Challenges Managers Face in Getting People to Work Together Effectively in Teams - Essay Example

Challenges Managers Face in Getting People to Work Together Effectively in Teams Organizations major challenge is to deal with their employees in a manner that is effective for the organization itself and its goals towards prosperity. Organizations have to deal with every matter that has to with its success in a way that should cater to the needs of its employees as well. If the employees are not happy then there would be no use in triggering the whole organization without the fuel needed. Managers of the companies have to keep a track of things so smoothly that they don’t face any hindrances while moving the company towards goals in the end. Managers have to work hard on this fact that their employees get what they want so that they are satisfied with what they are getting, let it be in monetary terms or psychological terms. Most of the times the reason for leaving a job is not getting the amount of pay one wants and also due to the fact that his or her boss keeps on nagging the employees about trivial things, such as not getting the work done as required although the work has been done on due time and with due effort etc. There are issues seen now related to getting employees work in teams which they don’t do in the way one manager would want them to. There are several reasons for that, for example don’t work because they are shy of not interacting with new people. Another reason can be that they are not very communicative, although that short coming should be eliminated in organizations training sessions. Further, there are employees that do not like to work with people whom they don’t like at all. Here comes the serious issue of handling people’s conflicting interests and catering to them so effectively that they are all geared towards one common goal with required amount of effort and energy. Certain examples have been taken from various case studies to depict this issue and solutions for this problem is put forth which can help managers deal in a sound manner. In the reading “Kiss the desk job goodbye” the writer talks about how boring the desk job which means a person has to just sit on his desk, waiting for the files to come up and just work on them continuously. According to the writer such kind of a job is not at all productive because it is not contributing to the work. It has no innovation and that kind of work does not keep the employee engaged in it. This issue is addressed by the author in a way that the organizations should be more like a family where everybody can interact and can take help if needed any in any kind of work. That is because one’s expertise would help in doing another’s work instantly. This can be helpful in creating an atmosphere in the organization of working in teams and helping one another effectively. Because of the fact one might know the solution to the problem you are facing, and without creating fuss for the management by continually asking questions about one thing or the other, this strategy can help in making everyone interact with each other and letting problems get solved by themselves smoothly. There are techniques nowadays that help people interact face to face while working, like web cameras and online video conferencing etc, but that would again contribute to the fact of staying at one’s desk and working. Although these methods can be used to solve the problem in short time and go on working for the present time but it won’t be effective for the organizations for making up teams and making them work together. Another reason that might not be favorable for taking up these technological advancements is that they again make the work tiresome, sitting at your desk for long hours without getting to walk around and look around what is going on in the office, and without talking to anyone about any issues, the problem remains at its place. In the article named as “Mommy-Track Backlash” the author describes the condition of an employee who wants some time off and surely wants it without having to have a baby. Jessica learns in her organization that the work load in increasing day by day and wants to get rid of it for few days so that she can start afresh after coming back from a vacation. She somehow wants a flexible schedule so that she can be tension free of the so much work load and can concentrate each and every thing separately and clearly. She wanted a clear distinction in what should be done at what time and how. She wanted to make decisions on her own while keeping in mind all the perspectives clear about everything and sort out things without any confusion. She wanted to make sure one more thing that employees in the organization where she worked, matter a lot to the managers and they care about them, because satisfaction of the employees would ultimately result in the satisfaction of the customers. Jessica was sure that if she had to take flexible working hours then she can work more productively and then she would be able to put in more effort with all her innovation to get the best output. Flexible work hours mean she can easily work at whatever time she wants and the managers should be lenient enough to leverage her work on that because she was tired and needed a break. Working in a team may affect the consequences of working at flexible hours because in that case she won’t be able to collaborate with the other colleagues. Managers have to give her such working hors which do not come in conflict with the organizational goals and other activities of the job. The job analysis would then be negative regarding the performance of the individual (employee) and the performance of the organization with respect to its goals. At many instances flexible job hours are not viable but managers have look into this matter closely. In the case of Jessica, she would be able to meet her goals and those of her job if the case of flexible working hours is dealt with sensibly. The common sense says that she should come up with creative solutions to her problem so that future miseries are avoided. Jessica had to take care of the fact that if she had been given flexible hours then would other employees would ask for the same thing? And what effects would it have on the employees’ performance for the organization on the whole? This is where organizational behavior and leadership comes in to play their part. Organizational behavior theory says that employees need to work hard for the betterment of the organization on continual basis and that has to have a positive effect on the organizations total performance in the market. Jessica had to keep in mind that the employees who are childless and the employees who have children should be treated fairly on the regards of their personal lives. The replacement she has to find for two of her employees was to be maintained in such a way that the organizational goals are not disturbed, with her own flexible hours of work. Roderick M. Kramer in an article “Trust and Distrust in Organizations”, explains some other challenges that make it difficult and exigent for the managers to make people feel at ease while working in teams. The main element that needs to be induced and introduced is “Trust”, not only on the people whom they are working with but in fact on the overall systems and processes as well. There is another element that breeds upon trust, is the feeling of security being in some company. The article has studied the element of “trust” in varying different perspectives. Firstly it’s being a choice of behavior (which is mostly a hindrance where people from diverse cultures work as well as in those organizations where opposite genders have to interact way too much); secondly, it is described as a psychological state which develops with time (normally) or it is developed by frequent interactions or by the usual “first impression” phenomenon. It is more of a kind where people tag it as a usual human expectancy behavior and being a part of a functional social system. There is also a set of moral and social orders that takes into account, all the experiences and social settings which a specific individual faces. Moving downwards into the hierarchy of types of trust, Roderick explains that some people take trust as a rational choice as well. Such people have limited and restricted social circle and don’t allow people to come closer to them, sooner or later; they have a barrier to socialization. There are various factors that affect organizations performance and that inflict a kind of pressure on the managers to meet those goals which are stated in the vision and mission statement of that organization. Managers play a major part in shaping the behavior of any employee. They can use positive and negative reinforcements, or punishment or extinction to make the employee work in the way a manager wants. Punishment and extinction are usually said to be avoided because they are one powerful tool that have negative effects on the employee’s behavior. He or she may not do a certain activity for which he or she is punished but may be inclined to do it if anyone, especially the manager is not around or watching him. People have very different views of different people whom they have never met before but if they meet them once, they would surely know what kind of a person he or she is. Then the employee would be comfortable in working with that person as he or she would be familiar with other person’s personality and the way he or she works or likes to work. The article talks about the same issue and puts forward the fact that trust play a prominent part in creating relationships among the employees belonging to diverse cultures. Behaviors are molded by the trust developed on one another. Employees not only have to trust on one another to minimize the level of shyness and reluctance to communicate but also the trust is to be developed between the employees and the managers. That is important due to the fact that their communication is significant for the organizational goals to be met. As the communication flows in a better way through out all the hierarchical level of the organization, the work is done more efficiently and everyone thinks that he or she is involved in all the matters as a team. Trust is also developed on one’s cognitive levels of interactions with one another. That is why trust puts certain limitations on one’s perception about the other person. Dispositional trust, history-based trusts, category-based trust, role-based trust, rule-based trust are some of the types of trust in an organization discussed in the same article. The effects of these kinds of trust mark a variety of results in diverse set of circumstances. Also the third parties play their part very interestingly in shaping one’s trust over the other. What one says about the other, and that other has to work with you, that matters a lot. The underlying point of this discussion in the article is that trust contributes a lot towards team building and how people work in that team. This trust minimizes the transactional costs all around the organization and develops a sense of social responsibility. This adds to the benefits if trust because that eases the flow of information among all levels. Trust is one powerful force that is very fragile and can break relationships among many of the employees all at once. That is all about trust which should be avoided in any case as that is the major influencing tool that would help in team building and effectively making it work towards the organizational strategies. In the article “Decision Making: It’s Not What You Think” by Henry Mintzberg and Frances Westley talks about the effectiveness of the decisions managers take at certain point in time and to what problems those decisions can address to. The basic art is how those decisions are made and when they are implemented so as to produce positive results. The managers have to think in advance, that is they have to be proactive rather than being reactive to solve the organizational problems. For that matter, managers have to be of the vision so that they can see things happening when the first glimpse of such happenings start showing up. Managers have to deal with every kid of problem at first hand and before it goes into the notice of superior hierarchy, the issues have to be resolved. These issues are of the intensity that could make or break the trust of upper level mangers or the shareholders in the organization. Preparations have to be made as earlier as possible so that such confusions and hurdles can be eliminated. Rational thinking counts a lot in such a process which is one of the in-built qualities of a leader or a manager in an organization. Another factor which counts a lot is the ability to put the decisions into action before anyone else does. That is only possible if the final decisions are implemented in the way that they are helpful to the organization and help the employees understand their mission clearly. If the decisions are approved by the upper level authority and are implemented afterwards, there are more chances then of their effectiveness and the survival of all systems of the organization to be functional. There are problems which occur at every level of the hierarchy, starting fro the line managers to the shareholders, but the way they are tackled in a pattern to smooth the fluctuation of difficulties along makes it appear to be surprisingly valuable. Every approach has its strengths and weaknesses and every manager has those too. Each manager has to have those skills to work out through tough times with the analytical techniques used commonly and fairly in organizations nowadays. Employees are also motivated by such managers who have the ability to lead the employees towards their mission distinctly and without any distractions. The article naming “A Multilevel, Complexity Theory Approach to Understanding Gender Bias in Leadership” by Mary Hogue and Robert G. Lord talks about the gender biases present in organizations and how that can affect the organizational behavior in shaping the targeted goals. There are many theories regarding micro and macro level integration if this gender bias but this should be intermingling with the organizational als as it would be affecting not only the targets of the organization badly but also the motivational level of the employees. They would be no more encouraged to work as they are required to and the organization would suffer in the end. The blame would be on the managers in the end who are supposed to work as motivational sources for the employees in very way, be it psychologically or physically, and charge them up to work with all their innovation and strengths. Gender affects the leadership in a number of ways, for example if the leader is a male, everyone would be listening to his orders and remarks on the work more sternly and if the leader is a female then everyone would take it leniently. That is the case in most of the organizations and it is also said that almost 90 percent of the employees waste time in useless activities in the organization while only 10 percent remaining are productive, so the companies have to take care of such a great amount of employees who are contributing nothing to the organization and if this big number starts working in a positive manner then it can create wonders. The top-down and bottom-up approaches in an organization help a lot in the integration of information and communication through out. In the top-down approach, only the orders are made through to the lowest level of mangers that have to guide the employees in the same way as stated. But in the bottom-up approach, the issues are sent from the bottom of the organization to the highest level so that they are sorted out in the way everybody wants. The latter one is more effective and is mainly used in decentralized organizations which are less stricvt in their rules, regulations and policies. The centralized ones are have their inclination more towards the top-down approach. Key findings and summary: All of the discussion above, made by the authors of various articles and also the analysis done with them shows that organization is driven by its goals firstly, and then how the managers seek to act upon them so that employees work effectively to achieve those goals. That requires basic fuel named as leadership and team building. Leadership helps the managers to guide the employees working under them in an appropriate direction and team building needs to be done in order to mobilize the employees to communicate with each other so that things get done easily and quickly. All that matters is the organizational tools in the end that shape the over all performance of the organization. The points to be taken care of are: Organization should be clear enough regarding its goals Organization should declare those goals clearly without any confusion to its employees so that they can work accordingly Managers should have a list of things to do and make sure these things are done in due time to meet the deadlines Employees should be willing and prepared to act upon those orders and targets so that the organizational strategies are seen working in action Employees should work in team to resolve the issues among themselves and get things done in an effective way; they need to have that motivational level for that without having any difficulty in communicating anything to anyone All of the points mentioned above are the major conclusion and organizations can learn a lot from these findings. Still, there is always space for further research and analysis and the raod never ends. Bibliography Beersma, C. K. (2006). Conflict in Organizations: Beyond Effectiveness and Performance. 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