Motivation, Leadership, and Open Communication - Essay Example

Introduction Nurturing a team work culture is a road to organizational success. The team work is a coordinated effort of the people in order to achieve same vision. The mind set of each team member should be directed such that each individual will work selflessly towards the same objective/goal. The benefits of the collaborative efforts are unlimited. The difficult tasks can be simplified with cooperative skills of people working together. Every business and organisation wants to harness the power of team work. Teamwork fosters the growth and profits of organisation. Ambitious goals can not be achieved by working individually. An important element of human nature is that every individual has own opinions and independent methods of working. Every individual wants importance, power, authority and control over other. However, the teamwork emphasises on sharing of opinions, ideas, experiences, rewards and punishments. Cohesive efforts and collaborative knowledge brings success to any organisation and healthy team environment. Training, co-training, and workshops are conducted by employer to equip their employees with necessary skills required for teamwork. The necessary information, resources and materials should be exchanged with teammates. The interdependence and dynamic interactions among the team members plays an important role to adopt certain strategy to complete a particular project. Team success can be achieved through positive outcome of series of events and coordination of series of tasks. In order for teamwork culture to succeed, some aspects of teamwork like motivation, leadership, and open communication plays major role. All these factors interact with each other and influence the overall excellence of the organisation (Nadjiwon-Foster 2002). Leadership When organisation adopts flat structure by eliminating many middle-level management positions, leadership plays an innovative role at all levels. The functional and legitimate behaviour of leader influences his teammates (Barker 1996). The leader inspires other team members to behave and perform in a certain way. The formal and informal forms of his influence help in building flexible, yet successful organisation with shared vision. When anybody in the team has disruptive influence on the other teammates and consequently impairing the team’s objectives, leader must take immediate action in the form of warnings or punishments. The person should be made aware of aftereffects of his behaviour. The leader has to handle varied personalities having different temperaments, cultures, values, beliefs, religions, and behaviours. Leader can develop attitude of togetherness and integrity, by arranging off site activity in an informal environment. Leader has to trust his team members and treat them fairly. This promotes harmony and reduced conflict in team work environment. If team members are underutilized, naturally productivity is decreased. The different methods of team building like group bonding sessions, social activities, company sponsored fun activities etc can be adopted to understand each other and to develop an effective team. As a head of the team, leader should be responsive and responsible towards the rational and sensible needs of teammates. Effective leader breaks up long term goals into smaller manageable tasks. Accordingly, the leader makes plan to achieve these tasks. The leader should able to convince clearly to his teammates about the future direction of the team. Honesty, congruence and credibility of the team leader lead to build up of confidence among team members (Bateman & Snell 1999). Midlevel or front line management is also susceptible to sudden changes. Good leader should able to adapt new situations and challenges very fast. The dynamic situations should be handled smoothly by implementing supportive approach than supervising strategy. This helps in smooth transition in response to any altered situation in the organisation. The work environment in organisations like military is based on the ability to fight and will to win. Effective military leader encourages his fellow members through his behaviour. The involvement and active participation of each individual is very important to combat any attack (Lekganyane & Oosthuizen, 2006; Bass 1990). An educator can be considered as leader for his class and students can be considered as other team members. The educator can set their own parameters or can induce certain situations to attain specific educational objectives. Student’s improvement in learning abilities is related to the teacher’s efforts, skills and knowledge to handle behavioral aspects (Alberto & Troutman 1999). Great input from the teacher helps the child to achieve specific goal. Motivation Motivation of each employee in the team fosters the growth of any business or organisation. Motivation helps in building positive attitude towards work. The employee should have deeply satisfying work life. When particular duties or responsibilities are assigned to a person, he is answerable for his act. The sense of ownership makes him more responsible towards his approach to do certain activity. The ascribed authority stimulated him to take required steps to complete the given task. This member remains motivated over a long period of time. Learning new skills, concepts and brain storming activities increases competency and motivates the individual further. The person becomes loyal and ardent; and remains attached to the organisation for longtime. Best leader encourages each member to put forward their ideas. The intentional engagement increases eagerness to collaborate, trust, and learn. The leader should create condition to keep his people motivated. The various factors which motivates the team members are job contents; job enrichment relevant to size, scope and difficulty of tasks; decision-making competencies; room for independent action; job variability; ownership; work conditions and environment; leadership behavior; social consideration; information; participation; delegation; and career development (Chien 2004). Rewards in any forms like promotions or monitory gains encourage team members to work more towards shared goal. People start believing in themselves and organisation; since their efforts, values, and strengths are rewarded. This appreciation from organisation definitely motivates the rewarded person. A special child faces many challenges while studying because of their inability to handle and understand various aspects of learning. Such students can be tackled by implementing positive reinforcement procedures like motivation. Positive learning environment nurture the students and make them competent by increasing their ability to learn. The teacher create supportive and comfortable environment. The kids are exposed to engaging curriculum where their curiosity to find out about stuff is soared (Brandt, 1995). Active participation in the classroom activities develops understanding of the subject. Understanding motivates them to express themselves properly and also encourages them to work hard (Nelsen et al 1997). The teacher acknowledges each performance of the student. So each student feels sense of accomplishment. Attention and recognition by classroom environment motivates them further to achieve higher goals and it reflects in their performance. Communication Good communication is a key to improve interpersonal skills. One of the beneficial consequences of the effective communication is displaying shared vision clearly in the mindset of coworkers. The team members should be kept continually updated on the project and its progress. Constructive suggestions in a positive atmosphere have capacity to solve most of the problems. Sense of belonging and good rapport among team members is required to achieve success as a team. Honest relationship among team members should be created. Direct open communication is the way to encompass this. The problems in conversation hinder the performance of any organisation. Formal and informal communication channels such as emails, viral communication, group meetings, one to one discussions etc should be used depending upon the team size. Proper communication skills and methods should be acquired so that clear cut messages are delivered without any ambiguity. This helps teammates to work together. The words which are used in communicating important messages should be simple, clear and easily understandable. An introduction of feedbacks, open question systems etc. might able to explain and evaluate efficacy of communication. When knowledge and skills are shared, opportunities to succeed in personal front and organizational perspective are increased. Building teamwork through open communication in the classroom is the best example. The teacher might able to cherish healthy learning strategies by means of positive communication. If the students do not feel free or afraid of their teacher then, total communication breakdown would occur. The culture of patients’ safety should be nurtured to respect the medical profession. The effective communication and team work plays an important role in complex heath care environment. The adoption of standardised tools of communication create an environment in which every member of health care team including nurses, physicians, and others can talk about the issues, and share common critical language to alert teammates to crucial circumstances. This helps in reducing adverse events and better clinical outcome (Leonard et al. 2004). Conclusion The interdependence and dynamic interactions of motivation, leadership, and open communication ensures greater success as a team member. The team comes out with flying colors. This fetches positive outcome to the team and the entire organisation is benefited. References Alberto, P. & Troutman, A. C. (1999) Applied behavior analysis for teachers, 5th ed, Upper Saddle River, N.J., Merrill. Barker, J. R. (1996) Communal-rational authority as the basis for leadership on self managing teams, Advances in Interdisciplinary studies of work teams, 3, 1996, pp. 105-126. Bass, B. M. (1990) Bass and Stodgill’s Handbook of Leadership, 3rd ed, New York, Free. Bateman, T. S. & Snell S. A. (1999) Management: Building competitive advantage, 4th ed, Boston, McGraw-Hill. Brandt, R. (1995) Punished by rewards? a conversation with affie kohn, Educational Leadership, 53 (1), 1995, pp. 13-16. Chien, M. (2004) A study to improve organizational performance: A view from SHRM. Journal of American Academy of Business, 4, March 2004, p. 289. Nelsen, J. Lott, L. & Glenn, S. (1997) Positive Discipline in the Classroom. Rocklin, CK Prima Publishing. Nadjiwon-Foster, M. Smithers, S. & Livingstone H. (2002) Teamwork and military leadership, March 2002, Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada. Lekganyane, J. Oosthuizen, T. (2006) Analysing Leadership Traits in Establishing Effective Leadership at Eskom, Acta Commercii, 2006, pp. 237-247. Leonard, M. Graham, S. & Bonacum, D. (2004) The human factor: the critical importance of effective teamwork and communication in providing safe care, Qual Saf Health Care,13, 2004, pp. i85-i90. Read More