Working as a Team

7 Key excerpts on "Working as a Team"

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  Teamwork

  Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives

  • N. Gold(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  6 The Psychology of Effective Teamworking Carol S. Borrill and Michael A. West Teams have become the building blocks of organizations (Lawler, Mohrman and Ledford, 1992). As organizations grow in size and become structurally more complex, groups of people are needed who work together in co- ordinated ways to achieve objectives that contribute to the overall aims, effectiveness and competitiveness of the organization. Team working pro- vides the flexibility needed to respond effectively, appropriately and more quickly than competitors to the constantly changing demands in the organ- ization’s environment, and provides a mechanism for bringing together the range of expertise, skills and knowledge required to complete complex work tasks. The contribution that team working makes to organizational effective- ness has been demonstrated in a range of studies. A review by Weldon and Weingart (1993) revealed that the introduction of groups with shared goals lead to better performance and productivity in a variety of organizational settings. Macy and Izumi (1993) conducted a meta-analysis of 131 field studies of organizational change and found that interventions with the largest effects upon financial measures of organizational performance were team development interventions or the creation of autonomous work groups. Applebaum and Batt (1994) reviewed 12 large-scale surveys and 185 case studies of managerial practices. They concluded that team-based working leads to improvements in organizational performance on measures both of efficiency and quality. Similarly, Levine and D’Andrea-Tyson (1990) concluded that substantive participation leads to sustained increases in productivity and that teams effectively enable such participation. Cotton (1993) confirmed this finding in a study of a variety of forms of employee involvement.

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  Moving from Project Management to Project Leadership

  A Practical Guide to Leading Groups

  • R. Camper Bull(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  23 3 Understanding Teamwork The era of the rugged individual is giving way to the era of the team player. Everyone is needed, but no one is necessary. —Bruce Coslet In most organizations, a “team” is defined as a group of people assembled for a specific purpose, usually to complete a given project or task. Anytime one of these groups is formed, there is an inherent expectation among the organization’s leadership that there will be teamwork between the members, yet merely assigning a group of individuals who work for the same organi-zation to the same group does not create a team. One of the first things a new project manager often realizes is that he or she is incapable of completing a project alone. The project manager must depend heavily, and sometimes exclusively, on the team that has been assembled. Unfortunately, not every team is capable of teamwork. The Fallacy of Teamwork Industries are becoming more competitive each day. Globalization of the world’s economy and electronic media such as the Internet create a “flat” sur-face for all organizations, and make finding strategic differentiators between these firms more challenging. Superior teamwork is one way to level a strategic advantage of an orga-nization; however, most organizations do not invest the time and effort in order to develop this teamwork. The word “teamwork” is overused in the business world. There are thou-sands of organizations in the world that claim to possess great teamwork simply because their organizations are filled to the brim with teams. I’ve been told by corporate executives, “We all work in teams here,” only to discover later that the teams are moved around every four months. This type of con-stant shifting breaks up the dynamics of a group, destroying their chances of achieving teamwork. These corporations are just interrupting their teams during the stages of team development without actually gaining any of the advantages of genuine teamwork.

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  The Daily Art of Management

  A Hands-On Guide to Effective Leadership and Communication

  • Peg Thoms, James F. Fairbank(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  If we start working together during any of those gatherings, we might become a team—and perhaps just for that brief time. Generally, the goal of a group is to share information; the goal of a team is collective performance. Groups allow for individual accountability; teams require mutual accountability. The skill set of people in groups might be random and varied; the skills of team members are usually either the same or, often times, complementary. Bringing It All Together through Teamwork 153 Because organizations prefer to use the word teams almost exclu- sively, we will follow that convention in this chapter. Groups tend to form naturally and informally, because human beings are social creatures. Groups provide us with strength in numbers and security, they provide us with mutual support both physically and emotionally, and they help us protect our identities or other facets of our being that are important to us. Professional organizations are good examples of groups. Teams, on the other hand, are usually carefully constructed and managed to get the most from peoples’ respective capabilities, and are designed to achieve synergy. WHAT IS ALL THIS TALK ABOUT SYNERGY? Synergy is one of those words that is tossed around pretty indis- criminately these days, as if it were magic dust. Synergy essentially boils down to the equation 1 + 1 + 1 = 4. What that means is that if three of us were to work individually and put our effort together, and each of us had a productive output of 1, then we would expect our productive output together to equal our additive individual efforts, or 3. However, if by working together, sharing information, and incorporating that additional information in our collective thought process, we achieve something more than our additive out- put; hence, 4. To illustrate synergy, just look at successful profes- sional sports teams. All professional athletes possess superb talents, and the individual performance differences between teams are slight.

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  Building Team-Based Working

  A Practical Guide to Organizational Transformation

  • Michael A. West, Lynn Markiewicz(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  106 DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE TEAMS reward the achievement of objectives in appropriate relation to the importance of their achievement to the team as a whole; provide support if required in prioritizing goals, developing action plans and managing time. A well-used approach to setting objectives for both individual team members and the team as a whole is the use of SMART dimensions: • Specific • Measurable • Appropriate • Realistic • Time-bound. Even more instructive is what the research evidence from psychological studies of goal setting and motivation indicate. Goals should be clear, they should also be challenging and team members responsible for achieving them should be involved in setting them. Finally, team members should feel a sense of efficacy about their ability as a team to achieve these goals. In these circumstances, goals are likely to be maximally motivating and the team maximally effective. 5.2 Team Participation The point of teamwork is to bring together people with different skills, experiences and knowledge to work interdependently to accomplish a task that is best done by such a group rather than by individuals working alone or in parallel. So building effective teams means ensuring a high and appropriate level of participa-tion. This requires that they interact, share information and also influence the decisions that are made. We next examine what this means and how it can be enabled. Interaction In order for a group of individuals who share a common goal to be called a team they must have some minimal ongoing interac-tion, otherwise their efforts are essentially uncoordinated and unaggregated. Teams interact during task performance and in-formally; both are equally important. Informal interactions might DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE TEAMS 107 include parties, lunches or informal chats in the corridors to discuss family matters or sporting events.

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  Managing People in Education

  • Tony Bush, David Middlewood, Tony Bush, David Middlewood(Authors)
  • 1997(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  In such definitions, the presence of conflict is rarely acknowledged in any meaningful way, yet the manner in which inevitable differences are handled is essentially what distinguishes a team from the looser notion of a 'group': 'The new senior management team is working well as a team. There is a good balance of personalities and experience. We are now comfortable enough to disagree with each other and it is very productive' (Bolam et al., 1993, p. 96, emphasis added). In short, according to my understanding, a team is, or becomes, confident in its ability to exploit conflict as a vehicle for making better decisions. Effective teams assume that members will hold different and, occasionally, irreconcilable views on certain issues. In the two senior management teams they studied over the course of a year, for example, Wallace and Hall (1994, p. 190) 'were aware of some difficult moments when consensus could not be reached, soaking up time; or when grappling with new ideas, which, 80 Managing people in education for most members, posed a threat to the existing culture of teamwork'. A group, however, is more likely to be concerned with merely avoiding such conflict altogether or, alternatively, with either socialising or excluding from the group those who are perceived to have different values and norms. THEORIES ABOUT TEAMS Some thirty years ago, whilst working for the US navy, Tuckman (1965) constructed a model of team development which has proved remarkably enduring in many other occupational sectors. Based on an analysis of the extant literature, Tuckman suggested that teams go through several basic stages of growth. These have since been labelled, in mnemonic fashion, • forming • storming • norming • performing. The key point is that a period of 'storming' or turbulence is essential if the team is to establish shared norms which will enable it to function effectively.

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  The Emerald Handbook of Group and Team Communication Research

  • Stephenson J. Beck, Joann Keyton, Marshall Scott Poole, Stephenson J. Beck, Joann Keyton, Marshall Scott Poole(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Communication in Group Contexts This page intentionally left blank Chapter 27 Work Groups and Action Teams: Distinguishing Among Task-oriented Groups Jennifer N. Ervin Abstract This chapter describes the ways in which tasks structure group discussion and performance in organizational settings. Work teams are de fi ned as three or more members of the same organization who work interdepen-dently toward a shared task or goal while supporting that organization ’ s mission. Action teams are a speci fi c type of work group. They are char-acterized by tactical tasks that require newly formed teams to perform in high-stakes situations. This chapter starts by covering historical trends in organizational culture and climate and team training. The remainder of the chapter focuses on the interrelationships among tasks, communication, and performance. Several tips for managing effective work teams, such as staying on task during meetings and responding to changing team mem-bership, are discussed. This chapter closes by making recommendations for future research. Keywords : Organizations; action teams; tasks; communication; performance; team training Introduction This chapter presents methods for creating, understanding, and evaluating effective task-oriented groups in organizational settings. This chapter draws pri-marily upon resources such as book chapters, reviews, and meta-analyses from the group and organizational communication literature to describe how tasks can facilitate or in some cases hinder effective communication, collaboration, and performance. For the purpose of this chapter, a group is de fi ned as three or more individuals who identify as members of the same group and who work together on The Emerald Handbook of Group and Team Communication Research, 429 – 442 Copyright © 2022 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved doi: 10.1108/978-1-80043-500-120211027

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  Learning by Design

  Building Sustainable Organizations

  • A. B. (Rami) Shani, Peter Docherty(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Competence development in the production process has now been established as an institutionalized iterative process. There is a constant group competence revision cycle being conducted, in which current competence levels are compared with required competence levels by managers and team members within the framework of planning interviews and the analysis of the main competence areas in teams. These analyses lead to team and individual development plans. The action taken on the basis of the gap analysis is evaluated and recorded as the basis for the next iteration in this ongoing process. The teams function practically as small companies and their work has the char-acter of joint communicative action. Their conversation and dialogues concern DESIGNING BUSINESS-FOCUSED TEAMS 77 production planning and follow-up, problem-solving, continuous improvement and development work, HRM, teaching and learning, and negotiation and conflict resolution. These develop a community of practice and culture within the group and with shopfloor management. The learning and the joint culture, with a common value base, are key factors strengthening sustainability at the individual and group level (Maslach and Leiter, 1997). The teams constitute a high trust organization. The “local theory” or common frame of reference re-garding the functioning of the team and the technology will also promote pro-ductivity and effectiveness in the work and thereby support competitiveness. However, the issue of balance is as critical in the group context as it was shown to be in the individual case. The groups have considerable decision discretion, but have scarce resources. There are also risks that different group members focus on different issues and that real conflicts may arise, eroding sustainability.

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