Leading Myself - Personal Power
Semester 3 - Day 1
Team Dynamics
Social Capital & Feedback
This AMU course is offered in collaboration with Edutasia and has been developed and designed by
Asnæs & Vangstrup.
Preparation for Semester 3 - Day 1
Please review the Semester 3 day 1 webpage carefully.
This page also includes buddy group exercises to be used during your in-person meetings. These exercises are therefore not part of your individual preparation for the semester.
What, why, how?
What is it?
As employees in an organization, we are all confronted with the ups and downs of being part of a team. Being aware of how you contribute to a team—and recognizing team dynamics—is key to a productive team. There are several key concepts that need to be present for a team to be productive.
Therefore, this Semester 3 - Day 1 will cover:
Understanding a key organizational theory called social capital
Understanding the importance of a strong feedback culture
Key components of effective feedback
Why is it relevant?
Team dynamics influence your personal performance far more than we are aware of. Ensuring that we consciously and continuously develop our team is key to the organization, your surroundings, and yourself.
How do I practise it?
In order to understand our own contribution to a team, we need to elevate ourselves to a higher level - a meta-perspective - to observe the dynamics from a distance. We develop social capital in our teams by actively working with the three key concepts of social capital. To do so, we practice our feedback approach.
Social Capital in a team
Social Capital is a fundamental theory that is important to keep in mind when working with people, whether as a leader, operations manager, or aspiring leader.
Social Capital and Metaperspective
Social capital is about creating value through employees by fostering value-creating relationships, respectful and effective communication and a constructive feedback culture that ensures everyone takes responsibility for their own communication and relationships.
High social capital directly impacts the organization’s ability to achieve positive results on the bottom line.
Approaching collaboration and relationships from a well-being perspective often emphasizes simply enjoying each other's company and taking care of one another, as well as oneself.
However, social capital is about developing the qualities that enable employees to collaboratively work on core tasks and collectively achieve great results. It’s about “making each other shine.”
High social capital means that we excel at helping each other improve across functions while respecting each other's differences. This allows us to collaborate in the best possible way when engaging with guests.
The 3 Diamonds of Social Capital:
Trust, Fairness and Collaboration
Three Forms of Social Capital in Organizations
1. Integrative Social Capital:
Refers to the social capital within a department or team. It focuses on how relationships and trust are built and maintained internally within a specific group.
2. Bridging Social Capital:
Refers to the social capital across departments or teams. It emphasizes the connections and relationships that facilitate collaboration and information exchange between different groups within the organization.
3. Connecting Social Capital:
Refers to the social capital between different levels or management layers. It involves the relationships and interactions that bridge the gaps between various hierarchical levels, ensuring effective communication and alignment throughout the organization.
If an organization has low social capital, the work becomes less attractive to employees. This can lead to lower job satisfaction, higher employee turnover, increased absenteeism, and reduced productivity.
It is also important to have social capital across all three dimensions of an organization. High social capital in just one department is not sufficient if there is a lack of effective collaboration across departments, for example. Social capital needs to be present in every dimension to ensure a cohesive and productive work environment.
About Trust
To build trust as a leader, focus on:
Creating transparency
Delegating responsibility
Being actively listening
Communicating equally
Working on emotional intelligence
To foster a sense of belonging, trust is key. It drives engagement and contributes to a more committed and motivated workforce.
About Fairness
Fairness is an individual feeling. As a leader, you can contribute to the sense of fairness experienced within the organization and by each employee by:
Ensuring everyone feels heard and involved
Treating everyone with respect
Handling conflicts constructively
Maintaining transparent processes and decision-making
About Collaboration
Good collaboration requires:
An appreciative approach
A shared reality
Effective communication across all levels
Working with feedback
Awareness of each other's differences
Remember this from Semester 1?
Read it again, because now we dig into feedback. A healthy social capital is based on constructive feedback
Feedback & mindset
Careless feedback can create conflict, while thoughtful feedback contributes to conflict prevention and de-escalation.
In essence, feedback helps expand your self-awareness—just as providing others with constructive feedback on what you observe can support them in becoming an even better version of themselves.
In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck explains how people with a fixed mindset believe that their qualities are set in stone. According to Dweck, this often leads to a tendency to avoid challenges, give up easily, perceive effort as futile, and feel threatened by the success of others.
In contrast, individuals with a growth mindset believe that their basic qualities can be developed through effort and learning. As a result, they tend to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, view effort as the path to mastery, and learn from the success of others.
What is feedback?
Feedback is primarily a tool and a process used to create learning, development and self-regulation.
Feedback is a way of giving each other information about how our actions, communication or behaviour affect others. It is an important tool in collaboration because it helps us learn, develop and become more aware of ourselves.
Feedback can be about what is working well and what can be developed. When feedback is given respectfully and thoughtfully, it can strengthen relationships and create better collaboration.
Being able to give and receive feedback is therefore not only about technique, but also about our approach to other people. If the focus is exclusively on mistakes, it can create a negative work environment and weaken communication. A constructive approach, on the other hand, makes it easier to support each other and “play each other good”.
What is the purpose of feedback?
The purpose of feedback is to create learning, development and better collaboration.
When feedback is used constructively, it can:
increase our self-awareness
strengthen collaboration and trust
improve communication
support personal and professional development
Feedback allows us to become aware of things we may not see ourselves. In this way, we can develop and become more aware of how our behavior affects others.
To give & receive feedback
To give feedback
When giving feedback, it is important to do so with consideration and respect.
Good feedback is typically:
concrete and clear
directed at the behavior – not the person
given with the intention of helping
worded in a way that invites dialogue
It can also be helpful to ask questions that make the other person reflect on the situation. Questions can function as a form of feedback because they open up new perspectives and learning.
To recieve feedback
When receiving feedback, the most important thing is to listen openly and curiously.
It can help to:
listen actively to the message
be open to other people’s perspectives
ask questions if something is unclear
thank them for the feedback
This doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything, but it does mean taking the time to understand the other person’s perspective. When feedback is met with openness, it becomes easier to create a culture where you can safely give each other honest input.
Key factors when giving feedback
To be curious
To be attentive
To be neutral
Till next time:
Meet with buddy group to discuss:
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