Alleviating The Laidback Behavior Of A Loafer

Learning how to work effectively in a group situation is key to success in many professions as well as in social situations. Groups vary from each other based on the individuals that make up each group, all of us belong to various groups at one time or another. The roles that we fulfill vary from group to

“Social skills are particularly important in team settings because working in teams increases the interdependence among workers, typically producing greater conflict, workload sharing, and coordination demands than work that is performed independently...”

As part of my Business Innovation Development Project Unit, I had the opportunity to put myself into group with my friends or people I believed I could work well with. In the first stages of our group we all tried to get to know each other more through analysing personality and learning types’ test that we previously undertook. I realise we were going through the normal stages of the team formation in particular forming and norming (Tuckman, 1965). In my assignment group we had all Belbin team roles which helped us perform well throughout our project and also helped us to identify other team members’ behavioural strengths and weaknesses. During the initial stages of the group getting together I believed it was

When teams are performing at their best, you are likely to find that each team member has cleared responsibility. You’ll also see that every team member needed to achieve their own personal goals in order for the team’s goal to be fully met to an adequate level. Dr Mereditch Belbin studied team work for many years and he mainly observed that people in teams tend to assume different roles within the team. He defined a team role as a “tendency to behave,

Yesterday I wrote about the fact that you are being judged by women - whether you like it or not. So it seems fitting that today I had a TV guy come into my home and have the nerve to look like this:

In the article “Coping with Hitchikers and Couch Potatoes on Teams,” the author explains effective techniques to use when dealing with “hitchhikers” and “cough potatoes” in group assignments. The author gives characteristics a student should be on the lookout for to determine if another group member is a hitchhiker or couch potato. A hitchhiker is someone who will typically “hand over partially worked problems and confess to spending the weekend watching TV” (1). A hitchhiker in the group should be dealt with immediately. The author presents the idea of “mirroring” (1) the hitchhiker to make the hitchhiker pay the price for his actions. Similar to the hitchhiker, a couch potato will show related traits. A couch potato is someone who “doesn’t

The bystander effect is both a social and psychological phenomenon in which an individual’s inclination towards showing helping behaviours are minimised by the influence of other people. Research has found that the more people acting as bystanders in a situation, the less likely it is that helping behaviours will be demonstrated. However in the correct conditions, where conditioned cues increase self-awareness, it is possible to reverse the bystander effect phenomenon. The bystander effect is prevalent in everyday life, and often decorates the news, shocking the world, especially when authority figures such as police men and women succumb to the effect. Diffusion of responsibility, ignorance of others interpretation of an event and self-consciousness are all social processes which appear to lead to social inhibition of helping behaviours and one of the main theories of the bystander effect is provided Latané and Darley (1970) whose cognitive model provides a series of decisions that can lead to social inhibition. The bystander effect is influenced by the conditions an individual is in when an event occurs, for example the bystander effect appears to be most dominant when an individual is in a group of strangers with low group cohesiveness. FINISH

As I was reading the "SAS" article I thought to myself this sounds very fictitious. It is very rare that corporation focus on their employees to this magnitude. The overall goal of the life-balance strategy is brilliant, because in the end there is a recognizable amount of cost savings. Some of the elements of SAS's life balance strategies include, a relaxed mood for the employees. This is a goal of Jim Goodnight, to have a nice surrounding for his employees. He believe that a person's surrounding, have a lot to do with how a person feels (Fishman, 1998). At SAS there is no limit to the amount of sick days that an employee can take. This allows employees not to stress and worry about losing their jobs, when things happen in their families and they need to be present. The seven hour work day at SAS is another element of the life-balance strategy that allows families to spend time with their families. Goodnight feels that if employees are off by 5 o'clock, they can sit down and have dinner with their families (Fishman, 1998). The facilities at SAS are equipped with 36,000 square feet of gym space, which can be used by employees at any time. To encourage usage of the gym facilities, there is a laundry service onsite. Ultimately, Jim Goodnight is

In teams with strong faultlines, the additional social categorization (the particular subgroup within the larger group) may lead members to exhibit intergroup bias and animosity toward members of another subgroup (Bezrukova et al., 2007). Information shared across subgroups may be misinterpreted, so that comments are viewed as criticisms or threats rather than as constructive critiques (Bartel, 2001; Lau & Murnighan, 2005). These misinterpretations often lead to negative attributions of other subgroup members that form the basis for personal disputes (Jehn, 1997). Thus, the first step in the affective path involved a positive relationship between demographic faultlines strength and relationship conflict.

Throughout high school and college, I have experienced a lot of social loafing. It happened to either people in my past groups or to myself for every group project I had up until this point. One notable experience I had with social loafing happened my senior year in high school. For our anatomy class, we had to draw, label, and write a paper on the human body. We split the workload amongst the group and planned on meeting periodically to make sure we are doing the assignment correctly. Two members would never show up the group meetings and never responded to the constant barrage of emails. The rest of the group and I eventually had to have the teacher intervene. A couple days after the teacher spoke to those two group members, the only contribution

In today’s interconnected world the ability to collaborate with other people is increasingly important part. In order to understand how to better manage bigger groups and improve co-operation, it’s important to understand what drives social behaviour.

I work at subway, so I would consider my coworkers my group. Working in a group has it’s benefits, such as socialization, and employees to help out with tasks. Unfortunately, sometimes what happens is you get a social loafer. The term social loafing is a term that refers to the concept that people, such as my co-workers exert less effort on a task if they are in a group versus if they are alone. Instead of helping out the coworker might lounge in a chair, while on their cell phone.

Early social facilitation theory asserted that just the presence or coaction of others could impact or affect performance (Strauss, 2002). Snyder (et al) assert that in addition,

Having tasks that are too difficult or are unfamiliar are likely to incite social loafing because they group member lacks the ability or courage to provide input. Robbins and Judge (2011) theorize that another cause of social loafing is an uneven equity. When two people are putting in different levels of input and receiving the same level of output the larger contributor will adjust their input to reduce cognitive dissonance. Another reason they believe is “dispersion of responsibility” group members cannot be held responsible because tasks and roles are not clearly assigned. (Robbins & Judge, 2011). In research by Worchel and others (1998) it was found that groups with friends or familiar members are far less likely to loaf when compared with groups made up of strangers (Worchel, Rothgerber, Day, Hart, & Butemeyer, 1998) Most people have been in a group made up of friends and colleges they are familiar with and seen that in these types of groups social loafing is drastically reduced.

Thirdly, our communication skills were better enhanced and we were able to build up on our synergy levels. In such an environment where communication is open and free-flowing, people were able to bring in new ideas, concepts and attitudes which benefitted the entire group. The problem with ineffective communication, especially where diverse groups are involved is that issues such as stereotyping are bound to crop up. This, in turn, caused team members to become increasingly self-conscious and often kept to themselves for fear of being judged. Much to it, the aspect of self-disclosure becomes almost elusive because no one is willing to step out of their comfort zone and steer a relevant discussion to the project at hand. In a scenario whereby team members are free to talk and express their ideas and feelings without being judged, the fear of revealing one’s true self is diminished tremendously (Peri et al., 2000). This is because such an environment fosters trust, values and ethics. Contrary to this, an environment that is characterized by prejudices and presumptions about others disintegrates this trust and often results to reduced productivity among the members. Cooperation and trust are two aspects that often determine the overall performance of a group. Where there is trust, team players become