Increasing Everyones Influence in Groups Lisa Slattery Walker

Increasing Everyone’s Influence in Groups Lisa Slattery Walker Leadership UNC Charlotte January 15, 2014

Overview ¢ Status Effects in Groups ¢ Controlling Status Effects and Making Groups That Work

Status Effects in Groups

Status Effects ¢ Status effects are consequences for interaction based on our personal characteristics ¢ Status effects come from cultural beliefs, sometimes called status beliefs, that privilege one group over another

Status Effects Are… ¢ Based on gender: https: //web. archive. org/web/20071113 183906/http: //www. slate. com/id/21776 97/nav/tap 3/

Status Effects Are… Based on race: http: //www. washingtonpost. com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR 200 5043000747_pf. html ¢ http: //www. healthycal. org/archives/11 057 ¢

Status Effects Are… ¢ Based on sexual orientation, ethnicity, attractiveness, where you got your Ph. D. …

Status Generalization ¢ “importing” a society’s evaluation of status characteristics and inferring performance expectation states roughly equivalent to conceptions of task ability on their basis ¢ one way that external social structure can affect face-to-face interaction

Status Effects at Work ¢ Having more or less interaction time in meetings, perceived competence at various tasks, likelihood of participating in group tasks, evaluations of problem solving attempts, interpersonal influence and influence over group decisions, and general assessments of one’s value to a group or organization ¢ Many cases of inequality are best understood as status effects

Controlling Status Effects And making groups that work, where everyone gets a say

Three Methods for Controlling Status Effects ¢ Reverse relevance l ¢ Specific information l ¢ A general statement that ____ are better at the task at hand Direct evidence that a particular person performed better at the task Additional characteristics l Information on other characteristics to overcome negative state

Groups That Work ¢ ¢ ¢ Have clear goals Establish effective two-way communication Distribute leadership and participation among all group members Distribute the use of power among all group members Match method of decision making with the task Encourage structured controversies

Groups That Work ¢ Provide appropriate feedback External is negative l Self-reflection is essential l ¢ Encourage self-reflection Need time and structure l Focus on principles at each meeting l • Staying on task • Balanced participation