Working in Teams - Essay Example

            For years, many individuals have not been able to distinguish between a group and a team (Hardingham, 1998). For a normal individual, these are just collective words meaning that they do not even require separation. To others, saying ‘we have formed a team’ means the same as ‘we have formed a group’. Hardingham (1998) finds a great difference between the two words – teams have particular goals and each member upholds and works towards achieving them while groups are just numbers of people. Important to note, that in a team, there is a common goal that requires the input of each and every member to accomplish. In simple words, a team is a group of people with a common inclusive goal – groups form teams. In a way, teams are modified forms of groups. Modifications are made of ideas of having a common goal. Hardingham (1998) raises a case of a team of soccer players. Clearly, each member of such a team is bonded to the other by a common thing. For instance, such a team wants to win a match and every member of the team will be working towards achieving a win. To such a team ‘winning the match’ is the common goal that requires the presence and efforts of each member (Hardingham, 1998). On the other hand, if people have individual goals that do not are mutually exclusive in terms of purpose, such people can only exist as a mere group. For a team, the achievement of the common goal generates mutual and equitable satisfaction (Roodt & Odendaal, 2009).

When it comes to management, managers are given a ‘group’ of workers who usually come from different backgrounds (Hardingham, 1998; Roodt & Odendaal, 2009). Such a manager is mandated to use the given group of workers to achieve particular performance targets. While a particular performance target is a goal, inevitably, each worker must work towards its achievement. Therefore, the formation of a team or teams of workers is absolutely the primary step. The responsible manager, therefore, has a role to form a team in this context. But forming coherent teams is not a simple task for a particular manager. Is important to recognize that for a team, the conviction of an employee that he or she is indeed a member of a team in the workplace is vital (Roodt & Odendaal, 2009). The manager has a vital role in deriving this conviction among the proposed team members. Upon achievement of a particular goal, the manager has an obligation to ensure that all workers are mutually satisfied and proud of their contributions (Roodt & Odendaal, 2009). This can be through acknowledging and rewarding various individual inputs and contributions of the workers (Roodt & Odendaal, 2009).

Any potential negative effects that these differences may eventually cause must be discouraged and streamlined by a common goal. As a matter of fact, diversity in the workplace is supposed to be beneficial to individual employees and to the management of the organization in question. The more the employees are of diverse backgrounds, the more coherent team formations become (Roodt & Odendaal, 2009). There is inherent mutual respect among workers of different backgrounds (Roodt & Odendaal, 2009), unlike among workers who come from a similar background – people from the same background know the same things and therefore there is no balance in terms of different operations in an organization. For example, detection of mistakes that could result to the failure of achievement of particular goals or cause massive losses would be very difficult if people knew the same things and had the same values. Similarly, when we say that each person’s input must be considered for success, we mean that such a person provides ideas or efforts that cannot be found anywhere else under the current circumstances (Hardingham, 1998). Just like in a team of a soccer players, each member of a team especially in workplaces plays a unique and/or specific role towards the achievement of a goal (Hardingham, 1998). The different members thus ought to have different abilities all for the best interest of the organization. In other words, diversity among workers or rather members of a team means a lot for the achievement of a team’s goals.