Leadership Fundamentals:

Class 3 Leading Through

Teams (1)

Prof Sally Maitlis

Everest Challenge

Everest Challenge

Learning Objectives

How to build, participate in and lead

teams effectively

How to improve team decision-making

processes

How leaders can avoid common team

decision making pitfalls

Start Climbing!

Leadership Fundamentals:

Class 4 Leading Through

Teams (2)

Prof Sally Maitlis

Leading Through Teams

Everest Challenge

Class Results & Debrief

Everest Team Debrief

Did your team perform effectively during the exercise? Why or why not?

What were the impediments to team effectiveness?

How did the leader help or hinder the teams effectiveness?

If you had to do it over again, what would you change about the way

oyou behaved in the team?

o the team was led?

Everest Lessons Learned

Everest Pitching Your Bestseller

The Challenge:

90 seconds to pitch your book proposal to HBS Press

Use 1 piece of paper

Use words and/or pictures

For projection with document camera

Content:

How successful were you?

What you learned about team process & decision making

How its relevant to business

10 MINS

PREP

Team Effectiveness

Actual team

effectiveness

Potential team

effectiveness Process gains Process losses

Process Losses

in Teams

Team members agree too much

Team members are distracted by relationship conflict

Privately held information is not shared or fully considered

Common Information

Effect

Common information effect = common type of process loss in groups

Information held by more members before team discussion has more

influence on team judgments than

information held by fewer members

This is independent of the validity of the information

Common Information

Effect Groups tend to spend too little time discussing

unshared (unique, uncommon) information.

3 possible initial-distribution conditions

A,C,B,D

A,C,B,E A,C,D,F

A,C: Common to all three people

B,D: Shared by two people

E,F: Unique to one person

A,B,C,D,E,F

A,B,C,D,E,F A,B,C,D,E,F

All information fully-shared

by all three people.

A,D

B,E C,F

No overlap of information

between three people

Asymmetries in Teams

Asymmetrical interests

Groups members often have different interests.

Asymmetrical information

Group members tend to discuss information each member has in common, vs. privately

held information.

Why the Discussion Bias?

1. Mutual enhancement

Discussing shared information feels good

Members are judged as more task competent & credible after discussing shared instead of unshared information.

Shared information is judged as more important, accurate, and decision-relevant than unshared information.

2. Bias for preference-consistent information

Members prefer to discuss information that is consistent with their preferences (an example of the confirmation bias)

Overcoming the Common

Info Effect

What does not work:

More discussion

Separate review and decision

Bigger team

More information (but same distribution)

Accountability for decision

Pre-discussion polling

Overcoming the Common

Info Effect

What does work:

Team leader is information manager

Increase focus on unique information

Suspend initial judgment

Frame as an information-sharing problem, rather than a judgment to be

made

Minimize status differences

Overcoming the Common

Information Effect

Psychological Safety: the degree to which

members of a team feel comfortable asking

questions, requesting clarification or inquiring about

others views

When psych safety is high, members

talk more openly (share information)

admit mistakes (and therefore learn)

ask for help more frequently

Key Team Attribute:

Psychological Safety

From Roberto (2002)

Everest Leadership Lessons: Building Psychological Safety

How did leaders work to help team members disclose

privately held information?

Did anyone not feel comfortable sharing information

with teammates?

Did anyone make a mistake or need help during the

exercise but was afraid to ask of it?

Leaders Role in Creating Psychological Safety

Leading to Increase Psychological Safety

Be vulnerable and admit mistakes

Minimize hierarchy (symbolic actions such as not meeting in a boardroom)

Create respectful environment

Encourage multiple channels of communication

Celebrate courageous behavior

Remove leader from some discussions

Everest Leading the Process

The team leader

shapes how the team works by managing its work

process. In that manner, the leader is very directive and

is pushing the team toward high performance, but does

that through management of the process, rather than

taking a position on all of the elements of the teams

work.

(Nadler, 1996)

Everest Debrief

Conflict in Teams

Task conflict

focused on issues

increases team effectiveness

Affective conflict

focused on personal differences

decreases team effectiveness

Amason et al. (1996)

Leadership as

Managing Group Process

1. Encourage sharing

2. Listen actively

3. Manage air time

4. Reflect back statements (especially

new information)

5. Design decision making process

(e.g., dialectical inquiry)

6. Take on arbitrator role