Effective Team and Performance Management - Essay Example

?Effective Team and Performance Management Effective Team and Performance Management Teams are groups of people with distinct yet harmonizing skills; they have a specific aim in mind and divide responsibility among themselves to achieve that aim. Teams are task effective when they are able to achieve these set aims during their target time period. Effective teams are categorized by traits of trust, mutual respect, cooperation and affability among the team members. Usually, successful teams are ones which have strong leadership and pay a lot of attention to how the team is built. They have a shared vision and sense of ownership so that all members feel responsible and work for the completion of the goal set by the team leader. Another important characteristic of successful teams is the communication factor, teams that do well have an open system of information exchange, team members coordinate among themselves to get the job done and are truthful with each other about work related issues. (Effective Teamwork, Constructing Excellence). This assignment is based on a series of lectures geared towards helping participant groups learn how to best work in groups and helping team members realize what their individual strengths and weaknesses are when working as a part of a collaborative team and how these contribute for the better or for the worse towards the achievement of the end goal. Each lecture involves a different activity, which allows participants to learn different aspects of being part of a team by involving themselves in the activity and reflecting upon it. Our team leader was chosen by a process of voting. All team members took a vote as to who should be our team leader and team member ‘a’ got 3 votes which was the maximum number of votes any team member got and thus the role of leader was delegated to team member ‘a’. Our team was to collaborate across a time period of 8 weeks. We would be attending 8 seminars, one every week and each time a task would be allocated to us and we would have to decide how we would go about it as a team. Once done with the procedure of attaining the goal that was expected of us in the task, we were to reflect upon the strengths, weaknesses, causes of these strengths and weaknesses and possible ways of improvement. One of the exercises was about being ‘lost on the moon’. In this task, we were to imagine that we had just crash landed on the moon and the mother ship was 200 miles away. There were just 15 items we had left for survival on our trip from the landing site to the mother ship and we had to rate the items from 1 to 15 in order of importance for survival, 1 being the most important and 15 being the least important. The keys issues we faced here were mostly centered in the difference of opinions among the group member as to what item should be given what rank of importance. The items varied greatly in nature and different people felt that different items were more important for survival when lost on the moon. Our team leader ‘a’ proposed that we brainstorm this situation according to rank so for example we started with rank 15 and all team members suggested which item they thought was least important and the reason why they thought so. This was to the end of convincing other members of their reasons so that we could narrow down to one item per rank by agreeing on one thing. And thus we moved up ranks till we reached rank one with our most important mutually agreed upon item. This tactic combined the use of collaboration and brain storming to bring about cohesion in the thought process. Another task was that of ‘the egg flying contest’. Our challenge as a team was to 5 of the 7 resources mentioned to be able to build a mechanism that would enable the egg to not break when dropped from a height of 2 meters. Under our leader, we chose 5 critical items from the given list based on a discussion among the team members concerning building a mechanism to stop the egg from breaking. Once our plan was in place about how we were going to use those 5 resources in the mechanism, the leader chose team member ‘b’ to give a one minute pitch about our idea. This task involved using the 5D frame work of problem solving. First the group defines the problem; it is a difficult task to keep the egg from breaking in a 2 meter drop. Then there is discovery, the group collectively decides on a possible direction towards the solution. Next there is dream, this is where the group decides exactly what it would like to attain and by what process. After this there is design, this is when the specifics of the process are decided in detail. And lastly there is delivery, which calls for the execution of the plan and process decided upon by the team under the guidance of the leader. Another task we had to complete during these weeks was based upon reflection. This required us to read two accounts by the same person, one was called THE PARK (1) and the other was called THE PARK (4), we had to compare them and say whether there were any reflective elements in the written pieces and what those particular reflections were. It was seen that in the descriptive account there was a sequence of events, no questions or internal dialogue, very few emotional references, no standing back and observing point of view and no instances of relating to prior experience. In contrast, the reflective account was more focused, there was a lot more internal dialogue and questions, a lot of references to emotions, a standing back point of view of observation and relevant instances of prior experience that relate to this situation. Johns (2000) model for structured reflection states that there are two ways to go about it, ‘looking in’ and ‘looking out’. Looking in is when the individual focuses on self and pays more attention to internal thoughts and emotions. Looking out is when the external factors are concentrated upon, with regard of significance, ethics, aesthetics etc. The tasks involving reflection employed the use of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a concept that can be learned. It includes knowing your inner feelings and the feelings of others around you and using these feelings to shape your ultimate decisions. It makes use of self awareness, motivation, managing emotions, empathy and social skills to give a person an edge over another individual who just employs his/her IQ in decision making. (Nancy K. Recker, 2001). I think our team was considerably cooperative and coordinated, however team performance appears different from the individual perspectives of team members. So even though I might have thought myself productive, team member ‘y’ might have thought me lagging in performance. Individual thoughts about the whole team’s performance may also be very different. From the perspective of team member ‘y’ our team performance can be analyzed in a different way than it can be from mine. Team member ‘y’ thinks of himself as a contributor, a team member who gets the group to focus on the task at hand. Team players styles are defined Dr. Frances A. Kennedy as Contributors who focus on the task at hand, Collaborators who emphasize the overall team purpose, Communicators who encourage positive relations among team members and Challengers who push the team to take risks. Team member ‘y’ thinks that despite some conflicts among the team the team members have done quite well under the leadership of team member ‘a’. According to him, the conflicts were effectively resolved through negotiations among group members through the guidance of the leader. However, he thinks that some members of the group did not completely align themselves with the team’s shared purpose due to which the full level of efficiency could not be achieved. This misalignment was due to differences in perspectives and ineffective communication between group members. For example during the ‘lost on the moon’ task, the team members took a long time deciding what items to rank based on their importance. This was because everyone had a different idea as to what was more important and it took a long time for the team to come up with a process by which everyone could agree on one thing. During the ‘egg flying contest’ the team players took a long time conceiving an idea that would help them keep the egg from smashing when dropped from a height of 2 meters. Since they took so much time coming up with the framework of the mechanism to use, it took a lot of time to pick the necessary items needed to put the mechanism into effect. This time the main problem wasn’t lack of cohesion but the lack of experience and knowledge required to build the needed mechanism. However, what no one realized according to team member ‘y’ was that they didn’t need to be sure that their plan would work, just that it needed to be viable. As the contributor, team member ‘y’ tried to redirect his team towards what he thought was the actual purpose but this took time because the team was too much involved in the task otherwise. The activity on reflection was undertaken particularly more effectively as compared to the other two tasks. The group had to read and differentiate a written piece on the same subject, one descriptive and the other reflective. Team member ‘y’ thinks that the team possesses a good level of emotional intelligence and was thus able to tackle this task effectively. The actions taken by the team during these lectures were by no measure completely optimal in nature. Thus there are some alternative courses of action that can be suggested. First and foremost, a better approach would be one that is more communication focused. When communication among team members is more streamlined, ideas flow easily from one member to another and it results in the fact that everyone remains on the same wavelength ensuring cohesion in the group’s thoughts, purpose and actions. Cohesion in these aspects will result in less time loss attributed to conflicts and the resulting conflict resolution. More efficient communication will yield better results for the team. There will also be no latent feelings of dislike among group members from feelings of not being heard or over looked by other team players. Another step that could’ve been taken was to assign specific roles to each group member based on their strengths and weaknesses. This means that each member would be in charge of a specific thing, Team member ‘a’ could be in charge of making written notes, while ‘b’ could be the chosen orator. This way with tasks divided among group members, it would be easier to finish them and in lesser time because everybody would know exactly what was required of them and there would be no time delay in people deciding on and getting to their portion of the task at hand. Furthermore, as things progress the leader can assess how things are going and assign and reassign things according to who does what best or worse as compared to the other people. Our team had some issues with in-group communication. Since the communication process among the team members was not streamlined and tasks and roles weren’t assigned, this resulted in inefficiency and wastage of time. Through these activities and lectures came a lot of learning experiences which have enhanced my knowledge and self awareness and will be relevant and applicable to my future professionally. I learnt how to work effectively as part of a team of diverse people and what things to avoid so that the team remains efficient in achieving its aim. This series helped me identify what I was doing wrong before in similar scenarios. I identified my core strengths and my weaknesses and discovered ways to enhance my strengths and eliminate my weaknesses. The best part was that that the knowledge imparted wasn’t only theoretical but showed us practical application of the theory mentioned. I learnt about different roles that people play in a team and the significance of each role and what and how team players contribute to attain the final goal. We learned how groups are formed and on what basis they should be formed on optimally. We learned how the behavior of individual team members contributes to the over all team cohesion and performance. The lectures then introduced the concept of emotional intelligence and how useful and applicable it is in today corporate world. Emotional intelligence should be used to enhance the decision making process during making decisions in the private or public sphere and helps people make better judgments and decisions because it incorporates the human element even in business decisions. This is important because after all organizations are made up of people, and keeping matters more people friendly is always beneficial and is the general trend the world is moving towards in this age. There was a lot of emphasis on leadership activities and skill throughout the tasks we had to complete. The role of the leader is very important and helps determine if the team is moving in the right direction and whether it will be able to accomplish the goal it has set. Further, we learned about conflict and negotiation. Conflicts occur when there is a clash of interests and if it doesn’t radically escalate a healthy level of conflict is stimulating and therefore beneficial. Negotiation is reaching some sort of compromise to resolve the conflict. Often in organizations, conflicts are resolved by authority figures or third parties that are neutral to the interest of the concerned parties. Negotiation is an important part of ensuring that peace prevails in the organizations even when conflicts occur on a regular basis. Decision making is another aspect that was stressed upon in the lectures. While a lot of other factors are of importance, the actual process of decision making is just as important. This also incorporates the importance of the concept of leadership, since most times it is the leader who is responsible for making the decisions. These lectures have covered various aspects that are important for business environment s and have proved a vital learning experience for me. Bibliography Recker, K.N. Emotional Intelligence…What Is It? [pdf] The Ohio State University. [Accessed on 28 april 2012]. Fisher, Ron., 2000. Sources of Conflict and Methods of Conflict Resolution. [pdf] The American University. [Accessed on 28 April 2012]. Lickson, C.P. and Maddux, R.B., 2005. Negotiation Basics- Win Win Strategies for Everyone. [book] Thomson Place, Boston. [Accessed on 28 April 2012]. Clippinger, J.H. Leadership. [pdf] [Accessed on 28 April 2012]. Goleman, D. Leadership That Gets Results. [pdf] Harvard Business Review. [Accessed on 28 april 2012]. Leadership Skills. [pdf] [Accessed on 28 April 2012]. Effective Teamwork. [pdf] Constructing Excellance. < http://www.constructingexcellence.org.uk/pdf/document/Teamwork_Guide.pdf> [Accessed on 28 April 2012]. Kennedy, F.A. and Nilson, L.B. Successful Strategies for Teams [pdf] < http://www.clemson.edu/OTEI/documents/teamwork-handbook.pdf> [Accessed on 28 April 2012]. Read More