Deck 6: Sharpening the Team and Mind: Communication and Collective Intelligence

Question 1

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

Answer 1

B

Question 2

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.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

An example of the curse of knowledge is a:

A) professor who believes his or her teaching ratings are higher than they actually are.
B) professor who understands an idea perfectly, but cannot explain it clearly to students.
C) team member who knows a potentially damaging piece of information, but cannot reveal it to the team.
D) leader who knows how to solve a problem, but must let the team solve the problem themselves.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

There are several biases of human communication, which affect team performance. All of the following are known threats or biases to effective communication in groups EXCEPT:

A) message tuning-tendency for senders to tailor messages for specific recipients.
B) message distortion-message senders present information in a way that recipients will like it.
C) biased interpretation-recipients hear what they want when receiving messages.
D) absorptive capacity-people experience information overload when listening to another team member.

Question 5

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 6

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.

Question 7

When a speaker tunes a message to suit an audience and, in the course of tuning the message, the speaker's subsequent memories and impressions about the topic change, this effect is known as:

A) biased interpretation.
B) message distortion.
C) perspective-taking failures.
D) saying is believing.

Question 8

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 9

Message recipients often hear what they want to hear when receiving messages, and interpret the neutral facts about a topic in a way that is favorable toward their own opinions or position. This communication bias is known as:

A) message distortion.
B) indirect speech acts.
C) biased interpretation.
D) illusion of transparency.

Question 10

A situational example of 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 11

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 12

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 13

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 14

Which is the best example of the communication bias termed "message tuning"?

A) The concierge at a hotel gives a tourist directions: "Turn right when you see that big tree that the city pruned last week."
B) A New York cab driver gives elaborate directions to the Empire State building to a New York police officer.
C) A store owner gives elaborate street directions to Madison Square Garden to a gentleman from Wisconsin,
D) A docent at the Met tells an electrician that the outlet next to "the newly acquired Renior" is the one that needs repair.

Question 15

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 16

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 17

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

Question 18

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 19

The illusion of transparency refers to what belief?

A) The faulty belief that our thoughts and attitudes are more visible transparent) than is actually the case.
B) The faulty belief that we are more ethical and honest than we really are.
C) The faulty belief that we can read others' minds.
D) The faulty belief that our behaviors are in greater alignment with our attitudes than is actually the case.

Question 20

The uneven communication problem is the fact that:

A) our verbal communication skills are not as consistent as we think they are.
B) in most groups, a minority of people do a majority of the talking.
C) different people emerge as the dominant people in teams across time.
D) people are less direct in their communication, but direct speech acts would increase accuracy.

Question 21

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 22

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 23

For teams to be effective in their work, they need to have a shared knowledge base. However, the shared knowledge base that governs a team is only as adequate as its:

A) employee experiences.
B) behavioral stability.
C) communication system.
D) team learning.

Question 24

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 team how something works.
D) watching others outside of the group figure out how something works.

Question 25

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 26

Transactive Memory Systems are the ways in which teams encode, store, 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 27

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