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High Team Performance

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High Performance Teams
By: Charlene Denise Norwood
Professor: Kate Spector
MBA 6210
Building Relationships

Abstract It’s essential for every organization to make sure that their goal is to motivate and help their employees demonstrate operating as a high performance team. Within every team, effective communication is extremely crucial between all members in order to see the success of the company. A divided team will not be able to stand against the fiery problems that arise within an organization if the foundation is not solid. In this paper I will be elaborating on communicating in teams, the organizational change, and organizational culture.

Communicating in Teams Communications is the lifeblood of all organizations, so organizations are keeping pace by adopting social media and other emerging channels into their communications toolkit (McShane & Glinow, p. 260). It’s nearly impossible for an organization to stand without first laying a solid foundation of effective communication. While establishing effective forms of communication the leader has to make sure that they enjoy helping the team members develop into leaders themselves, by creating climates of support and accountability rather than blame (Pearce, 2007, para 8). Take steps to help team members grow into their jobs by learning new skills, and train them to take on more challenging tasks and responsibilities. Praise, them either privately or publicly depending on the circumstances, for jobs they have done well (para 8). Make them aware that you have confidence in their abilities and support the decisions that they make on their own. Effective interpersonal communication depends on the sender’s ability to get the message across and the receiver’s performance as an active listener (McShane & Glinow, p. 274).Active listeners constantly cycle through sensing, evaluating, and responding during the conversation and engage in various activities to improve these processes. According to McShane & Glinow (2007), the breakdown of sensing, evaluating, and responding are listed below in depth: • Sensing, Sensing is the process of receiving signals from the sender and paying attention to them. Active listeners improve sensing in three ways. First, they postpone evaluation by not forming an opinion until the speaker has finished. Second, they avoid interrupting by the speaker’s conversation. Third, they remain motivated to listen to the speaker (p. 275). • Evaluating, This component of listening includes understanding the message meaning, evaluating the message, and remembering the message. To improve their evaluation of the conversation, active listeners empathize with the speaker. They try to understand and be sensitive to the speaker’s feelings, thoughts, and situation. Evaluation also improves listening by organizing the speaker’s ideas during the communication episode (p.275). • Responding, Responding, the third component of listening is feedback to the senders, which motivates and directs the speaker’s communication. Active listeners accomplish this by maintaining sufficient eye contact and sending back channel signals (e.g., I see”), both of which show interest. They also respond by clarifying the message, such as by rephrasing the speaker’s ideas at appropriate breaks (“So you’re saying that…?”). Teams that fail to communicate effectively wind up wasting time and energy doing busy work and other work that is not required because of a lack of understanding of what needs to be done. These team members also misunderstand each other and their personalities (Bass, 2010, para 5).This often leads to conflict within the group and a lack of trust between group members (para 5). Team members in groups that fail to communicate effectively wind up not understanding what makes themselves more efficient, because they fail to get feedback from everyone else in the group, and there is no one else that they can compare their work to (para 5). In our class discussion Sylvia stated: “The worst type of communication I have recently experienced is that of information overload. Information overload is defined as "a condition in which the volume of information received exceeds the person's capacity to process it" (McShane & Von Glinow, 2013, p. 273). Currently assigned to various projects and the folks on these projects are across the global and within all different types of job functions. Some are technology folks, executives, business project leads, employees in operations, compliance and legal teams.
Organizational Culture Organizational culture consists of shared values and assumptions (McShane & Glinow, p. 406). Organizational culture also consists of shared assumptions-a deeper element that some experts believe is the essence of corporate culture (p.406). Shared assumptions are non conscious, taken-for-granted perceptions or ideal prototypes of behavior that are considered the correct way to think and act toward problems and opportunities (p.406). Shared assumptions are so deeply ingrained that you probably wouldn’t discover them by surveying employees (p.406). Only by observing employees, analyzing their decisions, and debriefing them on their actions would these assumptions rise to the surface (p. 406). Many problems that leaders may face come from the leader’s ability to analyze and evaluate the organization culture properly. The leader has to become more consistent with the organizational culture in order for new strategy or strategic plans to develop to bring forth manifestation of what the company envisions for success. I have been in groups where there were different diverse backgrounds and at times it became very difficult to function because of the many personalities involved. One of the lessons that I have learn when dealing with various personalities, in order to bring some kind of harmony within the situation, entails asking questions about the individuals to obtain insight about the person(s) character and level of integrity. This will definitely assist in opening up the levels of communication and help you not to prejudge an individual before allowing them the opportunity to be themselves freely. I have been guilty of counting a person out because they didn’t behave the way I felt they should and they ended up being very valuable and contributed more than the call of duty too. It’s important to listen to the opinions and creative ideals of other team members because it’s going to take everyone in a team operating in full production in order to take the company higher.
Organizational Change Change is an inevitable and often continuous phenomenon because organizations need to remain aligned with the dynamic external environment (McShane & Glinow, p. 452). Many organizational change practices are built around Western cultural assumptions and values, which may differ from and sometimes conflict with assumptions and values in other cultures (p. 452). The employees are the ones that suffer the most when it comes to organizational change, because they have to adjust themselves to the many changes that are subject to take place. “Successfully changing and organization requires wisdom, prescience, energy, persistence, communication, education, training, resources, patience, timing, and the right incentives”, John S. McCallum wrote in the IVEY Business Journal. “Successfully leading and managing change is and will continue to be a front-burner responsibility for leaders. Prospects are grim for organizations that either cannot or will not change.
In conclusion, team leaders need to understand people and organizations, tasks, and processes, self and others (Gallos, 2008, p.3). When leading a team you definitely can’t be selfish and arrogant, because it will take away the genuineness and purity of empowering and encouraging the employees to be all they can be. The language of the workplace speaks volumes about the company’s culture (McShane & Glinow, p. 411). How employees talk to one another, describe customers, express anger, and greet stakeholders are verbal symbols of cultural values (p. 411).
References
Bass, A. (2010). Livestrong.com. Retrieved from http://www.livestrong.com/article/105939-team-communication-important-teams/
McShane, Steven L & Von Glinow, Mary Ann. (2013). Organizational Behavior. McGraw-Hill Irwin.
McCallum, John S. (1997). "The Face Behind Change." Ivey Business Quarterly.

Pearce, C. (2007). Ten steps to improving team leadership. Nursing Management-Uk, 14(4), 25.

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