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"Team Player" Across Cultures - Dom, Alston, and Ruoxi

10/28/2020

 
After reading the journal article “We want a team player: A formative cross-cultural investigation in the United States, China, and South Korea” (Park, Lee, Westerman, & Guan, 2019) with the GRIP lab, Dominique, Ruoxi, and Alston discuss their thoughts on the paper.

In this article, the researchers found that people who belong to different cultural groups may consider a team player’s responsibilities differently. For example, U.S Americans and Chinese participants were shown to prefer a balance between task and social roles, whereas Korean participants were shown to prioritize tasks over social roles. A reason for this, as attributed by the authors, is that different cultures may emphasize tasks and social roles differently (Park et al., 2019).

Ruoxi thinks the implications of this study could be furthered by follow-up studies on the effect that heterogeneous perception of team player’s responsibilities might have on multicultural teams. Since many companies, and even school projects, incorporate peer reviews in evaluating individual teammate member’s contribution, the result of this study might have practical implications on how to conduct these peer reviews in multicultural teams. For instance, Ruoxi wonders if a multicultural team receives vague instructions on how to evaluate teammates, diversity within the team might decrease over time as members who hold different standards of performance receive an unfavorable evaluation from the majority of the team. Ruoxi recognizes that this hypothesis might be a long shot from the current study as many other factors, such as whether people contribute to teamwork in accordance with their own conception of a good teammate or the groups’ expectations, need to be tested. Nonetheless, her general hope is to see future studies complement the current research with more data on the relationship between cultural identity and group dynamics, backed by specific behaviors of the people studied in supplement to the interviews.

Alston is skeptical about the findings because he thinks it is problematic for the authors to overgeneralize the populations of people who are involved. People in the United States, Korea, and China are most likely all very different in the way they interact with their teams. Therefore, he thinks that it is quite unfair to attribute a certain characteristic to a whole group of people. Not only can overgeneralization result in the formation of stereotypes of individuals, but it can also deter people from branching out and trying new ways to work with their teams.

Dominique agrees with Alston that the authors did overgeneralize about the way each culture typically views “team player” performance. She thinks it would be interesting to expand this study, and see how diverse teams should interact with each other.  With increased globalization and the increased use of virtual meetings, it is likely that more work teams will become more diverse and have people from different backgrounds and different cultures. If the study is true in their assumption that some cultures view the term “team player” in different ways than understanding that impact could benefit many work teams.

As for the implications of the study, we agree that this article reinforces the importance of having more diverse teams. From our experiences, we saw that groups work best when individual team members have different leadership styles. For example, if everyone in the group wants to constantly lead the discussion, they might clash in an argument. Therefore, if the results of the article were to be more credible, it would imply that we should encourage more diverse teams even more heavily.

On Demographic Heterogeneity - Tianke and Katherine

10/1/2020

 
After reading "Tensions Between Diversity and Shared Leadership: The Role of Team Political Skill" (Xu, Chiu, & Treadway, 2019) with the GRIP Lab, Tianke and Katherine discuss their thoughts on the paper.

Tianke and Katherine are really glad to have been part of the discussion about the function of “demographic heterogeneity” on shared leadership in teams. In their article, Xu et al. argue that demographic diversity — in gender and race specifically — inhibits people’s motivation to share leadership roles with others. Since people with similar backgrounds are more likely to identify with their team, they are more likely to hold shared group values and engage in a higher magnitude of shared leadership. On the other hand, people who have different backgrounds tend to be less inclined to share leadership with others in their group (Xu et al., 2019). 

Katherine thinks some parts of the article to be valid and relatable to her own experiences and observations. Over the course of her life, she has gravitated toward people who were similar to her. However, she believes that some parts of the article may be overgeneralizations. There are many forms of diversity, including age, major, socioeconomic status, and political ideology. She wonders what the results of a study that examined these other forms of diversity while controlling for ethnicity and gender would look like.

Tianke, on the other hand, feels strongly that diverse groups work best together. He believes that humans are meant to experience new ideas, to meet new people, to embrace new ideologies and perspectives, and to grow. To do that, they need to encounter demographic heterogeneity in their lives. In a group work setting, this demographic diversity matures discussion, helping the group draw a fuller picture of the world by combining the perspectives of many people’s eyes.

Katherine and Tianke both also had some reflections about Zoom breakout rooms. Katherine believes that through random allocation, breakout rooms eliminate personal biases in creating groups, so everyone has the chance to interact with people they might never have otherwise. However, she has found, in general, that communication through a screen is more awkward and uncomfortable than communication in person, that it is harder to develop and maintain connections with other people, especially when some of them turn their cameras off. Although diversity is promoted, Katherine wonders if the tempering effects of political skill could be hindered. She also wonders how relationships forged solely through on-screen calls would carry over in real-life –– whether they’ll grow weaker or stronger.

Tianke, on the other hand, recently had an experience that showed more promise for relationships within heterogeneous groups, even those in virtual environments. This past Friday, he organized an event called “Space Gathering,” where he invited eight of his friends who didn’t know each other beforehand to a Zoom meeting where they had a dialogue for two hours. He purposely selected the participants to promote diversity, as there was a mix of genders, majors, personality types, and nationalities. He designed several group activities to see if connections could be made among these “familiar” strangers. To maximize heterogeneity for each team, he pre-arranged breakout rooms so that every person would meet two people who have different backgrounds with them. After each person shared two identities and real stories behind, Tianke told the groups to use generative and reflective listening skills to validate each others’ stories and feelings so that each person could be heard.

As Xu et al. suggest in their article, people are disinclined to share leadership roles with dissimilar others. Tianke expected his friends’ discussion to go into a dead end; however, that was not the case. During the debrief, people shared that their natural curiosity towards those who were different inspired them to explore the others’ stories, experiences, and ideas.

“As a person who always interacts with people who are similar to me and who usually stays in my comfort zone, I was really excited to listen to people’s diverse experiences and imagine their living environments,” one participant reflected. “I agree,” replied another participant. “My desire to connect with people dissimilar to me, along with our shared curiosity, made us consciously active when engaging in conversation, motivating us to seek an optimal solution using group efforts.”

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