Deck 6: Team Communication and Collective Intelligence

Question 1

A truism for optimizing the knowledge resources of a team,is that teams perform better when their members know who is good at what.Two advantages of this shared knowledge amongst team members are that unexpected problems can be solved more quickly and:

A)team members can match problems with the people most likely to solve them.
B)communication between team members becomes more contentious.
C)managers are assigned less blame for team project failure.
D)team members don't need to learn new skills.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

In regards to the common information effect,what is the main problem with an uneven distribution of information?

A)Some team members are willing to share information with others,but some are not.
B)Certain pieces of information get more time,attention,and emphasis than alternative pieces of information.
C)The collective intelligence between the partners can be unbalanced.
D)Certain group members can be uninterested in the discussion and not want to participate.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

A team with a high adaptive capacity brings what capability to their organization?

A)Knowledge capacity
B)Ability to change or shift their strategy in the face of upheaval
C)Team's capacity to assimilate new knowledge
D)Team's capacity to apply new information and knowledge

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Key indicators of involvement in an experienced community of practice (the person's level of engagement with the given practice community)are a shared vocabulary,recall of previous lessons,learning from one another,and:

A)beliefs leading to different scanning orientations.
B)performance under pressure.
C)open communication.
D)diversity of knowledge.

Question 5

A team mental model is a common understanding,shared by members of a team,about how something works.Mental models most efficiently develop through the process of:

A)trust exercises.
B)team members sharing information regarding their specialized knowledge,skills,and abilities.
C)hiring an outside consultant to teach the team how something works.
D)watching others outside of the group figure out how something works.

Question 6

A situational example of a team putting knowledge to practice through knowledge adaptation is:

A)a manager discovers,by lots of personal research,that his department has created a new type of adhesive that is not sticky when wet but very sticky when dry.The manager challenges himself and his employees to improvise fixes to an employee's broken bicycle with this product.
B)a manager challenges the use of a newly developed fixture at her departmental status meeting.This manager pushes the fixture design department to keep refining the design with new parameters in mind.
C)in order to shorten his team's R&D phase,a manager visits the company archives and researches past formulas that led to unsuccessful results.
D)a manager finds out that their newest product is not doing well in the market.He pushes the team to take a new look at their product research,and make changes to the product based on the team expanding their knowledge of marketplace trends.

Question 7

An effective way to remedy the common information effect is to:

A)consider the decision alternatives one at a time.
B)increase the time needed for discussion.
C)increase the size of the team.
D)engage in prediscussion polling.

Question 8

Regarding information dependence issues,which of the following examples best illustrates the concept of a hidden profile?

A)Mary,Talia,and Sue have researched where the company retreat should be held this year,and they seem to agree on the location.However,Talia has found out some information that she hasn't yet shared with the group; a motorcycle convention at the same time and location as their retreat,which,if shared,will probably contradict the team's common choice.
B)Kelly,Bob and Dan have separately researched options for next year's company retreat.Each team member has unique information regarding the choices for the event location.No one location seems to be the best choice for the retreat.
C)Carl,David,and Jean are considering six pieces of information regarding the decision about the location of their company retreat.Even though each piece of decision criteria seems to be of equal importance,Dan and Carl have been overemphasizing the importance of access to nature trails.Mary feels pressured to overweigh this individual decision point at the expense of other criteria.
D)Ted,Paul,and Laurel together have done their research about the choices for the location of the company retreat.Each person knows the same information,both good and bad,as the other group members.

Question 9

The common information effect is best described as the tendency for groups to:

A)spend too long attempting to reach consensus on a problem.
B)consider and implement solutions that other groups have used rather than experiment with novel solutions.
C)want to delay making important decisions,even when they have all of the relevant information necessary to make a decision.
D)discuss and consider information that they all have in common more than unique information (that only one person in the group may be aware of).

Question 10

Functionally diverse teams are composed of people who have different information,knowledge,and expertise and must share and integrate it.________ problem-solving is the art and science of sharing and using knowledge,and making inferences that no individual group member could have inferred.

A)Collaborative
B)Tactical
C)Strategic
D)Transactive

Question 11

The greater the overlap,or commonality of experience,or among team members' mental models,the greater the likelihood that team members will:

A)be able to avoid interpersonal conflict.
B)engage in healthy conflict.
C)be able to cope with unexpected demands.
D)create new innovation for old problems.

Question 12

Transactive Memory Systems are the ways in which teams encode,store,process and retrieve critical information necessary for doing their work.Of the following,select the best situational example of a Transactive Memory System.

A)Molly keeps track of all her own work files by an elaborate cross-referencing system.
B)Tom secretly stashes away all of the new business leads,so that he can follow up with them himself.
C)Karen keeps records on customer satisfaction reviews,and Kari keeps records on product reliability,but neither are aware of this.
D)Julia has considerable experience in product engineering and Nathan has a background in product parts sourcing,and they are able to remember more about a new client because each knows the other's skill set.

Question 13

When a team consists of members who come from different functional areas,with different areas of expertise,different information,different priorities,and different perceptions of problems and opportunities,the ________ is exacerbated.

A)saying is believing effect
B)information dependence problem
C)uneven communication problem
D)indirect speech acts effect

Question 14

A team mental model is a common understanding that members of a team share about how something works.For example,a team might have a common understanding of how to assemble a transistor radio.All of the following are true about team mental models EXCEPT:

A)they may be assessed in terms of how accurate they are.
B)they may be assessed in terms of how much correspondence (agreement)there is among team members' mental models.
C)they are developed instantly,naturally,and are immediately compatible.
D)teams may have mental models about physical systems as well as social systems (such as how their group works).

Question 15

A transactive memory system,or TMS,is a shared system for attending to,encoding,storing,processing,and retrieving information.In one investigation,teams were asked to assemble radios without written instructions.The most effective group was given what type of training experience before "group test day"?

A)Members received their training individually.
B)Members received team training,but were re-assembled into different groups for test day.
C)Members received team training and were assigned to work with same team on test day.
D)Members received their training individually,and also underwent a trust-building workshop as a team prior to test day.

Question 16

An intervention that might exacerbate the common information effect is:

A)approaching the task as a problem to be solved,not a judgment to be made.
B)ranking rather than choosing.
C)suspending initial judgment.
D)prediscussion polling.

Question 17

In a longitudinal study of teams that worked together for over 5 years,a series of behavioral changes took place in these aging groups.Each of the following occurred EXCEPT:

A)behavioral stability.
B)selective exposure.
C)role assimilation.
D)group homogeneity.

Question 18

A study at an R&D organization,where teams worked together for more than five years,revealed what?

A)The performance of the groups increased over time,but only up to a point; after five years of working together,performance declined steeply.
B)The performance of the groups decreased steadily over time.
C)The performance of the groups remained steady over time,but declined sharply after five years of working together.
D)The performance of the groups increased over time in a steady,consistent fashion.

Question 19

Which of the following strategies for reducing the common information effect has been found to be most effective?

A)Increase the amount of discussion
B)Put the team leader in the position of information manager.
C)Increase the size of the team
D)Increase information load

Question 20

What is one of the best ways for improving the quality of pooled information collected during a collaborative problem-solving session?

A)Allow the group to have an unstructured method for gathering and sharing information.
B)The group shares ideas in the moment they occur to them.
C)Allow individual group members the time to internally recall and record details or observations to be shared later with the group.
D)Have teams pair off,and create collaborative observations to be shared later with the group as a whole.

Question 21

Regarding routine versus nonroutine tasks,what team factor is the best indicator that a process will go quickly,smoothly,and minimize errors?

A)How long the team members have been in their area of expertise.
B)The number of times the team has worked together as a team on similar tasks.
C)How much training each individual person has acquired throughout their career.
D)The age of the technology and techniques the team is using to accomplish their task.

Question 22

________ coordination is the synchronization of members' actions based on assumptions about what others on the team are likely to do and members' attempts to coordinate work in this way begins prior to actual team interaction.

A)Strategic
B)Orienting
C)Gatekeeping
D)Tacit

Question 23

A TMS and an emphasis on team training are most relevant to problem-solving teams as opposed to tactical or creative teams.

Question 24

In an investigation of several teams working on a complex skill task over a 2-week training protocol,both mental model accuracy and mental model correspondence were tested.Mental model correspondence was the stronger predictor of team performance.

Question 25

A team that has a large representational gap has:

A)success in enticing other team members to adopt their position.
B)a majority of members who privately agree with the minority.
C)disagreements about how to approach a task and who should do what.
D)inconsistent views and mental models about the definitions of the team's problem or task.

Question 26

Each of the following are effective interventions to defeat the common information effect,EXCEPT:

A)leaders asking questions and repeat unshared/shared information.
B)prediscussion polling.
C)approach the task as a problem to be solved,rather than a judgment to be made.
D)build trust and familiarity among team members.

Question 27

A team that has a large ________ has inconsistent views about the definition of the team's problem or task,such that team members have different mental models about the task.

A)organizational context
B)team culture
C)representational gap
D)goal contagion

Question 28

A transactive memory system is a combination of two things: the knowledge possessed by particular team members and metaknowledge,or the awareness of who knows what on the team.

Question 29

Accountability refers to the extent to which people and teams feel responsible for their actions and decisions and teams that are accountable are less likely to focus on unshared information.When groups are made to be accountable for their ________,rather than ________,they are more likely to repeat unshared information and make better decisions.

A)time spent on the task; quota of tasks completed
B)leadership decisions; team decisions
C)process; their outcome
D)monetary gains; productivity gains

Question 30

Training is one of the most effective ways of ensuring that groups quickly and accurately develop a transactive memory system and thereby protect team effectiveness.

Question 31

Even when teams are explicitly told to spend more time discussing information about a topic or decision,they often still fall prey to the common information effect.

Question 32

Regarding the team reaction to free-riders,teams with an integrated TMS suffer more negative socioemotional interactions,lower cohesion,and greater conflict than do teams with a differentiated TMS.

Question 33

Several factors can threaten the ability of teams to accurately share and use knowledge.One of these problems,the uneven communication problem,is best illustrated in which of the following situational examples?

A)In a brainstorming meeting with 6 team members,3 of the team members did 70% of the talking,while the other team members barely had a chance to voice their opinions and concerns.
B)Fern and Sybil have the same manager,but Fern sits next to her manager and so has many opportunities to discuss project progress,but Sybil sits in an office on a different floor and only gets to see her manager during staff meetings.
C)Pete keeps records on customer orders,and Ross keeps records on product recalls,but neither are aware of this.
D)Julia is helping Kari bake a cake for a client,so she prepares the kitchen by getting out Kari's preferred tools and rescheduling a vendor appointment because Julia knows Kari hates to be interrupted when she is working.