007) (Confirmation Bias, NA) (Charles E.T. 21 December 2012).

DRAWBACK OF HAVING FREEDOM

Though we could freely express our ideas in such a free and relaxing atmosphere, sometimes our directions are distracted.  Without a team leader, we did not have a clear direction.   Sometimes we fell into the trap of group think.  We easily agreed with others’ ideas in a friendly environment.  

Moreover, since the atmosphere was free and relaxing, sometimes we would discuss something not related to the product development.  That greatly hindered the efficiency of our discussion.  We spent much time on discussing unrelated topics.  Since everyone was free to talk in the discussion, sometimes the situation was out of control and everyone talked together.  Also, we spent much time on listening to each individual’s ideas.  Thus, the time spent on such discussion was much longer than in case 1.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, “TRUST, CREATIVITY & TEAM WORK” are always the key success factors to achieve high performance collaborations.  We found that there was a big difference in between these two exercises.  In Exercise 2, each group member was playing the key role to identify and determinate the final decision.  Trust built up the base for creativity.  With trust, individual members are linked up together and feel free to contribute and get involved.  This enhances the creativity potential of the team.  When all members are feeling free to express ideas, more contributions are allowed in the team.  With the higher level of communication and involvement, the team as a whole will be able to collaborate.

References:

• Bill F. and Andy B. (July – August 2005) Virtuoso Teams. The High-Performance Organization. Harvard Business Review, pp117-123
• Charles E. T. (21 December 2012). Human Factor Industry News. Aviation Human Factors Industry News. Vol VIII
• Deepak, M. (February 2004) Risky Business: Trust in Negotiations. Negotiation Decision-Making and Communication Strategies That Deliver Results, Newsletter from Harvard Business School Publishing and the program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School

• Dr. Sandra L (23 October 2007). The importance of trust. SEDL Advancing Research, Improving Education.
• Catmull, E.D. (September 2008) How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Harvard Business Review, pp.65-72
• Lynda G. and Tamara J. E. (November 2007) Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams. Harvard Business Review
• Roderick M.K. (June 2009). Rethinking Trust. Spotlight on TRUST. Harvard Business Review, pp.69-77
• Robert F.H. (September 2006). The Decision to Trust. Managing Yourself. Harvard Business Review, pp.55-62
• Teresa, M.A. (September - October 1998) How to Kill Creativity. Harvard Business Review, pp.77-87 
•  Confirmation Bias (NA) Science Daily [WWW] Available at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/c/confirmation_bias.htm. [Last Accessed 16 Feb 2015]