Solutions to make team dynamics work
Introduction
Team building is an essential aspect of the business climate currently. Most organizations are currently evaluating structures that are team-based for them to stimulate more productivity, quality of services, and profitability of the business. Team-based structures are typically viewed by managers as the right designs for involving the business employees towards the creation of the success of the company. Efforts of the teams are seen as a way of improving customer results. The building of a cohesive team involves a variety of activities intending to improve the performance of the units. Team building is defined as the philosophy of job design that views the workers in any business as interdependent team members instead of seeing them as an individual employee.
The primary purpose of building a cohesive team is to specialize in bringing out the best from the group, ensuring positive communication, self-development, and working together of the team to solve problems—cohesive team building results in employees working for a common goal leading to more productivity. A cohesive group shares expectations to accomplish group tasks, respect differences between individuals, and to support one another. A leader should ensure that teams head towards productivity and cohesiveness. Therefore, a team should be continuously maintained and nurtured, just like the way individual workers would be nurtured. In a team-based structure, all the employees are involved in the overall organizational success. While the teams in any business have different job functions and are from individual departments, they help to unify all members in accomplishing the overall organizational objectives. To foster teamwork, a work culture must be created valuing collaboration where individuals think and believe that decisions, planning, and action-taking are perfect when accomplished cooperatively.
The building of the team cohesiveness
A team is composed of a group of individuals working to achieve a common goal. The building of team cohesiveness involves enabling a group of individuals to attain their objectives. One of the steps towards building the cohesiveness of the team is to clarify the goals of the team, identifying the obstacles towards the achievement of the goals, and facing the challenges identified towards the attainment of the goals. Teamwork is viewed as integrating resources and inputs towards the attainment of the organizational goals.
To build a cohesive team, two skills must be implemented. First is to recognize the right challenges and second tackling the challenges in the best way. Building the cohesiveness of the teams depends on the nature and size of the teams.
Stages of building a cohesive team
- The forming stage is the first stage, and it involves the coming together of people to accomplish a common objective.
- The storming stage is characterized by conflicts and relationships that are strained as a result of disagreements about the vision and mission of the group.
- The Norming stage is the stage where the relationships of the team members are formed, and the teams can progress towards the attainment of the objectives set.
- The performing stage involves the improvement of the Effectiveness of the team, thus bringing about successful team functioning.
- The last stage is the performing stage, where the members of the group complete the attainment of the objectives of the team, and at this stage, a team can be transformed to pursue other goals.
Steps for building a cohesive team
To build a cohesive team, the following requirements must be adhered to:
- For an effective team building the objectives of the teams should be measurable, achievable, and specific and time-bound.
- The members of any group must understand the purpose behind them participating in the team and the fitness of the team in the organization.
- The members of the team must have the willingness to participate in the attainment of the objectives of the team
- The team should be small to ensure that it is manageable.
- A clear approach must be established for team functioning.
- The teams should have adequate complementary skills.
Importance of internal environments towards the Effectiveness of team building
The culture of the organization has different effects on any individual employee. Therefore different cultures suit a specific team that can make it succeed or fail. A company should choose a particular culture and ensure that it is implemented in all departments. Employees that will be suited by the culture will stay while those that do not suit will leave. Companies should ensure that they do not implement different cultures in different departments, as that may negatively impact the performance of the employee.
Language is the main form of communication in any company. For cases where a company has several offices across the continent, there exists a communication gap between the teams, and therefore the companies should ensure that they find solutions towards the barriers of language to improve on the performance of the teams.
Technology allows easy communication among the team members and helps in the reduction of time and the expenses in group working. The use of technology in leading a group and the member of a group is valuable to employers. The use of technology ensures that disparate groups can work efficiently by working together.
Ways of overcoming communication barriers across locations
For international companies working in different locations, the main barrier to communication is the language barrier. Different companies are working on better and new methods of bridging the gap of communication and assist in collaboration in the company. As a result of globalization, most companies are facing language barriers due to their different locations of operations. For example, a company like Nulab with offices in the USA and japan experiences a language barrier because most employees speak Japanese, and some use English.
A language barrier can also occur if the industry involves the use of many jargon or language that is more technical. Therefore companies should ensure that in this case, employees should communicate in a way that everybody can understand for the alignment of the company goals.
Language barriers can also present it as dialects, whereby people can speak a similar language but may have dialectical differences. Therefore dialectical differences can result in communication gaps. For example, there are 22 major languages in India and approximately 720 dialects.
To overcome the issue of the language barrier, companies should ensure the use of plain language. Plain language should be used regardless of whether people are working with understand plain language. The use of jargon should be discouraged to reduce miscommunication.
For companies working in different offices across the continent, the services of a qualified translator should be enlisted. The translator’s work is to translate all important documents into the company’s selected primary language.
The company should ensure that they enlist interpreters for ensuring that there is no missing of crucial instruction or information.
For companies involved in a highly technical environment, a course should be introduced to introduce the jargon commonly used.
Also, to overcome language barriers, there should be the use of visual methods during communication. Diagrams and pictures can be used in the explanation of complex and complicated concepts.