Chapter 2: Collaboration, Interpersonal Communication, and Business
Etiquette
Chapter 2 explores multiple aspects of interpersonal communication: communicating in teams,
collaborating on communication efforts, making meetings more productive, using meeting technologies,
and improving the skills involved in listening, nonverbal communication, and business etiquette.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Communicating Effectively in Teams
Advantages and Disadvantages of Teams
Characteristics of Effective Teams
Group Dynamics
Assuming Team Roles
Allowing for Team Evolution
Resolving Conflict
Overcoming Resistance
Collaborating on Communication Efforts
Guidelines for Collaborative Writing
Technologies for Collaborative Writing
Collaboration Systems
Social Networks and Virtual Communities
Collaboration via Mobile Devices
Giving—and Responding to—Constructive Feedback
Making Your Meetings More Productive
Preparing for Meetings
Conducting and Contributing to Efficient Meetings
Putting Meeting Results to Productive Use
Using Meeting Technologies
Improving Your Listening Skills
Recognizing Various Types of Listening
Understanding the Listening Process
Overcoming Barriers to Effective Listening
Improving Your Nonverbal Communication Skills
Recognizing Nonverbal Communication
Using Nonverbal Communication Effectively
Developing Your Business Etiquette
Business Etiquette in the Workplace
Business Etiquette in Social Settings
Business Etiquette Online
Business Etiquette Using Mobile Devices
Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment, and classroom
intelligence system. It allows instructors to engage students in class with real-time diagnostics. Students
can use any modern, web-enabled device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access it. For more
information on using Learning Catalytics in your course, contact your Pearson Representative.
LECTURE NOTES
Section 1: Communicating Effectively in Teams
Learning Objective 1: List the advantages and disadvantages of working in teams, describe the
characteristics of effective teams, and highlight four key issues of group dynamics.
Collaboration—working together to meet complex challenges— is a prime skill expected in a wide range
of professions.
A team is a unit of two or more people who share a mission and the responsibility for working to achieve
a common goal.
Problem-solving teams and task forces assemble to resolve specific issues and then disband when their
goals have been accomplished.
Such teams are often cross-functional, pulling together people from a variety of departments who have
different areas of expertise and responsibility.
Diversity of opinions and experiences can lead to better decisions, but competing interests can create
tension.
Committees are formal teams that can become a permanent part of the organizational structure.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Teams
Teams are often part of participative management—the effort to involve employees in the company’s
decision making.
A successful team can provide advantages, such as:
Increased information and knowledge
Increased diversity of views
Increased acceptance of a solution
Higher performance levels
Teams can also have disadvantages, such as:
Groupthink—occurs when peer pressures cause individual team members to withhold contrary or
unpopular opinions
Hidden agendas—private, counterproductive motives that undermine someone else on the team
Cost—aligning schedules, arranging meetings, and coordinating individual parts of a project can eat up a
lot of time and money
Overload—adding team responsibilities to an employee’s workload can result in overload, and top
performers in particular often get assigned to multiple teams
Characteristics of Effective Teams
The most effective teams:
Have a clear objective and a shared sense of purpose
Communicate openly and honestly
Reach decisions by consensus
Think creatively
Know how to resolve conflict
Believe that their work matters
Ineffective teams:
Get bogged down in con”ict
Waste time and resources pursuing unclear goals
Common reasons cited for unsuccessful teamwork:
Management expectations that are either unclear or not accepted by all team members
Reluctance to prioritize team goals over personal goals
Reward systems that don’t recognize team contributions
Team leadership that tolerates negative and counterproductive behaviors
Group Dynamics
Group dynamics are the interactions and processes that take place among members in a team.
Productive teams tend to develop positive norms—informal standards of conduct that members share
and that guide member behavior.
Group dynamics are influenced by:
The roles assumed by team members
The current phase of team development
The team’s success in resolving con”ict
The team’s success in overcoming resistance
Team members can play various roles:
Self-oriented roles are played by those motivated mainly to ful&ll personal needs—these individuals tend
to be less productive than other members.
Team-maintenance roles are played by those who help everyone work well together.
Task-oriented roles are played by those who help the team reach its goals.
As teams grow and evolve, they generally pass through a variety of stages, such as these five:
Orientation
Con”ict
Brainstorming
Emergence
Reinforcement
Another common model, proposed by Bruce Tuckman:
Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing
Adjourning
Conflict in team activities can result from:
Competition for resources
Disagreement over goals or responsibilities
Poor communication
Power struggles
Fundamental differences in values, attitudes, and personalities
Conflict is not necessarily bad. In fact, conflict can be constructive if it:
Forces important issues into the open
Increases the involvement of team members
Generates creative ideas for the solution to a problem
Conflict can be destructive if it:
Diverts energy from more important issues
Destroys morale of teams or individual team members
Polarizes or divides the team
Destructive conflict can lead to win-lose or lose-lose outcomes, in which one or both sides lose to the
detriment of the entire team.
If you approach conflict with the idea that both sides can satisfy their goals to at least some extent (a
win-win strategy), you can minimize losses for everyone.
For the win-win strategy to work, everybody must believe that:
It’s possible to &nd a solution that both parties can accept
Cooperation is be/er for the organization than competition
The other party can be trusted
Greater power or status doesn’t entitle one party to impose a solution
Conflict can be resolved through:
Proactive management. Deal with minor con”ict before it becomes major con”ict.
Communication. Get those involved with the con”ict actively involved in resolution.
Openness. Get feelings out into the open before dealing with main issues.
Research. Get the facts before a/empting a resolution.
Flexibility. Don’t let anyone lock into a position before considering all possible solutions.
Fair play. Insist on a fair outcome that doesn’t hide behind rules.
Alliance. Unite the team against an “outside force” instead of each other.
When attempting to overcome resistance:
Engage in active listening and make sure the other party knows you are listening
Recognize that your primary goal is to forge a relationship that can resolve the impasse
Bring resistance out into the open and keep listening for hidden elements of resistance
With a better understanding of the resistance, begin to collaborate on a solution
Class discussion question: Describe a time that you experienced some form of team conflict during a
class project. What were the sources of conflict, and how did the team resolve it? How did the conflict
affect the team’s work output?
Section 2: Collaborating on Communication Efforts
Learning Objective 2: Offer guidelines for collaborative communication, identify major collaboration
technologies, and explain how to give constructive feedback.
When teams collaborate, the collective energy and expertise of the various members can lead to results
that transcend what each individual could do otherwise.
However, collaborating on team messages requires special effort.
Guidelines for Collaborative Writing
In any collaborative effort, team members coming from different backgrounds may have different
work habits or priorities, for example:
A technical expert to focus on accuracy and scienti&c standards
An editor to be more concerned about organization and coherence
A manager to focus on schedules, cost, and corporate goals
Remember that the ways in which team members differ in writing styles and personality traits can
complicate the creative nature of communication.
To collaborate successfully, follow these guidelines:
Select collaborators carefully whenever possible.
Agree on project goals before you start.
Give your team time to bond before diving in to work.
Clarify individual responsibilities.
Establish clear processes.
Avoid composing as a group.
Make sure tools and techniques are ready and compatible across the team.
Check to see how things are going along the way.
Technologies for Collaborative Writing
Collaboration technologies range from simple features such as commenting and revision or change
tracking, to collaboration solutions such as content management systems that organize and control the
content for many websites (particularly larger corporate sites).
A wiki is a website that allows anyone with access to add new material and edit existing material.
Key benefits of wikis include:
Simple operation
Freedom to post new or revised material without prior approval
This approach is quite different from a content management system, in which both the organization of
the website and the work flow are tightly controlled.
Groupware and collaboration platforms let people simultaneously:
Communicate
Share &les
Present materials
Work on documents
Cloud computing expands the ways in which geographically dispersed teams can collaborate.
Shared workspaces are “virtual offices” that:
Give everyone on a team access to the same set of resources and information
Are accessible through a web browser
Control which team members can read, edit, and save speci&c &les
Can allow only one person at a time to work on a given &le or document to avoid getting edits out of
sync
May include presence awareness
The terms intranet (restricted internal website) and extranet (restricted, but with outside access) are
still used in some companies.
Social networking technologies are redefining teamwork and team communication by helping erase
the constraints of geographic and organizational boundaries.
Virtual communities or communities of practice link employees with similar professional interests
throughout the company and sometimes with customers and suppliers as well.
Social networking can also help a company maintain a sense of community even as it grows beyond
the size that normally permits a lot of daily interaction.
Mobile brings a new dimension to collaboration by connecting employees and business partners who
work part- or full-time outside conventional office environments.
Giving—and Responding to—Constructive Feedback
Constructive feedback, sometimes called constructive criticism, focuses on the process and outcomes
of communication, not on the people involved.
Destructive feedback delivers criticism with no guidance to stimulate improvement.
When you give feedback:
Avoid personal attack
Give the person clear guidelines for improvement
When you receive constructive feedback:
Resist the urge to defend your work or deny the validity of the feedback
Disconnect emotionally from the work and see it simply as something that can be made be/er
Step back and consider the feedback before diving in to make corrections
Don’t assume that all constructive feedback is necessarily correct