MT340 Unit 7 Team Development Analysis Paper Example

From Silent Reviews to Six Objections a Read: An MT340 Unit 7 Team Development Analysis of a Narrative Team

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT340: Conflict Management and Team Dynamics

Unit 7 Team Development Analysis

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The studio, team and figures are composite; the models, scale and research cited are real.

Evidence of Change

The narrative team formed fourteen months ago: a lead writer, two senior writers and two junior writers, writing dialogue and story scenes for a role-playing game. Its main ritual is the table read, where a script is read aloud and discussed.

Meeting notes record the number of objections raised aloud at each table read. In the first six months, the average was about one objection per read, and most reads ended with polite approval. In month six, a publisher playtest found that players were confused by the second act, and several playtesters said characters "contradicted themselves." Every scene in that act had passed the table read without objection. After month seven, objections averaged between six and nine per read and stayed there.

The producer also ran an anonymous pulse survey twice, using the seven questions Edmondson (1999) wrote to gauge psychological safety, once in month five and again in month twelve. The team's average rose from 4.1 to 5.6 out of seven.

Testing Tuckman

The four-stage model Tuckman (1965) built from a review of group research places open conflict in its second stage, storming, before a group settles how it will work.

This team's sequence was different. It formed quickly in the first month. It then moved directly to polite norms: reads were courteous, and disagreement was kept private, if it was voiced at all. Open disagreement, which looks like storming, arrived only after month six, and it arrived alongside better work rather than before it. Storming came after norming.

Tuckman's model therefore fits only partly. The stages appeared, but in a different order, and the "norming" stage contained a norm, avoid disagreement, that held performance back.

A Better Fit: A Midpoint Transition

Gersick (1988), studying project teams, found that many did not move through gradual stages. Instead, they kept an early pattern for about half of their time and then changed sharply around the midpoint, often triggered by an external event or deadline. The narrative team's change came after an external shock, the failed playtest, and was abrupt rather than gradual. Gersick's account explains the timing better than Tuckman's.

The team did not argue less as it matured; it argued more, once it learned that silence had a price.

What Changed in the Format

After the playtest, the lead writer changed the table read in three ways.

First, her own pages are read first, and she names one weakness in them before anyone else speaks. Before, her pages had been read last and rarely questioned. Starting with the most senior writer's admitted weakness changed what was safe to say.

Second, a rotating skeptic role was added. At each read, one writer is assigned to find the strongest objection to the script, whatever their own view. The role made disagreement a duty rather than a personal choice, so no writer had to decide alone whether an objection was worth the awkwardness.

Third, objections are recorded on a shared board during the read, with the writer's response beside each. Before, comments were given privately afterward, if at all.

Edmondson (1999) reported that the teams which learned were those whose members believed a mistake would not be held against them, and the team leader's conduct did much to set that trust. The lead writer's change in her own behavior is consistent with that finding.

The Psychological Safety Measure

The rise from 4.1 to 5.6 on Edmondson's scale fits the change in behavior. The largest rise was on the item about taking risks in front of teammates. The smallest was on the item about whether members reject others for being different, which was already high in month five.

An Alternative Explanation

Another explanation is possible: the team argued more because the junior writers had gained experience and confidence, not because the format changed. If so, objections should have come mainly from the junior writers and risen gradually as they grew. The notes show otherwise. Objections rose sharply in month seven, not gradually, and came from all five writers, including the two seniors, who had been silent in the first six months. Experience may have contributed, but it cannot explain a sudden change across the whole team.

A second alternative is that the producer's survey made the team aware of safety and changed behavior on its own. But the survey's first administration came in month five, before the change, and objections did not rise in month six.

The Cost of the Polite Period

The six months of silent reviews had a measurable cost. The confused second act required rewriting fourteen scenes and re-recording dialogue for three characters, about five weeks of the team's time and an unplanned voice-actor budget. Every one of those scenes had passed a table read without objection. In the year since the format changed, no act has failed a publisher playtest for coherence, and the junior writers say they now hear about problems in their pages at the read rather than in a note weeks later.

What the Studio Can Learn

The narrative team spent six months at a polite norm that cost the game a confusing second act. Jehn (1995) found that task conflict can help groups doing nonroutine work, as long as it does not become personal. The narrative team's work is nonroutine, and its early silence suppressed the very task conflict that would have caught the problem. Other teams at the studio, especially the art and level design teams, run review meetings that resemble the narrative team's early format. They might adopt the skeptic role and the lead-first reading without waiting for a playtest to fail.

Limits

The data come from one team's meeting notes, which were kept by different writers at different times. The psychological safety survey had only five respondents, so a single person's change could move the average. The analysis cannot separate the effect of the format change from the effect of the playtest itself.

Conclusion

The narrative team moved from silent reviews to open disagreement, but not in the order Tuckman predicts. Its change came abruptly after an external shock, as Gersick's work suggests, and was sustained by format changes that made disagreement safe and expected. The rise in psychological safety and the evidence from all five writers support that account over the alternatives.

References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Gersick, C. J. G. (1988). Time and transition in work teams: Toward a new model of group development. Academy of Management Journal, 31(1), 9-41. https://doi.org/10.2307/256496

Jehn, K. A. (1995). A multimethod examination of the benefits and detriments of intragroup conflict. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(2), 256-282. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393638

Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384-399. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0022100