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Welcome to LDRS 663:Transformational Blended Learning

Unit 8

Metacognition and Self-Regulation

Unit 8 (Week 8)

Thursday, Sept. 16 - Wednesday, Sept. 22

Things to do this week…
Unit 6: Negotiation, Power and Influence ========

Overview

In Unit 6, we will cover types of power, power dynamics, social influence, empowerment and group decision making. We will look at the definition of power and how it relates to social influences and learn about the different types of power and different influencing tactics that can be used to maintain, balance or diffuse power differentials. We will see how power dynamics can influence and affect a team and we will see the impact of interdependence on perceived roles and contributions to group decision-making. Covering the benefits of empowerment, degrees of empowerment programs and different approaches to promote successful empowerment, we will also look at ways to encourage and apply assertiveness. Focus will be placed on the value of group decision making, advantage and disadvantage and when group decisions are superior to individual ones. We will see different approaches to group decision-making such as consultative, consensus and democratic approaches and the impact of emotions, disagreements and negative pressures on making a group decision and how different techniques can help with these conflicts.

It should be noted that misuse of power is one of the most damaging forces on a team. When organizational leaders use their power to influence team members, when team leaders use their power to bully or override team members and when higher-ranking members of teams use their power to consolidate influence on a team, trust across members is significantly impaired. More than this, the members of the team (especially young members) learn through their experiences how teams operate for the benefit of the organization. Emerging leaders take their experiences on teams to either become more effective at building and maintaining team trust in the future, or they will learn to use power, group cohesion, blocks and silos, as ways to manipulate teams, they become increasingly ineffective at leading teams toward organizational purposes. Leaders have to constantly be vigilant for how their actions, words and relationships impact others who are looking up to them for guidance on how the organization should operate. Politicization and bureaucracy does not just happen by accident any more than family dysfunction is a stroke of bad luck. The seeds of organizational dysfunction and mistrust are won with every word, every team engagement and every breach of trust that is made. The challenge is the impact of our words and deeds rolls downhill. Dysfunction at the lowest levels in an organization have an impact on a few people. Dysfunction at the top impacts everyone beneath the leader. Dysfunction and power politics in the middle affects large swaths of the organization and creates silos.

Teams communicate the values, intent and principles of the organization. Manage them well and the organization is healthier, more functional, and more competent to meet people’s needs and make their lives better. Manage them poorly and the organization is weaker, more dysfunctional and less capable to meet people’s needs and make their lives better.

Learning Outcomes

When you have completed this unit, you should be able to:

  • Assess the importance of power in team decision-making.

  • Discriminate between appropriate and healthy uses of power and inappropriate uses of power relationships.

  • Describe social influences on team decision-making.

  • Assess the social Psychological influences on group processes and team dynamics.

  • Equip others to effectively analyze productive and effective group processes compared to ineffective group processes.

Activity Checklist

Here is a checklist of learning activities you will benefit from in completing this unit. You may find it useful for planning your work.

☑ Activities Time
Activity 6.1: GATHERING: Class meeting with professor. 1 hour
Activity 6.2: COMMUNITY BUILDING: Every Voice Matters exercise 3-5 hours
Activity 6.3: PERSONAL STUDY AND REFLECTION: Read Chapters 8 & 9 in your Levi textbook. 3-5 hours
Activity 6.4: ASSEMBLING AS A TEAM: Begin the process of developing a conflict management model for your team based project. Teams will need to submit their conflict resolution model in week 7. 3-5 hours
Activity 6.5: INSPIRATION: Select a Team member to provide and inspirational/motivational talk or devotion for the team to consider together. 1 hour
Assignment: Discussion – ‘Every Voice Matters’ Review of Online Team building Resources 3-5 hours
Assignment: Team Conflict Management Model (10%) (Due at the conclusion of week 7) 3-5 hours

Resources

Here are the resources you will need to complete this unit.

  • Daniel Levi (2015). Group Dynamics for Teams, Sage publications

Photo Credit: Pixabay

Learning Activities

0.15.4 Activity 6.1: GATHERING: Class meeting with Professor.

In this week’s conference meeting, your professor will provide a 40 minute talk on the role power influence and negotiation strategies have on team and organizational decision-making. Following the presentation by the professor will be a 20 minute interactive dialogue about healthy and unhealthy team leadership and experiences with poor team leaders.

This 1 hour online session will be recorded for future reference.

In order to prepare for the meeting, you are invited to view the following slides. Your instructor will go through this presentation during the gathering, so as you view the slideshow, be sure to jot down notes and questions.

[button url=“https://gitpitch.com/TWUOnline/gitpitch-decks/master?grs=github&t=black&p=LDRS502-6” target=“_blank” label=“Unit 6 Slides” type=“info” classes=“external-link”]_

0.15.5 Activity 6.2: COMMUNITY BUILDING: Every Voice Matters

Leading teams and managing processes to effectively include every team member in decision-making and the team’s ‘Story’ is much harder than it seems on the surface. Leaders are often distracted by the pressures they face from above them within the organization, the challenges they face across from them with other leaders at the same level as they are, and management challenges dealing with those within their own organizational units. Vertical and horizontal pressure constantly bombard the leader to the point where they often forget that there are real people within their teams that are trying to make their own way through the labyrinth of the organization.

The more leaders forget about the real needs of people within their teams, the more disconnected they can become and the more likely they are to dismiss the voices of those within their teams that need to be heard.

This exercise is called, “Every Voice Matters”.

Throughout the internet there are hundreds (possibly thousands) of companies who are trying to help organizations with team building and communication. Most of these companies are localized and perform functions, team building activities, communication and collaboration tools to help organizations use and harness the power of teams more effectively.

For this week, you are going to search the internet to find teambuilding models, strategies, exercises and activities that can help the leader do one thing with their team–Make sure that Every Voice is Heard.

Once you locate the resource on the internet that you believe is a good example of a strategy that ensures all voices are part of the team conversation, you are going to review the resource, exercise, game or strategy and write a review of the exercise and upload for the entire class to review. Much like the research article review, you are going to play a role in developing resources for the students of this class and future classes to use as they strive to become more effective team leaders.

Please see the Assessments section of this unit as it has the requirements for you to complete for the review.

0.15.5.1 Activity 6.3: PERSONAL STUDY AND REFLECTION

Read Chapter 8 “Power and Social Influence” and Chapter 9 “Decision-Making” in your Levi textbook and be sure to take detailed notes.

0.15.6 Activity 6.4: ASSEMBLING AS A TEAM

In the 6th week of class, you will need to begin the process of developing a conflict management model for your team based project. The conflict resolution model should be robust and include the various types of conflict and resources to deal with conflict as a team. Teams will need to submit your conflict resolution model in week 7. See full details about this assignment in the Assessment section for this unit.

### Activity 6.5: INSPIRATION:
### Unit 6 Summary{-}
In Unit 6 you had the opportunity to learn about power and power dynamics. You have seen how power dynamics and empowerment can affect a team and ways to encourage and apply assertiveness. You have looked at the value of decision-making as well as different approaches and tactics to have successful group decisions. You have learned about the impact of emotions, disagreements and negative pressures, and how different techniques can help resolve these problems. Careful attention to how we manage teams and the experiences of team members is critical to ensure that the team contributes to the organization reaching its full potential.
## Assessment ## Unit 6 Assessment{-}
### Assignment: Discussion – ‘Every Voice Matters’ Review of Online Team building Resources
After completing this unit, including the learning activities, you are asked to scour the internet in search of great team building resources, activities or exercises that will serve to bring teams together and ensure that every voice is heard through the team process.
Once you have selected your team resource, activity or exercise, review the resource by searching through the activity for more information, looking for online reviews of the activity, or pilot testing the activity with friends, family or co-workers to test its effectiveness.
Once finished this process please upload the following information into the Moodle forum for course interaction and information:
1. Title of the resource, activity or exercise.
2. Authors names, and affiliation information.
3. Full URL and date when you identified the resource.
4. Underlying theory or rationale for the resource, activity or exercise. In this section, please describe the intent or purpose of the resource, activity or exercise.
5. Briefly explain how the resource, activity or exercise can be used in all its variations (if any variations exist). How long does it take to complete? How many people can it handle? How much does it cost to do? Is it localized or virtual? etc. (1-2 pages)
6. Outline the evidence that shows the resource, activity, or exercise achieves the goal of ensure that all voices on a team are heard. Please describe the evidence that supports your conclusion (online reviews, pilot testing that you have conducted, etc.)
Once completed, please upload your review to Moodle. As the week progresses, take the time to look through other reviews submitted by your classmates so you are prepared for the discussion that will start week 7.
### Assignment: Team Conflict Management Model (10%)
(Due at the conclusion of week 7)
What is Conflict Management?
Conflict management starts with an assumption that conflict is both normal and healthy in all relationships. Conflict emerges when people have competing interests, values, and roles or when people differ in their history, age, gender, experience, ethnicity, etc. People experience conflict every day of their lives. Conflict is more likely to occur as an internal process than a process that occurs between people.
In Psychology, we use terms like cognitive conflict, cognitive disequilibrium, or cognitive dissonance to describe the internal experience people have when their internal cognitive representations of the world come into conflict with their immediate experiences. In fact, all models of growth and personal development have conflict or tension at the centre of the internal pressure for people to change, adapt and grow. A concept of Positive Emotive Tension Theory (PETT) posits that people are strongest when they are in relationships or life situations that exert tension or pressure on them. The tension that is created between people is a positive force that enables balance and perspective to impact people’s decision-making. Most people try to resolve the cognitive dissonance that is created between internal representations of the world and external realities of life. The concept of conflict management is that we don’t have to always resolve conflict. We can live in a world where cognitive representations are held in a balanced tension for long periods of time.
Conflict is Good.
Interpersonal conflict management starts with an assumption that conflict is a good and healthy aspect of relationships. Conflict helps us share our perspectives, to learn about others and their diverse ways of seeing the world, to challenge our worldview and to refine our thinking to improve our decision-making processes. The starting point to become healthy in our approach to conflict management is to accept that conflict is good and can help us to learn, improve, and thrive in relationships.
Conflict Management Takes Time.
Although most people would naturally desire to avoid conflict or pretend it doesn’t exist, conflict identifies a flaw in thinking, flaw in values, flaw in communication, or a flaw in process. In order to understand the nature of the flaw, we need to take the time to understand all perspectives, to allow each voice to be heard, to provide a venue for open and frank discussion, and to communicate each person’s value to the organization.
Conflict Management Requires Consistent and Stable Structures.
Because people naturally do not trust those who disagree with them, most will assume negative intentions, vested interests, ulterior motives, or destructive intent when they come into conflict with others. Because these negative reactions cloud people’s judgements about ‘the other,’ a good conflict management process must be structurally clear and consistent. Usually, this type of management system is defined in organizational policy in order to ensure people know where to take matters when there is conflict.
Conflict Management Requires Independent Processes.
Again, As with structure, the processes involved in good conflict management revolve around perceptions of unfairness, power inequality, gender, race and sexual orientation inequalities (that are all protected by the human rights code and charter), etc. As a result, there must be clear processes that are independent of these forces. My experience is that most organizations and people within them are not inherently biased, but when it comes to conflict, perception becomes reality. In designing your conflict management model, you must be clear to develop processes that cannot be influenced unduly by role or title within an organization. It should be noted from my personal experience that Christian organizations are often the poorest at developing good processes for conflict management. Christian organizations start with an understanding that people love each other, have grace, should put everyone else first, etc. These assumptions often stem from the ‘masks’ we put on to fit in to the Christian community. Christians are just as prone to bias, jealousy, hate, competition, feelings of inadequacy and unfairness, etc as other people. Christian organizations are generally in more need of good conflict management processes than other organizations are.
What does a good conflict management system look like?
1. There is an underlying assumption that people do not mean to do harm or damage and that they are trying to do what they believe it right.
2. People’s feelings are always real. Whether we agree with how those feelings arose or whether they are justified and proportionate, the experience of the other is a real experience.
3. People need help to manage conflict. People don’t know how to manage conflict effectively and are usually prone to ignore the conflict rather than manage it effectively.
4. People don’t know how to communicate well regarding conflict. People may not be able to contain their emotions and hold in their thoughts when it comes to conflict. Often the emotion has been pent up for so long that when it is time to speak, words are not organized well and thinking is not clear. anger, rage, hostility, fear, crying all may emerge when discussing conflicts. The person who is managing the conflict process must not take things personally as they may initially bear the brunt of the pent up emotional response.
5. Conflict management must have an internal and an external process to ensure that the issues can be addressed fairly and completely.
MODEL
Internal
1. Initial conflict is brought to the attention of the other person. After a frank discussion and presentation of issues and sides, the conflict is either addressed or needs to be escalated.
2. Immediate supervisor is brought in to hear both sides and attempt to mediate the conflict.
3. An internal conflict resolution system is engaged to manage the process. Two sides are usually formalized at this point with written presentations from both sides. A internal neutral third party (often HR) is brought in to hear the sides and make a recommendation.
External
4. If internal processes cannot resolve the conflict, an outside mediator with training in such matters is brought into the issue.
5. If the mediator is unable to manage the conflict effectively, arbitration or binding arbitration is the final step. Usually arbitration brings closure, but often underlying feelings remain.
6. Depending on the organization, there is always the right to sue and take legal action independently against the institution.
### Checking your Learning{-}

Before you move on to the next unit, you may want to check to make sure that you are able to:

  • Assess the importance of power in team decision-making.

  • Discriminate between appropriate and healthy uses of power and inappropriate uses of power relationships.

  • Describe social influences on team decision-making.

  • Assess the social Psychological influences on group processes and team dynamics.

  • Equip others to effectively analyze productive and effective group processes compared to ineffective group processes.