Managing and Leading Teams Essay

Introduction

Teamwork is a combined effort of a group or a team in order to achieve or complete a task as well as a common goal in the most efficient and effective way. Teamwork is crucial in order for small businesses to be able to cope with challenges as well as perform strategic tasks. Teams play the role of pulling the experience and knowledge of a diverse group of employees together in order to accomplish an on-going or short-term task. Teamwork is much more of a science as it is an art mainly because there are those teams that work extremely well when together while at the same time there are those that tend to hinder progress or even fall apart. Therefore, it's the responsibility of every member of a team to understand the elements and skills required for effective teamwork. This paper tries to explain the key concepts that relate to team development and how effective leadership and management of teams may lead to the overall development in an organization.

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Creating Professional Teams or Work Groups

Some of the factors to consider while creating professional teams or work groups include the commitment and trust of the members, communication, adaptability, diversity of capabilities as well as creative freedom. All the high-impact team members should be committed fully into achieving the goals and mission of the team. Every team member has to set aside enough energy and time to advance the mission of the team as well as have the ability to trust that the rest of the team members are doing the same. Open lines of communication are also key for effective teams (Levasseur, 2017). The communication has to be truthful and one that flows amongst all the members of the team equally. Those members of the team who agree on a certain style of communication from the outset or those who comprehend the unique communication styles of others have the ability to move the team in a direction which is productive and one that everyone supports and understands. Also, those teams which possess a wide range of competencies which are professional are usually fully equipped to cope with a wide range of challenges that affect a team, group or organization.

Practices That Help Build Trust Among Team Members

Trust is usually earned and any team leader who wishes to create a culture of trust in a team, they should first lead by example. This means that the leader should show trust to the boss, the members of the team as well as other colleges in the organization. Every member of the team does or follows what their leader does and once the leader shows a sign of trust, then the members of the team will do the same and trust in each other. Ensuring that every member of the team is communicating with the other in a meaningful and honest way may help in building trust within the team hence open communication is a significant factor to consider while building trust in a team. Strategies such as creating a team charter which defines the roles of every member of the team and the purpose of the team as well as the organization of team building exercises can help ensure that there is open communication in a team. Another factor that can help build trust within a team is getting and encouraging every member of the team to know each other personally. This helps team members view the other colleges as people and they are able to share personal stories as well as bond.

Impact of Team Structure on Team Effectiveness

Most organizations are made up of a number of different teams which enable the accomplishment of the company's goals as well as meet projections. Teams have the ability to offer a steadier level of achievement in the organization as a whole. Some of the teams that may be comprised in an organization may include virtual teams, permanent teams, task forces teams, temporally teams, cross-functional teams, committees, self-managed teams as well as workforce teams. Every team constitutes of a different structure which is normally designed to enable the achievement of certain ends and every team structure has a different mix of dynamics as well as goals that it seeks to achieve.

Teams enable each individual to focus on what they are gifted in most hence enabling them to work to their strengths. Teams also ensure that the members have a shared purpose and sense of community in achieving a shared goal. In a team, it is usually easy to come up with fresh solutions whenever all the members work together. Also, the efficiency of the team which basically depends on the team structure ensures every member of the team focuses on what is most important for their role in the team as they turn everything that seems to be white noise (Duhigg, 2016). With all these, one can conclude that the team structures ensure impacts the effectiveness of a team.

Strategies for Clarifying the Purpose of a Team

The team's purpose can be clarified using strategies such as identifying the core outcomes of the teams' work by stating what it is and what the team is going to be held accountable for. After identifying the outcomes then the crucial tasks which the team has to tackle independently are determined then a dialogue establish and narrow to the team's purpose is then engaged. Moreover, each member of the team should understand their functions, duties, and activities that are required in what they are doing and the kind of results they are expecting. Even a highly motivated and competent team member may fail to attain their performance to their best if they are confused about their priorities and responsibilities. Confusion like that results in misdirected neglected and effort of vital responsibilities in courtesy of less standing ones.

How Individuals in a Team Can Use Power or Influence to Achieve Team Objectives

Part of a team culture is that hold is that there should be a team leader who helps in formulating everything in the team. Team leaders mainly assist other members to achieve the goals set for the team towards a duty. They use their power, motivating members towards goal achievement which is not a small task. Basically, leaders reflect actions that motivate and inspire other members to the main goal of the team (Lehmann et al. 2015). The team cannot win unless they buy-in some advice and plan from the leaders and it's the leader's job to ensure that happens. By making personal connecting with team members is authoritative for the development of great-performance for the team. Furthermore, other team members become dedicated to their duties in the group, they influence the rest of the team by challenging them on what the personally do. In such cases, the whole team tries to do their best in order to achieve their ideal goals in the team.

How the Strengths of Team Members Can Be Capitalized on to Achieve Team Objectives

Strength in team members is noted when an individual produces presentation effortlessly and consistently in a given task. An individual team member's strength on a particular duty is very important as it creates the room of high performance from the team. Teams that focus on the strengths of their members are most likely to produce quality jobs, thus increasing the productivity of the team. When this member is placed into roles that are similar to their strengths it is evident that they will produce a high-quality job. Rewards could also be given to this team member as they could motivate this member much.

Ways in Which Technology Affects Communication in Virtual Teams

Technology has affected communication positively, this is where communication team members have become faster. Emails, Facebook, Instagram among other social media platforms which are easily accessed have made this happen. Not only can the team members communicate quickly but several members can discuss to each other easily. Secondly, the use of technology platforms which are all the team members is comfortable with inspires the collaboration among the members. For example, Snapchat which commonly used by the young generation would be used to congratulate team members for this success. This is a way the can use to interact with each other comfortably (Charlier, et al. 2016). Finally, technology lets collaboration and leadership with remote team followers. When they share files, messages and video conferencing about the team, even members from afar fell free and connected to the team. Team leaders can also allocate duties using this form of technology instead of meeting with all the members.

Virtue Team

The Coca Cola company made a team that will investigate on the problems affecting the management of one of its structure that deals with promotion of its brands in New York. A team presentation compiler, team leader as well as team members made up the whole team and everyone had a role to play in the team. The team leader was to ensure that the teams' main role which was to investigate the management of Coca Cola's brands promotion structure that operates in New York followed a high professional standard and was completed according to the time assigned by the company. The presentation compiler was to ensure effective communication between the members of the team as well as with the management of the company. The compiler was also given the responsibility of collecting and revising all parts of the presentation then forward it to the leader of the team. The team members were to help analyze and identify the significant human resource management problem which affected the promotion structure of the Coca Cola company in New York.

The team leader who was so passionate about his role in the team played a great role to ensure that the team was on schedule according to the proposal provided to the company for the investigation on the management of the promotion department. The leader also showed interest as well as passion in solving the problems that affected the members of the team and guided them into a direction that would help them achieve their roles in the team a character of teamwork skill. Every member of the team had a role to play and a team member who was assigned the role of collecting relevant data from the employees who worked in most Coca Cola distributors all over New York and was not sure on how to approach the role since she did not know on where to start and how to undertake the role. As a result, the member ended up providing the wrong information on how he would undertake the role. This interfered with the whole project by the team since the information provided would be used in the decision making by the Coca Cola company.

When it was realized that the team member was not sure on how she was to deal with the data collection role assigned to him by the team leader, the team members through some discussions by phone concerning the whole project helped motivating the team member into taking new actions and changing her approach to the role. This helped the team to remain focused on their main objective and every member played their roles effectively. Conference calls as well as emails were utilized for the purposes of communication amongst the team members as well as between the team and the Coca Cola company directors and high ranked managers.

References

Charlier, S. D., Stewart, G. L., Greco, L. M., & Reeves, C. J. (2016). Emergent leadership in virtual teams: A multilevel investigation of individual communication and team dispersion antecedents. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(5), 745-764. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984316300224

Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The New York Times Magazine, 26, 2016. http://athena.ecs.csus.edu/~buckley/CSc238/What%20Google%20Learned%20From%20Its%20Quest%20to%20Build%20the%20Perfect%20Team.pdf

Levasseur, R. E. (2017). People Skills: Building the Perfect Team-A Change Management Perspe...