Team Now & Later Presentation
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Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Project Proposal: The Language of Emerging Leadership
Advances in computer-mediated communication tools have made working in distributed teams easier than ever. We can use email to transfer documents in progress, video or audio conferencing to have weekly meetings, and instant messaging for quick questions and answers. However, as we introduce more layers of technology between group members, the social dynamics of group work change. One such social dynamic is leadership. It is well established in the literature that leaders play a critical role in group work and that the presence of an effective leader increases group productivity, but technology mediation as well as spatial distance introduce additional challenges for leaders of distributed teams over leaders of collocated teams [1,2].
Leaders can be assigned or they can emerge as group work progresses, but regardless group members should be able to identify them as leaders if they are to be effective in their leadership role [5]. In face-to-face settings, leaders make their presence known in a number of ways, including their seat location in meetings, body language and voice inflection [7]. However, in computer-mediated communication, these cues are either limited or non-existent. In text-based communication mediums that are often used to coordinate group work such as e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and forums, leaders only have language available to them as a way of making their presence known. In addition to establishing their presence, an important role of a leader is to establish group trust and cohesion [6]. While higher levels of trust and cohesiveness amongst team members are also associated with higher productivity, it is challenging to develop these dimensions without the aid of the rich communication that face-to-face interaction provides [6]. This is yet another challenge for leaders of virtual teams, particularly for those that communicate primarily (or solely) using text-based mediums.
We are interested in studying the ways that leaders emerge in these text-based environments and how this compares to the ways that assigned leaders lead. Following the Social Language Processing (SLP) framework [4] we plan on collecting and analyzing transcripts of groups completing tasks via a chat based interface to identify linguistic features that can predict the social dynamic of leadership. While it has been suggested that leaders of virtual teams should receive special training in order to effectively lead teams utilizing computer-mediated communication tools [6,7], we believe that the automatic identification of emergent and assigned leaders would allow us to provide tailored tools facilitating leadership in these groups.
To collect data, we will recruit 80 participants to take part in our study. Participants will work in groups of four (20 groups in total) using a chat interface to complete a task that involves coming to a consensus. We are still considering the exact task, however we find the murder mystery task as used in [2] promising because it involves the coordination of information to reach a consensus and it does not require the manipulation of physical objects as does solving a puzzle (we do not want to add the additional dimension of visual information into our study at this time). We will have two conditions; in one condition a leader will be assigned and the group will be told that this person is the leader and in the other condition a leader will be assigned, but their group will not be told that this person is the leader. After completing the task, group members will be asked to identify the member of the group that they thought carried out the role of leader. This will help us to identify individuals that emerged as leaders in the first condition and it will help us to verify that the assigned leader in fact took over this role in the second condition.
As mentioned above we will be using the SLP framework to identify linguistic features that can predict an individual leader amongst a group. In addition to analyzing the transcripts for linguistic features, we will analyze them at a higher level to identify the ways that leaders manage their presence and promote trust and cohesion through language.
Our work will contribute to the discussion of emergent leadership language, as well as how language is used to promote presence, trust, and cohesion in virtual leadership. This is relevant to the CHI community as it will suggest ways in which we can support the emergence of leaders in virtual groups and assigned leaders through computer-mediated communication tools. We will provide support for emerging leaders through automatic detection of this dynamic and by providing tools for leadership tasks that are made more challenging when mediated by technology. Effective leaders have been shown to increase productivity, making tools to support virtual leadership an attractive research area. There are many related areas for future work; we could run a study to investigate emergent leaders in asynchronous communication mediums such as e-mail, wikis, or forums. This work would have applications to online learning where students must collaborate, but may not have the benefit of face-to-face meetings.
In order to successfully prepare a short paper meeting the deadlines set by both CSCW/CHI and the course, we propose the following timeline:
• March 10: Submit IRB form
• March 22: Complete creation of all study related materials
• April 19: Complete data collection
• April 28: Complete data analysis
• May 5: Complete draft of paper
• May 12: Complete final paper
• May 12-August/September: Ask for additional feedback and revise as necessary
References:
1. Bell, B.S., Kozlowski, S.W.J. (2002). A typology of virtual teams: Implications for effective leadership. Group and Organization Management, 27(1):14-49.
2. Balakrishnan, A.D., Fussell, S.R., Kiesler, S. (2008). Do visualizations improve synchronous remote collaboration?. CHI ’08.
3. Cascio, W.F., Shurygailo, S. (2003). E-Leadership and virtual teams. Organizational Dynamics, 31(4):362-376.
4. Hancock, J.T., Beaver, D.D, Chung, C.K., Frazee, J., Pennebaker, J.W., Graesser, A., Cai. Z. (2010). Social language processing: A framework for analyzing the communication of terrorists and authoritarian regimes. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 2(2):108-132.
5. Tyran, K.L., Tyran, C.K., Shepherd, M. (2003). Exploring emerging leadership in virtual teams, in Gibson, C.B. and Cohen, S.G. (Eds.), Virtual teams that work: Creating conditions for virtual team effectiveness (pp. 183-195). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
6. Zaccaro, S.J., Bader P. (2003). E-Leadership and the challenges of leading e-teams: Minimizing the bad an maximizing the good. Organizational Dynamics, 31(4):377-387.
7. Zigurs, I. (2003). Leadership in virtual teams: Oxymoron or opportunity?. Organizational Dynamics, 31(4):339-351.
Leaders can be assigned or they can emerge as group work progresses, but regardless group members should be able to identify them as leaders if they are to be effective in their leadership role [5]. In face-to-face settings, leaders make their presence known in a number of ways, including their seat location in meetings, body language and voice inflection [7]. However, in computer-mediated communication, these cues are either limited or non-existent. In text-based communication mediums that are often used to coordinate group work such as e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and forums, leaders only have language available to them as a way of making their presence known. In addition to establishing their presence, an important role of a leader is to establish group trust and cohesion [6]. While higher levels of trust and cohesiveness amongst team members are also associated with higher productivity, it is challenging to develop these dimensions without the aid of the rich communication that face-to-face interaction provides [6]. This is yet another challenge for leaders of virtual teams, particularly for those that communicate primarily (or solely) using text-based mediums.
We are interested in studying the ways that leaders emerge in these text-based environments and how this compares to the ways that assigned leaders lead. Following the Social Language Processing (SLP) framework [4] we plan on collecting and analyzing transcripts of groups completing tasks via a chat based interface to identify linguistic features that can predict the social dynamic of leadership. While it has been suggested that leaders of virtual teams should receive special training in order to effectively lead teams utilizing computer-mediated communication tools [6,7], we believe that the automatic identification of emergent and assigned leaders would allow us to provide tailored tools facilitating leadership in these groups.
To collect data, we will recruit 80 participants to take part in our study. Participants will work in groups of four (20 groups in total) using a chat interface to complete a task that involves coming to a consensus. We are still considering the exact task, however we find the murder mystery task as used in [2] promising because it involves the coordination of information to reach a consensus and it does not require the manipulation of physical objects as does solving a puzzle (we do not want to add the additional dimension of visual information into our study at this time). We will have two conditions; in one condition a leader will be assigned and the group will be told that this person is the leader and in the other condition a leader will be assigned, but their group will not be told that this person is the leader. After completing the task, group members will be asked to identify the member of the group that they thought carried out the role of leader. This will help us to identify individuals that emerged as leaders in the first condition and it will help us to verify that the assigned leader in fact took over this role in the second condition.
As mentioned above we will be using the SLP framework to identify linguistic features that can predict an individual leader amongst a group. In addition to analyzing the transcripts for linguistic features, we will analyze them at a higher level to identify the ways that leaders manage their presence and promote trust and cohesion through language.
Our work will contribute to the discussion of emergent leadership language, as well as how language is used to promote presence, trust, and cohesion in virtual leadership. This is relevant to the CHI community as it will suggest ways in which we can support the emergence of leaders in virtual groups and assigned leaders through computer-mediated communication tools. We will provide support for emerging leaders through automatic detection of this dynamic and by providing tools for leadership tasks that are made more challenging when mediated by technology. Effective leaders have been shown to increase productivity, making tools to support virtual leadership an attractive research area. There are many related areas for future work; we could run a study to investigate emergent leaders in asynchronous communication mediums such as e-mail, wikis, or forums. This work would have applications to online learning where students must collaborate, but may not have the benefit of face-to-face meetings.
In order to successfully prepare a short paper meeting the deadlines set by both CSCW/CHI and the course, we propose the following timeline:
• March 10: Submit IRB form
• March 22: Complete creation of all study related materials
• April 19: Complete data collection
• April 28: Complete data analysis
• May 5: Complete draft of paper
• May 12: Complete final paper
• May 12-August/September: Ask for additional feedback and revise as necessary
References:
1. Bell, B.S., Kozlowski, S.W.J. (2002). A typology of virtual teams: Implications for effective leadership. Group and Organization Management, 27(1):14-49.
2. Balakrishnan, A.D., Fussell, S.R., Kiesler, S. (2008). Do visualizations improve synchronous remote collaboration?. CHI ’08.
3. Cascio, W.F., Shurygailo, S. (2003). E-Leadership and virtual teams. Organizational Dynamics, 31(4):362-376.
4. Hancock, J.T., Beaver, D.D, Chung, C.K., Frazee, J., Pennebaker, J.W., Graesser, A., Cai. Z. (2010). Social language processing: A framework for analyzing the communication of terrorists and authoritarian regimes. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 2(2):108-132.
5. Tyran, K.L., Tyran, C.K., Shepherd, M. (2003). Exploring emerging leadership in virtual teams, in Gibson, C.B. and Cohen, S.G. (Eds.), Virtual teams that work: Creating conditions for virtual team effectiveness (pp. 183-195). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
6. Zaccaro, S.J., Bader P. (2003). E-Leadership and the challenges of leading e-teams: Minimizing the bad an maximizing the good. Organizational Dynamics, 31(4):377-387.
7. Zigurs, I. (2003). Leadership in virtual teams: Oxymoron or opportunity?. Organizational Dynamics, 31(4):339-351.
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