High Performing Teams - Admission/Application Essay Example

Was the team high performing or not - why. Dear Dr Graham, In this team, I have experienced ups and downs in terms of feelings and relationships. Yet, I feel the team was high performing for which I have outlined my findings in accordance with my learning. I have noticed that each one of us has given full commitment to fulfill our goal of creating a high performing team. Our orientation towards the team goal was set right in the first place by the rules and expectations at the beginning. As we all were very clear of what we were supposed to achieve, we also felt we could achieve the goal, because goal clarity is extremely important for success. In addition, we also had defined every team members’ role in achievement of the goal. I have many reasons to believe that we have been able to successfully create a team and are in the right direction towards achieving the goal. Firstly, we had a clear objective in front of us that all of us were in agreement with. The guidelines in the agreement include team goals/objectives, directions to achieve the goals, rules and expectations from team perspective, responsibilities assigned to all team members, and also a clear conflict resolution procedure. These guidelines were explicit enough to direct each one of us towards achieving the intended goal. The clarity of guidelines helped us in reaching on an agreement with the objectives. We were clear about the priorities, which kept us focused towards the objectives. On similar lines, Colenso (1997) pointed that team’s main features such as a great deal of observation, measurement, supposition and assorted speculation drive the team towards high performance. Our motivation was driven by four main factors that include belongingness, importance, responsibilities and accountability. Sense of belongingness that was created was a motivational factor right from the beginning. Different responsibilities that each of us carried reinforced the sense of belongingness as it increased interdependence. Each one of us was aware of what individual tasks we carried, and how these tasks would impact the team’s success. Hence, every task was considered as equally important, and hence accountability was with everyone, unlike its ownership. The team knew that in case of any issue that might arise in course of task completion can be resolved with the help of other members. This feeling further increased our sense of belongingness. The three characteristics, i.e. sense of fairness, sense of achievement, and sense of camaraderie formed the guiding principle for creating a high performance team (Johnson, Heimann & O’Neill, 2000). I take pride in the kind of team processes we created, i.e. goal clarity, rules and expectations, conflict resolution processes, selection of team leader, allocation of responsibilities; the processes for increasing team bonding through regular team meetings, information sharing, and face-to-face and open discussions. These processes are definitely the deciding factors, or governing values as described by Argyris (1999), for team’s success. Through these processes, we ensured minimizing losing and maximizing winning; minimizing expression of negative feelings; decreased opportunity for confrontation; rational approach; maximized cooperation and collaboration; maximized free and informed choice/decisions. As our work progressed, I cannot deny troughs created due to every team member’s behaviour which was shaped by psychological aspects as well as previous experiences. Although the team processes created a strong sense of belongingness, eventually w, at least I experienced being left out. In my case, a self reflection of my personality made me associate two reasons for these feelings, first to my cultural background and second to some team members’ behaviour that was on the verge of creating sub groups within. At the same time when I felt left out or out of the group due to cultural oddness, our team leader, Lauren, helped me to overcome these feelings, driven mainly by the cultural differences. This not only talks about the ability of leader to show inclusive behaviour, but also her knowledge with respect to cultural influences that may hamper team bonding amazed me. Her extroverted attitude and collaborative personality type were in perfect unison with the areas that the team needed to improve upon. Gray suggests that it would be incorrect to believe that every team has the potential to evolve into a high-performing team without ingenuity, discipline and sensitivity to build team dynamics (2005; p.262). I believe that our team possessed some of these attributes and developed others eventually. For example, ingenuity and discipline were set as grounding principles of the team agreement. Sensitivity to team dynamics was gradually incorporated into every team members’ behaviour. Coming back to the second reason of feeling left out, potential for subgroupism was negated by our team leaders’ extroverted nature that deliberately brought all team members to the discussion. This way it not only eliminated subgroupism, but also improved all team members’ confidence in the leader and belongingness. Finally, another important hindering factor to team’s performance was the different personalities that each member possessed. With the help of TKI and MBTI test results, we had assessed each member’s personality type and behaviour. This understanding helped Lauren to facilitate team meetings in better manner that enhanced group thinking too. Our meetings were constructive; every member actively participated; open feedback was welcomed by one and all; they were well organised because conflicts of interests were handled effectively by Lauren who understood every team members’ behaviour and personality type. In addition to this, our conflict resolution process, which was pre-defined, helped in arriving at decisions quickly without wasting much time and efforts. All these activities, behaviours and the trend of progress only led to a gradual improvement in overall bonding and interpersonal relationships and an enhanced learning and thinking. As our team was formed with a purpose and had its objectives to be achieved in a fixed term, it required problem solving abilities through support received by the team leader who provided appropriate resources, protected and defended the members according to the situation, and assisted in reaching at solutions. According to Colenso (1997) these characteristics fall in the realm of limited-life problem solving type of team, precisely project team; these are also the requirements for such teams to reach high performance. This positive and constructive trend makes me believe that we have formed a high-performing team. References. Argyris, C. 1999. Why Individuals and Organisations have Difficulty in Double-loop Learning. In On organisational learning. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. (Ch.3,pp:67-91). Colenso, M. 1997. Setting up teams to achieve high performance. In High Performing Teams-in brief. London: Elsevier. (Ch.7; pp:77-97). Gray. 2005. Project Management. New York: Tata McGraw Hill. (pp.262) Johnson, P. R., Heimann, V. L., & ONeill, K. (2000). The wolf pack: team dynamics for the 21st century. Journal of Workplace Learning: Employee Counseling Today, Vol. 12, No. 4 , 159-164. APPENDIX Adopted from Pergamon Flexible Learning. 2005. Leading Teams. Management Extra. Vol.5. Oxford: Elsevier. What did you specifically learn? Dear Dr. Graham, My experience with this project has enriched my learning in many ways, circling interpersonal relationships, human behaviour, winning attitude, and a disciplined and systematic approach. First and foremost, this experience has taught me that individuals can achieve much more when they work in a team rather than as individual contributors. Teamwork not only includes individuals’ contribution towards a particular task or goal, but also an efficient contribution that has been enriched through learning that he/she obtains from interactions with other team members. In addition to my experience, the literature I referred to has helped me to learn that for teams to be successful, they need certain essential attributes with respect to elements such as purpose of the team, performance, leadership, relationships, communication, and learning. Specific attributes for each of these elements has been shown in the Appendix. For individuals to work together towards a common goal, trust satisfaction, motivation, and belongingness are extremely important. The psychological factors that come into play during team working include individual behaviours, needs shaped by their personality types, and values influenced by their sociocultural background. These factors determine the actions taken by individuals; these actions in turn produce outcomes in others in the form of reactions; this entire process creates and establishes interpersonal relationships (Dick & Dalmau, 1999). Leadership is an extremely important element for team’s success. In literature, I have found numerous definitions of leadership all of which stress the significance of leaders’ ability to influence others to get things done. From this experience, I feel leadership is the ability to influence others to getting things accomplished through a relationship that nurtures each others’ behaviour in a positive manner. With my observation of our team leader, Lauren, I feel leaders have to be flexible towards people; have immense knowledge and expertise, and be willing to learn; be open to accept challenges and changes that come in way; encourage new ideas from team members and involve them in critical decision making processes; and have a winning attitude that can be transfused into their team members. While leaders have to maintain and build relationships, their actions should not be relationship driven, but expertise and task driven. This will avoid biasness within the team and increase trust in the leader. It also makes leaders approachable, which will make team members more open to feedback, contribute innovative ideas, and take learning from others as well as the leader. I have understood how different stages of team formation occur, i.e. forming, storming, norming, and performing. These stages cannot be treated as sequential, and hence the leader should be able to appropriately in order to make the right decision; making right decisions will help the team to progress towards performing stage. For example, in norming stage when team members are aware of their responsibilities but are not able to fulfill them, either due to unsatisfying solutions to certain challenges or due to lack of expertise, then the team has returned to the storming stage. Leader will have to identify this and take appropriate action to eliminate issues. Overall, the team needs high degree of cohesion for effective decision making, goal attainment, establish identity and achieve satisfaction. Group think is advantageous as it helps in bringing out more ideas from people having different expertise; provides better pools of choices, thus maximizing chances of choosing best alternative; decision making is not hastened. Equally important is recognizing good work and appreciating the same, which will improve team members’ confidence and morale. This is one factor that can help in sustaining high performance within the team. Responsibility and empowerment contribute significantly to keeping the team members motivated. Besides creating a sense of belongingness, these initiatives enhance the feelings of importance and bring out innovative thoughts and actions. A sense of responsibility is also important to foster seriousness towards the team’s goal and helps in keeping the members focused. Empowerment gives the members authority to take decisions; however, in a team setting, decisions have to be taken in consensus with all team members. If decisions are forced or taken without consensus, it creates conflict of interest, reduces commitment and fosters distrust. Empowerment facilitates members to take accountability for their actions and decisions. As seen in the study of team dynamics, effectiveness of team can be enhanced by an appropriate balance of different team roles. This balance can be created by identifying team members’ personality types and using these members for team activities that suit their personality types. For example, in this team, we had a balance of sensitive/intuitive members and thinkers/feelers. We had members in the completer, teamworker, planter, and resource investigator roles. I was able to deduce these roles by relating results obtained from the MBTI tests taken by each member to typical team roles as explained by Colenso (1997; p.84). Different personality types produce differential thinking and perceptions. This quality in team formation cannot be avoided because members’ personality types are shaped by various factors such as their previous experiences, beliefs, values etc. Working with people having differences of opinion is the major challenge for high performing teams. The only way to tackle this challenge lies with the leadership; however, acknowledging and identifying personality characteristics by all members can help the leader in handling these issues with ease. In conclusion, effective team working helps in using all available resources and their knowledge and expertise. When all team members’ responsibilities are aligned toward a common goal, with appropriate responsibilities delegated according to their skill set, interdependence increases and all members feel supported and respected. Predefined goals, approaches, and processes help in setting direction for the team that in turn facilitate achievement of high performance. Through team work, organisations and individuals can achieve higher results than expected and in lesser time. The key aspect of a high performing team is the group think and has to be sensitively and intelligently managed in order to maximize winning, and minimize conflicting situations. Conflict management is extremely important for constructive outcome of team meetings, discussions, opinions, ideas, difference of thoughts and experiences. When defined by a logical process, conflict handling becomes meaningful and simpler. References Dick, B and Dalmau, T. 1999. Values in action: applying the ideas of Argyris and Schön, second edition. Chapel Hill, Qld.: Interchange. Accessed from, http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arp/argyris2.html#a_as_m12 Pergamon Flexible Learning. 2005. Leading Teams. Management Extra. Vol.5. Oxford: Elsevier. Read More