Managment and People - Essay Example

Problems of Team Building: A Case Study of Mighty-Tech Acquisition Team Effective team building is essential for the achievement of projects objective. Team building can take different approaches depending on the individuals in the team and the tasks that the team is to accomplish. An ineffective team could result to wasted time and effort, low opportunity, low morale, and high turnovers (Parker 2011). Time and effort wasting and lost opportunity were the overall result of the project presented by the case study analyzed in this paper. In this paper, we identify and analyze the problems that caused the identified team in the case study not to achieve its goals within the set time. These problems are related to team building and could have been avoided if an effective team building strategy was adapted. One of the problems that are very conspicuous in the case study is lack of cohesiveness and coordination in the team processes. According to Tannenbaum, Beard, & Salas (1992), a team process refers to ways in which members of a team interact with each other. In this team, the level of interaction of the members of the team is low. Moreover, the general rules of a team like the rule of accountability and communication protocol do not exist. Therefore, interconnection between the roles undertaken by some of the members of the team is greatly interfered with resulting to the problem of lack of cohesiveness and coordination in the team processes. Lack of coordination and coherence appears because of the failure of the members of the team to link their activities with the activities of the members of the team. Moreover, appears because of the difference in priorities of the different members of the team. Beatrice prioritizes accuracy of work more than saving time and meeting the deadline. Bill and Ben give more priority in meeting the deadline. In this case, the team leader has been effective in making the team members play their rolls to their level best. Moreover, he had failed to clarify roles and set an effective communication line between the members of the team. This is what has made the activities of the embers to fail to interconnect thus resulting to lack of coordination and coherence. Every teamwork problem is avoidable and soluble through the employment of proper team building techniques. The problem of lack of cohesiveness and coordination could have been avoided in several ways. Team building approach used in this case study is the roles approach. This seems to have contributed to this identified problem. This is because of its ineffectiveness especially when used in a place where roles might conflict. Therefore, this problem could have been avoided by using another team building approach like the goal setting approach or the problem solving approach. Moreover, the problem could have been avoided or resolved by a continuous evaluation of the proceeding of the team. Sometimes it is very difficult to avoid encountering any kind of a conflict in a team. Moreover, in most cases, it is not important to avoid encountering conflicts. This is because conflicts can reveal opportunities especially when diagnosed early enough (Brophy 2010). The second problem that makes the team designed in the case study to be unable to achieve its goals in the required time is lack of conflict diagnostic and resolution technique. In the team identified for the project, two team members Beatrice and Ben had a conflict on how the accountant role should be played to maximize output while saving time. The team leader in this team, Bryce, took a lot of time to identify and result this conflict thus allowing it to affect team processes negatively. The problem of having conflict in the team could have been easily converted to an opportunity. This is because it could have been used to reveal role conflict between the roles of Beatrice and the roles of Ben. Moreover, could have been used to identify the better approach to be used in accounting to achieve the required goals using minimum time. The conflict could have also alerted the team leader in advance to realize that something requires to be done to avoid the failure of the team to achieve its goals in the required time. However, this could have only happened if the conflict was realized in good time and steps to resolve the conflict employed by the team leader. Characteristics of individuals in a team can be both constructive and destructive. The difference in characteristics of individuals in a team promotes team diversity. However, it could also result to conflicts among the members of the team. In this particular case, individual’s characteristics happen to be the major cause of the conflict. This is because Ben and Beatrice, who are expected to play closely related roles, have conflicting characteristic. Several ways exist for resolving issues related to individual’s characteristics like the above-identified problem. According to Masters (2009), the most effective ways of resolving such issues are mutual respect and giving credit to one another in a team. If this measure was taken, then this conflict could not have negatively affected the team. Another problem that the team in the case study encounters is lack of knowledge and motivation. Knowledge and motivation is necessary in making team members to work harder and regularly (Griffin & Moorhead 2009). If the members of the project team had worked an extra harder, then they would have been able to meet the project deadline. A project team member that reveals low levels of motivation is Beatrice. This is because she does not bother a lot when the project deadline approaches before she completes her work. Moreover, she fails to accept the adaption of an accounting approach that would use less time. The problem of lack of motivation could have been resolved in several ways. Team intervention is the most popular way of resolving such kind of a problem. As a problem solving process, team intervention can take various forms. One the forms is the use of incentives and rewards to motivate team members (Tannenbaum, Beard, & Salas, 1992). In the team building process for the project in the case study, there is no intervention measure is adapted for the project team. This makes some of the individuals in the team like Beatrice not to be motivated to go an extra mile to ensure that the goals of the project are achieved in good time. Therefore, this problem must have probably contributed to the failure of the project. The most popular intervention measure that could be taken when building a team is training of the team members. This form of intervention equips the team members with knowledge required for the implementation of the project. Moreover, it informs them of what is expected of them as well as how there are supposed to play their roles effectively in the project implementation. The project team in the case study is not trained prior to the project implementation. That is why some individuals in the team find it difficult to decide the appropriate approach to adapt in their role. References Brophy, JR, 2010, Leadership Essentials for Emergency Medical Services, Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Publishing Ltd. Griffin, RW, & Moorhead, G, 2009, Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations, 9th edn, Mason: South-Western Cengage Learning Ltd. Masters, K, 2009, Role Development in Professional Nursing Practice, 2nd edn, Sudbury: Jones & Bartlett Publishers Ltd. Parker, GM, 2011, Team Players and Teamwork: New Strategies for Developing Successful Collaboration, San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons Publishers Ltd. Tannenbaum, SI, Beard, RL, & Salas, E, 1992, Team Building and its Influence on Team Effectiveness: An Examination of Conceptual and Empirical Developments, New York: Elsevier Science Pub. Read More