Facilitators of Team Performance and Barriers that Influences Team Performance - Essay Example

Team Work Student’s name Institution 1.1 Introduction Team work is important for the delivery of effective healthcare services (Forte & Fowler, 2009). Collaborative teamwork is about a large number of health workers from different backgrounds coming together to work in areas such as problem solving, networking and coordinating care for the delivery of quality care to families and patients (Mickan & Rodger 2000). This paper examines team work in nursing and specifically looks into the barriers and facilitators of team performance. Leadership styles and communication styles are highlighted as the major influences of team work. In the end, recommendations for improving team performance are suggested. 1.2 Teamwork Teamwork is always an important part of nursing as it is necessary for nurses to work together for a common goal. Teamwork refers to the willingness of a group to be working together in order to achieve a common goal (Salas et al, 1999). Every successful team work is necessitated by good leadership (Forte & Fowler, 2009). Leadership is the act of exercising one’s authority over a subject. For a leader to be able to steer a team, they need to ensure that there is group cohesion. Cohesion is the state of sticking together. As nurses, when you function and act as part of an existing team, your work will be much more efficient and easier. In addition to this, patient care will generally be enhanced. In nursing, teamwork is emphasized and valued, every nurse works in a team together in meeting the needs of their patients and for the purpose of having improved outcomes from patients (Brannick & Prince 1998). 1.3 Facilitators of Team Performance There are external and internal factors that differentiate effective from ineffective teams (Husting, 2000). There are also facilitators of efficient and effective teamwork geared towards successful team performance. The following discussion focuses on the facilitators of team performance. One of the facilitators of team performance is committed leadership. Every team requires a leader that focuses team members towards the goal, purpose and mission of the team.  This team leader must show commitment to the results of the team and should be ready to be held answerable and accountable to the team’s goals. The leader of the team should ensure collaboration, individual commitment, personal accountability and open debate. Closely related to committed leadership is leadership style which is a strong facilitator of team work. According to Salas et al. (1999), there are three leadership styles that facilitate team performance. One is the participative management style of leadership. This style involves the leader intentionally involving team members in the process of decision making and encourages sharing of ideas and collaboration. The openness makes team members feel involved and thus facilitates team work. Two is the affiliative style of leadership. This is a style aimed at developing teams that are strong. The main aim of the leader is to create harmonious culture within the group and encourage open communication and thus this style of leadership style facilitates team performance. Three is the transformational leadership style which involves a leader who makes changes drastically. He is visionary and charismatic and this leader usually has a definite plan on what needs to be changed in the company. Most team members take this style of leadership positively and thus it acts as a facilitator of team work. Yet another facilitator of team performance is good communication. Effective and efficient teamwork can be facilitated by open and clear communication. All the members of a team must be reading from the same script in respect to timelines, targets and responsibilities. To achieve this cohesion, there must effective communication. According to Forte & Fowler, (2009) effective communication is often supported by organizational protocols prevalence determining particular mediums and methods of communication in circumstances that are specific. Like there are group talks, emails, and one-to-one meetings amongst others. All the nurses in a team must feel comfortable to ask questions that regards clarification of responsibilities and jobs and they must always feel free in making suggestions involving team members in the face of a challenge or even a conflict, teams that are effective will always engage and therefore overcome it through effective communication, instead of avoiding the issue (Mickan, 2008). Different communication styles would also facilitate team performance. One such communication style is the connector communication style. This style prefers a friendly, polite and collaborative working environment thus team performance is facilitated through this style of communication. Another communication style is the driver’s communication style. This type of communication prefers to lead people to complete their task. They prefer work that is fast paced and thus they are facilitators of team performance. To add to that is individual accountability. Every member is responsible for a certain thing that the group is in need of for it to function well. Effective team’s structure provides for the individual’s accountability which will increase the norm of members of a team to devote enough effort in order to meet team responsibilities. Therefore for successful team work to be achieved, every nurse must be accountable to the team and be responsible at an individual level (Forte & Fauler, 2009). Another facilitator of teamwork is shared responsibility. Teams that are successful share responsibility. They are all responsible for idea implementation and they have a sense of collective accountability towards the outcomes. Members who share responsibility in their team are a stronger team well able to efficiently and diligently perform their duty (Mickan & Rodger, 2000). The next facilitator of team work is mutual trust. For a team to be successful there must be mutual trust between the nurses in the team. Mutual trust will enable the team engage in decision making and an open debate which leads to individual members being committed to the team’s mission. In order to build this trust, there must be openness which allows the members of the team to understand and know the behaviours and the beliefs of all team members in order to enable team actions be put to take advantage of member's talents and uniqueness. In nursing, it is therefore important that mutual trust is built between members so that performance of team work is enhanced (Forte & Fauler, 2009). . To facilitate team performance, the team must have Smart Goals. These are goals that are Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. The team members must come up with smart goals that will guide their performance and put them on track and thereby ensure successful team performance (Mickan, 2008). Lastly, clear goals by the team members is also a facilitator of team performance in nursing. An effective team has goals that are understood clearly by all members. Moreover the goals are mutual to all the members and therefore everybody works towards the achievement of such goals. In nursing, the goal of a team may for instance be to provide quick and efficient care to accident victims. Such a clear goal facilitates team performance (Mickan & Rodger, 2000). 1.4 Barriers that Influences Team Performance There are several barriers that hinder the activities of nurses working as a team. It is important to identify and eliminate them. Fostering a team that is productive among the staff makes work easier in the hospital environment and improves health care in general (Mickan, 2008). One of the barriers to team performance is Poor Communication. Whereas good communication will enhance teamwork performance, poor communication is one of the greatest barriers in promoting productive team work atmosphere. Nurses within the team who choose not to communicate, or nurses who fail to recognise the proper channels of communication that should be used within the team, can end up creating breakdowns that definitely inhibits the development of the team. In patient care, open communication should therefore be enhanced Closely related to poor communication is the choice of the style of communication. Certain styles of communication act as barrier to team performance for example the seeker’s communication style. This style prefers to lead people into ventures that are new. They enjoy taking the lead and they make their decisions on intuition. Therefore when this communication style is employed in a team, it will act as a barrier to team performance (Mickan, 2008). Second style that is a barrier to team work is the planer’s communication style. This type of communicator prefers to work independently, efficiently and in an orderly manner. He defines people’s individual roles, responsibilities and authority and thus hindering team performance (Husting, 2000). Another barrier to team performance is unclear goals. Team work is created in order to achieve certain goals, however when these goals are not well presented clearly by the nursing team, conflicts are likely to arise and destabilise the team spirit. The nurses forming a team must ensure that they set clear and smart objectives because unclear goals is a big barrier to team work. Individuals must never have different goals from the goals of the group (Salas et al., 1999). Thirdly, Lack of proper leadership and direction is also a barrier to team performance. The leader must be involved in team performance and offer the much needed guidance. Every team is in need of a leader, and so when the team’s leadership is absent then it means that the team is not able to develop properly. Lack of proper leadership and direction is hence a barrier that needs to be addressed in order to ensure the success of a nursing team. Closely related to proper leadership is the leadership styles adopted by the nursing team. According to Husting, (2000) there are three leadership styles that act acts as a barrier to team performance. The first one is autocratic leadership style. The team leader here takes full control of the nursing team leading to low morale of the team members and hence limiting team work. The second leadership style that act as a barrier to team work is the coaching leadership style. Here the leader makes development of the employee a major goal. He takes his time in coaching, training and evaluating team members hence it drives individualistic mind-set which then becomes a barrier to team performance. Another leadership style that hinders team work performance is the laissez faire style where leaders do not intervene in ongoing processes but let employees work as they think is best suited for them. This style becomes a barrier to team performance because it does not encourage team building but rather encourages individualistic views. Yet another barrier is ego. Nursing teams that have members not working towards the benefit of the whole group normally have a hard time becoming efficient, effective and productive. Individual nurses are usually given specific roles in the team, however if a nurse feels they are able to take up other roles and they end up interfering with their team mate’s work, then the dynamics of the group will be threatened. Therefore team members are advised to always check up and keep their egos and perform the work they have been allocated without infringing on the duties of their fellow team members. In nursing every individual must keep to the duty they have been assigned on for example in a team of six nurses working on the children’s ward six, the nurse allocated the duty of spreading the patient’s ward must not infringe on the work of the nurse assigned the duty of giving medication even though they feel they are better than their counterparts. Unless of course there is clear understanding then roles can be changed (Salas et al., 1999). Personal agendas and not being willing to make a compromise for the group, is another one of the biggest barriers of team performance. When individuals decide to give their personal interests priority rather than the interest of the team, the team suffers. For instance nurse A might have two matters at hand, taking their son to the park as they promised and the second matter would be attending an emergency in ward two together with the nursing team. If this nurse decides to ignore joining the team and takes their son to the park then it means the team work will be compromised and the work at hand will not be performed in the same efficient way because one of the team members is missing. Therefore personal interests are a barrier to team performance (Salas et al., 1999). Lastly, diversity is also a barrier to team performance. Research shows successful teamwork always depends on whether health professionals have respect for diversity (Mickan, 2008). Diversity becomes a barrier to team performance by creating tension even as health professionals examine attitudes towards each other and struggle with different world views which brings about conflicts between them. Thus anyone wishing to have successful team performance must be accommodative of diverse and different world views (Salas et al., 1999). 1.5 Recommendations for Improved Team Performance The team must have a common purpose. The members of the team should have purposes that are clearly defined and common purpose which should include demonstrated shared ownership and collective interests. The team must have goals that are measurable and is focused on the task of the team. The team must have an effective leader who manage conflict, set as well as maintain structures, listening to its members, manage conflict, trust and support its members. There must be effective communication. A good team shares information and ideas regularly and quickly. The team keeps records that are written and allow reflection time. Good cohesion. A team must have commitment, longevity of team members wanting to continue to work together, a unique team spirit and commitment. There must be mutual respect among the team members. 1.6 Conclusion To conclude, most organizations depend on teams because of the very many advantages of team work. Team work leads to better outcomes as the team is able to bring in more resources to fight against a challenge. Next, team work leads to better ideas as a team is made up of diverse members and lastly team work is advantageous as it brings about mutual support between members of the team. More specific to nursing, team work is advantageous because clinical care has become complex and more specialized than before, this has forced nursed to try complicated services and to learn new procedures quickly. Increased chronic diseases like diabetes, forces nurses to take up multidisciplinary approach to health care thus team work become the solution to these complexities . Two, researchers have realised that working as a team increases the safety of patients and reduces medical errors as not just one person is responsible for a patient’s well-being (Salas et al, 1999) . Lastly, because teamwork revolves around solid communication, people feel at ease to report and accept treatments. Nurses are also more satisfied in their job. A research study found that nurses who participate in team building have more job satisfaction. REFERENCE Brannick M. T. & Prince C. (1998)An overview of team performance measurement. In: Brannick MT, Salas E, Prince C, eds. Team performance assessment and measurement. Mahwah, NJ, Erlbaum. Forte A & Fowler P (2009). Participation in interprofessional education: an evaluation of student and staff experiences. Journal of Interprofessional Care 23(1). Husting, P. M. (2000). Leading Work Teams and Improving Performance. Nursing Management, 27(9. Mickan, S. M. (2008 )"Evaluating the effectiveness of health care teams." Australian Health Review 29.2 . Salas E et al. (1999)Toward an understanding of team performance and training. In: Sweeney RW, Salas E, eds. Teams: their training and performance . Norwood, NJ, Ablex. Read More