Climate uniformity matters when diagnosing conflict in teams
For a decision maker or practitioner attempting to understand performance issues and conflict within a team, the role of workplace climate is an important consideration. In organizations, climate refers to a shared understanding among members of a work unit regarding some aspect of organization life, such as how to communicate with colleagues, how much to trust leadership, or how to resolve conflict. This is different from organization culture, in that these shared perceptions are not global but instead emerge within teams, and often change quickly.Typically, workplace climate is measured by asking members of the unit about their perceptions of the climate and averaging responses across team members. This indicates both the strength of climate perceptions (i.e. how strongly all members feel) and general direction (e.g. positive, negative, neutral). For example, a survey of project team members might show strong feelings on the topic of support from organization leaders that is largely positive.
A recent study (González-Romá & Hernández, 2014) expanded this approach by looking at “uniformity” or consistency of responses across team members. In addition to studying the average climate across team members, these researchers looked at differences among team-members on how they perceived their work climate. Fewer and smaller differences in how teammates perceive their work climate show that they hold similar views, for better or for worse. Conversely, greater and more frequent differences among teammates views reflect a more diverse range of perceptions.
Interestingly, in this study of 141 teams within a large national bank, a full one third had non-uniform climate perceptions. More importantly, the researchers found that lower climate uniformity was associated with less effective communication and increased task conflict, which in turn resulted in poorer team performance. In fact, uniformity mattered even after accounting for the general level and strength of climate perceptions across members. This finding is important because it suggests that only looking at the strength and direction of climate perceptions is not enough. Understanding the extent to which team members are aligned or not in climate perceptions is an additional important piece of information for assessing team climate, and determining what steps to take to intervene.
González-Romá, V., & Hernández, A. (2014). Climate uniformity: Its influence on team communication quality, task conflict, and team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(6), 1042.
Photo source: www.notredameonline.com