Effective Team and Performance Management - Assignment Example

? Topic: Effective team and performance management Effective team management involves amalgamation of various methodologies and ideas and different individuals together to work as a team to achieve common goals on one platform. There is no hard and fast rule of how to manage a team effectively, but it is important to make sure that the leader or manager of the team has all the right leadership qualities to bring forward a productive and collaborative team effort. Some people are born with the qualities of being a good manager, while some are trained to do so. Good leaders or managers need to have some of the following qualities. They should be able to understand difficult ideas and deal with different issues with intelligence. They must be able to suggest solutions to problems and take control of situations by being initiative. They must have the self-confidence to be willing and able to lead others and to set an example. A team leader should be able to take command of others and to push through ideas and policies to their conclusion will assertiveness and determination. With energy and enthusiasm they must set high standards of effort and involvement so that others are encouraged to act in a similar way (Stimpson, Borrington 2006). Some basic roles of managers include strategic planning like setting aims and targets beforehand for the future as they give a sense of direction and purpose to any team work. This will be common feeling among the team members of having something to work towards. It is a manager’s responsibility to organize people and resources effectively with the process of delegation, because a team leader cannot do everything on his own. Some tasks need to be delegated to subordinates or team members. Delegation means giving a subordinate the authority to perform particular tasks. However, it is important to remember that it is the authority to perform a task which is being delegated and not the final responsibility. A manager can be very good or planning and organizing but may have failed to coordinate or bring people in the tem together just like what happened in the case study. This can be a real danger with the functional form of organization or structural problems as this leads to haphazard aims and not a shared vision. A good leader must therefore make sure that all team members are working together to achieve the plans originally set by the leader. Managers or team leaders must know the right way to command by guiding, leading and supervising people and not just telling them what to do. They must make sure that instructions and deadlines are being met on time. It is their responsibility that tasks are carried out by all team members effectively. Team leader must also try to evaluate and measure the work of all individuals to make sure that they are on target. There is little point in planning and organizing when leaders fail to check that the original aims are being met. Disciplining staff is also part of their responsibility (David, R. 2005). So, if the team leader does not possess all these roles, then the teamwork is going to lack a sense of control and direction. There would be no coordination between team members which will lead to wastage of effort. Control of team members and organization of resources is vital for productive output and results otherwise; the team project will drift and eventually fail. Different styles of leadership call for different management styles. A good leader will adopt the style of leadership that suits his situation the best. Leadership styles are the different approaches of dealing with people when in a position of authority; autocratic, laissez-faire and democratic. Autocratic leadership is where the leader is expect to be in charge if the project and have his orders followed. They keep themselves separate from other members of the team; they make virtually all the decisions. They will only tell people what they need to know. Communication is the business is mainly one-way and other people have little or no opportunity to comment on anything. Laissez-faire is a French word meaning ‘leave to do’. This type of leadership tends to make the broad objectives for the work known to individuals, but then they are left to make their own decisions and organize their own work. Communication can be difficult in this type of system as clear direction will not be given. The leader has a very limited role to play. However, democratic style of leadership which is also the style adopted by the team leader in the case study is where all members of the team participate in decision making process. Information about future course of action is openly discussed before the final decision is made. Communication will be effective and two ways. The style of leadership depends on the nature of work or project and personalities of the team members. Leaders cannot be autocratic all the time, it may be appropriate for them to be democratic over some issues, whereas other issues will need a decision imposing on the workforce. Communication is the transferring of a message from the sender to the receiver, who understands the message. It is important to have effective communication in a team. Ineffective or communication failures can lead to serious consequences like wrong message understood and acted upon which is waste of effort and time, deadlines will not be met and outcomes will not be productive. Both the sender and receiver should be involved in the communication process, this is called two-way communication. This way the receiver feels more a part of the process and can make a real contribution to the topic being discussed. This may help to motivate team workers. The message passed upon must be clear and easily understandable for all. The sender and receiver both, must pay attention and provide feedback (Panda Tapan, 2005). Motivation is the reason why employees want to work hard and effectively for a business or project. Motivation is the key factor to keep individuals interested and satisfied to give optimum performance. There are three motivational theories; one is of F.W. Taylor which states that people are only motivated by money. Second is Maslow’s where there are a hierarchy of needs that need to be satisfied for maximum motivation of individuals like safety, social, psychological, esteem and self-actualization needs. Third one is Mc Gregor’s motivational theory where he identified two types of managers. If the team leader would have used this motivational theory, it would have had better outcomes. One manager believes in Theory X which means that the willingness to work is mainly influenced by external factors such as pay schemes. These managers think that people are naturally lazy and have to be motivated, pushed and urged to work. The team leader will look to introduce incentives and have supervision to encourage group members to work hard. Managers who believe in theory Y think that motivation is basically an internal factor. Most people want to do a good day’s work but needs a favorable environment in e\which to do it. The team leader tries to provide a satisfactory environment where people are not frustrated and can take interest in work (Stimpson, Borrington 2006). Obviously monetary rewards cannot be given in our case study example as it is a school project and not done for money, but these include wages, commission, profit-sharing, bonus and performance related pay. While non-monetary benefits could have been given to the team members for high motivational levels, like job satisfaction where enjoyment is derived from a feeling that you have done a good job. Job rotation is where workers swap tasks and doing each task for a limited period of time. This can keep workers interested in a project for a long time. Job enlargement is where extra tasks of similar level are added to a workers job description. Job enrichment involves looking at jobs and adding tasks that require more skills and responsibility. All of these methods can be used to keep group member interested and collectively working as a team (Northouse, P. 2005). We observed some team management problems in the case study where were identified by Kayes. The team leader in the case study should have delegated some tasks to team members like doing research or the job of texting other members to notify for a meeting. This way the team leader would also have had more time to concentrate on other tasks like organizing and compiling the research work. When delegation will be done, it will boost the confidence of team members as they are trusted upon and feel important. Their morale and efficiency will increase helping the Person 3 to be more focused and participating and he will find his particular work to be more interesting and rewarding. In this case, probably the team leader was either unaware or perhaps reluctant to delegate certain tasks as it could have made him feel very insecure. He might have felt that there was a risk that subordinates would do a better job than him so he wanted to control everything by himself. In fact, there needs to be an increase in trust in order to reduce control over workers. Inefficient or poor performance by team members like not accomplishing the work on time or the need to over exert oneself to make deadlines meet could have been avoided if the team leader would have taken corrective measures by disciplining the staff. It is very important to do as it is a leader’s job to find out the reason for poor performance and start working on it immediately. In the case study we saw that Person 2 was always late in meetings and Person 3 was always busy on her mobile phone texting her friends and not concentrating on the discussion. The team leader should have been controlling and commanding enough to stop such behavioral and team dynamics problem. In the case study the communication was two-way but not quite effective. One person seemed to be constantly late and another busy on her cell phone. She never managed to understand what was being discussed. The team leader was shy, submissive, undisciplined and indecisive and was not affirmative in communicating with these two individuals. He could have been a little strict and commanding to make them work collectively. He should have adopted an autocratic style of leadership here. It is important to evaluate and manage the performance of all team members. Two-way communication between the supervisor and individuals is the purpose of performance management. It will help the team leader in rewarding and recognition decisions. The team leader must communicate with member on a regular basis for excellence in performance. All the individuals must participate in the communication process, provide feedback, understand their responsibilities and must not hesitate in clearing their misconceptions. This way, their performance will be at optimum level. We have seen the example of a self-directed work team. Roles and responsibilities are shared amongst all team members to achieve a common goal timely and in coordination with all team members. There was a lack of a collaborative team effort. There are certain tactics that the leader could have used to overcome conflicts within the team. First and foremost objective of a team leader is to define project aims and plans. This means giving a clear view of what is needed to be achieved in a given period of time. All team members must be contacted and explained their part of the job. If the members are not comfortable with each other then they must be given time to interact and understand each other’s personalities. This is called effective team assembling. Meeting deadlines is very important in any team project. Each team member must be allocated a certain timetable with individual tasks. The timetable needs to a have a little for flexibility in case something unexpected happens and there is no time left to do it. People must also be told not to wait till the last moment to get things done, instead prepare things in advance to avoid any major consequences as this will affect the team as a whole. Checkpoints after some interval of time must be established, to evaluate the progress of the project. Problems arriving at those stages will be dealt timely and accordingly. Alternative course of action will save time and effort. Once the team leader has been appointed, resources needed for the project like budget and information need to be obtained beforehand. Measurement standards should also be devised beforehand to assess the quality and progress of the work and project performance at the end. The leader must instill an effective system of communication between all members of the group (Doherty, 2008). The best leadership strategy is to avoid any conflicts at all, but even if they do arise for some reason, it must be dealt with patience and expertise. In the case study there was a conflict of team dynamics where some member showed no interest in working until the last minute. This disturbed other members and also caused them to lose focus and concentration. First of all the team leader must have tried to talk privately to those members of the group who did not seem sincere to their work. Just redirecting their thoughts and emotions in concentrating towards their goal for the benefit of the team as a whole will bring them on the correct path. Like when one person seemed bossy and tried to implement only her ideas and decision, the leader reacted very reasonably by listening to what she had to say an also making other’s opinions seem important by following a bit of both. Harmony must be created amongst team members by promoting healthy competition and not pangs of jealousy. There must be open communication of thoughts. Sometimes one or more members of the team will have to compromise on some point in order to reach an agreement and not take it personally, especially when not much time is left and a fast solution or decision needs to be taken. But when there is enough time, each member’s opinion is heard and then the best idea is implemented with careful study and discussions. The team leader’s personality must be a little more confident and should be affirmative in his commands; otherwise people tend to take advantage of this shy and soft behavior by taking the orders lightly. The whole team is affected negatively like this. The approach to communication should be more open-minded and vocal and interact with people freely. The team leader must be able to take control of a team in a friendly manner and get to know each member if the group even if they might not have the same personality as you have. Certain issues that are constantly becoming a hindrance in the team work must be dealt strictly on time or there is a waste of time and effort. Because some situations need to be dealt frankly while some need strict course of action. It is very important for all members of the team to cooperate, coordinate and work collectively as one team and avoid conflicts for a timely submission of project and excellence in performance. References: Alimo-Metcalfe, B. and Alban-Metcalfe, J. (2004). The development of first gender inclusive model of leadership. Paper presented to the European Institute for advanced studies in Management Conference on Leadership. Oxford University, December. David, Fred R. (2005). Strategic management. Concepts and cases. Tenth edition. Prentice Hall of India. p 123 DeJanasz, Dowd and Schneider. (2001). “Interpersonal Skills in Organizations,” Project Management. The McGraw Hill Companies: 349-68. Doherty. (2008). 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