Question:
Explore the Complexities of Organisational team work, and examine the skills and attributes it takes for individual team members to become Effective Team Players.
Team work refers to the coordinated or cooperative attempts of an assembly of people working together like a team or for the purpose of achieving a shared goal. It may be defined as an effective process of work that involves two or more members. The main aim of this process is to accomplish a task at hand with the help of the combined activities of many people specialising in a variety of activities required for the successful completion of the task. The process of teamwork, like all other processes may be looked upon as tedious and cumbersome for many and as a pleasant activity for the others. The team members of a single team may have expertise in various disciplines thereby making it easier for the team to achieve its goals in an effective manner within the stipulated time.
The following essay deals with the exploration of the complexities involved in the activity of working as a team. It also aims at the examination of the attributes and skills that a person needs to become an effective member of the concerned team. The essay aims at the discovery of strategies that help to develop the capabilities of the team members founded on the evidences from literature. The essay commences with a discussion on the team work and puts forward some of the concepts of team communication and performance. The essay continues on to review the communication factor that is involved in the activity of working as a team. The essay at its fag end discusses the role of ethics in the activities that involve team work. The conclusion of the essay deals with the recommendations for the students in a university who have undertaken team works throughout their tenure of studies.
Team work may be defined as the combined efforts put in by all the members of a team in order to accomplish the bigger goal at hand. It refers to a collection of emerging states and other processes of behaviour needed to accomplish a target that requires the work of a group of people (Dyer and Dyer 2013; West 2012). In fields of healthcare, team refers to the active and lively processes wherein a number of healthcare professionals sharing complementary skills and backgrounds are involved. They share the health goals that are common to all the members in the group. They exercise collaborative mental and physical efforts that are involved in the processes assessment, planning or the evaluation of the care taking of the patients. The members of the team may be provided with financial rewards to motivate them in their field of work. According to Belbin (2012), team refers to a group in the most benign contexts. The members of a team are dynamically attached to each other and have a significant contribution towards the chief achievements of the group as a whole.
Team performance refers to the performance of the members if the team as a whole. The management of the team performance refers to the adjustment in the composition, direction or context of a group of employees or a team. This helps in the increment in the effectiveness of the group of employees working together as a team (Chen et al 2013). The effectiveness of the team is measured by the benchmarks set by the organisations that is expected to be met by the team members. This can also be measured by the comparison between the expected outcomes or progresses of the team and the targets that were set by the company. King and King (2017) suggests a number of ways to measure the work of the team and proposes various ways in which the transactive memory systems can be used to measure the structure, performance and processes of the concerned team.
Team effectiveness refers to the ability of the team possess to attain the objectives or targets set by the authorized organisation or personnel. This is also known as the group effectiveness. According to the book Enhancing the effectiveness of team science (2015), the characteristics that define a highly effective team are the emotional intelligence of the team members, the well-dispersion of extrovert and introvert members of the team. The members of an effective team are known to be sharing the same stories and find time for humorous interactions during their work hours. The team members of an effective team are known to have proactive communications and have been known to undergo great leadership (Mahembe and Engelbrecht 2013).
Communication within the team is one of the five key components of effective teamwork within the workplace. An effective team is always known to have an open line of communication. The team wherein members agree on a particular style of communication form the commencement of the act itself, are more probable to attain productive results than the teams who do not have such great communication among their members (Hedman 2016). The working environment of the team should be such that the members of the team are never hesitant in their communication with the co-members of the team. The team members should be free enough to share their ideas with each other. Each member of the team should contribute to the ideas, issues and concerns that come up within a team. The poor communication within a team may prove to be harmful for the concerned organisation. According to a study, the cumulative cost incurred per worker head, per year due to the losses in productivity due to the barriers in the field of communications.
In order to establish effective communication within the place of work, the members of a team must possess an open mind. They must engage themselves in active listening of an idea which is being discussed. They must also possess a clear understanding of the requirements and aims of the project in hand. There are five strategies that are need to be followed so as to ensure strong communication within the company. The employees should be able communicate the objectives and goals with all the employees in the organisation (Henttonen, Johanson and Janhonen 2014). The employees of a certain company are expected to have a sound knowledge of the goals and missions of the concerned company. The employees are more engaged to a company when they feel that they are a part of the objectives set by the company. They start to communicate freely with other employees and the managers when they develop the feeling that they are a part of the company. The company should try and focus on emphasizing on bringing together the communications that are important to be circulated among the employees. The employees thus get to know of the happenings in the organisation and are connected with all the other employees of the organisation. This is commonly known as the consolidation of the communication that is taking place within the company (Nancarrow et al 2013). The company should provide for the ease of communication among the employees. The organisation should have a common platform through which the employees as well as the managers may communicate and thereby address the issues that the company is facing in the market. the company should promote the openness of communication between employees of all levels. The employees may at certain points of time feel discouraged due to the constant top-down communication which is necessary sometimes. The employees must have access to the company information at any given point of time when they need to do so (Shockley-Zalabak 2014). The company must provide all the employees with the access to all information that they need in order to make sure that the employees can deliver to their best capabilities towards the betterment of the company in the future.
Ethics refer to the values and principles that are used by the individual to govern the decisions and actions that the concerned person undertakes. The organisational code of ethics refer to the set of rules that help to provide guidance for the for the concerned organisation in the programs that it undertakes. The organisational ethics is also inclusive of the decisions that are taken for the betterment of the company and the policies that are selected in order to help the company to achieve success in the respective market. the productivity, bottom line and the reputation of the company can be affected by the ethical philosophy that the company chooses to abide by (Cohen et al 2014). The loyalty and the morale of the employees of a concern may be affected by the ethical policies undertaken by the leaders in order to manage the company. These ethical code that the leaders of the company use help to determine the behavioural patterns and disciplinary procedures that are considered to be acceptable in the concerned organisation (Hassan et al 2013). The ethical behaviour of the leader of a team encourages the other team members to follow the ethical pathway as well.
The promotion of ethical behaviour among the employees ensure that the employees accomplish their work with proper integrity and honesty. According to Yidong and Xinxin (2013), the employees who follow the ethical code of behaviour stick to the employee rules and policies that are set forward by the organisation. The members of the team that follow the ethical codes of work are the ones who struggle to meet the standards of the quality that the work demands from them thereby helping in increasing the reputation of the team that they are working with and in turn the goodwill of the company. The ethical behaviour of the team members may be reinforced by rewarding the member of the team who sets forth the example of the integrity and ethical values in their work that is in accordance with the set of rules and policies that are set by the concerned company (Pieterse, Van Knippenberg and Van Dierendonck 2013). The tasks that are handed over to an efficient and well-trained team, the task is assured to get completed accurately and in time due to the work pace that s set by the team. The team members feel more comfortable to communicate once the team starts performing well and reaps the benefits of doing so. The team members get accustomed towards processing of the brainstorming suggestions of their colleagues. The concerned company thus reaps benefits of the various suggestions that are put forward by the various effective teams that function within the organisation. The effective communication between the team members may help the team overcome challenges that they face in their place of among the team members. The team may reap benefits of these bonds during the conditions whereby the team has to bear up with the maintenance of the productivity under difficult conditions like the loss of one of its members.
In conclusion to the above discussion it may be said that effective and ethical communication is needed to deliver the best results while being a part of a team. A student must be engaged in an integrated teamwork in various fields in order to receive a well-round and comprehensive education. It is necessary to promote the teamwork among the children, their educators and the parents or guardians. The students who are exposed to the team work develop the vital collaborative and compromising skills that they would need to exercise in their future places of work. In many cases it is found that the classrooms have employed teaching assistants, paraprofessionals parent volunteers and student teachers in order to encourage the students to participate in the activities that would help the teacher with the basic exercises of the classroom. This also helps the main teacher of the class to find time to focus on the management of the classrooms and the development of the skills of the concerned students. Team work and good communication is needed to be present among the adults in order to ensure the fact that the students are having access to the required levels of instruction, attention and time. The adults of the classroom are endowed with some specific responsibilities and duties that they need to perform in a collaborative manner. The team work helps the student to gain knowledge on the basic skills required to perform in a collective manner towards a goal that is common to all the members of the team.
References
Belbin, R.M., 2012. Team roles at work. Routledge.
Chen, G., Farh, J.L., Campbell-Bush, E.M., Wu, Z. and Wu, X. (2013), “Teams as innovative systems: multilevel motivational antecedents of innovation in R&D teams”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 98 No. 6, p. 1018
Cohen, T.R., Panter, A.T., Turan, N., Morse, L. and Kim, Y., 2014. Moral character in the workplace. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(5), p.943.
Dyer, W.G. and Dyer, J.H., 2013. Team building: Proven strategies for improving team performance. John Wiley & Sons.
Hassan, S., Mahsud, R., Yukl, G. and Prussia, G.E., 2013. Ethical and empowering leadership and leader effectiveness. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 28(2), pp.133-146.
Hedman, E., 2016. Leadership Team Tool for better meaning making: Developing leadership team communication and reflexivity. Journal of Management Development, 35(5), pp.592-605.
Henttonen, K., Johanson, J.E. and Janhonen, M., 2014. Work-team bonding and bridging social networks, team identity and performance effectiveness. Personnel Review, 43(3), pp.330-349.
King, K.G. and King, K.G., 2017, August. Measuring teamwork and team performance in collaborative work environments. In Evidence-based HRM: a Global Forum for Empirical Scholarship(Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 196-205). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Mahembe, B. and Engelbrecht, A.S., 2013. The relationship between servant leadership, affective team commitment and team effectiveness. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 11(1), pp.1-10.
Nancarrow, S.A., Booth, A., Ariss, S., Smith, T., Enderby, P. and Roots, A., 2013. Ten principles of good interdisciplinary team work. Human resources for Health, 11(1), p.19.
National Research Council, 2015. Enhancing the effectiveness of team science. National Academies Press.
Pieterse, A.N., Van Knippenberg, D. and Van Dierendonck, D., 2013. Cultural diversity and team performance: The role of team member goal orientation. Academy of Management Journal, 56(3), pp.782-804.
Shockley-Zalabak, P., 2014. Fundamentals of organizational communication. Pearson.
West, M.A., 2012. Effective teamwork: Practical lessons from organizational research. John Wiley & Sons.
Yidong, T. and Xinxin, L., 2013. How ethical leadership influence employees’ innovative work behavior: A perspective of intrinsic motivation. Journal of Business Ethics, 116(2), pp.441-455.
Yukl, G., 2012. Effective leadership behavior: What we know and what questions need more attention. The Academy of Management Perspectives, 26(4), pp.66-85.
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