1.Discuss aobut the Financial loss faced by ABcorp organization due to ineffective teamwork.
2.What are the skills which if present would have prevented the failure of the teams in meeting their objective?
3.How effective communication can influence effective teamwork?
1.ABcorp organization was going through a terrible financial condition. It was in need of a strong contract from some of the large companies of the nation who uses steel for their production. ABcorp is mainly based on preparing steel from its raw materials and selling steel to other organizations that require them to prepare their own products. The growing competition among the steel industry had made it difficult of the ABcorp organization to survive. It was indeed in need of a big contract from an organization that would buy steel from them. At that time, Amber Technologies sent an invitation to the organization for their bids. Amber technologies are specialized in developing home products which include washing machines, refrigerators, televisions, microwaves, toasters, coffeemaker and many similar other products. Fortunately, ABcorp organization won the bid. Amber technologies requested the ABcorp to develop a proper plan in a presentation mode discussing the benefits they would be getting and planning the financial transactions that would be conducted between them throughout the year. It was a great opportunity of ABcorp to regain back its reputation and re-establish its financial competition.
The higher authority of the organization provided a deadline of 15 days to the employees and gave the managers the duty to develop presentations. The financial department, the business strategists, business analysts, the research team all needed to work together to prepare themselves for the presentation and meet all the queries of the representatives of the Amber technologies. However, various issues came into notice, which affected the teamwork among the various departments. Not only, teamwork failed miserably among the different teams but also working climate among the respective team members within the team was also not going through a smooth phase.
The research team was given the duty to develop an audit of the various businesses that Amber technologies had created and study the statistics of their purchasing techniques. This would help the finance department to develop proper financial planning to hold their customer company and provide them the best plans and service. The manager of the research team was a new member and was quite rude with the team members. I was actually the research team and had been observing everyone’s activity closely. It was seen that the members of the team did not have proper communication with the manager as they were rudely treated. The manager embarrassed a member who failed to understand a particular piece of work. This prevented the team members to approach their manager whenever they faced any issues. The employee stated:
“I felt so bad to be humiliated in front of so many people for no reason. I had no idea about how to conduct the task. It was entirely new for me. I got no help from the team members as well. I had never seen any rude managers in my life. Once, I felt like leaving the job”
Moreover, it was also seen that there was also ineffective communication among the team members. One of the experienced members of the team was seen to have impatient listening skills and therefore the new joiners could not get help from the experienced member, as their queries were never properly addressed. Besides, the members of the team did not have proper feedback giving and receiving skills. None of the members used to motivate each other or help each other by providing good advises. I heard a member saying:
“I have no one to talk to. Everyone is so professional. The place is emotionally draining me. There is no one to share any feelings. No one wants to be friends as well. It is getting diffivult to work here day by day. I do not feel like working here. There is no one to encourage you. No motivations ……”
They never used to provide help to each other and power struggle was observed among the members. There was once an incident where three senior members forced a junior member to work overnight and commanded him not to leave the office until the work was done. Such an unprofessional behavior was complained to the higher authority. However, no actions were taken against the senior members and they continued to harass the juniors. The juniors also did not care for the instructions of the seniors. The seniors suffered from superiority complex and never gave the juniors effective feedback for developing their skills. Moreover, the juniors also avoided any communication with the seniors as they had poor feedback receiving skills as well. Their complexes made them act in ways where no coordination was maintained. Because of the ineffective communication, the work that was often conducted in the team did not synchronized with each other and the managers rejected them repeatedly. This delayed the work and as a result, the entire objective of the project was jeopardized.
Moreover, trust issues were also seen among the members of the finance team. Many members of the new team used modern technologies in their working approach. The old members of the finance team were not a supporter of the new approaches used by the new members and considered them inferior to them. They behaved rudely among each other and did not rely on each other’s skills. The new members used modern day software to complete their calculation. This was not liked by the older generations. Another trend was also observed among the team members. None of the team members was seen to be having a helping attitude towards each other. Blame games were constant among the team members. When the manager wanted a response from the team member due to the delay of work, lame excuses were provided. It was heard that one of them said ‘Sir, trust me, it was not my job, he was supposed to do the excel sheet modification.’ To these the opposite person said ‘We never had any conversation like that. It was you who was supposed to do this part and not me’. When one of them used to be absent, his work would remain piled up and no one would come forward to help. Moreover, the new aged employees could never become comfortable with the older generation employees and therefore the working climate was always tensed and stressed. Moreover, the managers who were appointed were never seen to motivate both the cohort to work together with extrinsic and intrinsic motivators like reward, inspiration and others. As a result, the finance team was also not seen to properly complete their assigned roles and hence, the work did not complete successfully within deadline.
Another big issue that was noticed is that the inter-team communication was quite low. They never used to have proper face-to-face communication among themselves. The written communication is not also done in proper manner for which inter-team activities were also not conducted in proper manner. Power struggles were also seen among the managers and therefore the team of managers did not conduct team-head meetings, which are very important. Face to face meetings were not done and therefore on the final day, the entire arrangements were not synchronized. The objective was not achieved and the presentation did not take a good shape. The lack of coordination among the teams was clearly affected in the presentation given by ABcorp representatives for which Amber technologies got agitated. They were not sure about their partnership and hence cancelled the entire deal. This resulted in complete loss of the company.
2.Researchers are of the opinions that effective teamwork requires the team members to develop skills that are extremely important for the success of organizations. For effective teamwork, the team leaders or the team managers need to develop transformational leadership but not autocratic leadership. The manager of the research team should have followed a transformational leadership where he should not have criticized the worker but rather had given him effective feedback (Jackson 2015). He should have provided them scope to succeed, motivating them to work better and making them learn the proper ways of conducting their tasks. Besides, transformational leadership, another important attribute need to be developed by them is effective relationship building and trust among each other. Researchers are of the opinion that betters the trust and communication among the team members, the better will be the work environment. Such work environment will never develop job stress among the workers but will in turn develop an informal environment where all members will freely communicate their concerns, their issues, their queries and others (Cheruvelil et al. 2014). This will help in proper coordination among them. Moreover, the team should also develop proper organizing and planning skills so that they can complete the tasks properly on time. Proper decision-making skills could have prevented the team members to work individually and they would have in turn worked together taking decisions in a collective as well as unanimous manner (McQuail and Windahl 2015). The members also did not have proper problem solving skills for which they faced issues and could not consult with each other and solve problems. Moreover, the team leaders should have arranged frequent meetings, which should have included effective feedback giving and receiving sessions among the different members in constructive ways so that proper rapport can be built among them (Thomas 2014). Accountability is an important attribute, which should have been inculcated by every team members as researchers are of the opinion that accountability and responsibility reduces the chance of occurrence of blame games. Moreover, it enhances every member to accept duties and complete them in timely fashion. This attribute also would have helped the members to acknowledge and thereby take responsibilities for their own mistakes (Costa and Anderson 2017).
3.Ineffective communication could have been taken as one of the main reason that had resulted in the complete failure of the project. For effective teamwork in the research team, it was seen that members did not have proper communication skills. Therefore, they could not take part in effective feedback giving and receiving skills. This communication skill if present could have increased the chances of interaction among the members, which would have resulted in better team output and productivity (Sims, Hewitt and Haris 2015). The development of an informal environment with effective communication skills could have reduced the grudges each of the members had against each other (Sacks et al. 2015). In the finance team, the gap between the new members and old members took place because neither the members nor the leader took initiatives to overcome the gap. Presence of proper communication skills would have helped in increasing interaction among the members and helped in conflict resolution. Communication helps in relationship building. The better the bonding among the team members, the better will be sharing of emotions among the members. This will prevent development of stress, as members will be able to share their concerns and different barriers they were facing. Proper communication would have helped them in developing proper socializing skills, which are very important in modern day working environments to maintain harmony. If effective and constructive suggestions and feedbacks were exchanged between the different members, the working climate would not have been so tensed and negative .Poor communication mainly resulted in misunderstanding which lead to internal conflict. If proper training on effective communication skills would have taken place and both old and new members were communicated about how both of them can put in their own ideas and help each other to reach their goals, such issues would have never taken place. Proper communication skills would have cut down the possibilities of conflicts (Galeghar, Kraut and Egido 2014). Rather both of the old and new members could have collectively worked in manners that would have increased each other’s knowledge and enhanced their skills. This would have helped them to meet their goals within deadline and thereby complete it with high quality.
References:
Cheruvelil, K.S., Soranno, P.A., Weathers, K.C., Hanson, P.C., Goring, S.J., Filstrup, C.T. and Read, E.K., 2014. Creating and maintaining high?performing collaborative research teams: the importance of diversity and interpersonal skills. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 12(1), pp.31-38.
Costa, A.C. and Anderson, N., 2017. Team Trust. The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Team Working and Collaborative Processes, pp.393-416.
Galegher, J., Kraut, R.E. and Egido, C., 2014. Intellectual teamwork: Social and technological foundations of cooperative work. Psychology Press.
Jackson, D., 2015. Employability skill development in work-integrated learning: Barriers and best practice. Studies in Higher Education, 40(2), pp.350-367.
McQuail, D. and Windahl, S., 2015. Communication models for the study of mass communications. Routledge.
Sacks, G.D., Shannon, E.M., Dawes, A.J., Rollo, J.C., Nguyen, D.K., Russell, M.M., Ko, C.Y. and Maggard-Gibbons, M.A., 2015. Teamwork, communication and safety climate: a systematic review of interventions to improve surgical culture. BMJ Qual Saf, 24(7), pp.458-467.
Sims, S., Hewitt, G. and Harris, R., 2015. Evidence of a shared purpose, critical reflection, innovation and leadership in interprofessional healthcare teams: a realist synthesis. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 29(3), pp.209-215.
Thomas, T.A., 2014. Developing team skills through a collaborative writing assignment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(4), pp.479-495
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