Teamwork Makes a Dream Work - Essay Example

?Teamwork Makes a Dream Work Inserts His/Her Inserts Grade Inserts Inserts Here (Day,Month, Year) Introduction Teamwork, team building and efficient work teams, are trendy topics in the modern organizations. Productive teamwork fires the achievement of strategic goals of an organization. Effectual work teams amplify the achievements of each employee and allow an organization to improve its services. More than two decades ago, automobile manufacturers Toyota and Volvo carried out team-based structures in the era of high formalization, departmentalization and centralised mechanistic organization structures (Robbins 1998). An increased number of public as well as private sector firms in the period of 1980s started the utilization of teams for task completion. Soon after a decade, this trend spread rapidly as small manufacturing enterprises started developing effective and strong managerial and production teams in order to yield better performance and enhanced job satisfaction. It appears that the usage of teams has disseminated to the extent that now the mechanistic and bureaucratic organizational designs have become an exception instead of being a norm. This paper attempts to explore the impact of deployment of teams rather than individual employees for organizational task accomplishments over the organizational success. Moreover, the factors that may hinder in the effective performance of a team will be assessed as well as the ways to overcome such issues will be sorted (Maxwell, 2002). Team Defined A team may be defined in terms of work groups that are appointed with the accomplishment of a performance job that necessitates joint cooperation. Thus teams are distinguished from other group types as it emphasized collective performance instead of focusing on individual learning outcomes that may be acquired while working in groups (Ryan, 2012). Levels of a team In order to accomplish desired level of performance, teams are assessed at various levels. These are individual member level, issue or content level, psychological or interaction level, procedure or method level and the outside relation level. Individual member level is an affair of individual perceptions, personalities, ideas and concepts, emotions, behaviours and intentions. Content level focuses on the content of the task undertaken by the team; the psychological level focuses on the mutual group members’ attitudes as well as the state of affair between them, roles, behaviour pattern as well as the observed climate. Method level ails problem solving techniques such as decision methodologies, rules or regulations within team analysis and creativity skills. The outside group relations deals with the relations or contacts as well as information cultivated with the other members of organization taking into consideration the deputizing rules (Harvey, Millett & Smith, 1998). Relevancy of Teams in an Organization Teams are relevant to organizations in various situations such as when competing organizations are utilizing teams, when organization is required to be flattened, when improving quality is the main focus of organization, when teams are needed or desired by employees, when in order to provide quick response to organization flexibility is needed and when the tasks needed to be completed require diverse knowledge and skills (Guzzo & Dickson, 1996). Working in a collaborative manner as team now proves to be catalyst that accelerates the process of realization of the complete potential of an organization. So being such a driver for growth, progress and development in the organization, the process of team building is strategically imperative. Developing teamwork is based upon facilitating a dedication to working together on the objectives of the company and adjusting the opportunity and circumstances for employees to bestow their best (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993). But in order to efficiently perform the team must be developed keeping into consideration various factors such as role of each individual, the conflict avoidance techniques, time and other resource constraints. However there may be other aspects that may lead to the creation of conflict within the team such as self respect, behaviours, unfocused, personal objectives etc. So in order to avoid such conflicts organizations need to provide proper training to employees in an attempt to build team (Patten, 1981). Moreover while assigning the task, a clear purpose should be provided, an accurate information regarding the objective is necessary, the roles must be completely identified, leadership should be naturally accepted effective communication, building solid relationships with the team members and effective processes should be ensured (Gallagher, 2010). Although there are multiple purposes for which organizations endeavour to build teams including problem solving but the main aim behind is to increase flexibility within the organization making it more receptive to environmental change and thus more competitive in the industry (Wageman, 1997). Theories and Team Building According to Belbin, nine roles have been identified to b played while working in a team. Each of the roles played by an individual team member should be naturally suited. A team role may be referred as a propensity to contribute, behave, and interrelate with other members in a specific way. The nine roles include plants, resource investigators, monitor evaluator, coordinators, implementers, team workers, completers or finishers, specialists and shapers. These nine roles are excessively used in the progressing modern day organizations all around the world others in a particular way. The role identification provides a way to eliminate the source of conflict over role ambiguity (Belbin, 2010). Moreover keeping in view the Maslow’s theory, team members can be motivated by satisfying their needs at each level. John Adair on the other hand provided a model on the basis of three lapping circles. These circles included task achievement, team building and individual development. His model provided a distinction between management and leadership as all of these circles overlap each other and only one cannot fulfil the requirement of an effective leadership. Various other theories of management like MBTI, McGregor Theory X and Y and Bruce Tuckman’s model provide insights on the various aspects of team building as well as maintaining. The team building aspects are addressed by Bruce Tuckman’s model while other theories provide ways to keep the employees motivated enough to participate as a team will synergy (Robbins, 1998). Conclusion Nearly every organization in the world now utilizes teams to accomplish its goals and objectives whether utilizing temporary or ongoing teams. More usual than ever in the history, the work is organized around teams as a vehicle for increasing profitability and productivity. Empowered teams achieve more due to increased cohesiveness and synergized efforts in less time as compared to individual work. Hence organizations assume teams as a critical way for countering the modern day challenges due to increased competition, increased innovation as well as rising globalization. The rationale for team formation and encouraging team works within organizations may be different but each team requires support and appropriate training for effective delivery of task and better performance. References Belbin, R.M. (2010) Management teams: why they succeed or fail, 3 ed. Oxford: Elsevier. Gallagher, K. (2010) Ch.3, Skills Development for Business and management Students, Oxford: OUP. Guzzo, R. A. & Dickson, M. W. (1996) ‘Teams in organizations: Recent research on performance and effectiveness,’ Annual Review of Psychology, 47, pp.307-338. Harvey, S. Millett, B. & Smith, D. (1998) ‘Developing successful teams in organisations’, Australian Journal of Management & Organisational Behaviour, 1(1), pp.1-8. Katzenbach, J. R. & Smith, D. K. (1993) The wisdom of teams: Creating the high performance organization, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Maxwell, J. C. (2002) Teamwork Makes the Dream Work, Thomas Nelson Inc. Patten, T. H. (1981) Organizational development through teambuilding, Wiley. Robbins, S.P. (1998) Organisational behaviour: concepts, controversies, applications, Prentice Hall. Ryan, S. (2012) ‘When is a team a team? “Teamworking” and the reorganisation of work in commercial cleaning’, Employee Relations, 34(3), pp.255-270. Wageman, R. (1997) 'Critical success factors for creating superb self-managing teams’, Organizational Dynamics, 26(1), pp. 49-61. Read More