Essay Example on Team Building: Essential for Healthcare Professionals

The authors' main point is the necessity of team-building skills for healthcare professionals, particularly for nurses. There are several approaches to organizing tasks within a healthcare system. These include the case method, functional method, and team method. The team method has marked advantages over the former two methods. It results in significantly lower workloads, improved job satisfaction, happiness at work, improves patient outcomes, and reduce morbidity (Kumar, Deshmukh, & Adhish, 2014). Nurse leaders need to learn the basics of teams such that they become effective team players. Once they achieve this, they can transfer the benefits of working in a team to their respective teams.

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The authors intend the paper to be read by professionals in the healthcare sector, more specifically, nurses. While leaders have the responsibility of ensuring their teams are effective and working well to achieve their respective objectives, the information in the paper is intended for all individuals who could be part of a team. Reading the article informs one of the various aspects of teamwork, such as team formation, barriers to effective teamwork, and approaches to improve a team's efficiency. The paper may also be read by individuals outside the healthcare profession and achieve the intended impact.

The authors' arguments support their main point. Their arguments are centered on various aspects of teamwork. These arguments are centered on how teamwork may be optimized to optimize performance. The authors also focus on various ways in which teamwork is not effective in facilitating the achievement of objectives. For instance, conflict avoidance leads to energy wastage in maintaining an equilibrium that results in suboptimal performance. However, embracing positive discourses and healthy conflict management strategies results in growth (Kumar et al., 2014).

Teams have various traits that increase their desirability. One feature is dynamicity. A team has various stages, such as forming, storming, norming, and performing. Each stage has distinct qualities such as expression of conflict and learning curves that contribute to a team's variability. Teams allow several individuals to aggregate their effort and unique abilities in the pursuance of a common goal. A team allows members to fix each other's weaknesses (Kumar et al., 2014). It also leads to the development of relationships that survive the team.

The authors highlight communication as a vital aspect of an effective team. Negotiation skills are necessary for handling disagreements and conflicts such that they become constructive rather than destructive. Through communication, team members can engage in healthy competition. Furthermore, trust is a crucial aspect of a successful team. Communication creates an atmosphere of transparency, integrity, and accountability, all of which are essential precursors to trust within a team. Communication is cited as a factor that is facilitative when it is clear, open, and positive (Kumar et al., 2014). It ensures that members get timely information necessary in the accomplishment of their respective tasks.

I find the paper quite informative on the subject of team-building. I agree with the authors on various issues raised in the article. For instance, working in teams lower the level of stress among healthcare workers. The case method where a nurse is assigned complete care of a number of patients is likely to result in a heavy workload for the nurse. This increases the probability of problems such as burnout and poor patient outcomes. On the other hand, The functional method assigns nurses specific tasks in a care setting. This may result in monotony and a higher probability of job dissatisfaction (Dyer Jr, 2015). In this approach, there is limited interaction with other nurses of professionals. I also find the information on motivating team members enlightening. Motivation is not an isolated concept, but one that needs to persist if the performance of nurses is to be maximized. Motivation may be based on attributes such as money or power. Other aspects of improving the job environment are crucial too. These include several dimensions necessary in enriching jobs. They are providing feedback, increasing autonomy, improving task identity and task significance, and broadening skills variety (Dyer Jr, 2015). The authors also place emphasis on mentoring and coaching as crucial skills for team leaders. These two skills relate to the relationship between a leader and a leaner with the objective of allowing the learner to improve their performance.

As a leader, it is essential to ensure that interpersonal communication does not boil to conflict that derails job performance. As a team leader, I would engage in a team meeting to address various issues that are working against the team. First, I would identify the positive aspects of both Sheila and Quintin and appreciate the value they bring to the organization. Next, I would highlight the various forms of communication and their effects on a team's performance. I would then ask the two to identify the root cause of their conflict. Given Sheila is identified as the bully, they would be required to address the source of their issue with her colleague. It is likely that the source of the conflict is misunderstandings between the two. Therefore, identifying the source of the issues would be crucial in promoting positive, constructive communication that involves healthy conflict resolution mechanisms (Ramsbotham, Miall, & Woodhouse, 2011). I believe that I would need different communication skills as a leader than the ones I currently use. This comes from the need to facilitate cooperation among several people where there are possibilities of conflicts that need urgent resolution.

References

Dyer Jr, W. G. (2015). Team building. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, 1-2.

Kumar, S., Deshmukh, V., & Adhish, V. S. (2014). Building and leading teams. Indian journal of community medicine: official publication of Indian Association of Preventive & Social Medicine, 39(4), 208.

Ramsbotham, O., Miall, H., & Woodhouse, T. (2011). Contemporary conflict resolution. Polity.