Cohesion in the workplace

In 1950 Festinger defined cohesion as “the total field of forces which act on members to remain in the group.” Cohesion is therefore the group’s ability to hold on to its members, thanks to shared ideas, personal relationships, leadership, rewards and so on.

In the workplace, groups are defined by organizational needs, company goals or shared tasks; they can therefore be described as intentionally designed social units.

There are also, however, informal groups that grow out of interpersonal relationships and have goals that may or may not be consistent with the company’s direction.

Managing the formal groups and acknowledging the informal ones, while guiding them, becomes essential to achieving an environment that is cohesive as a whole.

Cohesion in the workplace increases employees’ satisfaction, their commitment and their sharing of goals, while reducing stress and conflict. It remains important to consider the risks of groupthink (see the post “Individual and group performance compared: when is the group more efficient?”). A group is particularly vulnerable to groupthink when its members have similar backgrounds and are afraid of not measuring up, or value the group more than the goal. Groupthink can push groups into hasty or irrational decisions; doubts are set aside for fear of upsetting the balance.

How can we foster cohesion within a team in the workplace?

1. Acceptance of the group: members have to accept the group as such; without this stage the group exists only on paper.
2. Communication among team members: communication involves defining roles and being willing to collaborate.
3. Common goals: goals must be not only imposed but also accepted by the members of the team.
4. Role of the group: people share the view that as a group they can achieve better results than as individuals.

Kurt Lewin (with action research) showed that it is possible to change people’s opinions, which tend to fall into line with those of the group in proportion to its degree of cohesion. According to Lewin, human behavior is a function of the person and the environment. This means that behavior depends on personal characteristics and on the social situation in which one finds oneself. The group is seen as a dynamic whole (the interdependence of its members) in which a change in any subpart changes the state of the other subparts. A group’s degree of interdependence depends on its size, its organization and its intimacy.

Lippitt showed how important the position of leadership is in determining the atmosphere of a group. According to him, groups exhibit behavioral contagion, which is related to status and to the ability to influence others in the group. Communication becomes the main instrument that characterizes the structure of the group. Lippitt also maintains that behavior is influenced mainly by authority (reward, punishment and persuasion). The way superiors use these modes of influence determines their leadership style.

This last thesis is challenged by Deutsch, who found that group members rewarded on a cooperative basis show a higher level of cohesion than members rewarded on a competitive basis. The study, conducted on MIT students, is “An experimental study of the effects of co-operation and competition upon group process” (Human Relations, 1949); a summary can be read on the website of the Columbia research center named after Deutsch.

Members of more cohesive groups are:

• readier to accept the choices of other members of the group when these conflict with their own;
• more open to being influenced by other members of the group;
• more inclined to seek an agreement that safeguards internal balance;
• more likely to respond positively to the actions of other members of the group;
• more motivated to carry the group’s work forward, feeling responsible for the team’s performance.

Within a company, people recognize several bases of social power (French and Raven, 1959, with later additions):

• connection power: the ability to draw on the resources of influential people inside and outside the company;
• expert power: the theoretical or technical knowledge to help the group reach a particular goal;
• informational power: being in possession of information the group needs;
• legitimate power: authority deriving from one’s official position (role) and the related rights of the various members;
• referent power: conferred by being liked and respected within the group;
• reward power: the ability to offer social or material rewards;
• coercive power: the ability to punish other members.

These bases of power can be only partly controlled by the company, and they make up the main dynamics within the team.

According to Bormann (1990), highly cohesive groups also interact in an open climate where individuals are free to ask for information, one that makes it possible to work through the inevitable conflicts constructively, using them to strengthen cohesion.

Members of small exercise groups place more value on the cohesion of their group than members of large groups do. This is the finding of four studies of exercise classes, which show that perceived cohesion, both task and social, is greater in smaller groups (Carron and Spink, 1995). In larger groups, it may be desirable to offset the negative effects of group size on cohesion and effectiveness through the use of team-building strategies. A meta-analysis of 60 correlations indicates that team building has a positive, moderate effect on team outcomes, more pronounced for affective and process outcomes (Klein and colleagues, 2009).

Some methods for increasing cohesion are:

1. Fostering leadership: the group can be a laboratory that lets people test and refine their own leadership skills.
2. Listening to the needs of others (even when they are not directly tied to the goal).
3. Brainstorming: During a brainstorming session every member is given room to express ideas freely, so that each has the opportunity to contribute to the group’s result, which strengthens the bonds among people.
4. Pushing the team to understand different personality traits and approaches to the goal, allowing each person to contribute to the result according to their own inclinations, knowledge and abilities. This technique also makes it possible to raise the group’s performance and reduce groupthink (be wary of groups that are too homogeneous).
5. Giving value to the common goal: clarifying the goals, motivation, impact and prospects that can come out of the group’s work. Clarifying the importance of this work for the entire organization and making it public.

Alberto Viotto