Question

You have been recently appointed as team leader in the research and development unit of an important pharmaceutical company. The team is composed of seven team members. The team members have the similar educational and social background. They are usually feeling that every member of the team has the exactly the same idea with each other. In the long run, this situation will have a negative effect on their team performance. In addition, The team you are heading has been stuck for several months in the development of a new drug due to some delay in the clinical trial process. The deadline set by the managing director of the company that is approaching. After a few weeks, you noticed social loafing in the team as some members systematically put less effort in the development of the new drug, blaming the delay in the trial process as solely responsible for this situation and never taking the initiative to resolve the impasse with creative solutions. The top performers of your team have privately complained to you about this situation, which is causing significant stress due to overload. They are even threatening to leave the company. You must decide how to manage this critical situation.

quesitons:

1. What is social loafing? What would you change about the way the team functions to ensure more active participation of all team members?
2. What is group thinking? How you can solve the group thinking problem to improve team effectiveness?

Answer 1

A Thumbs Up! Would be really helpful for me. If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

1)

Social loafing is basically a method which states that a person is putting fewer efforts in order to achieve group goals than doing the same task individually. This can be the reason a team can't work more productively in terms of achieving the goals of the team as well as the goals of the organization. This will not help up the team to achieve its goal and you as a leader should motivate each employee of the team to work hard on the target as it should be their priority to achieve it and show the top authority about their capability and skills. It is important for every employee to know the importance of the task they are performing in a team because the team goals can only be achieved if the whole team works in unity and prioritize that target in order to achieve team goals.

2) Group thinking is a term that means to think in a group in order to reduce the issues coming in the way of the team goals. The benefit of group thinking is that hold the group things on one-issue and brings ideas which help the team to solve the issue faster but only one idea can be adopted and other ideas of other employees working will not be considered and which will not initiate the independent thinking in the group. In order to improve team efficiency, group thinking helps the employees in achieving targets faster, completing all the tasks given to each of them effectively and efficiently. As here you need to work as a unity in order to achieve team goals and organizational goals as well.