Developing Teamwork Productivity in a Diverse Workforce - Essay Example

Creating Effective Teams in a Diverse Workforce In every organization, there are individuals present with a range of ideas, perspectives, skills, and abilities. In organizations with a high level of diversity, there is an even greater range of ideas, perspectives, skills, and abilities present. These are all resources that the organization can use to achieve significant benefits. The difficulty that arises is in finding a way for all the unique abilities of individuals to be used. One effective method is to use teams. In teams, people are able to contribute the unique skills or ideas that they have. Alone, the unique skills of individuals may not be able to be utilized. In a team, the unique skills can be combined in effective ways. However, it is not as simple as creating a team and waiting for results. For a team to be effective, attention must be paid to several other areas. This will now be discussed by describing some of the important considerations necessary to creating effective teams. The first major benefit of teamwork is that it allows organizations to make use of the skills and abilities of all its employees. Another benefit of teamwork is that an organization requires that individuals work together. Even if teams are not present, all of the individuals within an organization are working together to achieve some overall goal. This makes it logical to suggest that an organization will function better if all the employees are able to work well together. In a diverse workforce, this can be a problem because individual differences are often a source of conflict. In response, many employees will avoid working with people they consider as different. When this occurs, the differences become greater rather than lesser. The importance of teamwork in a diverse workforce is that it forces individuals to come together and work together. In doing so, they gain a greater understanding of each other and differences are bridged. Even if the team does not continue to operate, the workplace overall has been improved by the process. This is an important benefit to a diverse organization. Of course, teams have disadvantages as well as advantages. One of the cons is that they may not be as efficient as having individuals working independently. Team members may be spending time trying to function as part of the team, where this time could be being spent completing work tasks. This con recognizes that it takes time and effort to manage and run a team. Another con is that it can be more difficult to manage and control a team. In a workplace without teams, tasks could be assigned and employees managed by their supervisor. This is a reasonably simple approach that makes it easy to control processes. If a task is not being completed effectively, the organization only needs to look at who is responsible for a certain task. This is more complicated if a team is present because it means that the task is owned by many It may not be a simple process of identifying and solving the problem. Another con is that teams often create conflict in the workplace. In diverse teams, conflict can be greater because individual differences make it difficult for people to communicate and understand each other. In some cases, individuals may consider themselves as different to everyone else, reject their role in the team, and isolate themselves from others. In other cases, diverse individuals that share common traits may group together. This can create division in a team accompanied by struggles over power. These are all reasons that a team created to produce positive results can actually have a negative impact on the organization. There are also complicating factors related to motivating people in teams. A major part of motivation is providing positive rewards for desired behavior. If individuals are working independently, it is generally easy to identify desired behavior and provide rewards to encourage it. In a team, it is more complicated. Firstly, individuals are best motivated when the rewards are provided to them personally. If this is the only way rewards are provided, it can be a source of conflict in the team where team members are competing against each other instead of cooperating. As one example of the impact of this, consider a team member where one member contributes more than others and is known for their creative ideas. For the other members of the team, this individual may be viewed as a threat because they are taking all the praise and receiving all of the recognition. The team members may react by choosing to ignore the ideas of this team member even when they are good. The end result is that the team member's ideas are not utilized and the organization loses a valuable resource. This suggests that the rewards should be based on the performance of the team overall. However, this also creates problem because it may not work to motivate everyone. Some employees may conclude that they can receive rewards without working because the efforts of other employees will be attributed to them. The employees contributing the most may become annoyed by all the team members are receiving reward, even those contributing the least. In response, these team members may choose not to contribute as much. The end result in this case is a team functioning at a lower level. This shows that providing the right level of motivation is not easy in a team. Individuals need to be motivated by a desire for the team overall to succeed. However, individuals also need to be motivated individually to contribute to the team. This requires a careful balance. This is also complicated further because a team is constantly developing and changing, with motivating needing to change to adjust to the needs of the team. The pros, cons, and motivation issues related to teams suggests that a team approach is not best for all situations. A team approach is not always appropriate if there would be a strong difference in the skill levels of the members. Importantly, combining different skills can create an effective team. However, combining different levels of skills can create problems. As an example, consider that a production team is created made up of engineers, skilled workers, and unskilled laborers. The different skill levels would be a large source of conflict in the team, where the engineers would be likely to be seen as superior, while the unskilled laborers would be seen as inferior. This type of team would be likely to repress and demotivate the unskilled workers, while creating high levels of conflict. A more appropriate team would be created by combining unskilled workers covering various skill areas or engineers with various specialties. The important point is that the level of skill would be the same, which would help the team operate as one unified unit. A team approach is also not necessary if there is no advantage to combining different skills and approaches. If all the tasks needing to be completed can be done separately, creating a team only creates unnecessary problems. This means that a team can be created for a specific purpose other than performing normal work functions. A good example is the use of problem solving teams, which are formed for the purpose of solving a particular problems that impacts various areas of the organization. This team can be created to solve the problem, where it is beneficial to have people from different departments or areas contributing their ideas. At the same time, actual work functions continue outside of the team. For every employee, working in a diverse environment where all employees contribute to team success can be a challenge. The difficulties can be minimized by using some strategies. One strategy is to be aware of sources of conflict in the team and to try to empathize with team members. This means observing team members and thinking about their position and why they behave the way they do. With this approach, insight and understanding is gained. This understanding can be used to adjust behavior to gain better results. Another strategy is based on making an effort to work cooperatively with others. This does not mean that conflict has to be avoided completely. Instead, it means that conflict should be approached with a focus on cooperating, not competing. That is, if an argument or discussion is taking place, the people involved will achieve a better outcome if they are focused on cooperating and reaching an agreement that suits everyone, rather than winning the argument and getting their way. This also shows that a team requires people to compromise. Another useful strategy involves retaining a focus on the purpose and outcomes of the team, rather than focusing on personal issues. As an example, consider a case where an individual suggests a bad idea. One response would be to say that the idea is bad and that the person does not understand the issue. This response would be likely to insult the individual and cause further problems. A better response would be to state why the idea will not work based on practical concerns. In this case, it is the idea that is being rejected not the person that said it. This would be less likely to insult the individual and would help to retain positive relationships within the team. Overall, it has been seen that teams can be an effective way to utilize diverse employees and allow diverse employees to work together effectively. It has also been seen that an effective and productive team is not created automatically. Instead, an effective team needs to be created in the right situation, with attention paid to motivation, and with employees knowing the strategies they can use to be effective members of the team. References Dalton, M., Hoyle, D.G., & Watts, M.W. (1999). Human Relations. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western Educational Publishing. Read More