Challenges in Groups and Teams - Essay Example

Running Head Addressing the Challenges of Groups and Teams Addressing the Challenges of Groups and Teams Teams and groups are facedwith numerous challenges involving conflict situations and importance to achieve consensus, changing mindset and interpersonal relationships, religious and age differences, cultural values and different career goals. These challenges prevent teams to achieve desired goals and process to maturity stage. Collaborative (C) decision making takes a step in the direction of participation by way of consultation, and involves asking either certain individuals or, more generally, a group for their input.

The manager solicits a recommendation from individuals or the group, but still makes the final decision. Empowered decision making completes the continuum. It is full participation, and entails empowering either an individual or a group to make final decisions. The particular people involved in a given communication episode can make the critical difference in whatever understandings result. Personal qualities and background factors influence the interpretations and meanings created by sources and perceivers.

There are different key factors to consider with each decision-making style, and different levels of commitment to decisions that can be expected to result from each approach. The challenges can be overcome with the help of training and leadership support, planned intervention and positive climate and morale. The three stages: preparation, training and implementation and practical usage will help a team leader to overcome challenges in teamwork and create a dynamic team. Challenges in Groups and TeamsTeams involve in complex communication and interaction issues influenced by internal and external factors such as expertise of team members, communication skills, project structure and leadership, etc.

These factors are unquestionably too numerous for anyone to catalog even just the most important ones. In this case challenges in teams and groups include conflict situations and importance to achieve consensus, changing mindset and interpersonal relationships, religious and age differences, cultural values and different career goals. The challenges mentioned above prevent effective performance and team dynamics. Participative decision making is not so much one style of decision making as it is one end of a continuum of possibilities.

So much potential for miscommunication could be thwarted with more effective listening. Studies have shown that a large percentage of people listen less effectively than they believe, and many in fact are poor listeners. Everyone has experience with "power" in human relations. Power, most simply, is the ability to influence (Hanlan 2004). This ability, in turn, depends on the presence and manipulation of certain resources: outcomes that are attractive, outcomes that are unattractive, information, beliefs in the legitimacy of "hierarchy," expertise, affection, love, liking, approval, respect, trust, admiration, and so on.

As such, almost every form of interpersonal behavior involves the resources connected, however blatantly or subtly, to power: Effectiveness, as it applies to relationships, refers to an ongoing ability to draw upon the resources of the relationship to accomplish goals while enhancing or maintaining the strength of the relationship. Trust is the bedrock of any strong interpersonal relationship. And importantly, trust is shaped largely by communication (Buchholz and Roth, 1987). Conflicts and changing mindset, poor interpersonal relationships and religious and age differences lead to the biggest challenge facing team members who hope to develop shared vision, at any level: reconciling the need for one coherent "statement" of vision, with the requirement that, in effect, it reflects the individual "voices" of many.

Communication is the key to doing this. And it must start with the leader (Katzenbach and Smith 2002). The team leader should initiate the integration of visions by expressing, as clearly as possible, his or her own vision for the group or organization, along with how it serves the purposes of the organization and the interests of everyone in it. The worthiness of this statement as a vision, and its accuracy in serving purposes and interests, must be assessed, from the perspective of the people whose efforts will achieve or not achieve it.

This assessment may be formal or informal, but it must be done publicly if commitment is the objective. And it must be coupled with a sincere, demonstrated interest on the leader's part in collaboratively evolving a vision that everyone can appreciate. This sincerity means inviting and being responsive to suggested improvements and modifications to the basic vision. Above all it means that the vision cannot be imposed. It must be evolved -- adapted and adopted (LaFasto and Larsen 2001). PlanIn order to overcome these challenges, team leader should create a positive culture and support effective communication in his/her team.

This can be achieved by special training programs for team members aimed to develop communication and listening skill. The plan will consist of three stages: preparation, training and practical usage. I. Preparation a. problem identification and analysis of communication difficulties; analysis of the sources of conflict, b. program development II. Training and implementation a. indirect communication and cultural diversity programs, shared vision and development of trust between team members (it is possible to use role-play and dialogues, etc); b.

optimized working conditions, c. team (project) goals identification d. planned intervention (in order to prevent conflict situations)III. Practical stage a. Control and corrective actions Once the vision statement is clearly expressed to everyone's satisfaction -- once the group sees the total picture of what it wants to or needs to become -- then the leader must ensure that the group decides, owns, "how" the vision will be realized, and that implementation is left up to them. This is what will truly solidify the group's ownership of and commitment to the jointly created vision, when people "make it happen" from methods of their choosing.

ReferencesBuchholz, S. Roth, Th. (1987). Creating the High Performance Team. Wiley. Hanlan, M. (2004). High Performance Teams: How to Make Them Work. Praeger Publishers. Katzenbach, J. R., Smith, D. K. (2003). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization. Harpercollins Trade Sales Dept. LaFasto, F., Larsen, C. (2001). When Teams Work Best. Sage Publications.