Team synergy and Conservative Control - Essay Example

? Effective Team Performance Table of Contents 1Introduction 3 2Easy recruitment 3 3Team synergy 3 4Team is not a collection of people 4 5Introduction 4 6Concertive control 4 7Correction method 6 8Training 9 9Conclusion 10 Bibliography 11 1 Introduction Team building is very important in the workplace especially with regard to the fact work is becoming ever more complex with a need to increase efficiency and productivity. This document looks at the Electron case study to evaluate the following role of teamwork in the workplace. 2 Easy recruitment According to Belbin (2012), one of the major roles of a team is to aid in recruitment. Furthermore, these teams can also be used in achieving synergy in the way the human resource in an organisation is used. In this document, this issue will be looked at critically to see how the teams in Electron were used in the recruitment process and the application of this in other organisations. This case study showed that a good team formation can be useful in creating a good platform for recruitment. Recruitment is changing, and it is getting increasingly necessary for organisations to be able to get talent and develop talents. This document will indicate, through a closer look at the facts in the case study, how an organisation can use teams in the organisation to have a proper and productive recruitment. It also indicates how these teams can be used in getting the right talents and also in maintaining the best talent and making sure that the wrong employees are kicked out of the organisation when and if necessary. 3 Team synergy A crucial effect of teams is actually synergy where each team members bring in their best and use it to improve the team in terms of productivity and efficiency (Select Knowledge Limited 2011). This document will look at this with regard to how the team members in Electron contributed to the development of a more formidable workforce. According to Dyer 2013, team synergy is about making sure that every member in the team benefits from the strengths of others and that each of the individual weaknesses are covered by the other members. However, how this is achieved can be a challenge because there may be other inhibiting factors that may make it harder for a team to synergise. 4 Team is not a collection of people One of the most important theories about a team is a collection of people with common goals and who aid each other in achieving this goal (Belbin 2012). With regard to the Electron case study, this will be investigated to see how the teams in Electron worked together in order to achieve their goals together. 5 Introduction Teamwork is one of the most important performance tools. Being able to inspire teamwork in the organisation is one of the most useful things that an organisation can do. Teamwork may be utilised as a tool to help the organisation to overcome numerous setbacks in the market. This can be exemplified in the Electron case study. The teamwork illustrated in the case study can be looked at using the different team theories. One thing that is the most striking about the teams in Electron is that they are able to work together to a stronger force in order to achieve their goals. 6 Concertive control One of the main issues that come out in the case study is the way the team have used concertive control in making sure that the teams remain functional. There exist various factors which may be attributed to this concertive control. One of them is the fact it becomes more effective than having a manager led team. According to Kelley 1992, concertive control can be seen as a way to help the teams to be able to have leadership that is not dependent on one person but rather where everyone, new or old has a say and can contribute to the leadership. This is very useful in motivating team members into contributing to the team. People are more likely to be effective and cooperative when get the attitude that they are in control of their environment rather than when they feel that they are controlled by an individual. This form of common control in the team is also very useful in making sure that there is less victimisation, as opposed to where one individual leads the team and may have his favourite people in the team and those who he or she does not like (Williams 2002). The concertive control is also what made the team stronger by making sure that each tam brought in their best skills and that those who were not goods in a particular area could depend on others to complete them. In this regard, concertive control is not just a way to check those who were not following the team rules, but as a way to a lot complement each other. For instance, one of the technical teams agreed that any technician should never hesitate to ask for help when they are stranded and should raise the flag in order to ask for help. In this regard, when a technician is stranded about a certain aspect of the work, they are most welcome to ask for help, and there is an even easier way to do because all they have to do is by pressing a red button and help will arrive. This helps in avoiding unnecessary errors and helping increasing the rate of production while reducing he error rates. This is very important in a manufacturing environment. There are however some issues that may arise from this concertive control (Fagbohungbe and Longe 1994). Lack one central control is also likely to cause chaos in the team. Leadership is as important as the ability to synergise because without a common source of leadership, is likely to be lead to not only confusions but also lack of good social order. While the teams many benefit from the good concertive teamwork where each individual is able to question and correct each the other members, it is also important to understand that this may lead into situation where this can have a negative effect on the team. This is because the team members may use this as a way to sabotage each other and make especially where there is competition in the workplace. If the workers start utilising this as a tool to sabotage other employees as in order to look better, this can be counterproductive (Belbin 2000). 7 Correction method One of the biggest challenges with the concertive control in a team, as can be seen on some of Electron’s teams is that the mode of correction of the team members may seem disrespectful, and this can reduce the morale and motivation in the team. For instance, the method use to correct an employee who was doing the wrong thing can be seen as disrespectful when an employee was found doing the wrong thing, the senior member who corrected him did not use a respectful method to correct the employee and this can be a big setback to morale in the employees. With regard to this, it is important the method used to correct is effective without seeming to be disrespectful (Forsyth 2013). This is especially so with regard to the fact that the age difference between the employees and this can be a big issue. For instance, it is important to note that the age difference can be a challenge in this kind of situation especially because if a junior employee takes it to her own hands to correct and order the employee, this may lead to poor relationships between the employees. This is one thing that may need to be taken care of. While the team formation of found in Electron may be applauded in terms of its ability to create cohesive teams, it has also failed to consider some of the important team theories that can be useful in making sure that everyone in the team is able to fully contribute to the team in a healthy and productive way. Belbin 2012, for instance, talks about the different personalities of a person and the way they contribute in the way a team member performs in the team. He argues the different personalities of a person must be taken in consideration in order to make sure that the different personalities of individual members don’t affects the way are able to contribute to the team. For instance, one of the issues that were identified in the case study was that a certain technician failed to raise a red flag when he was having a problem with a specific task, and this ended to big error that had to be detected and corrected earlier. This kind of a thing can be viewed in at least two ways. One, the employee could have just been a careless person who did not want to follow orders. On the other hand, this can be seen as one manifestation of what Belbin 2000 is talking about when he discusses about the personalities of an individual and the way they are able to contribute to the team work. In this regard, it is possible that the technician was only afraid of asking. This can be a manifestation of an introverted personality which would then mean that the individual was afraid to ask. There is not any indication in the case study about how the team building effort that indicates that this issue of personalities was overcome. Because of this, it is essential to understand that the people personality traits among the members of the team may be holding back the team and preventing it from being able to achieve some of its goals. Any team formation that does not take care of the personality issues will have issues because every form of personality needs to be restrained and taken care of for the individual member with this trait to be able to fully and constructively contribute to the team (Patten 1981). Introverted people have a higher risk of being affected by the following issues within a team; They are less likely to be unable to speak their minds and therefore even in cases where they have a brilliant idea on how to improve the team, they are most likely to remain in the back row and listen to those who have less creative ideas. Secondly, introverted people are also more likely to be shy about asking for help and therefore will not be able to benefit from the strengths of the other people even when this help is readily available. The team formation in Electron fails to take care of this issue and therefore although it is designed to achieve synergy, introverted employees are not likely to benefit from is synergy because there are no supportive mechanisms through which to make sure that the employees are able to overcome the barriers created by their personalities traits and benefit from the input from the other employees. The opposite of introverted persons is an extroverted person or a charismatic person. These are people who are ready to speak their minds and who are able to convince others to listen t them. This kind of people also has their role in the team. However, as Tanke 2001 argues, they also need to be reined in order to prevent them from going to their own destruction and the destruction of others. Extroverted individuals in a team are likely to have the following issues; An extroverted person may be unable to benefit from the others because they may rarely listen to others because they feel they have everything figured out. These are the individuals may be controlling the team even if they don’t have the technical knowhow. They are likely to dominate the team, and this can be a big issue for the team if the person is not reined (Fagbohungbe 1994). In a team setting sic as found in Electron, the extroverted charismatic person is likely to easily get away with the behaviour that is considered unacceptable. This are the people who are likely to come in late for work and the other team members will not have the guts to raise a complaint against them because this person is liked by everybody else in the team and going against them may land one in trouble with the rest of the team. In reality it is a main challenge of the concertive control that is found in the team formation of Electron. Moreover, as Kelley 1992 asserts, introverted members do not fully involve themselves in the team work in a situation where there is not central leadership. In this regard, it can be said that the team formation strategy in Electron has failed in this way, for failing to provide the necessary platform to ensure that all individuals are able to participate in the team. 8 Training The team formation in Electron has indicated what Belbin 2000 discussed in his theory, that team in an organisation is a good way for creating recruitment and training platform. The information in the case study revealed that the teams in Electron were a good way to ensure that the recruitment and training are done smoothly. For instance, once a new employee joins Electron, they will join one of the teams, and it is their ability to get along with the team may determine if they will stay in Electron or not. At the same time, these teams are used for training new employees. Various issues arise from this. This also has to do with personality traits and how they affect the way different individuals are able to interact with the other people. Electron seems to depend too much on the opinion of the members in training and recruitment. These can bring issues in terms of personal interests. For instance, if one individual feels that a certain other individual in the team is a threat to their future career, they are more likely to mobilise the other members of the team to expel the person. In other words, the nature of the way the teams are formed in electron can be used to create unhealthy competition among the members. As Marquis and Huston 2009 says, it is essential to ensure healthy competition is encouraged and at the same time rein this competition in order to prevent it from getting into unhealthy competition while the team formation in Electron is useful in creative a vibrant team, it fails to address this issue, and this can be very dangerous in the long run. The other thing is that it can be restrictive to the introverted people because they are less likely to be able to sell their selves to the rest of the team. This would mean that less charismatic people into this kind of a setting would have the least ability to advance in their career because their personalities would stand in the way even if they are competitive and hardworking. As William et al. 2011 says, focusing too much on social skills can be detrimental in making good team and also in developing a vibrant team because this is not the only thing that should be considered in the long run. 9 Conclusion It is evident that team work is very important and necessary in the workplace, and without this it can be harder for the organisation to function. Team theories however don’t work in every situation and team formation is as unique as the individual team. This can be seen in the team formation in Electron where some theories of team formation have been proven not to be entirely universal. At the same time, the case study has revealed that most team building theories are actually universal and true in almost all situations. Personality traits form a formidable force that affects the way team works and therefore it is necessary for any team manager to look at this issue in a more serious way. This was clearly revealed in the Electron case study. However, one important thing that has emerged in the case study is the way in which teams can aid in recruitment and training process. This is very important, and any organisation can benefit from this kind of a thing because recruitment and training are very important aspects of a firm’s strategy and doing well in this area can help the organisation in achieving competitive edge. More so, tam building can and does support synergising a firm’s human resources, and this is very important for any organisation. Bibliography Belbin, M., 2000. Beyond the Team. London: Routledge. Belbin, M., 2012. Team Roles at Work, 2nd Ed. London: Routledge. Dyer, W. et al., 2013. Team Building: Proven Strategies for Improving Team Performance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Fagbohungbe, B.O. and Longe, S.O., 1994. Industrial psychology: x-ray of behaviour in Nigerian organisations. New York, NY: Kole Consults. Forsyth, P., 2013. Successful Time Management. New York, NY: Kogan Page, Limited. Kelley, L., 1992. Issues, Theory, and Research in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Limited, S. K., 2011. Managing Teams . Cambrigde: Select Knowledge Limited. Marquis, B. and Huston, C.J., 2009. Leadership roles and management functions in nursing: theory and application. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Patten, T., 1981. Organizational development through teambuilding. Boston, MA: John Willy and Son. Tanke, M., 2001. Human Resource Management for the Hospitality Industry 2nd Ed. London: Cengage Learning. William. P, et al., 2011. Business 11th Ed. London: Cengage Learning. Williams, L., 2002. Creating the congruent workplace: challenges for people and their organizations. Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Group. Read More