Vitaly Sharovatov
This article proceeds the “teams & groups” series:
The article focuses on the negative social dynamics triggered by a few aspects of organizational design, process activities, and certain managerial actions.
Layoffs
Layoffs in most cases are not economically justified, negatively affect laid off employees health (sometimes even provoke suicide), negatively affects managers health, significantly decrease performance of remaining employees. Layoffs are generally perceived as unjust and erode trust in the employer and within the team.
The result is that the team is likely to deteriorate into a mere group.
The reason for this deterioration is straightforward: teams are characterized by interdependence and trust, with each member expecting others to cooperate and collaborate, and to offer protection when needed.
However, as soon as one or a few members of the team are dismissed for a seemingly trivial reason (which could have been avoided in most cases), the mechanism of collaboration is shattered, and the trust that the team members had in each other disappears. Consequently, a team member cannot rely on the presence of others.
Layoffs undermine two of the three main characteristics of a team: interdependence and trust.
Trust is built on the expectation of reciprocity, and if there is no reciprocity — when those who remain see that they did not protect the person who was fired, they will understand that others will not protect them if they are about to be dismissed. Thus, a fear rooted in individualism emerges.
Our social behavior exhibits “tipping points” or “threshold effects”: the impact of certain actions may not be visible immediately but will accumulate, leading to a significant change in the system’s state. The effects of layoffs build up and have prolonged negative consequences. In a way, the fear instigated by layoffs follows a hysteresis pattern: even if there was just one layoff, the accumulated effect might persist for an unpredictable period.
Current research on trust and distrust in organizational settings identifies fear as one of the primary indicators of the highest degree of distrust:
Furthermore, it’s impossible to quantify the adverse effects of destructive effect of a layoff on a team.
PR-based code reviews
Certain process activities, even though not directly destroying teams, are well-known for provoking conflict or other types of negative social dynamics within teams. One of the famous examples of such a process activity is PR-based code review.
As I described in my article on code reviews, PR-based code reviews can trigger negative social dynamics or even conflict within a team.
Internet’s full of posts and articles on how to “solve” this “negativity problem”. Most of these posts talk about how to provide more “positive” feedback. Microsoft even hired a fully dedicated specialist working on this issue.
However, it’s hard to improve on an activity which simply suits badly for teams. The activity design has a flaw: reviewer is invited to find defects or issues in other’s work.
Every human being associates her work results with themselves, valuing things we spend effort on doing is innate to our nature. When a developer spends a significant effort on solving a certain problem / completing a task, and then receives feedback like “this has to be redone”, they will inevitably associate this feedback with themselves: the more effort a person spent on doing something, the more vulnerable they are to the critics. And while there wasn’t an upfront agreement as to how the problem should have been solved, they consider negative feedback even worse.
The shorter the feedback cycle, the less negativity will emerge, and the less rework will be done. Simply employing pair or mob work approach would both improve productivity and quality, and also foster team work instead of diminishing.
“Chapters” and “Guilds”
Organizing employees into chapters and guilds based on their specialization might negatively affect teams. Interdependence, trust, and cooperation heavily rely on team bonding. When employees of a certain specialization begin to value their chapter or guild more than the product team they are part of, there’s a probability that they will associate themselves more with the chapter or guild than the team. This can lead to a silo mentality or even outgroup prejudice within their team.
Personal Development Plans
Personal development plans are tailored to individual employees to outline their career goals, develop their skills, and identify steps for their professional growth. This process is inherently focused on the individual, aiming to support the employee’s growth and alignment with their career aspirations.
Personal development plans, like individual performance reviews, shift the employees’ focus from the team’s common goals and objectives to individual development.
The first issue with PDPs is that team members become accustomed to receiving information (and feedback) about their individual development not from the team itself but from an outsider—the manager. This diminishes interdependence and trust.
The second issue is akin to PR-based code review: planning anything for long periods means that the plan can quickly become outdated, as reality will demand something unplanned.
Instead of PDPs, the team can collaborate to help a team member improve and do so interactively, with Mob Learning, the chances are higher that the team member will appreciate the collaboration, which reinforces team bonding.
Additionally, modern pedagogy and andragogy have reached a scientific consensus: collaborative learning is the most effective one.
These activities and approaches represent only a fraction of the factors that can undermine teamwork. Extensive research within the fields of the sociology of work and organizational psychology delves into teams, groups, and the various elements that can either hinder or enhance team cohesion and performance. It is highly recommended that managers familiarize themselves with this body of knowledge. By doing so, their actions will be better informed, and their decisions will be more effective.
References:
- Social tipping points in animal societies
- Threshold Models of Collective Behavior II: The Predictability Paradox and Spontaneous Instigation
- From Stability to Change: The Potential Application of Bifurcation Theory to Opinion Dynamics Considerations
- Work Team Trust and Effectiveness
- Impact of trust in colleagues and management on knowledge sharing within and across work groups
- Exploring the causes and consequences of cooperative behaviour in wild animal populations using a social network approach
- The checkerboard model of social interaction
- Expectations, Outcomes, and Challenges of Modern Code Review
- Toward Understanding of the Social Hysteresis: Insights From Agent-Based Modeling
- Bringing the Neuroscience of Learning to Online Teaching: An Educator’s Handbook
- Collaborative Learning in Higher Education: Evoking Positive Interdependence
- The State of Cooperative Learning in Postsecondary and Professional Settings