Teams and Teamwork for the 21st Century.

Teams and Teamwork for the 21st Century

Introduction

In 21st century, many organizations are tend to be decentralized, team and teamwork are become popular terms in management circles, in today’s environment, teams promise to be a cornerstone of progressive management for the foreseeable future. A lot of cases show that more and more organization trying to narrow job titles and encourage employees working together to become a effective and efficiently team. According to management expert Peter Drucker, tomorrow’s organizations will be flatter, information based, and organized around teams. (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2001)

According to Katzenbach & Smith (1999, p.214), a work group become a team when

Leadership becomes a shared activity.
Accountability shifts from strictly individual to both individual and collective.
The group develops its own purpose or mission
Problem solving becomes a way of life, not a part-time activity
Effectiveness is measured by the group’s collective outcomes and products

A group of people working together become a team is required team member have sufficient knowledge, experience, ability to contribute in a team, leadership, top-management support, interpersonal communication skills, and so on. Katzenbach & Smith also stat: “ the essence of a team is common commitment. Without it, groups perform as individuals; with it, they become a powerful unit of collective performance.

4 types of Work teams

There are including (1) advice, (2) production, (3) project and (4) action. Each types of work teams depends on their tasks, for example action work team, such as football team, high specialization is combine with high coordination, include player, backup, coach, physicians, and managers. But these four ways of work teams can changed, not static, depends on the tasks, for example, football player also can be the advice team when they discuss the strategy for next matches with their coacher.

Work team effectiveness

To evaluate the work team effectiveness, two most important factors is the team performance which include the team output meets users’ expectation and viability which include team members are satisfied the experience working together and willing to continue contributing to team effort. Also, effective teams have similar characteristics those include clear purpose, informality, participation, listening and so on.

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Work team effectiveness

The three most important factors can cause whether teamwork effective or not are: cooperation, trust and cohesiveness. Team members are required to cooperate with other team members rather than compete them, according to Kohn, “success often depends on sharing resources efficiently, and this is nearly impossible when people have to work against one another… competition makes people suspicious and hostile toward one another and actively discourage this process.” (1989, pp.27-28) Trust is between both teammates and the top-management, trust can be create by communication, support, respect, fairness, predictability and competence. Cohesiveness includes members’ socio-emotional and instrumental cohesiveness. Socio-emotional cohesiveness is individuals derive emotional satisfaction from group participation, and instrumental cohesiveness is when members think them should working because they believe they could not achieve the group’s goal by acting separately. An effective team should balance the socio-emotional and instrumental cohesiveness.

Virtual team

Today technology allows peoples being a member of work team by using Internet, email, video and audio equipment to working together, whether you from different locations, different organization even different time zone. Virtual teams are base on tasks, the benefits of virtual team is include flexible, timing saving for travel, and so on, but some argue is virtual team member lack face-to-face communication, this can cause reduce the team effectiveness because both members are lack trust communication and accountability with others. Virtual team can not replace the tradition factors that includes: top-management support, effective leadership, and well designed time schedules.

Self-managed teams

Self-managed teams should be prepared to undergo revolutionary changes in management philosophy, structure, staffing and training practices and reward systems. Still have many managers strongly resist giving up the reins of power to people they view as subordinates, they see self-managed teams as a threat to their job security, therefore, self-managed teams need top-management support those include sufficient funds, autonomy, directly report to senior management. Employees in self-managed teams tend to act as their supervisor, such as planning, scheduling, monitoring and staffing. An effective self-managed teams can increase productivity, have good attitude, while training cost for self-managed teams can be very expensive.

Team building

For greater cooperation, better communication, and less dysfunctional conflict, team building include interpersonal trust exercises, conflict-handing role-play sessions and interactive games. And according to Wheelan, Murphy, Tsumura and Kline, the following eight attributes of high performance teams include:

Participative leadership. Creating interdependency by empowering, freeing up, and serving other.
Shared responsibility. Establishing an environment in which all team members feel as responsible as the manager for the performance of the work unit.
Aligned on purpose.
High degree of communication.
Future focused. Seeing change as an opportunity for growth.
Focused on task. Keeping meeting focus on results.
Creative talents. Applying individual talent and creativity.
Rapid response. Identifying and acting on opportunity.

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