eng - building effective teams

8/12/2019 Eng - Building Effective Teams

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CHAPTER 14

by4THGROUP


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According to many organizational analysts, the successof an organization can depend on the levels of

teamwork it employs. Teams have a great deal of

potential to contribute to modern organizational life.

Positive working teams encourage flexibility,

involvement and efficiency and the introduction of

teamworking has been known to transform companies

Entirely. We need to know the essential characteristicsof a successful team, to define the most important

processes which contribute to effective teamwork, and

to work out what can go wrong when we try to develop

teams.

INTRODUCTION


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This chapter confronts all these questions andemphasizes that the quality of communication, allied to

the quality of the team members, makes the real

difference.

This chapter also highlights another important issue.

Organizations can consider the more fundamental

challenge of moving to a team-based structure. This isnot simply about adjusting group relationships; it is a

much more radical reorganization of the way work is

designed and allocated

INTRODUCTION


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This chapter will:

Define an effective team;

Show how important effective teams are to modern

organizations, and comment on the moves toempowered work teams;

Analyse important processes which can influence

group and team working, including team roles,

leadership and problem-solving; Discuss how we can develop teams in organizations.

OBJECTIVES


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Business communication suggests that teams havethree key identifiers, namely:

1. members are operating within a charter

2. they see themselves as having specified roles

3. they see the team as accountable for achieving

specified organizational goals.

(Dwyer, 1997)

WHAT MAKES A TEAM?


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Leading American experts Katzenbach and Smith

distinguish different types of team/group and argue

that high performance teams are much more

effective than working groups.

The critical differences they see between teams and

working groups are the levels of commitment and

the strong sense of mutual support and

accountability (which are perhaps not emphasized

sufficiently in the definition from Dwyer).

WHAT MAKES A TEAM?


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Six basic elements of a team1. Size

2. Skills

3. Purpose

4. Goals

5. Working approach

6. Mutual Accountability

WHAT MAKES A TEAM?


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Katzenbach and Smith also define other varieties of group/team, as

follows.

The pseudo-team : A working group may call itself a team whenactually there is no real shared responsibility. Its membersfailure to

share and coordinate may make them perform worse than a workinggroup which has fewer pretensions.

The potential team : The potential team is the group which istrying to move to full teamwork but which is probably still not clear

on its goals and priorities and which is still struggling with the

problem of individual responsibilities and loyalties.

WHAT MAKES A TEAM?


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Turning groups into teams is not easy. It takes timeand it depends on an understanding of fundamentalgroup dynamics, issues such as:

Group development;

Team roles;

Leadership;

Problem-solving and decision-making;

Intergroup relationships (relationships betweengroups).

GROUP & TEAM PROCESSES


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Group Development

Many business texts paint a very definite pictureof how groups change over time, as in:

When a group of people form a team, they gothrough a set of behaviours that help to form

the team into a viable working unit, After a teamhas formed, normed and stormed then, and only

then, can it move on to the most successfulstage of team behaviour.


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This four stages in a definite sequence is based on the work of Tuckman (1965)


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Many texts agree on a few fundamental points:1. Leaders have special qualities which we can identify;

2. Leaders have an important effect on their organizations;

3. We need leaders, and only one leader in each situation.

A recent return to the traditional notion of the leader as a dominantpersonalityis the work of Edwin Locke. He suggests that theprime movers,

the creators of great wealth in a free (and even semi-free) economy, possess

special qualities. He categorizes these qualities into three groups:

1. Cognitive qualities, including being honest, independent and self-

confident;

2. Motivation, including egoisticpassion for the workand commitmentto

action;

3. Attitude towards employees, which includes respecting their ability and

rewarding them on merit.

Understanding Leadership


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1. Vision, communication and networkingemphasizing the leaders

need to communicate a clear vision for the group or organization.2. Culture and valuesemphasizing the leadersrole in building and

maintaining an appropriate culture for the group to work in and for

the leader to be concerned with values and goals.

3. Leadership as situated action trying to provide a more

sophisticated analysis of the situations that leaders can take an

action in every situation that happended

4. Leadership as skilled behaviour, making a more detailed analysis of

the skills and behaviour which goodleaders use.

5. Cultural differences, recognizing that there may be some commonqualities required of leaders in many cultures but that these will be

expressed differently.

6. Power and authority structures, looking at the different forms of

power which leaders may use and how followers see their power

and authority

Recent Development in Leadership Research


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Another important issue is the difference between leadership andmanagement, Leaders are people who do the right things and managers are

people who do things right

The Leader The Manager

Creates and communication the vision control

Develops power base Is appointed

Initiates and leads change Maintains status quo

Sets objectives Concentrates on result

Leadership & Management


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There have been many studies which show that

groups can fail to solve problems or can makeineffective decisions if they ignore some of the

following:

1. Determining the type of task2. Problem -solving barriers, biases and traps.

Problem-Solving and Decision-Making


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On the positive side, we can suggest that the quality of communication is

critical on both simple and complex tasks. What is still not clear is some of therelationships between communication, interaction and other components of

the decision-making process.

Communication and Decision-Making

We can say that group goals are important. Research in this area suggests the

following practical strategies:

1. setting goals which cover all aspects of the performance;

2. providing regular feedback on progress;

3. encouraging communication between members;

4. encouraging and supporting planning activities;

5. helping group members manage failure.

Another problem is that groups may fail to recognize that they are not

considering all the alternative information or courses of action which they

need in order to arrive at a balanced decision.


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INTERGROUP RELATIONSHIP

QUESTION : When is a group not one group?

ANSWER : When its an intergroup!

In other words, when we communicate with another person we

may choose to communicate with them on the basis of the social

categories which we occupy, as in the following examples: I am lecturer, you are student.

I am manager, you are trade union representative.

I am engineer, you are from sales and marketing.

In each case we may be more aware of our groupresponsibilitiesthan of our more individual characteristics, and

this can have a very powerful influence on our behaviour.


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SO HOW CAN WE DEVELOP MORE

EFFECTIVE TEAMS AND

WORKING GROUPS

Identify all the process problems which might

be impeding the group progress

Try to resolve each one in turn

According to observations Hilarie Owen, the team is characterizedby expectations and striving for outstanding performance.

Strategies and skills required to create such teams include open

communication, negotiating the success criteria, planning both

the goals and the process, and effective leadership.


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Different Ways of Mending Teamwork

West (1994) suggests five main types of team-

building interventions is :

1. Team start-up

2. Regular formal reviews

3. Addressing known task-related problems

4. Identifying problems5. Social process interventions


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SUMMARY

Research suggests that the critical differences between

effective teams and working groups are the level of

commitment and the strong sense of mutual support and

accountability.

In order to create effective teams, we must understand the

most important processes which can influence group and

team working, including group development, team roles,

leadership, problem-solving and intergroup behaviour

There are several models of group development but none is

inevitable if the members make an open attempt to review

their processes.


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SUMMARY

The role of leader may be critical, and modern views of

leadership place particular emphasis on aspects of

communication.

We can develop teams through improved communication,

either by conscious reflection on their major processes and

adopting strategies for effective working or by using

specific team-building interventions.

It is important to choose the right team-building

intervention to suit the situation; different types have

different aims and scope and will satisfy different needs.

eng - building effective teams

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