Choose one of the sections that’s most relevant to your situation, read that section, and complete a learning activity in that section.
Creating & Participating in Teams
A team is a group of people who collaborate toward a common goal. Sports teams are a good example of how teams work. For instance, a basketball team has individual players who each contribute toward the goal of winning a game.
Workplace Teams
Organizations form teams to accomplish tasks that are too large or complex for one individual to complete. Teams are also effective for work that requires different types of skills and expertise. For example, the development of a new product involves understanding customer needs as well as how to design and build a product that will meet these needs. So a new product development team would include people with customer knowledge as well as designers and engineers.
Organizations typically have many teams, and an individual employee is frequently a member of more than one team. Some teams are permanent and are responsible for ongoing activities, such as a team of nurses in a maternity ward. While patients come and go, the tasks involved in providing care remain stable. In other cases a project team is formed for a temporary purpose; project teams have a defined beginning and end point linked to achieving a particular one-time goal.
Because teams are so prevalent in business organizations, it is important for employees to have the skills necessary to work effectively with others.
Characteristics of Effective Teamwork
Effective teamwork requires certain conditions to be in place that will increase the likelihood that each member’s contributions—and the effort of the group as a whole—will lead to success. Effective teams have five main characteristics:
Shared values: a common set of beliefs and principles about how and why the team members will work together
Mutual trust: confidence between team members that each puts the best interest of the team ahead of individual priorities
Inspiring vision: a clear direction that motivates commitment to a collective effort
Skill/talent: the combined abilities and expertise to accomplish the required tasks and work productively with others
Rewards: recognition of accomplishing steps toward their objectives and reinforcement of behavior that supports the team’s work
Effective teamwork requires that people work as a cohesive unit. These five characteristics can help individuals collaborate with others by focusing their efforts in a common direction and achieving an outcome that can only be reached by working together.
There’s one additional characteristic that is not so much a team characteristic as an outcome: an effective team accomplishes its assigned task. For example, a team’s goal may be to deliver a new product in six months on a budget of $100,000. Even if the team finishes the project on time, their outcome is effective only if they stayed within the expected budget.
Team Processes
When considering the role of a team, it’s important to understand the various processes that teams will carry out over time. When a team starts (or re-starts with re-directed efforts), there’s a transitional process into the team, when the team specifies its goals and members formulate their strategy.
Once the team has agrees on their goals and method of approach, they move into action processes to operationalize those goals. They coordinate their steps and monitor their progress. Sometimes the action phase includes communication processes, in order to deal with conflict or to motivate team members.
The final team process is evaluating and refining the team dynamic for efficiency and success.
Within these processes, there are different team member roles.
Team Roles
Benefits of Teamwork
Teamwork creates outcomes that make better use of resources and produce richer ideas.
A well-functioning team can result in:
Higher efficiency: Since teams combine the efforts of individuals, they can accomplish more than an individual working alone.
Faster speed: Because teams draw on the efforts of many contributors, they can often complete tasks and activities in less time.
More thoughtful ideas: Each person who works on a problem or set of tasks may bring different information and knowledge, which can result in solutions and approaches an individual working alone may not have identified.
Greater effectiveness: When people coordinate their efforts, they can divide up roles and tasks to more thoroughly address an issue. For example, in hospital settings teamwork has been found to increase patient safety more than when only individual efforts are made to avoid mishaps.
Mutual support: Because team members can rely on other people with shared goals, they can receive assistance and encouragement as they work on tasks. Such support can encourage people to achieve goals they may not have had the confidence to have reached on their own.
Greater sense of accomplishment: When members of a team collaborate and take collective responsibility for outcomes, they can feel a greater sense of accomplishment when they achieve a goal they could not have achieved if they had worked by themselves.
The total value created by teamwork depends on the overall effectiveness of the team effort.
Learning Activity for Collaborating & Participating in Teams
Introductory Level
Within which “teams” have you collaborated? (e.g., work, family, sports, music, community organizations, etc.)
Evaluate your experience with team collaboration, and posit specific strategies for effective team collaboration, by writing a brief essay (3-4 pages) answering the following questions:
What was your best experience collaborating in teams?
What was your worst experience collaborating in teams?
What specific things were different about these experiences?
How could your worst experience have been improved? What specific actions could have been taken to foster collaboration?
What specific actions can you take in the future to avoid a bad team experience?
Submit:
essay evaluating your experience with team collaboration
Learning Activity for Collaborating & Participating in Teams
Advanced Level
Research how to build a collaborative team for a specific project. The project may be one for work, school, community, or family — consider something that you really need to accomplish (e.g., fund-raising, training, etc.). Find and read 2-3 articles on building collaborative teams that provide examples of collaborative teamwork and its characteristics. Make sure to retain the citation information for these articles.
Then design a collaborative team to accomplish a specific project. Identify the project and project goal and write a 4-5 page analysis of your strategy. Refer to your research in your explanation.
Describe the project and the project goal.
Identify the types of team members and the rationale for including each member.
Analyze the different proposed methods of initiating collaboration. What team activities would you start with and why?
Explain the strategies you have in reserve if the team gets “stuck in formation” (when the group cannot move from defining goals and outlining tasks to executing its work plan). Why would you consider those strategies for this team?
Explain how you would continue to motivate the team.
Explain how you would evaluate the team’s effectiveness, both during and after the team process, and why you would evaluate in this way.
Submit: analysis of how to design a collaborative team, with reference to your research
Dealing with Barriers to Effective Teamwork
The collaborative nature of teams means they are subject to pitfalls that individuals working alone do not face. Team members may not always work well together, and focusing the efforts of individuals on shared goals presents challenges to completing tasks as efficiently and effectively as possible.
The following pitfalls can lead to team dysfunction and failure to achieve important organizational objectives.
Individuals Shirking Their Duties
Since team members share responsibility for outcomes, some individuals may need to do additional work to make up for those not contributing their share of effort. This can breed resentment and foster other negative feelings that can make the team less effective. One cause of this is the failure of the team to establish clear norms of accountability for individual contributions to the group effort.
Skewed Influence over Decisions
Sometimes an individual or small number of team members can come to dominate the rest of the group. This could be due to strong personalities, greater abilities, or differences in status among members. When individuals either do not feel listened to or believe their ideas are not welcome, they may reduce their efforts.
Lack of Trust
Effective collaboration requires team members to have confidence that everyone shares a set of goals. When that belief is missing, some individuals may not feel comfortable sharing their ideas with the group. Lack of trust can also lead to miscommunication and misunderstandings, which can undermine the group’s efforts.
Conflicts
While conflicts are a common aspect of working together and can even be beneficial to a team, they can also negatively affect team performance. For instance, conflict can delay progress on tasks or create other inefficiencies in getting work done.
Lack of Team and/or Task Skills
When team members do not have the collaboration skills needed to work well with others, the overall ability of the team to function can be limited. As a result, conflicts may be more likely to arise and more difficult to resolve. A team that does not have the expertise and knowledge needed to complete all its tasks and activities will have trouble achieving its goals. Poor team composition can lead to delays, higher costs, and increased risk.
Stuck in Formation
Sometimes the group cannot move from defining goals and outlining tasks to executing its work plan. This may be due to poor specification of roles, tasks, and priorities.
Too Many Members/Groupthink
The size of the team can sometimes affect its ability to function effectively. Coordination and communication are more complex in a larger team than in a smaller one. This complexity can mean that decisions must take into account greater amounts of information, meetings are more challenging to schedule, and tasks can take longer to complete. Both large and small groups can fall prey to groupthink. Outcomes can suffer if team members value conflict avoidance and consensus over making the best decisions. People can feel uncomfortable challenging the group’s direction or otherwise speaking up for fear of breaking a team norm. This phenomenon is known as “groupthink.” Groupthink can limit creativity, lead to poor choices, or result in mistakes that might otherwise have been avoidable.
The articles and videos below offer additional information on difficult team members and how to deal with them:
Learning Activity for Dealing with Barriers to Effective Team Work
Introductory Level
You have been charged with leading a team at work to look into the possibility of instituting flex time. Your organization, Acme Scissors, is a small business of 85 people; the business makes scissors for craft work and also makes custom scissors for special purposes.
There are workers in a number of roles:
craftspeople who are committed to making a specific minimum number of scissors a week (but can exceed that number for more compensation)
staff who handle orders by phone and online
marketers whose job it is to market online and manage statistical information about orders
general office staff
Your manager chose team members to represent the various jobs; the team consists of 7 members: 2 craftspeople, 2 staff who specifically handle orders, 1 marketer, and 2 general office staff.
You have had two short meetings to date. The first meeting was for general information, and the second meeting was to start the team work. The second meeting was not very successful.
One member seemed bored, one seemed resentful of the time taken away from work, and one was quite vocal and combative, reacting negatively to suggestions about how to proceed and asserting that he did not see the need to investigate flex time at all. These members seem to have influenced the other four, who started on the team with willing attitudes and tried to contribute.
You’re now starting the third meeting, and it seems as though people are falling into the roles and attitudes established during the second meeting. As team leader, you know that you have to do something soon or the team will not function and produce as charged.
Discuss how you would deal with the difficult team members, both within the third meeting and after. How, specifically, might you respond to each one? Are there specific people you will deal with during the meeting? If so, how do you intend to deal with them and why? Are there specific people you will deal with after the meeting? If so, how do you intend to deal with them and why? Write and submit a full discussion (3-4 pages), including references to the articles and videos in your explanation.
Submit: discussion of how you would deal with difficult team members, with reference to articles and videos
Learning Activity for Dealing with Barriers to Effective Teamwork
Advanced Level
Research two relatively recent journal articles on managing conflict in teams. Review this text’s page on Academic Research to learn how to find articles in professional journals.
Summarize each article. Review a resource on Summarizing in order to create an academically-appropriate summary. Include an attribution at the start of the summary and a citation at the end.
Then synthesize the information from these two sources. What are the main ideas that these sources offer about managing conflict in teams?
Finally, imagine you are an expert, freelance team facilitator being brought into Acme Scissors to train some staff on managing conflict in teams, as they have had some issues in the past. (See the initial learning activity above for one experience that occurred at Acme.)
Create a PowerPoint presentation that you will use in your introductory session to teach some main ideas about managing conflict in teams.
