Exercise Overview

Interpersonal skills refer to the ability to communicate with, understand, and motivate individuals and groups. Implicit in this definition is the notion that a manager should try to understand important characteristics of the work group(s) being supervised. Diagnostic skills help managers visualize and understand the most appropriate response to a situation. This also relates to assessing how various things are related to one another. This exercise will give you insight into the importance of both interpersonal and diagnostic skills as they relate to managing groups and teams in organizations.

Exercise Background

In other cases managers are promoted, transferred, or reassigned to a different job and take over an existing group or team. At one extreme they may inherit a highly functional and productive group; at the other extreme they may inherit a group that is dysfunctional and that has a lot of internal problems. And, of course, there are many potential possibilities between these two extremes.

Therefore, it is important that managers have the skills needed to carefully assess the current dynamics of a group in order not to create problems where none exists or to solve problems that do exist. The questions that follow focus on different scenarios in which such insights may be needed.

You have been appointed to lead a new team. The purpose of this team is to assess different potential locations for a new warehouse and to make a recommendation back to senior management. Your team has been given 30 days to make a recommendation. What type of team is this?

1. Management team

2. Quality circle

3. Virtual team

4. Problem-solving team

5. Work team

You have been appointed to lead an existing group. Your boss, who informed you of the assignment, made these comments: These people have some real issues. They have been a problem for years. They stick together like family but never seem to get much work done. Which of these would best describe this group?

1. High cohesiveness, high performance norms

2. Low cohesiveness, low performance norms

3. Low cohesiveness, high performance norms

4. High cohesiveness, low performance norms

Which of these observations is correct? Check all that apply.

• In some cases, managers may want to resolve or eliminate conflict.

• Conflict always decreases a teams performance.

• In some cases, managers may want to control conflict.

• In some situations, managers may want to stimulate conflict.