Challenges Facing Management in Teams - Coursework Example

Team Challenges Institution Date Executive Summary As teamwork becomes more common in organizations, the challenge of motivating groups of employees has become apparent. Traditional approaches of employee motivation are based on individuals’ incentives which are not as effective in team situations. This report discusses the various challenges that face managers in working in teams. Other challenges that face managers of teams include leadership, slack and laziness of some team members, and management of employees with diverse characters. This report discusses these challenges and offers recommendations that can impact the effectiveness of team management. These recommendations include: using incentives that both applaud team members and individuals for the team’s performance; assigning dominating team members challenging tasks; recognized for team members for exceptional contribution, and offering inspirational leadership Contents 1.0 Introduction 5 2.0 Challenges Facing Management in Teams 5 2.1 Award of Incentives 5 2.2 Leading Teams 7 2.3 Employee Slack 8 2.4 Managing Dominant Characters 9 3.0 Conclusion 11 1.0 Introduction More than ever before, organizations need to complete their tasks in teams. In recent time, the benefits of teamwork for organizations have been proved beyond doubt. Organizations have assigned more and more work to teams in the last two decades. With teams taking more responsibilities in organizations, working in collaboration is considered more important than individual or departmental work. Unfortunately, current recognition and reward systems are reliant on motivating individual employees and not teams. In addition, management is faced with several employee management challenges that are unique to teams. Therefore, not all organizations are able to leverage the benefits of teamwork. Often the formation of successful teams is difficult for management teams in organizations. In this essay we will discuss the difficulties faced by management in making teamwork a success. 2.0 Challenges Facing Management in Teams 2.1 Award of Incentives Proper award of benefits is one of the most difficult undertakings in team management. Incentives are one of the issues identified by Fredrick Taylor as a principle of motivating employees (Kennedy, 2016a). According to Fredrick Taylor, benefits are one of the things that make employees work harder and give discretionary effort. Scientific management as proposed by Fredrick Taylor argued that pay should be related to performance (Kennedy, 2016a). However, Taylor reward system was based on individual performance and those individuals who reached the performance standard were offered a higher rate of pay. In contrast, those who failed to reach the performance standard were offered the ordinary rate of work. Taylor also recommended the use of non-economic incentives such as shorter hours and promotions (Kennedy, 2016a). Unfortunately, implementing these rewards in a team context is different and more difficult than in ordinary management contexts. According to Kirkman et al (2016), many companies have experimented with team-based rewards but many have failed. Over a decade ago, some companies used a system that based a portion of an employee’s pay on their team performance. Other employers based the entire compensation of the employee on their performance in teams. In 1992, Levi-Strauss tried this system of team rewards in their jean making factories. Previously, the company had used the ordinary piece-rate pay system for a number year (Kirkman et al 2016). Levi’s experiment with the system involved team of 10-35 members, each team was rewarded according to pairs of jeans produced. The experiment did not work as it created animosity among the teams. According to Kirkman et al (2016), Levi was forced to use deputy sheriffs in their Tennessee plant to prevent workers from attacking each other. Many employees had taken advantage of the pay system to engage in slacking behavior. The real losers in the system were the high performers and turnover of the best performers increased during the team-based reward experiment. Levi’s experiment with the team-based recognition and reward system illustrates that using incentives in teams is more difficult than in individual contexts. In many western countries, employees prefer to be recognized and rewarded as individuals instead of teams. Kirkman et al (2016) concludes that team-based reward systems fail in actually motivating performance and fostering teamwork. This realization meant many companies fell back to individual reward and recognition systems even though work had become more team based. Unfortunately, academics also struggle to come up with reward and recognition systems that are effective among teams. Kirkman et al (2016) carried out an experiment that sought to find out if rewarding a single individual for exceptional performance had an impact on team motivation. The experiment sought to disapprove the notion that rewarding and recognizing a single member of a team would promote harmful competition within the team. In the experiment, individuals in half of the teams were applauded and acknowledged publically. In contrast, the other half were not offered any recognition. For the team where individuals were offered recognition, both the team and individual performance of team members increased significantly. The results were applicable to a factory in Northern China that used employee of the month (Kirkman et al 2016). After the use of the employee of the month awards both individual and team performance illustrated a marked improvement. In contrast, Schrage (2014) suggests that organizations that want their teams to succeed must stop favoring individuals instead of teams. According to Schrage (2014), it is wrong for a single team member to be applauded or acknowledged for performance that was a result of assistance by others. 2.2 Leading Teams Leadership is another major issue that make teamwork more complicated that individual or departmental work. Henri Fayol’s management theory suggested that leaders were more useful to the organization if they possessed superior management talent instead of technical talents (Kennedy 2016a). Poor’s wider view of management argued that leaders should be able to inspire obedience and performance in an organizational context. Similarly, team leaders are supposed to be able to inspire their team members to perform beyond the ordinary standards. However, team leadership is more complex that leading in individual or departmental contexts( 2010). In many cases, teams are drawn from various parts of the organization and the team leader is rarely the most senior member of the team. This means that team members have to yield to the leadership of a less senior team leader. An effective team leader should be able to influence the other teams to perform beyond the ordinary. The leaders should also be able to guide the team on the model of decision making they will follow at the beginning of problem solving activities (Leonard, Beauvais & Scholl, 2005). 2.3 Employee Slack Slack or laziness is one of the common problems that affect employee performance at the individual and departmental level. According to Fredrick Taylor in his scientific approach to management, employees have a tendency towards natural soldering (Kennedy 2016a). According to Taylor, Soldering is the tendency of employees to work deliberately below full capacity. Natural and systematic soldering are likely to have a greater impact in teams than in other organizational work models. In teams, it is harder to spot team members who are taking it easy. Teamwork brings high levels of cohesion that prevent the identification of employees who perform below capacity (Wong 2010). In contrast, individual work provides a basis for identifying the performance of employees that are slacking. In contrast, the performance of a group ignores the contribution of individual members and lazy members may continue hiding in the team without making any significant contribution to the team. Unfortunately, team work is also vulnerable to peer pressure where the poor work ethic of one team member is reflected by other members. In many case, employees avoid putting too much effort in their work if their co-workers shirk their responsibility and avoid living to their potential. In contrast, team members may influence each other to perform to the best of their ability as seeing other perform to the best of their ability motivates them to perform better. According to Levit (2015), one lazy employee can destroy the productivity of the team and it’s important to ensure that each employee is performing to the best of their ability. The peer effect has been demonstrated in research in Italy relating to contagious work ethic. According to Levit (2015), Cities and towns in the North Italy have stronger work ethics. Therefore, Bank employees transferred from branches in the North to the South lost their strong work ethic as they moved to the South. Levit 2015) reported that employees moving from North to South exhibited extreme changes in work behavior upon joining work teams in the South. Once in southern towns like Napales, the employee would be frequently miss work, arrive late and performed more poorly. In contrast, employees who moved to the North improved their work ethics greatly. According to Levit (2015), the changes in behavior for employees transferred to the north were due to the peer effect. The incentive to observe high standards of work were reduced as soon as the employees transferred from the North learnt that work ethic was weaker in the South. Levit (2015) also reports a study stdying the peer effect conducted at a large American Supermarket. In the study, the work actions of the supermarket checkout counter workers were recorded in a database. Levit (2015) reported that shift handovers affected the performance of every worker that observed the changes in shifts. Most importantly, the study observed that when a more efficient worker joined the team, the pace of the team picked up to match the performance of the more effective worker. However, the study also found that the pace of work dropped significantly when slower and less-efficient team members started his shift. These research studies show that laziness in teams is likely to have higher impacts than in individuals or departmental contexts. The work ethic and attitudes in a team environment is contagious as a lazy individual will influence other to perform poorly. It is therefore important, that team leaders motivate everyone to work to the best of their ability. They also have to make sure that lazy performers do not spread their lazy attitudes and work ethic to the rest of the team. 2.4 Managing Dominant Characters Team leaders have to manage all types of characters in teams. Among one of the most challenging type of employees to manage in a team situation is the dominant personality (Wong 2010). While teams need the contribution of each member, domineering personalities can monopolize group activities and frustrate other team members. Letting domineering individuals dominate teams may lead to low morale among other team members. Dominant personalities are defined as people who behave in assertive, forceful and self-assure (Wong 2010). According to Wong (2010), dominant individuals are useful assets to teams. First, they provide strong leadership especially in crisis situations. Secondly, they can handle heavy workloads and stressful situations with ease. Thirdly, their energy is contagious and inspires other team members to stay focused on tasks and targets. In many cases their enthusiasm matches their force or character and enables them to handle challenges and risks. However, dominant personalities can be one of the most difficult team members to handle. In some situations, other team members feel intimidated by dominant persons who may not care about other people’s feelings. In many cases, the blunt approach of dominant individuals is likely to create personal conflicts in their team. In addition, dominant individuals have poor control over their tone, temper and body language when frustrated with fellow team (Wong 2010). Often, dominant individuals are seen as arrogant and self-important and this makes their relationships with other members of the team. Many times, dominant individuals may prevent other from sharing good their opinion and many good ideas may be missed. However, good leadership in a group can bring out the best from dominating individuals. According to Wong (2010), leaders should take the following steps to bring out the best from dominating team members: 1. Dominating team members should be assigned challenging tasks 2. They should be recognized for their exceptional contribution. 3. As much as possible they should be assigned tasks where they work independently. 4. Their bold ideas should not be constrained. 3.0 Conclusion Many organizations have adopted the teamwork model of work. However, organization still struggle in ensuring that all employees in teams are performing to the best of their abilities. Some of the challenges include developing an effective system for motivating employee performance through rewards and benefits. Traditional systems based n individual performance and rewards have proved ineffective in organization using the team model. Organizations still face the dilemma of weather to offer recognition and rewards to entire teams or to brilliant performers within the team. In this paper, rewards for exceptional individual performance are recommended. However, there is still poor evidence to support this approach that is opposed by some scholars. Leadership inspiration is also a major challenge in teams as team leaders are often junior employees within the organization. The team leaders have the challenging task of inspiring obedience and superior performance in employees who may be senior to them in other contexts. In addition, the team model faces the challenge of dealing with underperforming employees who are sheltered by the superior performance of their team. Finally, team leaders also face the challenge of managing dominating personalities within teams. References Kennedy, OAM, 2016a, Week 3: Fundamental of Management; Scientific Management. Lecture Notes. La Trobe University. Kennedy, OAM, 2016b, Week 2: Fundamental of Management; Scientific Management. Lecture Notes. La Trobe University Kirkman, B, Li, N, Zheng, X, Harris, B. &Liu, X. 2016, Top Performers Are Rewarded. Harvard Business Review March 14. Leonard, N. H., Beauvais, L. L., & Scholl, R. W. (2005). A multi-level model of group cognitive style in strategic decision making. Journal of Managerial Issues, 119-138. Levit, A 2015, Can One Lazy Employee Destroy Your Team?, Fast Track,March 13. Schrage, M 2015, Reward Your Best Teams. Not Just Star Players. Harvard Business Review, June 30. Wong, Z 2010, Human Factors in Project Management: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques for Inspiring Teamwork and Motivation. Wiley & Sons. Read More