Creating a Successful Team
Introduction
Team building has become one of the essential features of organization life. Most businesses create workplace teams to conduct specific projects, which make a significant contribution to the company’s success. However, building excellent, strong working relationships is essential for every team performance. As a result, most businesses invest in creating effective teams to reap the overall benefits of better performance, successful project completion, and improved morale. This assessment aims at developing an overview of what should be considered when developing teams.
The Functional Areas to Include within an Organization Team
When selecting team members, it is crucial to consider different employees who will bring a variety of attributes to the organization. A team will yield exceptional performance and ensure the successful completion of assigned projects when it consists of diverse individuals sharing a common objective (Cheruvelil et al., 2014). In such a way, it is possible to integrate different interpersonal skills from diverse fields to ensure high-performance and collaborative team. Therefore, team members will be selected from different functional areas to successfully create a team that would develop a new, effective business model. Over nine months, team members will collaborate and work together to develop a model that supports the desired company growth. The functional areas and reasons for selection of these functional areas include:
Human Resources: HR typically connects the organization’s employees with the upper executive management of the company. Team members from the HR department will serve as advisors on specific potential employment issues, including equal employment opportunities, harassment, and help in facilitating conversations concerning dispute management and guide leaders through employee’s disciplinary process (Currie et al., 2017). Therefore, HR team members will enhance collaboration among the members towards creating a new business model, which will remain unbiased of specific opinions and serve to assist the organization in achieving the current goal.
Sale and Marketing: Department of Sales and Marketing is typically involved in marketing its brand and striving to defeat the competitors by increasing the organization’s sales, revenue, and profit margin (Claro and Ramos, 2018). Sales and Marketing team members will provide their expertise to help the team build a business model that accommodates the customers’ needs and is unique to what competitors have to offer. According to Claro and Ramos (2018), the collaboration between salespeople and teams working in customer service and marketing is beneficial to customer superior value creation as well as sales performance.
Information Technology: The IT Department team members will also be selected to enhance the implementation of operational parameters for some of the organization’s working units and use of IT systems, networks, and architecture (Iyamu, 2015). They will help the team analyze the data, modeling, streamlining communication, and integrating innovative, technology-based strategies when creating the new business model.
Characteristics of Effective Team Members
Even though selecting team members from various functional backgrounds or departments in the organization to build an interdisciplinary team is a crucial approach, it is also important that some functional areas may contribute to conflicting opinions. Therefore, the selection of team members should also incorporate characteristics of effective team members to ensure that they possess various attributes aligned with the entire objectives. Some of the characteristics of effective team members include:
They understand the clearly defined, precise, and measurable objective and are committed/willing to achieve them (MacGregor and Smith, 2018).
They are recognized and integrated within the organization, enabling them to understand the expectations and mechanisms of legitimacy and accountability (Schoultz, 2017).
They demonstrate a strong commitment to shared objectives and willing to communicate honestly and openly with other team members (MacGregor and Smith, 2018).
They come up with exceptional thoughts and ideas as well as solve disputes collaboratively instead of leaving issues hanging or blaming each other (MacGregor and Smith, 2018).
They understand their obligations and duties in the team and respect other team members’ ideas/thoughts and differences (MacGregor and Smith, 2018).
They accept and support risk-taking and experimentation to implement change by viewing the first-time mistakes as excellent opportunities for them to learn (Schoultz, 2017).
Communicating Team Objectives
Ensuring a streamlined communication among the team members is critical for the team to achieve optimal success. A team member should understand team objectives to sufficiently carry out his/her task. Before communicating the team objectives, I will set motivating goals first, which align with organizational strategy to develop a new business model. I will use various methods to communicate team objects, that is, through the formal document and direct communication. I will define a clear communication process and mechanism and stick to it.
The formal communication will include creating the team’s charter/manual, which will include the team’s goals and objectives, project duration and plan, specific team members’ name, their respective roles/duties, specific tasks, and desired results (Corey, 2016). According to Chhay and Kleiner (2013), “Web-conferencing is more effective than passive modes of communications such as email or voice mail.” GoogleDocs should also be considered a reliable way for members to contribute to assignments and share in the workload in real-time if they are unable to physically meet with the other members of the team.
Therefore, to establish boundaries and identify the team’s overall objective, a team charter should be drafted. By doing so, the responsibilities of each member will be made clear, but these responsibilities will be identified measurably to ensure the accountability of each member. Failing to communicate team objectives and identifying member’s responsibilities can lead to several fatal errors, one being an individual member steamrolling the rest of the group and failing to consider other opinions. Without communicating the objective of the team, some goals may be missed entirely.
Strategies for Delegating Obligations
The team leader will identify the strengths and weaknesses of each team member and delegate tasks based on individual strengths (Sohmen, 2013). Assigning members to tasks that complement their strengths may also result in the group members feeling more confident and empowered in their ability to contribute to the group effectively. As Sohmen (2013) states, “Empowerment shows that the leader has confidence in the team to get out of their comfort zones, to be creative, and to find new ways to accomplish tasks.”
Strategies for Managing Conflict
Conflict within groups can result for several reasons. Individuals may have different outlooks, attitudes, desire for power or control, and social backgrounds (Sikes, Gulbro, & Shonesy, 2010). As expected, one of the main causes of conflict is due to the lack of communication between team members. This can be the result of poor listening skills or different communication styles. The team leader should understand that conflict with people from a variety of backgrounds is almost certain, and they arm themselves with tools and strategies to resolve issues. If the dispute arises due to cultural differences, the leader should be expected to bring cultural awareness to both parties involved. Understanding that cultural differences and various social abilities can contribute to miscommunications amongst team members should lead to a deeper understanding of their fellow group members. The team leader will also appoint the team member from human resources to assist in any group conflicts that may arise, as that is their area of expertise. The hope is that the facilitator will be able to guide those involved through healthy and effective means of communication. Failing to resolve conflict can cause team members to feel isolated and unheard of. If team members are not working cohesively, one can expect complete dysfunction within the group and ultimately is a disservice to the organization as a whole. Without conflict resolution, teams can often fail to reach the group’s goals and fall short of the organization’s desired outcome.
Success Measurement, Tools, and Process
It is essential to measure the team’s performance and outcome once team members start working and completing the assigned tasks. The team leader will estimate success by establishing the expectations and bottom line and monitoring whether they fall short of that. Other procedures applied include:
Breaking down large projects into sub-units and setting deadlines to assess how much progress the team has achieved over time.
If the team has a strong player, the leader will coach other members to adopt some of the strong members’ attitudes and habits.
Every team member will be given the team’s charter or manual to gauge their standards and achievements at the beginning.
The leader will assess and monitor the progress of the project at different intervals to find out whether the team member has met the set benchmark.
The team will use a software program to track the time taken to accomplish specific tasks and objectives.
The leader will poll the group, using the comments and opinions of other employees to measure an individual’s productivity.
Based on Cheruvelil et al. (2014), “anonymously and evaluate from there.this can be a good time to get feedback from individuals that may not feel comfortable with speaking up to more vocal team members and be able to provide them with any additional training or resources they may need to be successful.”
Conclusion
Building excellent, strong working relationships is essential for every team performance. As a result, most businesses invest in creating effective teams to reap the overall benefits of better performance, successful project completion, and improved morale. Even though selecting team members from various functional backgrounds or departments in the organization to build an interdisciplinary team is a crucial approach, it is also important that some functional areas may contribute to conflicting opinions.
References
Cheruvelil, K. S., Soranno, P. A., Weathers, K. C. et al. (2014). Creating and maintaining high-performing collaborative research teams: The importance of diversity and interpersonal skills. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 12(1): 31-38.
Chhay, R., & Kleiner, B. (2013). Effective communication in virtual teams. Retrieved from https://www.iise.org/details.aspx?id=36244
Claro, D. P., & Ramos, C. (2018). Sales intrafirm networks and the performance impact of sales cross-functional collaboration with marketing and customer service. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 38(2), 172–190. https://doi-org.library.capella.edu/10.1080/08853134.2018.1437353
Corey, D. (2016). Effective HR Communication: A Framework for Communicating HR Programmes with Impact. United Kingdom: Kogan Page.
Currie, D., Gormley, T., Roche, B., & Teague, P. (2017). The Management of Workplace Conflict: Contrasting Pathways in HRM Literature. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(4), 492–509. https://doi-org.library.capella.edu/10.1111/ijmr.12107
Iyamu, T. (2015). Strategic information technology governance and organizational politics in modern business. Hershey: Pennsylvania IGI Global.
MacGregor, D. & Smith K. (2018). The human side of enterprise: The Wisdom of Teams. Retrieved from http://www.stanford.edu/class/e140/e140a/effective.html
Schoultz, M. (2017). Ten team characteristics for effective teamwork. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@mikeschoultz/10-team-characteristics-for-effective-teamwork-e0429b362ddd
Sikes, B., Gulbro, R., & Shonesy, L. (2010). Conflict in work teams: problems and solutions. Communications and Conflict, 15(1), 48-52.
Sohmen, V. S. (2013). Leadership and teamwork: Two sides of the same coin. Journal of Information Technology and Economic Development, 4(2), 1–18.