TEAM WORKing

This essay discuss and compares the literature review about team builing in organization. It will highlight the importance of well performing teams in organizations and disadvantages of poor team performance.There are lots of great teams working in organizations bringing a success to the companies and to the team itself. It is very important to have a great, strong team to work with to gain a success. However, you have to have a success key to create an effective team. So, what are the main objectives of strong team? Where is a success key? This essay will provide definitions about team, therefore, to get a better understanding about team, and will discuss about how to create an effective team at the work place. This essay will provide some great examples of techniques how to start to build a great team and what kind of activities to provide for team therefore team members could get know each other better and could gain a trust. Nonetheless, you will see a clear difference between two very famous authors Tukman and Belbin. Both authors are very well known for explaining and analysing team building. At the end of the essay some personal experience about working in a big team will be provided also. The clear overall essay summary will be provided in a conclusion .
The reason why this topic was chosen because for Human Resource specialist it is crucial to know how to work in a team, to find out what are techniques to build a team and how to adopt yourself in a team. Usually Human resources are located in organizations where people are working in groups and teams. It is very important to work well in teams therefore to achieve business goals. Very often HR specialist have to provide trainings to employees for that reason it is good to know the main concepts about team building.
Firstly, if person has decided to work in a big or small team he should understand that “a team is a number of people with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold them themselves mutually accountable” (French, Rees and Rumbles, 2008, p274). However, “ you do not become a team until you have developed methods of working together and relationship have formed between you, i.e through your collaboration you have begun to “bond” and develop ‘team spirit’. If these collaborative relationships do not exist, what you are in is a group. Even if you first came together as a self-selected group of friends that does not make you a team” (Wilson, 2010, p141).Team would not accept you if you will work only on your own and try to exceed the targets and receive an award or some kind of bonuses for grate work. It does not work this type of selfishness in a team. It is a taught work to build a strong team and requires lots of effort from managers or coaches to build it. Training helps to guide managers how to form a great team but it is difficult for a team to follow some restrictions. Even experienced team tend to fall apart or is facing some downs in their performance. Things happen that people simply are losing motivation and stop bringing a high performance in their team, nevertheless, the rest of the team suffers and loses its strain. Managers are great psychologist because they have to indentify a problem and find out the best option how to deal with appeared problem and how to rebuild a whole team. We might start to wonder why all trainings and managers support is so important to build a great team? Why this team working is so important for organization? Everybody knows their role at work and should follow it and no matters are you in an effective team or not. Managers’ role is to manage their staff to get the high performance at work. People who are in charged to build a strong team at work knows the benefits their can get from team working. Benefits of effective team working are: improve productivity, meet customer satisfaction, enhance service and quality of products, motivation would be the most important point because motivated employees spread their enthusiasm to others so they could achieve all together the main goals in organization. However, trust between employees and leader is crucial. “Trust builders include: listening to and valuing what another says even when not in agreement, admitting mistakes, giving and seeking mistakes, giving and seeking instructive feedback, attacking issues without getting personal, explaining reason behind requests and decisions, providing ongoing status reports” (Kayeser, Thomas, 20120, p.49). If people will break a trust then mix messages will be sending, conflict might appear, people can hurt each other feelings, the information might be hidden therefore people will jump to the conclusions without checking the facts (Kayeser, Thomas, 2010)
Secondly, it is very important to know how to build an excellent team that could perform and produce high quality service and brilliant results. Very well known Bruce Tuckman have introduced his five stage team development model. Development model: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. This model explains very well about the steps towards the winning team. All Managers should follow the Tuckman’s model when their introducing new people into existing team or when they are creating a new team. Managers themselves should be more involved in creating or rebuilding new team because going through development stages you can understand and know your team better, therefore in the future managers could know how to approach his team and how to help or deal with any unexpected circumstances. It is very important that team member allow themselves to take more time for each stage, and managers or team leaders should be prepared to be more patiencious because they need to give a time for team to go through all stages. Tuckman says if team do not complete first three stages than team might fall apart, might not proceed effectively, which leaves unresolved issues (Rollinson, 2005). “In fact one of Belbin’s key principles is that ‘no one is perfect but a team can be’ ”( French, Rees and Rumbles, 2008, p 284). Belbin argues that his created nine team role description gives a clear explanation about different type of team roles and that there are strength and weakness in those roles. Each role has its own characteristic and they are all different. Therefore, that all those roles have to be fulfil by team members to make a successful and effective team (French, Rees and Rumbles, 2008). Nonetheless, it is very important for managers to be a role model for their team. Team leaders or managers have to bring a positive emotions and enthusiasm in the work place. The fascinating new study done by Chi, Ching and Tsai about managers positive or negative moods and team performance at work in Taiwan (Santora, Eposito, 2011). The questionnaire included the stages where moods, behaviour transformations, team satisfaction, commitment towards achievements were measured. The results showed that “leaders positive moods had a profound impact on various aspects of team performance, with transformational leadership behaviours mediating the relationship” (Santora, Eposito, 2011, p89). Little things make a big difference the study proves that even emotions has a major impact on team performance. Not only leaders’ emotions can lead to negative team performance but a member of the team with negative attitude, emotions and moods also makes the work progress slower and can cause dissatisfaction in work production and team productivity. However, good communications skills are essential in managing team. It is necessary to know how to provide the information to the team. Managers have to learn the ways of how to approach their staff. If leader will be rude and arrogant this type of attitude can lead to chaos. This type of leaders’ behaviour can increase employee turnover which means new people will be recruited, extra company cost and new team building, extra time spending on training instead of profit making. Multiple and shifting memberships can cause complications. Managers have to come up with ideas or methods of teambuilding. For example, arrange a meeting or some kind of activities outside the work place. All employees would be more relaxed and more engaged with activities because different environment gives a positive impact to people. Different style or type activities which involve team members to challenge each other, to get know each other better and get closer to each other. This type of games or tasks brings the team closer, brings confidence and trust. Outdoors activities outside the organization are enjoyable and promote a sense of wellbeing between the employees and their leaders but “ this types of event, argues Simon Hollingsworth, Executive Chairman of value Based Relationship, should not be confused with properly thought –through and objective based teambuilding” (French, Rees and Rumbles, 2008, p278).
Nonetheless, it is important to know how to make your team to participate effectively. “change managers and team leaders can encourage effective, productive teams by introducing an effective team development process and ensuring that the team task is clear, conflicts are processed with satisfactory (and ideally creative) consequences, team members’ roles are clear, positive norms are established, the team performs well, and disbands constructively and in a timely fashion when its task is complete” (West, Markiewicz, 2004, p98). There are some situations when team members do not have a clear understanding of their tasks. It might cause because of communication problems between leader and its employees or team member do not communicate and do not share the information which was given earlier from their leader. It is crucial to communicate well among leaders and team members because that is the main purpose of working in a team. You have to share information, share your knowledge and make decisions therefore to get the best out of it to produce great results in your work place.
Thirdly, every day we all are facing problems at work and we have to be ready to deal with those problems and at the same time to gain and learn new things. Lots of hard work and effort people put into their work. Managers or team leaders gives lots of difficult tasks to challenge team members’ knowledge and strength. It is necessary to appreciate and award people for their hard work. Managers and team leaders have to show the respect to their employees and let them know that their do care about each of them. An award gives a boost to employees. Gives more confidence and most important it motivates all team to work better and exceed even better results. All of us like to know and it is very important to know that we have manager or team leader who cares about us, who listen, who gives a fare feedback. Sometime it is enough to say “Thank you for your hard work today”. People they do remember how they been treated. It helps employees to feel good about them - self but also it makes them feel good about their work too. Happy employees will make happy employers. There are different types of employee awards. It depends on organization. Some organizations decide to send all team to a different country to have a rest and enjoy free time. Some other organizations have bonus system which adds extra money into employee’s bank account or just simply provides a gift card where person or all team decides where and how to use this gift card.

In conclusion, to have a great team at workplace requires lots of effort, good training and good management. It depends on management how do their want their team to succeed in a business. If manager do not put much of effort to build a high performance team than this type of team will never bring any success to the company and it will lead to employees and employers disappointment. Activities with full of interesting games and task might help to build a high performance team. During those activities team members are getting closer and gain more trust to each other. It is not an easy task to build and manage a team. Managers have to be very wise, spontaneous and most important that manager has to have brilliant communication skills. Tuckman and Belbin discuss about team building very clearly therefore it would be good that each manager would follow these famous theories authors to create an effective team. There are lots of interesting and very helpful activities which can help managers to create their dream team. Creativity and imagination are the main key concepts for managers to build an excellent team.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

French, R., Rees, Ch. R. G. and Rumbles, S. (2008) Organizational behaviour. England: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd ( p.274)
Wilson, D ( 2010) Developing Personal and Professional Compentencies England: Mc Graw Hill
Kayeser, Thomas, A. ( 2010) Building team power: How to unleash the collaborative genius of teams for increased engagement, 2nd edition, New York: Mc Graw hill professional publishing Rollinson, D. ( 2005) Organizational behaviour and analysis an intergrated approach. 3rd edition. England: Essex: Pearson education limited
Santora, J.C., Eposito, M., (2011) Academy of management perspectives Journal, Nov2011, Vol. 25, Issue 4, p 88-90,3p, DOI: 10.5465/amp.2011.0106
West, M, Markiewicz, L., ( 2004) Building team-based working England: John Wiley and Sons Ltd