Effective team
A good manager is most important role in a group. Whether the manager can help a work group to function as an effective team is determining if the work will be successful. Following, the differences between group and team, what is called effective team, why groups sometimes fail and how to improve group and team effectiveness Many people use the word group and team interchangeably, but there are many differences between group and team. A number of leadership courses designed for the corporate world stress the importance of team building, not group building. For example, a team’s strength depends on the commonality of purpose and interconnectivity between individual members, whereas a group’s strength may come from sheer volume or willingness to carry out a single leader’s commands (wisegeek, 2008). A group is easier to be formed than a team. In a group, if you have a group of professional accountants, the accountants could be grouped according to gender, experience, fields of expertise, age, or other common factors. They are all professional as accountants, so the leader will be harder to make consensus building.
A team is much more difficult to form. The member of the team may be elected for their complementary skills, not a single commonality. For instance, the member of business can be accountant, a company manager and a secretary. Every member has different functions in the business. So the overall success depends on a functional interpersonal dynamic. The leader will be easier to make consensus building. (wisegeek, 2008).
By comparison, a team does not rely on “groupthink”, because the groups are all in same specialty, the group is easy to form a “groupthink”. On the other hand, a team is formed of different functional peoples, so it will have different results. An accident investigation team would be a good example of a real world team dynamic. Each member of the team is assigned to evaluate one aspect of the accident. The team’s expert on crash scene reconstruction does not have to consult with the team’s expert on forensic evidence, for example. The members of a team use their individual abilities to arrive at a cohesive result. There may be a team member working as a facilitator for the process, but not necessarily a specific leader. (wisegeek, 2008)
Team effectiveness means getting people in a company working together effectively. Three parts of factors can influence the efficiency of company, which is the right mix of skills, the right motivation and the ability to solve conflicts without compromising the quality of the project.
The mix of skills is necessary. A company needs different roles, such as manger, secretary and accountants. That is meaning different technical abilities and communication skills. If there is no agreement on who does what in the group, it is unlikely that the team will prosper. The right motivation can lead a company work effectively. If the work is too easy or too difficult, the employee, or not worth to do, that will cause the employee feel passive. On the other hand, if the group meets challenge, it will be positive for the group members to improve efficiency. Working towards a specific goal enhances team effectiveness significantly.
Group work will meet problem in every part of the task. At the moment, we need the ability to solve conflicts without compromising the quality of the project. Conflict is innate to any work done in groups, and should be taken as part of the challenge rather than as something to be avoided by compromising.
Some groups sometime fail easily, not like the team. Some groups never do work out. Such groups can be frustrating for managers and members, who may feel they are a waste of time, and that the difficulties outweigh the benefits. Says a top consultant:” Teams are the Ferraris of work design. They’re high performance but high maintenance and expensive. (Thomas S. Bateman and Scott A. Snell 2002, Management competing in the New Era, P446)
It is hard to build high-performance teams. Team is not just consisting of some people, they must faction in a suit solution. For example, managers need new skills to make the group work, the skill include learning communication, allotting the members of group the work, and walking the fine line between encouraging autonomy and rewarding team innovations without letting the team get too independent and out of control. It is hard for traditional managers to give up control, they have to realize they will gain control in the long run by creating stronger, bettering-performing units. The benefits of teams are reduced when they not follow the decisions, so the management must truly support teams by giving them some freedom and rewarding their contributions.
Failure lies in not knowing and doing what makes teams successful. To be successful you must apply clear thinking and appropriate practice. That is what the rest of the chapter is about. (Thomas S. Bateman and Scott A. Snell 2002, Management competing in the New Era, P447)
How to improve group and team effectiveness is the things mangers need to do. It is one role to help a group to function. Teams and groups are not static parts of organizations. They come into existence, go out of existence, and change over time. In total, the performance and effectiveness of groups and teams can be improved. As a leader of a group, it is not necessarily easy to do. Contemporarily, there are no fixed system to manage the groups and teams. Nevertheless, there are some useful approaches to consider that have the potential for helping to improve a group’s performance in organizational settings. (Richard L. Daft 2000, Management, P481)
There are two main parts to improve group and team effectiveness. Those are managing the team conflict and build team effectiveness.
Researchers have generally distinguished two basic types of group conflict: task conflict and relational conflict. Task conflict is conflict that focuses on differences in ideas and courses of action in addressing the issues facing a group. Most of tasks are often not benefit for teams. Relationship conflict is usually found to be almost always dysfunctional. It will often distract focus from tasks and ideas, thus it may discourse rather than encourages consideration of multiple point of view. (Richard L. Daft 2000, Management, P480)
Many reasons can cause group conflict, for example, include scarcity of resources to accomplish group goals, difference in the interpersonal styles of individual members and differences in values. When we meet such multiple causes, dealing with the conflict becomes more difficult. Thus managing group conflict is very important as a part of improving group and team effectiveness. The most important managerial guideline for dealing with group conflict is tried to increase the ratio of substantive to relationship conflict. It means strongly encouraging to express differences of opinion about task methods and objectives. In this way, relevant information can be brought to bear on the issues faced by the group. In addition, you should help to clarify and reduce task ambiguities and try to get the group to focus on larger goals beyond individual member interest-goals, in other words, that emphasize the common interests of all the group members. Thus we can find active attempts that are function on avoiding relationship conflict, which is the best way to eliminate harmful effects on group members’ satisfaction and performance. (Richard L. Daft 2000, Management, P481)
Team building skills are critical for your effectiveness as a manager or entrepreneur. A team building success is when your team can accomplish something much bigger and work more effectively than a group of the same individuals working on their own. (Time-management-guide, 2008). Team effectiveness is defined by three criteria. First, the productive output of the team meets or exceeds the standard of quantity and quality. As example, Procter & Gamble’s business teams are effective at reducing costs and at developing new products. Secondly, the members will realize satisfaction of their personal needs. The managers will give their teams the freedom to innovate and stretch their skills. Thus the member will keep enthusiastic and work hard. Third, the team members remain committed to working together again. In other words, this type of team has prospects to achieve success. (Thomas S. Bateman and Scott A. Snell 2002, Management competing in the New Era, P447&448)
To promote team effectiveness, managers should enhance communication and promoting cooperation and team effort.
Reference:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-team-and-a-group.htm http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-team-effectiveness.htm
http://www.time-management-guide.com/team-building.html
Thomas S. Bateman and Scott A. Snell 2002, Management competing in the New Era, P447&448 P446 P447 Richard L. Daft 2000, Management, P481 P480
