Why it matters

When people work in a group, they bring their own personalities, insecurities and strengths to the table. They behave a certain way and take on specific roles. Group dynamics studies the effects of these roles and behaviors on other individual team members, and on the group as a whole.

Effective collaboration means working with others in a joint effort towards a common goal. That sounds great. Unfortunately, a lot of challenges can arise within and between different groups. Here are just a few examples:

Halo effect

This type of anchoring bias causes people to transfer feelings about a certain attribute of someone or something to different unrelated attributes. For example, you might perceive someone who is tall as also being trustworthy or you might wrongfully assume that when the colleague whose intelligence you’ve come to admire comes up with a new approach, it automatically means it’s a good idea to follow her advice.

Primacy or Recency effect

It has been observed that information presented at the beginning (primacy) or at the end (recency) of a group meeting or speaking session is retained better or valued more highly than the information in the middle.

Bandwagon effect

Sometimes, people start doing (or believing) something, just because everybody else seems to be. Their own beliefs or principles may be ignored in order to jump on the bandwagon and feel part of the crowd.

Hidden agendas and other manipulative techniques

People can give the impression to stay focused on the task at hand, while in reality they are trying to win people over for their personal standpoint even if this is seldom the best option for the team. Other kinds of manipulative techniques to look out for include pseudo-rationality, guilt inducing behavior, verbal agressiveness (disguised as assertiveness) and misuse of power.

Social loafing

When people work in a team, they sometimes have the tendency to put less time and effort in the completion of a certain task than they would if they were working on the task by themselves. Putting more people on a project doesn’t necessarily mean more work will get done.

Groupthink

Sometimes team members become too close. The group is becoming increasingly relationship oriented instead of goal-oriented or task-focused. Most forms of critical thinking are let go and individual members don't express their doubts anymore. Team spirit is valued more than results and although this overconfidence can be a lot of fun in the short term, it has disastrous consequences in the long run.