Understanding what makes an effective team

TITLE: Unit 04 What makes an effective team

Overview

Benefits of teams

Individual benefits

Organisation benefits

What makes an effective team?

Group decision making

Decision-making strategies

Using a SWOT analysis to evaluate a team’s effectiveness

Why teams end

How to deal with the break up of a team

Summary

Overview

Effective teams help modern organisations to adapt to change. Effective teams also provide you, as an individual within the team, with a sense of satisfaction from sharing ideas and help your professional and individual development.

Effective communication is essential for successful team operation. This means establishing good relationships within the team through effective use of interpersonal communication skills.

It is likely that you work in a team in your organisation or workplace. Even in our community we are usually involved in teams to make decisions and act on them.

We are experiencing a period of rapid change in the workplace. An efficient work team can deal with the day-to-day tasks of the organisation so it can respond easily to changes in work practices.

Inside this topic

  • Benefits of teams
  • What makes an effective team?
  • Group decision making
  • Decision-making strategies
  • How to evaluate a team’s effectiveness
  • The breaking up of teams

Benefits of teams

Teams have many benefits for both individuals and for the organisation.

Individual benefits

Benefits for individuals include:

  • giving satisfaction from sharing of values
  • allowing support from other members
  • as a source of information it helps the individual to know and to understand
  • assisting in mentoring and training of new members.

Organisation benefits

Benefits for the organisation include:

  • helping commitment to goals
  • fostering new and more innovative ideas
  • pooling the collective wisdom so the team arrives at better decisions
  • involving members which leads to ownership of the ideas by the members
  • increasing capacity for developing ideas than individuals working alone
  • making better, wiser and more complete decisions than individuals working alone
  • encouraging co-operation and inclusive work practices
  • ensuring development of quality products and service for customers.

As you can see, there are many more advantages of establishing teams for the organisation than the individual. This is probably why modern organisations are relying more and more on teams.

A team:

  • gives protection against careless decisions
  • reduces duplication of effort
  • increases cooperation
  • leads to improved product and service quality with increased productivity and profits
  • allows easier adaptation to change because of their flexibility
  • can reduce destructive conflict

When managers were asked to rate their reasons for forming teams, customer satisfaction rated highly at 84 per cent. Organisations see teams as an extremely effective way of improving customer service. Increasing staff flexibility, although important, was rated at only 13 per cent. (The Hay Report Compensation, Benefits, and Human Resources Strategies for 1997 and beyond.)

What makes an effective team?

Effective teams:

  • manage conflict constructively
  • use effective interpersonal skills
  • understand the relevance of the team andare committed to the goals
  • are able to communicate ideas and feelings
  • are able to use flexible decision-making procedures
  • participate actively and are prepared to share the leadership
  • encourage equal power and influence when in the team
  • involve everyone and everyone gets involved.

/ Activity 1: Effective teams

Read the following statements and tick the relevant box.

Effective teams / True / False
1Members value and respect each other.
2Make sure team roles are clear.
3Are so organised they never need to meet and discuss tasks.
4Only concentrate on getting the task done as quickly as possible.
5Sometimes spend time having fun.
6All do equal work because that’s fair.
7Never change the leader even if things are going wrong.
8Make sure everyone knows their teamwork is more important than their day-to-day work.
9Ask other team members questions if they are unsure.
10Have a clear purpose or goal and agree on strategies to achieve their goals.
Comments

1True. Teams are effective when they make sure each member feels they are respected and their work is valued.

2True. If the members know what roles they are to take on they can perform their duties more easily. However, people should be given a say in the roles they adopt so the roles are suited to their abilities.

3False. When teams meet they can share ideas and distribute tasks. They can decide on actions to be taken.

4False. When teams meet they can share ideas and distribute tasks. They can decide on actions to be taken.

5True. Developing team spirit helps the team stay together particularly if the task is difficult or unpleasant.

6False. Although everyone in a team should be fair in the amount of effort they put into the task, each person is an individual and will have different skills and strengths for each task.

7False. Different leaders may be needed for different tasks depending on the different skills of the team members.

8False. The team tasks should be tasks best done in a team while the everyday work is best done individually or in smaller groupings. Teams should not be used just for the sake of it.

9True. Open communication allows team members to get the most from each other’s abilities and knowledge.

10True. A team is a group of people committed to working towards a common goal.

Group decision making

Teams and groups that solve their problems effectively have high morale and work better.

Using effective interpersonal skills when making decisions ensure that:

Everyone gets a say. /  / When everyone has a say, it ensures that everyone will be more willing to follow the decision.

When everyone has a say, it ensures that everyone will be more willing to implement the decision.

There are many ways to make decisions. There is never just one decision, nor necessarily a ‘best’ solution. The solution your team chooses should be the one that everyone has contributed to. They may not agree with it one hundred percent but that must understand and accept why it was chosen.

Decision-making strategies

There are a few common methods used to make decisions.

  • Informal decisions—bouncing ideas around the group and discussing advantages and disadvantages as you go.
  • Brainstorming—listing all suggestions quickly without discussing them. Evaluation takes place after all suggestions have been made.
  • Criteria for selection—developing a set of criteria which is used to rank or rate the various opinions.
  • Consensus—discussing until everyone agrees.
  • Voting—the option with the most votes is accepted.
  • Weighing up against consequences (for the organisation)—rank each option against costs, risk to the team, objectives of the organisation, effect on members and so on.

Sometimes you can use more than one of these together. For example, you may brainstorm, develop criteria, weigh the decisions up against the consequences then vote or use consensus.

Using a team to make a decision

How does a team plan and use decision-making strategies to solve problems in an organisation?

Read the case study below to see how CommInc solves an OH&S problem.

Case study: Evacuation at CommInc

The CommInc team has to decide on setting up an evacuation procedure for the workplace. This is the method they used.

Ten step process / CommInc discussion
1 / Describe the problem. / No evacuation plan.
2 / Set the team’s goal. / Develop an evacuation procedure.
3 / Establish a criteria to use to measure the success of the procedure / The procedure is approved by the OHS committee and management
4 / List the main issues affecting the team / Brainstorm the problems or special requirements to be considered
5 / List the main resources available to the team / Team members allocated tasks to find out what resource are available
6 / List the options the team could use to address the problem / Team members use decision-making strategies to determine the steps in the procedure and also how it would be communicated to the rest of the organisation
7 / Select the team’s preferred strategy for achieving its goals / The team now decides upon and uses a decision-making strategy such as ‘criteria for selection’ to agree on the best plan
8 / Develop the action plan / The team now draws up an action plan of how they will write up the procedures and how they will make sure all the people in the organisation are aware of what to do in an evacuation. They will get maps produced and ensure that they are displayed appropriately.
9 / Decide on a contingency plan in case something goes wrong. / What happens if…? The team discusses all the problems which could hinder the plan. What if all the Evacuation Officers have the same holidays?
10 / Determine feedback and communication strategies / The procedure must be dynamic, That is, it must be able to change if there is a change in the situation. The team comes up with a feedback form and thinks of ways they can regularly assess the success of the strategy. How do they make sure that new employees are informed and that longer-term employees don’t forget the strategy.

Using a SWOT analysis to evaluate a team’s effectiveness

Another aid in solving problems in teams is using a SWOT analysis.

SWOT is an acronym for a method of evaluation where the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a team, organisation, situation or individual are identified.

Below are some questions that could be asked during a SWOT analysis.

Strengths

  • What are our advantages?
  • What do we do well?
  • What resources do we have?
  • What do other people see as our strengths?

Weaknesses

  • What could be improved?
  • What is done badly?
  • What should be avoided?

Opportunities

  • Where are the good opportunities for us?
  • Are there changes in technology or markets we need to know about?
  • What interesting trends are we aware of?
  • Are there changes in social patterns, populations or lifestyle changes in the local area?

Threats

  • What obstacles do we face?
  • What is our competition doing?
  • Are the requirements of our job changing?
  • Is changing technology threatening our position?
  • Do we have cash flow problems?

/ Activity 2: SWOT analysis

CommInc is thinking of introducing a new computer program.

Do a SWOT analysis as if you were a team member. Put yourself in their shoes. How would you like to have to learn a new program?

Strengths

______

______

______

______

Weaknesses

______

______

______

______

Opportunities

______

______

______

______

Threats

______

______

______

______

Comments

Here are some suggestions. Your answers will suit your own feelings about change and trying something new.

Strengths

  • Would make work faster.
  • We are a good team prepared to mentor each other.

Weaknesses

  • It will take time to learn.
  • I like the program we have.

Opportunities

  • Chance to learn something new.
  • Will increase our ability to work faster.

Threats

  • I may not be as good at the program as the others.
  • I might look silly.

By discussing our SWOTS we can help each other with the change or even decide it isn’t for us at the moment.

Why teams end

No team will last forever. It may break up because the project has been completed or, because the section or group has been broken up, the people have changed.

Studies on the reasons that teams in organisations break up have reached the following conclusions (in order from the most important reason to the least important).

1Management didn’t support the team.

2Team members didn’t feel that they were all equally accountable when things went wrong.

3The team changed its objective.

4People were not clear about what role they should play.

5The team leader was ineffective.

6The goals of the team were not clear.

7The members did not feel committed to the team.

8There was no payment for being in the team.

You may have been surprised that money played such a small role in teams breaking up. The most important value for people is that they are not wasting time and that they are being treated equally.

How to deal with the break up of a team

There is no right or wrong way to avoid problems with the break up of a team. It will depend on the team, and whether the team was necessary in the first place. However, for all teams, feedback and time to establish good communication between all members is essential.

Some of the following strategies can help.

  • Monitor the team’s behaviour and be prepared to allocate time to develop communication skills.
  • Have a time line.
  • Make sure the team environment is actually necessary to perform the task. Encourage all team members to give feedback to each other about how they felt the process worked.
  • Have an end-of-team/project celebration. This gives the team members the chance to feel positive about the process and each other.

Summary

Effective teamwork is a critical part of many organisations facing change.

  • Effective teams achieve what they set out to do when every member contributes and is committed to the goals of the team.
  • Effective teams use effective interpersonal skills, particularly decision-making skills.

Teams don’t last forever. Effective teams know when to break up and how to do so, so that members are happy to participate in teams again.

9592C: 4 Team participation skills1

2005/117/10/2005 P0031191