Cooperation and Competition

Objectives:
1. What is Cooperation and Competition and how it differs with each other?
2. What is leadership and its nature and effects to the group?
3. How do we appraised leaders?
4. How do leadership influence groups?
5. How do members participates in group decisions?
Cooperation and Competition
Cooperation is a core life skill and can be defined as the act or process of working
together to get something done for a common purpose or to achieve mutual benefit.
Cooperation demonstrates the ability to work effectively and respectfully with diverse
people or teams, make compromises, build consensus in decision-making, assume shared
responsibility for collaborative work, and value the opinions and contributions of
individual team members, from a position of firm self-identity.
Competition is the act or process of trying to get or win something (such as a prize or a
higher level of success) that someone else is also trying to get or win. Competition is a
contest between people or groups of people for control over resources. In this definition,
resources can have both literal and symbolic meaning. People can compete over tangible
resources like land, food, and mates, but also over intangible resources, such as social
capital. Competition is the opposite of cooperation and arises whenever two parties strive
for a goal that cannot be shared.

Leadership, its nature and effects

Leadership is an influence process in which group members guide one another in the
pursuit of individual and collective goals. Leadership is a process of influence rather than
a position or office; a cooperative, reciprocal relationship rather than a coercive one; and
a goal-oriented, generative process rather than an oppressive one.
great leader theory: A view of leadership, attributed to historian Thomas Carlyle, which
states that successful leaders possess certain characteristics that mark them for greatness
and that such great leaders shape the course of history.
Zeitgeist theory: A view of leadership, attributed to Leo Tolstoy, which states that
history is determined primarily by the “spirit of the times” rather than by the actions and
choices of great leaders.
Neither approach, however, is sufficient to account for leadership emergence, but must be
instead combined in an interactional approach that considers both personal qualities as
well as situational factors when predicting leadership.

Shared and Unshared Leadership

 The authoritarian, or autocratic, leader took no input from the members in making
decisions about group activities, did not discuss the long ange goals of the group,
emphasized his authority, dictated who would work on specific projects, and arbitrarily
paired the boys with their work partners.
 The democratic leader made certain that all activities were first discussed by the entire
group. He allowed the group members to make their own decisions about work projects or
partners and encouraged the development of an egalitarian atmosphere.
 The laissez-faire leader rarely intervened in the group activities. Groups with this type of
atmosphere made all decisions on their own without any supervision, and their so-called
leader functioned primarily as a source of technical information
 Shared and Unshared Leadership
 The authoritarian, or autocratic, leader took no input from the members in making
decisions about group activities, did not discuss the long ange goals of the group,
emphasized his authority, dictated who would work on specific projects, and
arbitrarily paired the boys with their work partners.
 The democratic leader made certain that all activities were first discussed by the
entire group. He allowed the group members to make their own decisions about
work projects or partners and encouraged the development of an egalitarian
atmosphere.
 The laissez-faire leader rarely intervened in the group activities. Groups with this
type of atmosphere made all decisions on their own without any supervision, and
their so-called leader functioned primarily as a source of technical information

Appraisal of Leaders
1. Team Member Feedback - Through feedback, ideally collected in a way that gives each
member of the team the opportunity to chime in on the same questions privately.
2. Team Turnover Rate - This metric is best used when bench marked across the group,
allowing you to understand which teams tend to stick together, which float more, and
what the leader might have to do with those trends.
3. Project Delivery Success Rate - Naturally, a team leader can only be as successful as the
results their team produces. This metric simply takes outputs over inputs to come up with
a success rate.
4. Conflict Resolution Rate - Conflicts can occur both within the team and with others
outside of the group. The mark of a good leader is not avoiding conflicts altogether, but
managing them successfully without requiring external input.
5. Team Development Rate - Measuring the rate at which this happens can give you insight
into the degree to which the leader cares not just about outcomes, but the greater good for
every member of the team as well.

Leadership and Influence

Leadership
- Leadership is the ability a person has to change values, beliefs or attitudes about a topic.
It's a skill you can learn as you gain more experience as a leader. A leader can use their
knowledge and speaking ability to offer a new perspective or new information to an
audience or team. Leaders who can successfully influence their audience may change
their audiences' minds about a topic because of how they present their information.
Ways to create trust with audience:

 Establishing credibility: You can establish credibility if you're honest, make your motives
clear, demonstrate your knowledge with research and share the findings with others.
 Building connections: Build connections with your audience or team members to
understand what they need, what motivates them and their values.
 Maintaining accountability: You can maintain accountability to build trust with others
 because it may show them you're committed to your work. To do this, you can set clear
expectations and checkpoints for updates with your audience or team members.
 Reciprocating influence: It's helpful for your audience or team members to know their
leader is open to hearing different perspectives. This can happen when you allow them to
ask you questions or have them share their thoughts on what you said.
 Sharing interests: Sharing your work interests can show those you're trying to influence
that you have a passion for what you're speaking about. Communicate your interests with
passion and with a positive perspective.
 Why is leadership influence important?
Influence is an important leadership quality because it means people will listen to and
follow you. This, in turn, means you are more effective as a leader. Influence also allows
your opinion to be seriously considered by your team, peers and senior management.

Participation by Members in Group Decisions

Advantages of group decision making:
✅ Make well-informed expert decisions due to a variety of experts involved in the
process
✅ Come up with unconventional ideas, especially if a group has members from diverse
cultural backgrounds
✅ Reveal and prevent hidden challenges and bottlenecks that may appear later with the
chosen decision
✅ Better understand the follow-on tasks and requirements when working on the issue
solutions as all the members take part in their generation from the start
✅ Enhance group collaboration due to the active involvement in problem-solving
through discussions and debating, and collective work.
Disadvantages of group decision making
❌ The absence of responsibility. The group makes the decision collectively, and nobody
personally bears the consequences of a failure
❌ It can be ineffective and slow. This happens if a manager poorly organizes the group-
decision making process
❌ Falling into group thinking. The groupthink phenomenon often appears within a
group of people who strive to avoid conflicts or too much discussion. As a result, it leads
to illogical and adverse outcomes
❌ Coming up with risky solutions. Sometimes a group can change from groupthink to a
risky shift phenomenon. This is when a group arrives at dangerous solutions that would
never occur in individual decision-making. A risky shift may happen when individuals
don’t feel the personal responsibility for the decisions made and leave it to the group’s
discretion.