Team Norms

Team Norms

There are many types of team dynamics – synergy, social facilitation, social loafing, projection, and ethnocentrism to name a few. We will describe only three more types of team dynamics in this module: Team Norms, Groupthink and Minority Influence. Understanding these processes tends to help each member of the team be more effective.

Team norms are acceptable standards of behavior within a group that are shared by its members. They are informal rules that guide and inform team members about what they can and cannot do. Norms emerge naturally in teams. All teams have norms. Because they are informal, often implicit standards of acceptable behavior, team members may not even know a norm exists until someone ‘breaks’ one of these informal rules.

There are different types of norms, such as:

· Performance norms (how hard to work, how to do the work, level of output, time)

· Appearance norms (dress, hair length-absence, loyalty signals, face time)

· Social arrangement norms (who to eat/socialize with, attending parties or team functions, food at meetings, who sits next to whom and where at meetings)

· Allocation of resources norms (who gets which assignments, the hardest jobs, new tools or equipment)

Norms develop from explicit statements people make about what the members should and should not do, during critical events, because of precedents, because of the most recent acceptable action, and as carryovers from past experience. But teams only enforce those norms that are important to their members. Importance will be determined by whether this norm is believed to help the team succeed, whether it will increase predictability of member behaviors, reduce interpersonal conflicts, discomfort or embarrassment and solidify the group.