Introduction
After the first post I published earlier this month, I tried to find information that could bring more light on the effects of cohesion of people in successful teams/companies. As I mentioned then, for me this point is vital for the proper functioning of an Organization; I have no scientific basis to say this, but I saw it through my personal experience being involved in rather similar projects from the business culture point of view since I was about 14 years old.
After the first post I published earlier this month, I tried to find information that could bring more light on the effects of cohesion of people in successful teams/companies. As I mentioned then, for me this point is vital for the proper functioning of an Organization; I have no scientific basis to say this, but I saw it through my personal experience being involved in rather similar projects from the business culture point of view since I was about 14 years old.
I found an article published by Ph. D. James Larsen, by 2003 I guess, so called "The Fine Points of Cohesion" I would like to share with all of you.
The Fine Points of Cohesion
In this article, the author analyzes the results of a study on the relationship between the level of cohesion of teams and their performance.
According to that analysis, it is said there are three key factors a team to achive its peak performance:
"1) interpersonal attraction (people in a group feeling attracted to each other for friendship), 2) group pride, and 3) shared commitment to the work of the group".
The three factors to improve cohesion
What would be in your opinion the importance level of these three factors in those more cohesive (and therefore better performance) teams?
According to this study, the order of importance of these factors in teams with highest performance is:
1) shared commitment to the work of the group
2) group pride
3) intepersonal attaction
As you can see, the commitment to the team is crucial to get the best performance of teams, whether their members have different personalities/ideologies, or are more or less friends.
Conclusions
It looks clear to me that mental models established in our culture regarding the need for "interpersonal attraction/sociability" as cohesive elements and real team performance are not directly proportional, eventhough personal attraction between team members seems to help to make things easier.
For me cohesiveness lies in the fact that team has to be more important than individual (shared success, everybody feels important on the team, shared responsibility etc.), and this is one of the more complex ideas to be implemented by Managers in our culture; sometimes by lack of knowledge and other times because personal interests, they don't realize about its importance so that Organizations move forward and obtain more successful results.
As you can see, the commitment to the team is crucial to get the best performance of teams, whether their members have different personalities/ideologies, or are more or less friends.
Conclusions
It looks clear to me that mental models established in our culture regarding the need for "interpersonal attraction/sociability" as cohesive elements and real team performance are not directly proportional, eventhough personal attraction between team members seems to help to make things easier.
For me cohesiveness lies in the fact that team has to be more important than individual (shared success, everybody feels important on the team, shared responsibility etc.), and this is one of the more complex ideas to be implemented by Managers in our culture; sometimes by lack of knowledge and other times because personal interests, they don't realize about its importance so that Organizations move forward and obtain more successful results.
Web page of the original article: http://www.businesspsych.org/articles/259.html
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (for the information created by me)
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