Learning Objectives
In this module, you will learn how to create and lead a successful team. You will learn how to motivate, delegate, and collaborate with others. You will also learn how to ensure that in a diverse envrionment, such as in a multi-national environment, that your team is inclusive in the sense and respectful of one another’s indvidual cultures with the idea of one mission, one team.
Introduction
Managers must recognize that they play a central role in effective team building. However, to be successful, managers require a framework to guide their activities. The purpose of this paper is to provide such a framework in the form of a seven-step process that can guide managers in their team-building efforts. The model itself is built upon the assumption that there are identifiable team characteristics that, if present, will help ensure team success. The model presents a set of decision strategies for the selection and sequencing of team-building efforts and interventions. The model is an iterative, multi-staged effort that requires considerable planning and environmental knowledge to successfully implement.
Background
In response to globalization, rapid changes in external environments, and a desire by organizations to remain competitive, organizations have continued to flatten, decentralize, re-engineer their business processes, downsize, and empower their employees. To facilitate these changes and gain a competitive edge, managers are increasingly turning to team structures. The actual team design used to support organizational goals may include such structures as cross functional teams, functional work teams, project teams, self-managed teams, intact work teams, employee participation teams, problem-solving teams, maintenance or support teams, and management teams. Cohen and Baily indicate that in the United States, 82 percent of companies employing more than 100 employees have turned to the use of groups to support organizational goals. We must therefore draw the conclusion that European and North American employees often do not work in isolation from each other but work in team.
Unfortunately, the typical team-building effort proves ineffective, for three reasons. First, it relies on the services of an external consultant, who is often unfamiliar with the particular characteristics of the business, the organization, and its people. Second, it involves off-site activities in artificial settings that fail to adequately reflect actual work-site conditions and therefore make transfer difficult. Third, it fails to plan for, monitor, and assess the transfer of team-building activities to the work environment.
In our view, the principal reason for the ineffectual outcomes of many team-building activities is the failure to use a critical team-building resource that is readily available in organizations — the manager. Managers play a critical role in maintaining a team climate through their day-to-day activities. For us, team building must be an ongoing activity internal to the organization. As such, it should be made one of the manager’s primary responsibilities, instead of the responsibility of an external team-building consultant or third party within the organization.