Beyond Separate Emergence: A Systems View of Team Learning Climate.

Jean-François Harvey,Pierre-Marc Leblanc,Matthew A Cronin

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01441

Jean-François Harvey, Pierre-Marc Leblanc + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01441

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Abstract

In this paper, we consider how the four key team emergent states for team learning identified by Bell et al. (2012), namely psychological safety, goal orientation, cohesion, and efficacy, operate as a system that produces the team’s learning climate (TLC). Using the language of systems dynamics, we conceptualize TLC as a stock that rises and falls as a joint function of the psychological safety, goal orientation, cohesion, and efficacy that exists in the team. The systems approach highlights aspects of TLC management that are traditionally overlooked, such as the simultaneous influence of and feedback between the four team emergent states and the inertia that TLC can have as a result. The management of TLC becomes an issue of controlling the system rather than each state as an independent force, especially because changing one part of the system will also affect other parts in sometimes unintended and undesirable ways. Thus the value is to offer a systems view on the leadership function of team monitoring with regards to team emergent states, which we term team state monitoring. This view offers promising avenues for future research as well as practical wisdom. It can help leaders remember that TLC represents an equilibrium that needs balance, in addition to pointing to the various ways in which they can influence such equilibrium.

Highlights

Team emergent states are defined in terms of beliefs that team members hold about the team’s goals, team member abilities, and interpersonal norms
We draw from Bell et al (2012) to consider four key emergent states for team learning, namely psychological safety, goal orientation, cohesion, and efficacy, and we argue that collectively these states bring about the team’s learning climate (TLC)
In the sections that follow, we review the literature on team emergent states and team learning to develop a systems view of TLC

Summary

Introduction

Team emergent states are defined in terms of beliefs that team members hold about the team’s goals, team member abilities, and interpersonal norms They emerge early after team formation and continue to develop over time as the team’s work unfolds (Marks et al, 2001; Cronin et al, 2011; Edmondson and Harvey, 2018). They tend to stabilize as beliefs become relatively coherent across team members (Kozlowski and Chao, 2012), guiding behaviors within the team (e.g., Edmondson, 1999). We know a fair amount about what makes particular team states emerge, and how team leadership can influence such emergence (e.g., Edmondson and Harvey, 2017), but we know significantly less about the feedback among team states when they are linked as a system, and what this means for team leadership seeking to control that system.

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