The

Interpersonal
Process
The Interpersonal Process in Teams
Interpersonal processes include
 Communication
 Coordination
 Cooperation
 Collaboration
 Conflict
 Cohesion and
 Trust
“All of these are highly
interrelated”
 Traditional theories of work team performance have
viewed the interpersonal processes as having the most
direct effects on a team's performance and as being
affected by a variety of inputs.
 The influences of the interpersonal processes
permeated all areas, including the work process
factors, characteristics of the team, the team's
environment both within and outside the team's
organization, and even the characteristics of the team
members themselves. Its greatest influence on the
team's performance was found to occur through its
influence on the team's work process, including team
member effort, talents, available resources, and
procedures applied to the work.
 Communication
 Communication within the
team, as well as
communication between the
team and others outside the
team, was found to be
related to the team's work
process, environment,
design, and the team
member characteristics.
Relevant environmental
factors related to
communication include
 the organization's

culture
 resources available to

the team
 the training and

information systems
 relations with

management
 physical proximity
Team Design factors
affecting communication
include
 Team size

 Team composition

 Norms of the team

 Team leader

 Brightman (1988) has identified some of the team leader

characteristics that can encourage communication, including
careful listening, summarizing ideas and feelings frequently,
avoiding being overly critical, encouraging team members to
speak, encouraging and protecting minority views, and dealing
with dis­agreements openly.
 The characteristics of the team members make
up another group of factors that were found to
affect communication within the team. These
included the
 team members' knowledge and skills
 interests in the work, and
 personality of the team members
 Coordination
 Work coordination refers to the act of performing two
or more steps of a work process in a proper order
 Hackman (1988, 1990) has brought the most explicit
attention to coordination by discussing its direct
effects on the team's work process. !f the work is not
well coordinated between team members, then the
steps or procedures used for doing the work will not
be carried out well. This can, in turn, reduce the
amount of effort placed on doing the work because the
employees' energies must be concentrated on
overcoming the coordination problems.
An Example
 In this team, two and sometimes three learn members would
periodically travel to a predetermined location in one of the
southwestern states of the United States in order to auction off
government supplies and equipment no longer needed (e.g.,
government automobiles). The auction was advertised weeks
in advance, and typically there were many potential buyers at
these auctions. The procedures that were followed in carrying
out the auction ranged from securing the airplane tickets for
the trip to collecting the money and recording the sales. For
such a trip, a great deal of coordination was needed, not only
between the team members going on the trip but also with
people at the sale site. Team members reported that, for some
auctions, coordination became a problem. When a
coordination problem occurred, it sometimes resulted in team
member-, having to spend an extra day at the auction site to
finish up business.
 Coordination has been found to affect other factors
as well. When considering the team's environment,
coordination was found to affect
 the training received
 team suppliers and customers
 losing customers
Team design characteristics
affecting coordination
 Norms

 Size

Team Member characteristics

affecting coordination
 Personality

 Attitude

 Perception
 Collaboration, Cooperation and
Conflict
 Cooperation and collaboration are concepts
that arc highly related and are treated
synonymously and are defined as the act of
two or more people working together for a
common purpose.
 conflict - disagreements between two or more
people that leads to mistrust, poor
communication, and lack of cooperation.
 During the late 1960s. behaviorists began
viewing conflict as a natural occurrence that
can lead to either problems and dysfunctional
behavior or to beneficial behavior.
 Beneficial conflict has
been termed cooperative
conflict and refers to
those situations where
two or more employees
have opposing ideas and
interests but are
motivated to explore
and understand the
views and interests of
the other
COOPERATION, CONFLICT AND THE
ENVIRONMENT
 Environment has been found to have large effects on
team member cooperation and conflict.
 Reward system of the organization is particularly
influential.
Rewards High team performance then team
members will be motivated to cooperate with one
another to achieve the team goals.
Rewards individual performance, conflict is more
likely to occur as team members struggle to make
themselves look good, regardless of the effects on the
team's overall performance
 The organization's culture, training, and
coaching greatly influence whether and how
conflicts arc resolved.
 The organization's culture and the team's
norms must be such that conflict is openly
addressed and managed cooperatively.
 Training and coaching can provide team
members with the skills to study conflict and
learn how to discuss it productively.
 A poor information system can also lead to
negative or competitive conflict.
 Just as conflict and cooperation are highly
susceptible to influences from the information
system and management, the reverse can be
true as well-the information system can be
affected by team cooperation and conflict.
 When cooperation is high among team
members, the information system is much
more effective-team members are more likely
to share all available infor­mation with their
teammates readily
COOPERATION, CONFLICT, AND TEAM DESIGN

 A variety of team design factors can heighten

cooperation and conflict. These factors are
 Team norms -encourage team members to share
information, listen to each other's ideas, exchange
resources, and respond to each other's requests
through positive interdependence will enhance
cooperation.
 Shared visions and values bind employees together in
collaborative pursuits. Group tasks, complementary
roles, and shared rewards also play a role. Tasks that
require people to exchange ideas and sources
reinforce the notion that participants have cooperative
goals.
 When considering the composition of the team, the
combination of team member characteristics can be
expected to be produce conflicts and cooperation.
This is perhaps most evident where differing
personality types come together within the team and
are found to inherently cooperate or conflict.
 Cooperation is found to be high where team members
are similar in their job status, values, prejudices, and
talents. Although these similarities reduced conflict,
they created problems by not providing enough
variety of ideas.
 If the team members arevery different, the opposite
effect occurred. There were a variety of different
ideas available, but the team had difficulty reaching
agreements acceptable to everyone.
 Cohesion
 Task-oriented cohesiveness positively affect a team's level
of effort placed directly on the work due to its influence on
the team members' commitment to the work
 Team-oriented cohesiveness affects effort through its
positive influences on the team members' commitment to
one another. However, team-oriented cohesiveness also
decrease effort due to time spent among team members
discussing non-work related subjects.
 Team-oriented cohesiveness results in the
team members being committed to one another
and providing extra effort to please their
teammates
 A second work process factor found to be
affected by task-oriented and team-oriented
cohesion was the extent of team member
talents placed on doing the work. With high
cohesion of either type, team members were
more likely to ask for assistance or defer to
others who had more talent with regard to the
particular tasks being performed.
Cohesion and Team Design
 Team-oriented cohesiveness facilitates deci­
sion making because the communication
among team members is more open.
 However, team-oriented cohesiveness can also
lead to groupthink (a practice of agreeing with
others rather than disagreeing), which, in turn,
can lead to a reduction in the number of
alternative work procedures that arc
considered by the team as it attempts to
identify best work procedures.
 Team members of the most cohesive teams remain
more comfortable during the decision-making process
 Cohesiveness has also been reported to influence the
norms of the team. Teams high in cohesiveness were
found to more rigorously adhere to the team's norms.
 Team design factors found to affect team
cohesiveness included goal clarity and the team's size.
Task-oriented cohesiveness was directly related to
goal clarity. Team members had difficulty developing
task-oriented cohesiveness to the extent that they had
difficulty identifying the team's primary goals.
 team size -smaller teams
generally had higher levels
of team-oriented
cohesiveness because team
members were able to have
more interactions with each
other and to get to know
each other better
 On the other hand, the size
of the team does not appear
to affect the level of task-
oriented cohesiveness.
Cohesion and the Environment
 Culture of the organization can be one that
encourages the team members to work
together in a collaborative, respectful manner
or in a competitive manner.
 Another environmental factor that can affect
cohesion is the physical location of team
members.
 Team member characteristics that did have
noticeable effects on cohesion included the
interests and values of team members
 TRUST
 Trust can be defined as a belief held by one team member about
another that
(1) the behavior of the other can influence whether one gains or loses
something,
(2) one has no control over the other's behavior, and
(3) that the other will behave in such a way that the gains will result
 Trust is a multidimensional concept including honesty, truthfulness,
loyalty, competence (i.e., technical or interpersonal skill and
knowledge), and consistency.
 Where trust was reported to be high, team
members spent less energy worrying about
what others were doing or thinking and more
energy directly on doing the work.
 When considering the team design- trust
results in team members being more willing to
consider alternative viewpoints during the
decision-making process.
 High trust positively influences the team
members' willingness to let others exercise
influence over them.
Thank You