Social sensitivity correlations with the effectiveness of team process performance

Abstract

Teamwork is essential in industry and a university is an excellent place to assess which skills are important and for students to practice those skills. A positive teamwork experience can also improve student learning outcomes. Prior research has established that teams with high levels of social sensitivity tend to perform well when completing a variety of specific, short-team, collaborative tasks. Social sensitivity is the personal ability to perceive and understand the feelings and viewpoints of others, and it is reliably measurable. Our hypothesis is that, social sensitivity can be a key component in positively mediating teamwork task activities and member satisfaction. Our goal is to bring attention to the fact that social sensitivity is an asset to teamwork. We report the results from an empirical study that investigates whether social sensitivity is correlated with the effectiveness of processes involved in teamwork and team member satisfaction in an educational setting. The results support our hypothesis that the social sensitivity is highly correlated with team effectiveness. It suggests, therefore, that educators in computer-related disciplines, as well as computer professionals in the workforce, should take the concept of social sensitivity seriously as an aid or obstacle to team performance and the teamwork experience.