PSYC30825: Community, Health, and

Applied Social Psychology

Small Group and Individual Interventions:

Session 9 with Dr Glenn Williams

Overview This week – Small group and

individual interventions

• Continuing Mhairi’s session 8 on

place, environment and well-

being: designing community

through teamwork

• Ways of working in groups – the

case study of teams

• Leading teams – the dynamics of

leadership

• Using Stages of Change

model: steps for interventions

with individuals and small groups

• CHASP coursework question

‘thought shower’ and

preparation for next week

Last week – Organisational

and Community Change

• Organisation systems and

cultures - revisiting Session #2

• Organisational structures

• Types of change

• Resistance to change

• Using Appreciative Inquiry to

effect change

• Steps for organisational change

• Considering strategies for

organisational change – as

applied to group scenarios from

Sessions 2, 3 and 4.

Community by Design: Designing Healthy Environments through Teamwork

• Watch the following clips from “Ways we live”:

– What do you think about Murray’s Corner? Do you like it? How might it have created a different sense of community compared with conventional suburban areas?

– Look at the Garden Drive Project in Vancouver – how was team work and involvement encouraged here? What tactics that were used and how effective could these be?

• Watch the following clips from “Kevin McCloud and the Big Town

Plan”:

– Look for the presence of ‘champions’ (advocates for the community groups being represented)

– Look out for the ways in which people were encouraged to get involved in Castleford.

– How was this involvement different to the Garden Drive project in Vancouver?

– How was it similar?

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What is in a team?

Team members:

• Share a common purpose and common goals (Hayes, 1997)

• Have a clear understanding of each others’ roles and abilities(Thomas & Corney, 1993)

• Regularly interact with each other, usually through informalor formal team meetings (West & Slater, 1996)

• Have a shared knowledge base and collective responsibilityas a team (Gilmore et al., 1974)

• Are task-orientated and have different, but complementary, skills (Hayes, 1997)

What makes a team work well?Understanding team climate…

• Team Vision

• Participative Safety

• Support for Innovation

–Articulated

–Enacted

• Task Orientation

Anderson & West (1994)

Quality of team climate depends on type of team (Williams & Laungani, 1999)

Team Type

Team climate MDTs Mgt. teams PHCTs Single disc.

teams

Participative

Safety *

40.24 47.83 34.73 45.87

Support for

innovation

24.60 29.19 22.30 28.75

Vision * 22.87 18.61 9.74 14.12

Task

orientation

19.90 22.93 17.83 25.12

N=259; 30 health service teams*p<.05

How to handle team dynamicsThe String Quartet Study (Murnighan & Conlon, 1991)

• Paradox 1 – Leadership versus Democracy

–Question: When might directive leadership be preferable in a team?

• Paradox 2 – The Second Violin

–Question: Who is playing ‘second fiddle’ in a team and how are their needs met?

• Paradox 3 – Confrontation versus Compromise

–Question: How does a team meet conflict?

The Capable Team Model #1 (Cook, 1993)

• Cooperation

• Activities

• People

• Advancement

• Brief

• Leadership

• Environment responsiveness

The Capable Team Model #2 (Cook, 1993)

Tentative Experimenting

Amalgamating Maturing

Self-Directed Team (Ankarlo, 1992)

• The team has a shared unit of production or service

delivered.

• Team members are trained in many core skills. Members are

sufficiently competent to be able to cover for staff absences

• The team can plan, implement and control all work

processes.

• All team members’ responsibilities are clearly defined

When NOT to have a self-directed team

When the team:

• Has geographically separate members who don’t meet often

• Has low interdependence among members

• Has lack of trust among team members

And when there are…

• Task limitations - some jobs can be done better by one

person!

Cautions: ‘Group-Think’ and ‘Team-Think’• Janis (1972) identified Group-Think when analysing the failed invasion

of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba by a US-based militia in 1961 to overthrow

the Cuban government.

• Group think characterised by the following:

– Overestimating power and morality of the in-group

– Stereotyping the out-group as weak and ignorant

– Pressures to conform to the leader’s ideas and censorship of any information that might not support the leader’s chosen course of action

• Curing ‘Group-Think’ through ‘Team-Think’ (Manz & Neck, 1995) – see:

http://tinyurl.com/c6ssbx8

– Encourage diverse views

– Be aware of limitations/threats

– Discuss collective doubts

– Look at the moral and ethical issues of decisions being made

Team Roles (Belbin, 2010)

• ‘Plant’: so-called because person was planted in team; creative,

solves problems in novel ways

• Resource Investigator: Important when team is too inward

looking; focuses on getting ideas and knowledge from outside of the

team

• Co-ordinator: Focuses on objectives and gets team to work together

• Shaper: Very keen on moving the team forward

• Monitor-Evaluator: Has an impartial eye; able to assess team’s

options in a neutral way.

• Team Worker: Flexible; is the social ‘glue’ to the team itself

• Implementer: Puts together a strategy and tries to put it into action

• Completer Finisher: Checks for errors; fine-tunes the final product

• Specialist: Has in-depth knowledge of a key area

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Ways to make things stick: The Tipping Point (Gladwell, 2001)

The Law of the Few

• ‘Salesmen’: Strongly persuasive people with powerful negotiation skills;

• ‘Mavens’: Information specialists - “Mavens are really information brokers,

sharing and trading what they know”

• ‘Connectors’: - Those in the community who know a lot of people and

habitually take pleasure from enabling people to connect with each other.

Characterised by personality traits of curiosity, sociability, and self-

confidence.

Stickiness of the Message

• Examples used by Gladwell were from Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues

The Power of Context

• Example given by Gladwell of dramatic reduction in crime on New York’s

metro system by tackling small crimes (e.g. vandalism, fare-dodging)

Leadership

"Managers are people who do things rightand leaders are people who do the right thing" (Bennis & Nanus, 1985, p. 21).

By that definition, does this mean anyone can be a leader, even if you’re not a manager?

Contingency theory (Fiedler, 1967)

• A leader’s success depends on how characteristics of a

situation and the characteristics of the leader inter-relate

• Focuses on:

–Leader-member (i.e. subordinate/follower) relations –ranges from favourable to poor relations

–Task structure – ranges from highly structured (i.e. always ask customers if they want a muffin with their coffee) to vague/unstructured (e.g. “develop a better coffee product)

•From some leaders’ perspective, highly structured is good (needs less explanation and guidance)

–Position power of leader – ranges from high levels of authority to having little formal authority over co-workers

Leader Characteristics: The Least Preferred Co-worker Scale (Fiedler 1967)

“…Now use the scale to describe the person with whom you

find it hardest to get the job done.

Pleasant: __:__:__:__:__:__:__:__: Unpleasant

Friendly: __:__:__:__:__:__:__:__: Unfriendly

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

•High LPC scores = relationship-focused•Low LPC scores = task-oriented

Schriesheim et al. (1994)’s meta-analysis found:Leaders with low LPC levels tend to out-perform

those with high LPC levels

Transformational vs. Transactional leadership (Bass & Riggio, 2006)

• Transactional:

– Uses contingency theory (i.e. outcomes for the employee are dependent/contingent on what they do)

– Assumes that workers are mainly motivated by reward and punishment

– Seeks centralised control (e.g. tells each person what, when, and how to do it)

– Rewards given when leader-determined performance expectations are met

– Management by exception (e.g. not bothered with regular performance – only exceptionally good/bad results)

• Transformational:

– Engenders trust and respect of followers

– Looks for different perspectives when problem-solving

– Gets workers to challenge old assumptions and ways of working

– Thinks about what motivates each worker and each one can best develop in their role (and any possible future roles)

– Spends time coaching colleagues and empowering them

– Appreciates each employee’s contributions; recognises and celebrates each person’s achievements

The Managerial Grid (Blake & Mouton, 1985)

The 1,9 Approach

I initiate actionsto help and support

others

I avoid generatingconflict but when it

appears I try to soothefeelings to keep people

together

I look for facts, beliefs and positions that suggest all is

well

The 9,1 Approach

I investigate facts, beliefs,and positions so that I am in

control of any situation

I drive myself andothers

I stand up for my opinions, attitudes and ideas even though it means rejecting others’ views

The 9,9 Approach

I feel it is importantTo express my concerns and convictions. I

respond to ideassounder than myown by changing

my mind

When conflict arises,I seek out reasonsfor it in order to

resolve underlyingcauses

I place high valueon arriving at sounddecisions. I seek understandingand agreement

Situational leadership (Hershey & Blanchard, 2001)

Low High

High

1

23

4

Directive behaviour

Support

ive b

ehavio

ur

Directing

CoachingSupporting

Delegating

Steps for Interventions with Individuals and Small Groups (Adapted from Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2010)

Work with individuals Work with groups

Pre-contemplation:• Look at where oppression and

suffering has emerged for each individual

Pre-contemplation:• Look at reasons for coming together

Contemplation:• Refine and define areas of work

Contemplation:• Explore principles for working

together

Preparation:• Select specific goals and areas for

change

Preparation:• Look at plan for achieving personal &

group goals

Action:• Try out actions to address oppressive

practices/systems

Action:• Balance participation and inclusion

with action itself

Maintenance:• Develop systems of sustaining

personal change and empowerment

Maintenance:• Norms and procedures for sustaining

change

Suggested Reading

• Belbin, M. (2010) Management teams – why they succeed or fail.

Butterworth Heinemann, 3rd edition.

• Nelson, G. & Prilleltensky, I. (2010) Community Psychology:I n

Pursuit of Liberation and Well-Being. Basingstoke: Palgrave

Macmillan [see Chapter 10].

• Williams, G. & Laungani, P. (1999) Analysis of teamwork in an NHS

community trust: an empirical study. Journal of Interprofessional

Care, 13(1), 19-28. [click on find it @NTU when going to the

following web page: http://informahealthcare.com/toc/jic/13/1 and

then access via EBSCO Host Academic Search Complete. There is

also a good paper by Poulton and West in the same journal issue].

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