Group Behavior: Team Building

 

Group Behavior: Team Building

Team:  A work team is a group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common mission, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. Work teams emphasize shared leadership, mutual accountability, and collective work products.

Importance of teams:

•   Teams are useful in performing work that is complicated, complex, interrelated, and/or more voluminous than one person can handle   
• Teams are appropriate where knowledge, talent, skills and abilities are dispersed across organizational members and require integrated effort for task accomplishment
• Teams with experience working together may produce valuable innovations
• Team or group members also derive benefits from the collective experience of teamwork

Types of team:   

·        Formal teams or groups are created by managers carrying out specific tasks to help the organization achieve its goals

• Command team includes a manager and all employees who report to that manager
• Committee generally lasts a long time and deals with recurrent problems and decisions
• Task forces or project teams are temporary teams created to deal with a specific problem and are usually disbanded when the task is completed or the problem is solved
• Empowerment teams are those in which employees are empowered to take up the responsibility of solving a problem by careful planning and focused preparation
•  Self-Managed teams are self directed teams that make decisions that were once reserved for managers

·        Informal teams or groups emerge whenever people come together and interact regularly that develop within the formal organizational structure.

Team effectiveness:  Team effectiveness refers to the extent to which the team achieves its objectives, achieves the needs and objectives of its members and sustains itself over time. Steven and Mary Ann Von have suggested the following elements of team effectiveness:

Organizational and Team Environment	Team Design	Team Process
Reward System Communication Physical Space Organizational environment Organizational Structure Organizational Leadership	Task  characteristics Team size Team Composition	Team Development Team Norms Team Roles Team Cohesiveness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Team building:

Team building refers to shaping of the team for smooth functioning of the team. Pareek Udai has suggested following approached for team building:

Approach for team building	Description
The Johari Window Approach	Aims at helping members to express their feelings, opinions, reactions and accept feedback from team members which enhances their sensitivity towards the team members
The Role Negotiation Approach	Focuses on understanding the expectations of the team members and accommodating their behavior which enhances the collaborative effort of the team members
The Team Roles Approach	Advocates that there are certain roles in which each team members are expected to perform smoothly which brings harmony in the effort of team members
The Behavior Modification Approach	Focuses on examining member’s behavior towards the team
The Simulation Approach	An artificial team is formed where members interact, discuss, deliberate and learn from other member’s behavior. The team members learn the most effective way of dealing with the challenges and meet the requirements and the expectations of the team members.
The Action Research Approach	The whole range of behavior is analysed and evaluated by the research by interacting with the team members and finds the suitable behavior of the team members.
The Appreciative Inquiry Approach	Focuses on the identification of positive qualities in the team members