Page 127 - Effective group discussion theory and practice by Adams, Katherine H. Brilhart, John K. Galanes, Gloria J

110 Chapter 5

dvertising agencies typically accomplish much of their work in teams. A
client—a restaurant, a line of cosmetics, a nonprofit organization—is assigned
A a team of individuals. One particular agency we know about had an excep-
tionally productive and successful team of five people. Ben, the team’s leader, was the
head of retail advertising and handled the meetings. Candi, the account executive,
served as liaison between the agency and the client. The others described her as “but-
toned down.” Marija was the media buyer, Vinnie was the art director, and Toni was
the copywriter. The team members took it as a matter of personal pride that they were
often given the most demanding clients and toughest assignments. The team also
represented a variety of perspectives and work styles. A team can derail if members
don’t know how to work with others whose styles, perspectives, and approaches are
different. But members of this team worked well together. Ben and especially Candi
were highly task focused and able to keep everyone on track. Both took seriously their
responsibilities for keeping the project within budget. But they both truly appreciated
Vinnie and Toni who, although sometimes taking the group’s discussion on a tangent,
often came up with just the right theme, just the right visual image, or just the right
slogan for a particular ad campaign. Marija, the number cruncher, had an excellent
command of figures about how much exposure per dollar various media would pro-
vide. Toni, although usually fulfilling a creative role, consistently helped the team
focus on the project by asking lots of questions about the client, the target market, the
product, and the main images the client wanted to project. While other teams might
self-destruct over differences in work styles, these open-minded, committed, and com-
petent members had learned to appreciate and work with their differences, and they
were highly successful.
Both the individual characteristics of members and their mix affect how a small
group functions and how productive it is. LaFasto and Larson, in their study of out-
standing teams of all sorts, discovered that excellent team members possessed two
overall competencies, a working knowledge of the problem and the ability to work in
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a team. They found six specific factors that mattered the most: experience,
problem-solving ability, communication that was both open and supportive, a desire
to act rather than be passive, and a personal style that was positive and optimistic.
Members of the advertising team in our story demonstrated all of these characteristics.
In Chapter 4 we discussed cultural and demographic influences that affect member
behaviors. Here, we describe how the number of members and their individual
characteristics can help produce a winning team.

Group Size
Theoretically, each member brings some different knowledge, perspectives, and
skills relevant to the group’s purpose. For complex, nonroutine problems, groups
of individuals with diverse skills, information, and perspectives are more effective
than homogeneous groups. But that does not mean the more, the better. We dis-
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cussed in Chapter 1 that at some point, adding members costs more in coordina-
tion time and energy than it benefits. Size becomes a disadvantage if it makes
consensus difficult or action impossible. Our guiding rule for group size is
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