Read the requirement carefully - Essay Example

However, a true spirit of team work working and co-existing together with the sole objective of a common goal is quite rare. As explained by Wageman (1997, p.59) “It takes more work than just grouping people together and calling them a team.” Critical components of an effective team Successful and effective teamwork is founded on three basic components; complementary skills, common and compelling goals, and mutual responsibility and accountability. First, the complementary and technical skills of the work force within the team are attainable during the hiring and recruiting the staff (Ryan, 2012, p.267). Such complementary, technical, and professional skills must be matched with the job requirement.

Besides, to increase their competence, more training is essential over time. Secondly, winning teams within an organization must have a common and clearly defined purpose to act as a guide for all the teammates to rally behind. The long chain goals are further broken down into specialized sub-goals for individuals with different technical and professional skills to undertake (Brainerd, 2006, p.56-9). Lastly, it is critical for an organization to foster the culture of responsiveness and accountability among the team members in a vertical format.

To enhance responsibility and accountability, an organization rewards productivity and higher degree of accountability within the team staff. Coupled with collective responsibility, individual strugglers are supported by their colleagues in order to achieve together as a team. Team building process The process of building a successful teamwork takes place in four stages: formation, storming, norming, and performing (Belbin, 2010, p.70). Formation: This is the first step towards building a team.

In this stage, individuals are busy trying to identify the most ideal position in the team. It is in this stage that initial offer on starting a team is made. Storming: This being the second stage in team building, it entails a number of challenges. Though people start to perceive each other as a team, conflict and confrontations are constantly observed, which further results into loss in performance. Norming: this is the stage where real team work commences. Members come together, develop common interests and goals, formulate policies and regulations, and perform job stratification.

It is at this phase where some sense of “togetherness” is evidenced. Performing: It is the final phase in teamwork development which is characterized with increased team relationships, collective responsibility, and combined synergy. Group performance is very effective and delivering profitable outputs in the organization (Wageman, 1997, p.49-61). These four teamwork building phases can be represented graphically as below: Tuckman’s model Phase/output Performance Formation Norming Storming Period This model helps us in developing a deeper insight into the evolvement of teamwork.

The major drawback of this model is that identifies team building as being a linear and sequential process without recognizing loops in the team development stages. Common team challenges and how to overcome them All teams (including the most talented) in an organization faces a numbers of challenges. The major challenge facing teamwork performance is building the needed trust, a leading foundation for team performance in an organization. Higher