Response the below:
The Abilene Paradox
1. Why is it important for an organization to have a mission?
2. Why is it important for team members to know their roles on a team?
3. Is competition within a team a good or bad thing? Explain your response.
4. Why is it important to set short- and long-term goals when planning a meeting regarding conflicts? Provide examples.
5. Why is it significant for leaders to understand how to resolve conflict and avoid unhealthy agreements?
Review the Case One: ElectriGov
ElectriGov is a government agency whose mission is to supply electricpower to various locations within the United States. The organization has three "line crews" whose job it is to install high-voltage power lines.
The work is hard, dirty, anddangerous. Almost all of the men have had a friend who has been
seriously injured or killed while on the job. The crews typically workindependently, but when there are large projects to complete, thecrews must work together. This can create serious conflicts, sincethe crews often don't agree with each other's approaches to organizing and managing a particular job, and none of the three foremenwant to be subservient to the others. Thus when doing large projectstogether, the line crews tend to compete with one another, rather
than cooperate.
On one project, the conflict became so nasty thatone crew failed to inform another crew that the wires were "hot" ata certain section of the project. This serious safety breach wasreported to senior management, who immediately launched aninvestigation. We, as consultants, initially were asked to serve aspart of the team investigating the causes of the safety violations.After the initial investigation, we were asked by ElectriGov'ssenior management to "clean up the conflicts" between the crews.
The approach we used to help the crews reduce their conflicts wasa variation on design A. All three crews were brought together inone room, and the need for an interteam-development program wasdiscussed. Each crew was asked to commit to solving the conflictsbetween themselves and the other crews and to agree to give theprogram a chance. Once this agreement was achieved, each crewwas then asked to meet separately to list their perceptions of the
other crews and the specific problems that they had in working withthe other crews. After meeting separately, the teams were broughtback together and each crew reported its perceptions of the othercrews.
In our consulting role, we facilitated the discussion, makingsure that each crew's perceptions were made clear and that eachcrew described the problematic behaviors of the other crews in concrete,specific terms. As a ground rule, crews were asked to bedescriptive and to avoid using emotionally laden language whencritiquing the other crews. After each crew presented its perceptionsof the other crews, the other crews could ask questions to clarifypoints that were made, but the crews were not allowed to debatethe validity of the other crews' perceptions.
After each crew aired their views, the crews were then asked tocome up with recommendations to improve the relationshipbetween crews. Their suggestions were listed on large poster boardsin the room. The crews discussed how they might do more advancedplanning on the larger projects to determine who would do what and who would be in charge of the project. They also consideredrotating crew members to improve relationships between rews. Atthe end of this interteam-building session, each crew made a publiccommitment to change its behavior and implement the recommendationsthat were made. As a result of this intervention, thehostility between the crews decreased and the crews now have anew approach to working with each other on large projects thatminimizes the conflicts that they had in the past.
Reference
McShane, S. L., & Von Glinow, M. A. (2013).Organizational behavior (6th Ed.).
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.