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Problem Solving and Decision Making in Groups 231

such behaviors as encouraging members to contribute, to disagree, and to elaborate
on their suggestions. The second two factors pertained to how group members estab-
lish the group’s climate. Negative socioemotional behaviors— being sarcastic, express-
ing dislike, personal attacks— hurt decision making, but positive socioemotional
behaviors— respecting and supporting others’ ideas— improved it. Clearly, both input
(e.g., members’ abilities) and throughput (e.g., how members communicate) factors
affect a group’s output. This is confirmed by Shin, who found that positive group
emotional tone was important to team creativity. 25
Both members and leaders affect group decision making. Milton Mayfield
and Jacqueline Mayfield discovered a relationship between a leader’s motivating
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language, or verbal communication style, and effective employee decision making.
In particular, employee decision making was positively affected when leaders used
three types of speech acts. The first type was uncertainty- reducing and direction-
giving language (e.g., providing an employee understandable instructions about
how to do his or her work). The second was involved using empathetic language
(e.g., praising an employee for good work). The last type was language that helped
make meaning (e.g., giving an employee useful information that she or he wouldn’t
get through official channels or telling the employee stories about people who are
admired within the organization). Use of all three types of communication accounted
for 90 percent of the variance in effectiveness of employee decision making. Clearly,
communication matters!
In an extensive look at group system dynamics, Losada and Heaphy reconfirm
the important relationship among communication, member relationships, and team
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performance. There is a powerful pull in groups to stay close to tried and true ways
of interacting, which does not promote creative “out- of-the- box” risks needed if the
benefit of group work is realized. They found that low- to medium- performing teams
could not break from negative comments that stifled creativity and promoted self-
centeredness. High- performing teams broke the pull of negativity with more positive
comments than negative ones that were respectful, supportive, and constructive. This
dominant positivity created a “we” emotional climate and sustained an ethic of
dialogue— both of which pushed the group into an enthusiasm that allowed them to
achieve their work within their working parameters.

The Need for Structure in Group Problem Solving

When you have a problem to solve what do you do? When philosopher John Dewey
asked people this question, most people told him they reflected carefully about the
problem, thought of options for solving it, evaluated those options, selected one, then
implemented their choice. Dewey developed his Reflective Thinking Model of deci-
sion making based on individual problem solving. This model serves as the basis for
different group problem- solving models we discuss in Chapter 10. Each of these mod-
els provides a logical structure for group members to follow as they begin to solve a
problem. But why do groups need structure? Why can’t they just jump in and start
talking about the problem? They can— but without guidelines, group problem solving
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can be pretty haphazard. Typically, someone mentions a problem, someone else

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