Team and Team Work

Introduction

A team is a reasonably permanent work group in which members must coordinate their activities to achieve one or more shared goals. The goals could include counselling people in the organisation, creating goods or services, and completing a project. Because achieving the team’s objectives necessitates coordination, team members rely on one another and must contact each other frequently. Through a coordinated effort, a work team develops good synergy. Their combined efforts result in a level of performance that exceeds the sum of their contributions. In today’s workplace, teams have a significant impact. They have become a key component of how business is conducted.

Teams suggest a high level of coordination among their members and a common idea that winning (reaching team goals) is desirable and the sole reason for the team’s existence. Any team is a group, but not all groups have the high degree of interdependence and dedication to success that we typically associate with the team concept. Although most organisations that use teamwork want to achieve high levels of commitment and cooperation, the nature of unique teams differs significantly. Teams differ along two primary dimensions: job distinction and organisation integration.

Creating Effective Teams

The establishment of effective teams is related to the four possible combinations: high or low differentiation plus high or low integration.

1. Advice and Involvement: An advice/involvement team is a group formed to solicit feedback from diverse employees. They have little distinction. Team members only meet for as long as it takes to create ideas or build proposals. One of the work group’s daily activities is problem-solving. Because this team has a narrow scope of influence, adopting teamwork has little impact on the organisation’s management structure.
2. Production and Service: Production/service teams are responsible for the operations associated with producing and selling goods and services. Production/service teams have a diverse membership and are frequently formed to empower front-line staff.
3. Project and Development: A project/development team is tasked with planning, exploring, evaluating, and reporting, often to produce complicated and unique outcomes. Project/development teams are particularly distinct since they demand individuals with specific experience.
4. Action and Negotiation: Action/negotiation teams are often made up of specialised professionals. Due to their skills, the team is very differentiated and strongly integrated with the organisation.

Types of Teams

Teams are categorised as problem-solving, self-managed, or cross-functional teams based on their aims.

1. Problem-solving Teams: Teams of 5-10 individuals from the same department meet weekly for a few hours to explore methods to improve quality, efficiency, and the work environment. These members exchange ideas or make suggestions on how to enhance work processes and procedures. Problem-solving teams also meet regularly to review quality issues, explore root causes, offer solutions, and implement corrective actions.
2. Self-managed Work Teams: A self-managed team includes communal control over task speed, work assignment, break organisation, and collective selection of inspection techniques. Fully self-managed work teams even choose their own members and have them evaluate one another’s performance. As a result, supervisory posts are given less weight and may even be terminated. These teams schedule themselves, rotate jobs independently, set production targets, determine skill-based pay scales, fire coworkers, and hire.

      3. Cross-functional Teams: Cross-functional teams comprise personnel from the same hierarchical level but from various job areas collaborating to complete tasks. Cross-functional teams are an efficient means for employees from many departments (or other organisations) to exchange information, develop new ideas, solve problems, and manage complicated projects. These groups are difficult to manage. As members learn to cope with diversity and complexity, their early phases of development can be time-intensive. Building trust and teamwork takes time, especially among people from different backgrounds, experiences and viewpoints. Cross-functional teams are classified into two groups. They are as follows:

1. 1. Task force — a temporary cross-functional team.
   2. Committees — groups made up of members from different departments.

Team Building

Team building is a broad term that refers to various strategies for strengthening the internal functioning of work groups. Whether led by in-house trainers or outside consultants, team-building workshops aim to increase cooperation, improve communication, and reduce dysfunctional conflict. Experiential learning strategies such as interpersonal trust exercises, conflict-resolution role-play sessions, and interactive games are popular.

Team-building specialists who advocate active versus passive learning reject rote memorising and lecture/discussion. They focus more on how work groups complete tasks than on the tasks themselves. Team building is typically done in the name of organizational development (OD). The widespread application of team building appears to be reasonable. A poll of human resource development managers from 179 Fortune 500 businesses declared team building the most successful management method.

A separate book would be required to cover the many team-building approaches. As a result, the scope of our current conversation is confined to team building and the day-to-day growth of self-management skills. This foundation will provide you with a foundation for picking effective team-building strategies among the many you will meet in the coming years.

Team Building Goals/High-Performance Teams

According to Richard Beckhard, a noted authority on organisational development, team building serves four purposes:

1. To establish objectives and/or priorities.
2. To examine or assign how work is done.
3. To investigate how a group operates and its processes (such as norms, decision-making, and communication).
4. To investigate the relationships between the persons conducting the work.

Trainers accomplish these goals by allowing team members to grapple with a simulated or real-world challenge. The group then analyses the outcomes to see whether group processes need to be improved. Recognizing and correcting problematic group dynamics leads to learning. Perhaps one subgroup concealed critical information from another, impeding group advancement. Team-building is more crucial than ever in today’s global economy as cross-cultural collaborations become more widespread.

Wilson Learning Corporation’s countrywide survey of team members from various organisations provides a valuable model or benchmark of what OD professionals expect of teams. The researchers’ simple query was, “What is a high-performance team?” Respondents were asked to share their best work-team experiences. The study results revealed the following eight characteristics of high-performing teams:

1. Participatory leadership: fostering interdependence via empowerment, liberation, and service to others.
2. Shared responsibility: Creating an environment where all team members feel equally accountable for the work unit’s performance as the management.
3. Aligned on purpose. Having a shared understanding of why the team exists and what function it fulfils.
4. High communication: Establishing an atmosphere of trust and open, honest conversation.
5. Future-focused: Seeing change as an opportunity for growth.
6. Task-oriented: Keeping meetings focused on results.
7. Creative talents: Individual abilities and inventiveness are put to use.
8. Rapid response: Identifying and acting on opportunities.

Many of today’s most advanced management ideals are skillfully combined in these eight traits: participation, empowerment, service ethic, individual responsibility and development, self-management, trust, active listening, and envisioning. However, perseverance and diligence are required. “High-performance teams may take three to five years to develop,” according to a manager knowledgeable with work teams. As we wrap out our examination of team-building, keep this fantastic model of high-performing teams in mind.

Developing Team Members’ Self-management Skills

In recent years, a promising dimension of team-building has evolved. It is a development of the behavioural self-management strategy. As defined by proponents, self-management leadership is the practice of empowering people to lead themselves. An underlying assumption is that self-management teams will fail unless team members are explicitly encouraged to engage in self-management behaviours. This makes sense because expecting employees who are used to being managed and subsequently led to suddenly manage and lead themselves is unreasonable. Current managers participating in self-management leadership behaviours is a significant transition to self-management. This is team-building in its broadest sense.

Six self-management leadership behaviours were identified in a field study of a manufacturing organisation organised around self-managed teams. The following behaviours were observed:

1. Promotes self-reinforcement. An example is getting team members to compliment each other on good work and results.
2. Promotes self-observation and evaluation. Teaching team members to assess their performance as an example
3. Promotes self-expectation. Encourage team members to demand excellent performance from themselves and the team, for example.
4. Promotes personal goal-setting. As an example, the team could establish its performance objectives.
5. Promotes rehearsal. Getting team members to consider and practise new tasks is one example.
6. Promotes self-criticism. Encourage team members to be critical of their bad performance, for example.

According to the researchers, Charles Manz and Henry Sims, this form of leadership represents a significant shift from typical techniques such as issuing instructions and/or ensuring everyone gets along. The overarching purpose is empowerment, not dominance.

Quality Circles

Quality control gave rise to the Quality Circle idea.

A quality circle is a small group of employees who do comparable or related work and meet regularly to detect, analyse, and solve product-quality problems and improve overall operations.

Quality circles are somewhat autonomous units (preferably around 10 people), typically led by a supervisor or a senior worker and organized as work units. Workers with overlapping responsibilities meet regularly to discuss, analyse, and propose solutions to existing problems.

Typical efforts to improve production procedures and quality include lowering defects, scrap, rework, and downtime, all of which are expected to result in cost savings and higher productivity. Furthermore, the circles attempt to focus emphasis on worker self-development and the improvement of working circumstances. As a result of this procedure, workers’ morale and motivation are improved, teamwork is stimulated, and their accomplishments are recognised.

The quality circle technique has been refined through time. It is now being used to achieve the following goals:

1. Overall improvement in the quality of the enterprise’s products.
2. Enhancement of production procedures and corporate productivity.
3. Employees who participate in quality circles’ self-development.
4. Employees’ unique ideas should be encouraged.
5. Increasing employee morale through encouraging teamwork inside the organisation.

Advantages of Quality Circles

Quality circles are expected to provide the following advantages to the organisation.

1. Establishing quality circles in Japan and other nations has aided in developing various innovations and modifications.
2. Quality circles have proven to be an effective technique for enhancing productivity, improving quality, and improving employee job satisfaction.
3. Circle membership implies a participatory setting that allows for identification with the workgroup. When employees are involved, they are more committed to producing superior products. Through quality circles, everyone becomes involved in running the organisation. From the top down, everyone is focused on a single goal: success through quality.

Introducing Quality Circle in an Organization

The quality circle is a novel concept, and its implementation may elicit considerable resistance from personnel. As a result, as with any organisational change, all measures must be taken before implementing the quality circle. The following are the steps in the introduction of the quality circle:

1. Selling the Idea of Quality Circle: Workers must be educated on the importance and necessity of the quality circle from the perspective of the organisation and the workers. The scope of the quality circle should also be adequately stated. Workers should be free to express their concerns about the quality circle. An attempt should be made to solicit their voluntary participation in implementing quality circles in the organisation. The management may also arrange training for employees who want to form quality circles.
2. Formation of Quality Circles: Employees should be encouraged to construct quality circles by drawing members who undertake similar job. A decent circle should include no more than ten to twelve people. Top management should have access to information regarding the composition of quality.
3. Quality Problem Analysis: Members of a quality circle are expected to meet regularly, perhaps once a month. They gather data and analyse it. In this sense, previous records, personnel, and consumer suggestions are critical. This will lead to the discovery of the issues that impede quality.
4. Problem Solving: The quality circle members will thoroughly discuss the problems and create a list of viable solutions. Each solution’s benefits and drawbacks will be assessed. The ultimate decision will be made by unanimous agreement of all members.
5. Presentation of Suggestions to Management: Suggestions for quality improvement are written down and forwarded to management. Top management may organise a committee to assess the proposals of the organization’s various quality circles. If there is any doubt, the committee may meet with members of the quality circles. The committee will write the final report. It will include a list of recommendations for increasing the quality of goods and services.
6. Implementation: Proper publicity should be provided to quality circles’ ideas that are being implemented. This will encourage employees because they will feel important for contributing to the organization’s success. Management should closely monitor the implementation of the proposals to ensure a seamless transition to new procedures.

Problems in Implementation of Quality Circles

There are various pitfalls in the quality community. Despite their merits, they have failed in several businesses. The following are the most typical barriers to establishing quality circles in India:

1. Negative Attitude: Employees and supervisors may negatively approach the quality circle. They will, of course, oppose its implementation. People’s misconceptions about quality circles must be dispelled. They should be well-educated on the quality circle concept and its application.
2. Lack of Ability: Indian labourers have a poor level of education and lack leadership abilities. To overcome this obstacle, a workers’ Education Program should be launched. It is also necessary to educate employees about the quality circle.
3. Lack of Management Commitment: Top management may not be dedicated to the quality circle concept. Employees may not be permitted to hold quality circle meetings during working hours, and they will be reluctant to devote their personal time to the quality circle. As a result, management should allow workers to hold quality circle meetings on a regular basis during working hours and provide the help requested by the quality circles to ensure their seamless operation.
4. Non-implementation of Proposals: Employees will be discouraged if their suggestions are rejected without explanation. Each quality circle’s proposals should be given equal weightage. They must be implemented if they are likely to increase product quality. This will energise the quality circle members.