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Leading diverse and creative teams: The role of inclusive leadership

Leading diverse and creative teams: The role of inclusive leadership. Roni Reiter-Palmon Professor, Department of Psychology Center for Collaboration Science. Why Creativity in Teams?. Increasing complexity of problems Additional performance benefits from varied skills of the team members

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Leading diverse and creative teams: The role of inclusive leadership

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  1. Leading diverse and creative teams: The role of inclusive leadership Roni Reiter-Palmon Professor, Department of Psychology Center for Collaboration Science

  2. Why Creativity in Teams? • Increasing complexity of problems • Additional performance benefits from varied skills of the team members • Creativity is defined as any product, process, or solution that is both original (novel) and useful (appropriate).

  3. Team Creativity • Much research on teams as a contextual variable (Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993) • Focus on individual creativity • More recent interest in the construct of team creativity (Reiter-Palmon, Wigert & de Vreede, 2011)

  4. Use the Input-Process-Output (IPO) model • Input • Team Characteristics • Team Diversity • Process • Social Processes • Cognitive Processes

  5. In what ways are teams diverse? • Demographic characteristics • Gender • Age • Race/Ethnicity • Nationality/Culture • Personal Characteristics • Personality • Motivation • Values

  6. Functional Diversity • Job/Position • Department • Discipline

  7. Meta analysis by Hulsherger et al. (2009) • Demographic diversity not related to creativity Functional diversity related to creativity • Not enough information on personal characteristics

  8. Strengths • More information • More diverse information • More perspectives • Cognitive benefits • Weaknesses • More difficulty in communicating • More difficulty in developing trust • Social deficits

  9. Team Processes • Social Processes • Multiple models of important social processes (Mathieu et al., 2008; Rousseau, Aube, & Savoie, 2006; Salas, Stagl, Burke, & Goodwin, 2007) • Commonalities across models • Collaboration and Coordination • Communication • Trust and Psychological Safety • Conflict

  10. Social Processes - Collaboration • Important for • Dynamic situation • Team adaptation • Creativity (Burke et al., 2006; Janssens & Brett, 2006)

  11. Collaboration • Team goals that emphasize collaboration relate to idea generation (Mitchell, Boyle, & Nicholas, 2009) • Collaboration is related to creativity and innovation in teams (Drach-Zehavy& Somech, 2001; Pearce & Ensley, 2004) • Effective collaboration allows for integration of diverse perspectives (Mitchell, Boyle, & Nicholas, 2009)

  12. Social Processes - Communication • Internal Communication – within the team • External Communication – outside of the team • With other departments/teams in the organization • Outside the organization (customers, suppliers, etc.)

  13. Ancona and Caldwell (1992) Ancona and Caldwell (1992 External Communication Ancona and Caldwell (1992) Ancona and Caldwell (1992) • One of the strongest predictors of team creativity (Damanpour, 1991; Hulsheger et al., 2009) • Diverse teams engage in more external communication (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; Keller, 2001)

  14. External Communication • Role of external communication • Providing diverse information • Weak ties related to creativity (Baer, 2010; Perry-Smith, 2006; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003) • Developing Support for new ideas (Howell & Shea, 2006)

  15. Internal communication • Communication with members within the team • Collaborative communication increases creativity (Lovelace, Shapiro, & Weingart, 2001) • Negative forms of communication hinder creativity (Lovelace, Shapiro, & Weingart, 2001) • Frequent communication hinder creativity (Kratzer, Leenders, & van Engelen, 2004)

  16. Trust and Psychological Safety • Linked to creativity and innovation (Carmeli & Spreitzer, 2009; West & Anderson, 1996) • Linked to team member willingness to discuss information openly (Burke et al., 2006; Edmondson, 2004; Rank et al., 2004).

  17. Trust and Psychological Safety • Low trust causes disagreements and ambiguous information to be interpreted in a negative way (Nicholson & West, 1988; Salas et al., 2005; West & Richter, 2008)

  18. Conflict • Can be task or relationship based (Jehn, 1997) • Hypothesized that task conflict may be beneficial (Kurtzberg & Amabile, 2001; Mannix & Neale, 2005)

  19. conflict • Mixed results regarding effect of conflict on creativity • Relationship = negative • Task = mixed • Possible curvilinear relationship (De Dreu, 2006)

  20. Social processes are interrelated and may have interactive effects on team creativity and innovation • Low trust can lead to more conflict • Communication increases trust and psychological safety • trust and psychological safety increase communication • Collaboration requires communication

  21. Time as an important variable • Social processes develop and change over time (team dynamics) • Social processes may have different effects depending on timing within a project

  22. Cognitive Processes • Social Cognition - How individuals and teams think about teams and team processes • Problem Solving (Reiter-Palmon, Herman, & Yammarino, 2008)

  23. Cognitive Processes • Received much more attention at the individual level than at the team level • Individual models of cognitive processes are available • Not clear how individual cognition then is aggregated to the team level

  24. Current work focuses on social cognition • How individuals and teams think about teams and team processes • Shared Mental Models • Reflexivity

  25. Shared Mental Model • Representation of knowledge or beliefs that are shared by team members (Cannon-Bowers, Salas, & Converse, 1993) • Positive relationship with team creativity and innovation (Gilson & Shalley, 2004; Pearce & Ensley, 2004) • SMMs may lead to too much similarity and conformity (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993)

  26. Team Reflexivity • Team members reflect on the objectives and strategies and adapt them to current or anticipated circumstances (West, 1996) • Reflexive teams can change their strategies and learn from past mistakes

  27. Important antecedent of team creativity and innovation (Schippers, Den Hartog, & Koopman, 2007; Tjosvold, Tang, & West, 2004) • Team reflexivity may not occur naturally (Muller, Herbig, & Petrovic, 2009) • Instructions and minority dissent may contribute to team reflexivity (De Dreu, 2002; Muller et al., 2009)

  28. Creative Problem Solving Processes • Problem identification and construction • Information gathering • Idea generation* (lots of research) • Solution evaluation and choice

  29. What is missing? • Individual cognition vs. team cognition • What happens when team members need to put together these individual cognitions? • How do we aggregate to the team level? • Early and late processes (before and after idea generation)

  30. Problem Construction • During this process the problem to be solved is • recognized and identified (Is there indeed a problem?) • defined (What is the nature of the problem?) • and constructed (What are the parameters of the problem to guide possible solutions?)

  31. Based on past experiences with similar problems – Problem Representation (Gick & Holyoak, 1983) • Includes: Goals, constraints, information and procedures • Typically, automatic application

  32. Individual Findings • Creative individuals engage in this process (Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1976) • Experts spend more time on PC (Voss et al., 1991) • Deliberate PC (more time, more ways, instructions) results in creative solutions (Basadur, Graen & Green, 1982; Reiter-Palmon, et al., 1997) • Focus on goals and restrictions (Mumford, et al., 1996)

  33. Very limited research on team level problem construction • How do teams construct problems? • Similar individual problem constructions • Different construction (rGap) (Cronin & Wiengart, 2007)

  34. Large rGaps • Lead to less integration, increased conflict, and lower creativity (Gish & Clausen, 2013; Weingart, Cronin, Houser, Cagan, & Vogel, 2005) • Lead to increased creativity if differences are discussed (Leonardi, 2011; Weingart, Todorova, & Cronin, 2008)

  35. Instructions to engage in problem construction • PC teams were less creative (Reiter-Palmon, Wigert, Morral-Robinson, Hullsiek, Arreola, & Crough, 2011) • PC teams were more original (Reiter-Palmon, 2017) • PC teams had lower conflict and more satisfaction with process and outcome

  36. Information Gathering and Sharing • Cognitive process that relies on social processes (communication) • Individuals search both within and outside the team for information • Diverse teams have access to more information and more diverse information

  37. Common information is more likely to be shared (Mesmer-Magnus & DeChurch, 2009) • Do not always know what is relevant to others • No direct studies on information gathering and sharing on creativity

  38. Solution evaluation and selection • Ideas are evaluated and choice is made to implement, refine or reject ideas • Creative individuals recognize creativity (Basadur, Runco, & Vega, 2000; Runco & Chand, 1995) • Standards for evaluation likely come from problem-construction stage

  39. Domain may influence the process (Furst, Ghisletta, & Lubart, 2017; Lubart, 2009; Sullivan & Ford, 2005) • When is evaluation more effective: Early vs. Late in the process • Evaluation criteria • Instructions to choose creative ideas (Lonergan, Scott, & Mumford, 2004; Rietzschel, Nijstad, & Stroebe, 2010) • Creative ideas • Original ideas but low quality

  40. Team Evaluation and Selection • No difference between nominal and interacting groups in idea selection (Faure, 2004; Putman & Paulus, 2009; Rietzschel, Nijstad, & Stroebe, 2006) • Teams are not very good at selecting creative ideas (Kennel & Reiter-Palmon, 2012) • Evaluation accuracy leads to selection of more creative ideas (Kennel & Reiter-Palmon, 2012)

  41. Providing structure during idea evaluation and idea selection leads to increased accuracy and better idea selection (Mumford, Feldman, Hein, & Nagao, 2001; Reiter-Palmon, Kennel, de Vreede, &de Vreede, in press)

  42. Sparse research on problem solving processes • Cognitive processes in teams rely on social processes • Particularly communication • Evidence that both similarity in cognition and diversity can be important

  43. When social deficits can be overcome – cognitive benefits facilitate team creativity • Social deficits can be overcome by effective leadership • Social deficits can be overcome by time • Getting to know the other team members

  44. Leadership • Is leading creative people different? • Creative people are • Independent • Achievement oriented • Arrogant • Intelligent/knowledgeable • Difficulty in teamwork

  45. Leadership • Leaders have an important role in providing resources needed • Time • Money • Materials • People • Information • Leaders provide direction and vision

  46. Leaders can provide role modeling for both social and cognitive processes • Leaders can emphasize creativity to facilitate active engagement • Instructions • Rewarding creativity • Leaders can create a culture of openness and communication

  47. Leaders facilitate inclusivity though • Openness • Engaging all members • Facilitating a culture of collaboration • Providing support

  48. Dec. 2017 – Oxford University Press

  49. Contact • rreiter-palmon@unomaha.edu • Twitter @rrpcreativity

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