Team management is the ability of an individual or an organisation to administer and coordinate a group of individuals to perform a task. Team management involves teamwork, communication, objective setting and performance appraisals. One equally significant point towards understanding the importance of team management is increased employee satisfaction. When individuals come together to form a strong team, they also learn to rely on each other and thus, bond. … Good team management aims also at reducing unnecessary conflicts among team members. A happy tea is a productive team!
Characteristics of an Effective Team
To achieve high performance, teams require regular changes, and challenges. According to Belbin’s findings a team will be motivated if the following exists:
- Specific objectives as a team (and individual team members)
- A clear identity
- A purpose(s)
- Full participation and decision making by consensus
- Guide lines and accepted norms of behaviour
- Orchestration
- Clear measurements of success
- A sense of commitment to the group
- A free flow of information and communication
- A feeling of mutual trust and dependency
- Resolution of conflict, by group itself
- The open expression of feelings and disagreements
If a team is to perform and grow, then you need to think about a team’s collective needs. From your experience you already know that an effectively grouped team will improve competitiveness and enhance the quality of working life for all its members.
Here are some signs that this isn’t happening:
- Low morale, loss of sense of purpose
- Lost sense of direction
- Group atmosphere – negative or lukewarm!
- Little team enthusiasm
- Signs of mistrust
- Sub-groups, divisions
- Decline of standards
- Suspicions
- Complaints about your leadership?
Five Stages of Group Development
Groups mature, develop, and have a clearly defined five-stage cycle of growth.
Forming
At this stage, the set of individuals has not yet become a group. People need to know how about the other persons attitudes and backgrounds and to establish ground rules. Members are also keen to
establish their personal identities in the group and make a personal impression on the others. Group issues are cohesion and involvement,
Storming
This is a conflict stage. Members bargain with each other as they try to sort out what each of them individually, and as a group, want out of the group process. Individuals reveal their personal goals and it is
likely that interpersonal hostility is generated when differences in these goals are revealed. Members may resist the control of other group members and may show hostility. The early relationships established
in the forming stage may be disrupted. The key issues in this stage are group direction and the management of conflict.
Norming
The members of the group develop ways of working to develop closer relationships and camaraderie. The question of who will do what and how it will be done are addressed. Working rules are established in
teams; they have norms of behaviour and role allocation i.e. Peter is the spokesperson. A framework is therefore created in which each group member can relate to the others and questions of agreeing
expectation and dealing with a failure to meet members’ expectations are addressed.
Performing
This stage is concerned with actually getting on with the job in hand and accomplishing objectives. The fully mature group has now been created which can get on with its work. Not all groups develop to this
stage but may become bogged down in an earlier and less productive stage. The issues are individual performance and co-ordination.
Adjourning
In this final stage, the group may disband, either because the task has been achieved or because the members have left. Before they do so, they may reflect on their time together and ready themselves to go
there separate ways.
Barriers to Effective Team Working
When a team is not working together effectively to achieve a group task, one or more of the following barriers may exist:
Lack of agreement on objectives
- Objectives not explicit
- Differing objectives
- Hidden agendas
- Different levels of commitment and world
Lack of agreement on constraints
- Time
- Authority and resources
- Information
Lack of agreement on decision making process
There may be no explicit agreement and understanding about how the group makes its decisions. This could be based on:
- Authority
- Vocal minority
- Majority: the majority vote in favour.
- Plurality: there is no majority view, so the view of the largest minority is accepted.
- Bypassing; an idea is dropped through failure to pick it up and discuss.
Ineffective Communication
Poor communication within a team may indicate the existence of barriers as above, ineffective communication is characterised by one or more of the following:
- Poor listening,
- Interruptions, team members interrupt each other.
- Lack of continuity of discussion
Team Maintenance and Monitoring Performance
To ensure that your team works effectively you need to ensure that they are clear about the objectives required, to assist you, ensure that set SMART objectives.
S-specific exact details of requirement
M-measurable quality required
A-achievable within individuals capabilities
R-realistic resources available
T-timely milestones and completion dates
In addition to SMART objectives, you have the responsibility of maintaining effectiveness as the team progresses through your requirements. You need to perform the following:
- Encourage – praise, show interest, listen seriously to contributions made.
- Harmonise-mediate between members, work towards joint solutions.
- Gate-keeping – ensure communication channels are open by encouraging or facilitating the participation of all or by proposing regulations of that flow.
- Setting standards – setting standards and show professionalism at all times.
- Observing -The contribution is most fittingly received by the team when this person at the request of the team has performed this role.
Making teams perform!
You can take these steps to increase the likelihood of effective team performance:
Step 1 – Pre Work
You identify the task to be done and establish the objective accordingly. Is this objective likely to be best achieved by a team or by the individuals working separately on their own?
Step 2 – Creating Performance Conditions
This involves ensuring that the ream has the necessary resources to allow it to do its job. These resources may be human or not, money, information, equipment etc.
Step 3 – Forming and building a team
The steps here are forming boundaries, that is, clarifying team membership: getting members to commit themselves to the task and their specific role within and clarifying expected behaviours.
Step 4 – Providing on-going Help
In this phase, you help the group to overcome its problems and achieve a high level of functioning. This may mean replacing certain ‘non-contributing’ members with others who are more productive, and by replenishing non-
human resources.
Working Patterns
- Team groups: The team designates the positions to be filled and the allocation of members and instigates changes as necessary. Examples are problem-solving groups, research teams and maintenance crews.
- Task groups: Jobs are defined clearly and individuals assigned to specific positions. The group has some flexibility over methods of work and the pace of work, but otherwise limited discretion. Examples could include many
administrative or clerical groups. - Technological groups: Members have very limited autonomy to determine or change the operational activities. The pace of work is also likely to be controlled. Content and method of work are specified and individuals assigned to specific jobs. There is little scope for individual discretion and often- limited opportunities for interaction among members.
- Self-managed teams: The team is accountable for each of its members; decision making and allocation of tasks, including budgetary control, no one task is imposed by a manager.The self-managed team constantly evolves as changes happen therefore facilitates a quicker response to the needs of the business and its customers.
- Virtual Teams: The virtual teams has members who are based at different locations. They are the new production units of knowledge and are increasingly being recognised as a powerful way of working. If knowledge is the primary asset to be properly managed, then virtual, cross-functional teams that create and share new high-quality
knowledge are the new primary business units. Communication, collaboration and co-ordination are their daily
activities.
Belbin Team Roles and their Deployment in an Assignment
Developed by Meredith Belbin in 1981, following nine years of study and has become one of the most accessible and widely used tools to support team building. The team roles were designed to define and predict the potential success of management teams, recognising that the strongest teams have a diversity of characters and personality types. Has been criticised due to its potential oversimplification and ‘pigeon-holing’ of individuals. However, when used wisely to gain insight into the working of the team and identify the team strengths and weaknesses it can be extremely useful.
Belbin describes a team role as “a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way.” There are 3 action-oriented roles – Shaper, Implementer and Completer Finisher; 3 people-oriented roles – Co-ordinator, Teamworker and Resource Investigator and 3 cerebral roles – Plant, Monitor Evaluator and Specialist. The 9 team roles are summarised in the table below.
- The team member with the highest Chairman score should take the part of the Team Leader even though he/she may not necessarily possess the highest formal status in the group. In the event of a Shaper being chosen instead of a Chairman, he/she should be allotted the role of steering the group’s activities.
- The Plant should be allotted an innovative or strategic role. Two people with high Plant scores may cause difficulties in a group.
- The Implementor should be allotted a job involving a high measure of direct responsibility. He/she should be given the principal action role in implementing the decisions of the group.
- The Monitor/Evaluator of the group should vet all new plans. Very careful consideration should be given before proceeding with any plan which does not meet with his/her approval.
- Several Team Team Workers should be allotted support roles. Workers are acceptable and useful in one group.
- The Completer should be encouraged by the Chairman to check that the plans of the group have been executed correctly in detail. He/she may play a particularly important role in emergencies.
- The Resource Investigator should seek to establish and maintain useful contacts outside the group, and bring in ideas and information, disclosing them to the Monitor/Evaluator for assessment.
- It is possible that some members of the group will have their scores broadly spread while one or two members will have high scores in particular categories. This may indicate a badly balanced group and the need for “swapping”. However, it need not matter too much if a role is allotted to someone who is not absolutely in their first role type, provided the role is indicated as a good relative fit for their own personal range of scores. Too much duplication is not a good thing in the roles for which individuals are naturally inclined, except in the case of Team Worker and to a lesser extent Implementor where duplication is less likely to be damaging
- Where an individual is asked to fit into something less than their ideal role, it is important that they achieve the necessary “orientation” before taking on the job. This is especially the case where their self-assessment conflicts with their best role as seen by others.
- These roles if correctly exercised should lead to balanced working in the typical management team or project team. In some cases, however, the tasks facing the group will call for a different role balance with certain roles being dropped and others brought in.The exercise will then need some redesign to meet such occasions,
although the same general approach can be followed. - Where an individual possesses substantial attributes in more than one role he/she should interpret the most appropriate combination of the two or more roles involved. A Chairman/Completer character, for example, will have rather different strengths and weaknesses from a Chairman/Team Worker, and should adjust his/her team-role style accordingly.