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Effective Communication:Confronting and Expressing Opinions without Offending

Roni Reiter-PalmonDepartment of Psychology

Center for Collaboration Science

About

• Director – I/O Psychology

• Areas of research

– How creative ideas are developed

– Innovation in organizations

– Team performance

– Leadership

What is Communication?

• The ability to provide or exchange information

– In writing

– Speaking

– Other ways – technology, non-verbal

Communication and Collaboration

• Communication is essential building block for most workplace tasks

• Collaboration and teamwork require communication

Teams

• Why use teams?

• Multiple perspectives, points of view

• More knowledge

• Ability to share workload (physical and mental)

• Ability to capitalize of various strengths of team members (cognitive skills, personality)

• Diverse teams have more of these

Teams

• Teams used frequently

• In medicine

– Multiple disciplines provides multiple perspectives

– Increased knowledge

– Complex problems require multiple disciplines

Disadvantages of Teams

• Multiple perspectives, points of view can lead to conflict

• Different “languages”, approaches

• Coordination costs (time and effort)

• Dominant individuals in a group

• Social loafing

Communication in Teams

• Is a requirement

• Need to communication

– Opinion

– Agreement

– Disagreement

Voicing an opinion

• Typically not of concern

• Concerns arise when

– Potential for disagreement

– Power differential

– Both

Disagreement

• Can lead to conflict

• More difficult to voice when low power

– Concern about conflict

• Not all conflict is the same

• Task conflict – focus on the task itself

– What are the major issues (goals, obstacles)

– How do we solve the problem

• Personal conflict – focus on the person

– Dislike or distrust of other team members

– Overt or covert

• Task conflict can improve decision making– Focus on how to solve the problem better

• Person conflict hurts team efforts

• Sometimes hard to differentiate– Criticism related to task may be delivered as

personal criticism

– Personal criticism may be masked as task criticism

– Task criticism may be perceived as personal criticism

• Much of the conflict (both task and person) can be traced to team diversity

• Differences can create difficulty in communication

Defining Diversity• Surface level diversity

– Observable demographic factors

• Deep level diversity– Personality, values, attitudes

• Task related diversity

• Evaluating diversity– What is a diverse team?– Diverse on what?

Team diversity and Team outcomes• Effect of team diversity on social processes or

collaboration– Cohesion– Liking– Communication– Conflict

• Effects of team diversity on outcomes– Efficiency– Effectiveness– Creativity

Why?• Similarity attraction/Social categorizations

– Similarity leads to liking, trust

– Dissimilarity leads to “us” vs. “them”

– Homogeneous teams will be more successful

• Cognitive resources diversity

– Dissimilar members will bring different knowledge and skills

– Heterogeneous teams will be more successful

• Demographic diversity can hurt team functioning early, but disappears

• Task related diversity may make collaboration and communication more difficult early

• Better for more complex view of the problem

– Effective solutions for complex problems

– Creativity and Innovation

• We prefer to discuss things that we agree on

• We prefer to discuss information we all share

• These facilitate smooth team functioning

– It makes everyone comfortable

• Teams that are similar will have a similar world view, shared experiences

• Heterogeneous teams will have less in common

– Communication is more difficult

– Potential for misunderstanding and conflict

Expressing Dissent

• Why is it important?

– Prevents error - In many cases errors are noticed but no one brings it to attention

– Increases thoroughness

– Improves quality

– Allows for creativity and innovation

• Exercise

What stops us?

• Expressing dissent is uncomfortable

• Concern about being wrong/looking stupid

• Concern about offending others

• Can lead to conflict

What to do?

• How important is it to express your opinion?

– Not all issues are created equal

• How has the team reacted to dissenting opinions?

• What is you position in the team? Are you in a position of power

What to do?

• As a team member

– Express opinions when appropriate

– Explain yourself clearly

– Avoid assumptions

• About what others know or understand

– Present your opinion and dissent respectfully

– Know your audience – present information accordingly

– Point out common and shared opinions/points

• As a team member

– Ask others for their opinion – encourage others

– Ask for more information

– Accept conflicting or dissenting opinions

– Do not take dissent personally

– Find common ground

• As a leader

– Encourage team members to express opinions

– Explicitly solicit opinions

– Model acceptance

• Your team is looking at your behavior

– Surround yourself with people who will express opinions

• As a leader

– Model appropriate ways to express opinions and argue

– Remind the team of the overarching goal

– Remind the team of the value of diversity and diverse opinions

• As a leader

– Encourage team reflection

• Important for learning and preventing errors

– Ensure that dissent stays at the task level and does not develop into personal conflict

– Know when to stop discussions and reach a decision

Diversity of Opinions and Creativity

• We expect that diversity of opinions and points of view will facilitate creativity

• The same factors that lead to diversity of opinions can make it difficult to express and understand

Creativity Paradox• Factors that facilitate effective team functioning can

hinder creativity in teams

– Similarity makes collaboration easier, but innovation is less likely

– Diverse teams are more likely to innovate, but have difficulty collaborating

Steps in Problem Solving

• Problem Definition and Construction

– Identifying that a problem exists

– Based on past experiences

– Defining the parameters of the problem• Goals and Restrictions

• Information Search

– Internal and External

Steps in Problem Solving

• Idea/Solution Generation– Developing an idea or multiple ideas

– Brainstorming

• Idea/Solution Evaluation and Selection– Evaluation based on goals generated earlier, norms

– Identification of solution(s) to be implemented

Problem Construction• Different people will define problems

differently based on background, past experience, and personality

• Not likely to discuss problem construction differences

• May not be aware of problem construction difference

• Homogeneous groups are more likely to have similar problem constructions

• Diverse teams are more likely to develop creative and more comprehensive problem constructions, if they are discussed

Information Search

• More diverse teams will have access to more information

• Similar information is more likely to be shared

• Effective communication required to share information

Idea Generation

• Diverse teams will generate more diverse ideas

– Only if different ideas are discussed

– Only if groups are open and not critical too early

– Criticism of ideas (task) may also stifle ideas

Idea Evaluation and Selection• More alternatives not always better

– Cognitive load– Heterogeneous teams will have a more difficult time– Homogeneous teams will quickly remove options

• Homogeneous teams more likely to agree on criteria for evaluation

• Diverse teams are more likely to have complex evaluation criteria– If discuss and integrate various criteria

• Ineffective collaboration and communication will disrupt effective application of cognitive processes

• Diverse teams need to work harder to attain effective collaboration and communication

• Once collaboration and communication practices are set, diverse teams have a cognitive advantage