Facework may be influenced by the company culture and environment, the employee status, their role, gender and the specific activity they are engaging in (Archer and Willcox, 2018).
This research explores the degree to which these faces can be used to improve communication in small-medium team interactions.
Companies who have a high dependency on team meetings and who rely on them to organise their work, particularly in the service sectors, will be most impacted by and interested in this research. Understanding the facework dynamics in a working context can be extremely useful for a company, as also highlighted by Archer and Willcox (2018) in a more restricted working context represented by 1:1 Personal Appraisals.
The hypothesis being analysed is that, in the broader context of team meetings, team dynamics will play a significant role in helping to shape facework strategy and that such a strategy will be different where stakes are usually higher.
The research found that Facework and pragmatics are fundamental components influencing a meeting outcome. Facework and pragmatics are intertwined and an essential component of meeting.
The success of a meeting depends on the right combination and balance of key elements used by the participants. The main faceworks used in successful meetings were Competence and Professional.
This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that personal and relationship faceworks are mostly associated to 1:1 interaction.
The research argues that an understanding of these strategies would constitute a useful tool to better shape high-performing teams.
Understanding the facework dynamics in a working context might ultimately benefit mostly companies relying on meetings to run their business, and it will ultimately allow them to have better performing teams.
