Small Group and Team Communication - Essay Example

Small Group and Team Communication Small Group and Team Communication Introduction The workplace environment has changed extensively in the past two decades. Earlier, each company had several workers, supervisors and a common manager. With the advent of the IT industry, this culture changed completely. Since each company is managing several different projects, small groups with ten to fifteen members managed by a team leader and a manager for ten or fifteen team leads is quite common. A normal IT company will have forty to fifty managers with four or five high level executives managing them all. Working effectively in small groups and establishing proper communication within teams as well as among different teams is a must in this modern age. Every team leader and manager should be an expert in dealing with small groups to achieve success. The Role of a Leader “Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work” said Vincent Lombardi. The duty of every leader is to bring out this personal dedication from every person working under them. Every team member is like a horse tied to a chariot. The team leader should control this group of horses using ethics as the whip and identification plus appreciation as the carrot for the horses. As a charioteer, the leader is completely responsible for making his team win or lose the race. A leader has several responsibilities like understanding the specific problems associated with the project, running the team smoothly without any ego clashes, extracting the best from the new performer as well as the star performer, meeting the deadlines and the expectancies of the management without compromising the basic rights of the city clean team, etc. Cultural Differences With the concept of global Village gaining popularity day by day, working with people from different countries in multicultural workspaces is unavoidable. When people from various races and countries join together to work in a single group, conflicts arising because of cultural differences are very common. For example, Americans consider it an honour to give each other enough space. They do not interfere in another person’s personal life. At the same time, people from traditional European countries consider it a symbol of friendship to act very close to each other. Handshaking is considered as the polite act in some cultures, while kissing on the cheeks while greeting a woman is mandatory in others. The same act is considered taboo in eastern cultures. The 4 significant Group Development Stages Several conflicts might arise due to these misconceptions. It is up to the leader to run the team smoothly by making the conflicting parties understand each other. The leader should assign tasks specific to each person. Here is an example which explains the importance of group work and team communication in detail. Consider a company is planning to go green and assigning the project to an 8 member team. They should create a full-fledged plan fit to be incorporated on the whole office. The process should start with the leader explaining about the ethical importance of the work they are doing. The team members will dedicate themselves to work properly, only if they understand the importance of the job assigned to them and its impacts on the company and the world as a whole. 1. Forming The next step is to form a group and assigning different tasks to each person. Some team members might be experts in gathering lots of information, while others might have lots of talent in putting together financial resources. Each person should be assigned a task fit for their ability. This is where conflicts will start to arise. Each person will feel, the other person is given more importance than themselves. It is up to the leader to make them realize, the contribution of each and every member is important for cohesive work. They should explain to the team members, a particular work is assigned to them because they can do it better than all others in the team. This is called the “Forming” of a group. Open discussions should be held at this stage on any conflicts. 2. Storming The second stage is “Storming”. Each group member should be made to understand what is expected from them completely. Each individual should be assigned a specific task like gathering information on new green technologies, creating a budget to implement them etc and they should be given a particular time frame to complete it. Once this is done effectively, the team members will start working towards their goal automatically. 3. Norming The third stage is “Norming”. Group discussions should be held frequently in this stage. The ideas of various people should be discussed before finalising on any particular plan. The team leader can use idea needlers and have an open door policy to access the ideas of different people. If a person feel a particular strategy is invalid, they should come up with an alternate way for the same and be able to explain themselves why it is better. In the above example, some people might consider using recycled paper in the office a very appreciative will move. Others might feel there is no need to use them, when there is advanced intranet software present in the office. The leader should give a chance for everybody to express their views before finalizing an idea to be implemented and explain to the team why he had selected that particular idea. 4. Performing The last stage is the “Performing” stage. The team will work together to put the plan into a proper format within a given deadline. Several anomalies might arise like a team member getting hurt suddenly, the price of the items mentioned in the plan rising, etc. A proper groupthink activity will give a suitable solution to the issue quickly. Else, the leader should be capable of explaining the same to the management and fetch more time or resources for the team to work on the issue. Each person in the team has a different role. But all of them should work together to complete the project on time. Group activities other than official meetings like taking them out together for an outing, or a picnic will help the members get close to each other. It will reflect in work immediately. There should be a computer mediated communication system which documents every progressive step and an anomaly faced. All group members should be made register their contribution to the project in it constantly. Reviewing this tool periodically will help the team understand the position of their project and how far they have to go. Importance of Communication A leader should be capable of listening intently to the team member’s views to achieve all this successfully. He should overcome the main barriers in listening and hone himself into a proficient person who can extract valuable information from the feedback received. All the above mentioned steps combined with a friendly management will enable any team to complete the projects on time professionally. In the above mentioned example, the leader’s task will not stop with completing the project successfully. He has to communicate the same to several other small groups when the green technology will be implemented in them. The leader should have in-depth knowledge in the process to address the questions from the other teams regarding the project when it is presented to them. Not only the leader, but every team member involved in the process should be able to do the same. This is important to make the team’s hard work recognizable throughout the office. Inter-team communications are a must to achieve the final goal of making the office a much greener one. The interpersonal and team working skills honed while working on the project should be put to full use for inter-team communication also to achieve the end target successfully. The concepts explained in the example are applicable to all projects handled by any small team in a corporate office. A good leader should master each of these techniques to climb the next successful step in their career quickly. References Harris, E. & Sherblom, C. (2008). Small Group and Team Communication . Boston: Pearson Education. Read More