Effective Team Performance - Assignment Example

?EFFECTIVE TEAM PERFORMANCE Introduction Tuckman (1965) distinguishes groups from team on basis of their commitment and teamwork. Teams can be categorized as decision team, task teams and self-directed teams. In self-managed or self-directed scenario, teams are autonomous or semi-autonomous and have more authority to deal with problems that face them. Usually such teams do not have a formal leader and either select one or follow leadership by committee process (Dyer and Dyer 2007). Fraser and Neville (2003) identified group transformation into a cohesive team understanding and collaborating towards final objectives as key to success. Team building concepts like Belbin’s Team Roles, Myers-Griggs Group Dynamics, conflict resolution and decision making were experienced as the team progressed through team development stages of forming, norming and stroming as described by Tuckman’s Team Development Model (Tuckman 1965). The team was faced with a number of problems that occurred during its entire developmental process based on Tuckman’s model (Beyerlein and Johnson 2000). Although improved collaboration, effective communication and alignment of individual objectives with team objectives helped to overcome these problems, Kayes (2004) is of the opinion that these could have been prevented at the initial stages of the project. The project presented number of opportunities to the team to remain engaged in number of activities that played significant role in transforming the group into a cohesive and effective team. This report focuses on key stages in the development of a cohesive team and the problems and conflicts faced during the process and steps taken to resolve these issues. The report also discusses key theories and concepts of team development and significance of their application in practical life and analyzes the transformation of experiences in reflective learning. Problem and Context In this project, I formed part of a group that was entirely unknown to me and I had no earlier opportunity of working with them in similar circumstances. Due to this situation, I felt anxiety as I was totally confused about the group members, their behavior, said or unsaid protocols for group interaction and team objectives, as mentioned by Myers-Briggs (1998). Tuckman described it typical to the forming stage of the team development (Tuckman 1965). In forming stage, future of team and the team objectives are not much clear. Members try to know each other, exchange personal information and make friends that help them to better respond to pressure situation in future. But as I gained more opportunities to interact and know other members, the anxiety transformed into confidence to effectively communicate and participate in the group activities. During the project, many problems like motivation, individual capability, ineffective communication and team dynamics as highlighted by Kayes (2004) surfaced. Team members were not focused on team objectives and were frequently found busy in their social and personal issues at the initial stages of team development. The team members belonged to diverse cultural background that presented a potential source for diversity conflict (Goleman 2002). I believe that like me other group members being almost on the same parity had the similar experiences, as they were also shy and hesitant to communicate among each other at initial stages. Although these problems impeded task completion, team development, cohesion and improving collaboration and coordination among the members but these provided opportunities to respond effectively to a particular situation and progress towards team development (Chaney and Lyden 2000). McManus (2000) stresses that teams are stronger in commitment, cohesion and understanding of objectives than the groups. Therefore, skills like self-awareness, self management, competence, social awareness and relationship management highlighted by Goleman (2002) as Emotional Intelligence played a key role in bonding team together towards common goal. Despite all the problems that surfaced during the course of project, the project met a successful completion in terms of achieving its final objectives. Undoubtedly, it was a great opportunity to appreciate the significance of the theories and concepts of team development and their importance of their application to bring improvements in real life team development processes. Reflection I remained skeptical about the group dynamics and the development of group into team from the very beginning stage of team formation, called forming stage by Tuckman (Beyerlein and Johnson 2000). Since the formation of group, the team faced diversity conflicts when some greetings in ones culture were not quite appropriate in other culture and a misunderstanding was developed among the two members, which took considerable time to defuse and clarify the intensions for bold interaction. Group diversity increases chances of conflict due to less understanding of diverse culture and may make good teams dysfunctional (Elwyn at at. 2001). Such problems, however, could be dealt more effectively with skills such as self-awareness as highlighted by Goleman (2002) and cited in Thomas and Kilmann (1974). The team undertook an activity based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicators and the resulted confirmed me as thoughtful realist, where other two members were action oriented realist and two were action oriented innovators while another member was also thoughtful realist. The group undertook behavioral style questionnaire exercise to develop the understanding of different behavioral styles among team members. From the results, my behavioral style was identified as self-controlled. The strengths of self-controlled include seriousness; persistency and industrious behavior towards goal while dullness and over-detailing mark their main weaknesses. This identification of my behavioral style helped me to bring improvements in my problem solving approach and effectiveness in planning for desired objectives. The role of team member is critical to the group dynamics, cohesion, effectiveness and focus towards team objectives. Stewart and Manz (1995) view supervisory lack as the main cause of failure of self-directed and self-managed team. During the second meeting, team decided to select a leader adopting a cumulative voting method using majority criterion (Nitzan and Paroush 1985). The team selected group member say Person-1 as the team leader. In my opnion too, he had the qualities and confidence of leading a team. He was responsible, good at communication, well-disciplined, dedicated, assertive and had a rational approach towards problem solving as mentioned by Kemp (2012). I myself was not confident enough as to I would be able to justify such a critical responsibility to lead a team. However, in the capacity of a team member I had the opportunity to adopt Belbin’s Team Role Descriptions of implementer, team worker, coordinator and evaluator suiting to each specific activity to accomplish the desired tasks (Belbin 2010). The roles of evaluator and implementer became more evident during Belbin Self Perception Inventory exercise Lost on Moon when I evaluated and analyzed the practicability and feasibility of carrying box of matches and a magnetic compass for miles long journey to the mothership. My evaluation of the situation forced the group to think on different lines than the traditional approach and plan the exercise towards successful completion. Belbin (2010) views implementers as evaluating and making logical, impartial and effective decisions in a dispassionate manner, while Kayes (2004) argues that practicability can result in diverse and competing targets requiring decisive and assertive leadership. As the group progress through forming stage to the norming stage, I gained more confidence in interacting with other team members and effectively participating in group activities. During the exercise, I maintained participative approach allowing and motivating other members to contribute to the development process and completion of exercise (Kippenberger 2002). The members came up with very unique ideas and contributed effectively with analytical approach to solve the problem. Beyerlein and Johnson (2000) emphasize breaking of mindset and encourage innovative and creative thinking so that the team can progress to storming stage of development. Tuckman (1965) sees this stage a very critical to the team development as it would not be practical for a team to fully mature past this stage. According to him, in storming stage competition in enhanced, relationships are strained and leadership is often challenged. In this the stage, the main goal of the team leader is to keep team focused toward the common goal and organize tasks in manner that they are accomplished effectively. This stage is an opportunity to develop team spirit among the members rather than developing feelings of competition. During this exercise, team appeared quite dysfunctional despite the members individual participation in the exercise. In this exercise, I remained patient and adopted an accommodating behavior before asserting or presenting my ideas, thus making use of skills of self-wareness. During the exercise, another member maintained a dominant and assertive behavior and was quite non-cooperating in reaching a consensus because he viewed his way as the best, making his own self as reference, called competing conflict by Shaw and Linnecar (2007). Because of disagreement on ranking the priority order, team could not identify ill-defined objects in the lost on moon exercise (Kayes 2004). In my opinion, main reason for failure was that the leader was not able to keep team focused and maintain an assertive behavior, which was the need of hour so that team could reach the consensus instead of engaging aimless arguments because of a single individual. The failure of this exercise, changed views in the team and they developed consensus to select me as team leader for the next exercise. The team viewed me as reliable, dedicated, well organized and assertive with a rational approach towards problem solving. Upon my selection, I had mixed feelings of being honored and facing a huge responsibility of managing and maintaining the team towards final objectives. The arguments from the team opened new dimensions of my personality that were unknown to me earlier, called blind window by Sutton and Stewart (2002). Soon after assuming the role of team leader, I started developing strategies to engage team in challenges to keep them focused towards the final objectives keeping in mind that the change to individuals might not be easy to accept as different people view changes differently (Goleman 2002). In my opinion, individual attitudes can be conformed into desired bevahiors under group pressure (Schein 1988), thus I required strong coalition and cooperation from team members to pursue team objectives. However, this was not much easy because team was aware of changes and was already struggling with tasks completion. For the next exercise of mystery murder investigation, I maintained a participative approach rather than assertiveness in my leadership style and allowed other members to participate and collaborate for investigating the clues in the murder mystery. I used interpersonal skills to keep team focused on objectives. The murder mystery task consisted of interdependent activities where output from the one person was required as input to another member for his task completion. However, one of the team members did not passed on his part of information in totality to the other member because of which other member’s task was badly affected, stated as interdependence conflict by Bartos and Wehr (2002). Main reason was that the team member was not able to evaluate, analyze and correlate his results. I assisted the team member in his tasks and helped him to correlate his results and present these in effective manner. After the completion of this exercise, I remained in touch with the team member and assisted him in completing all his tasks. I also coordinated and collaborated other parts of investigations and related activities to reach a logical conclusion, a quality of dominant leaders as described by Myers-Briggs (1998). Strong and Anderson (1990) are of the view that such activities may become a joy ride for the team members and may not prove much effective in team building process. To manage time and keep team on the right track, I had to occasionally use assertive approach and freeze decisions at certain points in the exercise. This exercise proved to be a success finally and met its desired objectives. Although I was initially not the team leader in the first exercise, I was nominated as one for the next exercise. Soon after assuming the role of team leader, I had many opportunities to use my skills and perform my role in capacity of team leader as the team progressed through the Tuckman’s Team Development Stages (Beyerlein and Johnson 2000). The success of my tasks in role of team leader gave me enough confidence and help me in equipping myself with the tools, techniques and methodology that would be of significance in practical life. Alternative Course of Action It is evident from the above discussion that group experienced many twists and turns during the process of its development as a cohesive and effective team. Tuckman’s team development model had been very critical to the entire development process and its realization in practical terms. What all problems surfaced during the team development process were not beyond expectations, but what matters is the use of skills, techniques and methodology to solve these conflicts and problems in effective manner (McManus 2000). Clearly, the lack and effectiveness of the team leader role in the initial exercise presented may problems and the team dysfunction occurred. With out defined objectives and proper guidance, team was unable to identify ill-defined objects in the exercise and thus lost the focus (Northhose, 2010). If I had the opportunity to redo the task in capacity of team leader, I would adopt an assertive approach in this type of problem to reach the consensus if required. Also I would define the objectives for conduct the exercise and our ultimate mission at the beginning of the exercise so that each member is on the knowledge of team objectives. I would focus on preventing the problems and conflicts from occurring rather than correcting and solving (Bowditch and Buono 1997). Another problem that I faced was the establishing and enforcing of ground rules for team meetings. In absence of ground rules, members were not particular about the punctuality and timing of the meetings. Members used to engage in light conversation and areas of interest rather than meeting agendas wasting initial 10-15 minutes of meeting sessions. Also at initial stages members appeared not interested in meetings and were found busy in their own jobs in parallel other than team activities. If I had the opportunity, I would establish and enforce ground rules from forming stage of the team (Midura and Glover 2005). Another issue that surfaced during the meeting sessions, was the misunderstanding among the team members due to the cultural diversity that existed among them. As a team leader, I would prefer to consume initial 5-10 minutes of each sessions to provide members with an opportunity to introduce their culture and basic norms that are common or different with other cultures to develop an environment of homogeneity. Although not much problems were faced to contact and communicate among team members in timings other than the sessions because members exchanged contacts from the initial stage, I am convinced that a use of facebook, messengers and skype should have been encouraged. I am of the opinion that from the very initial stage, a list of all contact and sources for each member like cell phone, skype, facebook and email should be made and distributed among the members so that may take advantages of vitual team and modern technology for effective communication (Robbins et al 2009). Learning The project helped to enhance my self-awareness and I became cognizance of by blind windows, many aspects of my personality that were earlier unknown to me. I did not know that I could make a good team leader and was more comfortable in the role of implementer and coordinator, evaluator. The experience I gained made me realize that I could play a more effective part with team work rather than performing in the individual capacity. This experience equipped me with knowledge, tools and skills that would be much beneficial in practical life. From the initial stages, I was not comfortable with the idea of working in a group of unknown people but as the team progressed through its developmental stages and as I became familiar with the group, the fear and anxiety of working in group faded with time and I learnt to work with people from diverse cultural background, religions, ethical values and behaviors. I can appreciate now that most of my future tasks would be carried out in similar environments and through teamwork. During the entire project, I saw team progressing through its developmental stages based on Tuckman’s model and I am confident that I would be able to undertake any such team building activity in future. Although I was able to manage my role as team leader, I believe that there exists a great room for improvement owing to my limited experience. I would appreciate the group activities that helped to acquire these leadership skills. I also learned different approaches from participative to assertive and directive and when to adopt a particular style. I also gained practical knowledge on conflict types and their resolution techniques. With these skills acquired, I am confident that I would be able to effectively use these skill in future and prevent problems rather than correcting them. Conclusion In my opinion, my project met a successful completion despite many problems and issues, which were not beyond expectations. I am of the view that these problems and conflicts could have been prevented if the theories and concepts were practically implemented in true meanings from the very initial stages. I feel that I was successful not only as a team member but also as a team leader to achieve the desired team objectives. Undoubtedly, reflection has a significant role in learning and provides opportunities for improvement. I am confident that I would be able to apply these gained skills in any practical situation and lead a diverse team more effectively. References Bartos, O. and Wehr, P. (2002) Using Conflict Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press. Belbin, R. (2010) Team Roles at Work. 2nd ed. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Beyerlein, M. and Johnson, D. (2000) Team Development. 5th ed. New York: Elsevier Science Inc. Chaney, L. and Lyden, J. (2000) Making US Teams Work. Supervision, 61 (6). Druskat, V. and Wolff, S. (2001) Building The Emotional Intelligence of Groups. Harvard Business Review. Dyer, W. and Dyer, J. (2007) Team Building. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publications. Elwyn, G., Greenhalgh, T. and MacFarlane, F. 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