Name: Yosra Khoffi
Course name & number: Leadership and Managing Multi Teams (GCO120)
Due date: 05/11/2018
Professor’s name: Rangtiem Hoomkwap
Question 1:
Hackman has identified different factors in order to have a successful teamwork:
Importance of the leader: A team must be guided by a team. An assertive leader will know how divide the tasks and encourage his or her team even if they are not highly skilled. However, another leader might fail even if the team members are excellent and highly motivated. Therefore, the role of the leader is more important than ever in this situation. As Hackman said: “I have no question that a team can generate magic. But don’t count on it.” Count on the leader of the team. I think that he or she is one of the most important elements of success in having an effective team because he will affect roles and tasks and will try to extract the best of his or her employees.
The choice of a leader in a team can change the future and destiny of a company. It depends on his or her personality and how he or her manage the resistance in certain cases. (For example: Ghana Airways went bankrupt because it didn’t take seriously the leadership management)
Size of the team: keep it small to avoid discoordination and waste of valuable time. I think it is a necessity. The bigger the team will be, the less communication and less effectiveness we will face.
Stages of group development: Before starting the performance, I believe that a team should meet each other ant have the time to understand the personality of different partners. This will help in cooperating and achieve higher performance. Any team should go through the five stages of development.
Time managing: Employees won’t do the individual task on time. It is rather to trust what a team can achieve together than individually. It will save a lot of time.
I believe that these factors will help the organization into achieving effective tasks.
Question 2:
The first condition for effective teamwork is to get the purpose clear (process variable). How can you achieve something when you don’t know what the goal is? “What do we want us to achieve?” is the first question that a team should ask to itself. Teams who translate their purpose into Clear and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timing) goal usually succeed in achieving their tasks. It also helps to maintain concentration on getting results.
I believe that applying a certain type of teams is also important. Generally, this will avoid a waste of time as they will understand the way of exchanging information and will start to work as soon as possible. For example, when I have a group project in my school, the first step is to agree on our type of team: Problem solving, cross functional or virtual. It depends on the personality of team members.
People of the same team should support and help each other by listening, evaluating, offering ideas, encouraging experimentation and giving support. It is included in the development stages but I think we should emphasize this fact either by members of the team (Team efficacy: the team trust what they can achieve together) or managers. Providing a supportive environment from the organization will increase the productivity of the team members.
Choosing the right people including skills and diversity on a team is a crucial condition to be effective. It is included on the composition of a team. Hackman has mentioned about size of teams, allocation of roles by the leader, but he didn’t talk about diversity. A team with members who have similar skill will be less creative than a homogeneous team. However, team members with different types of background and knowledge will provide enough collective knowledge to get any task done. It is rather to have also different personality on a team (Organize, creator, linker and promoter) than to have a group of four or five organizers. However, the leader is an important aspect in this case. It is his or her role to provide them with tasks. The goal should also be challenging for all of them and should maintain them focused.
In addition, teams need to be accountable on results. We have to set a system to help the team to measure and evaluate its performance. It is based on the group achievement and not on the individual work. Putting a rewarding system will maintain a good performance by the team and also may improve over the time.
Question 3:
High-potential employees usually are hardworking as well as motivated. They work to a high standard but they still need supervision when they work in a team.
According to the article “We Can Learn Much About Work Teams from Studying Sports Teams”, sports teams are examples of teamwork and I agree with that.
If I have a team of high skilled and experienced employee who should work together for an international campaign, I would start to introduce and compare them to a sport team. I will explain that I am willing to win the match (Marketing campaign). I don’t care if player A (team member A did a great work) scores a goal or 2 goals if the team doesn’t win the match. They have to understand that is about “WE” and not about “I.” This can be a difficult step at the beginning because I have to manage team member egos. Dealing with people who have approximately the same personality and needs can be a challenge.
I would make sure that they don’t skip the 5 stages of group development. They need to go through that to familiarize themselves, roles and responsibilities.
There is a huge talent in the team that I have to manage but I must put one leader who will know how and when to invoke authority (like Hackman said in the case study). Not all high performed employees can be leaders (not every excellent player can be the captain). There are some who are focusing just on themselves and others on the team’s effectiveness.
Once putting a leader, I should make it clear to the other members that they should let him drive ant avoid conflicts.
I will require from them a disciplined and supportive environment.
I would ensure also that the team had bonus and prize if their work was really good. However, I would never measure an individual accomplishment. I will destroy the team idea by rewarding an individual task while I want to focus on having the entire team win.
In this case, each team member will concentrate more on his or her individual work and forget about the team. Therefore, it will maybe enhance their personal development and definitely affect the development of the marketing campaign.
