Effective Team and Management - Essay Example

? Effective Team and Management Introduction Teamwork is a very important factor in any success of an organization. All organizations function effectively and successfully if they are well integrated in terms of teamwork. Teams have bigger impacts on the outcomes of organizations because of the fact that they create synergy and the idea of collective responsibility makes people combine efforts towards realizing high performance (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1997, pp.1122–1149). Many people have different perceptions about the value that teams bring to an organization. Some people think that teams are a waste of time and other resources and thus organizations need to focus on individual output as is opposed to group performance. They point out certain weaknesses of teams such as laxity by some members and lack of individual responsibility when mistakes do arise. Teams also overshadow talent and other stand to gain where they did not sow. However, there is strong evidence that teams and teamwork is the best way to go for organizations that are seeking success. For teams to realize productivity there needs to be certain principles in place which have to be observed by all team members. Building a team spirit is a huge task and requires that managers acquire better skills of interpersonal management as well as interpersonal communication. Various theories have been fronted to help understand teams or groups and group dynamics. This paper takes a reflective approach to the modules we studied and tries to link it with the learning outcomes that were expected at the end of the session. Theories and other concepts learnt will be utilized in this critical reflection and discussion (Senior & Swailes, 2007, pp.138-153). Reflection from group exercises in weeks one to three Reflection is important in the course of my study (Illes, 2003, pp.209-215). Groups at work places are very important additives to any organization’s success story. I realized that there must be clear objectives as to why teams are formed in work places in the first place. This is because previously I had a notion that teams are simply about numbers. But I realized that teams should not be formed on the basis of filling up positions and coming up with large groups of people who have no objective of being together in such workplace settings. Many organizations end up promoting teams in workplaces for the purpose of boasting and propagate a total quality environment at work. This is a very wrong idea. Teams within a workplace have been a very powerful tool in many successful organizations. The benefits of having teams at work are many and include the provision of motivation to employees who are members; they enhance job coordination (Sonnentag, 1999); they give an improved problem solving environment; and assist in better decision-making process, among others. However, I realized that there is a price to pay for having this good performance (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1997, pp.1122–1149). As noticed, making decisions within a team takes a longer period than if one was to do it as an individual. This could be attributed to the fact that all members need to be consulted and consensus reached before a final decision could be acted upon. The process taken for teams to mature is also very long and slower. Teams have been known to evolve and mature into formidable groups that could carry out work effectively and this could not happen as fast as I thought. The other idea that I realized was the fact that teams needed long periods of training and comprehensive training for that matter in order for them to mature. Despite these shortcomings, I noticed that teams have major benefits mentioned above, which do outweigh these problems and frustrations faced by managers in many situations (Senior & Swailes, 2007, pp.138-153). Belbin Team Roles Theory has posed a good model for many managers struggling with teams in their organizations. The model has various fundamental concepts that are based on roles. I realized that according to this theory, members are servants that facilitate each other for the benefit of all team. This theory looks at performance, and the structure of behaviour based attributes while putting into considerations the needs of others (Belbin, 1993). The team members are confronted by two roles which they have to play and these include the functional role and the team role which describes the suitability of a member in a team not the way he or she functions. I also learnt that six factors do describe the role of a team member and these were personality, motivation, mental abilities that the member has, values held by the team, field restrictions and experience, and finally the learning of role. High performance of any team demands that there be a balanced spread of all the roles identified in a team (Johnson & Erez, 1998, pp.540-555). The other concept that was so clear to me is the complexity of human behaviour and it being very different from one individual to the other. Teams are faced with the challenges of trying to match the tasks successfully, incorporating the manager and the people reporting to him or subordinates. There are ideal situations that do exist and in these cases, a manager is able to analyse the task at hand, establish the skills that are required and then do assemble the team in a manner that the identified skills would complement each other. In this ideal situation, the manager is able to create a team that is both free of conflict and quite enriching. However, reality dictates that a manager uses the resources available for a task that needs to be done, and should be able to understand the variations that exist in individual behaviours and then use these differences appropriately so that he or she could increase the level of synergy (Sohal, et al., 2003, pp.349-357). An integrated human behaviour model could well explain the processes that eventually produce the personal differences. Cognition is important as a thought process and helps people to constantly get information, which is then transformed, put into memory, and then used as knowledge in any decision-making process in future. This has to involve such mental processes like solving problems, making decisions, among others. Even when managers succeed in matching tasks to skills, the concept of an organization as a system is very crucial and as such, the relationship that should exist between the manager and the group should be bidirectional and not unidirectional. Just as a manager evaluates and matches the skills of subordinates to task, so do the subordinates evaluate the skills of the manager to adapt to group dynamics. When there is a bidirectional approach to team formulation, the impact on the performance of the organization is huge (George & Brief, 1992, pp.310–329). Various factors do influence the behaviour of people in teams of groups. These factors include the abilities that a person has and these could be either natural or learnt from the environment. These abilities could still be either mental or physical and I noticed that each task requires a different degree of applying the two. The other factor is gender where society dictates that males have different abilities to females although; work environment assumes that there is equality in gender abilities. The other factor is race and culture which do put a lot of pressure on teams at workplaces because of diversity and issues to do with inclusion. Perception is another factor and has to do with the cognitive process which is considered very basic in the transformation of sensory stimuli to give information that can be understood. I realized that there exists perception differences and managers need to put this into consideration when managing teams. Stereotyping and selective perception should be avoided at all costs. The other factor is attribution and is the process through which one observes behaviour and then goes ahead to determine the cause of such behaviour on the basis of personality portrayed by an individual or situation. Attribution has a framework that utilizes consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency. The last factor is attitude which is a learnt response that is abstract in nature formed out of the entire process of cognition experienced by an individual in a certain period of time. Attitude could be experienced as a faster response when one is presented with a familiar situation and is done without having deep thought. In most cases, attitude forms the platform for many biases and errors to do with attribution (Brannick, 1997, pp.67-78). Most of the team models do focus on the strengths of an individual. Thus, effective teams have been seen to be those that have people who fully use and develop their strengths in terms of where they could contribute best. Ideas and principles governing inter-personal relationships Credibility is very crucial in the interpersonal relationships. Credibility comes from the judgement that other people give to us. This credibility has two components which are competence, and character. Competence has more to do with the perceptions that the intelligence of a person creates the expertise, and subsequent knowledge regarding the subject at hand. Character on the other hand entails the perceptions on the sincerity of a person, his or her trustworthiness and the person’s concerns for other people. I noticed that credibility could be initial, derived or terminal. These issues play out in interpersonal relationships in team management. Interpersonal skills do influence the way all people within a work environment work together or how they come into conflict. Interpersonal skills need to be developed in order to help in the communication between people. These interpersonal skills I realized were being able to comprehend the points that are passed by others in the group, being able to influence other people by convincing them, voicing the points or thoughts that one has so that they could be heard and understood by others, being able to work well with others in a group, starting resolution mechanisms for conflict between group members, and being able to adapt to changes in the group requirements for example when pace needs to be changed in order to increase productivity. Lack of such skills means that people within groups or teams cannot be able to effectively communicate and will misunderstand each other. I realized the need for all companies to come up clearly and address the issue of interpersonal skills in relation to its employees. This could be done through giving them proper training and building teams that have people with the right skills for a given job. Conflict will always come up and if not well handled, the work available will not be able to be completed as required or if completed will not be of quality. Cohesion is needed in order to come up with proper teams for a given job. With coherence, I noticed that our team worked better and cooperated on issues at hand. Coherence comes from having a goal and purpose that is common and clear to all, having diversity in the group, and trying to create a balance between the task in the team and the relationships, roles to be performed, and responsibilities, high levels of trust among the group members, and efficient forms of communication. I found out that many managers think of groups as individuals that are on a table and engaged in polite discussions. These groups could not necessarily be teams and the behaviour that they show may not even be part of what we consider as teamwork. My learning therefore was that teams are like entities having a very sophisticated social structure. The members of these groups do show some specific behaviour that gives the group a chance to operate in a smooth manner towards a given goal. Conflict in teams is a very natural and good thing to occur and should be encouraged. The absence of conflict in a team might mean a lot of things such as people thinking alike, lack of interest, and or suppressing conflict, things that do not add value to the team. Divergence in thinking, experiences and attitudes gives teams the power to effectively do its work. Without conflict, the result is not that effective. Conflict simply needs to be resolved amicably. I also noticed that we have two types of teams which are problem solving and work teams. Problem solving teams normally constitute members across the divide of an organization with an aim of solving a specific problem and the team disbands once the problem has been solved. Such teams usually have leaders that control discussions. On the other hand, work teams are normally continuous and have a basic assignment of coordinating and managing work on a daily basis. Members are thus drawn from the same area. Group diversity is a good thing and leads to success of teams. This is because diversity does bring on board logical, intuitive intelligence, and emotional aspects that have a stronger bearing on given issues. When diversity is employed, teams normally have solutions that are simple, elegant and very effective. Such teams are usually quite competent. Diversity minimizes the consequences which are not intended. Diversity in teams makes it possible for them to incorporate weighted factor analysis that has the ability to balance the decision-making factors. I also learnt that motivation in teams is very crucial if superior teams need to be built. The hierarchy of needs theory applies here since the members form a craving for meeting the needs of social interaction, gaining self-esteem, and eventually realizing self-actualization (Fay & Sonnentag, 2000). An example of my own group experiences In my group experience, I initially realized that our team actually did struggle to hit the goals that we had set such as meeting the deadline, giving quality presentations, and ensuring that there is full participation in order to achieve high performance. I could attribute this occurrence to the fact that we had little, if any, interpersonal skills. However, when we got along and things started moving, we found coherence and built a strong group by trying to emulate the interpersonal skills taught in our modules. In order to enhance the interpersonal skills (Sonnentag, 1999), we had to do the following things which were presented by one of our group members: We looked for the best in the members of our group. This was done by anticipating that the members would do the best and right thing, which was basically building trust in each other. We started treating each other with respect. One of my group members noted that I treated each of them with a lot of kindness. This she attributed to the fact that I gave sincere appreciation for their contribution. Secondly, we did focus on having a common goal where we did identify those objectives that were seen to be crucial to our group work. We hence adopted the ‘We’ approach. The third thing that we did was put team interests ahead of our personal gains. The fourth thing was to listen to others very well when they spoke so that their perspectives could be understood before anyone emphasized his or her point. Finally, we tried to adapt certain behavioural styles that were friendly to all team members. Empowering my group worked well for us in building better teamwork spirit. My colleagues were very fascinated when we carried out a detailed presentation of how teams could be created and developed in a continuous basis. We also celebrated together when we reached a milestone in our pursuit of our goals. Conclusion Teams are very critical in organizations if attainment of certain goals is to be realized. Successful organizations have a culture of fostering team formation when need arises to achieve certain complicated tasks. Many organizations have been known to form permanent teams which are charged with carrying on duties from day to day. Various factors are necessary for successful teams to be established. These factors are cooperation, delegation, collaboration among group members, allocation of resources, identifying and matching skills with tasks, and other factors that work hand in hand in leveraging the individual actions and making them collective. It is important that team managers understand the effect that organizational design and the structure of such organizations have on the dynamics of team in order to assist in giving such teams better levels of management. Having excellent coordination is a good recipe for success in teams. Coordination has been seen to be more applicable in teams that are faced with multiple and sequential tasks that do occur in teams. The power that teams exhibit could be a core competence for organizations in work environments that could spur it into gaining competitive advantage over other competitors. Teams cannot be effective for those managements that are not patient, portray arrogance, and are not willing to fully invest time, training, and attention to these teams. Team leadership is thus needed and forms a very crucial part of managing teams. When a team functions, it is important that trust is built through better means of interpersonal skills application. Employing better interpersonal communication is a sure way of ensuring that teams succeed. Employing of patchwork (McKenzie, 2003, 152-160) done was very important in this paper. List of References Belbin, R.M., (1993). Team Roles at Work. Oxford, U.K.: Butterworth Heinemann Brannick Michael T. (1997). Team Performance Assessment and Measurement: Theory, Methods, and Applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Mahwah, New Jersey London, 67-78 Fay, D., & Sonnentag, S. (2000). Stressors and personal initiative: A study on organizational behaviour. Manuscript submitted for publication George, J. M., & Brief, A. P. (1992). Feeling good–doing good: A conceptual analysis of the mood at work–organizational spontaneity relationship. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 310–329 Illes K. (2003). The Patchwork Text and Business Education: rethinking the importance of personal reflection and co-operative cultures. Innovations in Education & Teaching International, 40(2), 209-215. Johnson, D.E. & Erez, A. (1998). The Role-Based Performance Scale: Validity Analysis of A Theory- Based Measure. Acad. Manage. J., 41(5): 540-555 McKenzie J. (2003). The student as an active agent in a disciplinary structure: introducing the Patchwork Text in teaching sociology. Innovations in Education & Teaching International, 40(2), 152-160. Senior, B. & Swailes, S. (2007). Inside Management Teams: Developing a Teamwork Survey Instrument. British J. Manage., 18: 138-153 Sohal, A.S., M. Terziovski & Zutshi, A. (2003). Team-based strategy at Varian Australia: A case study, Technovation, 23: 349-357 Sonnentag, S. (1999).Why star-performers enhance team performance: A theoretical model. Paper presented at the Ninth European Congress of Work and Organizational Psychology, 12–15 May 1999, Espoo-Helsinki, Finland Stajkovic, A. D., & Luthans, F. (1997). A meta-analysis of the effects of organizational behaviour modi?cation on task performance. 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