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Team Building

Team Building


Methods for developing a team

Team building can be applied within groups or at the inter-group level, at which activities are inter-dependent. The activities considered in team building typically include goal setting, development of interpersonal relations among team members, role of analysis to clarify each member's role and responsibilities, and team process analysis. Of course, team building may emphasize or exclude certain activities depending on the purpose of the development effort and the specific problems with which the team is confronted. Basically, however, team building attempts to use high interaction among members to increase trust and openness.

There is no shortage of efforts at trying to identify factors related to team effectiveness (J. R. Hackman, 1987). However, recent studies have taken what was once a "veritable laundry list of characteristics" (D. E Hyatt & T. M.Ruddy, 1997) and organized them into a relatively focused model. The key components making up effective teams can be subsumed into four general categories.


Context

The four contextual factors that appear to be most significantly related to team performance are the presence of adequate resources, effective leadership, a climate of trust, and a performance evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions.
Adequate Resources Teams are part of a larger organization system. A research team in a big organization must live within the budgets, policies, and practices set by the company's corporate officer. As such, all work teams rely on resources outside the group to sustain it. And a scarcity of resources directly reduces the ability of the team to perform its job effectively.

Leadership and Structure Team must agree on who is to do what and ensure that all members contribute equally in sharing the workload. In addition, the team needs to determine how schedules will be set, what skills need to be developed, how the group will resolve conflicts and how the group will make and modify the decisions (A. Harmon, 2003). Agreeing on the specifics of work and how they fit together requires team leadership and structure.
Climate of Trust Members of effective teams trust each other. And they also exhibit trust in their leaders. Interpersonal trust among team members facilitates cooperation, reduces the need to monitor each others' behavior and bonds members around the belief that others on the team won’t to take advantage of them.

Performance Evaluation and Reward System How do you get team members to be both individually and jointly accountably? The traditional, individually oriented evaluation and reward system must be modified to reflect team members (R. O. Crocket, 2002).


Composition

Abilities of Members Part of a team's performance depends on the knowledge, skills and abilities of its individual members. It's true that we occasionally read about the athletic team composed of mediocre players who, because of excellent coaching, determination, and precision team work, beats a far more talented group of players.
Personality: Personality has a significant influence on individual employee behavior. This can also be extended to team behavior. Many of the dimensions of the personality have been shown to be relevant to team effectiveness.

Allocating Roles Teams have different needs and people should be selected for a team to ensure that all various roles are filled. Successful work teams have people to fill all the roles in an organization and have selected people to play these roles based on their skills and preferences (J. Ewing, 2001).

Diversity Most team activities require a variety of skills and knowledge. Given this requirement, it would be reasonable to conclude that heterogeneous teams-those composed dissimilar individuals-would be more likely to have diverse abilities and information and should be more effective.

Size of Teams Generally speaking, the most effective teams have fewer than 10 members. And experts suggest using the smallest number of people who can do the task. But unfortunately there is a pervasive tendency for managers to err on the side on making teams too large which create lots of conflicts in the team.

Member Flexibility Teams made up of flexible individuals have members who can complete each others' tasks.

Member Preferences Not every employee is a team player. Given the option, many employees will select themselves out of team participation. When people who would prefer to work alone are required to team up, there is a direct threat to the team's morale and to individual member satisfaction (Knowledge management, 2005).


Work Design

Effective teams need to work together and take collective responsibility to complete significant tasks. They must be more than a "team in name only" (Burton & Silverman, 2001). The work design category includes variables such as freedom and autonomy, the opportunity to use skills and talents, the ability to complete a whole and identifiable task or product, and working on a task or project that has a substantial impact on others.


Process

The final category related to team effectiveness is process variables.
Common Purpose Effective teams have a common and meaningful purpose that provides direction, momentum and commitment for members. This purpose is a vision. It's broader than specific goals.

Specific Goals Successful teams translate their common purposes into specific, measurable, and realistic performance goals. These specific goals facilitate clear communication. They also help teams maintain their focus on getting results.

Team Efficacy Effective teams have confidence in themselves. They believe they can succeed. This is called team "efficacy"


Managing Conflicts in Team Setting

Interdependency of objectives and competition for limited resources often leads to conflict. Conflict can be defined as disagreement between two or more parties on one or more issues. Developing teams can lead to conflict because individuals have different expectations, priorities, liking and disliking and perceptions, schedules create pressure or stress, personalities are incompatible, and misunderstandings between managers and members occur.

When a team is developed for specific task bunch of conflicts arise because managers and members must make trade-off, such as whether to emphasize skills and abilities of individuals, personality or biasness, performance or development, growth or stability, reward or training, and size of team, members' role. The major conflict which a manager faces in a team is about the role and responsibilities. It is very hard to decide who will do what job? Most of the members emphasized on large teams because they know that in this way the duties and responsibilities will divided but they overlook the dysfunctions of the large teams. To avoid accepting more duties they always create conflict in the team to arrange more members.

As we know that without setting goals a company is just like a wandering ship that has no destination. In the process of goal setting every member of the team emphasize on his point view. For example, in a company with 6 or 7 partners, will unable to set agreeable goals. Because every person will try to impose his ideas on others, as a result the company will definitely descend.

But, we can't infer that every time the conflicts prove disadvantageous. Sometimes, it proves very helpful for manager to know the weaknesses of the team because the opponent will only highlight the weak points of the team on which a manager or team members can easily overcome if they sincerely work for company.


How to make Teams more Effective and Efficient

The effective teams may be measured based on the extent to which the team achieves its objectives and performs on behalf of the overall organization. Previous research has, at times, failed to note the ways in which teams are embedded in overall organizations (. Consequently, studies of team effectiveness may not have revealed a complete picture of the nature of team success.

For teams to be more effective, they must overcome some of the problems and dysfunctions that groups in general encounter (Evelyn et al, 1996). Long-standing models of team effectiveness include creating the right environment where support, commitment, reward systems, communication systems, and physical space are all in sync to allow the team to work in a productive atmosphere (James W. Bishop et al, 2000).


Skills for Team Members and Leaders

Leaders and team members need to be able to enhance their effectiveness and abilities in order to assimilate into new and fresh teams. They can increase their effectiveness and ability to meet with other new teams if they use the following nine behaviors (Robbins & Hunsaker, 2003). They must accept their responsibility, have Trust, must be industrious, motivated, have specific individual goals, like training, find opportunities, sociable, establish common purposes and have common approach to achieve goals.




REFERENCES

A. Harmon, (2003). Appeal of Instant Messaging Extends into the Workplace. New York Times, March 11, pA1.

D. E Hyatt & T. M.Ruddy, (1997). An Examination of the Relationship Between Work Group Characteristics and Performance: Once More into the Breech. Personnel Psychology, Autumn. pp.555

E. S. Neilsen (1972). Understanding and Managing Inter-Group Conflict. In J. W. Lorsch and P. R. Lawrence (eds). Managing Group and Intergroup Relations. pp. 329-343.

Evelyn F. Rogers, et al, 1996). Self-Managing Work Teams: Do they Really Work? Human Recourse Planning, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 53-57

James W. Bishop et al, 2000). Support, Commitment and Employee Outcomes in a Team Environment. Journal of Management, Vol. 26, No. 6, pp.1113-1132

J. Ewing, (2001). Sharing the Wealth. Business Weak e.biz, March 19, pp. EB36-40

J. R. Hackman, (1987). The Design of Work Teams. In J. W. Lorsch (ed). Handbook of Organizational Behavior, Prentice Hall. pp. 315-345

Knowledge Management@Tata steel (2005). Case Studies in Human Resource Management, Vol. II, (CFAI press).

R. O. Crocket, (2002). The Office Gossips, New Water Cooler. Business Weak, June 24, p. 14

Robbins & Hunsaker, 2003). Training in Interpersonal Skills. 3rd edition: Prentice Hall, pp. 66-69

R. R. Black, J. S. Mouton and R. L. Sloma (1965). The Union Management Intergroup Laboratory: Strategy for Resolving Intergroup Conflicts. Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences: 25-27

T. M. Burton & R. E. Silverman, (2001). Lots of Empty Spaces in Cerner Parking Lot Get CEO Riled Up. Wall Street Journal, March 30. p. B3
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Posted by: Jeffrey J. Thomson

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