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Leading and coaching highly effective teamsBasing on the syllabus the course objectives will focus on leadership behaviors that play a key role

in creating a positive work environment, managing conflict and effectively influencing others

toward the organization’s strategic goals. 

Module I. Introduction and Setting the Stage  

Overview of teams and their objectives

“A team is a group in which the jobs and skills of each member fit in with those of others as – to take

a very mechanical and static analogy – in a jigsaw puzzle, pieces fit together without distortion and

together produce some overall pattern.” (B. Babington Smith, as quoted by John Adair) 

Teams are more of a newer concept of working in organisations in the Uganda context basing on the

exposure I have had spanning Eight years in the public sector of health systems strengthening. The

cultural nature of hierarchical organisations with firm layers of management is slowly fading away

largely due to the massive increase in workload, pure human resource infrastructure in the public

sector and weak professional development of local staff in general.

‘….None of us is as smart as all of us….’ –Eunice Parisi – Carew, 2007

The main objective of teams would be to simplify a task by breaking it down into smaller units and

handled by experts in that field. This allows for more effective and focused resources placed where

they are needed.

Factors affecting teams 

Internal factors

Of the many factors that affect team performance the common grouping is into these categories;

Cohesiveness, conformity, norms and roles and leadership.

Cohesiveness;

This can best be defined as the gel that binds the group, how well the members mingle and

understand each other is key to any team success.

Cohesive groups or teams have very little turnover in membership. The longer that the group or

team maintains its core membership, the more cohesive it becomes. When participants retain theirmembership, they are demonstrating that:

1. They value their association with the team or group.

2. They receive benefits from participating in the group which they could not receive elsewhere.

3. They have made such significant investments (time or money) in the group or team, that theycannot forsake their membership

Significant advantages can be realized when cohesiveness is high:

  Member satisfaction with the group or team is high

  Group or team goals are achieved more effectively

  The quantity and quality of communication is high

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  The group or team exerts more influence over its participants1

Conformity;

For team success it is critical that all the members believe in the same objective or agenda, adopt

similar attitudes that will enable the team appear as one. This however should be done not as aresult of a decree but rather out of rational thinking and agreement from all the members.

The unfortunate drawback to this implementation in my experience has been the lack of trust in the juniors from the team leaders, possibly due to the racial divide and the skepticism in African abilitiesto carry out a task as a team

Forms and Norms;

Within a team each member plays a special role among these are; the socialiser, the inquisitor, the

organiser, the harmoniser and the facilitator. As a team each member has to play his role to the best

of his ability to ensure the team achieves success. If this total commitment is not shown, then of

course this will lead to discourse among the team members.

Leadership;

This to me is arguable the most important factor that affects team performance, without clear

guidance and character then the team is bound to fall apart. Effective teams rely on strong

leadership to influence their direction.

External factors affecting team performance are numerous;

The ones I found worthy of this discussion are;

Education empowerment in the organisation – does the organisation ensure that the team members

are constantly equipped with the right skills to ensure tasks are performed better? Is there a system

to monitor performance and strategies to ensure continuous performance improvement through

educating the staff? These issues if not addressed can affect the team negatively

Organisational culture – Key issues that affect teams most is does the organisation support teams as

a strategy to solving company issues, does the culture allow for the fostering of growth of individuals

through their tasks in teams to tap into their creative potential? In the past seven years of my

involvement in government structured organisation, I find that the culture is slowly embracing the

issue of teams of course the country’s biggest drawback is lack of funds to ensure that technical

human resource is fully available to carry out the tasks at hand.

1 Cougar , J.D. Creative Problem Solving and Opportunity Finding (Danvers, MA: Boyd & Fraser, 1995) pp242-

246.