One of the many ways for a business to organize employees is in teams. A team is made up of two or more people who work together to achieve a common goal.
Teams offer an alternative to a vertical chain of command and are a much more inclusive approach to business organization. Teams are becoming more common in the business world today. Effective teams can lead to an increase in employee motivation and business productivity.
What is a Team?
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 team can be defined in the following ways too:
- A group of people who compete in a sport, game, etc., against another group.
- A group of people who work together.
- A group of two or more animals used to pull a wagon, cart, etc.
- A number of persons forming one of the sides in a game or contest.
- A number of persons associated with some joint action: a team of experts.
Features of an Effective Team
Many studies have attempted to isolate the factors that contribute most directly to team success. Common characteristics of teams are identified include careful composition, information sharing, clear direction and measurable goals for accountability, sufficient resources, integration and coordination, flexibility and innovativeness, and the stimulation of openness to learning.
Here focus on four major features that make an effective team:
- Supportive Environment.
- Skills and Role Clarity.
- Super Ordinate Goals.
- Team Rewards.
Supportive Environment
Teamwork is. most likely to develop when management builds a supportive environment for it.
Creating such an environment involves encouraging members to think like a team, providing adequate time for meetings, and demonstrating faith in members’ capacity to achieve.
Supportive measures such as these help the group take the necessary first steps toward teamwork. Since these steps contribute to further cooperation, trust, and compatibility, supervisors need to develop an organizational culture that builds these conditions.
Skills and Role Clarity
Team members must be reasonably qualified to perform their jobs and have the desire to cooperate.
Beyond these requirements, members can work together as a team only after all the members of the group know the roles of all the others with whom they will be interacting.
When this understanding exists, members can act immediately as a team on the basis of the requirements of that situation without waiting for someone to give an order.
In other words, team members respond voluntarily to the demands of the job and take appropriate actions to accomplish team goals.
Super Ordinate Goals
A major responsibility of managers is to try to keep the team members oriented toward their overall tasks. Unfortunately, an organization’s policies, record-keeping requirements, and reward systems sometimes fragment individual efforts and discourage teamwork.
Team Rewards
Another element that can stimulate teamwork is the presence of team rewards. These may be financial, or they may be in the form of recognition. Rewards are most powerful if they are valued by the team members, perceived as possible to earn, and administered contingent on the group’s task performance.
In addition, organizations need to balance encouraging and rewarding individual initiative and growth and stimulating full contributions to team success.
Innovative (nonfinancial) team rewards for possible behavior may include the authority to select new members of the group, make recommendations regarding a new supervisor, or propose discipline for team members.
Differences Between Groups and Teams
There are many different types of teams and groups; depending on the situation, task, plan and goal; they perform differently.
A group of people with a full set of complementary skills required to complete a task, job, or project.
Team members operate with a high degree of interdependence, share authority and responsibility for self-management, are accountable for collective performance, and work toward a common goal and shared rewards(s).
| Groups | Teams |
|---|---|
| Individual accountability. | Individual and mutual accountability. |
| Come together to share information and perspectives. | Frequently come together for discussion, decision-making, problem-solving, and planning. |
| Focus on individual goals. | Focus on team goals. |
| Produce individual work products. | Produce collective work products. |
| Define individual roles, responsibilities, and tasks. | Define individual roles, responsibilities, and tasks to help the team do its work; often share and rotate them. |
| Concerned with one’s outcome and challenges. | Concerned with the outcomes of everyone and the challenges the team faces. |
| The manager shapes purpose, goals, and approach to work. | The team leader shapes purpose, goals, and approach to working with team members. |
| The leader dominates and controls the group. | The leader acts as a facilitator. |
| The leader is apparent and will conduct the meeting. | The members have active participation in the discussions and eventual outcome. |
| The leader usually assigns work to the members. | The team members decide on the disbursements of work assignments. |
| Groups do not need to focus on specific outcomes or a common purpose. | Teams require the coordination of tasks and activities to achieve a shared aim. |
| Individuals in a group can be disconnected from one another and not rely upon their fellow members. | Team members are interdependent since they bring to bear a set of resources to produce a common outcome. |
| Groups are generally much more informal; roles do not need to be assigned, and norms of behavior do not need to develop. | Team members’ individual roles and duties are specified, and their ways of working together are defined. |
