Team

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Team Definition Group of people with a full set of complementary skills required to complete a task, job, or project. Team members (1) operate with a high degree of interdependence, (2) share authority and responsibility for selfmanagement, (3) are accountable for the collective performance, and (4) work toward a common goal and shared rewards(s). A team becomes more than just a collection of people when a strong sense of mutual commitment creates synergy, thus generating performance greater than the sum of the performance of its individual members. The Importance of Teams Many start ups require a founding team. It is practically impossible for one person to have a broad enough skill set to start a successful new venture. I am a huge proponent of teams. I am a strong believer in the fact that no person is an island and that it is much better to have a smaller piece of a bigger pie than a large piece of a much smaller pie. So who do you need on your team? Where do you find them? What values and characteristics are most important when forging your team? Who do you need on your team? First thing you need to do is objectively look at yourself and your own skills and abilities and compare that to what you need to start this venture to see where the gaps are. Are you a good sales person? Organizer? Accounting & Finance? Marketing? Researcher? Writer? Speaker? These are just some of the fundamental areas you will most likely need while planning and launching your new venture. It is hard to critically analyze your own skills and abilities so you may need a third party to help you, there are also tests online that evaluate what type of entrepreneur you are and what other types of entrepreneurs you need to add to your team (check out http://www.peoplethatclick.com/). There may also be specific technical roles you need to fill on your team (such as software engineer, website designer, etc.). You need to make the decision in the beginning whether these key roles will be paid positions or are they so critical to your venture’s success that you should be making them a partner. Where do you find them? This is possibly the hardest question, where do you find good partners? Well the internet has helped make this a lot more feasible to reach a larger geographic area. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be in entrepreneurial hubs like Route 128 or Silicon Valley (or the top entrepreneurship college for that matter) so you need to keep that in mind while you are searching for your team. Also, keep in mind that friends and relatives may seem willing and able at first to be a part of your new venture, but, I highly recommend that these are the people you are most critical of in adding to your team. Many friendships and family relationships have been torn apart by new ventures that began to turn sour as one person began to not pull their fair share of the weight (which is bound to happen in almost all scenarios). Networking is crucial, keeping a good contact management system (as simple as collecting business cards from people you meet and writing a short summary of who they are on the back) so you know who people are and what they are interested in. Attend events and forums as well as chamber of commerce events, take a class on entrepreneurship at a local college and network with your classmates, post a classified ad, getting yourself out there is perhaps the most important thing of all! Countless potential entrepreneurs are so afraid

of people stealing their idea that they do not tell anyone and their venture never goes beyond a concept. Tell as many people as are willing to listen to you! You never know who knows that certain someone that will become your ideal new business partner and help make your vision a reality. There are some great key resources for building a team online. A quick search on Yahoo! for forums relating to entrepreneurship or small business will get you started in the right direction in terms of networking with folks online. A free classified ad on Craigslist will begin to generate potential partners if you know specifically what you are looking for and can post an effective ad. If your partners are not located locally your start up can still be successful, services such as Skype (free voice telephony & conferencing), instant messenger, or email help make the world a much smaller place and can provide effective means of communication and file exchange. In fact, some new ventures find they are more effective with their time by utilizing these communication methods as opposed to sitting in the same room together with their partners from 9-5. What values and characteristics are most important when forging your team? If I was a venture capitalist the stock answer would be that they attended an Ivy League school, have either an MBA or engineering degree, and have launched at least one highly successful new venture. However, seeing as how for most of us finding someone with those qualifications is not an option in the start up phase I am going to throw out that list of criteria completely. You need someone with integrity, with knowledge and experience in the functional areas that you are most lacking, with drive and the entrepreneurial hunger, someone you can work well with but who will challenge you, and most importantly someone that agrees with your gut. On this area you never want to go against your gut feeling, our subliminal mind picks up things we may not at first and hence the “gut feeling” is often right on the mark in this area. If something inside you tells you this person may not be the right partner, do not let them be a part of your new venture. Countless people make this mistake (including myself), always go with your gut instincts on this issue. On a side note, do not be swayed by individuals who approach you bragging about their immense personal network of connections and how they can contact numerous individuals who will greatly help your venture. Contacts in many instances are nothing more than a business card or a friend of a friend of a friend; while in some cases they may pull through, do not put as much faith in other individual's “contacts” as they would lead you to believe….just a lesson learned through personal experiences multiple times.

Differences between Work Groups and Teams
Teams definitely are forms of work groups, but not all work groups are teams. In fact, plain work groups are much more numerous than teams. Work groups function on three levels:
  

Dependent level Independent level Interdependent level

Here's the breakdown.

Dependent-level work groups

Dependent-level work groups are the traditional work unit or department groups with a supervisor who plays a strong role as the boss. Almost everyone has had some experience with this work setup, especially in a first job. Each person in a dependent-level work group has his or her own job and works under the close supervision of the boss. The boss is in charge and tells the employees the do's and don'ts in their jobs. Helping each other and covering for one another do not occur often and do so mostly under the direction of the supervisor. In fact, most problem solving, work assignments, and other decisions affecting the group come from the supervisor. A dependent-level work group can perform well in the short term. But for the long run, because group members operate separately and mostly at the direction of the supervisor, such work groups don't seem to go anywhere. Maintaining the status quo and keeping operations under control are what they do best. Creating improvements, increasing productivity, and leveraging resources to support one another are quite uncommon with dependent-level work groups.

Independent-level work groups
Independent-level work groups are the most common form of work groups on the business scene. Like a dependent-level work group, each person is responsible for his or her own main area. But unlike the dependent level, the supervisor or manager tends not to function like the controlling boss. Instead, staff members work on their own assignments with general direction and minimal supervision. Sales representatives, research scientists, accountants, lawyers, police officers, librarians, and teachers are among the professionals who tend to work in this fashion. People in those occupations come together in one department because they serve a common overall function, but almost everyone in the group works fairly independently. If members of an independent-level work group receive the managerial guidance and support they need on the job, such a work group can perform quite well.

Interdependent-level work groups
Members of an interdependent-level work group rely on each other to get the work done. Sometimes members have their own roles and at other times they share responsibilities. Yet, in either case, they coordinate with one another to produce an overall product or set of outcomes. When this interdependence exists, you have a team. And by capitalizing on interdependence, the team demonstrates the truth of the old saying: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. An independent work group can often be brought up to speed faster than an interdependent group. It simply takes more time to get a group of individuals to work as a team than to set a group of individuals off on their independent assignments. Yet when teams move into a high-functioning and high-producing state, where they capitalize on interdependence, they can outperform all other types of work groups. So, if you want a quick fix, don't look to teams: but if you want to see strong results for the long term, do look to teams. To call a group a team does not make them a team: wishing for them to work as a team doesn't work either. For a snapshot of the main differences between work groups and teams, take a look at Table 1. As you can see, work groups have a strong individual focus and teams have a strong collective focus. The individual is not lost on a team, but that person's work is coordinated to fit in with the greater good. Team concerns are much more focused on the outcomes of the overall unit rather than an individual's accomplishments. Table 1: Difference Between Work Groups and Teams

Work Groups Individual accountability Come together to share information and perspectives Focus on individual goals Produce individual work products Define individual roles, responsibilities, and tasks Concern with one's own outcome and challenges Purpose, goals, approach to work shaped by manager

Teams Individual and mutual accountability Frequently come together for discussion, decision making, problem solving, and planning. Focus on team goals Produce collective work products Define individual roles, responsibilities, and tasks to help team do its work; often share and rotate them Concern with outcomes of everyone and challenges the team faces

Purpose, goals, approach to work shaped by team leader with team members

Table 1 also indicates that teams meet more often than traditional work groups. Work groups may meet periodically, based on the manager's style, primarily to hear and share information. Teams, by comparison, do much more than communicate when they meet. Team meetings are forums for planning work, solving work problems, making decisions about work, and reviewing progress. In short, meetings are vital to a team's existence. The last item in Table 1 is crucial: Team leadership is participatory, in contrast to the primarily managerdriven nature of regular work groups. On a team, the manager or team leader frequently involves team members in helping shape the goals and plans for getting the group's work done — may as well get them involved, they've got to do the work! But in other kinds of work groups, managers more commonly work with staff individually to set goals and determine assignments. Of course, in many cases, managers just assign work with little discussion or collaboration with the staff members. And staff are then left to figure out what's expected and how best to get it done.

1. Types of Teams
Today we find all kinds of teams in society, and they generally fall into one of two primary groups: permanent teams and temporary teams. Here are some of the common types: 1. Task Force - a temporary team assembled to investigate a specific issue or problem. 2. Problem Solving Team - a temporary team assembled to solve a specific problem. 3. Product Design Team - a temporary team assembled to design a new product or service. 4. Committee - a temporary or permanent group of people assembled to act upon some matter. 5. Work Group - a permanent group of workers who receive direction from a designated leader. 6. Work Team (also called Self-Directed Work Team or Self-Managed Work Team) - an ongoing group of workers who share a common mission who collectively manage their own affairs within predetermined boundaries. 7. Quality Circle (today also under various other names) - a group of workers from the same functional area who meet regularly to uncover and solve work-related problems and seek work improvement opportunities.

The name of the group or team type is less important than the purpose for which it exists. These names simply give us a common language to help us define team types.

Leading Virtual Teams Teamwork has been around since before our ancestors gathered up their spears and learned how to work together to gang up on mastodons and saber-toothed tigers. Many experts agree that teams are the primary unit of performance in any organization. Today there is a new kind of team—a “virtual” team made up of people who communicate electronically. Its members may hardly ever see each other in person. In fact, they may never meet at all, except in cyberspace.

To some people, working alone at home is a terrific option. They like the idea of sitting at their terminals in robe and slippers, the cat curled at their feet. Others find the idea a little lonely and somehow disconcerting. They worry that they’d pine for the chatty atmosphere around the water cooler. However you feel about virtual teams, there are more and more of them, and they offer some definite benefits. For one thing, there’s no need for office or parking space. For another, more people can be included in the labor pool. Air pollution and congestion are reduced when people don’t commute. Virtual teaming offers more flexibility for workers and organizations alike. Software designed just for virtual teams, called “groupware,” is growing increasingly sophisticated. (Lotus Notes and Exchange are two popular programs.) Videoconference programs are also available, but so far they are unwieldy and expensive, requiring too much bandwidth to be practical. The work of virtual teams can also be enhanced by use of a Web site. It’s a handy place to store and distribute graphic materials, schedules, flowcharts, reference materials, and more. Virtual teaming isn’t something anyone planned. It happened because the technology was there. But how well are these teams really working and what can be done to make them more effective? What are some of the benefits of the virtual team? What are the pitfalls? Do unsupervised employees take advantage of the situation? What leadership skills are needed to make the virtual team work well? For the answers to these questions, I did a research study based on in-depth interviews and one case study. I studied people in virtual teams of up to 100 people. They were doing all kinds of work: planning a conference, editing a text book, developing software, even starting a company. Most of the virtual teams relied on telephones and e-mail. A few of them used telephone conferencing. Most of the teams were brought together for one project, then disbanded. Most of the team members worked on the team’s tasks full time, but some were volunteers working after hours. A lot of the teams would never have been formed without today’s technology. The expense and logistical problems would have been insurmountable. Characteristics of Virtual Teams Here’s what the data reveal about the virtual team phenomenon. Virtual teams get the job done. Most of the teams I studied achieved the goals set for them. In only one instance did a team fail to attain its goals, and this failure could not be connected to the fact that the team was a virtual team. People can be trusted. The question many managers ask is, “Can you trust people you can’t see to do their work?” For the teams in my study, the answer was clearly yes. Tasks wouldn’t have been accomplished if the work hadn’t been done. While participants acknowledged that this was a potential problem (“Your manager doesn’t see you. Out of sight, out of mind,” one of them said), it didn’t seem to have been an actual problem.

Few virtual teams are 100 percent virtual. Virtual teams tend to have some face-to-face meetings. In the study, face-to-face contact was fairly unimportant in teams with relatively independent team members engaged in individual work projects. However, it was important in teams with interdependent members. As one team member commented, “Face-to-face is very important. You yell at the woman [from the phone company] when your phone bill is messed up, not because she is responsible but because you don’t know her face. Once you’ve met, you have more compassion and understanding for your fellow team members.” Virtual teams take on the same basic structure as “real” teams. The teams I studied showed the same dynamics that researchers have discovered in “real” teams. The early stages are characterized by a certain amount of randomness, chaos, and ad hoc decision-making. As the team matures, processes are put into place and the team becomes more efficient. Leading Virtual Teams I was particularly interested in learning about effective leadership techniques for virtual teams. Virtual team leaders are operating within a different framework. Some of the behaviors considered good management practices were changed, or even eliminated, because the team was physically separated. Individual recognition, for instance, was infrequent and when it occurred, it was via e-mail or a telephone call. An e-mail message like this was typical: “Now that the conference has come and gone, I just wanted to send a note of thanks to all of you who submitted … I appreciated all of your hard work in creating materials and getting them to me on time throughout the process.” Some people felt online recognition was helpful; others were uncomfortable with it. They felt somehow communication should be done in person. One team leader arranged a voice conference call to make her praise public and to ensure that everyone heard it at once. Celebrations of team accomplishments pretty much went by the board in the teams I studied. The team leaders rarely if ever initiated celebrations. Comments from team members ranged from the barely festive, “Should we find ourselves in the same town at the same time, we would meet and celebrate past performance,” to the rather plaintive, “There were no celebrations of any sort— sounds drab, doesn’t it?” Some teams met to celebrate in person at the completion of the project, but for many, geography and expense made this impossible. So far, no one seems to have discovered a technique for successful virtual partying. Team leaders did, however, occasionally offer support and coaching to team members. One team leader, who provided verbal support in the editing of a textbook by a far-flung group of scholars around the world, put it this way: “Challenge, encouragement, and coaching are at the very nature of the editing and authoring process.”

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