LEADERSHIP SEMINAR

Working in teams
Organization: social entity, guided by goals of effectiveness,
efficiency and satisfaction of all the stakeholders involved,
designed as a system of specialized, formalized, clustered and
coordinated activities, in a dynamic interaction with the
environment.
Working in teams → Silicon valley and Google, skill always
more demanded by firms when selecting potential candidates

Team: 3 or more people who interact and depend one on the

others for the achievement of a common goal and who
perceive themselves as one “organism” guided by shared
purposes, vision and mission.
Team vs Group
Work groups are characterized by the least amount of
interdependence. They are based on organizational or
managerial [Link] groups may meet periodically to
hear and share information.
Teams are highly interdependent - they plan work, solve
problems, make decisions, and review progress in service of a
specific project. Team members need one another to get work
done. Have a shared goal.

Obstacles to effective teamwork

- Weak sense of direction in term of goals and approach
- Infighting that leads to wasting energy that gest
 misdirected
- Shirking of responsibilities that is exhibitinh lack of
commitment to the team
- Critical skill gap
- Lack of external support
- Lack of trust that is team members do no believe in one
another
Overcoming obstacles
- Create clear term goals
- Share individuals strenghts
- Go for small wins
- Build mutual trust
- Observe and evaluate team dynamics for ongoing fine
tuning
- Craft shared processes (role behaviors, communication
patterns…)

IPO model

Biases of teams
- Conformism: individual team memberquestions his/her
abilities to make sense of the situation and accepts what
the majority proposes, to fit in
- Groupthink: group-based pathology – pressure on results
and time that breeds search for consensus with
overestimation of group opinion
- Ingroup/Outgroup bias: pattern of favoring members of
one's in-group over out-group members. This can be
expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of
resources, and in many other ways.
- Abilene paradox: collective fallacy, in which a group of
people collectively decide on a course of action that is
counter to the preferences of most or all individuals in
the group, while each individual believes it to be aligned
with the preferences of most of the others.
- Polarization: tendency for a group to make decisions that
are more extreme than the initial inclination of its
 members

Psychological safety relevance

→ enables moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind,
creativity and stick your neck with no fear. People in this kind
of groups:
- Share info
- Ask for help
- Challenge status quo
- Signal mistakes
Communication
Communication is one of the defining processes of
organizational entities. Without communication the
organization does not exist.
Definition: Intentional (or also non intentional) exchange
process that happens both at a rational and emotional level
among 2 or more individuals involved in a relationship.
It aims at:
- Sharing data, info and meanings
- Constructing meanings
How to be more effective?
Omission: leave out unnecessary details that do not contribute
to the core message
→ prevents overload
Simplification: break down complex ideas into easy-
understendable lanugage
→ clarity and accessibility
Integration: combune key points into a structured and
cohesive message.
By using omission, simplification, and integration,
communication becomes clearer, more persuasive, and easier
to understand, leading to better engagement and
comprehension.

Skills for increasing communication effectiveness

- Seeking and building a connection
- Credibility and trust
- Active listening and empathy
- Using multiple channels
- Customizing communication according to the needs of the
receiver
- Short and simple as possible
- Example and metaphors
- Redundancy of important concept
- Ask for feedback
Non-verbal behavior: posture and proxemics, gestures, eye
contact, gestures…
use of voice: volume, rate, pitch, pauses and silence,
pronounciation

Pay also attention to the culture you’re communicating to

- Low vs high context
- Direct vs indirect feedback
- Use of silence
- Non verbal behavior (culturally determined)
Obsacles to active listening
- Cognitive/emotional: interests, values, personality traits,
expectations…
- Physical: being tired, hungry, distractions…

Negotiation
Definition: negotiation is a process in which two or more
parties work to reach an agreement about something that they
are interested in but in different intentions/needs.
Bargaining ability has an impact on firm profitability and
explains 79% of price variation.

Common features
- Two or more parties
- Parties are independent and have different interest on the
same subject
- Parties prefer to negotiate over: fighting openly, breaking off contact, exiting from the
situation, let the other party/s decide upon how the exchange the good/service, taking
the dispute to a 3rd party
- Parties are involved in a “back and forth communication” trying to find an agreement
that enables them to get along with their differences … getting to yes

Negotiation can’t be used when:

- exchange conditions are defined by the mkt
- power asymmetry
- there is a team and so interests are aligned
Distributive negotiation
• It operates under zero sum conditions (Σ = 0): any gain one
makes is at the other’s expense and vice-versa (a utility unit
earned on one side corresponds exactly to one unit lost on the
other)
• It involves distributing a fixed amount of resourcesbetween
two or more parties E.g. buying and selling a good; division
of shares in a company; salary negotiation etc.
• It is generally a negotiation on only one “object” and it is a
very "hard" negotiation given the clear opposition of interests
between the parties

Impo about distributive negotiation

BATNA → best alternative to negotiated agreement: have a
plan B to walk out if needed
Target: what do you want to get out from the negotiation
Resistance point: Ok here, but not lower
Bargaining zone: area between buyer’s and seller’s resistance
points
Strategy in distributive
- Focus on convincing the counterpart that it will be
impossible to reach an agreement without accepting the
offer that is being made
- Support in a compelling way your point of view
- Manage your emotions and those of your counterpart
Tactics in distributive
- Be aggressive (not too much) with your first proposal
(higher than your BATNA)
- Define your Target or Aspiration point before you start the
negotiation and be ready to fine tune – reciprocal
concessions
- Do your best to convince your counterpart to accept you
proposal (data, examples, storytelling is very convincing)
 - Never forget your BATNA
- Bluff: only once and …does your reputation matter?
- Leverage on time to push (if you can afford it)
- Keep your eye on the price and go small steps towards it
- Remember that … studying/getting informed beforehand
and plannings are…key!
→ identify issues, priorities, BATNA, target and res. point…

Initial offers and Anchors

Anchor effect: first offer and counteroffer anchor the
bargaining
Once is set, judgements are made by adjusting away from that
anchor, all other conditions being equal the most probable
point is the avg between the first 2 offers
DO NOT anchor if you have less information about the item
or about the relevant market or industry than the other side
does –
DO YOUR HOMEWORK prior to the negotiation, so that
you are not forced to let them make the first offer, or so that
you do not make a fool of yourself by giving an unreasonable
first offer

Integrative negotiation

Before this graph would have been a y= -x line (Ua increases

Ub decreases)
In this type of negotiation is important to search for points of
contacts, make a good first impression, prove your
trustworthiness and manage emotions