Group diversity

• This model made a distinction between two types of group diversity:
  
  • salient differences in detectable attributes
    
    • e.g., race, ethnicity, language, gender and
  • nonsalient differences in underlying attributes
    
    • e.g., educational background, disciplinary orientation, cognitive style.

Salient/non-salient differences

• Milliken and colleagues suggested that both salient and non-salient differences can encourage group
  creativity in the form of divergent thinking
• i.e. cognitive diversity would increase task conflict and enhance divergent thinking within the group

Positive

• When team members experience a high level of group identification and psychological safety in the formative phase, this translates into personal feelings of emotional engagement during the operations phase

Self-monitoring

• Such a workgroup can benefit from examining its inner dynamics to develop possible ideas as to why these negative feelings exist.
• This form of group self-monitoring can help individual members to re-evaluate their animosity towards one another as well as to remove the negative stereotypes or attributions that they have developed within the group.

Cohesiveness

• The ability of team members to gel and work together as a group in future is enhanced

Growth

• Individual members experience a heightened sense of well-being and professional growth through their involvement in the workgroup

Outputs

• the output of the workgroup meets or exceeds the standards which are expected

Group think

• This term refers to a strong desire by a closely-knit group to achieve consensus in decision-making in an extreme situation

Conformity

• The power of the majority vis-à-vis the individual member in the group is illustrated by Asch.
• It is found that individuals who are in the minority prefer to conform as opposed to taking a stance. This may be due to social acceptance and security.

Tunnel Vision

• In tunnel vision, individuals fail to see things from the perspective of the majority.
• This is the extreme opposite of Asch’s conformity hypothesis.

Welcoming minority

• Nemeth and Nemeth-Brown (2003) suggested that instead of utilising role-playing techniques like the devil’s advocate to achieve this goal, the organisation should focus on how to “welcome and not fear” the voices of dissent.
• This promote a diversity of views in the group

Idea misconstruction

• According to one line of reasoning, it is hard for group members to differentiate between the ideas they have generated themselves and the ideas suggested by other group members.
• As a result, members would claim to have come up with ideas that were really generated by another member

False sense of content

• According to a second line of reasoning, individual members of a brainstorming group have the opportunity to compare their ability in generating ideas with that of fellow members in the group.
• Typically members find their performance to be quite similar which results in a high level of satisfaction with one’s performance

Production blocking

• an idea cannot always be verbalised the moment it occurs as a group member must await a chance to express the idea.
• This delay in the articulation of a novel idea may cause the individual to forget or suppress the idea

Evaluation apprehension (High-self monitoring individuals)

• The group member may be concerned with how others view his creative ideas.
• Due to this evaluation apprehension, he may fail to mention eccentric ideas.

Lack of accountability

• in group brainstorming, members cannot be held personally accountable as individual contribution of new ideas is hard to isolate.
• This may result in free-riding in the group.

Removing production blocking.

• This can be achieved by using brainstorming procedures that do not require turn-taking among group members,
• such as brainwriting and electronic brainstorming

Appoint a facilitator

• To deal with over dominating/inactive individuals in a brainstorming group, a facilitator can be appointed to guide the brainstorming process so that the group can avoid these potential pitfalls

Set rules

• Additional rules of brainstorming can be implemented,
• e.g., avoid telling a long story or elaborating on an idea; restate the problem and motivate group members to think of more ideas;

Diversity

• cognitive stimulation can be enhanced in a brainstorming group if it consists of a diverse range of individuals with different backgrounds.
• When group members possess divergent life experiences, they can develop multiple perspectives on the problem and generate more unique ideas.

Scheduling break

• Scheduling breaks during a brainstorming session could provide a stimulus to take a different approach to the problem upon resumption of the activity.
• For example, the brainstormer might switch his ideation to a new domain or category from those previously considered and, in the process, overcome the cognitive fixation on a limited range of categories.

Two-part brainstorming

• brainstorming in a group prior to brainstorming alone can produce more ideas over the course of the two sessions than did brainstorming alone followed by brainstorming in a group.

• Transactional leaders focus on performance, promote success with rewards and punishments, and maintain compliance with organisational norms. Bureaucratic. Convergent.

• Transformational leaders exhibit individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and idealized influence. Divergent.