The Different Challenges Which Members Working in a Team Encounter - Term Paper Example

Executive Summary This report presents the different aspects which have to be looked at while working in a team. This helps to identify some important aspects like importance of working together in a team, the qualities that the team working together should demonstrate, the process in which the entire team will work together, and the different challenges that the team will encounter and the strategies to deal with those challenges. The report shows the different challenges which members working in a team encounter and ensuring that more and more group task are assigned will help to understand the manner in which the team works and the different aspects which when included together will help to complete the assigned task. Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction Working in a team can be described as a practice where people look towards working together so that their qualities are integrated together so that the common objective can be achieved (Scaife, 2004). This is done with the purpose to ensure that the individual qualities of the people are brought together so that better results can be achieved in comparison to a situation where the person works alone. This report thereby looks towards presenting the manner in which working in a team is important, the qualities that the team members need to have, the manner in which the different members in the team have to work, and the different challenges that will arise while working together as a team. 2.0 Importance of Team Working Working together as a team helps to ensure that productivity improves as people with varied skills, knowledge, experience and views come together to work for a common purpose which helps to ensure that the chances of achieving the objectives are higher (Scaife, 2004). This will help to improve the entire process through which better services are delivered and will facilitate the required development through which the team gains over a longer period of time. Working together as a team also ensures innovation and quality. Working together as a team ensures that people with varied skills, knowledge, experience and views come together to work for a common purpose which will help to achieve quality in work. In addition to it when different minds work together the chances of developing new and innovative ideas increases which thereby ensures better achievement of the objectives (Scaife, 2004) Working together as a team and helps to fix responsibility and motivate the team members so that the goals can be achieved easily. Working together ensures a higher level of commitment as members look towards fulfilling their roles and are accountable to the leader of the group. This also helps to ensure that they are further motivated and helps to achieve the goals better. This will thereby help to ensure that all members are able to come together and work for a common purpose. This will strengthen the overall working strategy and help the organization to achieve its objectives. Working together as a team also helps to ensure that the overall skills of the person improve. This is because of the fact that social skills of the group members gets shaped up due to the interaction that is present among them. This thereby ensures that the members are able to improve the level of interaction that is present in the society. This will help to find out the gaps that have to be filled and working on those will help to develop better strategies through which the group will be able to work towards a common purpose. Working together as a team also helps to ensure that workload is evenly distributed as working together helps to ensure that the entire work is divided among the members. This helps to ensure that entire work is completed in a better and coordinated manner. This requires the following A successful team is able to develop synergy which helps to empower people and other team members to work in a manner through which the objective of the business can be achieved by using the resources in the most efficient manner A successful team ensures that all members are allowed to speak and contribute towards the common goal. In addition to it the team also ensures that all members are able to acknowledge and respect others A successful team ensures that all members are able to contribute towards the objective and their contribution can be reviewed and checked A successful team ensures that the team members are allowed to ask questions to each others and it is the responsibility and duty of the member to answer the questions so that the doubts gets solved The team members should ensure that each and every member knows the role that has been assigned to them and they work effectively in that direction A successful team ensures that each and every other member respects each other and is able to contribute positively towards it A successful team also ensures that the members listen to the views and points of others. This helps to ensure that the contribution of each member increases and the contribution of all the members towards the common goal increases 4.0 Stages of Team Working Formation of a team looks towards working on the model that Tuckman and Jensen has formed in 1997. The entire process involves five stages and are as forming, storming, and norming, performing and adjourning. Each stage has its importance and helps to identify the interpersonal skills that are required to work together as a team Forming Stage: This stage looks towards finding out the members and inquiring about the different members that are present in the team. This looks towards some questions like the role of the different members within the group, the manner in which the resources have to be used to achieve the objectives and the different rules and regulations that the members have to abide with. The team members also look towards inquiring about other members of the team where they look towards understanding their experience. This is one of the most important part in formation of the team as it helps to ensure the different members that will be included and the role that has to be performed by them (West, 2012) Storming: This is a stage where the team member engages in a task and look towards accomplishing the work that has been assigned to them. This stage might result in conflict among the team members due to different opinion that the members within the team have. Different members are seen to react to different opinions differently and gives rise to a situation where people act honestly and are able to develop long term relations so that the group works in a coordinated manner (West, 2012) Norming: This stage looks towards ensuring that the conflicts that exist between the members of the groups get solved so that they are able to work together and collaborate towards a common goal. This stage also looks towards developing different standard and making plans so that the team can work in that direction which will help to ensure that the goals are better achieved. During this stage it is seen that team members look towards communicating among the team members so that mutual support and respect can be generated which will help to work towards a common purpose. The role of the leader magnifies here as it is his responsibility to ensure that the different members are entrusted more responsibilities so that they are able to fulfil the roles that is assigned to them (West, 2012). Performing: This stages look towards ensuring that the team members look towards working as joint members so that they are able to work together and ensure better coordination among the different members. This stage also looks towards ensuring that they are able to develop an effective team where flexibility is generated among the team members so that they are able to deal with the different situations and are able to remove the differences based on which the entire process of achieving the task can be better controlled (West, 2012). Adjourning: This is the final stage also looks towards comparing the performance with what has been achieved and looks towards moving forward and backward so that the different stages of the performance can be reviewed and strategies developed to achieve the goals. The review also requires that the different task that has been assigned is evaluated correctly and the gaps are filled. The entire process is completed when the team members are able to ensure that the majority part of the work is accomplished and the task that has been assigned is as per the requirements. Thus a team that has to be formed has to follow different steps and ensuring that all the different elements are successfully fulfilled will ensure that the group is able to work together for a common purpose. 5.0 Challenges of Team Working One of the major challenges that is witnessed while working in a team is conflicts that the team members encounter among themselves. This usually happens due to the fact that the different views and conflicts of view results in the creation of conflicts within the members. Conflicts are a part of the organization but it should e ensured that conflicts helps to generate positive results in comparison to negative results so that the organization gains. Brodie, (2011) shows that organization who are able to ensure that productivity is generated due to conflicts it helps to ensure that the coordination among the members improve and the members look towards increased commitment and working in a manner through which the goals can be achieved. The other problem that the member working in a team faces is disengagement among the members on different topics. This happens due to the fact that all the members don’t look towards committing in the same manner. Instead they look towards concealing some facts and are not as committed. This thereby results in creating differences and disengagement among the team members and makes it difficult for the team members to achieve the task that has been assigned to them (Brodie, 2011). This makes the team member doubt each other with suspicion and makes it difficult to have faith among each other. This can act as a major hurdle as it will make it difficult for the team to work together and will create gaps which have to be watched out. It requires that strategies are developed which looks towards filling the gaps and ensuring that the overall team works together and achieves their objectives. The other challenge that the team members have to encounter is silo thinking. This happens due to the fact that a situation which has different viewpoints results the members to come up with different views. This gives rise to conflicts among the team members as they are unable to find a proper reasoning based on which the organization can ensure that the chances of accomplishing the task increases (Brodie, 2011). The other challenge that the business might face is the lack of proper communication that exist among the team members. Lack of proper communication methods might make it difficult for the team members to ensure that they are able to work together in a proper way. This might create a situation where a particular member dominates in comparison to other which results in increasing gaps and makes it difficult for the entire team to function smoothly (Brodie, 2011). This will make the group to be further divided into smaller groups where the team members look towards working with people whom they are compatible with. This will defragment the entire team and will create huge gaps in the manner the team members perform. This will also translate into a mechanism through which they are unable to find out a method where they will be able to bring together all the members and ensure that the overall goals of the business is achieved. Also not being able to communicate clearly makes it difficult to ensure that the objectives can be clearly stated. Unclear objectives results in creating gaps and the members are not able to work together as a group which makes it difficult for the team members to work together as the objectives of the team cannot be achieved despite the efforts of all the members. This will require that the entire process of communication is further delivered and then look towards ensuring that overall effectiveness is gained and the group memebers are able to work in a manner that will help to achieve the goals efficiently. 6.0 Conclusion The report thereby highlights the different aspect which are important to ensure that the team works together and the group is able to accomplish the task together. The report shows that working together in a team helps to improve the manner in which the objectives can be achieved by ensuring that productivity improves, there is innovation within the team, the level of commitment and innovation also increases and the resources are used in the most productive manner. Despite the benefits that team working provides it also creates some difficulties like lack of proper communication, domination of some members within the group, conflicts and unable to accept and respect the views of others. This thereby requires that team working looks towards developing positive synergy, respect and cooperation among the team members so that all the members are able to work in a manner which will help them to accomplish the group goals in a better way. References Brodie, D. (2011). Team Working: Common Challenges. Scaife , R. (2004). Best practice Guidance on Team working and safety . Prism . West, A. (2012). Effective Teamwork: Practical Lessons from Organizational Research. John Wiley & Sons. Read More