THE SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR:

THE SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR: MEETINGS AS A GATEWAY Dr. Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock VU University Amsterdam Department of Social & Organizational Psychology May 28, 2015

WHAT IS DYNAMIC ABOUT ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR? Organizational behavior = the study of human behavior in organizational settings, the interface between human behavior and the organization, and the organization itself (Moorhead & Griffin, 1995, p. 4) 2 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

RESEARCHING TEAM DYNAMICS In order for members to achieve the collaboration and interdependence that make them a group rather than copresent individuals, they must interact. (Bonito & Sanders, 2011, p.343) Team researchers should examine behavioral data the visible interactional conduct of team members Baumeister, Vohs, & Funder, D. C. (2007). Psychology as the sciene of self-reports and finger movements: Whatever happened to actual behavior? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2, 396 403. But: Most team studies take a static view of organizational behavior, failing to account for dynamic aspects (for an overview, see Cronin, Weingart, & Tedorova, 2011) 3 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

NEED FOR BEHAVIORAL INTERACTION ANALYSIS Self-reports are limited: What employees say they do is often not equal to what they actually do (e.g., Chiu & Lehmann-Willenbrock, 2012) Understanding the impact of social context, interdependencies, and timing on individual organizational behavior requires studying behavioral processes and real interactions rather than relying on questionnaires (e.g., Cronin et al., 2011) Soccer teams know this, too 4 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

A SPECIAL CASE OF TEAM DYNAMICS: WORKPLACE MEETINGS Why study meetings? Team meetings are ubiquitous in contemporary organizations (for an overview, see Allen, Lehmann-Willenbrock, & Rogelberg, 2015) Managers spend up to 80% of their working time in meetings (Romano & Nunamaker, 2001) Average employee: At least 3 meetings per week, but meeting quality evaluated as poor in 41.9% of the cases (Schell, 2010) 5 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

CODING MEETING INTERACTION 6 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

MEETING BEHAVIORS CODING SCHEME Problem-focused statements Procedural statements Socio-emotional statements Action-oriented statements Problem Describing a problem Connections with problems Defining the objective Solution Describing a solution Problem with a solution Arguing for a solution Organizational knowledge Knowing who Question Positive: Goal orientation Clarifying Procedural suggestion Procedural question Prioritizing Time management Task distribution Visualization Summarizing Negative: Losing the train of thought (running off topic) Positive: Encouraging participation Providing support Active listening Reasoned disagreement Giving feedback Humor Separating opinions from facts Expressing feelings Offering praise Negative: Criticizing/backbiting Interrupting Side conversations Self-promotion Proactive: Positivity Taking responsibility Action planning Counterproductive: No interest in change Complaining Seeking someone to blame Denying responsibility Empty talk Ending the discussion early Inter-rater reliability: κ=.81 7 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

MEETING BEHAVIOR AND TEAM EFFECTIVENESS Field study on 92 teams from 20 medium-sized organizations: Frequency of functional interaction behaviors (e.g., problem-solving, action planning) were linked to improved meeting satisfaction, productivity, and even organizational success 2.5 years later Dysfunctional communication, such as criticizing others or complaining, had significant negative effects on team and organizational outcomes Bad is stronger than good phenomenon (Baumeister, Bratlavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001) Kauffeld & Lehmann-Willenbrock (2012) 8 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

HUMOR DURING TEAM INTERACTIONS Humor and laughter have likely evolved as group behaviors because they promote group cohesion (Gervais & Wilson, 2005; Van Vugt & Kameda, 2013) Workplace humor is particularly context-bound, such that jokes among co-workers are often obscure to outsiders (Holmes & Marra, 2002) However: Previous research has neglected the context in which humor is produced and reacted to (Westwood & Johnston, 2013) Humor decreases tensions and facilitates communication (e.g.,duncan, Smeltzer, & Leap, 1990; Holmes & Marra, 2002; Meyer, 2000) Previous theorizing suggests team performance benefits of humor (Romero & Pescosolido, 2008) 9 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

OBSERVED HUMOR DURING TEAM INTERACTIONS Humor and laughter coded during 54 regular team meetings (N = 352 employees) using the act4teams coding scheme, κ =.81 Behavioral unit Speaker (team member) Talk act4teams code 25 A Well, that [machine] keeps breaking down on us. Problem 26 B Uh-huh. Agree 27 C That evil thing! Humor 28 All (Laughing) Laughter 10 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

EMERGENT HUMOR PATTERNS Significant lag1 patterns: humor-laughter (z = 77.83), laughter-humor (z = 26.87), and humorhumor (z = 17.58; p <.01, respectively). lag1 lag1 Humor Laughter Humor 11 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

EMERGENT HUMOR PATTERNS Significant lag1 patterns: humor-laughter (z = 77.83), laughter-humor (z = 26.87), and humorhumor (z = 17.58; p <.01, respectively). Significant lag2 pattern: humor- -humor (z = 23.39, p <.01) lag2 Humor Laughter Humor 12 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

COMMUNICATION TRIGGERED BY HUMOR PATTERNS Lag0 Lag1 Lag2 z = 3.18 Idea generation: New solution Humor pattern z = 4.53 z = 2.71 Procedural statements: Procedural suggestion Goal orientation Procedural statements: z = 3.71 Distributing tasks z = 3.71 Goal orientation z = 4.60 Summarizing z = 2.66 Question z = 3.66 z = 3.66 Socioemotional statements: Offering praise Encouraging participation 13 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

HUMOR PATTERNS AND TEAM PERFORMANCE Frequency of humor patterns at t1 β =.32* β =.31* Team performance t1 Team performance t2 4 *p <.05; R 2 =.10 Overall frequency of individual humor behaviors per meeting no effect Lehmann-Willenbrock & Allen (2014) 14 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

MEETINGS AS A WINDOW INTO AFFECTICE CONVERGENCE PROCESSES IN TEAMS Emotional contagion: one person s mood can fleetingly determine the mood of others (e.g., Barsade, 2002) How does this work during dynamic team interactions? 15 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

COMPLAINING VS. ACTION PATTERNS Statement And nothing has ever changed. Nothing s ever changed, that s right. Always the same old story. Well, we have to look to ourselves and practice what we preach. Yup. And that s really not so bad. That won t hurt at all. Code Complaining Agreement Complaining Taking responsibility Agreement Positivity Lehmann-Willenbrock, Meyers, Kauffeld, Neininger, & Henschel (2011) 16 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

INTERACTION PATTERNS AND EMERGENT GROUP MOOD: FINDINGS Proactive patterns Complaining patterns Lehmann-Willenbrock et al. (2011) 17 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

SUMMING UP Meetings take up a substantial amount of employees work time Behaviors and emergent behavioral patterns in meetings are meaningfully linked to team and organizational outcomes Meetings can serve as a gateway to Behavioral dynamics in teams Emergent interaction patterns Emotional contagion processes Interaction analysis provides a magnifying lens for understanding these dynamic team processes 18 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION. Email: n.lehmann-willenbrock@vu.nl Personal Website with links to fulltext papers

REFERENCES Allen, J. A., Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., & Rogelberg, S. G. (2015). The science of meetings at work: The Cambridge handbook of meeting science. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Kauffeld, S., & Lehmann-Willenbrock, N. (2012). Meetings matter: Effects of team meeting communication on team and organizational success. Small Group Research, 43, 128-156. doi: 10.1177/1046496411429599 Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., & Allen, J. A. (2014). How fun are your meetings? Investigating the relationship between humor patterns in team interactions and team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99, 1278-1287. doi: 10.1037/a0038083 Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., & Kauffeld, S. (2010). The downside of communication: Complaining cycles in group discussions. In S. Schuman (Ed.), The handbook for working with difficult groups: How they are difficult, why they are difficult, what you can do (pp. 33-54). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Wiley. Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., Meyers, R. A., Kauffeld, S., Neininger, A., & Henschel, A. (2011). Verbal interaction sequences and group mood: Exploring the role of planning communication. Small Group Research, 42, 639-668. doi: 10.1177/1046496411398397 Meinecke, A. L., & Lehmann-Willenbrock, N. (2015). Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway. In J. A. Allen, N. Lehmann-Willenbrock & S. G. Rogelberg (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of meeting science (pp. 325-356). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. 20 Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock Social dynamics at work: Meetings as a gateway